The Pokey Finger of God

At the root of Judaism is a written history of people to whom Yah has spoken. These people, we are told, had direct, immediate, and personal knowledge of God. They spoke with him. He answered. His words became the driving force for their actions.
This is exactly the sort of individual congress with the divine that [...]

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According to Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, psychedelic drugs formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times.
Writing in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy, he says concoctions based on the bark of the acacia tree, frequently mentioned in the Old [...]

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Now Moses was pasturing the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian; and he led the flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. The angel of the LORD appeared to him in a blazing fire from the midst of a bush; and he looked, [...]

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Of course, I’ve been preparing for my upcoming Moses lecture and I just can’t help myself from getting all giddy about it. There’s so much cool stuff about Moses that I keep getting distracted. Such as:
What if the burning bush wasn’t a bush at all, but instead an exposed lump of radioactive material?
This would explain [...]

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Few characters in the Bible loom as large or stand as central throughout the Bible as Moses. If it wasn’t for Moses stories, I don’t know that there would be Jews or Christians or Muslems. The Hebrew Moses is similar in many respects to another hero in the Greek tradition: Heracles. Stories wild and amazing [...]

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Dear Seeker —
You ask: I’m perplexed by the “magick” involved with Yahweh “one-upping” the Egyptian Magicians with various magick. Were these “magick-offs” a common occurrence? Are these things actually documented elsewhere? I’m curious as to what type of magick we’re talking about here. It is mentioned that some of the [...]

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