This...is a paper...that I spent tens of hours on. I finally got it where I want it, and I think it's just beautiful. Please read it and tell me what you think. Better yet, read it and learn, and then tell me what you learned!
Since the dawn of man, we have concerned ourselves with one goal: to understand the world around us. This accounts for our insatiable wanderlust, our drive to explore and discover. When man first came to be, his means to this end was simple: to look inside himself and find reality reflected from within. This introspection took the form of spiritual beliefs. It was not in faith or dogma, however, that spirituality was manifest. It was through direct experience with the divine. Throughout history, many techniques have been devised to change man’s state of consciousness and let him experience oneness with creation outside of his waking ego, but none were as effective as entheogens. Their importance in shaping ancient religious and philosophical thought cannot be overstated.
It is important to first define the concept of an entheogen. It is derived from the Greek word enthousiasmo, which means “the god within one”.[1] In essence, an entheogen is an organism that, once ingested, causes the observer to experience the sensation that divine knowledge is being generated within himself. An entheogenic experience is most often characterized by ecstasy, a sense of unity and oneness with all creation, and a timelessness that results in the full impact and memory of the experience never leaving the observer.[2] In ancient times, these substances would have occurred naturally in plants, animals, or fungi, and required little to no preparation to activate.
This investigation into the influence of entheogens begins with an examination of the Rig Veda, perhaps the oldest existing Indo-European document. It is a collection of hymns written between 1800 and 900 B.C. that discuss and reflect the teachings of early Hinduism, referred to here as the Vedic religion. It was an important religious text, and it is perhaps more to this day, because it is one of the first documents to establish the concept of ritualistic use of entheogens. This concept was named soma.
It is important to note that much confusion still exists about the concept of soma. The word is used in the Rig Veda, related texts, as well as by Greek and Egyptian authors, to refer to a variety of things. It can refer to a plant, a beverage, a ceremony, or a god. When referring to a beverage, it can refer to something that one drank when thirsty, when wanting a bit of energy, or when one wanted to commune with the gods, suggesting that its psychoactivity varied. What’s more, knowledge of soma belonged only to the priestesses, and so while anyone could partake, it was only through a holy woman. It is largely through the allusions and eyewitness accounts of initiates, as well as careful analysis of other holy documents, that ethnobotanists and historians can approach identifying soma.
We can date the emergence of soma as an important religious concept to around 3000 B.C. by looking at references found in the Rig Veda to a text already written at the time called the Madhu Brahmana that first makes mention of soma.[3] It is from around this time until the Rig Veda was finished that we find soma being refined as a potent religious tool.
The importance and impact of soma can be attributed to two aspects of the experience: the ritual and the chemical. The ritual aspect was designed not only to worship the gods, but also to provide a basis for interpreting and appreciating altered sensory perceptions. All believers could attend these rituals and partake of the soma beverage. It closely resembled many ceremonies found in present-day religions, including Holy Communion in the Christian Church. (This is found not only with the idea of a golden chalice that may have started myths about the Holy Grail, but from the Vedic religion being the first to deify water and use it in ceremonies.)[4] The ceremony was designed to celebrate the greatness of creation and man’s oneness with it. The gods specifically invoked by the ceremony included Soma, the god who imparted knowledge and inspiration to mortals via a huge pillar of light; Indra, god of creation, who created the cosmos while under divine soma inebriation; and the twin Asvins, healers of the gods, keeper of the secret of the divinity of soma.
It was these twins, who rode in a chariot pulled by horses that traveled at the speed of thought, gathered the soma from its container, the moon, imbued it with power derived from the flowers that surrounded and represented them, and brought it in a golden chalice to the gods to drink, thereby assuring their collective immortality.[5] They represented the dual nature of reality: fire and water, day and night, birth and death. They were born of the river, and were always found together. The description of their physical appearance gives historians many clues to what the sacred soma plant’s identity may be.[6]
In studying soma as an entheogen, it would be very useful to know the identity of the plants involved. We start this process by looking at the purported effects of drinking soma. According to many of the writers of the Rig Veda, it seemed to have medicinal properties. This can be inferred from the fact that the gods drank it to remain immortal, as well as specific claims that it increased longevity and virility and cured ailments as diverse as vision problems, menstrual issues, and muscle aches. It was even claimed that it imbued users with special abilities, such as the ability to walk on water, to regenerate lost limbs, and to raise the dead.[7] It is thought that the inspiration for some of Jesus’ legendary acts came from accounts found in the Rig Veda, including the Asvins’ act of transubstantiation, turning the inert soma beverage into something divinely inspired.[8]
Additionally, components of soma must have some level of psychoactivity. Soma was known to be consumed as a beverage outside of a ritualistic setting, suggesting that the “base” for soma could be used for different purposes by altering its potency. This also points towards what is known as “elixir theory”, the idea that it was not just one plant that resulted in the soma achieving full potency, but a combination of them.[9] In the Vedic culture, alcohol consumption was frowned upon. Nevertheless, when soma was concerned, this rule was allowed to be leniently interpreted; one method of preparing a very strong batch of soma involved a degree of fermentation, though it is thought that it was done solely to release more active chemicals from the plants. [10]
Historians looking at all of these factors have come to two conclusions. In the 1960s, many historians were under the impression that the main psychoactive component of soma was a mushroom called Amanita muscaria, also known as “fly-agaric”. They point to the fact that it was grew prolifically, found use in other cultures as an entheogen, and that certain language in the Rig Veda seems to allude to its general shape and red and white coloration.[11] However, in the past ten years a new theory has been developed that the entheogenic component of soma consisted of two plants: those of the genus Nymphaea, a type of lily, and Nulumbo, a species of lotus.
All the evidence that points towards the fly-agaric can also be interpreted to support these two flowers, plus more claims that are of religious import. Almost all the health benefits attributed to soma can be produced by the flower combination.[12] The fact that they grow from the water points to the Vedic creation myth that all life rose from the rivers. Using two flowers to explain soma fits in perfectly with elixir theory. Most importantly, though, the psychological effects seem to perfectly match the accounts of the Rig Veda. Modern historians have consumed the three organisms in question, both independently and in various combinations, and have shown that the feelings of ecstasy and unity, as well as out of body sensations, are most strongly related to the water-dwelling flowers.[13]
Particularly worthy of note are the visual distortions associated with consuming the flowers together. Light-like phenomena, including seeing people as possessing columns of light, are often reported while under their influence. It was believed by followers of the Vedic religion that located at the place where man first learned of soma from the gods is an endless pillar of light that connects the earth to the heavens. It is this light that also dwells within is, making up the spark that infuses all life on earth. The soma plants were thought to soak up and store especially large amounts of this “light of life”, and by consuming them, the light they contained joined with the light within man, releasing it into the heavens. It was thought that this freeing of divine energy resulted in a permanent connection to the greatest source of light: the gods in the heavens. Once experienced, a permanent connection to the gods was established, which resulted in achieving the promise of eternal life while still in an earthly body.[14] This is the first time the concept of a person being granted immortality, which arises repeatedly later in time, has been used in our history.
As the prominence and popularity of the soma ceremonies increased, so did the dissemination of information about it. The next people to use Nymphaea and Nulumbo were the Egyptians. It was during the mid 1500s that the Egyptians, after having shaken off the Hysoks, started to expand their empire, and this included expanding trade. This is likely the time during which the two soma flowers were brought to Egypt. The Egyptians were known for importing plants to be used in their culture--”The two most sacred Egyptian plants, the papyrus and water lily, were not indigenous to Egypt”[15]-- and the Nymphaea and Nulumbo, with their healing powers, nutrition, and entheogenic potential, not to mention their awesome beauty and aquatic habitat, surely drew the Nile-worshiping Egyptians’ attention. In the Ebers Papyrus, written in the 1550s B.C., mention is made of both flowers. They are classified as “poisonous”, but many plants that were used in religion and medicine were labeled as such, which seems to imply Egyptians had just started to discover the potential of the plants.[16]
While not much is known about exactly how the Egyptians used entheogens in their ceremonies, it is thought that they were primarily used in worship of Osiris. Legend has it that Osiris was killed in a struggle with his evil brother, his body was chopped into pieces, and he was thrown into the Nile. Isis, Osiris’s wife, Goddess of motherhood and fertility, reassembled him and raised him from the dead. Osiris, while always important--especially when he took on the role of “judge of the dead”[17]--was celebrated nationwide in the spring. Here we see the contrasts of good and evil, life and death, coming together in the story of one god. Most importantly, we see the theme of resurrection and eternal life, which most strongly ties these ceremonies to the soma ceremonies of India. It is not difficult to see how the soma plants would fit into the Egyptian religion.
For the next several hundred years, Egypt continues to thrive as an empire. Eventually, however, it was made part of the Persian Empire along with western India, and it is during this time that we find even more contact between these two regions. It is also during this time that we start to see the rise of Greece, and contact between Greece and Egypt. (Indian culture is also still prominently found in Egypt, as in 500 B.C. there was an Indian colony inside Egypt proper.)
As the Greeks entered the Archaic Age, we start to find their documentation of entheogen use. A fragment of a poem written by Alcman that was found in Sparta, dating to 650 B.C., tells of a drink made of a sacred plant that draws many parallels to the Vedic concept of soma: it is prepared by women, consumed from a golden chalice, is associated with fire and water, and is thought to be linked to the idea of ambrosia, which is linked to the Vedic soma by the mythology of the moon filling with an elixir that grants the gods immortality.[18] Around 600 B.C., Pherekydes of Syros, Pythagorus’s teacher, has contact with India and first start using the term ambrosia to refer to the concept of an immortality elixir.[19]
It is between 580 and 490 B.C. that Pythagorus first starts to take the reigns of the intellectual revolution that is about to occur in the Classical Age of Greece. He teaches that the secrets of the universe can be learned by trying to recognize the patterns that are found in all creation, and that math and music most clearly reflected these patterns. This was a departure from previous Greek religious beliefs. “These early Greek philosophers may have eliminated the role of the gods as they were portrayed in Greek myths, but they did not eliminate divinity itself from the world, tending instead to identify it with the underlying, unchanging forces that govern the universe.”[20]
Ostanes, a direct pupil of Zoroaster, took the next step. Around 500 B.C., he started to explicitly teach Vedic magic and alchemy to Greek thinkers, and this included making soma plants known to them as well. He said that Egypt is “superior to all others on account of its wisdom and knowledge. The people of Egypt as well as those of the rest of the world, however, have need of the inhabitants of Persia and cannot succeed in any of their works without the aid that they draw from this country,”[21] thereby making the connection between India (part of the Persian empire at the time), Egypt, and Greece clear.
Between 460 and 370 B.C., we find Demokritos. He was an ascetic and a student of Ostanes, and he is credited with inventing atom theory, which was responsible for strongly influencing Greek thought. However, records from India show that they had developed a nearly identical theory before the year 500. Demokritos is known to have spent a great deal of time with Vedic ascetics, and it is through this interaction, along with his Vedic-taught teacher, that we can trace his atomic theory. [22]
With Plato, during the years from 429 to 347, we start to see materialized what will be quite an impasse for Greek philosophers: the idea of a dualistic reality. More and more, Greek thinkers were of the mindset that the world around them was completely separate from the world of man. It was due to this dualistic nature of inquiry that they could accomplish such leaps in scientific theory. However, it resulted in a strained relationship with religion. If natural phenomena were based on unchanging laws, not the demeanor of the gods, then what hope did they have for a better future, or an afterlife?
To the rescue came the mystery religions. As stated in Spielvogel, through mystery religions “individuals could pursue a path to salvation and achieve eternal life by being initiated into a union with a savior god or goddess.”[23] This union could be attained by anyone who could attend a secret ceremony, after which they were considered initiates and could enjoy all the benefits of being a member of the cult, including eternal life. It allowed for that emotional attachment that had gone missing from mainstream Greek religion. These cults were gaining popularity not just in Greece but in Egypt as well.[24] Clearly, there was a need for a more genuine connection with the gods, not one solely of servitude.
Of particular interest were the Eleusinian Mysteries. The myth behind the cult goes as follows: Hades, at Zeus’ behest, abducts Persephone, daughter of Demeter and Zeus. When Demeter hears word of this, she leaves Olympus in disgust and wanders the earth in human form, eventually being taken in by the ruler of Eleusis. Demeter rewarded their good nature by revealing herself to them and building a temple in her name. In order to punish the gods, she killed all the crops. The threat of not receiving the prayers of humanity forced Zeus to recall Persephone, but not without striking a bargain with Hades that she would have to return for a third of every year. This myth is intended to explain the growing seasons: no crops can grow in the winter, when Persephone is in Hades. This brought about great popularity for the cult when, in 760 B.C., the Oracle of Delphi told all Greek citizens to sacrifice to “Demeter of Eleusis” in order to banish a devastating famine.[25]
Though the myth seems straightforward, the Mysteries were indeed quite mysterious. Not only were specific details of the ceremonies kept hidden from initiates, like in India, but Eleusinian cultists were sworn to secrecy, not to tell anyone of what occurred inside the telesterion, the dark building in which the Greater Mysteries took place. In fact, to reveal the secrets of the cult was punishable by anything up to and including death. “When Alkibiades…dared to imitate acts of the celebration [at Eleusis], he was condemned in absentia, his property was confiscated, all the priests and priestesses of the state were called upon to pronounce curses upon him.”[26]
The so-called Lesser Mysteries were well documented, as they occurred for thirteen days before the sacred ceremony, and were conducted in public. There was parading in the streets, and much drinking and singing in celebration of the bountiful crop. The fourteenth day, however, was more somber. It started in a slow procession, led by the Eleusinian priestesses, which ended in entering the telesterion.[27] While little is known of what actually occurred inside the building, accounts from the newly initiated are well documented. All seemed to exit the experience permanently changed. The secrets of the universe were made known, and they had every assurance that they had been granted eternal life.
There is one detail of the Greater Mysteries that cannot be ignored, however. It is the presence of the kykeon. It was known in common parlance as a refreshing beverage made of barley and mint, considered by some to be a peasant’s drink. However, when given to an initiate by an Eleusinian priestess, it caused a powerful entheogenic reaction, much as soma only intensely affected the consumer when taken in a ritualized setting. Most historians think that contained in this special kykeon was ergot, the secretion of the crop fungus Claviceps purpurea. It infected grains of all sort, including barley, and worked by parasitizing the plant, replacing some of its fruiting body with ergot, the mycellial offshoot of the fungus.[28] This makes sense: when celebrating the crops and finding something odd that gives you paranormal abilities and ecstatic revelations, what Greek wouldn't think of this as the wonders of Demeter? Ergot produces a chemical called lysergic acid, which is the biological component of LSD. As such, the perceptual shift and change in consciousness that they imparted the consumer would have been incredibly dramatic. Unfortunately, due to the pact of silence that all the initiates signed into when undergoing the Mysteries, there are few eyewitness accounts of the experience that do not speak of them in vague, ecstatic praises.
However, changes in the beliefs of Plato, a known Eleusinian initiate, may shed some light on the matter, so to speak.[29] After his initiation, he begins to develop his thesis that the world of matter that surrounds us is not real. Instead, on a different plane of reality there exists the “true” form of every material object, represented in light energy. He believed that the best way to gain true knowledge was to try to look past the illusion of material existence and try to experience these “light bodies”.[30] This is a very Grecian approach to the concept of unity and oneness with reality; instead of acknowledging that we are one with everything, Plato says that we are being deluded into thinking that we cannot be one with everything, and he uses the concept of the lowest common denominator of light (life) energy as a means to the end of the unification of man and the universe.
For many hundreds of years, the Mysteries remained incredibly popular as way for Greeks to achieve the promise of eternal life. With the rise of the Roman Empire, we find Mystery cults from every major religion being practiced. There is no doubt that the popularity of these religions, all stemming from Vedic teachings, led directly to the rise of Christianity. The obvious comparisons--resurrection/rebirth, unity with the divine, life after death--are present. However, there is also ample evidence that Jesus himself not only partook of entheogens but also spread them to his disciples. Many of the Gnostic teachings that were not entered into the official version of the Christian Bible spoke of the process of anointing with oil being superior to baptism by water, and the oil they describe, when reproduced in our time, has been shown to have an extremely high level of THC, as well as other powerful psychoactives.[31] The term “Christ” itself means “anointed one”, and the term anointed, in ancient times, implied the use of oil. It was by anointing others, not baptizing them, that Jesus not only made them Christ-like, but Christs themselves, capable of anointing others in the same way Jesus did. There is also evidence that The Last Supper actually consisted of wine fortified with such potent psychoactive drugs as henbane and cannabis, and the “bread” was Amanita muscaria, one of the alleged soma plants of India, called teonanacatl, or “flesh of God”, by tribal Aztecs to this day.[32] Clearly, religious practitioners of all sorts could derive meaning from entheogenic experiences.
It was with the popularization of Christianity that entheogens fell from favor, eventually becoming demonized. As priests, bishops, and popes became more important, there were further barriers between god and man. They outlawed the use of entheogens because it allowed followers of the faith some control over their own souls. Those in charge of the church wanted the only way to communicate directly to god to be through them. Only through monasticism could one hope to attain a powerful personal relationship with god, but this required a complete change of lifestyle, and was considered unrealistic to most. Christian missionaries systematically wiped out religions that used substances to alter consciousness, almost out of some sense of jealousy. During the Spanish conquest of Mexico, a member of the invading force of holy men had this to say: “The orthodox Christian must accept on faith the miracle of the conversion of the bread and wine into God’s flesh and blood: that is what is meant by the Doctrine of Transubstantiation. By contrast the sacred mushroom of the Aztecs [called “flesh of god”] carries its own conviction: every communicant will testify to the miracle he has experienced.”[33]
The fear of altered states of consciousness that started to develop as a result of policies in the church has been linked to the Salem witch trials. There had come to be a regular occurrence in some cities, especially in France, known as “St. Anthony’s Fire”, in which a whole town would succumb to debilitating psychological and somatic effects. They would have painful sensations of heat in their limbs (the sensation of “fire”), their hearts would race, and sensory perceptions that ranged from distracting to incredibly disturbing would flash before their eyes. This has been linked to an outbreak of ergot in a town’s grain supply.[34] It is also thought that the concept of “witches amongst us” in general, and the Salem witch trials in specific, could be linked to the accused accidentally ingesting ergot and behaving abnormally.[35] It has even been suggested that a sort of generalized state of ergot poisoning ensued, which resulted in some simply becoming paranoid and delusional, while those who were especially susceptible to the toxins started acting noticeably strange, causing the first group, in their hallucinatory haze, to come to the conclusion that the others were witches. All of these effects took place due to the same substance found at the Eleusinian mysteries, which points to the importance of ritual when dealing with entheogens.
It cannot be emphasized enough how much Greek philosophy and Christian theology has affected the modern world. It is almost impossible to separate any function of society from these influences. It seems, though, that many of the values we hold near and dear to our hearts today were developed by the thinkers of old intentionally altering their own states of consciousness in order to peer past the trappings of the normal. If we can admit to ourselves that we have learned anything from these great minds, then we must admit to ourselves that the tools they used are effective in discovering these lessons. This is not to suggest that any of the abuses of so-called “psychedelics” today is justifiably. It is, however, a call to inquiry. It has been shown here that these substances, when used properly, can greatly enhance humankind. Let us not deny ourselves these potent tools of self-discovery. The results of ignoring these pleas is a society-wide stagnation, of losing track of the things that truly matter--that have always mattered. Let us not doom ourselves to repeat history. Let us learn from it.
[1] Spess, Soma: The Divine Hallucinogen, 8
[3] Spess, Soma: The Divine Hallucinogen, 4
[11] Metzner, Sacred Mushroom of Visions Teonanacatl, 97
[13] Smith, Cleansing the Doors of Perception, 55
[14] Spess, Soma: The Divine Hallucinogen, 96
[17] Spielvogel, Western Civilization 21
[18] Spess, Soma: The Divine Hallucinogen, 88-89
[20] Spielvogel, Western Civilization pg 80
[21] Spess, Soma: The Divine Hallucinogen, 78
[22] Spess, Soma: The Divine Hallucinogen, 79
[23] Spielvogel, Western Civilization 109
[25] Forte, Entheogens and the Future of Religion, 31
[26] Mylonas, Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries 224
[27] Forte, Entheogens and the Future of Religion 33
[29] This was a source of controvery at the time. Plato never explicitly said that he learned these truths at Eleusis, and so he was not technically in violation of the pact of silence. The Eleusinian priestesses, however, knew exactly what he was doing, but they could not accuse him, as to do so publicly would act to reveal the Mysteries, and then they would be guilty, not Plato
[30] Rachels and Rachels, The Truth About The World, 35
[33] Forte, Entheogens and the Future of Religion 99
[35] www.erowid.org/ask/ask.php?ID=2165
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Forte, Robert. Entheogens and the Future of Religion. San Francisco: The Council on Spiritual Practices, 1997
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Metzner, Ralph. Sacred Mushroom of Visions Teonanacatl. Rochester: Park Street Press, 2004
Mylonas, G. Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961
Plotkin, Mark. Tales of a Shaman’s Apprentice. New York: Penguin Books, 1994
Rachels, James and Stuart. The Truth About The World. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005
Smith, Huston. Cleansing The Doors Of Perception. Boulder: First Sentient Publications 2003
Spess, David L. Soma: The Divine Hallucinogen. Rochester: Park Street Press, 2000
Spielvogel, Jackson J. Western Civilization. Belmont: Thomson Wadsworth, 2009
Wasson, R. Gordon. The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of The Mysteries. Berkley: The R. Gordon Wasson Estate, 2008
Erowid Ergot Vault : Timeline, located at http://www.erowid.org/plants/ergot/ergot_timeline.php, The Vaults of Erowid, Accessed April 1, 2009
Ask Erowid, located at www.erowid.org/ask/ask.php?ID=2165, The Vaults of Erowid, Accessed April 1, 2009
