Jan R. Irvin. Are the two figures in the discs the Spirit of the Lord or Jesus?
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 brought forth the green herb, and such as yieldeth seed according to its kind, and the tree that beareth fruit, having seed each one according to its kind. And God saw that it was good".
The two discs in the better-preserved scene does not represent "the spirit of the lord or Jesus, peering down." It illustrates the fourth creation day where we read in Genesis 1:14-16:
"And God said: Let there be lights made in the firmament of heaven, to divide the day and the night, and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years: To shine in the firmament of heaven, and to give light upon the earth. And it was so done. And God made two great lights: a greater light to rule the day; and a lesser light to rule the night: and the stars."
In this case the sun and moon are personified as Sol and Luna. This personification of the Son and Moon are extremely common throughout the Carolingian, Ottonian, and Romanesque period. Multiple examples could easily be provided, but the point of these posts is to briefly describe individual examples of the many erroneous interpretations put forward by those who claim to find psychedelic mushrooms hidden in Medieval art.
Irvin's unfamiliarity with the fact that the discs represent Sol and Luna undermines whatever he significance he wanted to insinuate by claiming that the "spirit of the lord being held above it," i.e., the tree.
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