Jeffrey L. Dahmer was a convicted serial murderer who had admitted killing and dismembering 17 young men and boys, told police he strangled most of his victims, had sex with corpses, slit the bodies from sternum to toe, and cut off the flesh.
Dahmer surgically experimented with the bodies of his victims in his attempt to preserve them as zombies so he could continue to use them for sex. When that failed, he resorted to even more gruesome measures.
Dahmer surgically experimented with the bodies of his victims in his attempt to preserve them as zombies so he could continue to use them for sex. When that failed, he resorted to even more gruesome measures.
‘He ate body parts so that these poor people he killed would become alive again in him,’ his former attorney, Gerald Boyle said.
Dahmer’s bloody pattern of sexually motivated murder, dismemberment, and cannibalism led him to feel that he was the devil, according to his attorney.
“He became enamored, overwhelmed, caught up in the character in the (horror movie) ‘Exorcist III.’ The character was Satan because he was the personification of evil,” attorney Gerald Boyle said in his opening statement in Dahmer’s sanity trial.
Jeffrey Dahmer said that he was enthralled by the notorious Faces of Death videos. He rented Faces of Death and became fascinated with a corpse shown in the video.
“He was good looking. He was totally naked. I don’t know why I happened to have a fascination with that,” Dahmer said.
When police finally entered Dahmer’s apartment 213, they found seven skulls, four heads in a free-standing freezer, one head on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator, and assorted body parts in a blue fifty-seven-gallon barrel.
Among the items were more than a hundred photographs of people in various stages of dismemberment, most so disgusting that even experienced law enforcement officials could not bring themselves to look at them.
Milwaukee detective Dennis Murphy testified about what Dahmer said during his confession.
‘He stated he kept the skulls of the good-looking ones because he did not want to lose them,’ Murphy said.
‘He stated he would cut off the penis and other body parts and masturbate in front of them for gratification.’
Murphy said Dahmer, asked about cannibalism, said, ‘the only time I did was a bicep … it was big and I wanted to try it.’
‘He stated that he put Crisco on the bicep, softened it up with a meat tenderizer, then fried it in a skillet,’ Murphy said.
‘He said it tasted like beef,’ Murphy said.
He said Dahmer ‘talked in a calm, monotone voice’ during his confession.
Jeffrey Dahmer grew up in a middle class family. His parents were incompatible and argued often, which left him with little attention. He had no close friends and no one for him to hug or feel affectionate towards.
This led to isolation for Jeffrey as he had no friends to play with nor adults to spend time with. He coped by withdrawing into his own world and creating his own stories that always turned out right as long as they weren’t disturbed.
Dahmer wasn’t unknown to the law.
In 1982, he was charged with disorderly conduct. In 1986, he was arrested for exposing himself to a group of children. The charge was commuted to disorderly conduct and he pleaded guilty in 1987.
In 1988, Dahmer picked up a thirteen-year-old Laotian boy and gave him a drink laced with a sleeping potion. He fondled the boy as well. This time, he was charged with second-degree sexual assault and the enticement of a child for immoral purposes.
He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to one year in detention, but because he was apologetic, the sentence was stayed, and he received five years of probation instead.
This meant he could keep his $9.81-an-hour job at the chocolate factory, and go back to jail at night.
His father, Lionel Dahmer, had contemplated in his memoir, A Father’s Story, the family unit was anything but a happy one. Because Lionel was busy with his own doctoral studies, he was often absent from the home.
Yet, he pondered the nature of evil in an existential way, especially as it related to his son, Jeffrey.
“As a scientist, [I] wonder if [the] potential for great evil..resides deep in the blood that some of us … may pass on to our children at birth,” he wrote in the book.
He suggests that prescription drugs Jeffery’s mother was on while pregnant could have affected his brain in a negative way. In his book, Lionel Dahmer questions if his son’s shyness was a red flag of future murderous tendencies.
Confused about what may have “caused” his son to kill, Lionel expresses the complicated and often contradictory feelings he had about Jeffrey. The dad often blamed himself for Jeffrey’s (severe) flaws. Lionel said he was negligent and probably didn’t give enough to Jeffrey, emotionally. In his memoir, he referenced the “fan mail” his son received.
“Clearly, some of these people believe that in some bizarre way, my son could rescue them from lives in which they felt entrapped. It demonstrated a level of sympathy and pity that I simply could not reach. . . . I often wondered why, in a world of so much feeling, I could express so little.”
Recounting Dahmer’s life, Dahmer’s defense attorney, Jerry Boyle said that as a youth in Ohio, Dahmer was fascinated by the bodies of animals he found on the highway and brought home to cut up. At 14, Boyle said, Dahmer realized that he was a homosexual and first fantasized about having sex with a corpse.
Prosecutor Michael McCann, in his opening statement, described Dahmer as a clever plotter who carefully covered up his crimes.
McCann said Dahmer killed his victims so he could continue having sex with them after they were dead. “He wanted to continue the pleasure with their bodies,” he told the jurors.
Dahmer would have preferred sex with men who were alive, but he drugged and strangled his victims because they would always leave after having sex, McCann said.
“He enjoys the bodies for a day or two but then he becomes tired of them. It then becomes a disposal problem,” he said.
Two detectives later Thursday read their account of Dahmer’s 60-hour confession, given shortly after he was apprehended.
The dramatic opening statements and testimony marked the judgment phase in the worst multiple murder case in this city’s history. It began last July 22 when police entered Dahmer’s apartment west of downtown Milwaukee and found body parts of 11 of his victims.
The cannibalistic serial killer, Jeffrey Dahmer, had been fired for excessive absenteeism about two weeks before his July 22 arrest. As a result, he could no longer pay his rent. He expressed that he planned on living at a Salvation Army shelter and destroying the body parts in his apartment.
It was at that time when Dahmer bought a 57-gallon drum to dissolve bones and flesh in it, and flush them once they were turned into mush.
He also debated whether to keep 11 skulls as “souvenirs” but the risk of detection by police was too high.
It was a warm summer day in 1991 when police were called to the home of serial killer Jefferey Dahmer.
A young man by the name of Tracy Edwards had escaped from the house and made it to the station. He was chained by the ankle and had just barely survived after being drugged and beaten by Dahmer for several days.
Police immediately went to check out his story, not expecting to see what they found when they got there.
Dahmer claimed that he was his adult lover and that they had been experimenting with S&M.
The man then explained that he had met Dahmer on a bus and agreed to go to his apartment for sex.
Once there, he said that Dahmer was acting very strange, so he asked if he could leave. At this point Dahmer grabbed a pair of handcuffs and put them on him. He then pulled out a knife and began to cut off his clothes.
After being reassured by Dahmer that he wasn’t going to kill him, Edwards convinced Dahmer to let him go to the bathroom. Once there, Edwards locked the door and jumped out of a window. He ran on foot until he found two policemen.
At this point Edwards fled from the apartment, naked and still in handcuffs.
He ran on foot until he found two policemen who immediately went to Dahmer’s apartment to investigate.
Once Dahmer opened the door, the officers were confronted by a foul smell that radiated from his place.
They looked inside and saw a huge pot of acid on the stove that appeared to have body parts bubbling inside it. Then they noticed a head in his refrigerator.
When the police searched Dahmer’s apartment they found an array of photographs depicting dismembered bodies, along with four severed heads in the refrigerator.
Underneath the bed they found two more skulls and a 57 gallon drum filled with chemicals containing human remains.
The police also found some Polaroid photos which showed how some of his victims were murdered.
Jeffery Dahmer, the serial killer and cannibal’s reign of terror had officially ended.
On November 28, 1991, he was convicted of 15 counts of murder and sentenced to 15 consecutive life terms.
In February 1992 Dahmer pleaded guilty but insane to an additional charge of murder and one count of committing a lewd act on a child. He received another life sentence for each charge and was sentenced to 10 years for the lewd act conviction.
A few years into his sentence, Dahmer was killed by a fellow inmate on November 28, 1994.
Christopher Scarver, a man serving time for killing his boss with a claw hammer, beat Dahmer to death with a broom handle. The two men were doing cleaning duty at Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, Wisconsin.
Scarver had been sentenced in 1990 for the murder of his former boss during a robbery.
He said Dahmer had a personal escort of at least one guard at all times when he was out of his cell because of his friction with other inmates.
“Some people who are in prison are repentant — but he was not one of them,” he told the Post.
Scarver said that he was repulsed by the youth-molesting cannibal’s lust for flesh and kept in his pocket a newspaper article detailing Dahmer’s murders.
He said Dahmer would taunt other inmates by fashioning limbs out of the prison food, applying ketchup on places to represent blood.
On November 28, 1994, Dahmer, 34 at the time, was assigned to clean the bathrooms with another inmate, esse Anderson and Scarver — unshackled and unattended.
Scarver, then 25 told the Post he’d gone to retrieve a mop when he felt someone poke his back. When he turned around, he saw Dahmer and the other inmate “laughing under their breath.”
“I looked right into their eyes, and I couldn’t tell which had done it,” he told the New York Post.
After the incident, Scarver followed Dahmer to the locker room where he confronthed Dahmer about the killings.
When Dahmer tried to escape, Scarver then took a metal bar and swung it at his head, crushing Dahmer’s skull.
Scarver then found the other inmate, Jesse Anderson, and did “[p]retty much the same thing.”
Scarver said he believes the prison officials left them all alone on purpose, knowing he hated Dahmer and wanted him dead.
“They had something to do with what took place. Yes,” he told the Post.
After the murders he pleaded to “no contest” in exchange for a transfer to a federal penitentiary.
Scarver was then sentenced to two life terms on top of the one he was already serving at the time.
He is currently incarcerated at Centennial Correctional Facility in Canon City, Colo. where he spends some of his time writing poetry for his website.
Moe is the founder of GnosticWarrior.com. He is a father, husband, author, martial arts black belt, and an expert in Gnosticism, the occult, and esotericism.
A farmer living in Turkey’s central Çorum province, discovered a 3,300-year-old ancient bracelet while he was plowing his farm.
The artifact is from the ancient Hittite civilization, and it carries depictions of Hittite symbols, including imagery of the Itar/Auka and his servants Ninatta and Kulitta.
The farmer and his neighbor found the artifact while working on their farm in Çorum’s central district of Orduzu.
the farmer, identified only as Osman K., said that he saw a metal item in the field while he was plowing his farm and stopped his tractor upon discovering that it was an ancient artifact.
The farmer said that he initially tried to sell the bracelet, thinking it had no historical value. However, once he failed in his attempt to sell it and learned that it was an ancient piece, K. reported the finding to the local gendarmerie station.
The gendarmerie then sent the bracelet to the Çorum Museum Directorate for further examination and conservation work.
The Hittites were an ancient peoples of Anatolia who lived between 1600 B.C. and 1200 B.C.
They were an Indo-European people who established an empire centered on Hattusa in north-central Anatolia around 1600 B.C., as well as a kingdom in northern Syria called Mitanni or Hanigalbat and a kingdom in southern Levant called Kizzuwatna or Que or Cilicia, both of which became known as Syria after its conquest by Assyria in 740 B.C.
Hüseyin Kocabaş, the head of the museum, told Anadolu Agency (AA) that it is rare for an old artifact to be unearthed with such a high degree of preservation.
Noting that the bracelet is also decorated with animal figures including lions and bulls as well as gods depicted in human form, Kocabaş said: “The bracelet is 1 cm wide and 16 cm long. It is made of bronze and tin metal alloy.”
He added: “It can be dated back to around 1300 BC.
The archaeologist also noted that there are few pieces of Hittite-era jewelry and this piece sheds light on the jewelry styles of the civilization.
“The bracelet has important historical value. It is one of the rareest examples of this type of work. This kind of bracelet dates back to the Late Bronze Age [1500-1200 B.C.] and is not only important for Çorum but also for Anatolia and even the world,” said Ahmet Tuna, a professor at Çorum Hitit University’s History Department.
Tuna also noted that this was not the first time an image depicting Auka had been discovered in Çorum, although similar artifacts were found in other Turkish provinces.
With its location in Çorum, the most famous home of the ancient Hittite city of Hattusa and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1986.
Çorum has made its mark on history as an influential settlement in antiquity.
Hattusa served as the capital of the Hittite Empire, which played an important role in urban life and the development of Bronze Age civilizations.
It was the first national excavation site in Turkey.
Moe is the founder of GnosticWarrior.com. He is a father, husband, author, martial arts black belt, and an expert in Gnosticism, the occult, and esotericism.
It is important that you understand that Pythagoras held our souls come from the number One (1) which is derived from the first principles and assigns God and the soul to the number One.
This is our soul’s connection to the One Monad, which is God and the good, which is the origin of the One, and is itself intelligence, reason, and its end result, immortality (ie: True Gnosis – One With Christ in the Head).
These they call Divine spirits [δαιμονες] who are psychical beings (i.e. real people with purified souls).
However, Pythagoras taught that when the One becomes two, it becomes the “undefined dyad (ie: Duality or something consists of two elements or parts)” which is a divinity and the bad, surrounding which is the mass of matter.
We can say that this is a man divided against himself, imbalanced, and is ignorant (i.e. No Gnosis) of these Sacred Laws.
Pythagoras regarded the “soul of man between spirits” who always contemplated the Divine Essence (i.e.: their soul, true selves).
We are born into the world in a fallen state (ie: ruled by the passions and desires of the material world) which makes us forget our spiritual natures and divine selves.
Pythagoras had taught that it was from our separation from the Deity that we lost the wings which raised us towards celestial beings, and were thus precipitated into the region of death where all evils dwell.
By putting away earthly passions and devoting ourselves to virtue, our wings will be renewed, and we shall rise to that existence where we shall find the true good without any admixture of evil.
Through the process of life, death and rebirth our wings will be renewed, and we shall rise to that existence where we shall find the true good without any admixture of evil.
In Christian Scripture, this is what is called the “fall of man,” which is a term used in Christianity to describe the transition of the first man and woman from a state of innocent obedience to God to a state of guilty disobedience (ie: a life of sin).
It was said that when a man is in this state, he moves in its aerial clothing, and is thus subject to Fate ie; evil and temptation, because his whole life is attached to its earthly interests and material pursuits (money, fame, pleasure etc.).
Therefore, man is not pure, and it is only when he casts off this earthly garb of the first spheres and becomes ethereal, i.e.: Spiritual, that he becomes sure of his immortality.
The entire doctrine of the Pythagoreans would culminate in assisting initiates to connect with the One – The Monad AKA Their Soul, and through knowledge AKA Gnosis, to become masters of the self, the world and the spirits who inhabit “both.”
The Russian occultist, philosopher, and author Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (HP Blavatsky) had said about Pythagoras, “Pythagoras, the pure philosopher deeply versed in the profounder phenomena of nature, the noble inheritor of the ancient lore, whose great aim was to free the soul from the fetters of sense and force it to realize its powers, must live eternally in human memory.”
In other words, by learning how to die, we accomplish the most fantastic goal of all humans which is saving our own souls – The One via “The Great Work.”
Moe is the founder of GnosticWarrior.com. He is a father, husband, author, martial arts black belt, and an expert in Gnosticism, the occult, and esotericism.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit (Society of Jesus), was the most written-about and silenced Jesuit of the twentieth century, and certainly one of the most famous.
He was a geologist, a paleontologist, a philosopher, an evolutionary theorist, and a diehard mystic. Teilhard was also a gifted poet and writer who explored the cosmic intersection between science and religion.
The forbidden zone of gnosis for so-called pius Catholics.
Teilhard’s writings were banned by the Roman Catholic Church, but his books have sold more than a million copies. His ideas are part of mainstream popular culture, and his name is easily recognizable to most educated people. He has been called “one of the few truly great thinkers of our century,” and he has also been called a “deeply corrupting and corrupt philosopher.”
He has also been called “the man who discovered the soul of the world,” “the man who saw into tomorrow,” “the prophet of human potential,” and “the scientist with a heart.”
Teilhard was born in the Auvergne region of France to a family of minor nobility. He joined the Jesuit order in 1899 at age 18, citing his attraction to their strong emphasis on science education. Ordained as a Catholic Priest in 1911, he took up postgraduate studies in paleontology at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, and he also studied physics and chemistry at the Sorbonne University and geology under Professor Marcellin Boule at the Institute for Human Palaeontology.
In 1912 he received a degree in paleontology from the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, where he began his lifelong work studying fossils and human origins.
His Jesuit training took him to various locations around France, Belgium, England, Egypt, and South America. During World War I he served as an army chaplain and was among those who first uncovered evidence of the Piltdown Man fossil hoax. He then returned to Europe where he continued his work on paleontological studies. He was also a mystic who had visions and wrote about what he saw in language that was poetic and beautiful but difficult for many to understand.
Although Pope Pius XII praised him for his work, the Vatican condemned his work on several occasions. There are thousands of articles on his life and work, some praising him as an up-to-date thinker who brings together science and religion; others condemning him as a heretic who defies Church teachings on a number of subjects.
On 6 December 1957 the Holy Office published a decree stating that ‘the books of Father Teilhard de Chardin SJ must be withdrawn from the libraries of seminaries and religious institutes; they may not be sold in Catholic bookshops; and they may not be translated into other languages. The decree had little or no effect on the continued publication or the translation of Teilhard’s works.
The Society of Jesus has often been criticized for ‘silencing’ Teilhard. But, as Thomas Corbishley says, ‘If his superiors were to show a regrettable timidity in refusing to allow him to publish certain books which seemed, at the time, dangerously novel, it was these same superiors who encouraged his scientific bent and gave him every opportunity to pursue his interests in geology, paleontology, the study of human origins, which were to provide the basis for his larger speculations.’
Teilhard’s magnum opus, The Phenomenon of Man, was published posthumously in 1955 and remains controversial to this day. The book explores how evolution is moving toward greater complexity and consciousness — toward what Teilhard calls an Omega Point. In Teilhard’s view, the Omega Point is God; it is also the earth’s final destiny.
For Teilhard, evolution was continuous: matter evolved into life and life evolved into consciousness. Human beings are the highest stage in this process but not its final goal: evolution continues towards what he called Omega Point – the point of convergence towards which all the universe is evolving. This is the point at which all humanity will unite in a single perfect consciousness of Christ – “the ultimate fulfilment of all things” (Teilhard de Chardin 1964).
These teachings later developed into what is known as the nousphere or noosphere, named after the Greek word for mind – nous (νοῦς). The concept was developed by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) and Vladimir Vernadsky (1863-1945). The coining of the term is attributed to Édouard Le Roy (1870–1954).
The concept of a noosphere was first developed by Vladimir Vernadsky as he was working on his theory of the biosphere and geosphere. Vernadsky suggested that as life emerged on earth it created a new layer around the planet—the biosphere—that was distinct from geochemical processes and that changed over time with its own momentum.
In 1936, when Pierre Teilhard de Chardin read Vernadsky’s work, he saw how ideas about a nousphere might be worked into his own notion of both cosmic and biological evolution moving towards greater complexity and consciousness.
Teilhard’s concept of a global noosphere, or collective consciousness, is similar to Vernadsky’s idea of the “biosphere” (the planetary thinking layer). In The Phenomenon of Man (1955), he wrote that the noosphere is “a thinking envelope gradually spreading over the surface of the globe.”
The noosphere can be seen as an emergent property of our species-wide nervous system and communications networks. It develops in interaction with our genetic and cultural inheritance.
Teilhard says that there is a “greater complexity” than matter and energy. He calls this greater complexity “mind.” Matter makes up our physical world; mind makes up our mental world. But both matter and mind exist within one universe, which Teilhard calls the cosmic universe or cosmos.
Mankind’s mental activity, he suggested, might be a single field that could be measured and mapped, similar to an electromagnetic field. Eventually, we will create a conscious planetary superorganism encompassing all humanity and all its products.
The convergence of all our minds into one world-wide consciousness would constitute the noosphere.
Pope Paul VI had a great love for Teilhard’s writings and wanted to read them all. For this reason, he gave permission for his books to circulate secretly among bishops and cardinals only. The same thing happened under Pope John Paul II, who had two sets of Teilhard’s works in his library in Krakow: one set that was open and another that was kept under lock and key.
In 1962, Pope John XXIII approved several of his works for publication after being advised that they did not contain errors in faith or morals. In 1963 and again in 1966, the Holy Office (now called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) declined to approve more of his writings for publication because they contained “several ambiguities and grave errors.”
Despite orders from the Holy Office for Teilhard not to publish or speak about his controversial theories, he continued to do so until his death. After that, it was 50 years before the church lifted its ban on the publication of his works. But even then, some of those works were only released in censored form.
Teilhard had seen a need for a ‘new Nicæa’ to combat the threat of what he called a new arianism, a new diminution of Christ, not in relation to the Trinity, but in relation to the universe.
Writing to Bruno de Solages, rector of the Catholic Institute of Toulouse (1932-1964), he said, “I am more and more convinced the Church will only be able to resume its conquering march when it starts to rethink the relations, no longer between Christ and the Trinity, but between Christ and a universe.
Teilhard says that Christianity can only survive by subdistinguishing in the “human nature” of the Word Incarnate between a “terrestrial nature” and a “cosmic nature.”‘ ‘I am more than ever convinced,’ he adds, ‘that we shall need, sooner or later, a new Nicæa that will define the cosmic face of the incarnation.’
After his death, the religious writings of Teilhard de Chardin, banned by the Jesuit authorities who oversaw his order, became phenomenally popular, selling in their millions and being translated into every major language.
The New York Times called him “the forgotten man of human evolution.” Bruno de Solages sees him as ‘the greatest Christian apologist since Pascal.’
In 1981, Teilhard was beatified by Pope John Paul II, a step toward his ultimate canonization as a saint. His impact on the Second Vatican Council was undeniable; he was named as the person who had exercised more influence on those looking forward to the future than any other person.
But some Catholics, including many Jesuits, consider him to be dangerously controversial because of his ideas about evolution and creation, which were (and still are) at odds with church doctrine.
Moe is the founder of GnosticWarrior.com. He is a father, husband, author, martial arts black belt, and an expert in Gnosticism, the occult, and esotericism.
According to the “Stoned Ape Theory” developed by Terrence McKenna and his brother Dennis McKenna, a community of proto-humans might have consumed the magic mushrooms they found in the wild and eaten them.
After ingesting the psilocybin mushrooms, their brains kicked into overdrive, acquiring new information-processing capabilities, imagination, and a mind-blowing expansion of consciousness. In short, psychedelic mushrooms gave Homo sapiens the mental edge over other hominids and helped them evolve into modern humans.
McKenna was an ethnobotanist, philosopher, psychonaut, researcher and author who devoted his life to studying psychedelics and proposing new ways to view society, spirituality and the human experience. He theorized how psychedelics could have been used by early humans to expand their minds and become more intelligent.
In 1992, Terence McKenna argued in the book, Food of the Gods that what Homo erectus to evolve into Homo sapiens was its encounter with magic mushrooms and psilocybin, the psychedelic compound within them, on that evolutionary journey. He called this the Stoned Ape Hypothesis.
The psychedelic drug opened up an entirely new way of perceiving reality for the early human species. They began to see the world in a way they had never seen it before – and just like that, man became self-conscious.
McKenna said, “Homo sapiens ate our way to a higher consciousness,” and, “It was at this time that religious ritual, calendar making, and natural magic came into their own.”
As humans evolved, the domestication of wild cattle led to time spent around cattle droppings, and because psilocybin mushrooms commonly grow in cow dung, “the human-mushroom interspecies codependency was enhanced and deepened,” McKenna explained.
“I propose that the key to Homo sapiens’ leap from primitive protohumanity to full humanity was a mutation in the control of psilocybin biosynthesis. It is now clear from molecular phylogenetic studies that psilocybin mushrooms are widely distributed in nature.
They appear to be common among the tropical and subtropical fungi growing on dung. It is impossible not to suspect that their presence so close to the lives of cattle and other grazing herbivores is not accidental.” McKenna had written.
No one can say for certain whether or not this theory is true. However, some researchers believe that psychedelics played an important role in human evolution because they allowed our ancestors to think outside the box.
Fungi pioneer, Paul Stamets had substantiated McKenna’s theory at Psychedelic Science 2017 in his presentation, “Psilocybin Mushrooms and the Mycology of Consciousness.” Stamets also claims that consciousness, language, creativity, and imagination all were spurred by exposure to psychedelic mushrooms.
In his talk, Stamets said;
“What is really important for you to understand,” he said, “is that there was a sudden doubling of the human brain 200,000 years ago. From an evolutionary point of view, that’s an extraordinary expansion. And there is no explanation for this sudden increase in the human brain.”
Paul Stamets is a mycologist, author and advocate of bioremediation and medicinal fungi. He is a major proponent of the idea that mushrooms are ‘the earth’s natural internet’, and was awarded the National Geographic Adventurer of the Year award in 2008 for his discoveries of new species of psilocybin mushrooms.
The Stoned Ape Theory has never been tested or proven, but it has inspired several researchers to study the effects of psychedelics on cognitive abilities. In recent years, studies using MDMA, LSD and psilocybin have found evidence to suggest that these drugs can be effective treatments for depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
While I don’t see myself as a mushroom guru or evangelist, I am passionate about educating others about the healing powers of mushrooms. As someone who has suffered from anxiety and depression for many years, I understand the importance of finding alternative ways to manage mental health symptoms.
My experiences with psilocybin mushrooms have inspired me to further research their benefits.
We know that brain development in primates is influenced by environmental factors like diet. We know that psilocybin is one of the most well-studied drugs for its potential therapeutic benefits, having shown promise in the treatment of depression, anxiety, cluster headaches, migraines, addiction disorders, anorexia nervosa, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and more.
We know that psilocybin — the psychoactive chemical in magic mushrooms — causes brain activity to shift from the default mode network (associated with ego and self-centered thought) to the salience network (associated with sensory perception). This allows for a mind-expanding experience where you are more attuned to your senses, lose your sense of time, and find new connections between seemingly unrelated topics.
In a 2003 study at Johns Hopkins, students were given psilocybin and observed while they entered into a trance. The results were astonishing; the students reported having a transcendental experience with mystical/spiritual overtones.
In the study, “psilocybin dose-dependently caused a shift from normal waking consciousness to a broad range of subjective effects including visions, mood elevation, psychological insight, and mystical experience.”
The study also noted that “the volunteers’ ratings of their experiences the day after the session included descriptions of deeply felt positive moods, psychospiritual experiences of emotional significance and reported benefits to well-being or life satisfaction.”
In October 2018, Johns Hopkins University opened The Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research — the first research center of its kind in the United States since 1970s when psychedelic research was criminalized by the Controlled Substances Act. The center’s director Roland Griffiths, has noted “the potential for benefit that psychedelics have for addressing some of the most important public health issues we face.”
A team led by Robin Carhart-Harris at Imperial College London has published new data on how psilocybin affects the brain. The results of their study suggest that psilocybin may just be the trigger that initiated human evolution and consciousness.
The team scanned the brains of 20 healthy volunteers while they were under the influence of psilocybin in an fMRI machine. They found that the drug reduced blood flow in areas associated with higher cognitive functions, such as self-consciousness and identity, as well as ego-orientation.
They also found that the drug reduced connectivity between two key areas of the brain: the default mode network (DMN) and the hippocampus.
The DMN is thought to be responsible for processing information about self-consciousness, while the hippocampus is involved with memory and learning.
The stoned ape theory is just an idea brought to light by Terrence McKennna, who had researched extensively on the topic, and had some statistics and theories to back his statements up. After decades of research since his death by some of the world’s foremost experts, it appears that the scientific studies are validating his claims.
Perhaps in the near future, Terrence Mckenna will be proven right.
Moe is the founder of GnosticWarrior.com. He is a father, husband, author, martial arts black belt, and an expert in Gnosticism, the occult, and esotericism.
