For instance, cow dung is one of the five blessed products of the cow (the others being milk, curd, ghee and urine).
Having been the unwitting consumer of cow piss as an ingredient of various celebratory concoctions, I'm happy that cow dung is not commonly consumed. It is however a fairly ubiquitous product in village India, being used to smooth both interior and exterior walls of houses, and as fuel. Indeed part of the work I was involved in India was trying to persuade villagers that cow dung is not an appropriate dressing for open wounds.
Again, none of which has much bearing on whether mushrooms are or were consumed in India, but if they are, it is not widely practiced not because of secrecy but because of obscurity.

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The first photo you posted shows a mushroom with petals.
The last one looks like a cup to me.
Some of the others kind of look like mushrooms if you squint your eyes a little.
Unfortunately none serve as any kind of evidence for mushroom use whatsoever.

You make a lot of points and references in your posts, which makes it a bit difficult to do them justice, but, to start I would ask you if you have ever read Wassons (et al) book on Soma being fly agaric? I have, and his argument is thin at best. I also studied Sanskrit for two years, which does not make me an expert at any level, but does allow me both opinions on how it is translated and also insights into the work of professional Sanskritists like Wendy Doniger who collaborate on crank projects like Wasson's.

Concerning my experience, I lived in India for three years and was initiated into a division of the Nath Sampradaya that uses aghori practices, by a "guru", who used a skull as a cup and had participated in various charnel ground practices, who gave me a mantra and taught me certain practices. That was twenty years ago, and I understand it does not make me an expert or give me special credentials, but it does mean that I have had a good look at the thin end of the wedge and saw lots of wired and wonderful and horrible things, but no mushrooms.

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I think you would benefit from either first hand experience or at the very least finding credible primary sources before getting too involved in your "reportage" of this stuff, as most of what you have written is both incoherent and frequently factually incorrect.

My apologies to nen and the other contributers to this thread. I didn't intend to open this subjective can of worms in such a nice place. Lesson learned

It may be helpful to allow for the possibility that soma, amrita, etc. refer to things that have nothing to do with substances whatsoever.

Excellent point. Also cf practices like Kechhari which aim to harness internally produced Amrit, iirc from the "soma chakra".

You say wasson made a bad case, ok, fine, though I would appreciate it if you could explain to me why his case was bad, and make a better argument than "you are wrong because of my individual experience" I'm sure this could be true, but you are not doing much to convince me.

I'm not trying to be rude, I'm just very unsatisfied with your explanations and reasoning. I'll admit I may be wrong, but a good case has to be made...

Though I don't think it's unreasonable to agree to disagree, and let this one go....

I'll drop the soma and mushrooms bit, because as I said, I have a case, but I'm not at liberty to cite every text, ancient work of art, personal anecdote, archeological study, and research piece which makes my case, at least not in this context, say it's a thread regarding me proving my case and I can fill this thread with all the information I want, in that case, yes, I would cite more than an ancient textile, some ancient carvings of Hindu gods, some identified as holding mushrooms by John Allen, and the work of Gordon wasson.

In the fist picture, I can show you psychedelic coprophilic fungi with this is exact feature as the carving. The last picture is the textile from this link http://scfh.ru/en/papers...oma-we-became-immortal-/ which was analyzed by team from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography SB RAS, which was led by Natalia Polosmak, they had mycologists and archeologists, anthropologists, etc. look at that textile and they are in conclusion that it is a stropharia cubensis mushroom.

When you say "the book where wasson makes his case for soma" you are talking about "SOMA: Divine Mushroom of Immortality", no? I have read this book as a youth, and used excerpts from it in recent times, and like I said, wasson makes a great case that it is a mushroom, he makes a bad case in that he purportedly intentionally misidentified the mushroom as amanita muscaria. (Keep in mind that wasson discovered the mushrooms cults of Oaxaca, Mexico, and keep in mind what happened to those villages after he published that article)

My experience of those practicing aghori was more like this:

http://www.cnn.com/video...a-aslan-india-clip-1.cnn

These people are feral and nomadic followers of Shiva (except for aghori like lali-baba who is a rare exception, and owns an ashram) they are constantly intoxicated, the reject notions of pure and impure, and will go to great lengths to basically scare people to death, (aghora means "without fear" ) they sleep on corpses, they meditate on dead bodies and dead animals, they eat fecal matter, rotted flesh, human flesh, and so on, whether it is candy or cow dung the aghori the will accept it as part of divine creation...

There are also "charas sadhus", followers of Shiva who consume cannabis as a core piece of their religious practice, most are feral and nomadic, I have had charas sadhus give me anecdotes of the mushroom during my research, this is the type of thing I'm not comfortable citing as there is not any evidence to back it up, but I have been told the stropharia cubensis mushroom is common, and well known.

Any way, I'll drop it...

-eg

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I am giving my opinion that not everything that looks like a mushroom is a mushroom.

I am relating my first hand experience of having lived and travelled in India, lived with "Aghoris" and amongst tribal people (namely Dongaria Khond in the Eastern Ghats), and having got, for want of a better word, fucked up with everybody from rickshaw pullers to temple pandits, in every way possible, and never heard of any mushrooms.

And it's not like Indians, again, in my experience, have "big secrets". The have high-level techniques and expertise, which they might hold secret, but not generally the materials themselves. Go find a traditional Indian Ayurvedicist. They will tell about all the crazy medicines that can do weird and wonderful things to you, but they will not tell you how.

Or ask a Tantric about a specific Yantra or Mantra, they will show you what one looks like, but will not tell you how to use it. India is a land of marvels and the unexpected, but not generally a land of secrets. That is more of "mysteries of the East" Orientalist type nonsense aimed at selling perfume or pantyhose.

But- I'm still not saying mushrooms are not or were not used. I'm just saying that there is as yet no evidence, apart from the similarity between the psychedelic experience and, from my point of view, many aspects of higher Hindu, specifically Tantric, teachings.

Hokey pictures from the internet of small objects that might look a bit like mushrooms, from disparate cultures thousands of miles and many centuries in distance, do not cut the mustard. If this is all the evidence you need to believe something to be true, then your standards are not very high. If you want to cite credible sources of the various analysts who looked at two Scythian men passing a cup between them and said "Yup! Mushroom!", go ahead. I'd especially be interested if the identified it as P. Cubensis, which does not grow in Central Asia!

Re; Wasson's book, read it again. It is weak. Wasson was not a Sanskritist or an Indologist. He was not even a mycologist. He takes as evidence single occurrences of a number of ambiguous words, words that he did not translate himself, but had someone "translate to order". He was a wealthy hobbyist who did not rely on peer review of any kind. I personally factor these things into whose word I take seriously, as should you.

Please don't be offended if I am direct; I have been interested in Hinduism since my teens, travelled extensively in the Subcontinent, and wrote a BA thesis specifically on Soma. It's an area of great interest to me, and frankly I find it a shame that more people who are also interested do not make more effort in at least accessing the many primary texts that have been translated into English.

This is pure comedy staged for the camera. You experienced this?




"Charas sadhu" is a new one to me. Where did you meet these "charas sadhus" who gave you mushroom anecdotes? I'm curious.

In your opinion, what are the best reads on it?
I saw quite some stuff, but also quite some seemed not very good to me (e.g. like the one from Wasson). So I would be very interested, what someone like you would suggest.

Certainly in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras there is a famous reference to using herbs as one of a number of ways to attain siddhas.

On Soma? I don't believe there are any primary texts concerning the identity of Soma.
I was referring to primary texts on Tantra, which are mostly expositions of the nature of reality, and which might give one perspective on the relationship between South Asian religion and psychedelics.

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I am not and have not been trying to convince you or anyone else of anything. I have merely pointed out that there is no evidence (and no, your photos of statues or Scythian tapestries do not constitute evidence) for the use, past or present, of mushrooms for religious purposes in South Asia.
I also pointed out that I have personal experience of exactly the South Asian demographics you speculatively cite as being likely to use them, i.e. Tantrics and/or low caste/tribal people, and my experience at no point revealed anything remotely involving mushrooms, despite my excellent connections and personal tendencies at the time leaning heavily toward getting blitzed and staying blitzed.

If you are interested in my thoughts based on my personal experience of Aghoris of the Nath tradition, I am happy to discuss that, perhaps in another thread or privately. One thing that I can tell you is that Aghoris are not some sort of wild tribe of "feral nomads". They are people who choose a particular practice based on their particular proclivities and personality.




Of course it was staged for the camera! To suggest otherwise is absurd. It is possible that the crazy baba went off script, but the "journalist", if that's what we can call him, went there to provide his gormless viewership with something sensational, no matter what the cost in authenticity, taste or originality. I know that area on the far bank at Benares, it's where a lot of dead bodies wash up, and it's where a lot of crazies hang out, and for a little baksheesh they will put on a good show, as they have for a number of similarly assinine TV programs before the one you linked to.




Interesting. What were the circumstances? Where was it? Was it the same place where the "charas sadhus" told you about the mushrooms? I'm intrigued.