Physician, Heal Thyself

Physician, Heal Thyself... by John M. Allegro, 1985 Physician, Heal Thyself... is John Allegro's last book (of 13), and his final contribution to his work in The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross. In 22 years since this book's publication, no one has given it a worthy review, so I thought I'd try to do that here. The Asayya - or Essenes - `the physicians' were a group of religious Jews who lived in a monastery on the banks of the Dead Sea from about 200 BCE to about 100 CE, in Wadi Qumran. These people are most famously known for the Dead Sea Scrolls which they had written or collected, and in times of persecution had hidden them or dumped them in caves surrounding the Dead Sea where they lay hidden for roughly 2000 years, until a Bedouin boy discovered them in 1947. In 1953 Allegro was one of eight specialists called to help translate the scrolls as he was working on his doctorate in biblical languages at Oxford University. Allegro had prior been training for the Methodist ministry, but left when he found that the study of language made him question his religious convictions. Therefore, Allegro was the only member of the translation team who was not a committed Christian. By the time he made it to Jerusalem he considered himself to be agnostic. Unlike the other scholars, Allegro chose (as with his later reading of the Bible in The Sacred Mushroom) not to take these ancient religious documents at face value, but to try to understand their writings as mythology, not historical fact, and subsequently how the overlaps between the groups' mythologies make much of the Christian story unoriginal. This placed him in constant opposition to the other team members who were firm, for the most part, in their beliefs. Allegro believed, and I likely agree, that the Essenes of the Dead Sea Scrolls were the precursor to Christianity. He saw many similarities between the two, such as the Teacher of Righteousness and Jesus; the physician healers of Qumran and the physician-priests of Roman Catholicism, etc. In this book he set out the ideas of the Church healers, who, if they couldn't heal your body, maybe they could still save your soul, and their similarities with the Essenes - the physician-priests of Qumran - who likely made use of psychoactive substances - as most healing herbs are psychoactive in one varying degree or another. But where did these physician-priests originate? They beckon back to the age of the shaman, the medicine man, and his knowledge of herbs and drugs and psychoactive plants. Allegro had been attacked and ridiculed for many of his ideas, such as those presented in The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross. However, these have recently seen a huge upsurge in interest because of the work of Professor Carl Ruck of Boston University, Professor John Rush and others such as (myself -) Irvin and Andrew Rutajit, 2006/2009, and also Irvin, 2008, where I published the "the holy mushroom" of Mt. Athos - a direct reference to the mushroom in a Ch

From the dustjacket: In Physician, Heal Thyself. . . , John Allegro examines the origins and literary basis for the phenomenon of faith, or spiritual, healing within Christianity. The author traces the activities of a Jewish sect called the Essenes, or Physicians, who believed that through the powers granted to them by their God they could people men from the shadow of death into new life--physical, mental, and spiritual. Their successors, called Christians, were charged with the same task, and through the centuries, despite the opposition of many within their own ranks, they have tried to discharge that sacred calling. Today, their prophets and practitioners claim no less authority over mortal ills than did their spiritual forebears, through a conviction as firmly held of their right to direct access to the throne of Grace and of their power to mediate that knowledge of God to their fellowmen. It is no part of this study to confirm or cast doubt upon either the religious validity of these claims or their therapeutic efficacy, but merely to consider their source.