The study of comparative religion tends to focus on the links between certain groups of religions, and in particular the Abrahamic and Indian religions. While no religion can be studied in isolation, it does not investigate the true roots of these religions.
The oldest sacred site in the world is believed to be in Turkey at Gobekli Tepe. It is believed to be 11,000 years old. Its massive stone pillars are arranged in a set of rings, each mashed up against the next, and capped with further stones. Similar in its construction is Stonehenge in England and is at least 5,000 years old. No satisfactory explanations have ever been given for these structures. You take your choice. They could have been burial grounds, temples to the sun, healing centres or whatever. Their builders obviously went to huge pains to construct them. In the case of Stonehenge the giant sarsen stones were dragged at least 20 miles to the site on Salisbury Plain. The smaller white flecked bluestones can only have come from West Wales, meaning a journey by sea and land (unless dumped nearer by the Irish Sea Glacier).
We need to look no further than 3 fundamentals for the founding of all religion, and these are phallic imagery, hallucinogenic drugs and astrology. Whatever is above is also below, and if humans could unite the macrocosm of the heavens with the microcosm of the earth then this became a powerful idea. Correspondences were made. Thus the red setting sun sinking into the earth was the tip of the divine penis entering the womb of the earth. This became associated with the red tip of one of the holiest of all plants, the red and white speckled mushroom, Amanita Muscaria, whose poisonous cap when crushed in a powder and drank as a tea, became one of the most powerful hallucinogens of the ancient world. In so doing it became the soma of Vedic worship and the sacrament of the Aryans. It became the inspiration for the Eucharist found in many religions of antiquity. Its secrets were well guarded. Codewords for this mushroom, which grows like a limp penis into a fully extended one from apparently nothing, include Solomon, Buddha and Jesus. It was the basis for drugs mysticism, but it was a danger to life and antidotes had to be found. These included Cannabis Sativa, white lilies, hellebore and various roots. The symbols of the Amanita Muscaria became the red lion, the stag, the orb, the rose, and when combined with the Cannabis Sativa the double headed eagle of artists through the centuries.
This reference to the Amanita Muscaria and Cannabis Sativa now becomes clear.
No wonder Christians can't understand most of the Bible. The Book of Revelation is nothing more than a book of drug inspired hallucinations.
Although it has been observed that these sacred plants do not grow everywhere, the drug pedlars of the ancient world were the Magi. Their wisdom was that of the attributes of these mystical healing plants, which they needed to combine with the astrology of the patient. Birth signs were important because each sign had its own characteristics and this determined the correct doses. In a similar way the medieval grimoires required the use of sacred oils to help draw out the demons.
Now the stone arrangements at Gobekli Tepe and Stonehenge start to make sense. The upright nature of the stones suggests the phallic imagery of a fertility cult. The white flecked bluestones at Stonehenge were probably brought a long distance because of their vague resemblance to the white flecked cap of the Amanita Muscaria. But what about the original arrangement of the sarsen stones capped with lintels? If you see an artist's impression of this, you see a near circle of stones as a temple of doorways, but looked at another way, you can also see the Amanita Muscaria in a fairy ring with 2 lintels representing each cap. How else can you really explain the similarity between these 2 great sites?