“From Messiah to Mushroom: A Brief History of John Marco Allegro’s The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross”

Geoffrey Smith, CSWR, Psychedelic Intersections: 2024 Conference Anthology

Geoffrey Smith tracks the research and correspondence of the Dead Sea Scrolls scholar, John Marco Allegro, that led to his provocative conclusion that the New Testament gospel accounts are encoded texts disguising the truth that Jesus Christ and his apostles were not historical persons, but in fact psychoactive mushrooms. Smith concludes that Allegro’s mushroom hypothesis was informed by many trends in twentieth-century mycological study, alongside a desire to discredit Christianity from its inception.