Spot the hallucinogen
What are we to make of this distinctive constellation of symptoms combining spectacular visions with physical malaise? Carl
A.P. Ruck, Professor of Classical Studies at Boston University, . is in no doubt:
Clearly an hallucinatory reality was induced within the initiation hall and since at times as many as three thousand initiates, a number greater than the population of an ordinary ancient town, were afforded such a vision annually on schedule, / Page 634 / it would seem obvious that some psychotropic drug was involved.94
Together with the world-famous mycologist R. Gordon Wasson, and Albert Hoffman, the discoverer of LSD, Ruck was the third member of a team of eminent scholarly detectives who spent much of their spare time during the first half of the 197°S trying to solve the mystery of Eleusis. They drew attention to the well-documented fact that on entering the Telestrion every pilgrim was obliged to drink 'a special potion, the kykeon, that was an essential part of the Mystery'.95
Could the potion have been psychedelic? Fortunately its ingredients are recorded in a Homeric hymn to Demeter dating to the seventh century BC, so we ought to be able to find out. At first glance they don't look anything like hallucinogens, being listed rather innocently as barley (alphi), water, and mint (glechon).96 However, Gordon Wasson, the mycologist on the research team, knew that barley and other wild and cultivated grasses often support a fungal parasite called ergot that does contain hallucinogenic alkaloids. Indeed, it was from precisely the same fungus that Albert Hoffman had first synthesised LSD in 1943. Hoffman tells the story as follows:
In July 1975 I was visiting my fIiend Gordon Wasson in his home in Danbury when he suddenly asked me this question: whether Early Man in ancient Greece could have hit on a method to isolate an hallucinogen from ergot which would have given him an experience comparable to LSD or psilocybin. I replied that this might well have been the case and I promised to send him, after further reflection, an exposition of our present knowledge on the subject.97
-
KYKEON
-
-
-
2
KY
36
9
9
4
KEON
45
18
9
6
KYKEON
81
27
18
-
-
8+1
2+7
1+8
6
KYKEON
9
9
9
-
ASTRAL BODY
-
-
-
6
ASTRAL
71
71
8
4
BODY
46
19
1
10
ASTRAL BODY
117
36
9
1+0
-`
1+1+7
3+6
-
1
ASTRAL BODY
9
9
9
Page 635
It took Hoffman two years and much laboratory work to complete his task, since ergot-contaminated rye was known as a dreaded poison in the Middle Ages (see Chapter Eight) and he had to satisfy himself that it would have been possible for the priests of Eleusis to isolate the hallucinogenic alkaloids from the toxic and deadly ingredients. What he discovered is that ergonovine and lysergic acid amide, the two principal hallucinogens in ergot, are both water-soluble, whereas the poisonous alkaloids such as ergotamine and ergotoxin are not. Throughout Greece ergot is a parasite of barley, which we know was one of the ingredients of the kykeon, and in Hoffman's opinion it would have been relatively easy for the priests to extract the visionary alkaloids: 'The separation of the hallucinogenic agents by simple water solution from the non-soluble ergotamine and ergotoxin alkaloids was well with the range of possibilities open to Early Man in Greece.'98
Although the priests of Eleusis were dedicated in particular to the cultivation of wheat and barley in the name of Demeter, goddess of grains, Hoffman points out that an even easier method than washing contaminated barley was available to them. Paspalum distichum, a wild grass that grows throughout the Mediterranean basin, supports Claviceps paspali, a species of ergot
which contains only alkaloids that are hallucinogenic and which could even have been used directly in powdered form. . . In the course of time the hierophants could easily have discovered Claviceps paspali growing on the grass Paspalum distichum. Here they would be able to get their hallucinogen direct, straight and pure. But I mention this only as a possibility or a likelihood, and not because we need P. distichum to answer Wasson's question . . . The answer is yes. Early Man in ancient Greece could have arrived at an hallucinogen from ergot.99
Page 636
Any remaining doubt that the sacred potion of Eleusis was indeed a psychoactive brew was dispelled when the researchers came across evidence of a notorious scandal. . . uncovered in the classical age, when it was discovered that numerous aristocratic Athenians had begun celebrating the Mystery at home with groups of drunken guests at dinner parties. 100
The revellers included Alcibiades, the brilliant but unscrupulous politician and military commander who was convicted of
profaning the Eleusinian Mysteries in 415 BC and defected to Sparta rather than face the death penalty.1Ol As well as showing the seriousness with which such matters were treated by the Athenian authorities, the significance of this story lies in what it tells us about the true nature of the visionary experiences at the heart of the Mysteries. We now know that these experiences were not exclusive to the sacred precincts of Eleusis but could even be enjoyed at private dinner tables by the simple expedient of drinking the kykeon.lOl The conclusion that they were drug experiences is more or less inevitable, as is the obvious parallel with the modern recreational use of once sacred plant hallucinogens.
Last but not least, it is surely significant that Demeter herself,
the goddess of Eleusis, was sometimes known by the name of Erysibe, which means, literally, 'ergot',103 while we read three times in the Hymn to Demeter that her robes were 'purple dark', the colour of the fruiting bodies of ergot.104
For all these reasons, and many more, Professor Ruck concludes: 'I and my colleagues interpreted the Eleusinian mysteries as communal shamanic ceremonies involving the ingestion of drugS.'105
Page 636
The mystery of soma
As becomes apparent under modest magnification, 'fruiting bodies' of ergot are in fact clusters of tiny purple mushrooms.106 Another much larger species of mushroom, Amanita muscaria - the fly agaric - has been identified by the mycologist R. Gordon Wasson, together with lndologists Stella Kamrisch and Wendy O'Flaherty, as the most likely candidate for the mysterious soma, the famous consciousness-altering drug of ancient India's Vedic scriptures. ID?
The Rigveda, the oldest of the four Vedas that stand at the root of modern Hinduism, is thought to date back more than 3,000 years and perhaps a great deal longer. It describes soma as a god, as a plant, and as a beverage extracted or pressed from that plant. 108 The Vedas run to millions of words, and tens of thousands of them are devoted to soma, but we need only cite a few lines here to convey the sense of its hallucinogenic attributes and its unmistakably shamanic undertones:
Like currents of wind, the drinks have lifted me up. Have I not drunk soma?
One of my wings is in heaven, the other trails below. Have I not drunk soma?
I am huge, huge! Flying to the clouds. Have I not drunk soma?109
In the navel of the earth [is situated soma], which is also the mainstay of the Sky.110"
THE
PROPHET
Kahil Gibran
Page 82/83/84/85/86
"If these be vague words, then seek not to clear them.
Vague and nebulous is the beginning of all things, but not their end,
And I would have you remember me as a beginning.
Life, and all that lives, is conceived in the mist and not in the crystal.
And who knows but a crystal is mist in decay
This would I have you remember in remembering me:
That which seems most feeble and bewildered in you is the strongest and most determined.
Is it not your breath that has erected and hardened the structure of your bones?
And is it not a dream which none of you remember having dreamt, that builded your city and fashioned all there is in it?
Could you but see the tides of that breath you would cease to see all else,
And if you could hear the whispering of the dream you would hear no other sound.
But you do not see, nor do you here, and it is well.
The veil that clouds your eyes shall be lifted by the hands that wove it,
And the clay that fills your ears shall be pierced by those fingers that kneaded it.
And you shall see
And you shall hear.
Yet you shall not deplore having known blindness, nor regret having been deaf
For in that day you shall know the hidden purposes in all things,
And you shall bless darkness as you would bless light.
After saying these things he looked about him,
and he saw the pilot of his ship standing by the helm
and gazing now at the full sails and now at the distance.
And he said:
Patient, over patient, is the captain of my ship.
The wind blows, and restless are the sails;
Even the rudder begs direction;
Yet quietly my captain awaits my silence.
And these my mariners, who have heard the
choir of the greater sea, they too have heard me
patiently.
Now they shall wait no longer.
I am ready
The stream has reached the sea, and once more
THE GREAT MOTHER
holds her son against her breast.
Fare you well, people of Orphalese.
This day has ended.
It is closing upon us even as the water-lily upon its own tomorrow.
What was given us here we shall keep,
And if it suffices not, then again must we come together and together
stretch our hands unto the giver.
Forget not that I shall come back to you.
A little while, and my longing shall gather dust and foam for another body.
A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me.
Farewell to you and the youth I have spent with you.
It was but yesterday we met in a dream.
You have sung to me in my aloneness, and I of your longings have built a tower in the sky.
But now our sleep has fled and our dream is over, and it is no longer dawn.
The noontide is upon us and our half waking has turned to fuller day, and we must part.
If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more,
we shall speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song.
and if our hands should meet in another dream we shall build another tower in the sky.
So saying he made a signal to the seamen,
and straightaway they weighed anchor and cast the ship loose from its moorings, and they moved eastward.
And a cry came from the people as from a single heart,
and it rose into the dusk and was carried out over the sea like a great trumpeting.
Only Almitra was silent, gazing after the ship until it had vanished into the mist.
And when all the people were dispersed she still stood alone upon the sea-wall,
remembering in her heart his saying:
A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me.'
WISH ME LUCK AS YOU WAVE ME GOODBYE
Wish me luck, as you wave me goodbye.
Cheerio, here I go,on my way.
Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye.
With a cheer, not a tear,make it gay.
Give me a smile,I can keep for a while,
In my heart while I'm away.
Till we meet once again you and I,
Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye.
Wish me luck, as you wave me goodbye.
Cheerio, here I go, on my way
Wish me luck, as you wave me goodbye.
With a cheer, not a tear, make it gay
Give me a smile, I can keep for a while,
In my heart while I'm away.
Till we meet once again You and I
wish me luck as you wave me goodbye.
Performed by: Vera Lynn
Written by: Phil Park; Harry Parr Davies
I
AM
ALPHA AND OMEGA
THE BEGINNING AND THE END THE FIRST AND THE LAST
I
AM
THE ROOT AND THE OFFSPRING
OF
DAVID
AND
THE BRIGHT AND MORNING STAR
AND
THE SPIRIT AND THE BRIDE SAY COME
AND
LET THEM THAT HEARETH SAY COME
AND
LET THEM THAT IS ATHIRST COME
AND
WHOSOEVER WILL LET THEM TAKE THE WATER OF LIFE FREELY