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Jan R. Irvin. Are the two figures in the discs the Spirit of the Lord or Jesus?

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  The above taken from J.R. Irvin, The Holy Mushroom: Evidence of Mushrooms in Judeo-Christianity (Appendix by Jack Herer; Grand Terrace, CA: Gnostic Media, 2008), (unpaginated kindle edition). The tree is a mushroom tree in the sense of a stylized trees are called a Pilzbaum, i.e., a mushroom or umbrella-shaped tree. But it does not represent a psychedelic mushroom, which is what Irvin and others argue.   Mushrooms don't have branches, much less multiple heads on multiple branches. But more to the point mushrooms are cryptogams, that is to say, they have seeds or fruit. And yet this tree has fruit hanging from it, as does the much faded one in the previous scene. The fruit relates to the fact that the previous scene illustrates the Latin Vulgate text of Genesis 1:11-12: "Let the earth bring forth the green herb, and such as may seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind, which may have seed in itself upon the earth. And it was so done. And the earth...
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John A. Rush, The Ghent Altarpiece. Is that a mushroom at the base of the fountain?

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  Here is Plate 3:63c from  John A. Rush, The Mushroom in Christian Art (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2011).   John A. Rush presents an extremely poor-quality blow-up of the bottom of the fountain (lower right) from the Ghent Altarpiece, urging his readers to "Notice the mushroom at the base of the fountain."  This echoes the text of the book itself where he says the same thing and credits Jan Irvin for the information (p. 250).  As is so often the case, it is impossible for the viewer to tell whether what Rush says is true from the photo he provides. It is wholly worthless for verification of what Rush is claiming.  Here is a better picture revealing that it is not a mushroom, as Rush claims, but a water-spouting mascaron.
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Psychedelic Mushrooms in Christian Art? John A. Rush

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John A. Rush who taught Anthropology at Sierra College, Rocklin, California. Rush example represents the first kind issue, namely something he has simply gotten conspicuously wrong:  In his book  Failed God: Fractured Myth in a Fragile World  (Berkeley, CA: Frog Books, 2008), John A. Rush, uses a certain mosaic he saw in St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice as a sort of launching pad for the work.  We read in his preface: On July 13, 2001, I entered St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice, Italy, and was overwhelmed by the beauty of the mosaics.  As I moved along, I noticed an arch with a curious scene (see from cover).  There was Jesus with the cap of  Amanita muscaria , the sacred mushroom, in his hand (pp. xix-x). The image of the mosaic on the cover is not clear enough to tell whether what Rush said was true or not (Fig. 1).  But a clearer one will be presented below. Fig. 1 But in truth Rush saw no such thing, and the fact that he claimed he did reveals...
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Psychedelic Mushrooms in Christian Art? Why Does Jan Irvin Look at Nails and Think He Sees Shrooms?

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                                                                            J. R. Irvin,   The Holy Mushroom: Evidence of Mushrooms in Judeo-Christianity   (Appendix by Jack Herer; Grand Terrace, CA: Gnostic Media, 2008), plate 33. Those advancing the theory that early and medieval Christian art was intentionally filled with hidden images of psychedelic mushrooms are often shown to be disturbingly ill informed with regard to what is actually being portrayed in the pictures they adduce as evidence for their theory. As one reads the adventurous and idiosyncratic texts of these authors it quickly becomes apparent that very often little or no effort has been expended on undertaking the serious study of the norms and symbolism of Christian iconography. Rather the impression is given that the wr...
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Is the Boy Dizzy, Dancing or Dying? The Misappropriation of MS. Bodl. 602, fol. 27v, as "Evidence" for Psychedelic Mushrooms in Christian Art.

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Beastiary, MS. Bodl. 602,  fol. 27v . PDF of this article T he image above is from a 13th century bestiary in Oxford's Bodleian Library (MS. Bodl. 602, fol. 27v). A completely fanciful interpretation of this picture was advanced by Bennett et al.  1995 , which was in turn uncritically repeated and expanded upon by subsequent PMTs (Psychedelic Mushroom in Christian Art Theorists), all of whom imagined it came from a 14th alchemical text and none of whom knew it was actually from a 13th century bestiary.    Medieval bestiaries describe what was believed to be the peculiar behaviors and characteristics of different animals along with their typological or symbolic significance.  They are rooted in a Greek work known as the Physiologus , which is sometimes attributed to the 4th century Greek father Epiphanius of Salamis, but perhaps dates back as early as the end of the 2nd century AD.   In the present article we shall first describe what the pic...
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