Cannabis: Lost sacrament of the ancient world

0:30Archaeological evidence of cannabis use for rituals and as medicine goes back thousands of years. Why was this weed from God's garden so demonized? We'll talk about that in more with today's guest, Chris Bennett, author of five books, but we're going to speak about his most recent book, Cannabis, The Lost Sacrament of the Ancient World. Welcome to the Ten Penny Files, everyone. I'm your host, Dr. Sherry Ten Penny. If it matters to your body, your freedom, your future, we talk about it here. There's something new every day. So join us for a different conversation on different topics. We talk about politics, history, astronomy, archaeology, pets, travel, food, farming, and fitness, and of course we talk about vaccines, health, and health policy. And at least once a week we have a conversation with a pastor and author that writes about biblical principles. So join me here every day, Monday through Friday at 3 p.m. Eastern, on the Ten Penny Files, we hear from voices that have often been ignored, silenced, or censored.

1:30Before we begin today's episode, I want to invite everyone to become a Ten Penny Prime member. Ten Penny Prime members receive exclusive month of content and more. Visit primemembership.dr10penni.com, primemembership.dr10penni.com, learn about our program, and hopefully join and support our work. And one last thing, welcome to all of our regulars and to all the new listeners. We are so grateful that you are here. Now with that, let's get started. Today's conversation is with Chris Bennett, author of five books and a long time researcher of the historical role of cannabis and spiritual life. He is here today to talk about his most recent book, Cannabis Lost Sacrament of the Ancient World, an insightful exploration into historical and spiritual roles of cannabis, offering a new and different perspective on ancient traditions involving this controversial plant. Chris, welcome to the Ten Penny Files. I'm so looking forward to this conversation. Yeah, I should be fun, Cheryl. I'm glad to be here. Oh, thank you so much.

2:32I want you to tell the audience because we talked about this a little bit before the show went live about your interesting cannabis. And I thought it was such an interesting story. I wanted to start with that again. Tell us what got interested in researching the historical elements of cannabis and how did your interest extend into archaeological history? Well, I had a very powerful experience in 1990. In fact, reading the book of Revelation one night, well, I was smoking some marijuana and working as a net watchman as a fish plant. And when I first started reading the book of Revelation, partway through it, the beginning John the author is given a scroll and he puts it in his mouth and it tastes as sweet as honey and he swallows it and it turns bitter in his stomach. And then he begins to prophesize and that's basically the prophecies of the book of Revelation. And when I read that, I thought, wow, what did he eat? And I read further, you know, and there's all these references to building clouds of incense

3:32with the prayers of the saints and they're wearing clothes of sackcloth. I'm thinking, man, this sounds really trippy. And I got to the end of the book of Revelation and I read on either side of the river of life, stood the tree of life, bearing 12 men as a fruit, yielding its fruit each month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. And I still get a show when I say that from that experience 36 years ago and I feel like light poured into my body and that this was a reference to cannabis hemp and it's medicinal and industrial qualities. It's used for paper. We could replace the old growth forests we're cutting down with industrial hemp paper and we used to make all our paper from hemp. We could replace soil depleting cotton with hemp, which is a really good organic crop for cloth and really strong cloth canvas. Actually, it's a Latin term, comes from the Latin term for cannabis, Dutch term for cannabis, Latin and Dutch. And the list goes on and we make fuel out of hemp. The seed is a super food, highly nutritious, rich and essential fatty acids, one of the

4:34most digestible plant proteins known. And we can make all our paints and varnishes, plastics, batteries even, other making out of cannabis. And so it's a really useful, wonderful plant and we're being prevented from its use, you know, and it really offers a different way of doing things, a graining of the planet if you will. And I had this powerful experience that this was cannabis and when I reported to my wife at the time, she thought I was having a mental breakdown and I wasn't sure. And I thought, you know, okay, so I thought if it is something about cannabis being part of religion, then somebody somewhere else will have written about it and that began my 36 year research into the role of cannabis through history. And I wanted to not be like something that was based on my belief and my experience, you know. So I looked for really hard, factual information and I listened to critics all along the way when people criticized me and told me what I was wrong about something. I would listen to what they said and I would dig deeper and figure out, well, I need to

5:36explain that away or accept that that is not accurate, you know. So I really tried to be honest with both myself and the audience that I was running to. I wanted to bring a great truth, not a great delusion to the world. You know, this is, you know, I thought about cannabis for a long time. I mean, when they made it, it was in 54 or something like that, they listed it the same as heroin in terms of a drug. And I've often said, publicly in a lot of different places, you know, the ratios of the CHC and the CBD oil, if we would have for the last 50 years been able to do just plain botany, you know, yellow and green, yellow and green makes blue, you know, and mix this one and this one until we knew this particular variety has this ratio of CBD and seeded. And with this variety, we can treat Crohn's disease. And this one has a different ratio. And with this variety, we can treat asthma and et cetera and on and on.

6:36Because it's a weed in God's garden growing really everywhere. But instead, it would have up ended the pharmaceutical industry so we made it illegal. Yeah, you know, and cannabis is really revolutionized medicine, the discovery of the endocannabinoid system, which the cannabinoids, cannabinoids and cannabis attached to mimicking the endogenous endocannabinoids of the human body in such a way that it can have that medical effect. You know what I mean? Like the relationship with cannabis goes back, you know, tens of thousands of years according to the latest archeological evidence, at least for industrial purposes. You know, we have evidence of hemp rope from Czechoslovakia. That's believed to go back 24,000 years. And rope was a really important cultural evolutionary tool and enabled the domestication of the horse. And around 10,000 years go both in Taiwan and Asia and in Katalhayaq in Turkey. There's evidence of hemp cloth already and their diverse cultures.

7:39So they've already developed the technology for separating the fibers off the stalks of cannabis and the tools for deportation taking the stalks off cannabis. There's evidence of those going back to as far as 28,000 years according to Dr. Elizabeth Whalen-Barber, one of the foremost agent experts on agent textiles. So that's really agent. Carl Sagan even has speculated that perhaps cannabis was humanity's first agricultural crop. Certainly, the root words for cannabis, they go back to the proto-Indo-European language. That's even before the development of the Indo-European language, which is the mother tongue for most of our modern languages, English, German, French, and then even older languages like Sanskrit and Avastin. And so this is really, really, really far back in history that we've had this culture relationship. And in regards to religious ritual use, at least, this goes back 5,500 years. We have evidence in Ukraine and Romania of cannabis being burnt at funeral rights.

8:44And this was carried on even into the common era. In the first few centuries, Scythians were still burning cannabis and funeral rights. And did so for thousands of years before that and throughout the whole Indo-European world, right? And in Spain, we have evidence of cannabis-infused wine going back 5,000 years. That was another way that a lot of people ingested cannabis in the agent world, was infusing it in wine, burning it in incense censors, and ingesting it in foods. You know, walk us through the archaeological evidence for cannabis as cannabis, am I saying that correctly? Yeah, yeah, this is like, this has got to do with the term canabasum is a Hebrew term. And in 1936, an entomologist and anthropologist, Sula Bennett, wrote a paper and she suggested that these Hebrew terms canabasum identified cannabis. Cannot could be used in a dual way to mean both cane or reed and cannabis.

9:45Much like we use the term grass or herb to identify, you know, broad things, but also specific things as well, right? And Bennett suggests not no relation to me, her name is spelled slightly different than my own name, it's B-E-N-E-T. But I certainly carried on her research and she pointed to five specific references in the Old Testament. One of these was in Exodus 33 and God, who first appears to Moses and flames of fire from within a burning bush, commands Moses to make a wholly anointing oil with about 24 pounds of this canabasum mixed with cinnamon, mercasia into about a gallon and a half of olive oil. And every time he's to speak to the Lord, he places some of this oil on his body and your body is actually a big organ and THC can transfer through the skin, through the fatty, it's soluble. And he'd also place some of this oil on the altar of incense and then he would speak to the Lord in the pillar of smoke over the incense altar.

10:48That's where God appeared to Moses in the pillar of smoke inside the enclosed tent of the meeting. And this is all like in the, you know, and none of the other Israelites ever see or hear God, they can only see Moses talking to God when smoke is coming out of the tent of the meeting. And so he's speaking to the Lord in an inner smokey chamber. And this was a situation two in the Holy of Holies later when they built the temple. It was a smoke filled on place where they, where they, or acrillally talked to the Lord. And the next of these references, which appears in the song of songs, it appears along other items in the, the Garden of God. And some modern scholars believe that the song of songs in the Old Testament composed by supposedly Solomon or at least attributed to them was actually the agent world version of the hero's gammas or the sacred marriage. And this was a marriage of things like tomahs, tomuz and ishtar in the agent world where

11:51the God and the goddess were united to bring fertility to the land. Sometimes this was enacted ritually by a priest or priestess or king and queen or whatever, you know, different things and different areas. And we're talking about like I'm making some big generalizations here. We're talking about a spread out area and, you know, centuries of time that happened where these things were taking place. So there's variations here, right? And it's important to remember that Solomon himself was accused of worshipping the goddess to do so by his wife, Ashirath. But this is thought to be the another name for the Canaanite Hebrew goddess Ashirath. And he was also accused of burning incense on high in the high places. And this is important when we get to the archeology, right? The next of these references occurs in Isaiah. And in Isaiah, God laments that Isaiah has burdened him with sins and iniquities, but has not brought any cana, which is the reference here to cannabis that we're suggesting, and

12:54frankincense. And he's upset that he's come without the proper goods in order to be freed of his burden of sins and iniquities. And I think the suggestion here is that this was an incense because in another verse in Isaiah, that's in Isaiah 43. And in another verse in Isaiah 6, Isaiah goes into the temple and it says, and the house was filled with smoke. And then he describes one of the seraphim fluent to me with a life with a call which he had taken with tongues from off the altar. And he held it to my lips and low my iniquity was taken away and my sin was purged. Now I don't think he burnt his lips. I believe that he went over to an altar of incense and with a pair of tongues lifted up a burning ember of coal. And then Isaiah took an inhalation of it because we'll get into the evidence of cannabis incense inside the holy of Holies and a little while via archaeological evidence. And then the next reference is in Jeremiah 620 and both cannabis and frankincense are

13:57completely rejected. And he says, I don't care for your counter from a distant land. I don't care for your frankincense from Shiba, you know, and it's completely rejected. So what's happened here? What happened? You know, why was something that was so holy before all of a sudden completely rejected? And I think this ties in with Jeremiah 44. And in Jeremiah 44, this is after the fall of Jerusalem. Jeremiah runs into a group of Israelites living in Egypt and he confronts them and he blames them for the fall of Jerusalem and he blames it on them burning incense to the queen of heaven, right? And they said, well, when we worship the queen of heaven, did we not worship God also, the Lord also? And we were just doing what we did as our fathers and the kings and the princes before us did is what their explanation back to Jeremiah was, but he's like, you know, you send and this is why Jerusalem fell.

14:57Now, this is interesting because at this time, there was massive reforms going on in Israel under the king Hezekiah. And Hezekiah was trying to remember, there's a lot happening politically in Israel at this time. Israel is surrounded by much bigger kingdoms, a Syria Babylon and they're under threat by these kingdoms. In fact, Hezekiah is directly in conflict with the Assyrians. It's right in the Bible. And there's a need to solidify the people, the Israelites. And right now, there's all these different days being worshipped in the Holy Land, Asher of Bale, all of them, white so long, Yahweh, not necessarily people fighting each other over this. It was the way it was, you know, that's how it had been and that's the way it was at the time. And Hezekiah, he decided that we needed to get rid of all these high places. And this is where I mentioned Solomon Burring incense on the high places. And we've got to go down to just Yahweh and we've got to centralize worship in the Jerusalem

16:01temple, all tithes, all offerings, all commands come from the central temple in Jerusalem. And He goes into the temple and He pulls out the image of the Asherah and He pulls out the brazen serpent that Moses made and destroys it because the people of Israel are burning incense. Now, it's important to remember that in the temple itself, it's a microcosm of the garden of Eden. There's the two cherubums. The only other place they appear is in the garden of Eden. There's the sacred tree, the menorah. There's the image of the serpent, the brazen serpent. That's what Hezekiah takes out and destroys. And there's the image of Asherah, the goddess, whose name was a mother of all living and in Hebrew Hauwa. And this is tied with the name of Eve. And they've been connected together and the idea of the Eden mythology is connected to the temple and what was taking place in the temple prior to, you know, it's important to remember that going back to Revelation, the name revelation is pulling back the veil.

17:04And the veil is what hid the intertemple, the holy of Holies. And what we're doing right now is we're pulling back that veil and we're looking in that intertemple. Now this idea here was destined to be just a hypothesis for a long time. I spent decades writing about these references to these Hebrew terms, Kanabossum, trying to prove it. It was unproven because we can't go back in time unless we can, maybe through something like archaeology. And in 2020, this went from a hypothesis to a historical fact with a discovery of one of these high places, an intertemple at Teleraj Jerusalem. Telerab was a fortress, an important fortress that watched over trade in the Holy Land. And inside this fortress, there was a miniature version of the temple in Jerusalem. And they say this because of the way the temple at Teleraj was set up to mimic the design of the main temple in Jerusalem according to biblical descriptions.

18:07Right? We don't have the main, we don't see the main temple in Jerusalem currently. It's covered by the Alask Mosque in Jerusalem, right? And there's a great movement to remove the Alask Mosque and restore the third temple in Jerusalem, which will lead to the apocalypse, which is a significant event in the apocalypse. Disponatialists has been prophesied. There was restoration of the third temple where this was all taking place, right? And in this fortress at Teleraj, where there was this miniature version of the Holy Temple, there was also a miniature version of the Holy of Holies, which is the inner temple of the main temple. And in this temple in Teleraj, they found two standing stones indicating the worship of two gods, two different deities. They found an inscription that said, the house of Yahweh, identifying it as a temple of place where it's worshiped Yahweh. But they also found figurines of this goddess, Asherah.

19:11And this isn't the only find connecting Yahweh with Asherah. And anybody that is doubtful about what I'm saying only needs to Google Yahweh and Asherah. But you will find out that throughout the Holy Land, there's numbers of the inscriptions that refer to Yahweh and His Asherah. And so because of this, biblical scholars are now concluding that Yahweh at one time, at this time here, pre-8th century, had a consort, a wife, Asherah. And this would... Well, I think that a lot of people would argue with that and other people. People that are basing their beliefs on the Bible. No, people, people that are dead. You look up, Yahweh. People, people, people. I say to people, I say to those people. Wait, wait, wait, this is a dialogue. This isn't an argument. This is a dialogue, okay? That people are, you know, that Yahweh was trying to eliminate all of the extra pagan gods and things like that. You know, that they were the children of Abraham.

20:11And that I've had a lot of biblical archaeologists on this show about different things. So, you know, it's just a different perspective. And I think... I think that I would say to anybody, go to GROC or Clawed or whatever I, A-I-E-U's and ask to biblical historians believe that God once had a wife, Yahweh. And you'll find very leading biblical historians like Daniel McClendon, well-known biblical scholar and other scholars say that, yeah, at that time Yahweh had a wife Asherah. The text you're writing about, that's what I was saying about early when we were discussing off camera, is they are believed to have been composed in the Babylonian exile after all of this has taken place. And then describing events according to the beliefs of those people in the Babylonian exile, not recorded historically at the time they took place. But anyways, getting back to the Tellerad Temple, we don't, you know, you can... You can... Well, just remember, Chris, it's a dialogue, you know, it's not an argument.

21:15And we've got a, you know, I got an eye on the time here. So I hear what you're saying and maybe we just agree to disagree. Well, they're scared by a 44. And that's a... And what is scared of my a 44? That's right in the Bible. So... You know, I'm not even familiar with that. It's all about the Queen of Heaven and burning incense to the Queen of Heaven. If there's a Queen of Heaven, who's the King of Heaven? So let's get back to the role that cannabis has played in ancient cultures. Sure. In that temple, they found two altars. One altar was used for burning frankincense, and the other altar was burned for using, was used for burning cannabis. And this is a room, the Holy of Holy, is only about five by eight big. It's like the size of a broom closet. So it was built. And I will say, you know, for the audience, he's got a lot of these pictures in the book. So and you even said when you had that picture, it was much smaller than what you had thought it was going to be. Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? But the altar is like two feet tall or something like that, right?

22:17Yeah, for sure. And you can easily find the archaeological papers on this one, just by searching Tellerad cannabis as well. You know, anybody can go back over what the actual archaeologist said. And so this chamber was used for holding the smoke and people would go in and they would be like, what do we do? What do we do? You know, with a problem and then meditate. And eventually a voice would come to the mental and give them some advice. And it's important to remember that cannabis receptors are in the areas of higher thinking and memory. And so they can really kind of facilitate, you know, like imagination in a way to come up with come up with some sort of thing. You know, whether whether they were talking to God or whether they were like a shaman that went into an enclosed space and used a psychoactive plant for some sort of spiritual revelation is debatable. Or maybe they're both. Maybe there's maybe those things really happen, you know, but we certainly know that in

23:17a variety of cultures, and I'm not just talking about cannabis, that psychoactive plants have been used for similar purposes for divine revelation. And it's not like this evidence is just in the Holy Land. This is from 800 BCE. In China, we have, you know, evidence as well from a funerary rights. And this is Indo-Europeans that were living in China. And then the Tian Shan Mountains region and other places in China, they have discovered perfectly preserved age and cannabis. Still green. And because of the cold, dry climate where this took place. And this was two kilograms were discovered at one burial site, all perfectly preserved female cannabis that had been picked out and cleaned. And then in another site, a mummified remains were found with three cannabis bouquets placed over the body. And then as well, they found dozens of braziers that were used for burning, like they would

24:19hold up a piece of wood, put hot rocks in it, and then throw cannabis on top of that. And then inhale those fumes inside caves and things like that. Much similar to the way that the Hebrews were doing it in the enclosed chamber of the Holy of Holies. And as well, there's the group, the Scythians, who were the first horseback rider, I just believe that the horseback riding itself came about via hemp ropes and the people that did that, the Serdeni Stog, are the people that provide us the evidence of cannabis from the 5500 years ago for ritual use as well. And they're the ancestors of the Scythians, the first to domesticate the horse. And through this high mobility, it's believed that the ritual use of cannabis spread throughout the age of world. The Scythian had the ability to travel long distance through the steps, which was like the agent highway of the agent world. And they passed both the word canop, the root word for cannabis out, as well as the foundation

25:22for its ritual use, which spread into the Indian religion. And India is still used in India to date to worship Shiva, the longest worship god on earth, the Kauri, the archaeological evidence. His worship goes back to the Stone Age and is still used on the banks of the Ganges River in India in honor of Shiva, thought to be born from Shiva's own body. And ritual use there goes back in India, thousands of years as well. And in the Zerastering religion as well, it's believed a lot of revelation came about via a cannabis infused wine. And we have evidence from the Bactria Marjale and an archaeological complex discovered by the Russian archaeologist Victor Serianati of a temple, the size of a football field. And half of that temple was devoted to making a ritual drink that was made from both cannabis and a fedra. And this was a major depot of these products for the agent world.

26:26So yeah, explicitly throughout the agent world, you know, like in a variety of religion, in Taoism, we have evidence of cannabis and Taoist poetry going back like 2500 years ago, there's a core train. First a Yinn, then again, no one knows what I do. Jade Buds of Holy Hemp for the one that lives apart. In Shintoism in Japan, cannabis is not ingested or inhaled, but it is a ritual cloth and paper in the Shinto religion. In the Sikh religion, the Nihang Sikhs, the guardians of the temple still consume a drink of cannabis as their sacraments, Sukadun. And the list goes on and on with the history of this plant and its role in various religions. As you know, I mentioned in Exodus 3023 about this holy anointing oil. Now the one who received this anointing, at first it was just limited to high priests, but in the age of kings, it was extended to the kings.

27:28And the ones who received this anointing oil in Hebrew, they were referred to as the Messiah. And do you know what that name becomes in the Greek? Christ. Christ means the anointed. And in the oldest of the synoptic gospels, Mark, Jesus sends out the apostles with oil to cast out demons and heal the Sikh. And casting out demons in the ancient world could mean things like treating epilepsy which was thought to be demonic possession up until medieval times. And we have a Syrian references that are thought to be recipes for medicine to treat epilepsy which was referred to as the hand of ghost that contained cannabis. And the famous alchemist in the 16th century, Paracelsus, he had a cannabis infused topical as well that was used for the treatment of epilepsy. And in our modern day, you know, I'm sure you're familiar with this as a doctor, the role of cannabis in treating epilepsy. And especially in like the severe epilepsy of some children who have dozens of seizures

28:31in a day. And how do you think as a doctor, some mother and father of a baby or child that's suffering through dozens of tormenting epileptic seizures in a day would receive a medicine like cannabis that stopped that or limited it down to one or two? Well, yeah, I know that. I know that's really, really good and it has been used for that. But we've got to take a quick break here. We got to go to a station break because it's really true. You know, that that's where, you know, a long list of things that you know more than I do about, you know, medical cannabis and, you know, how it's different used from different ways. And, you know, like I said, at the top of the, at the top of the show, if we would have just allowed that to have been a normal botany, we would have been a lot further along. So we're going to take a quick break. So hold that thought because you're just a rapid fire of information. Chris, you just, they're like, like, so much. So let's, so let people take a quick break here. Let that sink in a little bit here from our sponsors and if our sponsors are something

29:33that you're interested in, please support our sponsors because they support us on the things that we do. So America out, out, out, America out loud talk radio plays the 10 penny files on the I Heart Radio Network daily Monday through Friday at 3 p.m. Eastern. You can, if you've missed any of these great conversations, you can find them on Pandora, Spotify, Apple, tune in iTunes. You can find them on my sub stack platforms, which is drtempity.substack.com. Also 10 penny walk with God.substack.com and primarily on my website, just as plainhold drtempity.com, we post these in the evening hours on X Instagram, rumble and YouTube. We've got a great message from our sponsors. And as I've already said, listen closely, if there's something there that would better your life, please support them because they support what we do. We will be right back with more from Chris Bennett about his most recent book, Cannabis Lost Sacrament of the Ancient World and insightful exploration and historical spiritual roles of cannabis.

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33:44Welcome back everyone. Today's conversation is with Chris Bennett about his most recent book, Cannabis, the Lost Sacrament of the Ancient World. An insightful exploration, very well documented. It's got great pictures. It's got a lot of different things in it that really make this book stand out and worth reading about the spiritual roles of cannabis offering a new perspective on ancient traditions involving this controversial plant. Let me tell you just a little bit more about today's guest. Chris Bennett is an independent cannabis researcher, historian and author, who spent more than three decades investigating the role of cannabis in ancient religions, spirituality, mythology and human culture. His work focuses on the historical and ethnobotanical evidence suggesting that cannabis played an important role in many ancient civilizations and religious practices. His work has been featured by major media outlets, including the BBC, the Guardian, the Washington Post, and Vice. He resides in Nova Scotia and continues to write in lecture on the historical culture and

34:47spiritual significance of cannabis. Chris, welcome back to the 10 Penny Files. You've shared already shared so incredible much information with us. It's like, you know, people are, it's like drinking from a fire hose. Sorry, I'm too rapid there. You've examined cannabis alongside of other, and the, in theotions, I believe is that word? Yeah, yeah, that's fine. That define that define a psychoactive substance used to induce altered states of consciousness. How does cannabis compare to psilocybin and ayahuasca used by shamans for many centuries in their ceremonies? Well, you know, chemically they're different. So they, they produce different effects, right? And you know, both those things are very, very powerful substances that have as well been used for religious ceremonies. But there's not the evidence for their agent used to the extent that there is for cannabis, at least in the old world, you know, in North and South America.

35:50There's certainly indigenous evidence for the ritual use of psilocybin going back many, many centuries through artifacts such as statues and inscriptions and stuff like that. And in the case of ayahuasca, we have archaeological evidence of its use going back at least a thousand years, I believe there was a recent discovery of products used in the preparation of ayahuasca that were discovered. I think it was about a thousand years ago, but it was a long time ago anyways. I'm not exactly sure of these. I'm not paid on that. So both of these substances are certainly sacred and have their sacred histories. The nice thing about cannabis is that there's this agent archaeological solid evidence as well as a lot of linguistic evidence. Like cannabis was identified early on, you know what I mean. And so we have, you know, like in Latin, the name is basically the same cannabis. So it's easy to spot it in Latin texts and we know what the invest in terms were,

36:51Bung and Bunga and the Sanskrit terms. And so we can actually identify its use in texts and where it's referred to and that sort of thing. And that's something a lot of these other plants don't have. Myself, I've, you know, there's the numbers of books like John Allegro, Sacred Mushroom and the Cross and Professor Jerry Brown's, the psychedelic gospels that make claims about biblical use of mushrooms. But I'm not convinced by that, you know, not that I wouldn't, you know, if I think if the evidence was there, I'd certainly support it, you know what I mean. But there's just not the, the identifiable proof a lot of times in the case of Jerry Brown. He's basing this on medieval paintings. And what he's saying are secretly incorporated mushrooms symbolically incorporated into the paintings. And then based on these medieval paintings with Christian themes, suggesting that this somehow is proof that in the biblical period there they were, we're ingesting mushrooms. Now, I certainly think like groups, like there's other psychoactive for use.

37:58But we know of in the ancient world because they're referred to by name, things like hand bane, what's the one in the Bible, Mandrake, Dachura, opium, you know, these type of things are well known. We have archaeological evidence for these as well. But we don't have that sort of archaeological evidence for a lot of the psychedelics that people are referring to, although there is some starting to appear for things like Ergot, which can have LSD like effects, if prepared properly. But I think, you know, I think that to agent people all over the world, when they came in contact with these things, they weren't thinking about chemicals affecting the brand. They have no idea of anything like that. So any sort of effect that they received from this was, you know, deemed supernatural, generally, you know, and led to, you know, its ritual use in a variety of different anthogens. And I don't doubt that all sorts of substances were used throughout the ancient Near East.

39:04You know, you have explored the relationship between cannabis and alchemy magic and the occult. What are some of the most compelling historical links between cannabis and esoteric traditions such as the Knights Templar and the Grail Legends? Yeah, this is a great, you know, I have a book, Leber 420, that goes into this. And in regards to magic, you know, one of the foundational documents of the Western Magical Tradition is this 12th century Latin text, The Picatrix, which was a translation of a 10th century Arabic text, The Gaia Al-Hakim. And directly in the Picatrix, they have a recipe for a hashish incense that is used to invoke a deity of the moon in a pillar of smoke, much, much like the pillar of smoke in Moses' temple. So that goes right back to the very foundation of the Magical Tradition, the Grim Wars and stuff. And then in the 16th century, there's like four or five different Grim Wars, Sephir Raziali,

40:09Prasalam-Honis, the book of magic, the book of Oberon, Cunning Man's Grim War, that all have references to cannabis for mirror-scrying. Mirror-scrying was this act where you would stare into an opaque mirror, a black mirror, and you just stare at it and tell you started seeing visions. And they found that cannabis and probably other drugs as well. And certainly enhance the effects of these agent TV screens. Now, what do you think is responsible for the global suppression of cannabis in both spiritual and additional uses in the last couple hundred years? It hasn't been just in the last 50 years. Well, you know, cannabis was legal in the United States until 1937, you know, and Europe wasn't outlawed. It was actually legal throughout Europe through the 19th and 20th century. And there's just like a whole wealth of historical references to the use of cannabis among

41:14occultists and stuff in the 19th and 20th centuries. Some of the most well-known figures of occultism are tied with cannabis, a hellenable of atsky, yallister, croly, GI, gird, chieft, just all of them, you know, use cannabis for astral traveling or past life, remembrance, and other things like that. So the modern, like in the Islamic world, there was periods of prohibition. They do things like if you're caught eating hashish and pull your teeth out, you know, in some areas. But we're talking again here centuries of time and a variety of areas. It wasn't always like that. Sometimes it was perfectly legal and everybody in the culture from different hierarchy were using cannabis without any real threat, you know what I mean? So it's more of a 19th and, I mean, a 20th century phenomena, this prohibition of cannabis and the prohibition around the world was largely influenced by, you know, United Nations and things like that after the American and Canadian prohibition.

42:16In America, it was prohibited in 1937. In Canada, we prohibited it earlier, the 1920s. But in both cases, the main drive for prohibition was a fear that races were mixing over its use, you know, jazz clubs and things like that. Reformation of the 1930s was all directed at the jazz scene, you know what I mean? And blacks and whites, fraternizing and in jazz clubs and whites and blacks dancing together and these types of things. And there's certainly well-documented racist references in the case of American prohibition. And in the case of Canadian prohibition, Emily Murphy, the name of the pen name of a Canadian judge was Janie Kinnock and under that name, she wrote all these books, I wrote a big book about Gaines cannabis and talking about how the dark-browed races were seducing the bright browned races through its use and the use of other drugs and this led to a racist prog ramen

43:20Canada as well. So this is where the foundation of it comes from. But prior to that, it was like a major medicine. I actually put together a museum collection of drug artifacts and the amount of cannabis medicine bottles from the pre-prohibition era that started turning up while I was collecting was just phenomenal from everything from menstrual cramps to cough medicines. One of the most popular cough medicines in America was Piso Scherar and cannabis Indica was one of its main ingredients. It was also in about 90% of corn and bunion plasters, publicly used to shrink that and this goes back probably to the same effect why there's claiming there's effects from cannabis for fighting tumors. You know what I mean? There may be a second there. This book, this current book that we're talking about here today is your fifth book on cannabis and they're well researched and lots of pictures and things like that. So as you were researching for your fifth book because you've already done a lot of research

44:24and a lot of homework, what was your biggest takeaway or your biggest surprise in your researching for this current book? Well, the whole reason I wrote this book was because of this discovery in Tellerad Jerusalem that happened in 2020. You know, I've been writing about cannabis, these references to cannabis and cannabis for decades prior, right? And so I really had to fully understand the implications of this find and what biblical historians were saying about it. And what I saw was that they were coming to the exact same conclusions about Asher and Yahweh and the split and then the suppression of cannabis that resulted and the transference into monotheism as I was. They were saying that this temple was shut down by Hezekiah. That's why it's so well preserved because they went to this temple, they knocked over the alters and they buried it under sand in a day. And so this enabled all the resins and everything like that to be sealed and for their rediscovery

45:27in our own time, right? And that this place was evidence of the combined, you know, believe by scholars, to be well-known to be evidence of the combined worship of Yahweh and Asher at a temple site. And so this was the same thing that I was coming to through Jeremiah 620 and Jeremiah 44 of how cannabis came to be suppressed. And so I think the biggest takeaway was that and also how all this fits so well with the Garden of Eden. I discovered that there were biblical historians that were suggesting that the Bible is not written in order. You know what I mean? Things were written and then it was kind of put together from different, the Northern Kingdom of Israel, the Southern Kingdom of Judah, and then later editors and stuff working in Babylon and stuff. And so it's believed by many scholars because of the style of Hebrew and other things that the Garden of Eden was written much later than a lot of, you know, the idea of the time

46:28of Moses. So it would be about 1200,000 years ago. The King's period would be like, you know, 10th, 9th, 8th century, you know, up until about the 5th century. And that this was written after all that and then placed at the front as an origin myth. And that this was made to demonize a relationship between Yahweh and Asherah and the sacred trees of the religious worship of Asherah, which is believed by some scholars. By there's cannabis evidence in this temple of Yahweh at Tellerad and the reason given for Jeremiah's rejection of cannabis being tied with the Queen of Heaven. With your, with the five books that you've written and you're, you're obviously intensely well read. I mean, you've read a lot, a lot, a lot of material over the last 36 years and assimilated it and kind of reorganized it and put it into your books. So the five books that you've written on cannabis and your most recent one, cannabis

47:29lost sacrament of the ancient world, which one would you suggest people start with? Well, depends what you're interested in. You know, if you're interested in magic and the occult, the labor for 20 is the book. And I should say about alchemy, you know, cannabis was a major force in alchemy as well. There's actual recipes for cannabis in quintessences, which is like an ancient tincture, right? You could extract into a potent alcohol extraction plants. And these were referred to as quintessences in our canoms. And cannabis, I had Latin translations from Latin, done of a number of medieval alchemical texts that refer to cannabis by name in these sort of preparations. It was a major force and this goes way back in alchemy 12th, 13th century. But if it's magic in the occult, that one, if it's biblical stuff, which is a deep interest, I would say cannabis lost sacrament of the ancient world, although I have another book on the Bible called Sex Drugs Violence in the Bible. It's left to speculation because the archaeology wasn't there.

48:33And on the Eastern religions, like India's, or Austrianism and Persia, Hinduism and these things, I have a book cannabis in the Soma solution. And this is based on my hypothesis that cannabis was made into a sacred beverage known as Soma in the Vedic religion and Hayaoma in the investment religion. And there's a lot of archaeological evidence for that. And then my first book was Green Goal, The Tree of Life, Marijuana and Magic from Religion. That came out in 1995. And it's almost like an introduction to my other work, but we didn't have the internet then, not to the extent we do now. And I was just kind of getting going. You know what I mean? So it's a big collector's item. People pay hundreds of dollars for it online. But I wouldn't buy it because if you're looking for deep research, you probably want the last three, Libre 420, cannabis the Soma solution or cannabis law sacrament because they're the most up to date and current research. And the other ones are more collectors items just because they're associated with me

49:34and my past as a writer. Well, I really appreciate that overview and the transparency of that. That was just amazing. So we've got about three minutes left. What kind of what takeaway would you like to leave with our audience here today? Well, you know, if you want to check out my writings, I have a blog over at cannabisculture.com where I cover a lot of historical cannabis stuff. And then I have another blog over at Substack at Chris Bennett 420. Over there, I've got a lot on the apocalypse. I have a 10 part series. I've just written on the book of Revelation, which goes into the text that inspired the writing of the book of Revelation. It's historical relevance in the first century. The dispanationist beliefs about it and things like that. And then some pretty radical modern interpretations of the book of Revelation that are based around my own religious experience, which will probably shock a few people, but you might want to check out. But I have a great article there on cannabis, I'm called Cannabisum 101.

50:35You could probably just search Cannabisum 101 in my name. And that goes into all the details of the archaeology and linguistic material behind this startling new theory that smoke was burned in the Holy of Holies. Well, Chris, I knew this was going to be a great interview. And I always, you know, like I said in my introduction, I tend to like to bring controversial topics to my audience, things that they wouldn't normally pick up in a bookstore and read, and bring things to them that would make them go, hmm. And to like examine their understanding of things and stretch their mind a little bit. And our conversation has certainly done that. It certainly brought a whole bunch of archaeological and historical facts to the table, which I just adore. I think it's just fabulous. Well, I appreciate your open mind and I apologize for my passions. Sometimes I get a little, little intent, I think, you know, but I'm pretty passionate about all this. Well, obviously, and you've spent, you've spent your entire life dedicated to this and bringing together the combination of science and medicine and history and religious practices.

51:42It's just really pretty amazing. So I think you've placed your science in religion, me, you know, and I think that's the first al Brown with the Tree of Life Bros. Well, that's really interesting, you know, that there's a really interesting comment, you know, because a lot of people don't believe that spirituality has any science and that's just wrong because there's a lot to it. It has been for thousands of years. So I want to thank you for your work. Thank you for your passion. I think it's just really good when people get really passionate about a place where they spend a lot of their time and I think it's really awesome. So I want to thank you so much for being with us today. It's been a great conversation. And I want to close with one of my favorite verses from the Bible. I close all of my podcasts with whether they are live or pre-recorded, which is Romans 12 12. Rejoice and hope be patient and trouble and be persistent in prayer and keep reading good books. Keep reading good books because they expand your mind. And you can get this book if you go to bookstore.dr10pitty.com. You have to part me of suddenly my eye started burning. So we will see everyone here again tomorrow or the next time on the 10 penny files.

52:46Have a great rest of your day, everybody. Goodbye and God bless.