From the Bodies of the Gods: Psychoactive Plants and the Cults of the Dead
“After this learned exploration of how necrophilia, hallucinogens, body fluids, human sacrifice, and ancestor worship powerfully influenced the major religions like Judaism and Christianity, it will be hard to view those venerable faiths and institutions in the standard, conventional way. During his stunning intellectual romp, Lee also provides fascinating, even ‘heretical,’ insights into such personages, places, and practices as the Roman catacombs, Last Supper, Eucharist; Neolithic, Hebrew, Greek, and Egyptian burial rites; Horus, the Virgin Mary, Moses, Jesus, the Knights Templar, veneration of saintly relics and the Holy Grail, Minoan mead-making, Dominicans, corpse-painting, psychedelic mushroom-growing, anointing, witch-hunting, Prometheus, and goddess worship.” (Sanford Berman, award-winning librarian and author of Prejudices and Antipathies)“...the book is a trove to delve into and it’ll be interesting to see what further scholarship it gives rise too.” (Psychedelic Press UK, July 2012)“From time to time, a book comes along that stops you in your tracks and stuns your mind.From the Bodies of the Godsis such a book. It will—and should—provoke intense discussion about some of the most fundamental underpinnings of Western religions.” (Larry Dossey, M.D., author of Healing Words, Reinventing Medicine, and The Power of Premonitions)“An insightful analysis on early funeral rites and ethnomycology . . . deepens our body of learning about the origins of the Christian faith and humanity’s entheogenic history.” (Rob Dickins, editor of the Psychedelic Press UK)“These were ideas intensely debated by seminarians after the disclosures of the Dead Sea Scrolls. . . . As this book demonstrates, many passages in the Holy Scriptures are incomprehensible as anything but blatant descriptions of the Christian cult of the dead traceable back to the earliest religious rites of prehistory and prevalent throughout antiquity and medieval Catholicism.” (Carl A. P. Ruck, professor of Classical Studies, Boston University, and author of Mushrooms, Myths,)