This book takes us back to the beginnings of written language and organised religion.

Through studying the origins and roots of words common to Sumerian and subsequent Middle Eastern languages, John Allegro has been able to show how ideas carried in these words continued into the beliefs, myths and practices of later religions, including Judaism and Christianity. Many of the stories and characters of the Old and New Testament, as well as Greek myths, are seen to be founded on the fertility religions of our ancestors. At the centre of the ancient cult, as the source and embodiment of its myths and rituals, was the sacred mushroom, Amanita muscaria. Allegro asks how far it remained central to biblical traditions, and his findings overturn all conventional views of religion in our time.

This 40th anniversary edition includes a foreword by Judith Anne Brown, author of John Marco Allegro: The Maverick of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and an addendum by Professor Carl A. P. Ruck of Boston University.