Moses, mountain

THE name of the saered mountain, Sinai, eomes, as we can now see, from a Sumerian word meaning brazier. This accounts for its description as wrapped in smoke...like the smoke of a kiln (Exodus 19.18) The fiery-topped Amanita Muscaria seemed to the ancients like a brazier. When Moses, the serpent-mushroom character, meets Jehovah there and receives the tablets of testimony, he finds after the interview that his face is glowing so much that people are afraid to approach him (Exodus 34.30). The substance of the Ten Commandments, hover well rooted some of them may have been in ancient tribal laws, owe their form and position in the story to word-play on ancient mushroom names. 

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