Easter & the Triumph of Good Over Evil
The Past, Present and Future of Psychedelic Tourism in Oaxaca (Part 4)
(This is the third chapter of a travelogue in which I visit the highlands of Oaxaca in order to investigate its psychedelic tourism scene. If you wish to start the story from the beginning, you can find the first chapter here.)
The Past, Present and Future of Psychedelic Tourism in Oaxaca (Part 4)
Easter Sunday, 2023
My life is full of synchronicity. How fucking crazy is it that I wound up going on a mushroom hunt on Easter Sunday?
I really didn’t plan this out deliberately. It just wound up this way.
To those who don’t understand why I would see this coincidence as meaningful, allow me to explain.
When Friedrich Nietzche described the Christian church as ¨an encyclopedia of prehistoric cults¨, he knew what he was talking about.
You see, there really is no question that Easter includes vestiges from pre-Christian pagan spiritual practices.
If you take a minute to think about the symbols associated with Easter, such as the rabbit, the egg, and the mushroom, it is plain to see evidence of a pagan fertility cult. It is likely that the origin of the Easter egg hunt derives from mushroom-hunting. Think about it.
After meeting Maria Sabina, R. Gordon Wasson became convinced that early Christianity included a psychedelic dimension.
As crazy as this will sound to conservative Christians, there is reason to believe that the eucharist used in the ritual of communion was most likely originally some kind of entheogen, possibly some species of magic mushrooms.
It is worth pointing out that there have been significant advances in this field o f study since the time of Wasson. It is no longer possible to ignore the evidence that Gnostic Christians used mind-altering substances as part of their sacred rites.
Psychedelic historian Thomas Hatsis, author of The Witches Ointment, has conclusively proven this by his original research into heretical Christian cults.
This was no easy task, by the way. In order to accomplish this incredible intellectual feat, the man had to teach himself Latin so that he could read primary Medieval sources. Thomas Hatsis has provided a tremendous service to humanity by digging deeper into psychedelic history than almost anyone before him.
Although Hatsis´s freakiness will probably prevent him from gaining recognition amongst academics anytime soon, this man is a truly revolutionary scholar, and his work may well lead to the creation of an entirely new academic discipline. It’s a very exciting time in the field of psychedelic studies.
No no means is Hatsis alone, though. I can also refer you to the work of Chris Bennett, one of the world’s leading authorities on the use of entheogens in the Judeo-Christian tradition.
Anyway, I woke up on Easter and felt a little sad that I wouldn’t see my family for Easter. My mom makes a special Mennonite bread called paska every Easter, and to me it’s not Easter without paska.
Thinking about Easter made me nostalgic. I was raised Christian, and Easter is the most important day for Christians. You have to remember that when I was a child, I was surrounded by believers. Almost everyone I knew back then was a churchgoer. And Easter was not a holiday like any other. It was the most holy day of the year.
Now, of course, Easter is much less important in Canadian society than it used to be. For most people, Easter is little more than a reason to buy candy for their kids, or maybe go visit their family. For millions of people, the religious significance of Easter has already been lost.
Lest people think I have an agenda here, I should probably state that I haven’t attended an Easter worship service in years. Although I was raised in the Mennonite church, I haven’t been baptized, meaning that I am neither Mennonite nor Christian. I am a Sun Dancer, and follow the Way of the Pipe. I am a pantheist and animist, and believe in shamanism, not any type of religion that could be codified and written down. I believe in the primacy of direct experience and that people should obey their own consciences, not any religious authority.
With all that said, I identify very strongly with the anarchism inherent to anabaptism. The truth is that anarchism can be traced back to anabaptism, and my political beliefs today are very much resonant with what I was taught as a child.
One of the core tenets of the Mennonite religion is the doctrine of ¨priesthood of believers¨. This doctrine holds that all people are qualified to be their own priests. In other words, there is no higher moral authority than the individual. This basically amounts to a rejection of priestly authority. Ergo, Mennonites reject the legitimacy of all worldly political authority. Most people don’t know this, including most Mennonites, but all real Mennonites are anarchists.
Think about that. Going back fourteen or fifteen generations, my ancestors were anarchists. What’s more, my relatives have spread out to every corner of the world. There are large numbers of Mennonites throughout Latin America, Africa, and Asia, and many of them practice the old ways. Of all the revolutionary movements of the past five hundred years, the Mennonites are amongst the most successful. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Despite the history of anabaptism, the church that I was raised in has embraced statism and CBC-style secular materialism. Without a proper consensus process, some members of the congregation even went so far to issue a statement specifically approving of trans ideology. Apparently in recent years, God started getting sloppy and putting souls in the wrong bodies. I guess He’s getting old.
It’s all very strange to me to realize how important all this is to me. But is it really so strange? I wasn’t raised to be a Canadian. I was raised to be a Mennonite. And the truth is that the culture I was raised in is a precipitous decline. Although there are around two million Mennonites worldwide, and conservative Mennonites continue to spread around the world, liberal Mennonites are more than half-assimilated at this point. I´m not usually given to nostalgia, but this this makes me both wistful and sad. But what can be done? The fact of the matter is that most people of my generation don’t truly believe in the Bible anymore, including myself. We know too much now. And what is Christianity without the Bible?
Because Easter has not been commercialized to the same extent that Christmas has, the importance of this holiday seems to be falling into obscurity, and that makes me sad. To me, the resurrection represents the triumph of good over evil, and this is one of the most important aspects of the message of Christianity as I understand it. And this is something that I believe with the whole of my being. Once one understands that the universe is a living being, the fact that nature would prefer good over evil ceases to be mysterious.
From the time I was a small child, I was taught that an omnipotent being loved me and was infinitely more powerful than any earthly authority. If I ever have kids, you’d better believe I’ll teach them the same thing. It honestly seems cruel to me not to.
But I digress. I didn’t set out to write about religion, and I doubt that many of my readers want to hear what I have on the subject. Most people just want to read stuff that confirms what they already believe, but that´s not what I´ve got to offer.
I set out to report about psychedelic tourism in Oaxaca, but when I sat down to write today, this is what came out. Maybe some of you will be ready for this message.
I know that some of you will have a hard time believing that good will inevitably triumph over evil.
But that’s the message that I’ve got for you.
Good will triumph over evil.
Never doubt that.