Road to eleusis pdf

The singing is good, but under the influence with their imaginative and immortal organs; of the mushroom you think it is infinitely tender the Apostles the same; the clearer the organ and sweet.

It is as though you were hearing it with the more distinct the object. You are lying Vision are not, as the modern philosophy sup- on a petate or mat; perhaps, if you have been wise, poses, a cloudy vapour, or a nothing: they are or- on an air mattress and in a sleeping bag.

It is dark, ganized and minutely articulated beyond all that for all lights have been extinguished save a few em- the mortal and perishing nature can produce.

He bers among the stones on the floor and the incense who does not imagine in stronger and better in a sherd. It is still, for the thatched hut is apt to be lineaments, and in stronger and better light than some distance away from the village. In the darkness his perishing eye can see, does not imagine at all.

From The Writings of William and stillness, that voice hovers through the hut, Blake, ed. III, p. Everyone experiences it, The advantage of the mushroom is that it puts just as do the tribesmen of Siberia who have eaten of many, if not everyone, within reach of this state Amanita muscaria and lie under the spell of their without having to suffer the mortifications of Blake shamans, displaying as these do their astonishing and St.

It permits you to see, more clearly dexterity with ventriloquistic drum beats. Likewise, than our perishing mortal eye can see, vistas beyond in Mexico, I have heard a shaman engage in a most the horizons of this life, to travel backwards and complicated percussive beat: with her hands she hits forwards in time, to enter other planes of existence, her chest, her thighs, her forehead, her arms, each even as the Indians say to know God.

It is hardly giving a different resonance, keeping a complicated surprising that your emotions are profoundly af- rhythm and modulating, even syncopating, the fected, and you feel that an indissoluble bond unites strokes. Your body lies in the darkness, heavy as you with the others who have shared with you in lead, but your spirit seems to soar and leave the hut, the sacred agape.

One sive chant. What you are seeing and what you are word—thain3—embraces the whole fungal tribe, hearing appear as one: the music assumes harmoni- edible, innocuous but inedible, and toxic,—the ous shapes, giving visual form to its harmonies, and whole fungal world except the sacred species.

The what you are seeing takes on the modalities of mu- sacred species are known by a name that in itself is a sic—the music of the spheres. The first element, 7nti1, is a diminu- occasionally break the tension of the night smells as tive of affection and respect.

The whole simple water is infinitely better than champagne. Elsewhere I once wrote that the bemushroomed But this word is holy: you do not hear it uttered in person is poised in space, a disembodied eye, invisi- the market place or where numbers of people are ble, incorporeal, seeing but not seen.

In truth, he is assembled. It is best to bring up the subject at night, the five senses disembodied, all of them keyed to the by the light of a fire or a vela votive candle , when height of sensitivity and awareness, all of them you are alone with your hosts. Then they will dilate blending into one another most strangely, until the endlessly on the wonders of these wondrous mush- person, utterly passive, becomes a pure receptor, rooms.

For this euphemistic name they will proba- infinitely delicate, of sensations. When we were leaving the Ma- was before, living an eternity in a night, seeing in- zatec mountains on horseback after our first visit finity in a grain of sand. What you have seen and there, we asked our muleteer Victor Hernandez how heard is cut as with a burin in your memory, never it came about that the sacred mushrooms were to be effaced.

He had and what ecstasy means. The mind harks traveled the mountain trails all his life and spoke back to the origin of that word. For the Greeks ek- Spanish although he could neither read nor write stasis meant the flight of the soul from the body.

His answer, am certain that this word came into being to de- breathtaking in sincerity and feeling, breathed the scribe the effect of the Mystery of Eleusis. Can you poetry of religion and I quote it word for word as he find a better word than that to describe the bemush- uttered it and as I put it down in my notebook at roomed state? In common parlance, among the the time: many who have not experienced ecstasy, ecstasy is El honguillo viene por si mismo, no se sabe de fun, and I am frequently asked why I do not reach donde, como el viento que viene sin saber de for mushrooms every night.

But ecstasy is not fun. The unknowing vulgar abuse the word, Victor was referring to the genesis of the sacred and we must recapture its full and terrifying mushrooms: they leap forth seedless and rootless, a sense. Aurelio Carreras, town are fit to go to work. But how unimportant work slaughterer in Huautla, when we asked him where seems to you, by comparison with the portentous the mushrooms take you, said simply: Le llevan alli happenings of that night! These are Spanish- native population of the Mexican highlands.

In the speaking villagers picked at random. Aristotle said of the Eleusinian Mysteries vinely engendered by Parjanya, the Aryan God of precisely the same: the initiates were to suffer, to the Lightning-bolt, in the Soft Mother Earth.

Someone has called mycology the step-child of They were not to learn anything. Is it not now acquiring a wholly new As man emerged from his brutish past, thou- and unexpected dimension? It made him see what this perishing mortal eye cannot see.

How right the Greeks were to hedge about this Mystery, this imbibing of the potion, with secrecy and sur- veillance! What today is resolved into a mere drug, a tryptamine or lysergic acid derivative, was for him a prodigious miracle, inspiring in him poetry and philosophy and religion. Perhaps with all our mod- ern knowledge we do not need the divine mush- rooms any more.

Or do we need them more than ever? Some are shocked that the key even to religion might be reduced to a mere drug. It is not the only instance in the his- tory of humankind where the lowly has given birth to the divine. Altering a sacred text, we would say that this paradox is a hard saying, yet one worthy of all men to be believed. If our classical scholars were given the opportu- nity to attend the rite at Eleusis, to talk with the priestess, what would they not exchange for that chance?

They would approach the precincts, enter the hallowed chamber, with the reverence born of the texts venerated by scholars for millennia. How propitious would their frame of mind be, if they were invited to partake of the potion! Well, those rites take place now, unbeknownst to the classical scholars, in scattered dwellings, humble, thatched, without windows, far from the beaten track, high in the mountains of Mexico, in the stillness of the night, broken only by the distant barking of a dog or the braying of an ass.

Or, since we are in the rainy season, perhaps the Mystery is accompanied by torrential rains and punctuated by terrifying thunderbolts. Two years have passed, and here now ergot shows an intimate knowledge of its properties, is my answer. Once a dreaded gists as Claviceps purpurea Fr. It is a parasite poison, it has become a rich treasure chamber of on rye and other cereals such as barley or wheat, and valuable pharmaceuticals. Other species of the In the Middle Ages bizarre epidemics occurred genus Claviceps, viz.

Thus in Switzerland there exist St. Anthony was the patron saint of a religious order three varieties of ergot of rye: a in the Midlands a founded to care for the victims of ergotism. The race containing mainly the alkaloid ergotamine, b cause of these epidemics—bread contaminated with in the Valais one with alkaloids of the ergotoxine ergot—was not learned until the seventeenth cen- group, and c in the Grisons a variety with no al- tury, and since then there have been only sporadic kaloids at all.

Furthermore in other kinds of er- outbreaks of ergot poisoning. He said it makeup, sometimes depending on geographical lo- was being used by midwives to precipitate child- cation. The word ergot is defined in the Petit partum haemorrhage. Hosack was a distinguished man. He was a phy- acid, I prepared ergonovine, which by its chemical sician to many of the eminent New Yorkers of his composition is lysergic acid propanolamide.

Lyser- time, and he accompanied Alexander Hamilton to gic acid is the nucleus common to most ergot alka- Weehawken heights for his fatal duel with Aaron loids. It is extracted from special cultures of ergot Burr. This I learned from the admirable life of Ho- and could also be prepared today by total synthesis sack by Christine Robbins. I used the The latest and most important chapter in the method developed for the synthesis of ergonovine history of ergot deals with it as a rich source of for the preparation of many chemical modifications pharmacologically useful alkaloids.

One of these partly synthetic deriva- thirty alkaloids have been isolated from ergot and it tives of ergonovine was lysergic acid butanolamide. Today all these alkaloids are also Another lysergic acid derivative that I synthe- available by total synthesis. The first ergot alkaloid that found lating properties was lysergic acid diethylamide. Stoll and A. From Roger investigations into the alkaloid ergonovine, which is Heim, then head of the Laboratoire de Cryptogamie the specific uterotonic water-soluble principle of and Director of the famous Museum National ergot.

Dudley and C. With my laboratory assistant Hans uterotonic activity. This observation led three years Tscherter I succeeded in isolating the hallucinogenic later to the isolation of the alkaloid responsible for principles of the sacred Mexican mushrooms, which this action simultaneously in four separate laborato- I named psilocybin and psilocin.

The In- succeeded in the elucidation of the chemical struc- ternational Pharmacopoeia Commission proposed a ture and the synthesis of psilocybin and psilocin. When we analyzed them we arrived at an laboratories all over the world are reviewed in the unexpected result: these ancient drugs that we are monograph by A.

This lished. The question presented itself whether er- grass grows commonly all around the Mediterra- gonovine, being not only an alkaloidal component nean basin and is often infected with Claviceps of ergot but also of ololiuhqui, possessed hallucino- paspali. Arcamone et al. In the light of its chemical structure these alkaloids in ergot of P. But one may ask why, if it is hallucino- ous species of the genus Claviceps and its many genic, this astonishing fact has not been announced, hosts, cereals and wild grasses, types of ergot do exist in the light of its use over recent decades in obstet- that contain hallucinogenic alkaloids, the same al- rics.

Undoubtedly the answer lies in the extremely kaloids as in the Mexican hallucinogenic morning- low dosage of ergonovine used to stop postpartum glories. These alkaloids, mainly lysergic acid amide, bleeding, viz. I are soluble in water, in contrast to the non- decided therefore to test in a self-experiment a cor- hallucinogenic medicinally useful alkaloids of the responding dose of ergonovine: ergotamine and ergotoxine type. Tired, need to lie down.

We analyzed ergot of wheat and ergot of bar- With eyes closed colored figures. As I said before, ergonovine and lysergic afflicted by mollusk-like forms and feel- acid amide, both psychoactive, are soluble in water ings. We gers. The famous Rarian plain was adjacent to Eleusis. Its po- Pennella, P. Samples of ergot The separation of the hallucinogenic agents by grown on L. Some range of possibilities open to Early Man in Greece. As I have found in ergot of Paspalum. During the many centu- The answer is yes, Early Man in ancient Greece ries when the Eleusinian Mysteries were thriving could have arrived at an hallucinogen from ergot.

An easier way would have been to broadening their knowledge and improving their use the ergot growing on the common wild grass skills? For the Greek world as for us, the Mysteries Paspalum. This is based on the assumption that the are linked to Demeter and Kore, and they and herbalists of ancient Greece were as intelligent and Triptolemus are the famed mythical progenitors of resourceful as the herbalists of pre-Conquest Mex- cultivated wheat and barley.

But in the course of ico. Here they would be able to get their hallu- cinogen direct, straight and pure. But I mention this only as a possibility or a likelihood, and not because we need P. Finally we must also discuss an ergot parasitical to a wild grass called in scientific nomenclature Lo- lium temulentum L.

In English this is most widely known as darnel or cockle or in the Bible tares, a weed that plagues grain crops. In classic Greek darnel was aira and in classic Latin was lo- lium. Its name in French is ivraie and in German Taumellolch, both names pointing to a belief in its psychotropic activity in the folk knowledge of the traditional European herbalists.

Analysis of Lolium temulentum in my laboratory and an extended botanical, chemical, and pharma- cological investigation by I. Katz4 showed that the plant itself contains no alkaloids nor does it possess any pharmacological activity. But the Lolium spe- cies L. The psychotropic 4 5 Katz, I. Private lium temulentum L. His wages, plus the expense of the stay in Athens. Every step of the way recalled some aspect of an attempts to repay her favors in some special way ancient myth that told how the Earth Mother, the were continually frustrated by the madam, who in- goddess Demeter, had lost her only daughter, the sisted upon confiscating all private gifts.

To give the maiden Persephone, abducted as she gathered flow- girl something that would be hers alone, he hit ers by her bridegroom, who was Hades or the lord upon the idea of offering her an immaterial, and of death.

The pilgrims called upon Iakchos as they thereby inalienable, benefit: he would pay the ex- walked. It was he who was thought to lead them on penses for her introduction into the blessed com- their way: through him, they would summon back munity of those who had witnessed the secret relig- the queen Persephone into the realm of the living.

When at last they arrived at Eleusis, they danced far That sight was generally considered the culminating into the night beside the well where originally the experience of a lifetime. And so she was allowed to mother had mourned for her lost Persephone. As travel to Athens, together with the madam and a they danced in honor of those sacred two goddesses younger girl from the brothel.

The lover lodged and of their mysterious consort Dionysus, the god them all with a friend while they prepared them- of inebriants, the stars and the moon and the selves by the preliminary rites. Then they passed through the gates of the Athens. Then at last, amidst the throng of thou- fortress walls, beyond which, shielded from profane sands who each autumn for the first and only time view, was enacted the great Mystery of Eleusis.

My colleagues and I, working from the swamp that once divided Athens from the ter- hints in numerous sources, have ventured to go be- ritory of its neighboring village, some fourteen miles yond that forbidden gate.

To say so much was The procession of pilgrims symbolically passed the not prohibited. The experience was a vision frontier between worlds, a momentous journey whereby the pilgrim became someone who saw, an characterized by its difficulty, for the bridge was epoptes. The hall, however, as can now be recon- expressly constructed too narrow for vehicular traffic structed from archaeological remains, was totally and ahead, just as they arrived at the village itself, it unsuited for theatrical performances; nor do the was traditional that they would be obscenely in- epigraphically extant account books for the sanctu- sulted by masked men, who lined the bridge across ary record any expenditures for actors or stage appa- the final boundary of water.

What was witnessed there was no play by ac- Each year new candidates for initiation would tors, but phasmata, ghostly apparitions, in particu- walk that Sacred Road, people of all classes, emper- lar, the spirit of Persephone herself, returned from ors and prostitutes, slaves and freemen, an annual the dead with her newborn son, conceived in the celebration that was to last for upwards of a millen- land of death.

The Greeks were sophisticated about nium and a half, until the pagan religion finally suc- drama and it is highly unlikely that they could have cumbed to the intense hatred and rivalry of a newer been duped by some kind of theatrical trick, espe- sect, the recently legitimized Christians in the cially since it is people as intelligent as the poet Pin- fourth century of our era.

The only requirement, dar and the tragedian Sophocles who have testified beyond a knowledge of the Greek language, was the to the overwhelming value of what was seen at Ele- price of the sacrificial pig and the fees of the various usis. Then there induced seizure. Eyes had never before seen the like, and know about the religions of the agrarian peoples apart from the formal prohibition against telling of who preceded the Greeks.

She the task. Even a poet could only say that he had was the Great Mother and the entire world was her seen the beginning and the end of life and known Child. The essential event in those religions was the that they were one, something given by god. The Sacred Marriage, in which the priestess periodically division between earth and sky melted into a pillar communed with the realm of spirits within the of light.

Her male consort was drama or ceremony, but to a mystical vision; and a vegetative spirit, both her son who grew from the since the sight could be offered to thousands of ini- earth and the mate who would abduct her to the tiates each year dependably upon schedule, it seems fecundating other realm as he possessed her upon obvious that an hallucinogen must have induced it. When the roving Indo-Europeans settled We are confirmed in this conclusion by two further in the Greek lands, their immortal Father God of observations: a special potion, as we know, was the sky, who was Zeus, became assimilated to the drunk prior to the visual experience; and secondly, a pattern of the dying and reborn vegetative consort notorious scandal was uncovered in the classical age, of the Great Mother.

There are indications of this when it was discovered that numerous aristocratic assimilation in the traditions about the Zeus who Athenians had begun celebrating the Mystery at was born and died in Crete. Furthermore, archaeo- home with groups of drunken guests at dinner par- logical remains from the Minoan—Mycenaean pe- ties. The priestesses or goddesses Mystery.

The sacred myth that narrates the events themselves occur as idols decorated with vegetative involved in the founding of the Mystery is recorded motifs, accompanied by their serpent consort or in the so-called Homeric hymn to Demeter, an crowned with a diadem of opium capsules.

In it we are recurrent variations upon the Sacred Marriage en- told how the goddess Persephone was abducted by acted between the immigrant founder and the au- her bridegroom Hades to the realm of the dead tochthonous female in ecstatic contexts. Most inter- when she picked a special hundred-headed narkissos esting among these are the traditions about Mykenai while gathering flowers with the daughters of Ocean Mycenae itself, for it was said to have been in a place called Nysa.

All Greek words ending in founded when the female of that place lost her head —issos derive from the language spoken by the agrar- to the male of the new dynasty, who had picked a ian cultures dwelling in the Greek lands before the mushroom. The etymology of Mykenai, which was coming of the migrating Indo-European Greeks. The Sacred Marriage can also be detected in the symbol- marital abduction or seizure of maidens while gath- ism of the founding fathers at other Mycenaean ering flowers is, moreover, a common theme in sites, perhaps because that particular wave of immi- Greek myths and Plato records a rationalized ver- grants brought knowledge of the wild and untame- sion of such stories in which the companion of the able mushroom with them on their movement seized maiden is named Pharmaceia or, as the name south into the Greek lands.

A similar process was sensed in the assimilated as consort to the Mother Goddess sur- frothing turmoil whereby the fungal yeast converted vived into the classical period. His name designates grapes into wine. In wine the god had found his him as the Zeus of Nysa, for Dios is a form of the greatest blessing for mankind; here his untameable, word Zeus.

Nysa was not only, as we have seen, the wild nature had succumbed to domestication. When he possessed his women devotees, ing its toxin from the fruit, for serpents were the maenads or bacchants, he was synonymous with thought to derive their poisons from the herbs they Hades, the lord of death and bridegroom to the ate, just as conversely it was said that serpents could goddess Persephone. The maenads, like Persephone, transfer their toxins to plants in their vicinity.

Di- also gathered flowers. And custom- ivy leaves; such hollow stalks were customarily used arily it was mixed with water that the Greeks drank by herb gatherers as receptacles for their cuttings, their wines. Simple fungi. Diony- lower boiling point than water, will merely escape to sus himself was born prematurely in the mystical the air, leaving the final product weaker instead of seventh month during a winter snowfall when his more concentrated.

Alcohol in fact was never iso- celestial father struck his earth bride Semele at The- lated as the toxin in wine and there is no word for it bes with a bolt of lightning; in the same manner in ancient Greek. Hence the dilution of wine, usu- mushrooms were thought to be engendered wher- ally with at least three parts of water, could be ex- ever lightning struck the earth. The father of Diony- pected to produce a drink of slight inebriating prop- sus was another Dionysus, as would be expected in a erties.

Sacred Marriage, for the child born at the time of That, however, was not the case. We hear of some wines so strong that they awesome nether realm from which life must forever could be diluted with twenty parts of water and that be reborn.

So too wines straight actually caused permanent brain was Dionysus like his father also called the thun- damage and in some cases even death. And did the earliest Christians inherit the same, secret tradition? A profound knowledge of visionary plants, herbs and fungi passed from one generation to the next, ever since the Stone Age?

There is zero archaeological evidence for the original Eucharist — the sacred wine said to guarantee life after death for those who drink the blood of Jesus. The Holy Grail and its miraculous contents have never been found. In an unprecedented search for answers, The Immortality Key examines the archaic roots of the ritual that is performed every Sunday for nearly one third of the planet.

Before the birth of Jesus, the Ancient Greeks found salvation in their own sacraments. Sacred beverages were routinely consumed as part of the so-called Ancient Mysteries — elaborate rites that led initiates to the brink of death. The best and brightest from Athens and Rome flocked to the spiritual capital of Eleusis, where a holy beer unleashed heavenly visions for two thousand years.

Others drank the holy wine of Dionysus to become one with the god. In the s, renegade scholars claimed this beer and wine — the original sacraments of Western civilization — were spiked with mind-altering drugs.

In recent years, vindication for the disgraced theory has been qui. Gordon Wasson, an internationally known ethnomycologist who was one of the first to investigate how these mushrooms were venerated and employed by different native peoples, here joins with three other scholars to discuss the evidence for his discoveries about these fungi, which he has called entheogens, or "god generated within.

Gordon Wasson. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

He traces the history of the cult in the archaeological remains, from the first traces of habitation at the site in the Middle Bronze Age around B. A guided tour of the Museum at Eleusis, illustrated with photographs of objects in the Museum, as well as air views, plans, and detailed photographs of the ruins closely correlated with the text, takes into account the needs of the visitor at the site as well as the reader at home. Originally published in The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press.

These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in Wasson has aroused considerable attention in learned circles and beyond by advancing and documenting the thesis that Soma was a hallucinogenic mushroom - none other than the Amanita muscaria, the fly-agaric that until recent times was the centre of shamanic rites among the Siberian and Uralic tribesmen.

In his presentation he throws fascinating light on the role of mushrooms in religious ritual. In this groundbreaking work, three experts—a mycologist, a chemist, and a historian—argue persuasively that the sacred potion given to participants in the course of the ritual contained a psychoactive entheogen.

The authors then expand the discussion to show that natural psychedelic agents have been used in spiritual rituals across history and cultures. The authors have played critical roles in the modern rediscovery of entheogens, and The Road to Eleusis presents an authoritative exposition of their views.

This 30th anniversary edition includes an appreciative preface by religious scholar Huston Smith and an updated exploration of the chemical evidence by Peter Webster. Home The Road to Eleusis.