But there’s a rich irony here: the same religions that people are today abandoning were themselves, Muraresku believes, built on the foundation of psychedelic mysticism. In his book, he advances a renegade academic theory that claims the original sacraments of Western civilization, born in ancient Greece, were spiked with primitive, mind-altering drugs. Annual pilgrimages were made to an ancient city called Eleusia to participate in secret ceremonies where adherents consumed a potion, kykeon, that contained ergot, the same fungus that Albert Hofmann used to synthesize LSD. Similar rituals and sacraments were then adopted by the earliest Christians sects, which suggests that Christianity itself was potentially founded on a psychedelic sacrament.
Brian Muraresku - on the possibility of ancient psychedelics as the "original sacrament" - youtube
I was looking for evidence to support that controversial theory from 1978 that the Greeks were drinking some LSD-like beer, for lack of a better phrase. And so I went digging into these archaeo-botanical journals looking for any scrap of evidence for exactly that, and wound up finding it.
It turns out there was this Greek colony in what today we call Spain, and it was a sanctuary in the middle of nowhere where these mystery rites were taking place. In the sanctuary they found lots of remnants of the mysteries, like terracotta heads that seemed to have belonged to Demeter or Persephone, and a very Greek altar that came from mainland Greece. But they also found these little ceremonial vessels, these tiny chalices that look like a Holy Grail.
Researchers took these little chalices and tested them under optical microscopy and turned up the evidence for an ancient beer that was spiked with ergot. I mean, it fits precisely this crazy theory from 1978. And the only reason no one’s really heard of it is because this find was published in Catalan, the language of the archeologist, who has been on-site there since 1990, and she’s still there today.
I went out of my way to find something similar that could fit within Christianity, and lo and behold, also from 20 years ago, outside Pompeii, there was this ancient pharmacy that was unearthed. Inside the wine jars that were found there was a really unique witchy wine that was mixed with what seems to be opium, cannabis, and henbane, which is one of these very hallucinogenic Solanaceous plants. And in there also were the bones of lizards.
So there’s a potion straight out of Macbeth just sitting there in Pompeii, dated to 79 AD, exactly when the first generations of Christians would have been showing up south of Rome, to celebrate the earliest versions of the mass.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/jgqej4/early-christian-communion-wine-hallucinogenic
But we should all be paying attention to Andrew Koh, the MIT scientist who’s researching “spiked” wine and other pharmacology and medicine across the ancient world and beyond. Part of his work is tracking down fresh, uncontaminated vessels in Galilee, and elsewhere across the Mediterranean where the first Christian communities took root.
To me, the ergotized beer at Mas Castellar de Pontós and the psychedelic wine at the Villa Vesuvio are some of the most compelling finds that have ever emerged in the hunt for the original sacraments of Western civilization. I think they are game changers. Not because of their intrinsic value, or our ability to speculate on the wider use of psychedelic potions among the Ancient Greeks and early Christians. But because they should excite the academic community, our religious institutions and the public at large to find out more. Over the next ten years, this new science may actually find the Holy Grail, so to speak. And Andrew Koh is the guy who’s going to do it.
https://bigthink.com/the-past/psychedelic-christianity/
The animal dung likely helped the cannabis burn during ritual ceremonies. The analysis revealed the presence of frankincense and animal fat in the larger of the two altars.
The chemical analysis of organic molecules on the two altars was performed by two separate labs. Both labs found residues of three kinds of cannabinoids: teterahydrocannabinol, THC; cannabidiol, CBD; and cannabinol, CBN.
The findings -- published this week in the Journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University -- suggest cannabis was appreciated for its psychoactive qualities in ancient Judah. - "a scaled down version of the Biblical description of King Solomon’s Temple"
Chemical signatures of cannabis, frankincense found on Iron Age altars in Israel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8VCBNGBeqg
Psychedelics: The Ancient Religion with No Name?
https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2021/02/12/video-psychedelics-ancient-religion-no-name
8th century BC from the Tel Arad shrine. This limestone altar tested
positive for cannabis and frankincense that was being burned, they
think, in a very ritualistic way. Not because they just found that
altar. Not because it was brand new data. The altar had been sitting in a
museum in Israel since the 1960s and just hadn't been tested.
And I started reading the studies from Pat McGovern at the University of Pennsylvania. And he was actually going out and testing some of these ancient chalices. And he found some beer and wine-- that was a bit surprising.
In fact, he found beer, wine, and mead all mixed together in a couple of different places. One, on mainland Greece from the Mycenaean period, 16th century BC, and the other about 800 years later in modern day Turkey, another ritual potion that seemed to have suggested some kind of concoction of beer, wine, and mead that was used to usher the king into the afterlife.
So the closer we get to the modern period, we're starting to find beer, wine mixed with interesting things. McGovern also finds wine from Egypt, for example, in 3150 BC, wine that is mixed with a number of interesting ingredients. And I'll just list them out quickly. Like savory, wormwood, blue tansy, balm, senna, coriander, germander, mint, sage, and thyme.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pplCnzrZDpA&list=LL&index=7
there was this long tradition about these water basins that would be left in the temple in the appointed hour and appointed date and the water would be miraculous transformed into wine....
Yes, I'm very interested in the scholarship of Wouter Hanegraaff. His knowledge of the history of esotericism in the Western canon is without parallel. But I must say, when it comes to the Ancient Greeks, I owe full credit to the man whose writing completely changed my life: Peter Kingsley. I would start with In the Dark Places of Wisdom (https://www.amazon.com/dp/189035001X/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_bUzPFbN0YF6B5) and move into Reality (https://www.amazon.com/REALITY-New-2020-Peter-Kingsley/dp/1999638433/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=peter+kingsley&sr=8-1), first published in 2004, and just released in a new and updated edition last month. Peter Kingsley is a living legend. And a prophet in every sense of the word.
“You see spirits killing people. You smell burning, rotten flesh. Then you heal, you pull sickness out. You heal, heal, heal. Then you live.”
quote from the anthropology book Healing Makes the Heart Happy
You
can check out Dr. Brad Keeney's youtube channel for his interviews with
the San Bushmen female spiritual healers - and Brad's own spiritual
awakening through music training in the church. So the tradition you
tapped into via Peter Kingsley actually goes back before human language -
as Dr. Elizabeth Marshall Thomas explains.
I have a couple books that give more details. The first book is not very clear but gives an overview of some speculative research - before I really discovered and realized the "noncommutative geometry" or quantum algebra connection to the Logos. That book is called "Alchemy of Rainbow Heart Music" - and goes into my testing of qigong with the psychedelics. Just search the title to get the free pdf.
The second book is called "Ancient Advanced Acoustic Alchemy" - that is more recent with more details - and also a free pdf by searching.
This secret of "noncommutative geometry" was also recently discovered by Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff (who goes into psychedelics as well).
Let me know if you
are interested in more details and discussion - as this has been a life
long journey for me. I also trained from the African-American assistant
of Chunyi Lin who is also now a qigong master - Jim Nance of http://guidingqi.com
I found that the qigong is also equivalent to the "three gunas" of India - the oldest philosophy of India and also explained by the noncommutative phase secret of nonwestern music theory.
All the best,
drew hempel
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