The Curious Evolution Of Christianity

By Ian G Dalziel

Did you ever pause to wonder how Christianity came to be the world’s leading religion?

It certainly is a strange belief system, with its flying angels, virgin birth, miracles galore, magic wafers, and that rather strange and unpleasant idea that we are all supposedly born into sin. Nor should we forget that very puzzling man from Nazareth who went to the cross, and seemed to rise again.
In The Curious Evolution of Christianity, the author’s skeptical viewpoint, lightened with moments of humor, will help you understand how this faith took shape, from ancient times to the present day.

He begins by theorizing about the earliest human fears and superstitions, then examines the ideas Christianity borrowed from neighboring religions in Egypt, India, Persia and Greece.

The history of the Hebrews is demystified: their clumsy Creation myth, the Great Flood, the Exodus from Egypt, and a bloodthirsty arrival into the promised land of Canaan.

The life, teachings, and objectives of Jesus make up the third major section of the book. This includes reviewing the crucifixion, and the strange idea of a resurrection. You will read several theories about what may have happened at the cross, any one of which could explain the resurrection, without requiring any divine intervention whatsoever.

The most interesting thing about Jesus, however, may be that his philosophy had little to do with the eventual shape of the Christian Church. You will read how, after Jesus departed the scene, the Christian story morphed into a struggle for power and wealth, with churches vying for control over their populations, and seeking to dominate both religious and secular life.

The Curious Evolution of Christianity is an enjoyable read, and a must for skeptics everywhere.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ian G Dalziel
• Release date: Feb 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311370235

Book preview

Introduction

It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life, I have been searching for evidence that could support this.

~ Bertrand Russell

A glance at the title and subtitle of this book and you’ll quickly realize that you will be reading a criticism of Christianity. Yes, that’s true. But I’ll hasten to say that I’m not writing out of any sense of malice, and I’m not one of the atheist camp’s attack dogs. Rather, I’m trying to puzzle out what on earth brought this rather strange religion into existence.

And in the interests of full disclosure, I have to immediately let you know that I am not an academic. I have no research assistants, and no network of theologians or historians working alongside me. Nor have I made the subject of religion my life’s work.

The reason I wrote this book has to do with what happened to my thinking as I grew up in a Christian environment—a slightly odd one, as it happens. My father was a skeptic, and my mother was a believer of a particular kind: she claimed to believe in God, but only because she’d regret not doing so if she got to the pearly gates and found out that he did exist after all. A very pragmatic woman, my mother.

Because much of the extended family was religious, relatives would swing by and take me to a nearby Protestant church on Sundays. Their hope was that my soul would somehow be saved from this heretical family into which I was born. My parents’ hope, I suspect, was that they’d have quiet Sundays to themselves.

For a while, it looked like the plan was working. For years, I went to church every week. As a little boy, I’d sit there on the pews, and would look up at the faces of the adults all around me.

They were kind, and would smile and help this young lad who was fumbling for the right page in the hymn book. I’d see the occasional baptism, and hear uplifting Bible verses in the sermons. There was also the music, with those lovely hymns—hymns that I’d enjoy trying to play during my visits to my grandmother’s home, where there was a wonderful pedal organ.

In high school in Scotland, I’d go to morning prayer services, and would attend Religious Instruction classes. Those sessions were never very exciting, but I paid attention as best I could. And so, you’d expect all those influences to shape me, and to produce the very predictable outcome of a committed Christian.

However, I was hearing things that didn’t resonate well with my young mind. Miracles, really? Moses putting curses on the Egyptians—that’s weird, and not particularly nice either. A great flood killing all of humanity? What god would do such a thing? An angel and an annunciation, leading to a human virgin birth? Sorry, pal, there ain’t no such thing as angels or divine virgin births. Feeding five thousand with those loaves and fishes (a favorite story)? Well, nope, that can’t have happened. And a resurrection, where a man came back from the dead. I don’t think so.

My poor young brain was horribly confused. Perhaps if I had just heard those helpful words of St. Anselm, credo ut intelligam, then I might have just shrugged and gone along with the Christian flow.

That idea—I believe so that I may understand—well, it might have done the trick, since it implies that greater minds than mine had wrestled with the puzzles of Christianity many centuries ago. They had first and foremost remained faithful, with the expectation that all knowledge would be revealed to them one day.

But the saints didn’t come to my rescue, and I quietly stepped away from my boyhood religion. As I transitioned into adulthood, I became preoccupied with the mundane task of making a living, and I somehow found work that suited the way my brain functions. It seems that I’m one of those people who puzzle and scratch away at things until they understand them. It’s the understanding itself that motivates me, rather than any desire to change the world.

For many years, I designed and built computer systems, then later I traveled the world, reviewing and evaluating business operations. I became quite skilled at getting to the root cause of issues.

Always, my mind would be consumed with questions. Why are things the way they are? Exactly how did they get to be that way? Who were the key players, and what were the crucial moments when events took their particular turns?

That’s probably enough preamble. I think I should now let you know what you will find in the pages of this book, as I apply my methods to the long arc of Christianity.

In the first part, I speculate about the origins of religious feelings themselves. Why do we humans even have these tendencies? And I use the word speculate because we have no tangible records from tens of thousands of years ago.

So I have to use my imagination to set the scene for the earliest of our religious behaviors. And that requires me to provide for you what is now fashionably called a trigger warning. In this book there will be the occasional attempts at humor, and that will begin in the very first chapter. These humorous sketches or asides will be sprinkled throughout the mostly serious content of my book.

So anyone who takes offense at mixing humor with religion has been adequately warned, and can now turn the pages at the risk of having their sensitivities assaulted.

As I continue in the first part of the book, I look at the religions that surrounded the cradle of Christianity in what we now call Israel. I describe aspects of those earlier religions that then found their way into the Christian belief system.

The second major section of the book looks at the history of the Hebrews, including the Creation and the Exodus, and then the development of Mosaic law. This will take us to just before the appearance of a strange, and somewhat deranged, preacher that we know as Jesus of Nazareth.

He is the principal subject of the third main section. I look at theories about his origins, and examine the various ideas of how he gained his religious knowledge and convictions. That includes considering the various claims that Jesus traveled to distant lands, to learn from other religious environments.

Spoiler alert: I tend to buy into the notion that Jesus did not go on a world tour. I favor his having been a member of the sect called the Essenes. I suspect that, although Jesus lived in one of the Essene communes, his ideas eventually differed in key ways from the sect’s own beliefs, and he may have decided to strike out on his own. Or was asked to do so.

Perhaps the most important feature of Christianity is the Resurrection. The Apostle Paul himself said that it was the central belief of the faith: And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.[¹]

I do not believe that a dead human was resurrected to live again, and to ascend to a heavenly place. So I will review for you several of the rational explanations that people have considered for why this strange idea came to be.

I may surprise you by saying that, for the fourth and last major section of the book—namely the rise of a powerful Church—nothing in the first three parts matters very much. Not the Old Testament, not Moses, and not even Jesus himself.

I believe that Christians completely misunderstand what Christ was all about. I also believe that his story was seized upon by ambitious individuals, was reworked, and then used to build an empire driven mostly by the desire for power and wealth.

Although much of what I have to say concerns Christianity in general, I have found it instructive to focus specifically on the big dog: the Catholic Church. For much of the last two millennia, it has struggled to control the world, to appoint kings, to amass resources, and to neutralize anyone who got in its way.

I provide ample illustrations of just how corrupt this Church has been through the ages. I believe it is important, even today, to see past the cuddly, avuncular figures that we call Popes—to look behind the so-called charisma, in order to understand the underlying motives that still drive this institution.

If the last few paragraphs have alarmed you, then fear not. I close my book with a very short section called It’s Not All Bad. What I do there is to draw a distinction between the confusion and bad behavior of the Christian Church, and the fundamental decency of everyday Christians. There is an important difference between the Church as an organization, and its faithful as good human beings, and I am happy to acknowledge it.

Please enjoy The Curious Evolution of Christianity.

Part 1: The First Glimmers of Religious Thinking

This is my simple religion: There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.

~ Dalai Lama

In the Beginning

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.

~ Seneca

If we could go back and observe our ancient ancestors in their daily lives, I’m guessing that it wasn’t just one idea, or just one type of experience, that led them to develop religious thinking. So in the next few chapters, I’ll speculate on what might have been going through their minds.

I use the word speculate, because we have no records of those earliest times. So we are obliged to employ our imaginations and our common sense.

Having said that, wouldn’t it be helpful if we could listen to our human ancestors as they made those first mental leaps into thinking that there were gods working behind the scenes, causing earthquakes, tsunamis and other pesky nuisances?

As I’ll do occasionally throughout this book, let me play the role of the fly on the wall of history, and imagine how that first prehistoric conversation might have gone:

"Hey, Dave and Frank, what do you think causes the earthquakes, the avalanches and all the floods?"

"I dunno, Bill, said Dave. I haven’t thought about it much. I’m too busy hunting and gathering. Do you realize how much work it is to collect a week’s supply of nuts?"

"I’ve wondered about these things sometimes, said Frank. The way I see it, there must be really huge and powerful beings working behind the scenes doing all that stuff. Like giants or something. I mean, it’s only logical."

"Yeah, said Bill, but if they’re giants, then why can’t we see them?"

"Well they’re different, said Frank, and they’re so clever, they can hide themselves from us. He frowned. One thing’s for sure, we’d better be darned careful not to mess with them.

"In fact, we should acknowledge their power in some way that they can see. How about we get all of the tribe to meet in the clearing, and then raise our arms to the skies, to show these beings that we know they’re superior to us? We could sing a bit so they’ll notice us."

"That’s a good idea, said Dave. You should be our leader, Frank, and maybe you could wear a distinctive robe when you manage the ceremony."

"Why?" asked Frank, puzzled.

Dave chuckled. So that the powerful beings can pick you out, if they start sending down bolts of lightning. After all, this is your idea.

"Oh, very nice, said Frank, scowling. Thanks a lot, guys. He paused, then added, Of course, I’ll need to be compensated for this. Let’s pass a plate round during the ceremony, and you can all give me some of your nuts."

I did warn in the Introduction, didn’t I, that there would be occasional attempts at humor in this book? Of course, I never promised that the humor would be any good.

I’m sorry, too, for the lack of realism in the above sketch. I know, a priest would never be satisfied with a plateful of nuts—he’d want lobster and caviar, right? Nothing but the best is good enough for the men who can commune with gods.

Why do we humans have these tendencies towards being religious? Well, there are some who believe that humans are naturally wired for feelings and behaviors that promote group solidarity. The idea being that a tribe will be more successful if it has a widely-shared sense of commitment among its members.

For those of you who, like me, see little difference between religious fervor and its political equivalent, here is a favorite extract from one of the landmark books on belief, The True Believer:

. . . the chief preoccupation of a mass movement is to instill in its followers a facility for united action and self-sacrifice, and that it achieves this facility by stripping each human entity of its distinctiveness and autonomy, and turning it into an anonymous particle with no will and no judgment of its own.[²]

Such commitment to an idol or a group identity gives a tribe’s individual members added courage to do what needs to be done in times of crisis. To defeat an attacking enemy, for example. Or better yet, to be an attacking enemy, trying to take territory for the tribe’s own benefit.

As those early priests carved out their role in society, perhaps they had to adapt their procedures, in order to deal with the occasional whining that came from their congregations:

"Oh, hi Dave, hi Bill, said Frank, come in. You wanted to see me?"

"Right, said Dave, looking anxious. You see, there’s been some grumbling among the members of the tribe."

"I know, said Frank. Some of the elders told me. But what have you heard?"

Bill nodded. The people are saying they’ve been diligent, and have been coming to the ceremonies to pay homage to the spirits. And they’ve been giving you and your assistants a share of the tribe’s food and property. But they’re angry that there was that earthquake last month. How come the spirits did that to us?

"Yes, said Frank, I see. He paused, then said, What the people don’t understand—since their minds are not open, and they’re not in touch with the spirits as I am—is that our ceremonies have already stopped countless earthquakes, avalanches and floods. Think of all the damage and misery that would have happened if we hadn’t been worshipping the spirits."

"Yeah, said Dave, but from the tribe’s point of view—"

"And another thing, interrupted Frank, it’s not possible for us to fully understand exactly why the spirits do what they do. Their ways are wondrous and mysterious. Can’t the people understand that?"

"You’re right, of course, said Bill. But isn’t there something you can do?"

Frank nodded. "I’ve already agreed something with the elders. It will be difficult, but we have to take action. And this new idea is based on something that was revealed to me in a recent dream, when I was up on the mountain.

"You see, the spirits are angry with us because of the way we live, and the way we’re thinking. They get upset when we’re evil—like when we envy the property of others, or when we tell lies.

"So what we have to do is choose someone to be the focal point for all of the tribe’s wickedness, and then offer him to the spirits, and that way we can atone for all we’ve done wrong, and we can move on."

Bill nodded. I think I understand. We’d be transferring all our evil over to this one person. Yes, Frank, I think the folks’ll buy that.

"Hang on a minute, said Dave. When you say that we choose someone and—how did you put it—offer him to the spirits? What exactly did you mean by that?"

Frank nodded. It means that we should kill him. To get rid of the evil, don’t you see? Then hang his body in a tree so that the spirits are sure to notice. He paused, then added, That should keep them happy. For a while, anyway.

Bill and Dave were silent for some time.

Finally, it was Bill who spoke. We could choose Phil, he said hesitantly.

"That works for me, said Dave. Phil’s always been a pain in the ass. And I think he’s the one that stole my spear."

"Right, then, said Frank. We have a winner."

Perhaps my little dose of fiction was too contrived for you? Or the idea of hanging poor Phil in a tree was maybe too obvious a parallel to the Jesus Crucifixion?

But be aware that there has been plenty of human sacrifice through the ages, and it has taken various forms around the world. Anyone who’s watched the movie Apocalypto, for example, will have seen depictions of the gruesome sacrifices conducted by early American societies.[³]

Critics do point out that, although that movie was set in Guatemala and used the spoken language of the Mayans, the practices shown were more like those of the Aztecs. They are believed to have dispatched tens of thousands of their enemies in the way that the movie demonstrates: prisoner force-marched up a pyramid; heart ripped out and shown to dying victim; head and body rolled down the cleverly-designed steep steps of the pyramid, to be collected by the gleeful onlookers below.

As recently as the mid-nineteenth century, anthropologists were able to observe regular human sacrifice performed by people in the mountainous regions of India. Some of the Khond tribes there felt that human sacrifices were necessary to enhance agricultural fertility—a common idea in ancient times.

I’m not sure I’d have enjoyed living among the Khonds. You see, they’d usually sacrifice non-Khonds, but they weren’t averse to bumping off some of their own. It must have been a nervous existence back then, trying not to be the one sliding onto the bull’s-eye.

At the end of ceremonies that lasted several days, the Khonds placed their victim on a cross, or in the branches of a tree that had been split to permit hanging the body by the neck. Then, the climax of the show:

It was essential that the victim not finally resist. To make sure, his arms and legs were broken and he could be made passive by drugs. The priest then slightly wounds him with an axe and the crowd instantly cuts him to pieces, leaving only the head and intestines untouched. These are subsequently burned and the ash spread over the fields or laid as a paste on houses and granaries.[⁴]

Yes, we should all try that technique on our tomato plants next year, don’t you think? If we did, we’d also be tuning in to the old pre-Israelite religions in their land of Canaan, where less-homicidal fertility and sexual rites were held even in the eighth century BCE.

To get closer to the world’s sky gods, victims of old were raised to a higher elevation on stakes, in trees, or sometimes all the way up on mountain tops. This was confirmed to us all too sadly in 2013, when three Inca mummies were found near the summit of Volcán Llullaillaco in Argentina.[⁵] The bodies were of children: two girls and a boy, none older than thirteen. Due to the high altitude and low temperatures, all three were perfectly preserved.

That Inca practice of killing and offering young children to the gods was known as capacocha. The children would be killed by blows to the skull or, in the case of these three, drugged heavily and allowed to die more peacefully. How kind.

This idea of communing with gods on mountain tops has stayed with us into comparatively modern times. In the 1950s, a certain Sun Myung Moon climbed a mountain in South Korea and received a revelation from Jesus, who asked Sun to establish God’s earthly kingdom and bring about world peace. Aww, isn’t that nice?

Sun’s new church was initially called the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity. He may have tired of writing all that out, and he renamed it later to the Unification Church. You and I also know his followers better by their colloquial name—the Moonies.

Let’s descend our mountain, and consider the other themes that influenced the early development of religion.

Drugs, Drums, Dances and Dreams

If thine enemy wrong thee, buy each of his children a drum.

~ Chinese Proverb

Have you ever strolled round museums, and been curious about some of the objects that the ancients carved out of wood and stone?

I’m talking, of course, about the obsession they seemed to have with the phallus. Maybe you do what I usually do, namely: smile weakly, glance around to make sure nobody sees what you’ve been staring at, and then wander on to the next exhibit, hoping it’ll be something more socially acceptable, like a wooden club with spikes on it. Even better if it has bloodstains on it.

Why did the ancients focus so much on our naughty parts? Fertility was important, I suppose, and being fruitful was desirable. That’s because children, although they had to be reared and cared for, would eventually add to the strength and productivity of a tribe, and would also look after their elders.

But there was something else going on. It seems that humans watched plants flourishing after rains fell from the sky. They assumed that the rain was the ejaculate of the sky gods, being poured onto the womb of the earth below. Just as men poured their issue into the wombs of females.

These life-giving processes—of the gods, and the humans too—were given great respect. It was considered bad form to do anything that would interrupt the completion of the divine urge for life. Even to this day, the Church considers it evil to masturbate, to use contraception, or to have an abortion. And don’t even get them started about gay sex: all those alleged deviants happily coupling without producing any offspring—how much that must upset the gods on high.

The plants that sprang from the rain-soaked womb of the earth were considered to be a blessing from the gods. The ancients then experimented with what grew around them—they’d have to find out what was safe to eat, and what was poisonous. They’d test their ideas by feeding plants to animals, or to captives from enemy tribes, and then watching the effects.

They’d have quickly found out that some plants, especially those in the mushroom family, could create altered states of mind. Since those plants sometimes resembled female and then male genitalia at the different stages of their development, the ancients thought mushrooms to be a most important gift from their gods. Especially when the plants seemed to appear almost instantly after a heavy life-giving rainstorm.

Plants that could create visions, or treat and even cure ailments, were highly valued. You can imagine, then, just how much experimentation went on to find such important plants, and to blend, purify or distill their essences.

But our ancestors would also have found other ways that opened their minds. For example, picture a tribe whose hunters departed on expeditions that lasted several days. The village would use drums to help their brave hunters find their way home, in the same way that wolves howl to help strays find the pack.

The sound of drums made from hollowed-out logs can carry about four or five miles during the day, with a few more miles possible in the morning or evening, when the air is cooler.

The tribe would be drumming for long periods at a time, and there’s one important discovery that some of them would make. They’d find out that after hours of drumming, they could go into an altered state.

The drummer for the Grateful Dead, Mickey Hart said that, after drumming for a time, he would almost go into a trance, and then had to hold himself back so that his performance didn’t start to suffer.[⁶]

When drummers drum, people dance. It’s a way of showing their physical attraction to potential mates, and to demonstrate vitality. We still do this in modern times, with trendy young European things jetting down to Ibiza in the Med, to take part in drug-crazed raves. I’m only sorry those weren’t happening when I was a boy.

But in dancing, too, strange things can happen. Some would find that, if they whirled round and round, they’d experience new sensations. Today, we know of dancers like the whirling dervishes, such as those in the Mevlevi Order of Turkey. And although the spinning may look wild to us, it is in fact very controlled, and the dancers are going through a specific routine.

Their foot movements are carefully designed to help them whirl without becoming dizzy. They hold the right palm up to the heavens, and the left palm down towards the ground. The dance is supposed to empty their minds of all distractions, and to help them bridge the earthly to the spiritual world.

Of course, we don’t have to go to all the trouble of eating the mushrooms, or dancing and drumming, to reach strange mental states. After all, each and every one of us dreams. Several times a night, it seems.

I remember mine only occasionally, and it seems I’m not alone, since most dreams are forgotten. Whatever the brain is doing, it doesn’t seem to have high value to be able to recall dreams when awake. It may be that your mind is just tidying things up, or reorganizing its disk drives while you sleep.

Imagine how it might have gone down when an early human, let’s call him Wilbur, described his dreams. Every day, Wilbur would get up and head to the breakfast buffet, help himself to eggs and antelope sausages, and chat to the tribe about his dreams. Maybe he’d talk about being chased by a leopard, or about almost drowning in a river.

But then, one morning, perhaps Wilbur told the tribe about a different kind of dream:

"I saw my father last night," he said.

"What? said Jimmy, one of the younger men. That doesn’t make sense. Your father died last year."

"I know,’ said Wilbur, frowning. But the fact is that he came to me last night while I slept. I saw him in my mind, clear as day. I don’t understand it, and I must say it made me nervous."

"I can explain this, said one of the elders. You see, when we die, we don’t just disappear. We go to a different place, one that we can’t quite see during the day. But at night, the gods sometimes let us glimpse into this special spirit world. You should be grateful for that experience."

"One thing, Wilbur, said Jimmy. Your father . . . he didn’t say anything about that knife I borrowed from him, did he? Like, wanting me to give it back?"

Dreams even feature strongly in our scriptures. One of the most famous occasions is when Joseph helped a pharaoh who’d been having nightmares:

And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, I have dreamed a dream, and there is none that can interpret it: and I have heard say of thee, that thou canst understand a dream to interpret it. (Genesis, 41:15.)

Joe took a stab at interpreting the Pharaoh’s dream. He said that there would be seven good harvest years, followed by seven disappointing ones. The Pharaoh took decisive action, and stored up grain to get through the lean times to come. What Joe foretold came to pass, and so he got into the Pharaoh’s good books.

Let’s look at another dream—this one relates to king Nebuchadnezzar. He too was greatly troubled, and so he called in his experts. Seems that reading dreams was a thriving business in those days. But Nebby wasn’t terribly patient with his consultants, and he put the screws on them real bad:

The king answered and said to the Chaldeans, The thing is gone from me: if ye will not make known unto me the dream, with the interpretation thereof, ye shall be cut in pieces, and your houses shall be made a dunghill. (Daniel, 2:5.)

Nothing like having a dunghill dropped on your house to get the brainbox working.

In the end, it was Daniel who saved the day. First, he asked for a couple of days to think about ol’ Nebby’s dream. And then, Dan himself had a dream about the dream:

Then was the secret revealed unto Daniel in a night vision. Then Daniel blessed the God of heaven. (Daniel, 2:19.)

Elsewhere in the Bible, you have Joseph’s dream about God being the one who got that nice girl, Mary, in trouble. And there was the dream of the magi—the one that told them not to check back in with naughty old Herod, who was plotting to kill the baby Jesus. And Pilate’s wife had dreams too—about that hunky Jesus guy who had just been taken prisoner.

What about other religions, you might ask? Do they also have tales of dreams? Yes, they do. The Hadith scriptures of Islam, have several thoughts on dreams. Here’s one:

The Prophet said, A good dream that comes true is from Allah, and a bad dream is from Satan, so if anyone of you sees a bad dream, he should seek refuge with Allah from Satan and should spit on the left, for the bad dream will not harm him.[⁷]

Buddhists were a bit different: one strong belief they held was that dreams were shallow, as was earthly existence itself. Dreams were the flashing and chaotic images of the human mind experiencing the underlying emptiness of all things. A sentiment that seems to have come from the Buddha himself, as explained in the Diamond Sutra:

Wherefore the conclusion is this—that all things which admit of definition are as a dream, a phantom, a bubble, a shadow, as the dew and lightning flash. They ought to be regarded thus.[⁸]

Hindus also deal with dreams in their holy writings. But, from what I can see, they’re all over the place: they can be either prophetic or retributive. Some Hindus also think that if you live a decent life you can avoid bad dreams altogether. Sadly, it’s a bit late for me to try a decent life.

By the way, Hindus have a lovely little story about dreams and greed. It seems that somebody came to a certain Vikramāditya to ask him about a dream. Old Vik was a legendary ruler in central India around the time of Christ, and was known for being a clever sort.

Anyway, Vik listened to this guy who said he’d had a dream in which he had lent out some gold coins. This clever little man asked Vik to get the gold coins back for him. Vik outsmarted the weasely dreamer. He put some gold coins in a bag, hoisted the bag into a tree, then held a mirror at ground level so that the bag’s reflection could be seen in the glass. Crafty ol’ Vik told the dreamer to bend down and take his gold from the bag in the mirror. Just because someone lived thousands of years ago, doesn’t mean they weren’t wicked smart.

When the ancients weren’t dreaming, or getting stoned out of their tiny minds, they’d worry about the seasons. As the days grew shorter and winter arrived, there was inevitable uncertainty, since some thought that the land actually went through a process like death. So they’d wonder whether the Sun would ever shine strongly again? It always had in the past, but would it come back next year? Would there be enough food from the land? And as harvests did arrive, humans would be grateful to gods who seemed to help them escape drought or famine.

Early man also looked in wonder at the skies, trying to figure out the apparent movements of the Sun, the Moon, and the other planets and stars.

Now, why have I put together this assortment of strange ideas: drugs, drums, and so on?

I suspect that the human mind works in many different layers, and that its individual circuits may be related to different periods of our human evolution. So it’s not surprising to me that, while we may spend much of our time thinking in rational ways, we can occasionally be snapped into another mode, a more primitive process of feeling and sensing, rather than calculating and deliberating.

So the drugs, drums, dances, dreams and other pathways to our different senses may be nothing whatsoever to do with the supernatural. They may be insignificant little diversions into the other workings of our brains. Just as happens when we’re traveling in our cars, only to suddenly realize that we’ve blanked out for a few seconds, and been driving, quite happily, on autopilot.

The ancients would have violently disagreed with my conclusions. For them, the drugs, drums and dreams were a gateway to other worlds, with powerful spirits.

Gradually, all these areas of special knowledge and experience became organized into a specific skill set. After all, members of a tribe would specialize at certain activities, with some hunting, others gathering or farming, still others handling crafts or preparing food.

The individuals who consolidated the knowledge of drugs, or who were able to use the stars to predict seasonal changes or navigate across seas, would become important figures in their tribes.

They’d become the earliest religious practitioners. Such mysterious, so-called shamans have existed for many thousands of years, as suggested in this article:

Archaeologists in northern Israel say they have discovered the world's oldest known grave of a shaman. The 12,000-year-old grave holds an elderly female of the mysterious Natufian culture, animal parts, and a human foot . . .

Hundreds of Natufian graves have been excavated in Israel, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. But only the one uncovered by Grosman contains a woman believed to have been a shaman.

The term shaman originated in Siberia, but these magic-invoking priest-doctors are common in cultures around the globe.[⁹]

Eventually, the business of religion evolved. Picture the lone shaman of a tribe, shaking a chicken-bone rattle over the woman who wanted a baby, or the man with a stomach ache. Then fast-forward to a point in time when the role of shaman had expanded, and almost become industrialized, with simple priesthoods growing into major movements.

These early religious organizations evolved their own personalities in their respective world regions. They are now known by some as The Mysteries. As they took hold in different regions, they became exclusive clubs where knowledge was guarded jealously, in order to preserve the power of the priests.

You know, when it comes to being in a club, I’ve always followed the advice of Groucho Marx, who said: I’d never join a club that would have me as a member.

Ah, but Groucho would have been wrong about the Mysteries, since they were worth joining. Their priests were respected, even feared, and they led lives of comparative luxury.

The Mysteries Take Shape

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