by Jan Irvin
Critical analysis of the words exchanged between Wasson and Allegro suggests a deeper, almost hidden, argument between the two men. I suggest this argument has caused serious shockwaves that have had strong, long-lasting repercussions on theological research, especially with regard to Judeo-Christian origins, long after both their deaths.
For example, Allegro caught Wasson in contradiction of himself. Wasson consequently appears angry toward Allegro, lashing out at him in the press, personal letters, and interviews. And to the undiscerning public eye, Wasson’s antipathy appears justified. Allegro’s point ends up being almost completely overlooked, and from there he remains unresponsive, which appears to only further escalate the antipathy of Wasson, who continues his attacks almost until his death, sixteen years later.
Commentary throughout this study analyses the critical points.
The Wasson and Allegro missives
1) Wasson to TLS, pub. 21 August 1970
Sir, I have just read John M. Allegro’s The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross (reviewed in the TLS on May 28). I will refrain from passing on his philological evidence, which others have already treated thoroughly. But I will call your readers’ attention to a question of art history, that I have not seen mentioned in the various reviews that have come to my attention.
Facing page 74 of his book Mr Allegro exhibits a photograph of what he calls “a Christian fresco showing the Amanita muscaria as the tree of good and evil in the Garden of Eden”. His publishers have reproduced a mirror-image of this on each of the end-papers of the book and also on the jacket.
This fresco, an expression of French provincial Romanesque art, was first called to the attention of the learned world in the Bulletin of the Société Mycologique de France in 1911 (vol. xxvii, p. 31). It has been picked up frequently in mycological publications, especially in England. Mycologists speak only to each other and never to art historians. Had they done so, the story would have been different.
I drew attention to this error in our Mushrooms, Russia & History (1957) and at greater length in my SOMA Divine Mushroom of Immortality (1969). In this last book I quoted from a letter that Erwin Panofsky had written me in 1952:
The plant in this fresco has nothing whatever to do with mushrooms… and the similarity with Amanita muscaria is purely fortuitous. The Plaincourault fresco is only one example – and since the style is provincial, a particularly deceptive one – of a conventionalized tree type, prevalent in Romanesque and early Gothic art, which art historians actually refer to as a “mushroom tree”, or in German, Pilzbaum. It comes about by the gradual schematization of the impressionistically rendered Italian pine tree in Roman and early Christian painting, and there are hundreds of instances exemplifying this development – unknown of course to mycologists. […] What the mycologists have overlooked is that the medieval artists hardly ever worked from nature but from classical prototypes which in the course of repeated copying became quite unrecognizable.
I checked with other art historians including Meyer Schapiro, and found that they were in agreement. I was struck by the celerity with which they all recognized the art motif.
One could expect mycologists, in their isolation, to make this blunder. Mr Allegro is not a mycologist but, if anything, a cultural historian. On page 229 of his book, in his notes, he shows himself familiar with my writings. Presumably he had read the footnote in which I dismissed the fresco on page 87 of Mushrooms, Russia & History and, more especially, Panofsky’s letter reproduced on page 179 of SOMA. He chooses to ignore the interpretation put on this fresco by the most eminent art historians.
R. GORDON WASSON
Commentary
Unsolicited, Wasson fires his first attack against Allegro.
He states: “I drew attention to this error [Plaincourault fresco as mushroom] in our Mushrooms, Russia & History (1957) and at greater length in my SOMA Divine Mushroom of Immortality (1969).”
Buried in a footnote on page 87 of Mushrooms, Russia and History, we find:
The Bulletin of the Société Mycologique de France in 1911 (vol. xxvii. P. 31) announced to the mycological world the discovery of a 13th century fresco representing the temptation of Eve. The mycologists who focused their attention on this fresco persuaded themselves that the Tree of Good and Evil had been portrayed by the artist as an amanita muscaria. The fresco, which we visited in the summer of 1952, is in a disaffected chapel in France, in the Berry, between Ingrandes and Mérigny, near the Château de Plaincourault. The style is Romanesque, and this fits the date that the edifice bears – 1291. Since the initial announcement there have been numerous references to the fresco in mycological publications: e. g., The Romance of the Fungus World, by R.T. and F.W. Rolfe, London, 1925, p. 291; also John Ramsbottom’s Mushrooms & Toadstools, pp. 40-7 and illustration facing p. 34; also The Illustrated London News, Nov. 21, 1953. The mycologists would have done well to consult art historians. The Plaincourault fresco does not represent a mushroom and has no place in a discussion of ethno-mycology. It is a typical stylized Palestinian tree, of the type familiar to students of Byzantine and Romanesque art. The German art historians have even devised for this oft-repeated motif the technical designation of Pilzbaum.
~ Gordon Wasson
Attacking Ramsbottom and the Rolfes et al, Wasson says: “The mycologists who focused their attention on this fresco persuaded themselves that the Tree of Good and Evil had been portrayed by the artist as an amanita muscaria”. As plate 1 shows, the Plaincourault fresco does in fact clearly portray a hybridized A. muscaria mushroom, as several scholars have since shown (Hoffman et al, 2006; Ruck et al, 2007/2005/2001/unpublished; Samorini, 1998). Wasson next states that the chapel is “disaffected,” which can have various meanings, such as: evilly affected, unfriendly, hostile, disliked, regarded with aversion—or simply alienated or unused. But he seems to choose this word to create the illusion of separation between the chapel and Christianity. He then says: “The mycologists would have done well to consult art historians.” Never mind that art historians don’t study mycology, which he later admits in Soma (pg. 179–80, below). He continues: “The Plaincourault fresco does not represent a mushroom and has no place in a discussion of ethno-mycology. It is a typical stylized Palestinian tree…” This, however, contradicts (or predates) Wasson’s letter (above) where he states that the mushroom tree is an “impressionistically rendered Italian pine tree”.
But Wasson also avoids admitting that in Soma (pg. 221) he says the Plaincourault fresco does, nonetheless, indirectly represent the mushroom:
[…] the mycologists were right also, in a transcendental sense of which neither they nor the artist had an inkling, when they saw a serpent offering a mushroom to Eve in the Fresco of Plaincourault.
~ Gordon Wasson
These contradictions will be key points throughout the rest of this study.
In the last paragraph of his letter, Wasson makes an unnecessary jab at Allegro. Wasson states: “Mr Allegro is not a mycologist but, if anything, a cultural historian.” Wasson doesn’t just say Allegro is not a mycologist, the likes of which he’s just put down, but includes the caveat “if anything,” purely as an insult to Allegro. Wasson was himself a banker and not a professional mycologist or art historian. Allegro, contrary to the image that Wasson wants to portray of him, was an eminent cultural historian, theologian, and philologist. It’s true that he wasn’t a mycologist—but then Wasson has just criticized the mycologists for not studying art.
2) Allegro to TLS, written 31 August, pub. 11 September 1970
Sir, Is it too much to hope that persons who presume to comment critically on my book, The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, would read it thoroughly first? Mr Gordon Wasson’s (August 21) objections to the mycologists’ identification of the Plaincourault fresco’s tree of good and evil as the Amanita muscaria are quoted verbatim in n. 20 to chapter IX.
One other point: “others” have not, in fact, “treated thoroughly” my philological evidence for the identifi
cation of the mushroom cult and mythology in the ancient Near East adequately to assess the results of this major advance in language relationships, now presented for the first time in published form, will require much longer unemotional study by competent philologians than has yet been possible. Until this has been done, laymen would be well advised to ignore the kind of emotive criticism of my work so far expressed by clerical and other reviewers and read the whole book for themselves.
JOHN M. ALLEGRO
Commentary
Allegro fired back at Wasson for not having read the book before writing his critical commentary. And though Wasson claims to have read Allegro’s book in his August 21 letter to the TLS, it appears most likely that he only gave the book a superficial and second-hand evaluation. Jack Herer, author of The Emperor Wears No Clothes, has recounted to me on several occasions his telephone conversation with Wasson in February 1984. Herer had just spent six months examining many of Allegro’s references. He called Wasson to ask him personally why he felt Allegro’s work was incorrect. As Herer recalls the conversation, Wasson informed him that he had actually been too busy to read Allegro’s book, and that two respected friends, a Jewish Rabbi and a Catholic Monsignor, reviewed it and reported back to him that “there was not one single word of truth in the book whatsoever.” (See the Appendix for a full transcript of Herer’s conversation with Wasson.) In conversations and emails, Ruck confirmed Herer’s statements.
Allegro goes on to reference chapter IX, footnote 20. Footnote 20 is a contradictory statement by Wasson. In SMC, chapter 9, Allegro describes the fresco as recalling the tradition of the Eden story as mushroom-based mythology: “Even as late as the thirteenth century some recollection of the old tradition was known among Christians, to judge from a fresco painted on the wall of a ruined church in Plaincourault in France (pl. 2). There the Amanita muscaria is gloriously portrayed, entwined with a serpent, while Eve stands by holding her belly.” Allegro continues in note 20 to this chapter: “Despite rejection of identity of the subject (‘rightly or wrongly’) as being a mushroom by R. Gordon Wasson: ‘for almost a half-century mycologists have been under a misapprehension on this matter’ (qu. Ramsbottom op. cit. p. 48)”.
Allegro had found this quote from Wasson—that “rightly or wrongly, for almost a half-century mycologists have been under a misapprehen-sion on this matter”—printed in a second edition of Ramsbottom’s book Mushrooms & Toadstools, pg. 48. Ramsbottom had taken it from a private letter that Wasson had written to him dated December 21, 1953, regarding the Plaincourault fresco and the Panofsky interpretation. As is shown below, Wasson was unaware at this stage that his private letter had been printed sixteen years earlier in the second edition of Ramsbottom’s book, which Allegro used. From a purely intellectual perspective, Allegro had beaten Wasson by using his own words against him. But unfortunately, the rebuttal, while technically complete, is too vague for public reading. The proper response from Allegro would have been to reprint Wasson’s entire letter to Ramsbottom in the TLS, with full commentary. If Allegro had done so, his own reputation would have been strengthened, and Wasson’s reputation weakened. Instead, Allegro published his short and dismissive response. Academia and the public at large missed Allegro’s point, but Wasson didn’t. Wasson was furious.
3) Wasson’s private letter to Allegro, 14 September 1970
Dear Mr Allegro
At last I understand. From your letter in the TLS 11.9.70 I surmise what had baffled me. I had found your note IX 20 incomprehensible. In nothing that I had published had I used the words apparently attributed to me, and it wasn’t 100% clear whether you were attributing them to me or to Ramsbottom. I looked up ‘Ramsbottom op. cit. p. 48’ and I found nothing there. In the fall of 1953 as I passed through London I saw an ad of Collins announcing a new book on mushrooms by Ramsbottom. (The date was the day it was put on sale, October 26.) I bought it and hurried home. On December 21 I wrote a letter to Dr. Ramsbottom pointing out the misinterpretation of the Plaincourault fresco in his book on page 34. I now gather that he was properly impressed and added a footnote, not to be found in the original edition, on p. 48. He never replied to my letter (which is not unusual with him), and he neither sought nor had my permission to reproduce what was a private letter. The letter was not drafted for publication. I had forgotten its text, which I have now looked up for the first time since it was written, and find the words you quote in it. What we wished to say we said in Mushrooms, Russia & History (1957) and I added Panofsky’s letter in my SOMA. Does your copy of Mushrooms and Toadstools carry ‘1953’ on its title page? If so, it is misleading, because it was either a fresh print or a new edition published at the earliest in 1954.
Though we are utterly opposed to each other on the role played by the fly-agaric, we agree that it was important. I think we can correspond with each other on friendly terms, like opposing counsel after hammering each other all day in court who meet for a drink together in a bar before going home. I wish you would tell me one thing: when did the idea of the fly-agaric first come to you and from where?
Sincerely yours,
R. Gordon Wasson
Commentary
Wasson first says he couldn’t find the reference to which Allegro was referring him in Ramsbottom’s book (below). This is because Allegro confused the first edition, published in October 1953, with the second edition, published four months later in January 1954. Wasson continues with a story about how he first discovered Ramsbottom’s book in London on the very day it was released, October 26, 1953. He mentions how on December 21, one month before the second edition of Ramsbottom’s book was printed, he sent Ramsbottom a letter which he, being “properly impressed,” included in the second edition.
Wasson then discusses how Ramsbottom didn’t respond, which he suggests “is not unusual with him”, and how he did not ask permission to reprint the letter. Wasson mentions that it was a private letter, “not drafted for publication.” He then states, or backpedals, that what he wished to say, or tell the public, he said in his 1957 publication (above). However, this implies that Wasson actually believes two things: those that are private, and those that he published, which I’ll discuss more later. Wasson goes on to mention Allegro’s error regarding the first and second editions of Ramsbottom’s book.
Let’s take another angle. Here we see Wasson attempting to influence the leading respected authority on mushrooms, Ramsbottom, about the interpretation of the Plaincourault fresco. Ramsbottom takes Wasson’s entire letter, faults and all, and prints it in the second edition of his book, pg. 48. He doesn’t even bother to reply to Wasson to let him know that his letter was published. Ramsbottom is likely thinking: “OK, Wasson, have it your way. Who is the reader going to side with: me, with a simple natural interpretation (Plaincourault fresco looks like Amanita, and represents it), or Wasson who says that ‘rightly or wrongly’, he’s going to reject it as Amanita, based on the authority of art scholars who don’t study mushrooms?”
Wasson doesn’t figure out what Ramsbottom did to him until sixteen years later, in 1970, when Allegro found the letter and not only published a reference to it in his own book, but shed daylight upon it in the TLS. Once Wasson figures out what Ramsbottom did with his letter, he objects to his own waffling yet authoritarian position being highlighted in the pages of Ramsbottom’s book, and in the TLS. We then see Wasson backpedaling to Allegro regarding his own words written to Ramsbottom, as if to say to Ramsbottom: “Hey, I didn’t intend for you to actually print in your book what I professed and wrote you about!”
This scenario is most intriguing. Wasson writes to a famous authority he’s trying to influence, who then elevates his letter – inconsistencies and all – fully into his book. Realizing it sixteen years later, Wasson objects to its publication. It’s the backpedaling of Wasson that arrests our attention: You’ve got to say X! Hey, I didn’t mean for you to print my letter that says “You’ve got to say X!”
But Wasson still fails to realize how h
e’s been had. Not only was his letter given the compliment, or ignominy, of being included as a “footnote”, but Ramsbottom put Wasson’s letter in the very body of his text as an “Addendum”. This just happens to be the perfect place for someone like Allegro to find it.
I propose that Allegro was pointing out Wasson’s doubts when he briefly quoted Wasson’s words “rightly or wrongly”. He was letting Wasson’s indecision speak for itself. This is how Ramsbottom and Allegro saw, and intended to portray, Wasson’s letter denying the depiction of Amanita in the Plaincourault fresco – they revealed Wasson’s position as incongruous and tenuous.
The last paragraph, which will be further discussed later, is interesting. Wasson knows that Allegro has gotten the better of him. Attempting to be affable, and perhaps cover up the seriousness of their differences, he therefore suggests that they correspond: “on friendly terms, like opposing counsel after hammering each other all day in court who meet for a drink together in a bar before going home.” Maybe Wasson himself felt “hammered” on.
Wasson sent the above private letter on September 14, two days before he wrote his public letter of September 16 to the TLS (see (5) below), published on September 25, 1970, thus not allowing Allegro adequate response time. Wasson omitted the core facts of both his private missives to Allegro and Ramsbottom in the public letter.