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.The Greek word harma, joining , like the Latin jugum, yoke , could express chariot , as could the Sumerian MAR, axe- head; rainbow; and groin .53 From this forked burden came the104THE HEAVENLY TWINSsexual allusions of chariots and chariotry noticed earlier.54 To drive a chariot meant, then, totake an active role in the copulatory act.The sun is the great charioteer (Greek harmektr) ofthe heavens as it wheels across the sky and plunges into the vulva of mother earth at eventide.SoYahweh, the creator god, is seen riding upon the cherubim (Ps i8 :ii,55 etc) and, among the lesserheroes, Jehu drove furiously (II Kgs 9:20).The Greek word for horse driver is elatr.In derivation it is more related to the sexualaffinities of the action than the equine, since it comes from the Sumerian E-LA-TUN, strongwater of the belly (womb) , that is, in its sexual application, spermatozoa .56 As Elatrion wefind it as the Greek name of the Squirting Cucumber, Ecballium elaterium, whose phallic shapeand periodic exudation of a mucilaginous juice gave it sexual allusions57 which the modem Arabrecognizes when he calls the plant, donkey s cucumber .58 In actual fact the intensely bitterjuice of the Elaterium is anything but productive of fertility, being a violent purge and anabortifacient.59 But like Hellebore, strong water of defecation as its Sumerian derivation showsthe name to mean,60 the Squirting Cucumber gathered to itself many names that belongedprimarily to the Amanita muscaria, no less bitter and with similar gastronomic and intestinaleffects.6In mythology the horse- and cattle-driving theme appears frequently.The newly-born Hermesleaps from his cradle and precociously drives away his half brother Apollo s cattle.62 Castorfights with his cousins over their driving away cattle and is killed in the battle.68The yoke laid across the neck of a servant or an animal or the upright pole of a carriage, hadanother, more sinister application.It was also the crux ( cross )64 or furca ( fork )65 that thecriminal carried on his shoulders to his place of execution, his wrists fastened to each end.At thegallows, at this stage simply the upright set in the ground, the Greek stauros,66 the condemnedman was hoisted up so that his legs were just clear of the ground and left there to die of exposure.To take some of the weight off the bonds at his wrists, the upright was sometimes provided with ahorizontal peg to support the crutch, a kind of saddle (Latin sedile).66 aTo take up the yoke or cross was thus synonymous with being crucified, and is a constanttheme in the New Testament.It will also have been a euphemism for sexual copulation, the yoke being the burden of the woman s crutch borne gallantly by the erect penis.It10510ó THE SACRED MUSHROOM AND THE CROSSis with this implication that the cross became the symbol of the phallic god Hermes.It consistedbasically of an upright piece of wood with a cross piece at the shoulders, and in its moresophisticated forms with an erect penis at an appropriate place on the shaft, indicating its phallicimplications.Sometimes the top of the upright was carved with a two- faced representation of thegod s head.The Hermes cross symbol was known throughout the classical world, and standing atcrossroads was welcomed as a source of comfort and inspiration by the traveller.67The similarity between this fertility symbol and the instrument of execution must have beenobvious to all, even to the detail of the crutch- supporting sedile of the gallows finding its parallelin the replica phallus half way up the Hermes upright.It is interesting that the eastern churchespreserve this detail in their traditional form of the crucifix with the double cross-piece: t. Castor and Pollux were also represented by crossed wooden beams in Sparta,68 and the Greekscalled the gibbet the twin tree (xulon didumon).69 The Twins also carried a cross or star ontheir heads, surmounting a close-fitting felt cap, as we may see from coins on which the brothersare represented: Y Presumably this characteristic headgear was intended to represent the half-egg (Castor) of the mushroom and the stalk and canopy of Pollux.In Christian iconography thissymbol became the orb , and the Sumerian ideogram for fertility , ,71 may possibly have beenexpressing the same motif:The idea of crucifixion in mushroom mythology was already established before the NewTestament myth-makers portrayed their mushroom hero Jesus dying by this method.The fungusitself was probably known as The Little Cross ,72 and in the Old Testament the seven sons ofSaul had been crucified as an expiatory sacrifice to Yahweh.The story runs that a three-yearfamine in the land drove David to seek from Yahweh an explanation for his disfavour.The godtold him that there was a blood guilt on Israel because David s predecessor Saul had executedthe Gibeonites.These deaths had to be expiated before the fertility of the land could be restored.Thereupon David called the Gibeonites who demanded the atoning death by crucifixion of Saul sseven sons, one of whose names was Armoni, the joiner, carpenter .73After the deed, Armoni s mother Rizpah (Hebrew r-z-p, join )74 took sackcloth and spread it for herself on the rock (of execution),fromTHE HEAVENLY TWINSthe beginning of the harvest until the rain fell upon them (the crucified) from heaven; and she didnot allow the birds of the air to alight upon them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night (IISam 21 :io).Only after David had taken down the bodies and buried the remains, and those of Saul andJonathan which had been similarly exposed, did God allow himself to be entreated on the land s behalf (v.14).75 The verb used in thisgruesome tale for crucify means properly disjoint .76 In the story of Jacob s wrestling match with the angel it expressed the dislocation ofthe hip-joint:When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched the hollow of his thigh; andJacob s thigh was put out ofjoint as he wrestled with him.therefore to this day the Israelites donot eat the sinew of the hip which is upon the hollow of the thigh, because he touched the hollowofJacob s thigh on the sinew of the hip (Gen 32:25, 32).The hip motif is a recurrent theme in mushroom mythology.Adonis-Na iman was killed,according to legend, by being run through the hip by a boar, sent, some say, by Artemis fromjealousy.Dionysus, often connected with Adonis, was said to have been born from the hip of hisfather Zeus.His mother Semele, an earth-goddess, had been impregnated by the Father-god, butbefore her son could be born, she was struck by a thunderbolt.Her divine lover snatched thefoetus from her womb and implanted it in his own hip, from which in due course the youngDionysus was born.77Again, as Jesus hangs on the cross, a soldier runs him through the side with his spear (John19:34).The resultant wound made a mark large enough for the doubting Thomas to put his fist in(John 20:25, 27).In all these references, the allusion is to the ball and socket picture presentedby the hip-joint, by the head of the penis in the female vagina, or, as was fancifully imagined, bythe stem in the cap of the mushroom, 78 and the separation of the one from the other by violentmeans. As crucifixion was envisaged primarily as pulling apart of the limbs, so scourging also had asimilar connotation.The victim was splayed on a frame to receive the lashes, like a starfishstretched out on the sand
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