Shroom: A new book filled with inaccuracies & blasts Was

[boomer2]

THis book, according to several I talked to in the last few days is horrible about the history of shrooms. filled with inaccuracies this book, written by an Englishman has no substance regarding his writings which are filled with errors, and innuendos about Wasson and others who researched these sacred mushrooms.

He writes the book as if England (GB) was the sole authority on the worldwide use of these shrooms.

John

Here is a letter about this problem

This is Jan Irvin. I co-authored Astrotheology & Shamanism with Andrew Rutajit.

I sent this out tonight for the major researchers. Hopefully we can do something about this ASAP. I've read about 50 pages. We've got some debunking to do.
-----------------
This email is being sent to the following researchers in entheobotany and related fields:

Clark Heinrich
Mike Hoffman
Mark Hofmann
Rick Strassman
Dennis McKenna
Jack Herer
Chris Bennett
Andrew Rutajit
Judith Anne Brown

The reason this email is being sent out to everyone is because we have something that I deem as URGENT for follow researchers in this field. This email is going out in order to (hopefully) establish a collaborative effort in order to confront the matter at hand. Those who have contact, please also forward this email to Carl Ruck, Paul Stamets, Christian Rastch, Paul Devereux, Jim Dekorne, Ralph Metzner, Kat Harrison and anyone else currently involved in the study of ethnomycology / ethnobotany.

As you may or may not know, in February of this year Dr. Andy Letcher published his book called Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom.

http://www.amazon.com/Shroom-Cultural-H ... 131&sr=8-1

In this book, Dr. Letcher attacks head on the works of Heinrich, Stamets, (T.) McKenna, Kat Harrison, Allegro, Wasson, Ruck and Herer and ourselves (though some of us not named directly), as well as many others. This is a frontal, academic attack in a well written and researched hard bound, 360 page book, published by HarperCollins. This book is receiving WINDOW STATUS at major book sellers such as Barnes & Noble and Borders Books. The book seeks to DISPROVE any entheogen (especially mushroom) theory to established religion, cultural identity, etc. except on a very small scale e.g. Maya, Mazatec, etc.

As I discussed with Mike H. this evening, the book seeks to show that there is zero archaeological/historical evidence of the mushroom/entheogen theory of religion. I’ve read about 1/6 of this 300 page (+ footnotes) book thus far. I zoomed to the bookstore last night in order not to delay its reading when I heard more specifics on its content. The book certainly does have its errors, as well as its points, and I think that all of us on a collaborative effort can debunk it, at least most of it, quickly. For instance, the book repeats the same errors regarding Allegro that Mike H. and I debunked last year: http://www.egodeath.com/WassonEdenTree.htm . Our article also questions the integrity of some critical areas of Wasson’s research. However, Letcher seeks to utterly destroy G. Wasson’s research and reputation, singling him out specifically for the most ruthless attacks in the book. As one reviewer writes on Amazon:

“Letcher pushes forward into the roots of the cultural movement that elevated the humble mushroom into an archaic religious symbol for an increasingly cynical age, and the primary target of this academic hit job is the legendary banker-turned-amateur ethnomycologist R. Gordon Wasson, the originator of the sacred mushroom myth. To say that Letcher has a bone to pick with Wasson would be putting it mildly. Let's just say Letcher barely masks his glee in annihilating this man's historical legacy, not only peeling apart his legendary theories one after the other, but criticizing the man himself for being somewhat stubborn and single-minded; too blinded by his own theory to do the proper research; too quick to mold the facts to meet his preconceptions; too arrogant and forthright to allow dissenting voices to penetrate his mythos. It is a view of Wasson I have never seen before -- including new insights into his relationship with Maria Sabina -- and like much of this book, contains a wealth of new material.”

I hope this email comes across as informational and organizational and not as anxious or over zealous. From what I’ve read so far, this book requires our immediate attention. Please order your copy ASAP and let’s begin to dissect this attack on this field of study.

Kindest regards,

Jan Irvin

[cenacle]

"Please order your copy" I'm confused. If I was contending that a book is full of lies and distortions, the LAST thing I would do is urge lots of people to buy it and talk about it. If it's crap, why give it the legitimacy of time, attention, and one's money?

Poor sales would be much more effective, frankly. Something strange there...

[boomer2]

Well he made some distorted comments about Koh Samui and the Tsunami which hit (Krabbi and Phuket Islands). A tsunami by the way, which is hundreds of miles from Koh Samui, and on the far southwestern side of Thailand facing the Andaman Sea. Although he cited my Koh Samui paper in his book. He obviously does not know where in Thailand Koh Samui is.

And that is but one. I have the book, bought it yesterday, glanced through it and I will get around to reading it in a week or so.



I just conversed with my colleague Dr. Tjakko Stijve, who is also going to publish a critique of the book. He too said others are telling him it is a really bad book by an English kid who has no knowledge of the history other than what he has read in others works.

I too noticed when flipping about several pages of the book that a lot of his historical data came from news items posted at my site.  And many news items which he had no access to, items I actually clipped from newspapers and magazines published here in the PNW and many not available to anyone outside of the USA. SO he took a lot of published info and expanded on it somewhat, but in doing so he distorted the facts.

Also about the shroom conferences and dozens of other things.

So Irvin was asking those who study the shrooms to buy the book and publish a review in prestigious journals

boomer2

[TooStonedToType]

I would say DONT buy the book.  Go to the bookstore or library and read it there!

[cenacle]

boomer,

I was simply questioning legitimizing this book with sales and attention. Doing so, however, if that is the choice, will give an opportunity to debunk its claims, where they are factually wrong or erroneous. Why anyone would try to underplay the importance of mushrooms in the history of humanity at this point is a mystery in itself. Too much evidence, too much research.

We know the shrooms are a friend/allie to man!
 :twisted:

[boomer2]

Hi Cenacle,

I pointed errors out to others.  But would like to note that this person is from Great Britain. He was allow access into Wasson's papers at Harvard, Something which I was denied access too.

Possible because I have no degree from a University and am not a Harvard Scholar.

Dick Schultes once said to me there were a lot of "elitist snobs" at Harvard.

I use a quote because that is what he said to me in private.

Now, I have a note from R. G. Wasson given to me a few years before his death which read that I could access the Tina and Gordon Wasson Library material for research for my works.

Well The same lady who gave Letcher permission to look at the Wasson collections, denied me entrance to Harvard's libraries and to the Wasson papers.  Yet my books and cd's are int he Harvard catalogues.  Where they got them form is a mystery to me. They did not purchase them from me, nor frm my distributor.

It seems that after Wasson passed away, his books, notes, artifacts and papers were redistributed into other numerous libraries on campus and are no longer situated in one place.  I think that was a personal insult to the Wassons who created that museum at Harvard.  While I only have degrees from comm. college in mycology and a degree in Graphic Arts from a technical institute, I have none from Harvard or a major university,   while Letcher has 2 doctorates from Oxford adn form King Alfred's College, (1) in Ecology and (2) in religious/cultural studies.

Now a third point is that he wrote a lot of data about the PNW, the first two shroom conferences (Which he never attended) and the recreational use of shrooms, but sticks to the English (UK) attitude that England was more responsible for the spread of the shrooms there and in Europe and Australia.

His critiques are rude to those who first spread the word.

Anyway I cannot ramble on this matter at the moment but am working with Tjakko Stijve on this. He will write a good critique in French and English Journals.

Will keep up on this subject and post more as I learn it form reading. I am doing a page by page critique right now but have only read two chapters and half of the third. I have to keep flashing back to his sources, many which came form my site, which he briefly notes in the footnotes, and four or five of my published papers.

Numerous PNW news clippings which I have the actual clippings he used form my site to reference his research,but some of those news clippings are not available to someone in England and many were privately published and not cataloged at some of the schools libraries he cites from.

And not to let my ego go, He completely did not acknowledge me as a contributor to this contemporary cultural phenomena.

He does mention strains and such but does not list where they came from or who introduced them to the West, except for Pollocks, strains or PF or McKenna's South American strains.

And I have presented data at more than 50 conferences and lectures over the passed 30 years yet he failed to note me outside of a couple of publications and a brief note to see MJ Shroom World.

I still believe that primitive man (food Hunter-gatherers) were the first to eat a magic psilocybian shroom which brought on psilophoria to those who ate them and through that experience, religion and deity became known to humankind.  He says maybe they did but it was not a religious experience.

He claims now is the historical use of these shrooms throughout the world.

Yes, thanks to media and word of mouth the shrooms are continental, and shrooms are a girls best friend.

And reminding the author, there were not a lot of people 10,000 years ago to spread the word throughout the world about the shrooms so use was local or centralized to those habitats of human encroachment and settlement.  So a small tribal group of say 20 to thirty people here and there could not spread the use of the shrooms into other known regions of the worls. However, shrooms exist all over the world so maybe more people were aware of them at that time in our history

Gotta go,

mj