The Road the Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries
Now, I had been reading a book about a president on the last Sunday of the month, but, I finished that project in March. Did a recap in April. So now I’m on to the new topic. Religion. And since I had a book that covers both religion AND fit the overarching theme of mind expansion, this weeks book is The Road the Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries by R. Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann, and Carl A. P. Ruck. So let’s do this.
Now, the central thesis behind Road to Eleusis is that the mystery religions celebrated on the Thriasian Plain outside the Greek city of Eleusis, was so widely celebrated because it’s central mystery involved the use of psychedelic plants, specifically an early form of LSD as distilled from Ergot fungus.
Now to the cast of characters who wrote this book.
R. Gordon Wasson is a fairly famous mycologist, one of the earliest ones. He didn’t even like mushrooms until he married his wife, who loved them. She was a refuge from the Russian purges in the 1920’s…? Anyway, they met, married, and while out walking one days she was delighted to find a patch of mushrooms. Which he, not knowing how to tell which ones were poisonous, refused to eat. She DID know that they were not poisonous, and a new career path was born. Wasson wrote the article for Life Magazine which created a massive psilocybin tourism industry in Mexico in the 1950’s. The project started with Wasson. After his own explorations of psychedelics and the religious aspects in Mexico, began to wonder if there had been any such cause and connection with the Eleusinian mysteries. So he reached out to Hofmann. Why Hofmann?
Well, chemically, the ergonine, which is the active ingredient of Ergot, which creates the psychedelic in LSD, is the same as the ergonine found in Morning Glory seeds. Which is where the shamans in Mexico were creating ololiuhqui. So if it’s chemically the same, he went to the source, the guy who brought ergonine into the 20th century limelight.
Albert Hofmann, who famously discovered LSD for the modern man in 1938 when he synthesized it for Sandoz laboratories in Switzerland. Most famously, on April 19, 1943 he accidentally ingested a tiny bit of it before riding his bicycle home and went for one HELL OF A RIDE home, tripping balls the whole time. So he examined Wasson’s theory and found nothing inherently wrong with it. Now, he didn’t say it was definitively possible, and as I read this book, ESPECIALLY the appendix at the very end, I know why he said it was possible. We’ll circle back to that in a bit. Let’s introduce our third player, Carl A. P. Ruck.
With Wasson presenting the hypothesis, and Hofmann saying it was chemically possible, they needed a classicist to comb the literature from ancient Greece to see if there was ANY reference to any such. Which is no mean feat, since this was famously a MYSTERY religion. In point of fact, Ruck points out there were only two families in Greece who were priestly lineage if you will, to the Eleusinian mysteries. It was a family business back then.
But for all that, Ruck does a masterful job combing the literature and what we know of ancient Greece to find dozens of references to mildly hallucinogenic plants that were known to be used by the ancients. Everything from Nightshade to Henbane to Poppies are discussed.
And then, as an addition to the thirtieth anniversary edition, which is the copy I have, there is an appendix at the end, written by Peter Webster, exploring the chemistry of the Kykeon. He includes why Claviceps Purpurea is the most likely candidate for the secret ingredient, including information on crops, grain yield, how the fungus propagates and spreads, and the regularity of harvest.
And he hypothesizes that most likely the ergot would have been broken down using ashes. And makes a strong case for ashes being a worthy contribution to the creation based on Homer’s The Hymn to Demeter, wherein while looking for her daughter she is acting as a nurse to a wealthy family, and every night, she places their child in the hearth as a blessing for immortality…until the woman of the house spies this ritual, freaks out, and fucks up her sons future by screaming at a goddess. This…is never wise. But I digress.
So, there is a clear link between sacred ritual and ashes. He even makes a connection which was missed in Muraresku’s Immortality Key, but certainly is relevant, that this may be why the ashes from Palm Sunday are used in Ash Wednesday in the Catholic faith. One more bridge to the distant past was built here.
And he is….SO CLOSE….to the actual possibility. Ashes would be and could be used for such a purpose. More likely, it’s the lye that was used. Ashes are used to make Lye. Webster even discusses that lye or sodium hydroxide, which is just the chemical name for lye, is used in the lab for creating LSD.
And Lye…is OLD. Like….ancient Babylon used it for making soap, initially, but it has also been used for food preservation, for almost as long. Because it inhibits bacterial growth. Like, there’s a reason you can buy food grade lye from Amazon, and it’s not just for Lutefisk. Lye can be used for breaking down the hard, outer husks of…grain. Like say, for example…barley. Which is a major host of Claviceps purpurea. Barley is also the grain referenced in The Hymn to Demeter. Now, once you’re done with the preservation, you don’t just eat the lye soaked food. Lye is caustic. It’s an extreme base. You do need to use gloves and eye protection when using lye, masks so you don’t breath it in and fuck up your lungs. So how do you bring it back to a neutral ph 7, so it’s safe to consume? Adding anything acidic.
This one did throw me for a minute. I mean, oranges, lemons, limes, these were not horticulturally available in Greece until like 1000 C.E. Alexander the Great brought the Citron plant back with him during his adventures, but he was 5th century B.C.E. and we know the mysteries pre-date that by around 1500 to 2000 years. And then I realized the answer is literally in plain sight.
Persephone was forced to accept a split schedule, spending 1/3 of her year in the underworld with Hades after consuming a pomegranate seed. Pomegranates have a ph of around 2.93 to 3.20…on par with a lemon, whose ph is between 2 and 3. And pomegranates have been in Greece since the Minoan period…around 1650 BCE.
I can see why this book was a jumping off point for a lot more interest in the ancient mysteries. It certainly leaves the mind spinning and wondering just what was possible? What did our ancestors know about the natural world, that was recorded…and then lost with the Library at Alexandria?
Now…I am not a chemist. I am all for experimental archaeology, but before you go off experimenting on your own, please remember there’s a reason ergot poisoning is better known historically than the mysteries of Eleusis, and it’s not just because of the word mystery, or the two priestly families that kept that knowledge to themselves. Ergot can and will kill you. I’m throwing this out there not just as a CYA for myself, but because I truly don’t want someone to seriously injure themselves or others in a half cocked attempt at creating their own LSD. If you do it wrong, you can cause anything from violent hallucinations to gangrene in your limbs as the blood flow to your extremities is cut off from the ergot, to actual death. Don’t die for an experiment.
But I remain in the yes it’s possible camp. It’s entirely possible, just using what was available in the ancient Greek kitchens, to have made ancient LSD, and initiated others into the world beyond. To the tune of thousands per year.
