Psychedelic Mushrooms in Christian Art? John A. Rush

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 two things. First, that he was not (on that occasion at least) a careful and critical observer, and second, that he was unfamiliar with what Jesus would be expected to be holding according to standard depictions of the mosaic in question.

The mosaic is a depiction, based on Matthew 28:1-10, of Mary Magdalene and the other Mary encountering the risen Jesus on the morning of the resurrection. A more common version of this scene shows only Jesus and Mary Magdalene at the moment described when Jesus said to Mary “touch me not” (Noli me tangere) (John 20:17).

In Noli me tangere scenes Jesus is usually shown holding one of three things.  The first is a shovel or adze, based on Mary’s having confused him with a gardener in John 20:15.  The second is a staff with a cross on its upper end, from which a flag with a cross on it usually hangs (Fig. 2).  These are mostly found in the iconography of the Western Church.

Fig. 2


The third, which is mostly found in the Icons of the Eastern Church, where biblical scenes are more standardized, is a scroll (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3

According to the Hermeneia, or ‘Painter’s Manual’ of Dionysius of Fourna, an eighteenth-century iconographer from Mount Athos Monastery in Greece, in Noli me tangere images, “Christ stands before the tomb, holding his robe with one hand, and a scroll with the other which says, ‘Mary, touch me not.” Mary kneels before him and tries to touch his feet” (The ‘Painter’s Manual’ of Dionysius of Fourna [trans. Paul Hetherington; Torrance, CA: Oakwood Publications, 1996], 39).

Had Rush cross-referenced what he thought he saw with informed discussions of iconography and/or obtained a better photograph of the mosaic in question, he could have clearly seen and understood, were he inclined to do so, that what was in Jesus’s hand was a scroll and not a psychedelic mushroom (Fig. 4).  On the other hand, when we look at some of the other examples where Rush asserts the presence of mushrooms (which I shall include in due course) it is easy to imagine that he would also be able to look at the scroll and somehow see a mushroom there as well.

Photo: Richard and Claire Stracke





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