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The Pervasive Arcane Substance
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The Pervasive Arcane Substance is a 2008 non-fiction book by Michael Miller. Investigating the connections between shamanism and Western Religion, Miller outlines the plethora of connections between the Amanita Muscaria mushroom and various cultures that influenced modern day religion. Excerpts Chapter 1 While still a young boy and pondering the history of religion in the western world, I managed to negate shamanism altogether. Somehow in my young impressionable brain, I managed to take the history of western religion and go directly from caveman to Bible thumper. Soon to realize, as I grew older that I was a victim, and that my ignorance was exactly what the establishment desired. Of course when I thought of a shaman, I thought of a South American medicine man. Soon I would learn that shamanism has played a major role in religion throughout mankind’s evolution. Chapter 5 Wei Po-yang, the oldest Chinese alchemist known to us (2nd century A.D.), gives an instructive account of the dangerous consequences of making mistakes during the opus. Wei Po-yang gives a graphic description of the physiological and psychic consequences of error: "Gases from food consumed will make noises inside the intestines and stomach... Days and nights will be passed without sleep, moon after moon. The body will then be tired out, giving rise to an appearance of insanity. The hundred pulses will stir and boil so violently as to drive away peace of mind and body. Ghostly things will make their appearance, at which he will marvel even in his sleep. He is then led to rejoice, thinking that he is assured of longevity. But all of a sudden he is seized by an untimely death. A slight error has thus led to a grave disaster." Aurora consurgens I says in regard to the dangers which threaten the artifex: "O how many understand not the sayings of the wise; these have perished because of their foolishness, for they lacked spiritual understanding." Hoghelande is of the opinion that "the whole art is rightly to be held both difficult and dangerous, and anyone who is not improvident will eschew it as most pernicioius." Aegidius de Vadis feels the same when he says: "I shall keep silent about this science, which has led most of those who work in it into confusion, because there are few indeed who find what they seek, but an infinite number who have plunged to their ruin." Contact Author ThePASubstance@gmail.com See Also
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