I don’t know much about Allegro, but I remember that the book really opened me up to what Hillman calls “the etymological fantasy”. You have to stand back at some point and realize that, in terms of verifiable knowledge, this sort of stuff is poetic fancy at best, bullshit at worst. But there’s a need – in me at least – for a certain amount of this associational, mythic exploration of the past. It needs to be reigned in and placed in perspective by reason, but not nailed down and left to die. I firmly believe it just comes and bites you on the arse if you attempt this.

I wondered why Andy left out Peter Lamborn Wilson’s Ploughing the Clouds: The Search for Irish Soma. Possibly because it didn’t really have much impact, and he was looking at “culture”. Maybe he thought it beneath criticism! Anyway, I thought Wilson’s argument, in the rallying of evidence, was over-dense and often questionable, but the theoretical basis was excellent. He made much of the concept of a “Soma-function” – basically something that genuinely transported you to a deep altered state, be it whatever kind of mushroom, another plant, or even a ritual practice. He makes his bottom line the fact that a Soma-function almost certainly existed, even if we’re stabbing in the dark as to its exact nature or identity. That frees you up to speculate without gravitating to dogma. I think this neatly gets round a lot of the narrow vision where people like Wasson try to pin things down to a definite plant – leaving Letcher to easily demolish such a fixed idea, and throw out the whole enquiry.

Lewis-Williams is careful to apply this sort of openness to his ideas, despite the impression given by Bahn & Helvenston’s bitter rebuttal titled Desperately Seeking Trance Plants. I think he’s right to insist that it needn’t have been a psychedelic plant involved; but again, it’s good that Hancock has gone out and done the research to leave the door to the mushroom theory as open as it should be.