The reality is, you and I can perform many of Jesus’ miracles, if we can get enough cannabis.
The historical and archaeological records show hemp/cannabis had been a food, fibre and holy oil in the Middle East for millenia by Jesus’ time. In our body, cannabinoids are important signalling molecules for cell function. In plants, apparently, protection and reproduction.
In 1936, (the year before hemp’s prohibition in the US), Polish Professor Sara Benetowa – later known as Sula Benet – found after extensive research that ancient Aramaic and Hebrew versions of the Old Testament referenced hemp/cannabis as a fibre for rope and cloth, and as an incense.
But, pre-eminently, keneh bosem (kineboisin, kannabosm) was a key ingredient in the ancient Hebrews’ holy anointing oil. (Keneh bosem was mistranslated in the King James Bible as calamus, a plant of useful, albeit much more limited benefit than hemp/cannabis).
Cannabis is a unique plant with remarkable healing and entheogenic properties. During the Jewish exodus from Egypt, Moses famously came down from the mountain (where he heard God in a burning bush). He brought with him a recipe for holy anointing oil which included nine pounds of cannabis to six and a half litres of holy anointing oil.
Nine pounds of cannabis equals $37,800 worth of wholesale blackmarket cannabis. The police would call it $134,460, and it was concentrated into just 6.5 litres of oil.
You could grow that $134,460 of health for $50 if you were allowed.
The effects of this anointing oil, even topically applied, would have been intensely ‘spiritual’ and therapeutic. But this oil was reserved for the priestly and royal class, a bit like today’s increasingly wealth-stratified world.
Except in Thailand, where the government has just launched a ‘Dr Ganja’ campaign to encourage the public to grow and use cannabis for health purposes.
“This is to be my sacred anointing oil for the generations to come. Do not pour it on men’s bodies and do not make any oil with the same formula. It is sacred, and you are to consider it sacred. Whoever makes perfume like it and whoever puts it on anyone other than a priest must be cut off from his people.” (Exodus 30: 22-23).
Making the Bible’s holy cannabis oil will get you 14 years jail in New Zealand because it’s a Class B drug here.
In the US, (even though there are zero deaths ever and 4750 years of recorded therapeutic use), it’s a Schedule One drug due to having ‘a high risk of abuse and no medical value’. Despite being legal as medicine in 30 states, and with 3,000,000 doses of it prescribed in 1937, the year of its prohibition.
So, how did this ‘man born of woman’ heal the ill, infirm and blind, cast out the demons of psychiatric illness and dementia? Maybe it was magic, but Jesus’ healing miracles match the abilities of ‘our bodies’ own medicine’, the signalling molecules called cannabinoids – which also occur in hemp/cannabis.
If citizens don’t understand the past, we can’t understand the present, or change the future. Sadly, and through no fault of our own, most of us have become consumers instead. A citizen is an informed, independent thinker who shares responsibility for their societies’ fate. A consumer simply consumes, enjoys whatever protections their Donald Trump permits, and society can go to hell. We are like Nero – fiddling while Rome burns; only we shop and watch sport instead.
I will leave you with these questions: Why were cannabis and hemp removed from world medical and industrial markets? Who benefitted?
Why does a vegetable oil that can save lives get you 14 years in prison? Why isn’t New Zealand leading the world with this broad-acre agricultural crop? Who benefits?
I think the moneychangers bought the temple. It’s time to do what Jesus would – in 2020 we have to #makeitlegal. (Tadhg Stopford)
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