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. Eat and drink withrelish, for what ye have been doing. Reclining upon couches ranged in rows, and we have pairedthem with wide-eyed houris.(SurThose who go before.are in the Gardens of Deli ght(gannati-nna imi), a company fromformer generations, and a few from later.Upon bejeweled (?) couches they recline facing eachother, while around circle boys of perpetual youth, with goblets and jugs, and a cup of flowing(wine), from which they suffer neither headache nor intoxication, and with fruit of their ownchoice, and bird s flesh of what they desire, and wide-eyed houris like treasured pearls  areward for what they have been doing (Sur 56:10 23).THB GARDBN OF ADONIS 185Wherever Muhammad found his (earthly) inspiration for the picture of heaven he paints in theQur an, it must have been within a community which still knew the name of the sacred fungus gan-Na iman and associated it with the  tree of life of Paradise, the  Garden of Sex as thename probably meant originally.31 Indeed, one of the many puzzles about the Qur an and theArabian prophet is where he found hisJudaeoChristian ideas.32 That he was in touch with Jewishand Christian communities throughout his life and work is, of course, well known.But some ofhis versions of Bible stories, of the Old and the New Testament, are so strange and so interestingin themselves, that scholars have long been puzzled to know how many of them came to be insuch aberrant forms, and under what circumstances the Prophet could have heard or misconstruedthem.Even more interesting is the special vocabulary that he uses in the Qur an.He employswords which are often not Arabic and are certainly derived from Christian Aramaic sources,33but sometimes with a peculiar connotation unexampled elsewhere.One or two very specialphrases, like the  gardens of delight above, seem to stem directly from the mushroom cult, andremembering that by his time (seventh century AD) the Church had managed to purge itself of its heresies , driving these communities out into the deserts, one may reasonably wonder if some ofthe Christian communities with whom Muhammad fraternized may not have been more trulyrepresentative of the older and truer  Christianity than the Byzantine Church that had taken theirplace.Here also, there is a promising field for fizrther research.For example, one intriguing problem about the Prophet s revelations of Paradise is the source ofhis ideas about the  wide eyed houris who  were so warmly to entertain the heroes of Islam.Indeed, the precise significance of the epithet he applies to them of  wide eyed has been amatter for debate.34 Literally the Arabic words mean  white of eye signifying that the white ofthe eye has been accentuated, setting off the darkness of the pupil.As we know, this can beachieved cosmetically by painting the lids with a dark pigment.A woman so adorned is called inAramaic mestabãthJ , of the root s b t,  set right.35 (Our word  cosmetics comes from theGreek cosmos, properly  that which is in order , so the  universe.Cosmetics are, then, literally,what put a girl  right , at least, in theory.)It appears that Muhammad, in his description of the fair inhabitants186 THE SACRED MUSHROOM AND THE CROSSof Paradise, is heir to a very old piece of word-play between the Aramaic mestabathã ,  adornedwoman , and the Sumerian mushroom name*MASh_Tj1J_BA_PJ_TI.S6 We see it again in the story of jezebel in anincident which is otherwise connected with mushroom nomenclature.When Jehu came to Jezreel, Jezebel heard of it; and she painted her eyes, and adorned her head,and looked out of the window.And as Jehu entered the gate, she said,  Is it peace, you Zimri,murderer of your master? (II Kgs 9:30 3 r).In  murderer of your master it is not difficult to see a word-play on the plant-name Cotyledon,which we already noticed as derived from the Sumerian GU-TAL--U-DUN, ball-and-socket;penis-and-vulva and thus to be related to the sexual characteristics of mushroom imagery.37Jezebel has become the prime exponent of the seductive art through her biblical portrayal, andsimilarly the  wide-eyed houris of Muhammad s Paradise are the adorned ones , the Semiticreading of the sacred fungus.We may therefore deduce that wherever the Prophet found hisreligious vocabulary relating to heaven, they were identifying by word-play the  ganNa iman , Adonis-garden or  garden of delight , with the mestabãthJ ,  adorned one , and Muhammad,not unreasonably took it that these ladies were the inhabitants of the heavenly gardens.The New Testament has the same word-play in a passage whose fresh elucidation leads on todiscovering more about Muhammad and his  Muslims.In the first epistle of Peter there is a long24)Lon the necessity for women to be submissive to their husbands.It reads:Likewise, you wives, be submissive to your husbands, so that some, though they do not obey theword, may be won without a word by the behaviour of their wives, when they see your reverentand chaste behaviour.Let not yours be the outward adorning with braiding of hair, decoration ofgold, and wearing of robes; but let it be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable jewelof a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God s sight is very precious.So once the holy women whohoped in God used to adorn themselves and were submissive to their husbands, as Sarah obeyedAbraham, calling him lord.And you are now her children if you do right and let nothing terrifyyou (I Pet 3:1 7).The whole passage has probably been woven together from theTHE GARDEN OF ADONIS 187same name of the sacred mushroom, *MASh.T_BA_RI.TI from which the astute authorderived Aramaic expressions for  be willing ,38  be adorned , and  hope.39 Of the over-alltenor of the passage and its matrimonial relevance, either in the first century or in the twentieth,we need not dwell.We shall have occasion later to discuss the validity of the ethics and homileticteachings of the Bible in the light of our new understanding of the cryptic nature of so much ofthe text.What is of more importance for the moment is the word-play between the Aramaicmestebit ha ,  submissive , and the mushroom name *MASh_T/.1_ BA-RI-TI, and its possiblesource for Muhammad s teaching.For the Prophet called his followers  The Submissive Ones ,Muslims, literally,  those who have handed themselves over, are submissive ,40 and thiscomplete submissiveness is an important characteristic of the religion, amounting in Western eyesoften to a quite unacceptable fatalism.To the women of the East, this doctrine of submission hasbrought tragic results, symbolized by the veil which even now after some thirteen centuries isbeing cast aside only with the greatest difficulty.When, to the utter astonishment and disgust ofthe wives of his first Medinan followers, the Prophet insisted on their submission to theirmenfolk, tradition has it that the innovation met with some resistance.For among the desert-dwelling folk at least the women mixed freely with the men before the coming of Islam.41Muhammad s faithful disciple Omar is said to have bitterly complained that the men of his tribeused to dominate their women but  when we came among the  Helpers (the Ansär ofMedina),they proved to be a people whose women dominated them, and our wives have come to copy thehabits of the women of the Ansãr.41a How far pre Islamic Arabia was a matriarchal society isin ispute; perhaps the movement towards a patriarchal system was already in progress by theseventh century [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]