Email: jarush43@gmail.com

Mushroom in Christian Art

Chapter Four

Plate 4:22 – Virgin of the Sweet Kiss, Moscow, State Historical Museum, Mid-Sixteenth Century.  Note the mushroom-shape in Jesus’s swaddling cloth under Mary’s right hand.

Plate 4:23a – Beatty Rosary, Brugge, Belgium, 1530 CE Notice the shape at the top of the page. St. John the Baptist’s robe is a representation of the mushroom which is also noticed in the hem of his cloak.

Plate 4:23b – Saint John in the Wilderness, Domenico Veneziano, 1445 CE Notice the mushroom cap John is wearing, his naked flesh upon which he will place the camel hair coat, and the path into the wilderness.  Also note clothes he removed piled in such a manner as to suggest Amanita muscaria.

Plate 4:24 – John the Baptist with Scenes from His Life, Yaroslavl (Russia), Museum of Art, Late Sixteenth Century.  Notice the mushroom-shape in the Baptist’s cape; the stalk is clearly visible. Note the symbols (far right) that represent the Baptist. The camel hair coat may have a precedent in the Leopard Skin Chief preparing Pharaoh for resurrection (Opening the Mouth ceremony).

Plate 4:25 – Last Judgment, Fairfield Church, Gloucestershire, England, Sixteenth Century. Notice how Jesus has an Amanita cap at his back and appears to be standing on or emerging from a mushroom.

Plate 4:26 – The Vision of St. Paul, North Deacons Door, orig. Cathedral of the Annunciation, Solvychegodsk, Russia, c. 1579.  Clearly a mushroom with stalk in the angel’s stole.

Plate 4:27a Virgin as Inviolate Mountain, Solvychegodsk, Russia Late-Sixteenth Century. The Cherub to the right has the mushroom-shape with stalk in its stole. The ladder is a device of transportation or direction, while the “burning bush” under Jesus’s forearm is the means of transformation. Notice what the angel is holding—three devices of transmutation, one being the reed that holds the sponge, the others, the lance and cross.

Plate 4:27b – Virgin as Inviolate Mountain, Solvychegodsk, Russia Late-Sixteenth Century. Notice God with the globe and cross in his left hand flanked by Seraphs. Notice what is at his back and the Christian rendition of the Aten sun disk.

Plate 4:28 – Noli me tangere, Emmanuel Lambardos, Dubrovnik (Croatia), Museum of Icons, 1603 CE Notice the mushroom-shaped cloth where Jesus’s head was positioned.

Plate 4:29 – Sacrifice of Isaac,  Allesandro  Allori, Florence, Italy, 1607 CE Notice the mushrooms in the field disguised as worker,  while mushrooms (Amanita and Psilocybin) are clearly seen to the right of Abraham.

Plate 4:30 Martyrdom of Saint Ponciano, Baltasar de Echave, Orio, Mexico City, 1607 and 1610 CE  The mushroom traveled to the New World via the priests, who encountered competition. The  Mexican priests had powerful mixtures of their own containing similar hallucinogenic properties.  The native substances, however, were demonized by the priest and yet were allowed to continue in many areas.  Notice the mushroom torch and mushroom vapor.

Plate 4:31Novgorod School, The Creation of Adam and Eve and Expulsion from Paradise, fragment of deacon’s door, Mid-Seventeenth Century. The only “trees” in this image are  mushrooms.

Plate 4:32 – Jacob’s Ladder, Swill Roundel, Wragby Church, Yorkshire, England, 1685 CE Note how the deity at the top of the ladder has an Amanita cap , white beard (stalk), and shoulder-mushroom. Jacob likewise appears to have the Eucharist in his lap.

Plate 4:33 – Creation of Man and Expulsion from Earthly Paradise, Iconostasis Prothesis Door, originally in Solvychegodsk Cathedral, Solvychegodsk, Russia, Mid-Seventeenth Century.

Plate 4:34a – Women of the Apocalypse, Cristobal de Villalpando, Mexico City Cathedral, 1685-1686 CE Notice the mushroom emerging from or going into one of the monster’s (Satan) heads, and the mushrooms by the demon’s left head.  Jesus, we are told, is standing on the crescent moon.  This is not the moon but the cap of a mushroom. Jesus is a sun god not a moon god.

Plate 4:34b – Pieter Bruegel the Elder – The Fall of the Rebel Angels Brussels, Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts, 1562 CE The major mushrooms are at the end of the angel’s left arm forming the shield-mushroom motif and in the cape of the Cherubim in left corner.

Plate 4:35 – Christobal de Villalpando, Allegory of the Sweet Name of Mary,  1690 CE Notice the mushroom shape in the rolled stocking and the mushroom formed by the wing and the upper left arm repeated by the Cherub on the left. Also notice the angel’s cape on the right.

Plate 4:36a – Virgin of Guadalupe, Nicolas Enriquez, Denver Art Museum, Denver, Co., 1740 CE Note that the Virgin is being supported by a young boy—perhaps Jesus growing off Mary’s roots. This is the same image as Otto III. Turned upside down we see the mushroom.

Plate 4:36b – Woman Clothed with the Sun, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, c. 1750 CE

Paul Rubens Woman of Apocalypse, Flemish ,1623-24 CE

Vierge Apocalypse Cathédrale Troyes, France Vitrail de Jean Soudain, 1524 CE

The Appearance of the Woman Clothed with the Sun, Duce Apocalypse, 1255-1270 CE

Plate 4:36c – Ascension of Christ, Rabbula Codex, perhaps Syrian origin, Florence, 586 CE

Virgin of Guadalupe, Nicolas Enriquez, Denver Art Museum, Denver, Co., 1740 CE

From Plate 2: 29 – Otto III, c. 996 CE

From Plate 4: 7 – Book of Hours, Fifteenth-Sixteenth Century

Plate 4:37 – Russian Orthodox icon of Apostle Andrew, Eighteenth Century, Iconostasis of Transfiguration Church, Kizhi monastery, Karelia, Russia

Plate 4:38a – Virgin of the Burning Bush, central Russia, c. 1780 CE Note the deity at the top surrounded by mushrooms.

Plate 4:38b Virgin of the Burning Bush, central Russia, c. 1780 CE Note the curlicues and the mushrooms in the capes of the surrounding Cherubim.