The Hidden Connection Between Christianity and Amanita Muscaria

A Moment of Historical Wonder

That moment when history suddenly winks at you. I had one in Paris last week. I found myself in the Cluny Museum—the temple of medieval art. I was staring at a carved altarpiece, the Oratory of the Duchesses of Burgundy. It depicted Christ’s childhood, his passion, and little scenes of medieval life. Tiny figures walked through forests, tended to animals, and passed under little towers and bridges. Every detail was perfect.

And then… I noticed something odd.

In several forest scenes, there were low, round-topped shapes with thin stalks. They weren’t as tall as the people. They were brightly rounded, unmistakably shaped like… mushrooms.

Smooth stems, round little domes for caps. Not just any mushrooms, but Amanita muscaria—the classic toadstool of myth and magic.

A Curious Inquiry

I spotted a curator nearby and decided to ask: “Excuse me, are these… mushrooms? Amanita muscaria?”

The man looked at me with that perfect French museum indignation. “No, madame. They are trees.”

Trees? Really? Tiny trees that barely reach a person’s waist, with domed tops and smooth stalks? I pushed a little: “Why are they so small, then? And why do they look exactly like mushrooms?”

His answer was priceless: “The medieval artists simply could not do trees.”

I almost laughed. These same artists mastered everything else—bone-carved humans with delicate fingers, animals mid-stride, towers with architectural precision, even cities in miniature. But trees? No, apparently that was their one great artistic weakness. So, instead of trees, they carved… mushrooms.

That was the explanation I got. Yet, I left the Cluny still staring at those “trees,” thinking: They’re mushrooms. They have to be.

The Psychedelic Gospels

That moment—a little jolt of wonder and suspicion—put me in the exact same headspace as the authors of the book The Psychedelic Gospels, by Jerry B. Brown and Julie M. Brown. After leaving the Cluny Museum, still pondering those ivory “trees” that looked suspiciously like mushrooms, I dove into a book that lives in that exact space of doubt and discovery.

Its premise is simple: early Christianity might have had a psychedelic heart. Sacred mushrooms—especially Amanita muscaria—were hidden in art, whispered through scripture, and maybe even part of the sacrament itself.

Before you imagine some wild-eyed hippie guru making this claim—no. Jerry Brown is not Baba Masha from our previous episode. He’s a Ph.D. anthropologist and founding professor at Florida International University, where he taught Hallucinogens and Culture for over forty years. His co-author, Julie Brown, is a holistic psychotherapist and health coach. Together, they present this as a serious anthropological investigation into Christian art and scripture.

If you read it, you’re supposed to see the sacred mushroom trail winding through cathedrals, Gnostic gospels, and the life of Jesus himself—and maybe never look at a medieval altarpiece the same way again.

A Journey Through Art and History

The book takes you on what I can only describe as a middle-aged anthropological Euro-road-trip. Jerry and Julie Brown wander through European and Middle Eastern churches—Roslyn Chapel, Chartres Cathedral—squinting at murals and carvings and exclaiming: “Aha! Mushroom!”

They’ve got color photos to prove it, just in case you can’t spot the suspicious toadstool in a thousand-year-old fresco on your own.

The book also promises to decode the Bible and the Gnostic Gospels for you. The claim is that sacred mushrooms were the actual catalyst for Jesus’s divine awakening. He may even have learned the ways of the mushroom sacrament in Egypt during those mysterious “missing years.” And Eden’s Tree of Knowledge and Tree of Immortality? According to this book—they were mushrooms too.

In short, the Browns invite you to throw out everything you thought you knew about Jesus and imagine that the first Christians were basically early psychonauts. That every cathedral is secretly a mushroom manual, and that all you need to see it is a slightly suspicious mind… or maybe just better lighting.

Heroes and Villains in the Narrative

In this book, there are clear heroes and clear villains. Heroes are mushrooms, mushrooms, and—wait for it—more mushrooms. The villain? None other than R. Gordon Wasson, the first great American mycologist and the man who basically introduced the West to magic mushrooms.

The Browns even give him an epic anti-God tagline: “Just as Darwin took God out of the creation of man, Wasson took God out of the creation of religion.”

From there, the book jumps straight into a greatest-hits tour of every psychedelic gospel you’ve ever heard:

• First stop: Maria Sabina—the Mazatec healer from Oaxaca who shared her sacred mushroom ceremonies with the outsider world for the first time in the 1950s.

• Next up: R. Gordon Wasson—a New York banker turned amateur mycologist, the man who traveled to Mexico, participated in her veladas, her sacred ceremonies, and then brought psilocybin to the attention of the West. He sent samples to Albert Hofmann—the guy who discovered LSD—who was able to isolate the active compound and named it psilocybin.

  
  

The Browns scold Wasson for “abusing native sacraments” and bringing all this attention to Maria Sabina’s community—which is a bit like blaming Columbus for being an explorer or blaming Sleeping Beauty for being too lazy.

The Mushroom-Myth Connection

Then the book moves on to every mushroom-and-myth connection you’ve already heard. They comb through Europe, seeing mushrooms in every mural, every panel, every medieval forest carving. Honestly? They add nothing new except some long, mundane slices of personal life.

They open the whole thing with a proud “debunking” of The Da Vinci Code. It’s as if a physics professor dedicated his career to proving that Harry Potter isn’t factually accurate. Like… thank you?

What I did NOT know, however, is how complex Wasson’s personality was. This is the man who basically founded modern ethnomycology—a citizen scientist who did more for psychedelic history in the 20th century than almost anyone except Albert Hofmann.

• He was not just the first outsider to participate in Maria Sabina’s magic mushroom ceremony in Oaxaca.

• He didn’t just team up with Hoffman; he also got very chummy with poet Robert Graves, and together they argued that the legendary Indian soma was likely a drink made from Amanita muscaria juice.

  
  

And yet… this same Wasson was vehemently against the obvious next step—the theory that early Christianity, like every other major religion, might have had its own entheogenic sacrament. He even dismissed the famous mural at the Chapel of Plaincourault—which looks exactly like a cluster of Amanita mushrooms in Eden—as “just a stylized apple tree.” Right. Sure.

The Twist of History

Then comes the twist I didn’t know: Wasson wasn’t just a banker—he was an international banker for J.P. Morgan and one of the very few outsiders who had private meetings with the Pope. Suddenly, his decision to leave Christianity untouched makes a lot more sense.

Honestly, if it weren’t for the syrupy old-man voice of Jerry Brown reading this like a love letter to his wife—because he reminds us constantly how much he adores her—I might have joined the conspiracy-theory fan club right there. But no. Great guy, probably. Terrible writer.

A Beginner's Guide to the Psychedelic Theory

I’ll give the book this: it works for beginners. If you’ve never heard of Gordon Wasson, Maria Sabina, or the whole psychedelic theory of religion, this book will sweep you right in. The narrative is designed like a guided tour for the uninitiated. You follow Jerry and Julie Brown from polite skepticism to full-blown conviction that, yes, there are mushrooms hiding in the sacred heart of Christianity.

It even pretends to be scholarly enough to keep academics on board. They talk about methodology, how to identify psychedelic imagery in medieval art, and how to decode certain biblical mythemes. To be fair, they do sprinkle in a little new evidence—a few fresh examples of mushrooms in Christian art and some creative re-readings of mythic themes.

So if this is your first trip through the idea that religion might have sprouted from a mushroom patch, this book is… rhetorically effective. It will carry you from “Hmm, that’s odd” to “Okay, maybe the first Christians really were eating Amanita.”

The Cultural Impact of Amanita Muscaria

Here’s the thing. Amanita muscaria lives in our collective psyche. Its shape and colors are etched into fairy tales, into Christmas, and into that deep corner of the brain where myth and magic meet. So, of course, if we go looking for God, we’re going to see it everywhere—on murals, in altarpieces, in the folds of medieval forests.

Yes, it’s very plausible that Amanita muscaria was once a sacrament. It’s small, it’s red, it’s served in little doses, and it opens you to the strange pulse of nature. It’s easy to imagine early Christians—or anyone—using it to step closer to the divine.

The Inconvenient Truth

But here’s the inconvenient truth: we don’t have proof. No fresco, no ivory carving, no Gnostic hint is going to hand you certainty. The only real way to understand it… is to try the sacrament yourself.

Amanita muscaria won’t kill you. It won’t make you lose your mind. Used carefully, in microdoses, it quiets the nervous system. In that calm, the world softens. Your guard drops. Suddenly, the divine—whatever that means to you—has a way in.

Maybe that’s the secret the Browns are really circling: The mystery isn’t on the cathedral wall. It’s in the mushroom… and in you.

Final Thoughts

You can read about mushrooms all day. You can stare at medieval murals until your eyes cross. But this—like an orgasm—is an empirical experience. I can describe it to you, give you metaphors, and tell you what Amanita muscaria does to your nervous system—but until you try it yourself, you won’t really understand.

So if you’re ready for your soul orgasm, - grab your starting pack, read the microdosing protocol, and start your own experiment. Educate yourself. Play with your consciousness. Because nature is fun. Knowledge is fun. And discovering the divine in both? That’s the best kind of fun.