Episode 4: Manna From Heaven.
*But now our soul is dried away: there is nothing at all, beside this manna, before our eyes.
And the manna was as coriander seed, and the colour thereof as the colour of bdellium.
I love teh intertubes. So, I do a search for the word ‘mushroom’ in the Bible and find that fungus does not appear to come under God’s purview at all. Anywhere. God did not create mushrooms, apparently. Well, not explicitly anyway. He created the animals and the plants, but as we know, the fungus inhabits a Kingdom in its own right – if anyone should know this, it’s God – Him being omnipotent and all that. You’d think it was worth at least a mention.
Well, even if HE doesn’t care to embroider mushrooms into Biblical history, I discover that this does not prevent the many advocates of the psychedelic theories of religion from going to all kinds of lengths to write them into the Good Book, whether their appearance is justified or not. ((I remember reading The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross in high school and thinking that it sounded feasible, but I’m inclined these days to view the hypothesis as a bit of a stretch…))
One chap even puts up a compelling case for the ‘manna’ in the Bible being the Terfezia desert truffle (not to be mistaken for dessert truffle ((The dessert truffle was created by God in later times, in order that luxury hotels would have something to place on guest’s pillows. This is not mentioned in the Bible either.))), which, the legend goes, is created by lightning striking the ground.
I also got to look up bdellium, which is now surely my favourite word. But even after looking it up I’m not certain what colour it is.
The mushroom patch into which Pocket Jesus has ventured above is another manifestation of fungal weirdness that continues to manifest in our backyard. The Bleeding Tooth fungus that I mentioned in recent despatches has now turned into an unattractive brown slimy sludge and this little display has popped up close by. We have a veritable fungal festival going on here.
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The font used in The Adventures of Pocket Jesus (aram44.ttf) features genuine Aramaic characters and is used with permission of Mr. G. S. Dykes
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