Cannabis and the Soma Solution

Bennett

Cannabis and the Soma Solution

Copyright © 2010 ChrisBennett. All Rights Reserved.

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Bennett, Chris — Author

Cannabis and the Soma Solution—1st ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Epub (ISBN-13) 978-1-936296-32-3

Mobi (ISBN-13) 978-1-936296-33-0

Print (ISBN-13) 978-0-9841858-0-1 (ISBN-10) 0-9841858-0-1

1. Indo-Europeans — Religion. 2. Cannabis/Marijuana — History. 3. Cannabis/Marijuana — Religious aspects. 4. Cannabis /Marijuana-- Social aspects -- History. 5. Soma. 6. Haoma. I. Bennett, Chris. II. Title

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Publisher’s Foreword

God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

— Gen. 1:29-31

And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielding her fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

— Rev. 22:1-2

When I was growing up in the 1950s, marijuana (cannabis) was a scourge, a ne’er-do-well, the assassin of youth, the gateway drug, a thoroughly evil and nasty weed.

Then came the turbulent 1960s: what a ride! With marijuana as its main sacrament, a counterculture was born, developing community around a joint-passing circle. Explorations of ourselves and the world led to new journeys along ancient pilgrimages of spiritual understanding.

Chris Bennett’s Cannabis and the Soma Solution is a tour de force, following the trail of a hotly debated question: What was the sacred ritual drink that was written about in the Vedas and other early religious texts? This was a substance so revered that it became a God within the Hindu and Zoroastrian pantheons. Bennett’s work covers this and much more. From archaic medical journals, venerable religious texts, colonial reports and contemporary investigations, Cannabis and the Soma Solution gathers a wide range of material and weaves a very coherent whole. Giving our past a new old reality.

Om Shiva Shankara Hari Hari Ganja!

Boom Somnath!

Lord of Soma, the Herb of Vitality!

Onward to the Utmost of Futures!

Peace,

Kris Millegan

Publisher

TrineDay

August 18, 2010

Table of Contents

Cannabis and the Soma Solution

Copright page

Publisher’s Foreword

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Introduction

Quote

— 1 —

The Soma-Haoma Question

— 2 —

What Soma Was Not Was Wasson’s Mushroom Mania

No Hope for Harmaline

— 3 —

Seeds of the Soma-Haoma Cult: Ancient Europe

— 4 —

Soma: A Cannabis Concoction

Haoma

Preparation

— 5 —

The Bundles of Haoma?

— 6 —

The Archaeological Evidence

The Cult of the White Room

Seeds of Dissent

— 7 —

The Scythian Haoma-Gatherers

The Scythian Soma

The Scythian Queen

— 8 —

Hu-ma, Cannabis in China

— 9—

China’s Haomavarga

Real Mummies Wear Plaid

— 10 —

A Scent Pleasing to the Gods: Mesopotamia

The Basalt Stela of King Essarhaddon

— 11 —

Shemshemet: A Ladder to the Heavens – Egypt

Shemshemet

A Rope Ladder to the Heavens

Evidence of Hemp Entheogenic Use in Ancient Egypt

Kyphi, the Scent ‘Welcome to the Gods’

The Nepenthe

The Sacred Shrub

The Maat Plant

Egyptian Soma?

Drug Testing Mummies

— 12 —

Kannabis in Greece

— 13 —

A Drug for Hilarity: Rome

— 14 —

Zoroaster, Psychopomp or Party-Pooper?

— 15 —

Bhanga; Zoroaster’s Good Narcotic

The Bhang, Mang Debate

Zoroaster and Bhanga

Vistaspa, the Shamanic King

The Persian Origins of Heaven and Hell

— 16 —

Keneh Bosem: Sacred Plant of the Hebrews

The Holy Anointing Oil of Exodus

Samuel and Saul: The Age of Kings

Solomon’s Songs

Ezekiel

Isaiah

Jeremiah

The Queen of Heaven

The Lost Book of the Law

Ezra and the Cup of Fire

Zoroastrian-Canaanites?

— 17 —

Mithristianity

The Anointed

The Treasure of Light and the Mystery of the Five Trees

Mithristianity

Death On The Cross?

The Persian Apocalypse

Paul the Revisionist

— 18—

India, Land of Bhang

Buddhist Sobriety

The Laws of Manu

The Decline of Indra

Indra’s Soma becomes Shiva’s bhang

The Churning of the Ocean of Milk

The Sacred Smoke

Sex, Drugs and Shiva

Kali Weed

Vishnu’s Party Plant

The Bauls

India’s Festival Intoxicant

The Warriors Herb

The Sikhs and Sukhnidhaan

The People’s Medicine

The Religion of Hemp

The Kali Yuga and the Return of Shiva

— 19 —

Hashish and Islam

The Hashish-Takers

Haoma in the 19th century

The Green One

The Decline of Islamic Hashish Culture

— 20—

Hao ma in the Court

Zoroaster’s Reforms Reach into the 21st Century!

Conclusion

Appendix A

Appendix B

Appendix C

Appendix D

Appendix E

Appendix F

Illustrations

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

A very special thanks to Professor Carl Ruck and Professor Scott Littleton for taking part and offering advice in our excessive correspondence over this book and my research, and with editing advice. As well as David Malmo-Levine, Marc and Jodie Emery, Alan Piper, Jan Irvin, Dana Larsen, Daniel Quaintance, Neil Mcqueen and others who looked at early drafts of the book or helped in other ways. Thanks to John Stahl for his extensive effort in proof editing. Thank you also to High Times editor Steve Hager who has always shown an affinity and support for my research and introduced me to the publisher of this work, Kris Millegan, to whom I am again grateful

Foreword

Debate about the identity of the ancient enthoegenic plant known as Soma has gone on for centuries. Although the plant was once the primary sacrament of the dominant spiritual culture of Northern India, its identity became obscured. When I came to High Times in 1987, I first became aware of Gordon Wasson, who wrote a book asserting Soma was Amanita Muscaria, a mushroom. Gordon’s theory had already become dogma in both the psychedelic and academic communities.

That same year I created an event in Amsterdam, The Cannabis Cup, a celebration of all things cannabis with a harvest competition designed to identify the best strain of cannabis available in Amsterdam. About five years into that project, I suddenly realized I had a serious obligation to study the history of cannabis in ceremonies. This quest led me to meet Stephen and Ina May Gaskin, Wavy Gravy, Paul Krassner, Ken Kesey, Mountain Girl, Ken Babbs, and the rest of the Merry Pranksters. I recognized these people as masters of ceremony for the counterculture. I soon picked up a copy of the Penguin translation of the Rig Veda, and read the chapter on Soma. One paragraph immediately jumped out:

"Soma is a sage and a seer inspired by poetry

[S]he clothes the naked and heals all who are sick.

The lame walk, the blind see."

This clearly was a reference to cannabis. I spent the next few years investigating this story, while crafting rituals for the High Times Cannabis Cup and World Hemp Expo Extravaganja (Whee!). After I discovered Wasson worked for J.P. Morgan, once the richest person in America, I no longer placed much faith in the validity of Wasson’s research.

While many people concede corruption plays a major role in contemporary political power structures, few believe such corruption extends to our established religious institutions. Unfortunately, the truth is the creation of organized religion was the first attempt at mass mind control, and most wars over the last two thousand years have been fomented in the name of one religion or another. Obviously, spirituality and religion are different concepts and ceremonies manifest naturally in all living things. Even people who claim not to be spiritual cannot escape the reality that everything in our universe is somehow connected.

Our modern counterculture has its roots in New Orleans because Congo Square was the only place where people of all colors and religions could gather together to hold ceremonies. When people of diverse cultural backgrounds join together to create new ceremonies, a form of cultural hybrid vigor ensues. This hybrid vigor is responsible for jazz, blues, rock’n’roll and the improvisational-based culture we know today as the counterculture.

It’s no accident cannabis played an essential role in shaping this culture, for cannabis use was at the very foundation of almost every major religious institution in history. Yet almost no one knows this history because there has been a longstanding cultural war on shamanic plants and the insights and connections to spirituality that they offer. This cultural war was created to sever our spiritual connections. The best evidence we have today is the relentlessly male nature of all the religious institutions. By removing the natural male/female balance from spirituality, religions were created that manifested war, bigotry and hatred, a cultural heritage we still live with today.

The counterculture is a baby, infant spirituality that may someday blossom into a full-blown religion. When this happens, Jack Herer will probably be recognized as one of the founding saints. In fact, it was Herer who first inspired me to examine the corruption of our religious institutions. Chris Bennett, however, will someday be recognized as the most important religious scholar of our time. Just as Herer revealed the great lies behind hemp prohibition, Bennett has unveiled the great lies behind our established religions and their attempts to blot out the true history of the ceremonial use of cannabis.  The counterculture is not anything new, just a natural emanation of true spirituality. Cannabis is the sacrament of this culture and always has been. Unfortunately, we’re currently trapped in a system that manufactures war to sustain economic growth.  If this unfortunate dynamic is ever going to change, it will be due to the growth of the counterculture. Bennett continues to fight for our religious right to cannabis, both in the courts in Canada and in his groundbreaking research. This is one of the most important books you will ever read.

And if you go to Kumbeh Mela, the sadus will undoubtedly tell you the identity of Soma was never lost by them (and then pass a chillum to you)

Sincerely yours,

Steven Hager

June 16, 2010

Woodstock, New York

Introduction

Generally, when discussing the role of cannabis in history, most people’s minds go back to the early Sixties, or at most the reefer madness of the Jazz age in the of the 1930’s. Few people realize the pivotal role that marijuana played during the foundation of ancient civilizations and still existing cultures. This Book fills part of that gap of historical knowledge, and is hoped to help better define humanity’s millennia old indigenous relationship with one of our oldest plant allies.

The role of cannabis in the ancient world was manifold: a food, fibre, medicine, and as a magically empowered religious sacrament. Here the focus will be on archaic references to cannabis use as both a medicine and a sacrament, rather than as a source of food or fibre, and its use in this manner by a variety of Ancient cultures will be examined. The history of cannabis is one of the longest chapters in the study of man’s desire for intoxication (Sarton, 1993).

Indeed, and this is a subject that this author has visited in two other books, Green Gold the Tree of Life: Marijuana in Magic and Religion (1995), as well as Sex, Drugs, Violence and the Bible (2001), along with numerous published articles on the same subject. One thing that has taken this project far beyond the scope of these previous works has been the progression of the Internet, which was totally unavailable during the writing of the first book, and still in its puberty by the time of the second. Now, the Internet has become a virtual cyber Logos, and tools such as Google Books enables a savvy research to source the indices and pages of what must the contents of tens of libraries of books at the push of a button. This advantage is not only true in regards to my own work, but is also a clear advantage over earlier authors who have touched on some of the subjects advanced in this considerable volume.

Shamanism, the Faith of experience, marks mankind’s transition from dreamtime into experiential-self-reflective-time, and is the common source of all Religions, and psychoactive plants played a pivotal role in this relationship. The very term ‘shaman’ itself comes from the Siberian Tungus ‘saman’ who were known for ingesting Amanita muscaria mushroom to achieve shamanic trance (Von Bibra, 1855). Before recorded history, and to the present day, powerful plant-entheogens used for ritual and healing purposes, have played a paramount role in shamanism world-wide. The tomb of a shaman from the sixth millennium B.C. in Catal Huyuk contained plants with psychedelic properties (Grof, 1984). As recorded in the Encyclopaedia Brittannica: Though the idea may be strange to most modern worshippers, drugs have played an important role in the history of religions. The ceremonial use of wine and incense in contemporary ritual is probably a relic of a time when the psychological effects of these substances were designed to bring the worshipper into closer touch with supernatural forces (Clark, 1978). Almost without exception the drugs and intoxicants found in nature or discovered by primitive technology were used more or less as the nucleus of rituals and ceremonials of a profoundly religious character… (Vetter, 1958).

In relation, Andrew Sherratt, one of a growing number of archaeologists discussing the role of psychoactive substances in ancient cultures noted that "The deliberate seeking of psychoactive experience is likely to be at least as old as anatomically (and behaviorally) modern humans: One of the characteristics of Homo sapiens…. Psychoactive substances can be seen as integral to the constitution of culture. They have been fundamental to the nature of sociality and an active element in the construction of religious experience…" (Sherratt, 1995).

Before man knew fire, he had grubbed for roots which, he realized through his dim perceptions, not only nourished but also soothed or excited him. As century moved onto century these bits of bark of leaf and fruit took on meaning. Some healed, some killed, some offered momentary peace or even an occasional magnificent glimpse into another realm…. So the herbalist and soothsayer came into being, and the conjurer and wizard became the leader of the tribe. (Mathison, 1958)

Little known, and the basis for much of this book is the important part that cannabis had in the shamanism of the ancient world, a relationship, which according to the archaeological record alone, can be shown to stretch back 5,500 years ago. The oldest archaeological evidence for the cultural use of hemp points to it originally having been used in a shamanic context (Ratsch 2005).

Unfortunately, due to the deterioration of plant matter, archaeological evidence is sparse and Pollen records are frequently unreliable, due to the difficulty in distinguishing between hemp and hop pollen (Scott, et al., 2004). Despite these difficulties in identification some remains of cannabis fibre, cannabis beverages utensils, seeds of cannabis, and burnt cannabis have been located (burnt cannabis has been carbonized and this preserves identifiable fragments of the species).

Fortunately other avenues of research regarding the ancient use of cannabis remain open, and etymological evidence regarding cannabis use in a number of cultures has been widely recognized and accepted. Indeed, the modern term "cannabis comes from an ancient Proto- Indo-European root word, kanap; the an from this root is believed to have left traces in many modern terms for cannabis, such as French chanvre, German hanf, Indian bhang, Dutch Canvas, Greek Kannabis," etc.

Pointing out the widespread religious use of hemp throughout the ancient Near East, amongst the Babylonians, Assyrians, Scythians and Hebrews, as well as the early spread of its cultic use from northern Europe, to Siberian Asia, China, India, Asia minor and Southeast Asia, the famed anthropologist Weston La Barre, suggested that cannabis was part of a religio-shamanic complex of at least Mesolithic age, in parallel with an equally old shamanic use of Soma… (La Barre, 1980).

La Barre mentions Soma, an ancient psychoactive beverage that was the source of the Vedic religion in India, and the Mazdean religion of ancient Persia, where it was known as Haoma. This ancient sacrament was one of the most widely used inebriants of the ancient world. The identity of Soma-Haoma has been a long time matter of debate. La Barre, unfortunately accepted R. Gordon Wasson’s identification of Soma, as the Amanita muscaria mushroom, which has remained the prevailing view since the early 1970s. As well, David Stophlet Flattery and Martin Schwartz have hypothesized that the Persian Haoma was Peganum harmala, or Syrian rue, and this designation has held to be equally as strong as that of Wasson’s. But what if one were be able to show that these identifications were incorrect, and that the ancient Soma-Haoma, was in fact cannabis? This would mean that Hemp was the most celebrated religious sacrament in the history of humanity, and that its use would be twice as widespread as La Barre has suggested for either cannabis or Soma!

As botanist Mark Merlin noted three and a half decades ago in his short but commendable presentation on the subject:

…[W]hat was the famous Soma plant that played such an important part in the formation of the Vedic civilization? Was Soma really the hemp plant? There are many evidences to suggest such an identification…. [I]f it were possible to substantiate, beyond any doubt, that the plant source of Soma juice was Cannabis sativa, the diffusion of hemp into India would seem to be deeply significant. (Merlin, 1973)

Writing in the early seventies, when so little information on the matter was available in the West, Merlin lamented that even with all the circumstantial evidence that I have collected and will list to support this identification, it would be extremely naive and in a real sense impetuous to dogmatically assert this theory (Merlin, 1973). As for this author, let’s just say I am feeling slightly more impetuous about the information collected for this considerably larger work, and I am confident the reader will fully understand why by the time they reach the closing pages of this book.

In The Tree in Religion or Myth, it is noted that:

The drinking of vegetable juices, fermented or otherwise, was no doubt one of the means by which early races were accustomed to produce dreams and visions, and so, in their view, to get themselves possessed by or put into communication with a spirit. It was natural, therefore, for them to assume that the spirit in question had entered into them with the drug, and was therefore present in it and in the plant from which it was derived… this… was one of the chief factors in the origin of plant worship in general, a main reason why plants yielding intoxicating agents, and hence other plants, came to be regarded as containing supernatural beings. (Philpot, 1897)

Nowhere in the history of the world, has such a relationship been more identifiable, than with that of ancient Humanity’s relationship with the long lost Soma-Haoma, which was at the same time a plant, a God and the sacrament ingested by that God’s cult.

It is extremely difficult for the person who is not acquainted by actual study with the history of religions to understand how a plant can become deified on account of the peculiar medical or intoxicating effects which it is supposed to possess. We may read in the Vedic literature page after page of the virtues of the Soma plant and the way in which it affects both gods and men, and becomes itself an object of divine worship, but since the plant itself is unknown, and only represented in the present day by a substitute, we have no means of observing experimentally the potencies which the Aryans attached to the original plant and its juices. (Harris, 1927)

In this volume we shall show that what once was lost, has now been found, as we explore the story of the Soma-Haoma cult from its origins in the Indo-European use of cannabis, and how that tradition spread with them throughout the ancient world, even influencing the Biblical tradition and other still existing ancient faiths, until its eventual suppression and consequent disappearance.

Ever since the Aryans crossed the Hindu Kush into India in prehistoric times, the mystery has persisted. And ever since Sanskrit was discovered by Europeans in the eighteenth century, an apparently insoluble riddle has lain at the heart of Vedic studies: the identity of the mysterious, sacred psychotropic plant of the Brahmans called soma. (La Barre, 1980)

The Vedic God Indra, whom the Soma ritual was dedicated to, riding upon his elephant Airvata

Sanctify Soma our mind, our heart, our intellect; and may thy worshippers delight in thy friendship, like cattle in fresh pasture, in thine exhilaration (produced) by the sacrificial food; for thou art mighty….

Like the winds violently shaking the trees, the draughts of Soma have lifted me up, for I have often drunk of the Soma

The praise of the pious has come to me like a lowing cow to her beloved calf, for I have often drunk of the Soma

Both heaven and earth are not equal to one half of me, for I have often drunk of the Soma

I am the sun, the greatest of the great, raised to the firmament; for I have often drunk of the Soma

— Rig Veda Tenth Mandala [excerpts]

x

— 1 —

The Soma-Haoma Question

The History of the search for Soma is, properly, the history of Vedic studies in general, as the Soma sacrifice was the focal point of the Vedic religion… everything of a mystical nature within that religion is pertinent to the identity of the plant.

— (Doniger O’Flaherty, 1968)

The identity of the ancient Soma is undoubtedly one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in the field of religious history. Common in both the religious lore of ancient India and in Persia where it was known as Haoma, the plant was considered a God and when pressed and made into a drink the ancient worshipper who imbibed it gained the powerful attributes of this God.

The whole Sama-Veda is devoted to this moon-plant worship; an important part of the Avesta is occupied by Hymns to Homa. This great reverence paid to the plant, on account of its intoxicating qualities, carries us back to a region where the vine was unknown, and to a race to whom intoxication was so new an experience as to seem a gift of the gods. Wisdom appeared to come from it, health, increased power of body and soul, long life, victory in battle, brilliant children. What Bacchus was to the Greeks, the Divine Haoma, or Soma, was to the primitive Aryans. (Clarke, 1883)¹

As Zenaide A. Ragozin noted in his 1895 edition of Vedic India, Soma was unquestionably the greatest and holiest offering of the ancient Indian worship:

The Gods drink of the offered beverage; they long for it; are nourished by it and thrown into joyous intoxication… The beverage is divine, it purifies, it is a water of life, gives health and immortality, prepares the way to heaven, destroys enemies, etc.,

The fierceness of the drink, its exhilarating and inspiring properties, are especially expatiated upon. The chosen few who partake it… give most vivid expressions to the state of exaltation, of intensified vitality, which raises them above the level of humanity. (Ragozin, 1895)

The origins of Soma’s use goes back into the shadowy time of pre-history and to the common Aryan ancestors of the Persian Zoroastrian religion, and the Vedic religion of India². It may seem strange to some readers that fair skinned Aryans are the source of both the Vedic Soma cult in India, and Avestan Haoma cult in Persia, but this is clearly the case. Fair skinned, yellow haired Indra, the celebrated Soma drinking God of the Vedas, clearly originated as a white man’s God.

At the swift draught the Soma-drinker waxed in might, the Iron one with yellow beard and yellow hair. (RV.10.96)

Fair cheeks hath Indra, Maghavan, the Victor, Lord of great host… (RV.3.30)

As I.J.S. Taraporewala explained:

The Aryans (using the word in its narrower sense, as comprising the two peoples, the Indians and the Iranians, who called themselves by that proud name) had lived together for long ages in one land, had spoken one tongue and had followed one religion. Where that ancient Motherland of the Aryans was, we have no means of determining, but it seems to have been a region far to the North, which, according to the Iranian tradition, was overwhelmed and destroyed by ice and snow. At a later period the two main stocks of these people migrated southwards, still keeping together, and after many generations of wandering, ultimately arrived in the neighbourhood of the high mountainous region which we know as the Pamir table-land today. They spread around from that region into the lower fertile and salubrious valleys of the south, west and east. The lands called by us Afghanistan and Bactria were the regions where the Aryans had long carried on their activities.

The language which these people spoke was the ancient tongue of which the language of the Vedic Hymns and that of the Gathic Chants of Zarathustra were both branches. The exceedingly close resemblance between the two has been noted by every student of Aryan philology. So close are these two languages that a mere phonetic change (or, to put it popularly, a slight mispronunciation) often suffices to translate a passage from the one into the other, keeping at the same time the sense absolutely intact. The differences are not greater than what are found between two ‘dialects’ of one original tongue.

The religious traditions inherited by these two great peoples, the Hindus and the Persians were, therefore, the common Aryan traditions…. Haoma is … [an] Indo-Iranian Deity, being the Vedic Soma. In the Avesta He is not a mere personification of the Soma-plant, but a great Teacher who appeared in the very early days to lead forward our infant humanity… Some scholars believe that it was He who introduced the Haoma-(Soma-) Cult among the Aryans and thus gave His own name to the plant and its juice which formed an important item of the Indo-Iranian ritual. The Hindu and Zoroastrian rituals turn entirely upon the offering of the juice of this plant. (Taraporewala, 1926)

This common ancestry accounts for the many similarities in the Indian and Persian cosmologies and language as can be seen in the surviving religious texts the Hindu Rig Veda, and the Persian, Avesta, and especially to their use of the sacred plant known in India as Soma, and in Persian Haoma. As Dasturji Dr. Maneckji N. Dhalla explained of the connections between Haoma and Soma:

…[T]he resemblance between… [the Haoma] and the Soma cult is so great that they are spoken of in identical words. We shall quote a few of the more important passages to show the close parallelism between the Haoma-Soma cult. The celestial plant, it is said, was brought upon earth by birds. It is girishta or girijata and parvata vrddhah, say the Vedic texts, and the Avesta says it is bareshnush paiti gairinam and paurvatahva viraodha, that is, growing on mountains. It is Av. zairi, and Skt. hari, meaning green or golden. It is passed through a sieve of the hairs of the tail of the sacred bull among the Iranians and from that made of sheep wool among the Indians. The extracting process is called Av. havana, and Skt. savana. It is Av. haomahe madho, and Skt. somyam madhu, ‘sweet juice of Haoma-Soma.’ It is Av. baeshaza, and Skt. bheshaja, ‘healing.’ The plant is deified among both and then it is called Av. hvaresh, and Skt. svarsh ‘celestial,’ it is Av. hukhratu, and Skt. Sukratu, ‘posessed of good intelligence.’ It is Av. verethraja, and Skt. vrtraha, ‘victorious.’³ (Dhalla, 1936)

Unfortunately, over the millennia that have passed since these ancient texts were composed, the identity of the original Haoma\Soma was forgotten. Whatever plant was used by the Indo-Aryans in the early centuries it is certain that it was later replace by other botanical species (Eliade, 1978). As has been noted, the subjects of psychoactive substances in magical rituals, even in the historic period, are hard to follow, as to both Priests and shamans alike, magic revealed is secrets lost. As Rendel Harris explained, at first the use of ritual consumption of Soma was an event for the general public, but this soon changed:

Then later the club, formed by the initiates, will assert itself against the drink; the democracy of the new draught will disappear; the god-intoxicated mystics will become a caste; the Aryan in the street will no longer make nor drink the beverage: it will come under the rule, ‘For the priests only’ and ‘By the priests only:’ in the beginning it appears to have been more widely diffused and more commonly enjoyed. The religious experience becomes transferred from the many to the few; one must not over-populate the upper atmospheres! Gods there; Brahmans here: but not too many of them. (Harris, 1927)

Detailed descriptions of the plant thus likely became a form of sacred knowledge and therefore not privy to the masses administered to by the priesthood. "Apparently for some time members of the priestly clique limited the knowledge and use of Soma to their own esoteric activities. Thus a small influential segment of ancient Indian society controlled religion and the distribution of the Soma plant (Merlin, 1972). In the end it could be the case, as it appears with the soma of the ancient Vedic religion, that the priests kept it so secret that they eventually lost the knowledge themselves" (Taylor, 1985).⁴ Some scholars believe that it was an extinct variety of Indian hemp, others that it was some other long forgotten plant found only in the Himalayan foothills. It was already becoming scarce at the time of the Brahmanas, [composed 600 B.C., onwards] and the Aitareya Brahmana even suggests a substitute (Sharma, 1985).

As Vedic scholar Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty explains, the confusion caused by this situation was further compounded as time went on:

Not knowing what plant the poets of the RgVeda had in mind, modern scholars have often jumped to the conclusion that the hymns are vague and obscure in speaking of soma. The Brahmanas, dealing as they do with involved chains of substitutes, add to the confusion in almost geometric progression; the few Avestan parallels are rendered more or less useless by the overlay of purely Iranian elements; and by the time the Europeans enter the scene, with their fixed ideas and various axes to grind, the situation approaches bedlam…. there seems to have been little contact between botanists and Vedists, Indian Scholars and Europeans. (Doniger O’Flaherty, 1968)⁵

Fortunately for this author, writing in the age of the internet, access to the works of all such fields are much more easily accessible. Authorities from a variety of areas of expertise, with the inclusion of archaeology, will be cited in order to help establish the position that the original Haoma/Soma was a hemp preparation.

Although modern descendants of these ancient cults still perform the rituals of their ancestors, placebo non-entheogenic sacraments and in many cases the mildly stimulating plant Ephedra,⁶ is used as Haoma by modern Zoroastrians, and the non-intoxicating Sarcostemma acidum, consecrated in current Indian rites as Soma. But ephedra and Sarcostemma acidum, along with other substitutions clearly do not live up to all of the claims about the Soma/Haoma as described in the Vedas and Avestan texts⁷. Ephedra is a branching, dioecious shrub, which has a sharp, disgusting taste. Ephedra contains the active alkaloids pseudoephedrine and ephedrine, which are used in a number of cold and other medicines; as well, ephedrine is the base of methamphetamine, or ’speed,’ and for this it has come under legal scrutiny in recent times.

The qualities of Soma are given in poetic detail and the ancient composers’ love and admiration for the plant can still be felt thousands of years after the texts were composed. In a spirit similar to that of the Catholic Eucharist, Soma/Haoma, was prepared in a sacred rite and then bestowed upon the pious to give them spiritual inspiration, wisdom, courage, health and other benefits.

The descriptions and praises of the plant left to us by antiquity have led numerous scholars to speculate on what the botanical identity of the original plant was. Western research into the identity of Soma/Haoma began in the 18th century, "but in the relatively short time that has elapsed since the investigation was initiated, over 100 species have been suggested as the source of Soma (Merlin, 1972). With the rather unusually large number of notoriously varied candidates for Soma and with the controversies arising from a series of misconceptions and subjectivity-centered interpretations, it is no wonder that even genuine students of the Soma problem become baffled and ‘lost’ themselves" (Swamy, 1976).

Amongst the many suggestions, besides those already mentioned, are milkweed, Sarcostemma acidum, mandrake, rhubarb, ginseng, opium Poppies, blue lotus, Stropharia cubensis, wine or liquor⁸ and the still used ephedra. Most popularly and more relative to what shall be discussed here, Syrian rue, the Amanita muscaria mushroom and cannabis have been suggested. As the editors of the authoritative Encyclopaedia Britannica have recorded on the subject;

One of the pharmacological mysteries is the nature of Zoroastrian haoma and the early Hindu soma, both sacred drinks made from plants. Their source may have been the Amanita Muscaria mushroom, the mind-affecting chemicals of which pass into the urine with their properties very little diminished; there are scriptural references to sacred urine drunk as the source of divine insights. Allusions to twigs and branches of haoma, however, suggest other plants, perhaps hemp. The mushroom, which does not grow in hot countries, may have been introduced to India, by Aryan invaders from the north; subsequently, other plants may have been substituted until their identity was confused and lost. (Encyclopaedia Britannica)⁹

References to its rich color and wonderful fragrance, the blissful state produced by Soma and the quantity and extent to which it was used also limits the number of potential candidates, as some of the botanical suggestions produce effects which could be considered far from blissful, and in some cases, if ingested in the quantities in which Soma was consumed, would have been toxic.

Before moving onto the reasons why the origins of the Soma/Haoma cult can be found amongst the early users of cannabis, a quick overview of the most popular candidates, Amanita muscaria and ephedra, is required in order to demonstrate why neither of these other substances offer a suitable answer in comparison to cannabis. The ideas that Vedic Soma was the Amanita muscaria mushroom as put forth by R. Gordon Wasson, and the Avestan Haoma was Syrian rue, as suggested by co-authors David Stophlet Flattery and Martin Schwartz, have become so pervasive in academic circles, in some cases seemingly accepted unquestionably as fact, that a thorough examination of the flaws in these theories is needed before moving on to a more realistic presentation. As well, an analysis of their reasons for dismissing cannabis as a candidate is also in order.

¹ Clarke saw the intoxicating fermented juice of the plant Asclepias acida as the identity of the Soma/Haoma, but few have since agreed with this designation (Clarke, 1883). Since, however, soma-haoma is described as being immediately intoxicating, its effects could not be dependent on alcohol [or fermentation]. There must have been some narcotic substance in it (Aalto, 1998).

² The Aryan invasion of India is believed to have happened in two distinct and differing phases; the first came with Aryan tribes which entered India through the passes of the Hindu Kush, passing through South Afghānistān, and the valleys of the Kābul, Kurram, and Gumal rivers, finally settling in the N.W. Frontier Province and the Punjab. These tribes were nomadic groups accompanied by their wives and families; the second invasion was slightly more aggressive, coming through Gilgit and Chitral, and was carried out by men unaccompanied by women, who, therefore, needed to form alliances on a wholesale scale with the Dravidians, thus these men intermarried taking native wives. Although some indigenous Vedists dispute the Aryan invasion and origins of the Vedas, the similarity between the Yasnas and Soma/Haoma is undisputable.

³ "Bhanga [hemp] is also called… vijaya (the victorious)" (Greirson, 1893). Bhang also means ‘intoxicating’ and both Haoma and bhang share epithets meaning madini (the intoxicating), and, as shall be discussed, Soma is even referred to under the title of ‘bhang’in the Rig Veda.

⁴ From a quote in (Thorne, 1998).

⁵ In R. Gordon Wasson’s Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality (1968).

⁶ "The oldest date for a potentially psychoactive plant in a cultural context is from the Neanderthal burial site at Shanidar Cave in northern Iraq where pollen of an Ephedra species (E. Altissima Willk., cf. Leroi-Gourhan 1975; Solecki 1971) was dated to more than 50,000 B.C. (Solecki, 1975)…. Ephedra altissima yields ephedrine, an alkaloid that produces sympatomimetic and amphetamine-like effects (Teuscher 1979), as well as euphoria (Wenke 1986: 579). Therefore it may have served as an entheogen for ritualistic, spiritual purposes, and/or a medicinal" (Merlin, 2003). [Although, as Merlin notes, there is speculation that these plant remains may have not been placed by Neanderthals, but rather put there by burrowing rodents in the area that have been known to store flowers and seeds in their burrows].

⁷ "Harry Falk [1989]… argued that the essential effect sought from soma/haoma was not hallucinatory, but precisely that produced by ephedrine, namely inducing alertness and awareness. He cited as evidence the previously overlooked use of soma in the highly esteemed night-time Atirâtra ritual as both a sleep-preventing drink for the priests and a stimulating offering to Vrátra-fighting Indra. The alkaloid ephedrine is somewhat milder yet more prolonged in action than adrenaline… The basic alkaloid is water-soluble and, because of climactic conditions, its full effect could be enjoyed only in Situ, i.e., in the mountainous borderlands between India and Greater Iran, where the ephedrine-yielding species of ephedra (Ephedra gerardiana, procera, and intermedia) grow. This limited distribution of potent ephedra would explain the post-Vedic question put to the soma vendor, whether his merchandise was harvested on mount Mûjavat… Interestingly, a side-effect of ephedrine, the hindering of urination, coincides with the priestly fear to die of urine-retention" (Taillieu,, 2002).

⁸ Generally discounted outright by most researchers as no fermentation process is indicated in the texts describing Soma/Haoma’s preparation, although the use of alcoholic beverages infused with psychoactive plants, such as cannabis, mandrake and henbane was surprisingly widespread in the ancient world.

⁹ Pharmacological Cults’ Alcohol and Drug Consumption

— 2 —

What Soma Was Not Was Wasson’s Mushroom Mania

Undoubtedly, currently the most popular candidate for Soma has been the Amanita muscaria mushroom. The Fly agaric theory was originally proposed by the banker and mycologist R. Gordon Wasson, and has been widely accepted by a number of scholars, like poet-philosopher Robert Graves, Huston Smith,[1] Clark Heinrich and anthropologist Weston La Barre.

The careful scholarship of the dedicated amatuer mycophile R. Gordon Wasson reads like an exciting scientific, detective story. Moreover, his willingness to pursue the quest through the wide range of linguistics, archaeology, folklore, philology, ethnobotany, plant ecology, human physiology, and prehistory constitutes a object lesson to all holistic professional students of man. (La Barre, 1980)

Indeed, even one of the most in-depth anthropological studies of hemp, Cannabis and Culture,[2] included an essay on the role of cannabis in India, where the author concluded;

Some scholars believe that soma, the mysterious plant, is cannabis… however, the idea has been strongly opposed by Wasson… Wasson’s scholarly analysis of numerous verses from the Rg Veda and ethnohistorical and entheobotanical data advance very convincing arguments for identifying soma as the mushroom, fly-agaric (Amanita muscaria). (Hasan, 1975)

Before beginning this pointed dismissal of R. Gordon Wasson’s theory of Amanita muscaria as the original Haoma/Soma it should be noted that Wasson’s overall contributions to the study of the role of psychoactives in the birth of religion are more than remarkable.

My greatest criticism of Wasson’s book Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality is that for the most part it only deals with about half the evidence; the Avestan material is only dealt with in a few passages; and a large part of the Vedas are purposely left out of the discussion!

I exclude from consideration the latest hymns to have been written, the last to be included in the canon before it was closed. These hymns differ from the others considerably in tone and language, and there is reason to believe there are substitutes, which I think had always been occasionally used, and now almost completely replaced the Soma sacrifice. These hymns are mostly in Mandala X from 85 through 191. (Wasson, 1970)

Wasson favours the Rig Veda (or rather parts of it) over the Avesta with the acknowledgment and explanation that Religiously and linguistically the Avesta and RgVeda are siblings. The text of the Rgveda is, however, much purer owing to its marvellous preservation through the ages by the disciplined human memory (Wasson, 1970). One is left wondering who Wasson felt had preserved the tradition of the Avesta! Having read translations of both texts, what I could see was a profound similarity in both content and style.

Indeed, throughout his book, it is almost as if Wasson purposely, or unconsciously, excluded all potential textual references that conflicted with his own view. Moreover, he even acknowledges that Soma substitutes, had always been occasionally used, as he clearly recognized that the passages in the remaining texts from the Vedas which he allowed for his study (when it fit his view) indicated a variety of the other candidates for the Soma, more so than did his own champion, or rather champignon! As well, Wasson only excludes the remaining texts when they don’t support his opinion, but when he’s able to find the rare passage that he can interpret in favour of his hypothesis, he quotes quite freely from it, and he does this numbers of times in Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality.

As Wasson conveniently states: In the Rg Veda (excluding the latter half of the Mandala X, last to be admitted to the canon) there is no reference to the root of the Soma plant, nor its leaves, nor its blossoms, nor its seed (Wasson, 1970). Wasson’s often repeated mistake here is based solely on omission. It should be noted that only a few of the passages that are left in Wasson’s exclusive study deal with the plant Soma, many deal with the beverage Soma, the God Soma, and the Moon (which was viewed as the celestial goblet of Soma from which the God’s drank, and which was continually replenished by the Sun). By the exclusion of the Rig Veda’s Tenth Mandala, which holds the most descriptive account of the plant Soma in the Vedas, Wasson purposely limited the passages discussed to those which fit his view. Alternatively, in the Vedic Index, MacDonell and Kieth (1958) associated the Vedic term naicasakha with Soma, and this indicates branches (or twigs and leaves) hanging down, which would again give indications of cannabis.[3] Vedic scholar, Dr. N. Warhadpande (who, as shall be discussed, identifies cannabis as the source of the ancient Vedic elixir) also felt Vedic descriptions indicated branches and leaves (Waradpende, 1995).

Flattery and Schwartz rightly noted that Wasson’s view that the Soma was a mushroom and had no leaves, branches or roots, was due to the fact that the soma referred to in the RgVeda and adduced by Wasson as pertaining to the mushroom is the liquid extract (soma pavamana) or the deity Soma, and hence not the soma plant at all (Flattery & Schwartz, 1989). On one of the few occasions when Wasson deals with the Avestan literature, his textual interpretation of the passage (which he interprets as identifying the growth of a mushroom, with no stems, roots or branches) is, in the very least, original, as can be seen from a comparison with translations from the Harvard University website[4] and an Avestan website.[5]

Increase by my word in all (your) roots

in all (your) buds, and in all (your) protuberances!

Grow (then) because I pray to thee on all thy stems and branches,

in all thy shoots (and tendrils) increase thou through my word!

—Y.10.5

Swell, (then,) by my word!

In all thy stalks, and all thy shoots, and in all thy sprouts.

— Wasson Y.10.5

Dieter Taillieu, an expert on Vedic and Indo-European studies states that there seems no doubt that the haoma depicted in the Hôm Yašt is a normal, chlorophyll-bearing plant: apart from its stock color epithet ‘yellow, golden, green’ (Av. zairi- and zairi.gaona-, cf. Skt. hari-) this is suggested most strongly by the mention of stems, shoots and branches (Av… Y. 10.5).

Haoma is further called ‘having tender/pliant’ [stem]… (Av… Y. 9.16) or ‘having tasty…’ [flavour] pure soma, however, is not; ‘sweet,’ Skt. mádhu-, but ‘sharp, astringent,..’. In favor of the fly-agaric theory stalk (Wasson, 1968) and fibre/flesh...were proposed, but this ignores the expressed necessity of pounding the [stalk]… which seems relevant only in the case of fibrous or hard plant material (twigs, roots, seed)…. Reality has been sought in haoma’s epithet tall (Av. bə rə zant-, Y. 10.21, Vd. 19.19;…)[6]. (Taillieu, 2002)

As Weston La Barre (who accepted Wasson’s theory hook, line and sinker) attempted to explain of the differences between Soma and Haoma; the plant that some students identify as haoma is apparently an herbaceous plant (La Barre, 1980). Indeed, unable to find compatibility between Haoma and Soma, La Barre went on to suggest that the Haoma of the Avesta was a replacement for Wasson’s Vedic Soma-mushroom, which he believed was used by the ancestors of both cults.

Wasson states Soma is unique amongst the Gods of the Vedas, Soma was at the same time a god, a plant, and the juice of the plant. So far as we know, Soma is the only plant ever deified (Wasson, 1970). I concur with this statement, but then it is in fact evidence in favour of cannabis as being the original plant identified as Soma, and indication of this comes from India itself as a reading of the historical record shows in the following passage from The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission Report (1894) on The Worship of the Hemp Plant:

The custom of worshipping the hemp plant, although not so prevalent as that of offering hemp to Shiva and other deities of the Hindus, would nevertheless appear from the statements of the witnesses to exist to some extent in some provinces of India. The reason why this fact is not generally known may perhaps be gathered from such statements as that of Pandit Dharma Nand Joshi, who says that such worship is performed in secret. There may be another cause of the denial on the part of the large majority of Hindu witnesses of any knowledge of the existence of a custom of worshipping the hemp plant in that the educated Hindu will not admit that he worships the material object of his adoration, but the deity as represented by it. The custom of worshipping the hemp plant, though not confined to the Himalayan districts or the northern portions of India alone, where the use of the products of the hemp plant is more general among the people, is less known as we go south. Still even far south, in some of the hilly districts of the Madras Presidency and among the rural population, the hemp plant is looked upon with some sort of veneration…. There is a passage quoted from Rudrayanmal Danakand and Karmakaud in the report on the use of hemp drugs in the Baroda State, which also shows that the worship of the bhang plant is enjoined in the Shastras. It is thus stated: The god Shiva says to Parvati—‘Oh, goddess Parvati, hear the benefits derived from bhang. The worship of bhang raises one to my position.’ In Bhabishya Puran it is stated that on the 13th moon of Chaitra (March and April) one who wishes to see the number of his sons and grandsons increased must worship Kama (Cupid) in the hemp plant, etc.[7]

Conceivably, the elements of plant deification in these independent small districts could be indications of a more ancient surviving tradition. Anthropologists often look to the folklore and customs of the common folk for evidence of the survival of more ancient traditions. Thus, in regard to Soma being the only plant ever deified in the Old World, either Wasson is wrong in his statement: for if cannabis is not the Soma, then in the area he is writing about we have evidence of another plant being worshipped; or he is wrong about the identification of the Fly agaric, and we have more evidence in favour of cannabis being the Soma through its continued deification in the surviving traditions of the common folk who would have been less influenced by the eventual Vedic reforms which led to the plant’s disappearance than their more cosmopolitan counterparts.

Possibly aware of some of these connections, Wasson himself discounted the cannabis Soma theory with an arrogant sounding comment that comes off as something written during the British Raj!

In 1921 an Indian advanced the notion that Soma, after all, was nothing but bhang, the Indian name for marijuana, Cannabis sativa, hemp, hashish. He conveniently ignored the fact that the Rg Veda placed Soma only on the high mountains, where hemp grows everywhere; and that the virtue of Soma lay in the stalks, whereas it is the resin of the unripened pistillate buds of hashish that transport one into the beyond; or, much weaker, the leaves, which are never mentioned in the Rg Veda. (Wasson, 1970)

Without digressing too far, as we will be returning to the subject in detail later, it should be noted that Wasson goes to great lengths to properly reference other authors and researchers, but when he comes to this topic, he disrespectfully drops all sense of propriety and refers to an indigenous researcher on the subject, as simply an Indian disregarding his learned input! Little wonder that Wasson’s theory has accumulated no visible support amongst Vedists in India.

The Indian was Braja Lal Mukherjee’s and as an indigenous researcher he could read the actual Vedas in the language they were written; Mukherjee was the first amongst a number of Vedic researchers who suggested bhang (hemp) as a candidate for Soma. Mukherjee’s 1921 article The Soma Plant was published in The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain & Ireland. It should also be noted that, as shall be discussed later, this interpretation has been suggested by more than one Indian: Joges Candra Ray (1939), Chandra Chakraberty (1944; 1952; 1963; 1967), Vikramasimha (1967), Indian botanist B. G. L. Swamy (1976), Ramachandran and Irāman Mativānan (1991), Dr. N.R. Warhadpande (1995), Indra Deva and Shrirama (1999) have all identified the Vedic Soma with bhang (Hemp). I know of no indigenous Vedic scholars who have agreed with Wasson’s hypothesis. (Wasson later revealed his own long held prejudices against cannabis, through his requests that it not be considered an ‘entheogen’ when the term was being coined.)

In reference to Wasson’s comment that it is only the buds of cannabis which contain the resin, and the power lay in the stalks, Indian botanist B. G. L. Swamy, a proponent of the cannabis theory, noted:

It is true that the maximum quantity of the narcotic is collected from the resinous secretions on the female inflorescence. The leaves, however, rarely exude the resin but yet do contain narcotic substances. As attested by Watt [(1889)], in plants inhabiting the montane habitat the bark spontaneously ruptures and the narcotic resin exudes…. it is not correct to say that it [the narcotic principle] is endemic only in the pistillate buds. The Vedic texts refer to this part as amsu. Certainly it does not mean specifically a leaf. The word merely imports the meaning of ‘a part’ (cf amsa). Contextually it may refer to a part of the stem, leaf, stalk and leaves. In other words any part of a body, shoot in this case, is an amsu. (Swamy, 1976)

References to stalks of the plant being crushed for the Soma, from the vague description give in the Vedas, could just as easily refer to the long stalk-like bud covered branches of cannabis as any other plant. A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases refers to bhang, the dried leaves and small stalks of hemp (Crooke, 1903). Moreover a mushroom stalk makes up little of the mushroom, probably just a few inches at most when dried. As well, a mushroom only has one small stalk per plant, and as Mahdihassan notes "Wasson… has not correctly worded the problem. What calls for question is not only stalks but a thousand boughs per plant. Abiding by what the Rgveda actually states soma would be an assembly of a ‘thousand boughs..’." (Mahdihassan, 1986).

…soma/haoma is prepared from stems or stalks, which most probably should be regarded as fibrous… while the fleshy stems of A. muscaria contain only very small amounts of the pharmacologically active compounds, which are concentrated in the mushroom cap (these are the only parts of the mushroom used in northern Siberia. (Nyberg, 1995)

The lack of active compounds in the stalk of the Fly agaric is interesting when compared to Wasson’s earlier comments which discounted cannabis as a candidate, reasoning that its active ingredients were in the leaves and flowers, not the stalks (Wasson, 1970). In the case of the proposed Fly agaric, most of the mushroom is made up by the cap and Wasson is able to offer little in the way of indication of the caps of the Amanita muscaria when trying to milk the Vedas for evidence.

One would think the phenomenal looking Cap of the Fly agaric, which takes up most of the mushroom itself, would be a subject that would receive at least as much reverence as the stalk, if not more, if the Amanita muscaria were indeed the Soma. But in this respect, Wasson was only able to find a few Vedic references (RV.9.27.3; 9.68.4; 9.69.8; 9.71.4; 9.93.3) and devoted less than a page to the subject. Many of the passages cited by Wasson in this regard are made in reference to the God Soma as the Head and Chief being infused into the Soma, and have nothing to do with the physical preparation of the ancient sacrament. Clearly in Sanskrit, as in English, Head has a variety of applications, and when the Vedic passages that make reference to Head are looked at in the context of the verses in which they appear, it is an obvious stretch to interpret any as making reference to a bright red spotted mushroom cap. Notably, none of the references to Head cited by Wasson appear alongside the many references to the preperation of the stalks of Soma in the Vedas, which is where someone would expect them to appear if they were in fact part of the Soma beverage. [8]

In reference to cannabis, Wasson noted the fact that the Rg Veda placed Soma only on the high mountains, where hemp grows everywhere (Wasson, 1970). For this same reason Wasson discounted a variety of Soma candidates. What a useless business it is for us to go chasing in the valleys after rhubarb, honey, hashish, wild afghan grapes; in hot arid countries after species of Ephedra, Sarcostemma, Periploca! (Wasson, 1970)

First off, it is difficult to understand how Wasson ever came to the conclusion that the Fly agaric mushroom is purely a Mountain species. This author has witnessed first-hand wild Fly agarics growing in coastal sand dunes and valley forests. In regards to cannabis, Wasson’s view is based on the situation contemporary with his own time, after thousands of years of cannabis cultivation, not at the composition of the Vedas. Indeed cannabis spread everywhere quickly but numbers of sources have seen the Hindu Kush Mountains and Tien Shan Mountains as possible places of Hemp’s origin, both of which have also been suggested as the Aryan’s secondary homeland. The Hindu Kush Mountains are particularly associated with the origins of Cannabis indica, which is the species of hemp indicated by the Vedic description, particularly in the Tenth Mandala, as we shall discuss later in Chapter 4. The Hindu Kush Mountains, suspected homeland of the Soma, are still renowned for the quality ganja they have produced for millennia, eventually spreading to the rest of the Himalayas, as cannabis now grows wild throughout the area.

Geographical references in the Rg Veda also indicate that the Soma plant eventually diffused to locations along the banks of the Saravati and Arjikiya rivers. The fertile alluvial soils adjacent to these other rivers that have their headwaters in the Himalayas ..’. are exactly the situations of the wild growth of Bhanga (hemp).’[9] (Merlin, 1972)

As Witzel has also noted of Soma’s association with water sources, the hymn RV 10.75 has the following stream: The Su_omå ‘the one having good Soma’ …. the modern Sohån/Suwan… (Witzel, 1999). The widespread distribution of Haoma is referred to in the Avestan tradition as well.

Thus the life-giving birds launched there

carried you out in various directions:

to Ishkata Upairi.saêna,

to Staêra Starô.sâra,

to Kusrâdha Kusrô.patâdha,

to Pavrâna along the path of the birds,

to the two *White-color Mountains.[10]

— Y.10.11

Moreover, Wasson ignores comments from the Avestan literature that indicates widespread growth of the plant early on:

I praise all the haomas,

even when on the heights of the mountains,

even when in the depths of the streams,

even those in the narrow passes of ravines.

— Y.10.17

As Dieter Taillieu has commented haoma and soma are accorded fragrance (Av. hubaoiδi-, Y. 10.4, cf. Skt. surabhintara-) and a mountainous location; the additional reference to river valleys in Y.10.17 is probably… way of saying ‘all haomas, wherever they may be’ (Taillieu, 2002). Taillieu makes a good point in reference to the fragrance of Haoma, something attested to in a variety of passages in both the Vedic and Avestan literature, and which could hardly designate a mushroom:

O king Soma, O Soma which the priest carefully prepares. High with power that is real, its flowing blends together, together blend the fragrances of the fragrant,

purifying you by the formula, O wild god. Flow, O elixir, for Indra all around

— RV.9.113

I praise the earths, where, O Haoma, you grow,

fragrant, fleetly-moving.

— Y.10.4

Y.10.4 also has the added description of fleetly moving, a description likely identifying a plant that is blown around in the wind, which again would hardly describe a mushroom. To explain inconsistencies with his theory Wasson put forth that the RV.10.85 gave indications of a substitute; "One thinks