Antonio Escohotado - The General History of Drugs PDF

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B] Antonio Ema/aoiado
Realigg and Substance (1986)
Philosophv and Methodologv in the Sciences (1987)
The Spirit of Comedy (1991)
Whores and Wives (1993)
From Physis to Polis (1995)
The Question of Cannabis (1997)
Portrait of a Libertine (1998)
Chaos and Order (2000)
Learning About Drugs (ZQUZ)
Sixgg Weeks in the Tropics (2003)
Elementary Histog of Drugs (2003)
Four Myths on Sex and Dug; (2003)
The Enemies of Commerce (2008)

THE
GENERAL HISTORY
OF
DRUGS
Volume I
Antonio Escohotado
translated and edited by

G. W. Robinette
~?
/fi\
GRAFFITI MILITANTE PRESS

I/a[pamzlr0, Chile
2010
Cop)/rig/at 20 70
Grajjili Mi/ilanle Prexx
Vaiparaixo, Chile
All rig/alx rexerv/ed

including the right of rqprodnrlion
in whole or in par! in an)/for/n.
Firxl Eng/ix/9 Edition
ISBN 978-O-98207-873-O
For/1/hert Hofmann and Tom Szaxg who with their
friendshzji and advice helped to distill the essence of this
chronicle.
“This endeavor to achieve that everyone should approve that

which one loves and hates is, in reality, ambition; and thus we see that
each naturally desires that the rest should live according to his own nature.
But as all desire this at the same time, at once each one gets in the way of
the other, and as everyone wishes to be praised and loved by everyone
else, they end by hating one another.” – B. Spinoza, m (Book III,
Proposition XXXI)
I owe gratitude also to Pablo Fernandez-Florez, who was always

distrustful of the project even though he ended up writing various
portions and who contributed valuable documentation for the rest; to
Luis Gil, who guided me decisively through Greco-Latin antiquity,
moreover remediating some inappropriate remarks in the proofs; to
Ramon Sala, for making accessible to me many sources about the
contemporary period; and to Monica Bacazar, my wife, who stoically
supported the birth of the whole book, collaborating also in the
typewritten transcription. With their economic assistence, the Center for
Sociological Investigations first, and later the Ministry of Culture,
permitted an undivided attention to the work in its initial and final stages.
Author’s Preface
It has not been very common to unite theory and practice in the
matter of drugs, and this explains perhaps some adventures that
accompanied the composition of La /azkloria eneral de las droas. In 1988 –
being then a professor of Sociology – the criminal court of Palma
condemned me to two years and a day of prison, having found me guilty
of drug trafficking. The punishment requested by the prosecutor – six
years – was reduced by two-thirds, because for one judge of the court the
offence was found to be en grado de tentatil/a imposible [literally, a crime
impossible to commit]. Effectively, those who were offering to sell and
those who were offering to buy – by means of three interposed users (one
of whom was myself) – were agents of the police or their pawns. Just one
week after this judgment, the criminal court of Cordoba declared a verdict
of pure entrapment upon similar facts, whereupon they proceeded to
annul all the charges, an interpretation that in time would become the
accepted jurisprudence in Spain.
Apprehensive over what might end up happening on an appeal to
the Supreme Court – in a litigation where a certain citizen was alleging to
have been blackmailed by the authorities, while they were accusing him of
being an opulent drug dealer who hid his criminal empire behind the
lectern of the scholar – I preferred to serve the sentence without delay.
As a then magistrate of the Supreme Court made clear, the matter was
poisoned by the fact of my being a spokesperson for reform on the issue,
already well-known since 1983. Given the facts of the case, to absolve
without conditions would incriminate in some manner the incriminator,
and would open a path toward a demand for a scandalous reparation.
After some inquiries, I discovered that the jail at Cuenca – thanks
to its understanding Director – would concede me the three things
AUTHOR’ S PREFACE
necessary to take advantage of such a stay: a light switch inside the cell, an
ancient PC, and isolation. During that fully-paid (albeit humble) vacation,
four-fifths of this work was written. Naturally, I had entered into that
establishment with no small number of kilos of index cards and notes,

gathered during many long years. I had only to structure them, polishing
the final exposition.
It could be added that I did not lose much time, and for this same
reason neither was I downhearted. However, the conditions for
bibliographic consultation are not ideal in a penitentiary and before I
could abandon it this book began to be published,1 so that it was dogged
from the beginning by innumerable imprecisions, more than those which
trouble any really extensive work. Some of them were remediated in the
third edition, thanks above all to the effort of the chemist and
ethnobotanist Jonathan Ott who tirelessly inserted the many changes and
additions necessary, thoroughly revising the system of references and
transforming entire sections of the text.
With this new English edition, the degree of precision demanded
in a scientific work has been perfected once more, completed by a
researcher who has been able to confirm and amplify my work making use
of various libraries and the internet. As a result, the edition that the reader
now holds in his hands not only suffers from far fewer errors and
oversights, but also hopes to fulfill even closer the goal of an academic
standard with regards to the precision of its information. No doubt, in
twenty years this history will need to be revised again as new data becomes
available. I look forward to reading that book.
La Navata
February 2010
1 Volumes I and II in the Alianza edition.

Translator’s Preface
Antonio has written a guilty pleasure, an encyclopaedia with a plot,

the “Golden Bough” of drugs and the most comprehensive history of the
subject in any language to date. Nothing like it exists in English. Until
now.
This madrileño polymath asks the intelligent question: How long
have we persecuted some users of some drugs (pharmakoi)? How is it that
certain drugs, taken without incident over millennia, can suddenly,
magically, threaten the State? How did so many religious institutions
evolve from entheogenic drug experiences? When did inanimate objects
and inert substances first become charged with good and evil natures? Is
there an all-bad drug that offers no good? The answers unfold in a tale
crowded with quiet, uncompromising observation and exhilarating zen
like moments of insight.
Its initial publication in Spain scandalized the newly democratic
intelligentsia, forcing a re-evaluation and revision of drug policy. No
longer was it possible to repeat the same mistakes before the harsh,
reflective mirror of the past. In English it is destined to become the most
sought-after reference for every university, college, public or private
library, serious researcher and thoughtful reader.
I envy you if this is your first Escohotado. It has been a delight to
translate his impeccable Castellano. All errors are mine. The English
translation was made possible in part with the hospitality and cuisine of
the wandering Christian desert mystic, Ms. D. Wilcoxson.
vi
Contents
of
Volume I
I. Magic, Pharmacy and Religion 35

A. Sickness and Sacrifice 37
1. Two Models 37
2. Details of the Two Models 41
B. Drug and Victim 46
1. Catharsis 49
2. Ecstasy 51
3. Ebriety 53
a. Drugs of possession and
drugs of psychic excursion 56
b. The plebian nature of the
chemistry 61
II. Myths and Geography 65

A. The Neolithic Revolution 65
1. The Forbidden Fruit and the Fall 67
2. An Ethnobotanical Perspective 76
B. The Distribution of the Principal
Psychoactive Drugs 81
III. Profane Ebriety 91

A. Mesopotamia 92
B. Egypt 101
1. Opium 101
2. Cannabis 106
3. Alcohol 107
CONTENTS OF VOLUME ONE
C. Israel 112
1. Alcohol 112
2. Cannabis 120
3. Other Drugs 127
D. China 130
1. Alcohol 130
2. Cannabis 139
3. Opium 141
4. Other Drugs 144
IV. Sacred Ebriety 149

A. India 149
1. Cannabis and Other Drugs 149
2. The Question of Soma 152
a. The identification of the plant 155
b. Castes and ebriety 159
c. Disembodiment and original
puritanism 162
B. Iran 166
C. Pre-Columbian America 172
1. Central America 173
a. Mushrooms 174
b. Other entheogens 180
2. The Andean Civiliztions 188
a. The Incas and coca 190
b. Male’ and guarana 195
V. Greece 197
A. Medicine and Pharmacology 200
viii
1. The Concept of the Pha'r/ezakon 203

2. The Principal Greek Drugs 208
3. Myths and Therapies related with Opium 213
a. Myths 213
b. Medical use 214
c. The idea of the universal
antidote 220
B. Entheogenic Drugs 223
1. Dionysus and the Orgy 223
a. The dynamics of the shadows
and the law of the day 225
b. Drinkers of water and
drinkers of wine 233
2. The Oracle of Apollo 238
3. The Mysteries at Eleusis 258
a. The effect of the ceremonies 266
b. Suggestion or perception 273
c. The experiments of Pahnke
and others 282
VI. Rome and the Celts 287

A. Statutes on Drugs 288
B. Cannabis, Belladonna, Mandrake, Henbane and
Hellebore 291
C. Opium 300
1. Literature 300
2 Medicine 306
3. Pharmacological Descriptions 313
4 Mortal and Mercantile Aspects 317
ix
D. Mystery Cults 325

1. Cybele, Theurgia, Hermetism,
Mithraism 327
2. The Dionysian Plague 337
a. The circumstances surrounding
the accusation 338
b. Political measures and
religious background 342
c. The future of the bacchanals 345
E. Drugs of the Celts 349
VII. Paganism and Ebriety 359

A. Profane 360
1. Recreative 360
a. The neutral spirit 364
b. Sober ebriety 368
2. Therapeutic 372
a. Medicinal drugs 372
b. The practice of medicine 378
B. Sacred 385
1. Blessed 386
a. Entheogenic drugs 387
b. Evolution in entheogenic cults 389
2. Cursed 393
a. Enechthrogenic drugs 394
b. Evolution in enechthrogenic cults 395
C. A Sketch of an Older Religion 400
D. Conclusion 407
Introduction
The master requires things from the world but he does not confront its
miseries directly except by means of his servant, who takes care to
transform them frst. The human psyche depends upon external stimuli
but it cannot absorb these material substances except through the body,
which metabolizes them beforehand. However, some molecules are not
transformed for nutrition and instead provoke a mental state.1 Seen
through Cartesian eyes, these are material things that do not obey the
rules and which influence things of the mind. Halfway between the
material and the immaterial, the miraculous and the prosaic, “certain
1 “But it is herein also that the main difference lies between nourishing food and a
deleterious drug; the latter masters the forces of the body, whereas the former is
mastered by them” (Brock, A. J., tr. Galen: On the Natural Faculties. London: \X/illiam
Heinemann, 1916 (GB), p. 251, De firm nat., book III, ch. 7). Six or seven centuries
earlier, the Hippocratic C07]>fl.\' spoke of the “present state” as something that could be
modified by either drugs or food: “A remedy is anything that modifies the present state;
all the substances which have some strength are modifiers. You can modify with a
remedy if you wish, and if you don’t want to, with food. It is useful to change the
present state of someone ill; because an illness, if one does not change it, increases
(gwr).” A slightly different translation is given by Potter, Paul, tr., ed. Hippocrates, vol.
8. Cambridge, MA: President and Fellows of Harvard College, 1995 (GB), p. 91; Le
remède [pharmaka] est tout ce qui modzfie l’e'tatpre':em‘,' or, toutes les substanm qui ont quelqueforce
£0111‘ modzflmmkes. On pem‘ wadzfierpar un remède si l’on veut , et, si l’on ne vertpas, par l’aliment.
Au malade convient tam‘ 6/9dflg€flZ€fll /901"; de l’e'z‘atpn"m1z‘,' rm" /e mal, 11' on M le change pas, augmente
(Littré, É. Oeuvres co/ni_>/étes d’HiQg0rate, vol VI. Paris: Chez B. Baillière, 1849, p. 341,
Des Lieux dans l’H0/nme (Of the Places in Man), sect. 45).
GENERAL HISTORY OF DRUGS
substances allow men to give to the ordinary sensations of life and to their
way of wanting and thinking an unaccustomed form”2 through the play of
a purely mechanical chemistry.
Although the effect may only be partial and transient, or deceitful
(nothing comes for free), the possibility of affecting the mind with a
morsel of anything tangible fully assures its own self-perpetuation. For
human beings, eating, drinking, moving or doing simple tasks becomes
nonessential (when not impossible) in emotional states like the pain
caused by the loss of a loved one, intense fear, the sense of failure or even
simple curiosity. In this the spirit manifests its superiority over the
conditions of existence. The essence of certain drugs resides in their
power to affect the mind itself: temporarily augmenting serenity, energy
and perception, they permit a corresponding reduction of affliction,
apathy and the mental routine. This explains why from the beginning of
time they have been considered a divine gift, from a nature fundamentally
magical.
But there is also another way, typically contemporary, of
understanding the ebriety they produce. In the book Drugs and the Mind,
which many have saluted as a masterpiece, the author states without
further circumlocutions:
Some rats with electrodes implanted in certain regions of the hypothalamus stimulate
themselves more than two thousand times an hour, throughout an entire day. What a
surprising finding! What curious abyss of depravity opens before our eyes. If it were
human, that rat driven mad with pleasure would present exactly the portrait of moral
degradation of the drug addict who roams the streets in search of drugs, while his wife
and children die of hunger in a fleabag hotel. Could it be possible that the
neurophysiologists have achieved something that not even the devil himself could
2 Lewin, 1970 (1927), P. 17.
12
INTRODUCTION
accomplish after so many centuries of experience? By chance could they have managed
. - 3
to invent a new form of sin?
In fact, many today perceive the use of certain substances as a new

form of sin, and the law codes characterize this conduct as a new form of
crime. Drugs drive men mad with pleasure, just as the electrode
conveniently implanted in its hypothalamus converts the existence of the
rat into one large orgasm.4 It could be said that neither of these two
things is explainable without an undercurrent of intense individual
discontents and that in the human case this might also be attributed to the
general cultural malaise that Freud and others described nearly a century
ago. For contrast, the situation changed considerably in the formerly
communist societies. A half century before their collapse, this social and
individual discontent was readily admitted, while toward the end “it was as
if there existed a taboo that prohibited defining as repugnant the very
repugnance that such societies produced.”6 Whosoever should violate this
rule, be it group or individual subject, included themselves in the category
of the mentally infirm, and the mentally infirm – like the sinner and the
3 De Ropp, 1960, p. 13.

4 Ibid., p. 14.
5 De Ropp ignores that the rodent supposedly made demented by pleasure is an animal
submitted to painful surgical procedures, implanted with a prosthesis that its body
rejects, imprisoned in a foreign environment and subjected to every kind of violence. By
the same logic, a person in analogous conditions who prefers chloroform or morphine to
food is converting his life into an abyss of depravity. It seems plausible that in place of
voluptuous pleasures the rat could be obtaining some kind of analgesia. It would not be
strange then that its compulsive recourse to electrical stimulation might undergo
important modifications if it were able to live freely in its own natural habitat [see ch. 6].
6 Behr, 1981, p. 243.
13
delinquent — came to be treated as some users of some drugs have been

over the last century.
The tree of science and the tree of life. On the other hand, anguish
and its palliatives do not exhaust the subject. Psychopharmacology
exemplifies today the most irreconcilable conflict between blessing and
curse. On the side of blessing not only are there innumerable therapeutic
and recreational uses – all relative to the human need for euphoria or
good spirits – but also increases in knowledge that may develop new
dynamics of learning and contribute to the control of undesirable
emotions, strengthening up to unsuspected limits the powers of the will
and understanding; certainly, on the horizon is an exploration of an inner
space hosting a perception, intelligence and imagination unlike the human
mind today, developed only to a small proportion of its capacities.
On the side of curse is the more or less conscious refusal of this –
loyal to the same criteria of non-interference that blocks experimentation
in genetic engineering – summed up by two very specific objections: one,
the individual risk of acute and chronic intoxication; and the other, the
danger of groups which may avoid the incentives and the common
indoctrination, forming countercultures or simply centers of deviance
with respect to the use of time and the values promoted by the powers
that be.
As a consequence, the same thing promises both a jump forward
and a step back for the human condition. The opinion of neurologists,
practically unanimous since the middle of the nineteenth century, is that
pharmacological chemistry offers superior possibilities for the elimination
of pain in all its forms, a goal already in itself astounding.7 No less
7 In the course of writing the prologue to the book of De Ropp, for example, one of the
authorities in this field - N. S. Kline — commented: “Man is capable of firmly
14
INTRODUCTION
unanimous, the managers controlling a society understand that, by

definition, any kind of psychotropic substance is a trick on the rules of fair
play: inevitably it alters the psychosomatic constitution of the user,
necessarily prejudices the rest of society, and betrays the ethical hopes
deposited in citizens by their governments, which have the right to
demand sobriety because they are always attentively encouraging healthy
solutions for stress and the neurosis of modern life, incarnated above all
in the cult of competitive sports.
The ideal of a society without drugs, even the legal ones, is set
against another where there exists a market for everything as open as that
of publications or entertainment, with all of the market saturation that
exists for alcoholic drinks, coffees and tobaccos. Supporting the first with
ever more severe and repressive laws, the majority of citizens appear to
have internalized government orders, while numerically significant
minorities practice passive resistance in a tenacious fashion, feeding a
black market in which many governments and almost all of the specialized
police forces participate surreptitiously. The present moment, as far from
one ideal as the other, is characterized by something that can be called the
Era of the Substitute, with never before seen rates of poisonings by
concentrating his attention on the achievement of something more than the mere
alleviation of sadness. The exaltation that comes from increased lucidity, strong and
positive reactions of sympathy, as well as the pride of a useful achievement might be
achievable for us today” (De Ropp, 1960, p. x). \X/ritten fifty years ago, these words
continue to be the north star for the vanguard of present—day neurochemistry, which
from the laboratories of various universities announces revolutionary discoveries in drugs
synthesized from the human body itself. At a time not so far in the future
psychopharmacology may be able to make use of incomparably more subtle and less
toxic medicines for all the needs now fulfilled by the alkaloids discovered during the last
two hundred years, and countless others besides.
15
various adulterants,8 clandestine laboratories continuously launching new

drugs, and uncountable persons detained, fined, incarcerated and executed
each year on the planet.9
The complexity of the subject. Fifth horseman of the apocalypse,

public enemy number one, the deafening noise generated by the illicit use
of certain drugs cannot hide at the very same moment the strategy of
power that is in play. As methods for feeling and thinking in
unaccustomed ways, the illicit vehicles of ebriety can affect everyday life;
and in a world where the private sphere finds itself more and more
teledirected, any change whatsoever in the daily routine potentially
constitutes a revolution. For the same reason, the confiict over health is
also a serious political problem, because for a citizen today not only is his
own health at risk, but also that of a constitutional system of legal
guarantees. A recent investigation presented by one of the institutions
tied into the system of the United Nations noted the general tendency of
penal legislation on drugs to “overthrow established principles of law.”m
In effect, as its principal champions have repeatedly declared, from Nixon

to Bush fi/I, an effective war against drugs cannot be reconciled with the
traditional framework of liberties, nor with the constitutionally sacred
doctrine of separation of powers, because it requires intervention by the
military in civil affairs, the presumption of guilt in place of innocence, the
8 Spain – the sixth country in Europe in deaths – counted 690 cases in 1990, and more
than 1000 to the middle of 1991, although the rare autopsies suggest that the great
majority are caused by adulterants.
9 Before the end of 1986, for example, there had been arrested almost a million people
only in the United States for different charges related with drugs; cf. Thomas, Beatty,
Moody and Thompson, 1986, p. 26.
10 Cf. Drugs and Puni:/J/nent. An up-to-date Interregional Sun!/gy on Drug-Related Ofinders,
United Nations Social Defense Research Institute, Rome, 1988.
16
INTRODUCTION
validation of techniques for inducing crime, the suspension of the

inviolability of the domicile without a search warrant, and the end of
secret banking for the accounts of the suspicious. Without any doubt, the
pharmacological crusade is the clearest challenge taken on by the U.S.
government, and subsequently by the rest of the world.
At the same time, in contrast with acts such as homicide, robbery,
rape, swindling, etc., where there must exist a specific harm and a
complaining victim either in person or through his relatives, the political
dimension of crimes related with drugs shows up in its penal
classification: it is a crime of purely contingent or possible harm, which
can be committed without the need to prove any concrete danger toward
any one in particular. Being thus a crime that only might have caused
harm, those who would infringe the prevailing norms in this matter will
always be the authors of an illegal act, no matter what might be the
specific circumstances of the case, and exactly these characteristics –
typical for example of the crime of publishing illegal propaganda –
distinguish crimes of disobedience to authority from crimes with a
physical victim.
The peculiar nature of such crimes can be observed in the fact that
delinquent and victim can be (and often are) the same person, because the
orientation of the law here is to protect the subject from himself“ in one
11 Although jurisprudential doctrine varies, up to the end of the 1950s a large part of
legislation condemned equally the consumer and trafficker of drugs. The
decriminalization of the former (which happened in only a few countries) was due finally
to the incapacity of judicial and penal institutions faced with the sheer number of
infractions, especially where no distinctions were made between “possession for
trafficking” and “possession for consumption,” so that a judge could suppose what he
wished, punishing mere consumption when it appeared convenient. On the other hand,
in the decade of the 1980s one observed a clear step backward in legislation
decriminalizing simple possession. As occurs today in many countries, the legal
17
degree or another, like the demand for the use of seatbelts by drivers of
automobiles. Perhaps because of this, delinquency linked directly or
indirectly with illegal drugs makes up the single most important chapter in
the penal codes of a large part of the countries on the planet, especially in
the ones that call themselves advanced where a significant percentage of
prisoners are routinely incarcerated for drugs. In the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries close to the same proportion corresponded to
political dissidents, and from the fourteenth to the seventeenth to
religious dissidents.
When a crime previously unknown is elevated to the principal
source of the condemned, and grows in inverse proportion to the
repression, it is possible to suspect that this conceals a process of
reorganization of the prevailing moral doctrine, or as a great writer once
said, that society has arrived at a “time of mutation.”12 A certain type of
collective is confronted with an internal crisis, which it rejects as if an
external pathological agent. The recourse (which isn’t new) vigorously
strengthens the mechanisms of social integration; nevertheless, the
unasked question is upon whom is it incumbent to define the norms of
permissible conduct, and from there the delicate relationship with
compromise inherent in the democratic system, which protects
differences in the face of calls for uniformity; in the judgment of some,”
the solution to the problem depends upon a fusion that takes into account
the ideology promoted by the Moral Majority without discarding the
rights of other minorities, constitutionally though not institutionally
protected. Where something like this doesn’t happen – the transmuting
alternative offered to the user is to submit himself voluntarily to a psychiatric cure or

suffer harsher treatment in the penitentiary.
12 jiinger, 1974, p. 504.
13 Cf. Lidz and Walker, 1980, p. 244 and subsequent.
18
INTRODUCTION
of temporary weaknesses into a new integration – massive scorn for the

law like pharmacological dissidence tends not only to maintain itself but
to grow. A society without offenders to its ideological laws would be a
fossil, and indeed a crime of this nature ought to be considered socially
useful, because “not only does it imply that the road is open to needed
changes, but also in specific cases it can prepare a society for these
changes.”14
The result then is that a difference rejected on moral grounds at
the same time engenders an equal and opposite morality. With the rest of
the public passively viewing the spectacle, both the deviants and the social
managers play out their conflict within a value system which has for a
complexity of motives fallen into a crisis, isolating the specific question
over drugs as a paradigm of the conflict. Finally, social change and a
change in morality are here the same thing. In spite of the formidable
structure of economic interests which have sustained Prohibition, the
subject is and will continue to be a matter of conscience, similar in more
than one sense to the dilemma provoked by the discovery of the printing
press. Just as the invention of Guttenberg threatened to spread among
the people innumerable doctrinal errors, calling into question many
principles previously considered untouchable, so does progress in organic
chemistry threaten to diffuse undesirable customs and attitudes that might
upset the distribution of labor and the programmed pastimes of a society.
Because a part of the society denies such programming – with reasoning
apparent to those who call for abolishing the censorship of books –
today’s equivalent of the Medieval fratricidal religious war is the chronic
mass hysteria over drugs, exploited very profitably by some and suffered
devastatingly by others.
14 Durkheim, 1912, p. 136.
19
Centered around the mechanism of collective integration known

familiarly as the scapegoat, these hysterias act out the archaic confiict of
purity/impurity, and lead in particular to some persons being charged
magically with danger for the benefit of all the others. It is a spiritual
poison spread like an endemic disease, which does not suggest the
investigation of causes nor the submission of questions for debate, but
only surgical methods like lancing and amputation, even though the
abscess or the gangrene – the infection – exists only in a figurative sense.
Most of contemporary society forgets that Christians and a long series of
ethnic groups, sects and even formal professions were considered
betrayals with regard to specific canons of social conformity.
The point of departure for a scientific examination. One might

suppose that inside the successive symbols of impurity branching out
through different epochs, nothing is less superstitious than the error
miasma incarnate in certain drugs, and that to eradicate specific chemical
bodies could not prepare us without bad faith to eradicate religious
attitudes, races or political opinions. Nevertheless, the perplexities of the
pharmacological crusade began with the same notion of drug that
supported the others.
From antiquity comes down to us a concept – exemplified by the
Greek pnérvnakon – that indicates cure and poison, not one thing or the
other but both inseparably. Cure and threat are opposite sides of the
same coin in this scheme of things. Some drugs will be more toxic and
others less, but no one of them will be purely an innocuous substance or
simply a poison. On the one hand, toxicity is something expressed
mathematically, as a therapeutic margin or proportion between active and
lethal or incapacitating dose. The frontier between harmful and beneficial
does not exist in the drug, but in the use of the drug on the part of the
20
INTRODUCTION
living. To speak of good or bad drugs was for a pagan as unusual, surely,
as to speak of guilty and innocent sunrises.
On the other hand the present pharmacological crusade is
characterized by its disregard of this essential ambivalence, distinguishing
between valid medicines, spiritual poisons, articles of food or pastimes
like the alcoholic beverages, coffee and tobacco. But we do not add
together litres and degrees, or kilos and curves, and if in order to classify
the kinds of a thing we must make use of references to a medicine, a
religious creed and a particular administrative situation, then wines could
be classified as expensive, red and from Jerez or – as has been suggested
by T. Szasz – water as heavy, blessed and from the tap. Factors no less
arbitrary join classifications supposedly more rigorous such as that of
drugs that create addiction, drugs that create mere habit and innocuous
drugs, though an innocuous drug would not be a drug, while the
difference between addiction and habit constitutes merely a verbal game.
Behind a similar disregard for common sense is the semantic
evolution that took place at the turn of the twentieth century in the term
narcotic – from the Greek narkoun, meaning “to sleep” and “to sedate” –
applied until then without moral connotations to substances that induced
sleep or sedation. The English word narcotics, translated into the French
as estupefiants, is what one calls in Spanish, estupefacientes (those things which
stupefy). In order to incorporate the moral sense, the word narcotics has
lost pharmacological precision and has passed over to include drugs that
do not induce sedation or dreams, while excluding a huge range of
narcotic substances in the strictest sense. From the beginning, the legal
classification bumped into an annoying reality about drugs: neither were
they all what they seemed to be nor did they all seem to be what they
were. After some decades of efforts to achieve a technical definition of
something which stupefies, the international health authority declared the
21
problem unsolvable for reasons outside of pharmacology,15 proposing

instead to classify drugs simply as legal and illegal.
However, the impossibility of finding such chemical and
physiological criteria highlights in sharp relief the point to which
something can not be what it seems. Although at the beginning of the
twentieth century it was said that the legal classification of certain
substances was a function of their pharmacology, the mere passage of
time has carefully demonstrated the reverse, that their pharmacological
nature is a function of their legality. During the early 1920s the federal
law in the United States prohibited the sale of alcohol, remaining
indifferent to cannabis while hash parlors flourished in Manhattan.
Today many thousands of substances are prohibited and even
though alcohol has ceased to be one of them, it is evident that the worry
is no longer over this or that particular substance. Now openly expressed,
the principle of that which is not expressly prohibited is authorized has
ceased to reign in the United States after the passage of the Dengner Drugs
Act, by which every psychoactive drug not previously authorized must be
understood to fall under the same regimen of prohibition as those which
are now illegal. In other words governments now are not trying to
control the spread of specific drugs, as at the beginning of the crusade,
but are considered to have the right to control any substance with
influence over “the judgment, the behavior, the perception or the state of
mind,” as affirmed by the International Convention on Psychotropic
Substances of 1971. It is now the business of government any chemical
modification there might come to be of consciousness, even ebriety in
general. Only in this way can we understand the case of a house painter in
15 Concretely, for “not reconciling the biological data with the necessary administrative
measures,” according to H. Halbach (1963), chief of the division of toxicology of the
WHO in its headquarters in Geneva; cf. Varenne, 1973, p. 46.
22
INTRODUCTION
Tucson, Arizona who was condemned in 1982 to two years in prison for
breathing a compound containing benzene, violating a rule by which “no
one may breathe, inhale or drink consciously a volatile substance that
contains a toxic substance.”16 The Office of the Prosecutor based the
charges on the notion that “someone intoxicated with paint fumes could
become violent.”11
The theocratic state felt that it was legitimate to legislate about
matters of conscience and decreed severe persecutions of a spiritual
nature against the heretic, the apostate, and the freethinker. The post
theocratic states have also unleashed witch hunts of a similar kind –
against the spells of the communist, the Zionist, the bourgeoisie – and no
less implacable. Nevertheless, up until 1971 neither the theocratic nor the
democratic state had extended the function of government to vigilance
over perception or a state of mind, although from the most remote
antiquity there have existed more than enough drugs capable of
influencing the one or the other. To be exact, as yet there does not exist
in a single Constitution on the planet precepts whereby the state may
assume such supervision in general or has any right to do so, because even
those most affected by totalitarian schemes recognize subjective rights
incompatible with a tutelage carried to such an extreme. As a
consequence, drugs will have to be considered an exception to the rule
defending the autonomy of the individual, one based upon exceptional
motivations and circumscribed by the tardiness in solving a very specific
problem.
\X/ell now, is this credible? Is this just one more indication of what
to expect from overpopulated collectives, each time closer to the beehive
and the anthill, whereby it is just as discretional to prohibit a diet as to
16 Cf. E. Hume, “Sniffing paint gets man 2-year term,” Itbamjouma/, 11-2-1982, p. 29.
17 Ibid.
23
impose one, even governing through different drugs, or what is the same,
using the prerogative already achieved in the legislation about perception
and a state of mind? Why couldn’t a world association of governments
that can prohibit a drug be capable of (with the same reasoning) declaring
anything it likes a panacea? Can anyone cite a single specific jurisdiction
which has been renounced voluntarily by those in power without a
previous political liquidation of the pretensions upon which it was
founded? More concretely, is the existing system a solution for the
medium or long term? Will the least worst follow for the undesirable in
this order of things? Who determines its establishment and who really
makes money off of the reality today? What relative infiuence in this has
economics, politics and morals? Up to what point does disaster constitute
a buried triumph for those who today support the crusade? Questions
like these ask for objectivity while the frivolous polarization of attitudes
today promotes the opposite, with a parade of people and groups who
declare themselves in favor of or against an unreal pipe dream like the
“drug.”
Excepting those communities that might live year-round in arctic
zones completely lacking in vegetation, there is not a single human group
which has not been detected using some kind of botanical psychoactive
drug. If there is anything that leaps into view in this field it is that drug
use constitutes a truly plural phenomenon, one that shows up in a
diversity of time periods, covers an amplitude of places and is obedient to
a multitude of motivations. Not falling into a trite dialog of the deaf
sustained by partisans and detractors demands a systematic or properly
scientific attitude, and the first condition of the scientific method is a
critique that demarcates experience and prejudice, certain data and mere
supposition. Currently, the pharmacological is less respected than the
penal, and the ancient duty of chemists and doctors has passed over to
24
INTRODUCTION
judges and police brigades, feeding a progressive divorce between

discursive logic and the problem as a whole. At the pace of such arbitrary
legislation, differing opinions begin to merge and common ones to
separate, producing a body of doctrine each time more vague and
contradictory. This doesn’t necessarily mean that such principles ought to
be modified, that they are inadequate or that they achieve the opposite of
their explicit intention. It means only that an approach to the material in
its entirety (accepting beforehand that we are pursuing something
unknown) should help us form rational judgments, instead of simply
placing our trust in one cliché or another.
Although it might not have been this way in the past, “we choose
our poisons in line with tradition without taking into account their
pharmacology: social attitudes determine which are the admissible drugs
and attribute ethical qualities to chemical products.’”8 Comprehensible in
one sense, the undesirable corollary to this is a clash with the natural order
of things. If in order to build bridges or drill tunnels it was not necessary
to take into account the resistance of materials, there is a high risk that the
works would collapse, leading to wastefulness or catastrophe. But
modern man would be very much surprised if the official approval for
new antibiotics were left in the hands of the Olympic Committee or if the
authorization for the launching of meteorological satellites belonged to
the American Bar Association. Yet no one appears astonished that the
pharmacological crusade was set in motion by an Anabaptist archbishop
and other missionaries, nor that the rules in place about psychotropic
drugs should have been elaborated in police stations and only later
assumed by the health authority instead of the reverse. Just as it is
understood there is a military adviser even in the installations for
launching satellites with civil ends, the sociopolitical transcendence of
18 Byck, 1980, p. 43.
25
ebriety makes it seem understandable that different functionaries should

intervene as advisers to the boards of those charged with its regulation.
But it is poorly understood that in these councils those capable of
scientific rigor lack a vote – and almost always a voice. Thus, from the
time of F. Kennedy, the White House asserted the right to periodic
reports of a commission – the Presidenfx Com/mkxion on Narmlirx and Dmg
Abuse – consisting basically of doctors, pharmacologists, social scientists
and jurists, although from the first report onward it was also the custom
of the White House to reject their reiterated invitations to change its
politics. “Outmoded liberalism,” said Nixon and Reagan, perhaps
unaware that the expression “outdated laissez faire” was the favourite
motto of the Anabaptist archbishop C. H. Brent decrying the immorality
of drugs.”
A history within a history. After millennia of festive, therapeutic and

sacramental use, the vehicles of ebriety have now been converted into an
important scientific enterprise, though it began by upsetting religion and
ended by provoking the Right, meanwhile compromising the economy
and tempting art. Opportune or incoherent, the crusade against some
drugs constitutes an operation of political technology with complex social
functions, where that which is deployed is a determined physical power.
Behind the spectrum of anxieties that accompany any kind of change in
the profundity of life, the cog wheels of this technology grind upon the
creation of a problem encapsulated as “drugs,” as well as upon the much
larger subject of the relationship that contemporary mankind guards with
its very real freedom. It would be ingenuous to hope that the changing
criterion for morality, the cultural stereotypes, and the propaganda slogans
of one group or another should be submitted to a detailed scientific
1° Cf. Musto, 1973, p. 26 and 260, footnote 8.
26
INTRODUCTION
examination. But to form concepts on this subject instead of myths and

dogmas is to attend at one’s own birth.
Until recently it was not taken into account that the use of drugs
discovered in various cultures constitutes a chapter as relevant as it is
forgotten in the histories of religion and medicine. At the beginning of a
notable history of medicine popular in Greece and Rome, the humanist
author corroborated the scarcity of investigations on a subject so
interesting, attributing it to “the attention of professionals who fear to
lose time in tiny details on the one hand, and to encounter primitive or
savage man on the other under the fold of the cape of the toga or the
clamide ”20 Multiplied to infinity, this occurs with the subject of the
present investigation: to the historians themselves it seems less trivial to
examine the evolution of a pictorial style than the evolution of drug use,
and the same subject not only runs the danger of ennobling the savage,
but of seeming the reserve of puerile sensationalism as well, close to a
kind of bad taste, as happened with sexuality until well into the twentieth
century. If this has happened with the historian of the profane, so much
more has it been habitual – with few exceptions – among historians of
religion.
As much could be said of its relevance for comparative
anthropology, because the use of mood-altering drugs is a careful
indicator about the form of society and its consciousness. A certain
determination in the one allows one to extrapolate something about the
other. Drugs have always determined a wide variety of institutions and
responses, previously explainable only from the world view of each
individual society, helping to silhouette it under a new light. The specific
history of ebriety thus writes a prominent chapter topologically parallel to
20 Gil, 1969, p. 22.
27
a general history, requiring constant references to it just as one would

demand in a coherent history of taxes or prisons.
But to this generic correlation between the whole and the part, in
the case of drugs one can add a scene from a present-day drama, asking
nuclear questions about the limits of adult discernment, the relation
between criminal and moral law, the sense of political paternalism, the
dynamic of prejudice as well as the polemic over euthanasia, to mention
only the most obvious. In fact, perhaps no subject exposes in such a
concise manner the latest justifications for the Welfare State in which we
live. Our civilization suffers because of plants whose existence dates back
to unrememberable times, and whose respective virtues were deeply
exploited by all the great cultures. For millennia no one has been
particularly worried over their seeding or harvest, while today these simple
botanical facts have achieved the dimensions of a planetary catastrophe.
So huge is this threat that it unites capitalists and communists, Christians,
Muslims and atheists, rich and poor, in a crusade for the mental and moral
health of humanity. In the middle of the space age there is no lack of
vocational or professional crusades, nor of hordes of infidels attracted by
rebellion, the anomalies of the black market or the irresponsible victim
who agrees to ingest the forbidden. Throw in for many the psychological
mechanism known as introjection or identification with the aggressor in
the same way that their opposite numbers are united by a mechanism of
projection and the exterior localization of evil.
Of course, such a mental state is not completely new in the history
of ebriety. Although its evolution has been strongly and peacefully diluted
in magical rites and festivities or in medicinal applications that do not
incite worry about particular abuses, at least on two previous occasions –
with the Bacchus cult of preclassic Rome and with the unguents and
potions of witches from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries – the
28
INTRODUCTION
use of drugs accompanied the moral pestilence, viewed as a crime against

God and the State. Complementing these episodes with those today
enriches the data bank about analogous plagues, almost always extra
pharmacological, which catch up sects and groups in the role of sacrificers
and sacrificed, in rituals of purification and reaffirmation no less active
today for their archaism. The concrete contribution that this chronicle
can make to the theory of moral pestilence is founded upon describing the
social and psychological motivations that incline one towards the
declaration of epidemic, the quarantines applied by each type of culture
and the results, as predictable as they are real.
Saved for last is the predictive value inherent in an historic
treatment of the question. Detractors and partisans of Prohibition base a
fundamental part of their opinions on suppositions. Some say that its
goal should be to stimulate self-control, reducing even in the middle term
the number of people that compulsively use the now illegal drugs. Others
think that any kind of permissivity would convert many more individuals
into drug addicts, not to say almost everyone. However, the history of
different instruments of ebriety permits one to abandon the field of pure
supposition and to establish opinions based upon verifiable facts. Not
only can one demonstrate with precision what takes place when the
consumption of this or that drug is made illegal, but also what happens
when a drug stops being illegal which had been forbidden previously, as
occurred with opium in China and alcohol in the United States. Although
the epochs are different, the data relative to analogous moments in the
past enjoy an advantage over conjecture difficult to negate. In a time so
marked by fanatics taking sides, if something seems urgent it is
documentation that allows one to refiect for himself with some
knowledge of the subject.
29
Respecting the present study, there have been some attempts to

describe the customs in different parts of the planet throughout the ages.
Nevertheless, these are expositions that can only be considered catalogues
of short reports. Sometimes it is a doctor, with solid notions about
toxicology and practically none about universal history, who lists the drugs
used here and there. Other times it’s a criminologist, a journalist or a
traveller, perhaps with less fragile ideas about the history of civilizations
but totally insufficient on the level of pharmacology, who accumulates
opinions marked by the picaresque, capriciousness and prejudice. Neither
one side nor the other seems to show with any beauty the critical thinking
which supports it, and if they standout by their absence of precise
bibliographies, no less do they lack there the concatenation demanded in
any attempt oriented toward objectively describing an evolution. This
does not mean that the literature on the subject lacks very valuable
contributions, elaborated with the all the rigor demanded, and thanks to
these it is possible to study certain specific moments without a hazardous
peregrination through public and private libraries, pursuing information
that very rarely appears directly summarized in the index files. Even so,
these always deal with works about some particular aspect that does not
tackle the subject as a whole.
What is missing is a cultural or general history of drugs,
understanding by that an examination which combines an evolutionary
perspective, linked to a successive chronology, with the comparative or
the structural, that relates the data derived from different societies with
each one of its traditional models. But if the data on this subject is not
linked with the means by which it was produced, it would be impossible
to separate the anecdotal from the essential; the high esteem toward
cannabis in Tibetan Buddhism, for example, cannot be explained by
retelling the tale of the Buddha living on two hemp seeds a day for a week
30
INTRODUCTION
without examining the nutritional benefits of the seed oil or to what point
the effects of this drug are related with specific techniques for tantric
meditation. The extensive distribution of opium in ancient Rome would
be badly understood without considering the high value held by its
citizens for euthanasia (mom tempexlil/a). The same succeeds practically with
any other episode of this chronicle.
I hold it as self-evident that an investigation so vast, about material
drawn from so many sources, can only aspire to be a sketch of its own
plot. To convert the history of ebriety into a truly illustrative appendix of
the human condition would require the work of many other investigators
who can fill in the numerous gaps and defects in the scheme, adding
uncountable bits of information that without doubt must exist although as
yet dispersed throughout a multitude of documents. In the introduction
to his study about the history of systems of incarceration, M. Foucault
said that one can only transcend the limited goals of mere curiosity and
erudition in so far as one is allowed “to analyze the political framework of
the institution.”21 Here the object of analysis is an evolution that
culminates in a legal and moral framework of the mind. Instead of
preventing a body from escaping its spirit which the regime of the
penitentiary attempts, the goal here is that the spirit should be able to
escape from its body, the millennarian ambition of the ascetics.
Exposing beforehand the precariousness inherent in an
investigation as complex as irregularly documented” leaves me only the
21 Foucault, 1978, p. 35.

22 The bibliography uses the modern system indicating exclusively name, date and page
number. At the end of the volume are the alphabetized indexes of books, pamphlets,
catalogues and magazines cited, with the rest of their details. Often, however, the first
time a reference is cited within a given chapter it will be given in full; the succeeding
references will be abbreviated. The citations which correspond to the classics,
31
hope of an initial benevolence on behalf of the reader, perhaps as would

merit a map by a cartographer of unexplored territories. The first two
chapters deal thoroughly with certain abstract questions in order to be
able to pinpoint later upon a broad horizon the concrete data about each
distinct culture, outlining some basic concepts that may seem general and
theoretical but will prove useful later on. Those who prefer to rush
directly into the material need only go without further prologues to
chapter three.
congressional documents, legal texts and news extracted from the daily press are also
cited in full.
32
a
r
E
n
a
g
a
P
e
_h
T
Figure 1 (previous page).
Archaic Attic stele depicting a M)/ste or initiate
contemplating the /view’, or sacred objects of
the mysteries, during an initiation.
1
Magic, Pharmacy and Religion
Count: Happiness? Happiness doesn’t exist. None of the

thingxpeople chatter about rea/Q exist Love, for
instance. It’s the sa/ne with love.
Actress: You may be right there.
Count: Enjoy/nent... intoxication there’s nothing wrong
with the/n, they/’re real. I enjoy so/nething all right, and I
know I enjoy it. Or I ’/n intoxicated, all right. That’s real
too. And when it’s over, it’s 01/er, that’s all.
A. Schnitzler, La Rona/e*
In the earliest literature there is no safe way to distinguish empirical

medicine – fundamentally based upon physical and botanical knowledge –
from the practice of magic or religious belief. As we will see when
discussing ancient Greece, there co-existed experts in herbs and roots,
masters of gymnasium and diet, military surgeons, wizards strictly
speaking (iatro/nanteis or healer-seers, music therapists, purgers or quacks)
and priests of diverse cults (basically those appointed to the temples of
Asclepius). A very similar thing happened in Egypt, Mesopotamia, India
and Iran.
Before the development of comparative anthropology, historians
of medicine postulated something quite different, supposing that from the
beginning it was possible to trace a clear division between knowledge of a
*Schnitzler, Arthur. Plays and Stories. New York: Continuum Publishing Company,
1982; La Ronde, tr. Eric Bentley.
THE PAGAN ERA
practical nature about antidotes, the treatment of wounds, etc., and the
magical-religious world of each cultural area. Some even arrived at the
conclusion that empirical medicine came prior to the sacred and the
magical,1 guided evidently by the desire to see in the genesis of their trade
a clear evolutionary path without detours from the simple to the complex.
However, recent examinations of the ethnobotanical and cultural
data has made more and more precarious this hypothesis of a pure
medicine that unfolded slowly but autonomously in comparison to the
rites and spells. Toward the middle of the twentieth century this
preconception began to be considered a fallacy in the history of medicine
because, although early therapists had available objectively effective
methods, their foundation was not rational, but magical.2 In fact, until a
more empirical medicine does appear, it is always linked to the magical
balms of antiquity, and even during the fourth century BC – in full
expansion of Greek rationalism – Plato has Socrates say that the
phármakon will bring one back to health if upon using it one pronounces
the appropriate incantation.3 Hence today the tendency is to invert the
evolutionary order in the history of medicine, considering that the
purification rites and the other cathartic elements came first, and that only
sometime afterward appeared ideas of secular medicine.4 In fact, up until
the rise of Hippocratic medicine, it could actually be said that the same
remedies appear so frequently in so many different epochs and places
(inside a given botanical area), that the true differences correspond to the
mythical-ritual frameworks of each cultural group.
1 Cf. for example Hofschlaeger, 1909, pp. 81-83.

2 Cf. Ackernecht, 1946, pp. 467-497.
3 “[I]f a person would repeat the charm at the same time that he used the cure, he would
be made whole” Qowett, B. The Dialogues of Plato, vol. IV, part I. New York:
Hearst’s International Library Co., 1914 (GB), pp. 10-11, C/mrnzides (Temperance).
4 Cf. Coury, 1967, pp. 111-127.
36
MAGIC, PHARMACY AND RELIGION
A. Sickness and Sacrifice
If we look for a common factor in the many diverse institutions of

ancient peoples, we might consider as a permanent feature “the universal
fear of the impure (miasma) and its corollary, the universal desire for ritual
purification (,éatharxz'x),”5 in agreement with the well-defined terms of a
philologist. Together with this fear and desire, there reigns in a practically
hegemonic fashion the idea of sickness as divine punishment, manifest in
words like the Assyrian shertu, which signifies simultaneously ailment,
punishment, and divine rage.
Corresponding to the principle of sickness-punishment and the
opposition purity/impurity is the intrinsically religious institution of the
sacrifice, an important part of almost every known belief or cult, present
or past. The sacrifice is sacerfacere (to sanctify) which bridges the gap
between the human world and the divine. As has been said, in the
sacrifice there is not “a relationship of similarity but one of contiguity
between extreme poles (the sacrificer and the divinity) mediated through a
series of successive identifications.”6
1. Two Models. In order to understand the function of this

nuclear religious act, we can begin with two basic perspectives, that
henceforth we shall call models A and B.
Model A is the theme of the expiatory gift7 which perceives in the
sacrifice the gift of a victim to a deity. The motivation for the act is to
ingratiate oneself with the divinity through a more or less symbolic barter,
thanks to which an individual or a group can offer something in exchange
5 Dodds, 1980, p. 46
6 Lévi—Strauss, 1970, p. 326.
7 Expounded originally by E. B. Taylor and M. Mauss.
37
THE PAGAN ERA
for themselves. That which is offered can range from a hair that the
celebrant plucks from his head (saying “this pays for my debt”) up to an
anirnal or a human victim. Inside this perspective there are various
ulterior constructions8 whose examination now would require an excessive
detour. Model B is the theme of the sacramental banquet9 which

conceives the sacrifice as an act of participation, that not only establishes a
nexus between the profane and the sacred, but also a higher unity between
the members of the group.
Obviously, the first hypothesis does not explain the cases where
there is total or partial consumption of the victim, and the second does
not explain the cases which lack such consumption. But to view these
models so narrowly would needlessly engender myopia, because neither
one by itself alone can exhaust the subject of sacrifice as a fundamental
religious institution. The man-god relationship can be basically an act of
fear (marked by paranoid projection) and it can also be an act of hope
(marked by feast and reconciliation). In other words, it has “two senses,
according to whether the sacrifice should be expiatory or that it represents
a rite of communion.”10 In those of an expiatory nature, the act begins
with man and arrives at the divinity through the priest and the victim,
while in those of a communal nature the act begins with a god incarnate in
some plant, and sometimes in an animal, which through its ingestion by
the participants is then identified with themselves.
Both lines appear fused in the Christian mass, which combines the
memory of the torment infiicted upon a sacrificial lamb with the agape of
bread and wine, reiterating a theme ancient in the Mediterranean area. In
8 That of a divinity originally burnt Qensen), that of the assassinated proto—father (Freud),
that of the rejuvenation of a god by periodic ritual death (Frazer), etc.
9 Proposed originally by W. Robertson Smith.
10 Levi-Strauss, 1970, p. 326.
38
fact, this is the essence of the cults of Persephone (linked to cereals) and
of Dionysus (linked to wine), that are themselves already united as the
banquet of bread and wine in the cults of Attis and Mithra, long before
the coming of Christ.
The ceremonies of model B that incorporate by way of memory a
ceremony of model A frustrate the temptation to emphatically distinguish
peoples that sacrifice in order to buy indulgences off of some angry
divinity from peoples effecting rites of communion with gods who are not
so avid for victims. But one can add a sociological precision to the
circular logic in each ritual. The orientation toward persecution (model A)
will predominate where impurity is considered infectious and hereditary,
and this in turn is not independent of the degree of social stratification
imposed upon each group as a law of governability. After studying
various societies of central Africa, one anthropologist suggested that there
was a correlation between witch hunts – a prototype of model A – and the
structure of each group, being at its maximum in disintegrating traditional
societies, very much less in those still integrated, and practically non
existent in those with great social mobility.“
Also deserving of attention is the fact that impurity should be
considered infectious and hereditary in larger measure when dealing with
agricultural and pastoral societies with an urban future than in nomadic
tribes dedicated to the hunt and the collection of fruits. For the same
reason, the sacrifice of animal victims predominates in the former while
ceremonies of sacramental consumption are emphasized in the latter.
Although there are exceptions, there hardly exist groups of hunter
gatherers which practice human sacrifice.” On the other hand, there are
11 Cf. Douglas, 1978, pp. 82-83.

12 An excellent analysis of hunters and gatherers can be found in Clastres, 1974, pam‘/n.
39
THE PAGAN ERA
Figures 2 and 3.
The horned god or cave wizard of
Trois-Fréres, from a drawing made
by H. Breuil and a photograph of
the same wall. This drawing, dated
to the Middle Magdalenian (approx.
13,000 BC), dominates one of the
chambers of the cave at a great
height. Some specialists postulate a
shamanic origin for the cave paintings
of the Palaeolithic.
scarcely any sedentary

societies — none in the
historical examples —
where there is not
practiced in a systemic or
occasional manner human
sacrifice, or where there
are lacking deep-rooted
legends about such deeds.
40
2. Details of the Two Models. The sacrifice that seeks

barter is linked to an idea of gods dominated by pthonos or envy toward
man. The Old Testament repeats unceasingly the jealousy of Yahvéh, and
Herodotus said envy is the hidden hand responsible for the historical
event; as well, there corresponds on this plane the idea of the weakening
gods, who need great masses of victims in order not to disappear, as
believed the Toltecs and Aztecs. By contrast, the sacrifice that looks for
some form of communion is linked to an essentially animate nature, that
postulates a co-ownership of the divine and the human.
The distinction between a sacredness of transgression, the source
of the prohibitions, and a sacredness of respect, origin of the communion
in general,” also offers points of contact between models A and B. In
reality, it reveals whether the projective mechanism predominates or
remains on a secondary plane with respect to the participatory in different
cultures, but also that almost every society creates taboos against impurity
while taking care to provide periodic ceremonies where these same taboos
can be suspended.
With respect to model A, the classic work on the transference of
evil is without any doubt The Golden Bough which contains a complete
revision of the anthropological data available at the beginning of the
twentieth century, and of whose abundant documentation it will be
enough to mention a few examples, simply to the effect of demonstrating
the diffusion of the phenomenon. In Manipur, a criminal was used
(afterwards pardoned) to transmit the sins of the Rajah. In New Zealand,
the sins of the entire tribe were transferred to one man, who in turn
transmitted them to a bracken fern that was then thrown into the sea.
The Yoruba of West Africa used to cut the throat of an individual, whose
dying moans would induce in the members an explosion of joy, because
13 Cf. Caillois, 1950, pp. 71-163.
41
THE PAGAN ERA
the people had been cleansed of their sins and the divine anger pacified.
A similar thing occurred among the Gondos of India, the Albaneses of
the western Caucasus not so long ago, and the ancient Spartans annually
threw a criminal from a high precipice into the sea; other peoples of the
Adriatic threw a young man from the cliffs each year with the oration,
“you shall become our shit.” In Greek Marseille an individual of the
poorest class was maintained regally during an entire year and then was
stoned to death outside the walls if there came a plague, while in the
Tarhellian feasts the rite developed with two expiatory victims, a man and
a woman, by way of redeeming both sexes.“ It’s said that the Aztecs
practiced these rites with many thousands of persons each year
(sometimes prisoners of war and servants, although at other times with
the young of whatever social strata), for whom they augured grand and
eternal bliss underground. During the lower Middle Ages and the
beginnings of the Modern Age, the scapegoats were drawn from an
unusual variety of victims, ranging from inanimate books to their living
translators, heretics, apostates, lechers and witches. In the middle of the
sixteenth century, Guillaume de Machut, chronicler and poet of the
Bourgogne court, relates in Old French how all the Jews were
exterminated who did not fiee to Flanders, in order to free the territory
from the black pest, which had arrived in 1341.15 Isaac and Christ,
Iphigenia and Oedipus are characters tied into the same synopsis.“ No
doubt, a similar thing could be said of Adam and Eve.
14 Cf. Frazer, 1944, chapters LV-LIX.

15 “Car tuit firrent destruit /Li uns pendm, /2' autres cuit, / L lmtre noié, l ́autr o copée/ La
teste de haa/ye ou d ́eij>e'e” [For all the Jews were destroyed / Some hung, some burned alive
/ One drowned, another beheaded / By the axe’s blade or sword.]. 1908, vol. I, pp. 144 -
145.
16 Cf. Girard, 1986,pam'm, and Vernant, 1972, pp. 99-131.
42
As for model B, its manifestations are no less extensive in space

and time, although they are perhaps one step further removed from
contemporary man. Remembering many times a bloody sacrifice, but by
this same memory excluding it from immediate reality, the sacramental
banquet informs some of the most well-known ancient rites. Its roots lie
in the Vedic sacrifice of so/na, the Avestic of hao/na, the Eleusinian kykeon
and the Christian eucharist, as well as a diversity of initiation rites that
span the whole of the Hellenistic period including those of Bacchus,
Cybele, Isis, and Mithra.
Nevertheless, it is possible that model B appears even more
sharply defined within shamanism, a universal category that only begins to
take shape with the development of anthropology and the comparative
history of religions. In contrast with characters like the king, the village
chief, the family patriarch and the priests – who are concerned with the
rites of model A and the ceremonies of birth, marriage and death – the
shamans” only cover psychic needs, and this by virtue of a completely
17 It is a debatable question the Turkish-Mongolian or the Sanskrit origin of this term. In

his Essays on the Sociology of Religion (II, 2), M. Weber assures us that the word
shaman comes from the Pali saniana (Sanskrit Iffllfiflflfl), a term used to designate a hermit
that has magical powers over the gods thanks to his ascetic exercises. Evidently, the
shamans of central and northern Asia aspire to the same when they put the gods in their
service. But Weber considers that the character was exported along with the expansion
of Mahayana Buddhism, a thing unlikely considering the existence of identical characters
in Africa, America and Oceania. The shamanic trance has been seen in the relief of the
caves of Lascaux (cf. Giedion, 1962, p. 391) and some specialists in prehistory consider
that the evidence of shamanism in Europe dates back some thirty thousand years.
Maintaining this are Closs (1960, pp. 29-38) and Narr (1959, pp. 233-272), who cite
evidence dating back to the transition between the Upper and Lower Palaeolithic.
Others, like Vadja, place the beginning of Asiatic shamanism much later, at the start of
the Bronze Age, as a result of the cultural interchanges between the agricultural societies
of the south and hunters of the north (cf. Eliade, 1968, p. 389). According to Eliade
43
THE PAGAN ERA
different legitimacy, which from the initial study of the subject

concentrates upon “knowing the techniques of ecstasy.”18 According to
Eliade, the shamanic trance understands two moments: the initial one of
magical flight and the subsequent one of death and resurrection.
Although shamanism is an institution repeated with punctual
gatherings on every continent (besides Africa, America and Oceania, it
appears in cultures that describe a gigantic arc from Scandinavia to
Indonesia, crossing all of Asia), the shaman ought not to be confused with
the sorcerer in general, because shamanism constitutes a particular kind of
sorcery, characterized by its own effects.19
In contrast with some sorcerers, and with so many modalities of
priests who continue to call for public lynchings, there is not a single
known case of a present-day shaman that pretends to cure by offering a
human expiatory victim.20 In fact, the shaman constitutes the almost
chemically pure antithesis of the transferencial sacrifice, because he offers
himself up as the particular victim, resolving in simulation or magical
excursion the nexus between death and the extraordinary. He constitutes
himself, it’s an “original phenomenon known by archaic humanity in its totality”
(1968, p. 392).
18 Eliade, 1968, p. 155.
1° The Cuna of Panama, for example, distinguish three types of sorcerers (inatn/edit,
alzragedis and neles) but only the ne/e can be considered anthropologically a shaman. The
notes that define a shaman are two: a) to be vocational, in the sense that one can only
arrive to be one after a mystical experience in which one receives the mandate of some
spirit; and, b) to realize his divinatory and curative operations through voyage: to the
Other World. Cf. Lévi-Strauss, 1968, the chapter Magic and Religion.
20 In some cultures — like the Aztec — there were jaguar shamans who convoked and
realized human sacrifice; the Papnl V012 (78-79) and other sources even suggest that such
sacrifices began in Mesoamerica; cf. Garza, 1990, pp. 134-137, and Reichel-Dolmatoff,
1978. About contemporary forms of these individuals, cf. Castaneda (1968) and Benitez
(1970), the first centring around a Yaqui shaman and the second about a Cora shaman.
44
MAGIC, PHARIVLACY AND RELIGION
Figure 4.
Ceramic from Colima, Mexico,
between 200 BC and 100
AD A group of celebrants
dance around a mushroom,
probably a P.rz'/09/he hzexieamz.
a professional of model B,
who with his capacity to
travel to supernatural planes _
is able to combat adverse spirits and absorb the foreign impurity, but he
does not need to be annihilated in an irreversible fashion. His field is the
marvellous-terrifying universe of magic, where a mysterious sympathy
links all things, and his function is to mediate between wakefulness and
dreams; he can descend to the depths, mount up again to the heights, and
in general accommodate all kinds of spirits insufferable by others, with no
more effects than the convulsions of a trance.21 In the individuals of this
21 Qualifying the phenomena of the trance, Firth (1965, p. 296) distinguishes three types:
spiritpossession (a trance in which the possessed little by little loses control to a spirit that
ends up operating his body); spirit mediumship (a trance where the invading spirit speaks
through the possessed); and sha/hunt:/h as we know it (where the spirit remains
subordinate to the will of the individual who lodges it). To these three types, Mary
Douglas adds a fourth, called the positive cult of the trance, by virtue of which “the
possessed remains unconscious with the tribe neither considering this undesirable nor
dangerous supposing that it constitutes a channel of benign power for everyone”
(1978, p. 101). Types 1 and 2 – not as clearly 4 – are cases of possession pure and
simple, while in shamanism it does not seem correct to speak of such a thing, but rather
of a voyage to the Other World. We would arrive then to distinguish between the
trance-rapture of possession and the trance-ecstasy of shamanism. The question will be
tackled much later.
45
THE PAGAN ERA
species who remain today above the earth, there is something of the living
fossil, whose evolution appears to have halted in the Stone Age. But for
this same reason they interest us in order to understand a past where they
left such a decisive mark.
B. Drug and Victim
Suggestive or not, the reader might well ask what relationship

these considerations have with our subject. The answer is that the
religious complex linked to model B employs psychoactive substances in a
systematic and very particular manner, a use dating back perhaps to the
paleohominids, throughout hundreds of thousands of years prior to the
agricultural and urban revolution of the Neolithic.
Yet, maybe it would not have been necessary to enter into so
much detail were it not for something that is difficult to consider an
arbitrary coincidence: the victim of the expiatory sacrifice was called in
Greek pharmzakoir, and the vehicle of the shamanic ecstasy – no less than
some religious ceremonies of the ecstatic and orgiastic kind – was a
phármakon and other names as well. Changing the final consonant and the
accent, the same word designates things that – in principle at least – seem
to lack some link. The pharmzakós belongs to the sacrifice-gift, and the
phármakon to the communal sacrifice, as if it were of little importance that
the one should be a particular person and the other a particular plant.
Why should such a minimal orthographic difference separate the objects
of models A and B, so clearly opposed as projective and participative
therapy, as the kingdom of the homicidal ritual and the kingdom of agape?
A first response is based on the magical as an element common to
either form of sacrifice. The expiatory victims like the psychoactive
substances are magical agents, of whose efficacy there is no accounting
for in a natural or logical sequence of cause and effect. This is evident in
46
MAGIC, PHARl\/LACY AND RELIGION
Figure 5.
A Sioux medicine man pours out sand
along the lines of a curative painting.
the case of the pharvna/cox, but also in that of the phárvnakon, which was not
just mixed with non-psychoactive substances, but was also accompanied
by all kinds of incantations. In the Homeric poems, where these terms
appear for the first time, the nexus between the drug – expiatory or
vegetal – and the prodigious is manifest and frequent.” On the other
hand, the concrete mechanism behind the action of drugs was a mystery
three thousand years ago and continues being so in large part today;
22 Cf. Artelt, 1937; in Lain Entralgo, 1982, p. 326.
47
THE PAGAN ERA
contemporary man considers it a prosaic thing the infiuence over the

nervous system of certain substances now isolated chemically into their
essential factors (the alkaloids), tending to forget that in neurological and
physiological terms the modalities of their actions are far from being even
remotely well understood. Medical techniques and the sacred were not
well distinguished before Hippocrates, meaning that up to then the result
would have been seen as miraculous (inexplicable but true) when any
simple or compound body was capable of modifying the spirit. Thus,
Homer in the Odyssey calls the lineage of Peán the knowers of drugs,
where Peán is one of the names of Apollo, the deity with the most
shamanic references in the Greek pantheon.
A second line of inquiry would seek support in the etymology of
the Greek word for drug, p/ninnakon (from which is derived the English
pharmacy and pharmacological), however much the slipperiness of this
terrain leads many times to delirium. P/aarvnaxxo signifies “to temper the
iron,” that is, to submerge the red hot metal into cold water – and temper
continues to have for us a medical-psychiatric meaning; taking one step
back, the root p/aarvnak could be derived from the magic of the warriors,
whose importance in ancient economic and military life is evident. Even
so, we might be on more solid ground if we consider that we are dealing
with a compound word, with the first part meaning “transfer”23 and a
23 Far could be derived from the Indo-European root Mer (to carry) – considering that
the Indo-European 11/] becomes the Greek p/Ji-, from which comes the Old Iranian
la/Jéranii, the Avestic barai/ni, the Armenian berein, the Greek phero, and the Latinfem. [The
English derivation for the word drug is said by contrast to come from the O. E. dryge or
the O. F. drogue, via the M. Du. dmge, meaning dry, as in droge vate or dry casks, in which
medicines mostly consisting of dry herbs were packed.]
48
second that signifies “power.”24 In this case, a drug would be “that which
has power to transfer (impurities).”
But it is precisely the impurity that supplies the connecting thread.
Both phármakon and pharwzakós are clearly linked if one contemplates that
what is trying to be achieved by either method is the purification.
1. Catharsis. Whether or not pharmakoi (plural of pharmakós)

meant those humans that cities sustained only to immolate in sacrifice
when they were afflicted by some calamity, as “sponges with which one
cleans the table,”25 what is certain is that they were also called katharmoi, a
word derived from katharós (pure) and kathairein (to clean, to purge) which
in its substantive form – katharsis – will popularize the Aristotelian theory
of tragedy. In effect, Aristotle held that this dramatic genre produced in
the spectators a purification in some way analogous – although spiritual
and unsanctified – to that which he believed achievable through religious
rituals.“
Further, the word – and the elimination of the impure generally –
possesses an esteemed place in medicine from the most remote times,
where there were known and described many types of katharmoi. In
contrast with the current use of the term, often restricted to intestinal
laxatives and to expressions like “to drain (purge) a wound,” ancient
medicine talked of purgatives for all parts of the body, among which was
included, of course, the brain. In fact, the drugs themselves –
psychoactive or not – were considered therapeutic by how much they
24 The Indo-European root male, from which comes the Germanic maeht, the English
might and the Latin magister.
25 Nilsson, 1925, p. 87.
26 Greek tragedy represents an expiatory sacrifice — the death of a hero in payment for
his excess (hyhrir) — put forward to a community as a commemoration that discharges the
primary passions.
49
THE PAGAN ERA
purged, not just a material organ of the body but also the understanding
itself and the spirits of the individual, emphasizing a close semantic
connection that has escaped various philologists. Bernays, for example,
said that “cat/aarsis means either the expiation of a guilt thanks to certain
priestly ceremonies or the alleviation of an ailment by means of a
remedy.”27 But the relief of an ailment and the expiation of a guilt are in
the archaic epoch perfectly parallel processes, and instead of employing a
disjunctive conjunction, it seems better to employ the copulative.28
Definitely, the phaflaakon was an impersonal p/aarraakós, almost
always botanical.” In place of purifying an individual or a collective
through the projection of a miasma onto another human being,
designated for destruction by this same act, it liberated someone from a
particular impurity by a path not paranoid but realistic, expelling purely
and simply from his body this miasma just as a laxative washes out the
intestines. Freed from its magical element, as an objective and non
transferencial cathartic vehicle, this concept will define the collection of
medical treatments reunited under the name of the Corpm Hzjijiocrafirum.
The extreme phonetic proximity between the scapegoat and drugs ceases
then to be enigmatic. The therapeutic substances known by archaic man
are contained within an horizon where medicine and the rite of model A
take turns in an attempt to confront a perfectly common fear. To
alleviate an illness (when possible or effective) and to expel an impurity
are the same thing.
The decisive difference is that the drug (with its ambivalence of
that which may kill, and because of this, may cure) does not fall into the
27 Cf. Lain Entralgo, 1982, p. 334.

28 Cf. Temkin, 1930, p. 90 and ss.
2° Sometimes it was composed of secretions or parts of animals, and prepared minerals
as well.
50
foreign dichotomy of good and evil, of pure and impure, but only into
that of whether its cathartic effects should be useful or not useful. Before
an epidemic of cholera one group will decide to immolate expiatory
victims while another will use opium as a remedy, due to its known
astringent capabilities, or hellebore, or some non-psychoactive drug. We
can be sure that the majority of ancient cities employed both solutions.
And they continued in this way until one civilization – the Greek – dared
to pass decisively over to rationality, declaring the first of these –
scapegoating – a criminal delirium.30
Almost thirty centuries later, as if history describes an orbit with
periodic cyclic returns, some drugs and their users will be converted into
new pharvnakoi for rites of collective decontamination, a 21st century
atavistic faith in the transferencial cure comparable to that espoused by
those primitive peoples of the Adriatic who threw each year a young man
from the cliffs with the pious oration: “You shall become our shit.”
2. Ecstasy. We have examined briefly the connection between

the phármakon and model A, based on the expulsion of an impurity
through its transference to another. However, the festive element is most
typical, without any doubt, of model B. Only there, within rituals closely
related with one form or another of communion, does it acquire its full
social and sacramental significance.
The feast is sacred, though it be brief. Its function is either to
strengthen a certain system of prohibitions, releasing like an escape valve
the tension created by periodic transgressions (in agreement with the
30 From the fifth century BC and onward, the memory of the pharrna/eoi seemed to the
Greeks ‘something comparable to our burning of witches and heretics [...] linked to the
worst possibilities of the savage mob directed by malign or demented priests’ (G. Murray,
1924, p. 12).
51
THE PAGAN ERA
psychoanalytical hypothesis), or that it constitutes simply a moment where

the routine of existence is suspended. The anthropological data, the
written documents, and immediate personal experience indicate that the
feast tends towards a renovation of the world, reinforced by the
accompaniment of music, dance and some kind of drug. In his book
about the origins of Greek tragedy, Nietzsche wrote:
It is either under the influence of the narcotic draught, of which the hymns of all
primitive men and peoples tell us, or by the powerful approach of spring penetrating all
nature with joy, that those Dionysian emotions awake, in the augmentation of which the
subjective vanishes to complete self-forgetfulness. Under the charm of the Dionysian
not only is the covenant between man and man again established, but also estranged,
hostile or subjugated nature again celebrates her reconciliation with her lost son, man.31
In the first century the theologian Philo of Alexandria proposed –

discussing a somewhat debatable etymology – that inebriation was
originally an act of noble jubilation culminating in a religious ceremony of
offering:
For first, of all, they offered up prayers and instituted sacrifices, and then, having
propitiated the deity, and having purified their bodies and souls, the former with baths,
and the latter with the waters of laws and of right instruction, they then turned their
cheerful and rejoicing countenances to more luxurious food, very often not returning
home but walking about in the temples in which they had sacrificed [This] is what
they say the word inet/2)/ein, to be drunk, derives its name from; because, /neta to tlgyein
(after sacrificing) it was the custom of the men of old to drink great quantities of wine.”
31 Levy, Oscar, ed. The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche vol. I. London:
George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 1909, p. 26, The Birth of Tragedy (Die Geburt der Tmgödie),
www.archive.org; see also thejohnston translation at GB and www.cafepress.com
32 Yonge, C. D., tr. The Works of Philo udaeus, vol. I. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854
(GB), p. 449, De 13>/antatione, ch. XXXIX.
52
3. Ebriety. But it would be an error to circumscribe this

religious aura surrounding ebriety in paganism to wines and beers.”
Speaking metaphorically, a perfume can intoxicate us, an emotion, a
voyage, a work of art, etc. Although the term is applied almost exclusively
to alcohol and its effects, certainly even today these ceremonies are
realized with a wide variety of drugs. In the Amazonian basin and in the
Antilles, stew pots of tobacco were and are the agent elected for initiation
rites and other celebrations, just as in Central America very toxic daturas
(toloache) are employed in festivals very similar to the orgies of the
Mediterranean area in antiquity; and as such, the kau/akau/a of Oceania and
the African iboga fulfil in their collective rites some of the same functions
as the vat of fermented must. In one of the treatises attributed to
Aristotle, for example, the rye parasitized by the ergot (containing amides
of lysergic acid) is considered a narcotic (and perhaps a vehicle of ebriety)
similar to others: “A confirmation of this appears from considering the
things which induce sleep; they all, whether potable or edible, for instance,
poppy, mandragora, wine, darnel, produce a heaviness in the head.”34
The Greek methe and the Latin ebrietas, as with their synonyms in
Indo-European languages, cover all kinds of provoked botanical
experiences; hence, for example, the archaic hymns reunited in the
Veda – viscerally opposed to alcoholic drinks – make affirmations like the
33 The distillation of alcohol dates at least to 500 BC in northern India, according to F. R.

Allchin (Man. 14 (1979): 55-63. Indisputable are the drawings by Zosimus the
Panopolitan of distillation apparatus attributed to Maria the Jewess, generally considered
to have invented the water-bath or bain-marie and to have given the oldest description
(first or second centuries AD) of a still (heater, condenser, and receiver), according to
Raphael Patai (The Jewish Alchemists: A History and Sourcebook. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1994).
34 Beare, 1., tr. Aristotle: On Sleep and Sleeplessness, //classics.mit.edu, //ebook.
adelaide.edu.au, De 10111110 et uzlgilia, 456 b 29.
53
THE PAGAN ERA
following: “Transported with our Munihood we have pressed on into the

winds: you, therefore, mortal men, behold our natural bodies and no
more”35
Apart from their profane use, and from therapy properly said, it is
important to take into account moreover that when these drugs play a
part in ceremonies directed by shamans, other sorcerers and priests, in the
strict sense they are substances with entheogenic“ virtue, constituting
modalities of blood and meat of the gods (so/aa, /aao/aa, mad/9], manna,”
teonanácatl, eucharistia), with which the minister and the celebrants literally
commingle. To take part in an orgiastic rite, let’s use an example, does
not mean to take pleasure or to relax oneself sensually but rather to
participate in a precise ceremony, which implies “the experience of
communion with a god that transforms the human into a laafié/Jos or
leak/ae.”38 For contemporary Westerners, the problem of comprehension
derives from the overwhelming hegemony that the alcohols have managed
to achieve over other drugs; thus, a philologist like Dodds doesn’t vacillate
in affirming the previous for other substances, but he is very cautious in
recognizing it in rites linked to the consumption of the fermented grape,
even though inside the complex represented by model B – as a planetary
35 Griffith, Ralph T. H., tr. Hymns of the Rig Veda, vol. III. Benares: E. Lazarus and
Co., 1891 (GB), book X, hymn 136, v. 3; www.sacred-texts.com.
36 From en I/Jeosgenos (to engender inside oneself the god, to generate the divine).
37 R. Graves maintains that the mana of the Hebrews was originally the secretion of
certain plant lice, and that he had tried it with Prime Minister Ben Gurion. In fact, many
ant hills cultivate – as recounts Maeterlinck in his Life of the Ants – plant lice of this type
in order to suck said secretions, that are apparently psychoactive. But Graves does not
but touch upon the theme in passing and of his fine sense of humour one might expect
such a joke (Cf., 1980, p. 72).
38 Dodds, 1980, p. 260, n. 1.
54
phenomenon, past and present — the beers and wines in their pure state”
constitute nearly perfect entheogens. In this field there reigns a local
stereotype, nourished by the lack of ethnobotanical investigations until
just recently.
The change of perspective came from the hand of the Swiss, K.
Meuli, who, when analyzing the penetration of shamanic institutions in
ancient Greece, exposed the use of cannabis as a vehicle of ecstasy among
the Scythes, Caucasians and Iranians, and at the same time, the connection
of these rites with cult sessions in Altaic and Siberian tribes.40 From that
time onwards – although they lacked much news about American and
African groups, available today – scholars began to pay attention to
knowledge once overlooked, like the reference to cannabis in the Zend
Avesta41 the mention of visionary mushrooms in hymns to the pagan
divinities of Asia and northem Europe,“ and the fact that the original
Indo-European word for cannabis (bhanga in Iranian, bhang in Sanskrit)
also designates any kind of mystical intoxication in central and northern
Asia, beginning with the ecstasy
3° For example, the Mexican pu/que — a beer extracted from the agave — was consumed
with other psychoactive substances (peyote, morning glory flowers, psilocybin
mushrooms, daturas); about the pulque cie cinco, Garza, 1990, p. 165. The same
probably happened with the biblical wine and that used in the Bacchus cults, for reasons
that will be expounded upon later.
40 Meuli, 1935, p. 122 and ss. Herodotus observed the ecstatic role of cannabis among
the Scythes, although as mere commentary (Cary, H. The Histories of Herodotus. New
York: D. Appleton and Co., 1904 (GB), p. 235, book IV, sections 74-76).
41 “Bangha, the so-called Bang of Zoroaster,” the “good narcotic” (Darmesteter, Jamers,
tr. The Zend-Avesta, parts I, II. New York: The Christian Literature Co., 1898 (GB), p.
267, Din Yart, ch. V, verse 15).
42 Cf. B. Munkacsi, 1907, p. 343-344; in Eliade, 1968, p. 315.
55
THE PAGAN ERA
Figure 6.
The shaman josé Matsuwa
_ officiates at a drum ceremony
under the influence of peyote.
linked to Afflflflilfl /nnxiaria, that mushroom that often appears in fairy tales,
sporting a red cap speckled with clear spots and a white shaft. To this
came to be added a mass of information about the nomads of the artic
steppes, from the Baltic to eastern Siberia, and the use of amanitas by a
high proportion of the inhabitants of these regions in ecstatic rituals and
in initiations; less trustworthy are the existing analogies on this level
between groups of warriors as far apart as the Scandinavian bersekir and
the Vedic /nag/a.
On the other hand, inside model B it is necessary to make
distinctions among the religious ceremonies themselves, supported by the
different kinds of entheogens employed.
:1. Drugs of possession and drugs of psychic excursion.

Certain covens of witches and casts of priests are limited to postulating
the immediate efficacy of ritual, without it being necessary to modify the
conscience of the sorcerer or the priest. Said individuals have in common
56
that they have not been called nor have they suffered some type of direct
or mystical experience with the spiritual world that they administer in their
parishes; their office comes to them via professional training, in that they
have learned the hymns, the ritual gestures, the fiights of birds and their
meanings, the reading of the entrails of certain victims, the calendar of
official events, the vestry and the composure due to their position, the
sacred books, etc. Of this type are the Roman pontiffs, the Hindu
Brahmins, the Jewish rabbis, Christian clerics and a coterie of analogous
figures.
In contrast with these, there is a group of sorcerers and priests
that perform their functions in direct connection with different
psychoactive substances, because for the efficacy of their operations –
divination, electrifying sacrifices, cures and whatever intervention in reality
– it is important to achieve altered states of consciousness. Perhaps it
isn’t necessary that such substances are administered every time they
perform the acts of their offices, but their apprenticeship has passed
inexcusably through these “great proofs of the spirit” (Michaux) which are
voyages to the Other World; moreover, periodically one of their tasks is to
lead isolated individuals or entire groups to this Other World, serving as
guides to the experience.
Closer to this second group than the first we encounter local
authorities who – like the yogis and other anchorites – practice very
complex techniques in order to alter their consciousness and that do not
use, or use only tangentially, some drugs. Without a doubt, it is possible
to achieve mystical experiences of great intensity following ascetic
methods (fasting, silence, solitude, gymnastics, and more severe forms of
mortification). But it is possible, and even probable, that these exercises
modify the cerebral mechanism in a fashion analogous to that derived
from ingesting certain psychoactive substances, judging at least from the
declarations of either group. After his first ingestion of visionary
57
THE PAGAN ERA
mushrooms, an illiterate Athabaskan Dogrib from the Mackenzie

mountains in Canada” can experience visions strangely paired with the
tales of a medieval European mystic or a contemporary Hindu yogi.
Juan de los Ángeles, a Spanish mystic from the Golden Century
says for example:
Departing out of your body, you will be transported cleanly in a flash of the divine
shadows. [I]n this rapture of all the senses that itself is called éxtasis, a man hears
things that are not reasonable nor can he describe them because everything is in a state
of affection; I want to say, things that he cannot ponder or reason upon, but only love.44
There cannot be the slightest doubt that a member of the present

day Native American Church would endorse these words as an excellent
description of his own experiences with the buttons of the peyote cactus.
But neither can it be doubted that these words would not be taken as a
description of his own experiences one who is faithful to the rites of
macumba, alternating incantations with swallows of sugar cane aguardiente
and suckings from a great cigar, or a medieval witch immersed in a trance
brought on by unguents, or a bacchanalian Greek. Considering that all
these rites are characterized by the use of psychoactive substances, it
seems necessary to distinguish inside the ceremonies of model B two
classes of experiences, linked to two basic types of drugs.
One is the ebriety of possession or rapture, realized with drugs
that make one drunk, exciting the body and annihilating the superego’s
moral conscience as well as the memo 1'3’ . Its a3ents are basicallY the
43 Cf. Schultes and Hofmann, 1982, p. 85.

44 Angeles, Juan de los. Triunfiat del a/aw" de Dios, part I. Madrid: Libreria Catélica de
Gregorio del Amo, 1901 (GB), pp. 210, 222, chs. XV, XVI, a reprint of the 1590 edition
by Medina del Campo.
58
alcoholic drinks and the psychoactive solanaceas,45 which in high doses

produce a mix of disinhibition and mental numbness inclining one toward
an orgiastic trance, understanding orgy in the etymological sense
(confusion). To the accompaniment of music and violent dances, these
rites seek a frenzy that liberates the self and promotes the occupation of
its space by a spirit much more redeeming, at least so it seems in a certain
light. The sacred is a stupefaction and a forgetting, a deaf and mute
although physically very vigorous trance that concludes in a refreshing
exhaustion.
The other is the ecstatic ebriety that can be realized with drugs
that spectacularly develop the senses, creating mental states characterized
by a high. Its agents are chiefly plants rich in phenylethylamines or
indoles46 which are distinguishable from the agents employed in the
ceremonies of possession by a very low toxicity and a great visionary
activity. This trance is characterized not only by the retention of the
memory (to begin with, the memory of having been submitted to an
alteration of consciousness), but also by an active disposition, that instead
of being possessed by a spirit seeks to possess it. But the essence of its
effect – which coincides surprisingly with the non-chemically induced
mystic travel – is a psychic excursion characterized by two successive
moments. The first is the magical flight (in secular terms this would be
called the ascent) where the subject inspects unknown or barely suspected
horizons, covering great distances up to the point of seeing oneself from
the outside, as another object of the world. The second is the voyage
itself, that in a quick sketch begins with fearing going mad and ends with
45 Henbane, belladonna, daturas (stramonium, inoxia, metel), brumansia, mandragora,

and tobacco, chiefly.
46 This deals with a chemical family practically inexhaustible, in which stand out
psilocybin, harmine, the amide of lysergic acid, and dimethyltryptamine.
59
THE PAGAN ERA
dying while still alive, and a rebirthing purified of the fear of either life or
death. Although the ecstasy can be considered centered in the phase of
rebirth, the ecstatic sequence understands the totality, and – when things
go well – all is resolved in some form of beatific serenity.
Returning to Nietzschean terms, one could say that witchcraft and
the cults of possession are Dionysian while the ecstatic are Apollonian.
The wizards and priests that administer the first belong to diverse schools,
while it is always shamans (male or female) who administer the second.
This does not mean to say that shamanism and the sorcery of possession
lack common features, especially in contrast with the purely ritualistic
priests. In fact, both are vocational, and both are wizards of power (in the
sense that they deal intimately with the spirits), who, due to their
supposed capacities to prophesize and magically cure, remain in a state of
social marginalization, very distinct from that which characterizes the
ritualized pontiff.
But the experience of the shaman – and that which the drugs used
by him induce in the group – is that of a self that abandons momentarily
the body, transforming itself into spirit, while in the sorcery of possession
the experience is rather that of a body that momentarily abandons the self,
transforming itself into a refreshing silence and insensibility. In the one
case one tries to abduct and in the other to be abducted. Moreover,
shamanism has its focus of irradiation in central Asia from where it could
have passed over to America, the Pacific and to Europe, while the sorcery
of possession rules in Africa, and from this center it could have extended
itself to the Mediterranean and to the great arc of the Indonesian islands,
where a/nok constitutes one of its clearest examples;47 in historical times it
invaded the Americas with the importation of slaves, and today enjoys
there an enviable prosperity (voodoo, mandinga, candomble, etc).
47 Cf. Geertz, 1972, pp. 50-55.
60
MAGIC, PHARIVLACY AND RELIGION
Figure 7.
A Kunama magician from the northeast
of Africa guides a ritual dance of women
in a trance, after ingesting a drink made
from daturas.
b. The plebeian character ofthe chemistry. As a summary, it

could be said that the nucleus of the sacrifice of agape are archaic
techniques of ecstasy and possession, linked to shamanic practices and to
other branches of sorcery, some converted into castes of hierophants.
With respect to shamanism, it is of course indubitable that its
contemporary manifestations employ drugs to such ends. However, some
of the studies consider that the first news worthy of confidence about the
use of visionary mushrooms in the north of Europe and Asia comes from
the middle of the eighteenth century, and there is an emptiness of
millenniums between the verifiable use of entheogens in ancient
civilizations and the present, which permits one to speak of primitive and
modern, pure and impure, vigorous and decadent shamanism. Even
61
THE PAGAN ERA
without filling in this gap, it would nevertheless be difficult not to deduce

that the techniques of ecstasy have always been essentially linked to the
consumption of certain drugs.
To be exact, this historical lacuna doesn’t end with all the neatness
that one would have thought, since it ignores the pre-Columbian cults in
America (documented at least from the tenth century BC) as well as the
explosion of witchcraft that occurred in Europe from the fourteenth to
the seventeenth centuries AD, both phenomenon accompanied by the use
of specific drugs. But the true motivations that can lead one to
distinguish between a vigorous and a decadent shamanism are not so
much reasons as feelings. The repugnance toward linking mysticism and
intoxication – such as the connection between the Bacchus cult and wine
– appears well-illustrated in the words of this scholar on the subject:
The magical-religious trick of intoxication for ecstatic ends is of Iranian origin [. . .], and
it is possible that the technique of shamanic intoxication among the Ugros of the Baltic
should have Iranian origins. But what does this prove about the original experience?
The narcotics are only a plebeian substitute for the “pure” trance. We have already had
the opportunity to confirm that the intoxications (alcohol, tobacco, etc) in many Siberian
villages are recent innovations, which accuses in some way a decadency in shamanic
technique. They struggle to imitate by means of a narcotic drunkenness a spiritual state
incapable of being achieved now by other means. In the decadency and vulgarization of
a mystical technique, in ancient or modern India, in all of the Orient, we always discover
this strange mix of the “difficult ways” and the “easy ways” for realizing the mystical
ecstasy or some other decisive experience.48
As unquestionable as the fact that mystical experiences can be

achieved by ascetic means” is that persons with a particular mental
constitution fall into a trance more easily than others, without resorting to
48 Eliade, 1968, p. 315.

4° Eliade elected personally the path of yoga; see 1968 b.
62
some chemical stimulation. With all of this, to call plebeian and decadent
this use of “narcotic” substances that no pharmacologist would call such,
as they certainly are in no way inducers of drowsiness or sleep, cannot be
explained on a scientific basis. Saying that these “elemental recipes for
ecstasy” sully the nobility of the “hard road” of authentic mysticism
converts Eliade’s dispassionate interest in all human religious institutions
– impassive before human sacrifice, anthropophagi, bloody rites of
passage – suddenly into a moral preoccupation with aberrant techniques.50
This personal take on the game does not provide proofs that
archaic shamanism was in fact more pure than the contemporary or the
medieval, and becomes an unforeseen accusation of impurity, more
appropriate to the mental states investigated by the historian of religion
than those unforeseen in the investigator himself. The ethnocentric cliché
appears, once again, in the fact that the Bacchus rites are not considered
aberrant or decadent substitutes, but original manifestations of the sacred.
For the rest, Eliade does not deny the incidence, present and past, of such
aberrant techniques (in fact, he highlights them more than other historians
of religion), and thanks among other things to his work it has been
possible to construct a theory of ecstatic trance – what he calls psychic
excursion – that helps to understand said techniques inside the religious
evolution of humanity.
If he and some of the other of his illustrious colleagues would
have procured even a minimum of pharmacological information, or if
they would have experimented personally with the substances employed
today in shamanic rites, they might have been able to better qualify an
opinion whose principal inconvenience is a clumsy simplification.”
Accustomed to wine and coffee, it does not occur to us to confuse them
5° Eliade, 1968, p. 316

51 Cf. Naranjo, in Riedlinger, 1990, pp. 177-181.
63
THE PAGAN ERA
under the rubric of “narcotics.” But there is as much and more difference
between peyote and opium, or between cannabis and coca, than there is
between wine and coffee. Although there are many who would feel
repugnance to have to admit it, certain psychoactive drugs are
incomparably more suitable for inducing a mystical voyage than others,
and for this reason they have carried on being used for such purposes on
every continent since time immemorial.
64
2
Myths and Geography
At the third mp Ipenetrate the Great Way,‘

A fullgallon
But all–theNature
thing and
IfeelI when
are one
wine
ponerres in] soul

I will never tell to those who are not drunk.
-- Li Bai, Drin,éin<g Alone by Moonlight1
A. The Neolithic Revolution
With the cultivation of cereals, a curious mythology appears

characterized by and based upon the comprehension – acceptance would
be perhaps more exact – of the cycles life/ death, appearance/
disappearance, fiowering/ fading, in opportune correspondence with
observations of the recently premiered crops. The myth of Persephone,
abducted by the obscure depths during one part of the year and fiowering
above ground during the other part, as with the Sumerian couple
Inana/Dumuzid,2 is the dramatized representation of the seed. And the
1 Waley, Arthur. More Translations from the Chinese. New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1919.
2 In the original Sumerian myth, Inana, goddess of vegetation, descends to the
underworld, becoming a corpse. Her father, Enki, creates the /énrgara and the gala-tura
from the dirt beneath his fingernails: “To the kur-gara he gave the life-giving plant. To
the gala-tura he gave the life-giving water.” These two descend and sprinkle the “life
THE PAGAN ERA
metamorphosis of the seed is what man begins to comprehend as his own

status and destiny.
Agriculture modifies the values of the paleolithic hunter, replacing
the animal world with the vegetal, transforms the worship of the animal
into a cult of fecundity, promotes the feminine principle to a superior
position and converts the celestial deity into a deus otiosus.3 Perhaps
because upon the female is centered that knowledge on which depends
the abundance of the harvests, a goddess worship is established and a
religious character impregnates sexuality, within a universe close to what
has been called a mystery of vegetation, a species of mystic solidarity
between humans and nature that must be recognized periodically by
means of solemn ceremonies, midway between models A and B of the
sacrifice.
The urban revolution (beginning around 4000 BC) re-elaborates
the rites of ecstasy within the demands that arise due to the physical
proximity of large and heterogeneous groups, compelled to obedience by
military and priestly classes in rapid expansion. The feat of developing
agriculture requires a prior accumulation of enormous practical knowledge
giving plant” and the “life-giving water” over her corpse, permitting her to ascend once
more to the “great apple tree in the plain of Kulaba” where her consort, the shepherd
god, Dumuzid, thoroughly amuses himself, seated upon her throne. In her anger, she
banishes him to the underworld but later relents. In the end, the gods decree that he will
take her place in the underworld for only half the year: ‘You for half the year and your
sister for half the year: when you are demanded, on that day you will stay, when your
sister is demanded, on that day you shall be released.’ Thus holy Inana gave Dumuzid as
a substitute ....” From ETCSL t.1.4.1, “Inana's Descent to the Nether World,” Black,
J.A., Cunningham, G., Ebeling, J., Fliickiger-Hawker, E., Robson, E., Taylor, J., and
Zólyomi, G., The Electronic Text Corpm ofSumerian Literature (http:/ /etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/),
Oxford 1998–2006, lines 90-113, 217-235, 254-289, 348-358, and 384-412.
3 An idle, or absent god.
66
MYTHS AND GEOGRAPHY
and perhaps men have never known so much about the fiora of the planet
as when they were transforming so many inedible species, minuscule in
meaty and assimilable food. Nor is it too hazardous to speculate that it
was in that epoch when mankind began to accumulate complex
pharmacological knowledge as well as a catalogue of botanical remedies
effective against pain.
1. The Forbidden Fruit and the Fall. The liturgy seems

suddenly dominated by a veneration of fertility and death because the first
urban cultures represent, albeit in a germinal fashion, a leap halfway
between the small nomadic horde and the crowded anthill, where
everything is ordered around the belly of the queen mother who requires
workers and guardians – no longer warriors and hunters – setting in
motion a transformation of the principle of self-sufficiency into one of
interdependency, whose basic institutions will be sacred royalty and
slavery. The dichotomy death/ fecundity (the twin sisters
Ereshkigala/Inana in Sumerian mythology, but also twins in many other
farming cultures) communicates a basic ambivalence toward life itself, and
when conceived of as an attribute of the vegetable world imparts a foreign
etiology to the plants.
In some of these, the vegetal is not even the original, something
given spontaneously, ab initio. For many early agricultural societies the
plants are born from an immolated deity, and who eats them feeds upon
their substance as he re-enacts a crime. For others – like the Greeks – the
cereals were guarded jealously by the gods, and according to certain
traditions were stolen for the benefit of mankind by a titan (Prometheus).
One ethnologist and historian4 has proposed that this difference between
an assassination and a theft constitutes the hallmark distinguishing the
4]ensen, 1954.
67
THE PAGAN ERA
paleocultivators (slash-and-burn vegetable growers) from agriculturists in

the modern sense (cereal growers). The myth of Persephone celebrated at
Eleusis, for example, contains elements belonging to a type of immolated
deity.
One of the most striking of the plant etiologies appears in the
principal Sumerian cosmologonic myth, that of Enki and Ninhursaga,
which speaks of paradise (Di//nnn) and its loss, that happened when the
“Lord of the earth,” Enki, “determined the destiny of the plants, had
them know it in their hearts,” having decided to try eight of them, one by
OI1€Z
He said to his minister Isimud: “I have not determined the destiny of these plants. What
is this one? What is that one?”
His minister Isimud had the answer for him. “My master, the ‘tree’ plant,” he said to
him, cut it off for him and Enki ate it. “My master, the ‘honey’ plant,” he said to him,
pulled it up for him and Enki ate it. “My master, the ‘vegetable’ plant,” he said to him,
cut it off for him and Enki ate it. “My master, the alfalfa grass (?),” he said to him, pulled
it up for him and Enki ate it.
“My master, the Main plant,” he said to him, cut it off for him and Enki ate it. “My
master, the aštaltal plant,” he said to him, pulled it up for him and Enki ate it. “My
master, the . . . . .. plant,” he said to him, cut it off for him and Enki ate it. “My master,
the an;/baru plant,” he said to him, pulled it up for him and Enki ate it.5
5 ETCSL t.1.1.1, “Enki and Ninhursaga,” Black, J.A., et al., 1998-2006, lines 198-219.
Here, a curiosity emerges. In the myth, Ninhursaga grows eight plants, named one by
one, in order, and Enki eats the eight plants, one by one, in order; when Enki becomes
ill, Ninhursaga gives birth to eight healing goddesses, again listed one by one, in order.
Goddess number four, Ninkasi, is associated with Sumerian beer and Sumerian beer with
barley. Because of the obvious order and repetition in the poem, could it be that plant
number four that Enki eats is not “esparto grass(?)” (ETCSL t.1.1.1, lines 190-197) or
“alfalfa grass(?)” (ETCSL, t.1.1.1, lines 202-210) as tentatively translated, but, in fact, an
early biological ancestor of our common barley?
68
MYTHS AND GEOGRAPHY
This brings down the wrath of Ninhursaga, the mother goddess,

who curses his name: “Until his dying day, I will never look upon him
s
with the life-giving eye.” Once more appeased, Ninhursaga gives birth to
eight healing goddesses, including Ninkasi, a goddess of concoctions, who
“shall be what satisfies the heart” and in the end helps to cure the
sickened Enki.6 Composed very early (not before 2800 BC) and preserved
in fragments, the myth clearly represents the kernel of the later biblical
tale of the tree in the garden of Eden. Enki offends Ninhursaga by trying
all the different fruits just as Adam and Eve outrage Yahveh by eating the
forbidden apple.7
Paradise lost by trying a plant shows up in the very beginnings of
the first written mythology. The world as it is – not the garden (Dil/nun)
1’ In Lara Peinado, 1982, pp. 34-40; ETCSL t.1.1.1, “Enki and Ninhursaga,” Black, ].A.,
et al., 1998-2006, lines 198-227 and 247-281. A “Hymn to Ninkasi,” (ETCSL t.4.23.1)
composed around the 18th century B.C. contains an original Sumerian recipe [see Ch. 3]
followed carefully by the Anchor Brewing Company of San Francisco to brew Ninkasi
Beer in 1991, nearly four millennia later (Civil, l\liguel. “Modern Brewers Recreate
Ancient Beer,” The Oriental Inrtitnte N€WI and Notes, No. 132, Autumn 1991; Katz,
Solomon H. and Fritz Maytag, “Brewing an Ancient Beer,” Archaeology, July/ August
1991.1991, pp. 24-33; “The Sumerian Beer Project,” www.anchorbrewing/beers
/ninkasi.htrn). “There was a sense of awe as we began to use the ancient words of the
Goddess Ninkasi familiarly. After many thousands of years, happir, /nnnn, lal, gertin and sirn
were discussed again in a brewhouse.” In the words of Professor Civil, “everybody
connected with the modern reconstruction of the process seemed to have enjoyed the
experience.”
7 The story of Eve made from Adam’s rib (Genesis 2: 21 KJV) may be derived from a
double entendre in the ancient Sumerian myth of Enki and Ninhursaga that does not
exist in the Hebrew. The seventh goddess was called Ninti, from Nin (lady) and ti (rib).
But ti also means in the Sumerian, “life.” Compare the Hebrew Hawwah (life, from the
Akkadian, haqah) with the Hebrew rib (tsalah). See for example, S. H. Hooke, ~
Eastern Mythology. NY: Penguin Books, 1963, et al.
69
THE PAGAN ERA
with neither pain nor death where, as the Sumerian scribe says, “(t)he lion
did not slay, the wolf was not carrying off lambs, No eye-diseases said
there: ‘I am the eye disease.’ No headache said there: ‘I am the
headache.’”8 – begins with the ingestion of a wild vegetable, as inoffensive
and tempting as the biblical apple. At this point it might be appropriate to
ask if this theme of the prohibited fruit, with its ambivalence of that
which ruins a paradisiacal existence (though stagnant) in order to give way
to a world of fatigue (but real and human), does not establish the earliest
foundation of poison and remedy, panpathogen and panacea. From at
least one perspective, the positive aspects of paradise seem like a long
prehistoric night of man as unconsciousness being: unconscious meaning
without work and without awareness; unconscious meaning not
depressively anticipating death like one of the direct descendents of Enki,
the warrior-king Gilgamesh.
Enkidu, the companion of Gilgamesh, dies suffering from an
unknown disease (possibly venereal) that he blames upon the /aetaera
(prostitute). It is the death of his friend, and his own approaching end
that awakens Gilgamesh from his mourning stupor, and he sets off on a
quest for a plant of immortality that takes him across the waters of death
to the home of the Sumerian Noah, Uta-Napishtim, after a long journey
and many metaphorical adventures. The latter, after a very long recitation
of the story of a great flood, demands of Gilgamesh a test:
“But thee, as for thee, pray, Who will assemble the gods for thy (need), that the life
which thou seekest Thou mayst discover? Come, fall not asleep for six days, aye, a
se’nnight!”
8 ETCSL t.1.1.1, “Enki and Ninhursaga,” Black, J.A., et al., 1998–2006, lines 11-16 and
20-26.
70
MYTHS AND GEOGRAPHY
But mortal Gilgamesh cannot resist the demands of his own body:
(Then), while he sat on his haunches a sleep like a breeze breathed upon him. Spake to
her, Uta-Napishtim, yea, unto his wife: “O, behold him, E’en the strong fellow who
asketh for life, (how) hath breathéd upon him sleep like a breeze!”9
Still sick with the fear of death, Gilgamesh asks a boon of Uta-Napishtim,
something to take away with him after his long journey. Uta-Napishtim
reveals to him a secret:
“What shall I give thee (as gift) wherewith to return to thy country? Gilgamish, I will
reveal
[deep down
thee ainhidden
the ocean],
matterLike
I’ll unto
tell thee:
those There
of the isbriar
a plant
(in sooth)
like a its
thorn
prickles
with will
its root
scratch
[thee], (Yet) if thy hand reach this plant, [thou’lt surely find life (everlasting)].”10
Gilgamesh retrieves the plant:
(Then), when Gilgamish heard this, he loosen’d) [his girdle about him], Bound heavy
stones [on his feet], which dragg’d him down to the sea-deeps, [Found he the plant]; as
he seized on the plant, (lo), [its prickles did scratch him]. Cut he the heavy stones [from
his feet] that again it restore him unto its shore.11
9 Sin-liqi-uninni et al, editors. The Epic of Gilgamesh: A new translation from a

collation of the cuneiform tablets in the British Museum rendered literally into English
hexameters. Translated by R. Campbell Thompson. London: Luzac & Co., 1928, p.
54, lines 195-205; Jastrow, Morris and Albert T. Clay. An Old Babylonian Version of the
Gilgamesh Epic on the Basis of Recently Discovered Texts. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1920, p. 11.
10 Sin-liqi-uninni, et al, editors (R. Campbell Thompson, translator), 1928, p. 54, lines
265-270.
11 Ibid., p. 55-56, lines 270-275; the epic is replete with references to various magical
plants: “In the eleventh tablet, Gilgamesh descends into the sea to find the plant of
71
THE PAGAN ERA
Sadly, during the journey home, the hero’s plant of immortality is stolen
and eaten by, of course, a serpent and Gilgamesh returns empty-handed.
There is no shortage of people who have suggested that the plant
was psychoactive,“ nor partisans of the belief that all paradises possess
immortality. On the journey back to his homeland, the plant is taken from him by a
serpent. In the last (twelfth) tablet is a fascinating episode involving a willow tree (Salix)
guarded and coveted by nmnna (Ishtar). Of the many plants that might have figured in
such a legend, it is curious that the willow tree should happen to be the most common
source of the most popular analgesic medicine. Salicin, found in its young twigs and
leaves, removes pain and inflammation and is the antecedent of modern aspirin”
(Emboden, W. A., Jr. “Art and Artifact as Ethnobotanical Tools in the Ancient Near
East with Emphasis on Psychoactive Plants,” Ethnobotany: Evolution of a Discipline,
Schultes, R. E. and Siri Von Reis, editors. London: Chapman and Hall, 1995, pp. 93
107).
12 Particularly popular is the contention that the Tree of Life was the Egyptian blue lotus
(Nymphaea caerulea), a water plant which roughly matches the description, creates a feeling
of well-being at low doses, is reportedly psychoactive at higher ones, and has been shown
to contain apomorphine. See, for example, McDonarld, J. Andrew. “Botanical
Determination of the Middle Eastern Tree of Life,” Econoinic Botany 56 (2), pp. 113-129,
www.utpa.edu; Emboden, 1995, pp. 93-107; and Bertol, E, et al. “Nymphaea Cults in
Ancient Egypt and the New World: a lesson in empirical pharmacology,” R. Soc Med
2004; 97: 84-85, http://jrsm.rsmjournals.com. Wasson, on the other hand, insisted on
linking shamanism with depictions of the Tree (of life and knowledge) and the Plant (of
immortality and bitter knowledge), considering that the one and the other represent
originally the Ainanita /nuscaria. There are traditions that show the Tree as a
goddess /woman against a background of round breasts, symbolic – according to Wasson
– of the regular spots of this mushroom, which grows at the feet of conifers (pine, fir,
sequoia). This line of reasoning would permit an understanding of the strange and well
known Romanesque fresco in the chapel of Plaincourault (see figure 8). Indeed, there
appears an Eve next to a tree of knowledge where is found entwined the biblical serpent;
but with the specificity that the tree is clearly an enormous Anianita muscaria whose
branches are somewhat smaller mushrooms of the same species. The two trees – that of
72
MYTHS AND GEOGRAPHY
similarities that can only be explained because they are derived from
primitive experiments with visionary drugs.” The physician A. Bennet
knowledge and that of life – could then be one and with the same fruit, whose ingestion
produces paradisiacal or terrifying visions depending on the situation and the individuals.
Wasson presents considerable indirect documentation (based chiefly on linguistic data) in
order to maintain that the Tree and the Plant “are archetypes brought from the Siberian
forests in the fourth millenium before our era” (1964, p. 219). Curiously, Wasson
abstained from considering the fresco of Plaincourault as proof of his theory, following
the opinion of the well-known art historian E. Panofsky, for whom that tree is “a
stylization of a Mediterranean pine” (Wasson, 1968, pp. 179-180). Only much later was
he able to check that the judgment of Panofsky did not square with the evidence, since
many examples of the European Romanesque – in Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe, Vézelay,
Lectionnaire de Reichenau, Vicq, Aix-la-Chapelle, Hildesheim and other places – exhibit
in a pictorial or sculptural form the /lntanita niuscaria (or perhaps panterina) as well as
psilocybe mushrooms. The work in this field presently indicates that these depictions
could be linked with the Knights of the Order of Malta, whose stay in the Holy Land –
during the crusades – could have fainiliarized them with similar illustrations found in
primitive Roman and Christian art (Samorini, 1997, p. 33). For now, it seems
indisputable that there is a connection between visionary mushrooms and Christianity,
although the prudent thing is to consider it a mystery as does Samorini, instead of
launching into sensationalist declarations like Allegro – one of the philologists
responsible for editing the Dead Sea Scrolls – whose judgment is that Christianity grows
out of an ancient mystery cult, based on the Arnanita Innscaria, Christ being a mere symbol
of said mushroom (Allegro, 1970).
13 According to Graves, “in the beginning an hallucenogenic drug caused paradisiacal
visions and brought about the noteworthy illumination described as perfect wisdom”
(1980, p. 102). To his understanding, the Hebrew pardess, the Persian pariilaeza, the
Sumerian ilil/nun, the Greek paradeisos, and the American and Polynesian Edens share an
essential similarity, particularly evident when treating areas where one can verify the
traditional consumption of visionary mushrooms (Bali, Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador);
the paradises are always “beautiful garden watered by a crystalline river flowing from four
springs; its fruits are laden with sparkling jewels and a serpent is known to inhabit it”
73
THE PAGAN ERA
Figure 8.
Eve and the tree in the garden of Eden, Romanesque fresco in the chapel of
Plaincourault in France, from the end of the XIII century. The painting, in a very bad
state of conservation, represents a tree of knowledge similar in appearance to a small
cluster of the mushrooms, /lmanita amtearia. The image has sparked a number of
controversies (on this same question, see also figures 11-13).
also thought that the fruit of the tree in the garden of Eden was a
psychedelic plant,“ although his orthodox opinion — very different from
that of Wasson and Graves — is that we should avoid a new fall, abstaining
from any close relationship with these kinds of substances. An extensive
and systematic revindication of that maintained by Graves began to be
defended recently, with arguments much more valid as they were
101). For Graves, this deals with an habitual vision among those who experiment with
psilocybe mushrooms or /lmanita mmearia.
14 Bennet, 1971, pp. 407-409.
74
MYTHS AND GEOGRAPHY
connected to data not exhumed — or interpreted until now — of ancient

cultures, especially those of pre-Columbian and African.15 In reality, it
appears that the history of man and his drugs has in itself interesting and
adventurous incidents so as to not need the addition of prehistoric fiction,
and that it permits a clear demarcation between the imagined and the
documented in each case, without the need to manipulate data or, so to
speak, strain it through one’s beard.
It’s opportune to establish this precisely before passing on to what
is now called ethnobotany, in the beginning a clear and scientific discipline
whose object should have been the connections between the psychoactive
fiora of different geographic regions and their respective cultures. Today,
what is problematic in this new branch of knowledge is defending the
exact inverse of the thesis proposed by M. Eliade and other traditional
scholars, descending at times into a comparable partiality. Just as Eliade
was reserving the word entheogenic for rituals like the Dionysian,
considering the use of other substances that alter consciousness a
decadent aberration, some ethnobotanists are trying to preserve
entheogenic virtue for the visionary drugs,“ implicitly negating the
religious nature of the phenomenon of possession and its specific agents.
15 The most recent and categoric work in this direction (cf McKenna, 1991; C. M. Torres
et alia, 1991; Samorini, 1994) – supported by new data, or not taken into account until
now (as the extraordinary rupestre paintings in the Tassili desert) – points to the
discovery of the psilocybe mushrooms as a decisive stage in the spiritual evolution of
man.
16 Some of the visionary drugs discovered have indolic alkaloids. Others do not, as
happens with mescaline (3,4,5-trimethoxyphenethylamine) or the ibotenic acid of
Arnanita niuscaria. Another exception to the rule is cannabis, whose active principle
(delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol) does not contain nitrogen and is not, as such, an alkaloid.
Its most common forms – marijuana and hashish – are normally considered minor
visionaries.
75
THE PAGAN ERA
In other words, the divine and the supernatural may only become really
accessible (in chemical terms) when we turn to the shamanic tradition.
2. An Ethnobotanical Perspective. Whereas in the disciplines of

classical philology, theoretical anthropology and history it has been until
recently quite rare to encounter investigators with both a solid
pharmacological background and first-hand experiences with psychoactive
substances different from the ones traditionally used in the West (alcohol,
tobacco, coffee, other sedatives and patented stimulants), ethnobotany
groups together – albeit with varying degrees of adherence – scholars
coming from very diverse“ fields (but united by serious work as
theoretical as it is practical on alternative psychoactive drugs). Out of this
comes the fact that, together with the particular investigations about this
or that specific subject, almost all highlight the infiuence of vegetable
agents on the genesis of a complex that could be called the sacred,
emphasizing that the intervention of certain substances with visionary
effects have not been evaluated in fair measure as a religious factor in
remote antiquity.
The thesis that magic mushrooms are found at the origins of
certain forms of spirituality was perhaps expounded initially by R. Graves
and R. G. Wasson, although the first limited himself to some observations
17 The oldest academic representative of this trend is R. E. Schultes, eminent botanist,

whose first work in this direction dates to 1937. Also pioneering is the anthropological
work of P. Furst (1980), which in terms of classical philology has its parallel in the
contributions of C. A. P. Ruck, a Harvard professor like Schultes (cf. Ruck, 1982).
Recently, ethnobotany has experienced a period of rapid growth — due in large part to
the indefatigable work of Ott (cf. Ott, 1993 and 1997) — to the point that there have
appeared various specialized journals on the subject and its investigators gather every
four years to celebrate an international congress.
76
MYTHS AND GEOGRAPHY
Figures 9 and 10.

Neolithic cave paintings from
Tassili-n—Ajjer, in the Sahara
desert, southern Algeria
(7,000 — 5,000 BC). These
anthropomorphic figures — a
possible shaman with the
head of a bee and a body
covered in mushrooms,
above; a troop of runners
possibly following a stream
into a cave, below — are
ancient graphic testimonials
to a culture associated with
the eating and storing of
psychoactive mushrooms.
77
THE PAGAN ERA
— as audacious and ingenious as diverse — while the second embarked

upon a vast theoretical enterprise directed toward trying them. Obliged to
do a basically interdisciplinary investigation, Wasson maintained that the
anthropological, linguistic, historical and botanical data pointed to a
connection between the so-called proto-Indo-Europeans and A/aanita
/at/xtaria. In the complicated framework of his argument stands out an
analysis of the Vedic religion, another of Euro-Asiatic shamanism, and
concrete data about comparative mycology, as well as more general
considerations. Yet the conjunction cannot manage to avoid a certain
sensation of arbitrariness and fixed ideas, even if it underlines some
interesting ideas.
One of them is, without doubt, the distinction between
mycophobia and mycophilia. Supported by data indicating that the
hypothetical proto-Indo-Europeans could have emigrated from regions
situated to the north of the Caspian Sea – a habitat where cold steppes
alternate with great conifer forests, devoid of psychoactive plants with the
exception of a few mycological varieties – and wishing to prove that there
could have existed those peoples who introduced cults linked to visionary
mushrooms, from which could one might finish up by suggesting nuclear
ideas about posterior religions, Wasson did demonstrate that the shamans
of northern Asia are very fond of their A/aanita /aattaria, even to the point
where the urine of the intoxicant (in which the psychoactive principal of
the mushroom remains intact) is captured so it can be drunk again and
again. Thanks in the beginning to his Russian wife, he was able to
document something as simple as the mycophilia of this people. Like
some zones of the Americas and the Indies, but in contrast to most of
Europe, Russia is not mycophobic but mycophilic, and its language has
78
MYTHS AND GEOGRAPHY
for the mushrooms and fungi an incomparably larger number of friendly

references than perhaps any other. 18
Considering that the fungi show a much lower proportion of
toxicity than other plants (such as the case we could make for the wild
berries),19 and that the fear of the common people is centered precisely on
the former and not on the latter, it is to Wasson’s credit that he was able
to elucidate that mycophobia must have had originally a religious
connotation, bound up with the outright rejection of very ancient cults
based upon shamanic ecstasy. In any case it does not cease to be very
curious that from its beginnings Christianity should look with reprobation
upon the use of any of the species of such plants (Saint Augustine, for
example, calls the Manichaeans “eaters of fungi” inside a ferocious
diatribe)20 and that much later the Inquisition will unleash in the Americas
a harsh persecution against the natives who ritually employ psilocybin
mushrooms. The initiative became rooted so well that mycophobia could
not free itself even from a text as anticlerical as the Encyclopedie, whose
article Cha/npignoni” mentions that “they only serve for being thrown back
again into the shit from which they were born.” The discovery of the
antibiotics (and perhaps a simple personal experience with psychoactive
mushrooms) would have shamed the author of that article, and it remains
at least possible that his pejorative conception of fungi should not be
independent of a scorn whose origin lies in malicious rumors propagated
in the struggle against pre-Christian religions.
18 The exhaustive work in his area is that of R. G. and V. Wasson (1957).

19 There are six species of amanita with the power to be lethal (phalloicies, 1/irosa, verna,
tenuifolia, bispongera and ocreata) among hundreds that are edible and psychoactive.
20 Cf. Wasson, 1964, p. 67.
21 Published in 1753 by L. de Jacourt.
79
THE PAGAN ERA
Apart from this, a wealth of ethnobotanical data demonstrates the

generic correlation that certain psychoactive drugs have with the life of
the hunter and gatherer (linked or not to a pastoral economy), as well as a
connection between certain other drugs and agricultural and urban groups
where this kind of individuality has given way to more centralized
structures. The cultivation – or the mere systematic recollection – of
these plants produces large and well-known transformations in the plants
themselves, as much morphological as chemical; in consequence, one can
truly ask if psychoactive fiora condition societies, or do the societies
change the fiora, begging the question of the chicken or the egg.
It has been shown, in contrast, that in the groups which today
consume periodically drugs of the shamanic type there is no autocratic
government already formed or in the process of formation. That which
these groups pursue before everything else is to achieve a symbiosis with a
natural world, developing to the maximum the autonomous practice of
each individual; to such ends they retain a collective identity that never
trespasses upon the boundaries of society with the aspirations of
becoming a State. As a result, the small surviving remnants of these
peoples are no longer seen today as impurities to be redeemed with
missions or as a rich resource to be exploited through colonies; simply,
they continue being displaced from their last remaining habitats by the
power of advanced industrial societies.
The latter require totally different drugs which in place of inducing
mystical visions or divinatory trances, achieve one kind or another of
analgesia, or one kind or another of abstract stimulation, since such are
the measures for continuing to collaborate in the exaltation of the State,
the only fundamental reality. Although the State exacts an increasing
tribute, while returning a growing technical prowess over the physical
80
MYTHS AND GEOGRAPHY
natural realms, these old gods – unfathomable, close at hand and

multiform – are preserved within paganism in their ultimate essence.
A curious proof of this correlation occurred during the diffusion
of indolic substances throughout the North American and European
societies in the 60s and 70s of the last century. The effect was to launch
masses of young people into an imitation of the existence and the values
of nomadic peoples in a climate of a return to nature and peaceful
liberation through music and love, as scandalously understood by the
Establishment. Nevertheless, in more than one sense and with few
exceptions, the sorcery of ecstasy continues to be displaced by the sorcery
of possession.
B. The Distribution of the Principal Psychoactive Drugs
The most promising and scientific aspect of practical ethnobotany

is rooted in fixing the places of origin of the known principal drugs. The
question is still not clear although some things can be affirmed.
The north of Asia and Europe are poor in psychoactive drugs,
emphasizing there – as in Canada – the seasonal fermented berries and a
few species of mushrooms and fungi. The zone considered invaded by
peoples speaking languages with an Arian root is a wide southern swath
called the Fertile Crescent, stretching from the Nile valley to the Ganges,
where the poppy, cannabis and the daturas proliferate. The same must be
said of Indochina and China with the unique exception of some islands of
the Indian and Pacific oceans, where various species of psilocybin
mushrooms grow in abundance. Cannabis perhaps is originally from
China or from Turkistan, and the poppy with a high content of opiates is
from Asia Minor, although prehistoric examples of cultivated poppies
81
THE PAGAN ERA
have been found around some Swiss lakes, and the plant from which they
are derived appears to come from the southeast of the Mediterranean.
Making use of a typical ethnobotanical generalization, one could
say that from the Middle East to China there grows an analgesic with the
power of soft dreams like the poppy, the drug of senectitude, which
coincides territorially with harsh empires like the Egyptian, Sumerian,
Acadian, Persian and Chinese.” Also, one could call attention to the fact
that in all of the Greek territory – especially on the plains of Eleusis, a
short distance from Athens – there appears with notable abundance the
cornezuelo of cereals, or ergot, in a variety that recent field work
considers unusually low in toxicity and of great visionary potential, in
contrast to the ergot of other places where it also proliferates (as is the
case with the province of Castilla, in Spain, for example).
The American continents from the Mississippi valley toward the
south appear extraordinarily rich in psychoactive fiora, as much in the
more or less light stimulants (coca, mate’, guarana, cacao) as in the plants
rich in visionary principles, as well as others more difficult to classify,
among these notably tobacco. Cannabis, the poppy, and the grape vine
were brought over by the Spanish and the Portuguese when they began
their colonizations. One could say that in the zones where hunters and
gatherers subsist there are always various drugs of a shamanic type.
With regards to Africa, although the field studies are still very
insufficient, the psychoactive fiora possess a noteworthy variety.
22 The poppy may be a relative latecomer to China, said to have been brought in by Arab
traders in the seventh century, though there are supposed references dating to the master
surgeon Hua Tho, during the Three Kingdoms period (220-264 AD). Moreover, this
generalization should be tempered by the limits of its observations; we might very well
have included the stimulants ginseng and ephedra, from China, or any of a dozen or
more similar plants from Mesopotamia, for example.
82
MYTHS AND GEOGRAPHY
Cannabis and the daturas appear to be autochthonic, as well as iboga, a

plant whose principal alkaloid is indolic, and is in turn central to the Bwiti
cult in Gabon and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (previously
Zaire); this is a religion similar in many respects to the peyote-using
Native American Church which resists with a certain effectiveness both
Christianity and Islam, while accepting some of the elements of each. On
the other hand, very noticeable are the plants that contain alkaloids similar
to caffeine or amphetamine such as khat” and cola nut.” It will be in
zones contiguous to those of khat and cola, where there will be grown –
much later, toward the tenth century – coffee. This supposes that the
plant had millions of years of existence, but the cultivated varieties are not
anterior.
In the Far East, to those drugs mentioned previously there has to
be added tea and, especially, betel nut, another stimulant that one
masticates forming a ball similar to the cocada of the Indians of the Andes,
with practically the same frequency (that is, all day long, as do the chewers
of khat and cola), and for the same reasons, because it reduces hunger and
23 The leaves of the tree Catha eduli: are frequently consumed in Abyssinia and Yemen.
Of its principal alkaloids, cathine and cathinone, the latter can reach levels as high as 2.1
percent in fresh material, possessing a stimulant power comparable to amphetamine.
Although the users belong to every social strata, with neither religious nor ethnic
distinction, Lewin holds that in the middle term they suffer heart and libido problems
similar to the users of large quantities of cocaine (1970, p. 258).
24 Cola nut, the fmit of a wild tree (Cola niticia, and others of the same genus), grows in a
strip that runs from Guinea to the sources of the Nile. The seeds have two parts per
hundred of caffeine — the same as coffee — and small quantities of the stimulant
theobromine, also present in cocoa beans. Like khat, cola nut is consumed massively
with fervor, it “not being rare to see a poor man gather up a bit of nut, which had been
gnawed and used up by a rich man, and put it again in his mouth in order to obtain some
effect” (Lewin, 1970, p. 280).
83
THE PAGAN ERA
diminishes fatigue and combats the reluctance to work.25 Betel is used in

many of the Pacific islands, though in Oceania the drug most used is
kawa-kawa, a potion rich in kavalactones26 extracted from the roots, which
is incorporated in shamanic rituals and social ceremonies in some areas,

but ingested in others for strictly profane reasons. Only Australia seems
to lack large quantities of psychoactive drugs according to Schultes,
although others mention the existence of a solanacea with notable
powers27 whose leaves would be smoked by the aborigines in sacred
COI11I€XtS.
25 Its users are spread over a zone of approximately eight million square kilometers and
number some three hundred million, located especially in the littoral plain and the islands
of India, the South China Sea and parts of the Pacific. Although betel is prepared with
the leaf of the tree with this name (Pi/3>er betel) and bits of calcium carbonate (ashes,
powdered conch shell, slaked lime, etc.), the psychoactive element is the nut of a palm
(Arem catechu) described as a drug already by Theophrastus in the third century BC and
known in Sanskrit as gni/aka.
26 7-8-Dihydromethysticin is sometimes said to be the most active tranquilizer of the
group.
27 Dnleaisia laopu/oodii, a shrub that grows in central and northeastern Australia, from which
the aborigines extract a drug they call pituri, has been shown to possess a high proportion
of both nicotine and nor-nicotine (Bottomley, W. and D. E. White, “The Chemistry of
Western Australian Plants. IV. Dnlioisia laapu/ooilii,” /lnxtralian Journal zy’ Scientzfie Researtla,
Series A: Pb)/rical Sciences, vol. 4 (1950), pp. 107-111, found at http://articles.adsabs.
harvard.edu). Two others of the same genus, D. ntyoporoides and D. leichhardtii contain
“principally hyoscyamine and hyoscine (Henry 1949).” Schultes may have
underestimated the ingenuity of the Aboriginal peoples of Australia. Recent
ethnobotanical investigations have highlighted a considerable number of medicinal plants
from this continent including many Ereniophila species. Leaves of E. alternifolia, for
example, were “harvested, dried and carried around to treat colds, influenza and
headaches, to induce sleep and pleasant dreams. The active constituent in E.
alternifolia leaves was identified as the known phenylethanoid glycoside, verbascoside
84
MYTHS AND GEOGRAPHY
Central and Western Europe could be considered a paradise of the

hallucinogenic solanaceas where henbane (H)/org/a/nnr niger), deadly
nightshade (/ltropa belladonna), mandrake (Mandragora officinarn/n) and
various daturas grow spontaneously and profusely There are various
types of visionary fungi also, though only in some areas (as in Catalunya
with A/nanita /nnrraria or in Wales with psilocybin mushrooms) are there
popular traditions of use. It is probable that the cultivated poppy (Papal/er
.l‘0t7tfli]l97Wt7t) derives from the wild Papaver setigern/n,28 also called Papaver
iberos for being autochthonic and spontaneous in an area that De Candelle
– in his treatise on the origins of cultivated plants” – situated in a territory
delimited by Spain, Algeria, Corsica, Sicily and Cyprus.
The grape vine is supposed to have originated on the slopes of the
Caucasus, on the shores of the Black Sea and points more to the east.
However, traces of a wild grape vine that dates back four to seven million
years to the Pliocene have been discovered in countries bordering the
Mediterranean.30 This finding should be put in context since it is unlikely
that these varieties would have been edible.
The plants linked to alcoholic beverages are practically universal.
Left on the vine, grapes naturally ferment from yeast in the air. Enzymes
(which) has been shown to have a range of pharmacological activities, including

antibacterial, antioxidant and analgesic effects (Pennacchio, Marcello and Emilio L.
Ghisalberti. “Indigenous Knowledge and Pharmaceuticals,” The Beautiful and the Damned‘
journal of/lustralian Stndier, edited by Richard Nile, no. 64, St. Lucia, Queensland, 2000).”
28 This is a plant low in morphine with considerably smaller heads (capsules) and leaves
divided more deeply than those of the sonrnifern/n (Font Quer, 1982, p. 240). In Spain, it
grows along the coast from Gerona to Portugal.
29 Pauly, vol. XV, p. 2435.
30 Arroyo-Garcia, R. et al. “Multiple Origins of Cultivated Grapevine (Vitus vinifera L.
ssp. sativa) based on chloroplast DNA polymorphisms,” Molecular Ecology 15: 3707
3714.
85
THE PAGAN ERA
(specifically amylase) in
saliva convert starch to
fermentable sugar so
that in order to get a
crude beer it is enough
to masticate some fruit
and then spit it out; the
spontaneous
fermentation from the
bacteria in the saliva
and the plant will
produce alcohol of a
low gradation.” As a
vehicle of ecstasy, divination and therapy, the fermented juices were never
worthy of the American and Euro-Asiatic shamans, an opinion distinctly
enunciated in the Satapat/ea Bra/2/aana long before the first Buddhist
31 Emboden (1995) suggests that the first Mesopotamian beers were made from
fermented barley bread: “The extraordinary amounts and varieties of beer produced
were made not from grain, but from barley bread that was fermented – a far less wasteful
practice, since unused bread would be recycled as beer and the leftover mash fed to
domestic animals.” But the oldest fermented beverages have been found in the Neolithic
village of Jiahu, Henan province, China (7000 BC) made from “rice, honey and a fruit
[possibly grape or hawthorn]” and whose grain “probably was saccharified by
mastication and/ or malting.” Mold or amylolysis saccharification, in which “fungi of the
genera Aspegillus, Rhizopus, Monama: and others break down the carbohydrates of rice
and other grains into simple, fermentable sugars” appears only several thousand years
later. See McGovern, Patrick E. et al. “Fermented beverages of pre- and proto-historic
China,” PN/LY, 21 December 2004, vol. 101, no. 51, 17593-17598, www.pnas.org.
86
MYTHS AND GEOGRAPHY
preachings: “and of these two the So/na is truth, prosperity, light; and the
Sum” untruth, misery, darkness.””
Of course, everything depends upon that which each culture tries
to obtain from their psychoactive drugs. The Old Testament celebrates
the power of wine to console the unhappy man, and in time walking this
road of resignation will end up being considered the only rational path.
At the end of the XVIII century a particularly striking text was
incorporated into Swedish school manuals:
Rare is the nomadic tribe that does not use the Amanita muscaria to strip away their
feelings and senses, so as to be able to taste the animal pleasure of refusing the healthy
tethers of reason. Fortunately, the art of distillation is putting an end to this ignominious
abuse.“
qfldam uotvgimr hr fl1.L\1'l1.\I‘|

' Juan: fiififlw. oc fimilc cfi- taco.-cult
Figures 11, 12, and 13 [courtesy of G. Samorini; see also figure 8].
Previous page, a capitol from the basilica of Vézélay, central France (XII century); this
page, a drawing from an alchemist's manuscript from the fourteenth century;
32 Muller, F. Max. The Satapatha-Brahmana, according to the test of the Madhyandina

School, Part III, The Sacred Books of the East, Vol. 41, Fifth Kancia, Second Brahrnana,
tr. Julius Eggerling. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1894, www.sacred-texts.org.
33 Ödman, 1784, p. 245.
87
THE PAGAN ERA
below, a mosaic from the baptistry of Messaoudia, Tunis. In ancient Christian art,
particularly from the Romanesque and Gothic eras, one finds symbolic trees (trees of life
and trees of knowledge) that are known as mushroom trees. Are the authors of these
works trying to represent the A/nanita ninxearia and other psychoactive mushrooms as an
esoteric message, or are they unconsciously painting an iconographic depiction of the
tree of the prohibited fruit, without recognizing its deeper mycological meaning? It is
worth noting that iconography of this kind existant in central France was painted by the
Knights of the Order of Malta upon their return from the Crusades.
88
Figure 14.
A collection of Sumerian
remedies on a tablet
discovered in Nippur.
Dated to 2100 BC, it is
considered to be the oldest
medical text known.
Figure 15.
The Egyptian papyrus named for George Ebers,

found at Thebes in the late nineteenth century;
among the nearly 900 medical prescriptions are the names,
many of them still untranslated, of over 700 different dmgs.
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3
Profane Ebriety
Strong drink is a thing intended to be used in

ojfiring sacrifices and entertaining guests;
such e/np/0]/nent
Butofit
/nenislaywhat
theirHear/en
abuse ofsuch
harprescribed
drink co/ne
to lose their virtue and destroy theirpersonr

such e/np/0]/nent ofit is what
Hear/en has annexed its terrors to.
-- Choo He1
Partly due to the exigencies of preservation, the first written data in the
West comes from Mesopotamia and Egypt, considered the cradles of the
first unquestionably extensive discoveries concerning psychoactive drugs
as they are the cradles of Western civilization. Unfortunately, we can only
identify a few of the plants and mixtures mentioned in these broken clay
tablets and torn papyri. Pharmacology is not – as certain other branches
of medicine – something that can be translated without a grounding in
immediate experience. If and when our civilization succumbs, should
there only remain loose fragments of the vademecums of present-day
pharmacies, the mere word penicillin – or even mentions of the mold
Penicilliu/n chrysogenu/n – would not be enough to insure its elaboration
thousands of years hence, and the words would continue to exist without
their meanings ever being identified.
1 Contemporary of the Sung dynasty (Legge, James. The Chinese Classics, Volume
Three, Part Two. Hong Kong: At the Author's, 1865, p. 402).
THE PAGAN ERA
Figure 16. The First Babylonian Empire
°Hl1l"'1"3'm11 _i1IilliEul1nu|'||'|a
_ nu-5 Wu
lIlrI\1l'.I1
:|
Elabylunia
if lfli lll'l'Ii Of
Hammurabi
A. Mesopotamia
Ninkasi, the Sumerian goddess of potions and the other seven

goddesses of plants who help cure the intoxicated Enki, are figures who
suggest a systematic knowledge of pharmacology. Yet, none of the eight
plants of this early Sumerian mythological pharmacopeia have been
translated convincingly. With these, the Sumerians may have had basic
plant remedies for eight different specific ailments affiicting the human
body.2
2 The tree plant, honey plant, vegetable plant, alfalfa or esparto grass, atutu, astaltal,
unknown and a/naru plants provided treatments for ailments of the head, hair, nose,
92
PROFANE EBRIETY
In the third millenium before the Christian era, cuneiform tablets

discovered at Nippur are said to depict the poppy using the Sumerian
ideograms HUL GIL, the frst meaning “joy” or “rejoicing” and the
second meaning “plant,” though there is also argument against this.3
Images of poppy capsules appear in the oldest Babylonian cylinder seals as
well as those from the Cretan-Mycenaean culture. Nor should we forget
mouth, throat, arm, ribs and sides, respectively (“Enki and Ninhursaga,” t.1.1.1, ETCSL,
Electronic Corpus Text of Sumerian Literature, lines 190-281, //etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk). It
is tempting to associate the “honey plant” with one of the lotuses, N)/rnphaea caerulea, for
example, due to the other references in Sumerian literature involving “carp [that] dart
among the honey plants” (“Enki and the World Order,” t.1.1.3, lines 89-99, 162-165,
ETCSL) or the fish “with the handsome barbels who eats the honey plant” (“The Home
of the Fish,” t.5.9.1, lines 68-80, ETCSL). When prepared as a tea, lotus blossoms
produce a thick, sweet, gold calming liquid according to unconfirmed reports from users
on many websites, but there is also an Egyptian recipe using lotus leaves that makes the
hair fall out (Manniche, Lise. An Ancient Egyptian Herbal. Austin, TX: University of
Texas Press, 1989 (GB), pp. 126-127).
3 Lindesmith, 1965, p. 207; the specific suggestion that HUL GIL means opium in
Sumerian originally came from Yale Prof. R. P. Dougherty, consulted during the
translation by R. C. Thompson of the Assyrian Medical Tablets of the Royal Palace of
Ashurbanipal, now in the British Museum (Terry, C. E. “The Development and Causes
of Opium Addiction as a Social Problem,” Journal of Educational Sociology, Vol. 4, No. 6
(Feb 1931), pp. 335, www.jstor.org, retrieved 29 Jan 09; Terry, Pellens, The Opium
Problem (1928); A. R. Neligan, The Opium Question. London: John Bale Sons and
Danielsson, 1927; Thompson, R. C. The Assyrian Herbal. London: Luzac and Co.,
1924, for example). The interpretation has since been disputed (Krikorian, A. D. “Were
the Opium Poppy and Opium Known in the Ancient Near East?” Journal of the Histogl zy’
Biology, Vol 8, No. 1 (Spring 1975), pp. 95-114, www.springerlink.com, retr. 29 Jan 09;
Chouvy, Pierre-Arnaud. “Le pavot à opiurn et l ́honrrne: Origines géographiques ez‘ premières
diffusions a’ ́un cultivar,” Annales de Géographie, no. 618, rnars-a1/ril 2001, pp 182-194; Sneader,
Walter. Drug Discovery. The Atrium, England: John Wiley and Sons, Ltd., 2005, pp.
12-13).
93
THE PAGAN ERA
the mythologem of the plant of immortality, appearing in the Epic of

Gilgamesh in its most common form (first it is found after great effort
and then is sadly lost). 4
Alcohol and its production are also mentioned very early, for
example in the original creation myth of Enki and Ninhursaga, the first
time by implication in a description of the Babylonian Eden (Dilmun):
“When a widow has spread malt on the roof, the birds did not yet eat that
malt up there.”5 The second time the reference is more direct as Enki
seduces Uttu: “He poured beer for her in the large ban measure.”6 From
approximately the XXII century BC, there are other Sumerian tablets
where beer is mentioned as a remedy and recommended for women who
are breastfeeding.7 Impossible to omit in this context is the famous
“Hymn to Ninkasi” describing in detail the production of beer from
sprouted barley bread:
Ninkasi, it is you who handle the and dough with a big shovel, mixing in a pit, the
beerbread with sweet aromatics. It is you who bake the beerbread in the big oven
4 Ebert, in Pauly-Wissowa, XV, 2, p. 2435; In the Sumerian original the description

closely matches a l\[)/a:/]f>/Jaea cam:/ea or sacred blue water lily. Assyrian frescoes a
millennia later depict the plant unquestionably as a poppy, Papaver Jammferum. This
change over time of drug but not myth will find an echo with the Hindu som in chapter
four. On the other hand, archaeologist Geoffrey Bibby has “little doubt that the Flower
of Immortality” is the pearl (Looking for Dilmun, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969, p. 144).
5 Enki and Ninhursaga, t.1.1.1, lines 17-19, from ETCSL, the Electronic Text Corpus of
Sumerian Literature, //etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.1.1 .1#, 30 Jan 09.
6 Enki and Ninhursaga, t.1.1.1, lines 167-177, from ETCSL, the Electronic Text Corpus
of Sumerian Literature, / / etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/ cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.1.1.1#, 30 Jan 09.
7 Roueché, 1960, in Szasz, 1985, p. 44; Until recently hospitals in Ireland dispensed
Guinness and those in Belgium a brown ale to aid nursing mothers in ‘letting down’ their
milk, a practice still recommended on many websites and online forums.
94
PROFANE EBRIETY
It is you who water the earth-covered malt; the noble dogs guard it even from the
potentates(?). It is you who soak the malt in a jar; the waves rise, the waves fall. It
is you who spread the cooked mash on large reed mats It is you who hold with both
hands the great sweetwort, brewing it with honey and wine. You place the fermenting
vat, which makes a pleasant sound, appropriately on top of a large collector vat.
Ninkasi, it is you who pour out the filtered beer of the collector vat; it is like the onrush
of the Tigris and the Euphrates?
Somewhat later is the famous compilation of the law codes of

many newly conquered city-states known as the Code of Hammurabi
(XVIII century BC), whose laws 108-111 regulate “houses of drinking” or
taverns and demonstrate the importance and diffusion of beers and wines
in that epoch:
108. If a tavern-keeper (feminine) does not accept corn according to gross weight in
payment of drink, but takes money, and the price of the drink is less than that of the
corn, she shall be convicted and thrown into the water.
109. If conspirators meet in the house of a tavern-keeper, and these conspirators are
not captured and delivered to the court, the tavern-keeper shall be put to death.
110. If a “sister of a god” open a tavern, or enter a tavern to drink, then shall this
woman be burned to death.
111. If an inn-keeper furnish sixty ka of usakini-drink to she hall receive fifty ka of
corn at the harvest.9
Article 108 is sometimes read as demanding a drowning for a

tavern-keeper who watered her stock.” But both the punishment and the
8 “A Hymn to Ninkasi,” t.4.23.1, lines 1-48, from ETCSL.

9 King (1910), Leonard W. (1869-1919), of the Department of Egyptian and Assyrian
Antiquities of the British Museum. The Code of Hammurabi. From www.fordham.edu.
111 In Hammurabi's time, taverns were normally operated by women: “As a general rule,
the brewing of beer and the fermentation of the toddy [from fermented dates] were the
95
THE PAGAN ERA
crime are susceptible of other interpretations. The determination of the

former is complicated by a curiousity of the Babylonian legal system, the
trial by Euphrates: “In matters beyond the knowledge of men, as the guilt
or innocence of an alleged wizard or a suspected wife, the ordeal by water
was used. The accused jumped into the sacred river, and the innocent
swam while the guilty drowned.’”1
When the facts were easy to establish, the victim was bound and
thrown (drowned); in cases where the evidence could fall either way, an
appeal could be had to the holy river. When read together with Article
111, the crime in Article 108 appears not to be one of adulteration
punished by a drowning but one of merely ignoring the tariff and
exchange rates established for beer, barley and coin, an act worthy
perhaps not of a drowning per se but simply a trial by river. One of the
earliest translators, Chilperic Edwards comments simply: “The Code
work of women, who made and sold the stuff in their own houses” (Edwards, Chilperic.
World’s Earliest Laws. London: Watts and Co., 1934 (GB), p. 85, Kessinger reprint,
2003).
11 Johns (1911), with King (1910), www.fordham.edu; Johns, C. H. N. “Babylonian
Law,” a in Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. III, eleventh edition, Hugh Chisholm, editor.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1911, www.1911encyclopaedia.org/
Babylonia_law. Drowning on the other hand explicitly called for the victim to be bound
or tied and then thrown into the river, as in Article 129 (lovers encountered in flagrante
delicto) or Article 155 (father-in-law surprised in the act of fornication with son’s wife).
Laws calling for the accused to be thrown (but not explicitly bound or tied beforehand)
into the water treat circumstances more difficult to judge, such as Article 133 (husband
taken prisoner of war and wife leaves house though there may be sustenance there;
compare Article 134 which holds her blameless if she leaves when there is nothing to eat)
and Article 143 (wife quarrels with husband, neglects house and husband; compare
Article 142 where she is blameless if he leaves and neglects her).
96
PROFANE EBRIETY
Figure 17. The Stele of

Hammurabi (Louvre)
contains laws regulating
“houses of drinking.”
regulates prices at which the beer was to be sold,

(sections 108, 111), and prohibits the seller from
making any extra profit by taking silver and
refusing corn at the current tariff of the day.’”2
Article 109 prohibits neither alcohol nor
drinking nor taverns but only conspiracy in a
tavern. Considering Hammurabi’s somewhat
tentative and tenuous hold on his newly created
empire, he may have had good reason to
sanction public displays of disaffection. The
intention of this law is not to prohibit tippling but treason. The
motivation is clearly political, not anti-alcohol. No doubt said
conspirators would also face capital punishment along with the publican
who did not surrender them. Many thousands of kilometers away and
more than half a millenium later, another newly created empire will
proceed to enact very much the same statute for very much the same
reasons.
Besides alcoholic beverages, we know that in the tavern they were
also selling sex, and this explains the proscription in its Article 110: “If a
11 Edwards (1934), p. so (GB).
97
THE PAGAN ERA
priestess enters a tavern, she shall be burned.” The priestesses of Ishtar

were of course /aierodules or sacred prostitutes, but neither their form of
payment nor their place of work nor their clientele had anything to do
with lay meretrices: “The principal priestess is denoted by the signs NIN
AN, ‘Divine Lady.’ She was expected to lead a blameless life. She might
not open a tavern, or even enter one (section 110); and slander against a
NIN-AN was severely punished. [It was] expected that the Babylonian
prietsesses also married.””
We also know that Babylonian medicine not only habitually used
opium, mandragora, cannabis, beer and wine but substances of great
activity like black henbane (H)/oxg/amuux uzger L.) and other poisons:14
Probably the oldest known dental prescription that was used for abolishing pain arising
from an aching tooth is recorded upon a clay tablet that was found in Niffer, and its age
may be approximately placed at 2250 BC. The treatment consists in filling the painful
cavity of the tooth with a cement prepared by mixing powdered henbane seed with gum
mastic.15
13 Edwards, Chilperic. The Hammurabi Code and Sinaitic Legislation. London: Watts
and Co., 1904 (GB), p. 102 (Kessinger reprint, 2003).
14 Thompson (1924).
15 Prinz, Herrmann. Dental Materia Medica and Therapeutics, 5th ed St. Louis, MO:
C. V. Mosby Co., 1920 (GB), pp. 515-516. In the original Babylonian, hyoscyamus
(henbane) is SAM. SA. RIM and is used within the context of a particular incantation for
tooth pain (Beschwörungfür schmerz a'e.r Zahnes): Action with this [incantation]: You shall
pulverize hyoscyamus and knead it together with mastic (Handlungun dabeezf Du :0//it
H)/0:9/a/uu: pulverisieren und u:/it Mastix zusa/uuen kneten), according to Felix Freiherrn von
Oefele, “Z11/ei medizinische Kei/it/mftexte in Urschrift, Umschrifz‘ und Übersetzung” (Two
cuneiform recipes in the original, transcription and translation), Mitteilungen zur Gen/92':/ate
de: Medezin und der Naturu/isseurtletyften, no. 11: 1904, vol. III, p. 223 (GB).
98
PROFANE EBRIETY
Botanical data indicate that there is already cannabis throughout

the region, although one must wait until the Assyrian empire (IX century
BC) for this plant to appear to be mentioned in this region, specifically as
a ceremonial incense.“ The system of perfuming with medicinal incense
enjoys a high esteem in antiquity as a means of administering these and
other drugs. As well, the Code regulated the professions of physician,
barber, and veterinarian in the first Babylonian empire. Successful eye
surgeons received ten shekels for a citizen, five for a freed man and two
for a slave. Unsuccesful eye surgeons had their hands cut off or were
forced to replace the slave or pay compensation.” Though there are no
specific regulations regarding the prescribing of drugs in the Code, with
laws such as these any physician would have to be cautious in the
administration of his remedies.
In summary, only one of all the drugs commonly available in
Babylonia carries with it any regulations or prohibitions: alcohol: “It is
interesting to note that none of the 281 paragraphs in the Code of
Hammurabi are addressed to drunkenness itself.”18
16 Cf Schultes and Hofmann, 1982, p. 95; specifically the medical tablets from the Royal
Library of Ashurbanipal recovered from the Kouyunjik mound, Ninevah, modern Mosul,
Iraq, translated by R. Campbell Thompson, who argued that cannabis in Akkadian was
azallu from the Sumerian /l.ZAL.L/1 (see Russo, E. B. “History of Cannabis and its
Preparations in Saga, Science and Sobriquet,” Chernistry and Biodiversity, Vol. 4 (2007), pp.
1628-1630, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17712811).
17 See laws 215-227 for example in King (1910), The Code of Hammurabi, www.
fordham.edu.
18 Hornsey (2003), p. 112, for example.
99
THE PAGAN ERA
Figure 18. Detail

of the Stele of
Hammurabi.
Figure 19. The Stele

of Ur-Nammu, one
of the city-states
conquered by
Hammurabi
(ca. 2050 BC).
PROFANE EBRIETY
B. Egypt
Egyptian pharmacological knowledge has perhaps not been

equalled until very recently, thanks to synthetic chemistry. Both of the
Persian kings Cyrus (whose “adviser was a physician the most skillful of
all the Egyptian eye-doctors, singled out as the best from the whole
number”) and Darius swore by Egyptian physicians, though Herodotus
chauvinistically relates that Democedes from Crotona surpassed them:
(I)t happened that king Darius, as he leaped from his horse during the chase, sprained his
foot. The sprain was one of no common severity, for the ankle-bone was forced quite
out of the socket. Now Darius already had at his court certain Egyptians whom he
reckoned the best-skilled physicians in all the world; to their aid, therefore, he had
recourse; but they twisted the foot so clumsily, and used such violence, that they only
made the mischief greater. Democedes, by using the remedies customary among the
Greeks, and exchanging the violent treatment of the Egyptians for milder means, first
enabled him to get some sleep, and then in a very little time restored him altogether, after
he had quite lost the hope of ever having the use of his foot.19
1. Opium. A fragment of Canto IV of the Odyssey relates that

Helen was an expert in drugs (pharmaka):
Then Jove’s daughter Helen bethought her of another matter. She drugged [pharrna/eon]
the wine with an herb [nepenthes] that banishes all care, sorrow, and ill humour. Whoever
drinks wine thus drugged cannot shed a single tear all the rest of the day, not even
though his father and mother both of them drop down dead, or he sees a brother or a
son hewn in pieces before his very eyes. This drug, of such sovereign power and virtue,
had been given to Helen by Polydamna wife of Thon, a woman of Egypt, where there
grow all sorts of herbs, some good to put into the mixing-bowl and others poisonous.
19 Herodotus. Histories. Book III (Thalia), chapters 1, 132, http://www.greektexts.

com/ library/Herodotus/Thalia/eng/80.html.
101
THE PAGAN ERA
Moreover, every one in the whole country is a skilled physician, for they are of the race
of Paeon.20
These colossal pacifying effects have caused the majority of

interpreters to identify the nepent/fles as opium. Known as telaaico (or
t/aelaaicu/u, that from Thebes) as early as the First Dynasty, Egyptian opium
is a symbol of quality throughout the Mediterranean, being the object of
many forgeries that are denounced by Dioscorides, Pliny and others.
However, Coleridge and Sir Joseph Banks (assuredly solid authorities on
the subject) preferred to think that it was a very active preparation of
cannabis.“ But here, as regards many other ancient drugs, hypotheses can
multiply without arriving at anything certain.
It is not discardable of course that the nepenthe of Helen was an
even more powerful remedy than opium, which could produce rapid and
strong effects of the type today denominated neuroleptic (conquering the
nerves). Together with the pronounced connection between drugs and
herbs,“ and the provocative 2'/uperiu/u of self-medication, the Homeric text
also states something that is significant from a socio-political viewpoint:
in the Homeric text this potent philtre was mixed in the wine without
20 Homer. Odyssey, Book IV, line 219 et seq., translated by Samuel Butler (1835-1902)
from the 1900 edition published by Longrnan, Green in London, www.classics.mit
.edu/Homer/odyssey.htm.
21 “Sirjoseph adds in a postscript: ‘It seems almost beyond a doubt, that the Nepenthe
was a preparation of the Bang, known to the Ancients.’ We will have a fair trial of
Bang. Do bring down some of the Hyoscyamine pills, and I will give a fair trial of
Opium, Henbane, and Nepenthe. By-the-bye, I always considered Homer’s account of
the Nepenthe as a ‘Banging’ lie” (Coleridge, S. T. “Letter 118 to Thomas Wedgwood,
Stowey, 17 Feb 1803,” in Bio ra /Jia E zistolaris, Volume I (Turnbull, editor), from
www.fullbooks.com/Biographia-Epistolaris-Volume1-6.html, 2 Mar 09).

22 A theme which will recur when we come to the cereal-based ky/éeau of Eleusis.
102
PROFANE EBRIETY
consulting those at the banquet, as if this were a normal occurrence, or at

least not something inappropriate for a gathering or feast. But indeed,
when they were celebrating at a banquet, the drink of the ancient Greeks
was regulated by a master of ceremonies charged with determining the
degree of inebriation advisable.”
More direct testimony to the extraordinary fiowering of
pharmacological knowledge in Egypt arrived in 1890 when Dr. Heinrich
Joachim published a translation into the German of a papyrus dated to the
middle of the sixteenth century BC from Luxor (ancient Thebes, where it
had been purchased by Edwin Smith and then was repurchased by Georg
Ebers a decade later). With this, it was clear that the Egyptian /nateria
/nedica possessed a variety bordering on the disconcerting.“ The existence
of an arsenal of “all sorts of herbs, some good to put into the mixing
bowl and others poisonous” acquired a new meaning when H. Grapow
and H. von Deines isolated more than 700 names of different drugs in the
discovered papyrii.25
23 Ruck, 1980, pp. 63-66.

24 That single text enumerated almost 900 remedies; commonly called the Ebers Papyrus
to distinguish it from another known as the Edwin Smith papyrus.
25 1954, vol. IV; Richard Caton has: “As regards rnateria niedica the Egyptians possessed
the following drugs : — lactuca, various salts of lead, such as the sulphate, with the
action of which in allaying local inflammation they were well acquainted ; pomegranate
and acanthus pith as vermifuges ; peppermint, sulphate and acetate of copper, oxide of
antimony, sulphide of mercury, petroleum, nitrate of potash, castor oil, opium, coriander,
absinthe, juniper (much used as a diuretic), caraway, lotus, gentian, mustard, ox-gall,
aloes, garlic, and various bitter infusions ; mandragora, linseed, squills, saffron, resin, and
various turpentine products ; cassia, certain species of cucumis, cedar-oil, yeast,
olchicum, nasturtium, myrrh, tamarisk, powdered lapis lazul, vinegar, indigo ; the oasis
onion, mastic and various gums, mint, fennel, hebane or hyoscyamus, magnesia, sebeste (a
tonic and a cough medicine), lime, soda, iron, and a great number of other agents, the
103
THE PAGAN ERA
Translators of the Ebers most often give “the xlaepen plant” as

poppy, though there is recent argument against this.“ It is used in simple
recipes as an analgesic and tranquilizer, habitually recommended in
mixtures with other plants, to be used either orally, topically or rectally.
Remedy 247 tells how the priestess-physician Isis cured a headache of the
god Ra using a mixture of coriander, absynth, opium and honey:
Another remedy, the sixth, from the goddess Isis made for the god Ra himself, in order
to drive out the pain in his head:
Coriander berries
Fruit of the opium plant
Absynth >Q,i>n>~>~
Berries from the miner-plant

juniper berries
Honey 1
Mix this together with honey and apply it and immediately this will make him healthy.
When this remedy is used against all sorts of diseases of the head and against pain and
illness of any kind, it will instantly make him well.”
names of which no one can at present translate. The copy of Ebers’ papyrus has
evidently been in use by the priest physicians, for various notes have been added on the
margin by later hands in reference to the prescriptions — ‘Good,’ ‘Very good,’ ‘Try this,’
etc.” (Caton, R. The Harveian Oration, delivered before the Royal College of Physicians.
London: C. Clay and Sons, 1904, pp. 24-25, www.archive.org, 2 Mar 09).
2‘ Joachim (1890) translates Clnzriz‘-pflanze as opium as well as rlaepen as ntalanpflanze, or
opium poppy (Papai/er so/nniferum). See Joachim, H., editor. Papyros El707".\'.' Das ältest Bucla
iileer Heil/ennile. Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1890, pp. 59, 61, 62 and 169; for argument that
rlaepen is not poppy, see Nunn, John F. Ancient Egyptian Medicine. Norman, OK:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1996 (GB), pp. 153-156.
27 “Ein flt7tl7'6I, das sechste, von iler Göttin ast [I.ri.r]fiir ilen Gott rä sellartgemaelat, un Selnnerzen, die
in .\'¢’itt¢’I77 Kopfsind, {ii U6777‘t’ll76tt.' Beere 1/an Coriander 7, Beere 1/on iler Cleasit-Pflanze [Brugiwla
VI. S. 896 “Opinin"] 7, Alzfyntla 1, Beere 1/an iler Jd7it€.!'—P]‘ldfl{€ 7, W/aelelmlderbeere 7,
Hong 7, in Eins inaelyen, ilieses ntit Honig niirelaen nnd ila/nit [l\7iz‘/nlitle diff ileni Kept]
104
PROFANE EBRIETY
Opium is proposed for a wide range of ailments, including tooth

pain in infants and generally to “keep children from crying too loudly”28 as
will occur later in India and China, Europe and the Americas. Remedy
782, for example, is halfway along the road between the hilarious and the
intriguing:
Remedy to banish the screaming of children: Capsules of the opium poppy, wasp
excrement, that from the walls, is mixed together, strain and ingest for four days. The
crying will soon cease.”
In the lands where it began to be cultivated systematically very

early on, the poppy is a blessing that is used from infancy without exciting
any problem with health or public morals. It is also an economic blessing
since Egyptian and Mesopotamian opium will become one of the basic
trade articles for these civilizations. It is worth observing that while other
drugs, such as mandragora, present certain mythic-ritual connotations,
opium is a lay drug which is employed in profane contexts.
The passage of more than a century has shown, sadly, that the vast
majority of the pharmaceutical knowledge in the Ebers papyrus will
remain shrouded in mystery. Admittedly, we can recognize clearly only
aufitreichen, urn ihn rogleich gerund {u rnachen. Wenn lrei ihrn alle diere Mittel gegen allerlei
Kran/éheiten arn Kopf und gegen Leiden und Uehel jeglicher Art angewendet werden, wird er
augenhlicklich gesund werden” (joachim, 1890, p. 61, http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/
diglit/joachim1890/0191, 26 FEB 09).
28 Cf Macht, 1915, p. 480 and following pages.
29 Ibid, p. 481; “Mittel das Schreien (des Kindes) zu vertreiben: Kapseln von der Mohnpflanze (?),
Wespenkoth, der an der Mauer ist in Eins rnachen, durchseihen und 4 Tage einnehrnen; es ho"rt sogleich
auf Es ist das Schreien des Kindes, das schreiz‘ [Eigentlich.' “Was das Schreien betriflt, so is es das
Kind, das .tchreit;” d. h. es ist das Schreien des Kindes gerneint.]” (Joachim, 1890, p. 169,
http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/joachim1890/0191, 26 FEB 09).
105
THE PAGAN ERA
the most elemental of the psychoactive drugs, for example opium, some
alcoholic beverages, cannabis, and the solanaceas.
2. Cannabis. Very ancient also is /éjp/7], a ceremonial incense

with possible psychoactivity, among whose ingredients is cannabis. Both
Democritus and Galen mention a resinous wine and cannabis may have
been an ingredient.” The archaeological record discloses a single pollen
grain of Cannabis satil/a from Thebes (Nagada) dated to the third millenium
BC.” Hemp fibers have been found and confirmed in a tomb dated to
1350 BC.” Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) has been recovered from the
internal organs of an Egyptian mummy carbon dated to 950 BC (twenty
first dynasty).33
There is general agreement that in ancient Egypt “she/at/ae/uet
means cannabis, and the identification was strongly supported by the use
of hemp in rope making. As a drug, it has remained in active use ever
since pharaonic times.’”34 Russo (2007) cites one text written on stone and
five separate papyri containing references to the use of cannabis in
30 Columella says pitch was used to preserve wine (Of Husbandigy, bk 12, ch. 23, p. 531).
31 “Un grain de pollen de type Cannabis a été za'entifié”’ (Emery-Barbier, A. “L '/Jouuue et
l ́eu1/irouue/uent en Egypte durant la période préafi/ua.rtz'que” in Man's Role in the Shaping of the
Eastern Mediterranean Landscape (Bottema, S., et al, editors). Rotterdam, Netherlands:
A. A. Balkema, 1990 (GB), pp. 321-325).
32 Russo (2007), p. 1625.
33 “Since we found significant concentrations of tetrahydrocannabinol in the lungs,
showing values ranking above those of the other organs, it is fair to assume that this drug
was mainly incorporated by inhalation” (Nerlich, A. G., et al. “Extensive pulmonary
haemorrhage in an Egyptian mummy” in I/ire/9011/I Archiv (1995) 427: 423-429, p. 428,
www.springerlink.com/content/x0n45tr66m548667, 4 Mar 09).
34 Nunn, 1996, p. 156, who cites Dawson (1934), von Dienes and Grapow (1959),
Faulkner (1962), Charpentier (1981), Ghalioungui (1987), and Mannische (1989).
106
PROFANE EBRIETY
medicinal preparations.” Manniche (1989) reports from the Ramesseum

III Papyrus: “A treatment for the eyes: celery; hemp; is ground and left
in the dew overnight. Both eyes of the patient are to be washed with it
early in the morning.”3° Remedy 618 of the Ebers Papyrus is nearly
identical to that of Formula 177 of the Hearst Papyrus: “Remedy for a
toe-nail: Honey 5 r0; ochre 1/64; r/nun-t (hemp) 1/32; hd-t resin 1 /32;
ihoe-plant 1 / 32; ground; the toe nail is bandaged therewith.”37 Russo
(2007) adds:
The antibacterial effects of honey are well-known, but less attention has been paid of late
to the antibiotic effects of cannabis and its components, antihelminthic activity
prominently described in the later Arabic literature, or insecticidal potential. These
reported vermicidal properties of cannabis thus may have predated Galen’s reports by
1700 years! 38
3. Alcohol. With respect to the medicinal use of alcoholic

drinks in Egypt, we find something similar to that seen in the Sumeric
civilization and the Babylonian empire. Besides honey and oils, a large
55 Russo, 2007, pp. 1621-1625, specifically in the Pyramid Texts (2350 BC), Ramesseum
Papyrus (1700 BC), Ebers Papyrus (1550 BC), Hearst Papyrus (1550 BC), Berlin Papyrus
(1300 BC), and the Chester Beatty VI Papyrus (1300 BC).
36 Manniche, Lise. An Ancient Egyptian Herbal. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press,
1989 (GB), p. 176 (Ram III A 26); Robert Randall and Elvy Musikka were certified
under the U.S. Compassionate Use Program to be supplied with cannabis for their
glaucoma before the program was abruptly closed under the first Bush administration.
37 Ghalioungui, Paul. The Ebers Papyrus: A New English Translation, Commentaries
and Glossaries. Cairo, Egypt: Egyptian Academy of Scientific Research and
Technology, 1987, from http://reefermadnessmuseum.org/history/ AEgyptian.htm;
Joachim (1890), p. 134 has: “Ein andrerfür nent des Riickgrater Honig 1⁄4; Grüne Bleierde
(?) 1/64; Sesani 1/32; Knoblauch 1/32; abu-Pflanze 7 / 32, ebenso und als Pflaster legen.”
38 Russo (2007), p. 1623.
107
THE PAGAN ERA
number of the remedies in the Ebers papyrus recommend beers and

wines.
Curiously, to alcohol specifically belongs one of the most ancient
moral admonitions preserved on the subject of psychoactive drugs. It
comes from a text dated to the nineteenth dynasty (ca. 1292 - 1185 BC)
which contains a letter from Amen-em-an, the chief librarian of the royal
white house to his scribe Penta-our:
Whereas it has been told me that thou hast forsaken books, and devoted thyself to
pleasure [?], that thou goest from tavern to tavern, smelling of beer, at the time of
evening [?]. If beer gets into a man, it overcomes thy mind; thou art like an oar started
from its place, which is unmanageable every way; thou art like a shrine without its god,
like a house without provisions, whose walls are found shaky. Thou knowest that
wine is an abomination.”
Another letter from the reign of Sety II Userkheperure (ca.

1200/1199 to 1194/1193 BC) is in “the same strain as the admonitory
letter of Amen-em-an to Penta-our about the frequenting of taverns. It is
probably the composition of the same respectable scribe, but we have no
39 Lewin, 1970, p. 173-4; Goodwin, C. W. “Hieratic Papyri” in Cambridge Essays

Contributed By Members of the University. London: John W. Parker and Sons, 1858, p.
253 (GB); www.britishmuseum.org, www.digitalegypt.ud.ac.uk, retrieved 15 Feb 09;
Papyrus Anastasi 4 is BM ESA 10249 and Sallier 1 is BM ESA 10185 at
www.britishmuseum.org; compare Chapter V, verse 92 of the Qur’an: “O ye who
believe! verily, wine, and games of chance, and statues, and divining (arrows) are only an
abomination of Satan’s work; avoid them then that haply ye may prosper” (Wollaston, Sir
Arthur N. The Religion of the East. London: John Murray, 1911, p. 64, www.sacred—
texts.com, 21 Feb 09).
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names.”40 It contains not only admonitions but a prohibition,” though

without specifying a penalty:
Having heard, saying, that thou goest after pleasure – turn not thy face away from my
advice; dost thou not give thy heart to all the words of the votaries of pleasure [?], thy
limbs are alive, thy heart is of those who sleep. I, thy superior, forbid thee to go to the
taverns. Thou art degraded [?] like the beasts. But we may see many like thee; they are
haters of books, they honour not God.42
In fact, this moral degradation is only attributed to the alcoholic

beverages, be it in some form, repeatedly from the very beginning. The
rest of the drugs are invariably medicines, subject to a regimen of self
medication or to be used sumptuarily.
Figure 20. Letter from Amen

em-an to Penta-our
(British Museum).
40 Goodwin, p. 261; Papyrus Anastasi 5, Didactic Exerpts and Hymns (Late Egyptian
Miscellanies) is BM ESA 10244 at www.britishmuseum.org; www.digitalegypt.ud.ac.uk/
writing/library/ram.html., ret'd 30 Jan 09.
41 A number of authors who cite this same reference and the previous will place them in
the twentieth century (2000-1900, therefore the 1900s) BC, thus proposing them
incorrectly for the first written moral admonition and prohibition.
42 Goodwin, p. 261.
109
THE PAGAN ERA
me ~*"‘
Figure 21. Egyptian Scribe,

ca. 2475 BC (Egyptian Museum,
Cairo).
Figure 22. Egyptian stele

depicting a Syrian soldier
drinking beer in a tavern
served by an Egyptian
slave.
PROFANE EBRIETY
'1' ' JQII-5% ‘'55,:
Figure 23. Queen Nefertiti offers Pharaoh Akhenaten (who may have suffered from
Marfan’s Syndrome) a medicinal plant, possibly rnandragora or foxglove.
111
THE PAGAN ERA
C. Israel
1. Alcohol. After the flood, the first man who begins the
repopulation of the earth starts with a drug: “And Noah the husbandman
began, and planted a vineyard. And he drank of the wine, and was
drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent.”43
Of his three sons, one – Ham, the father of Canaan – saw his
father naked and called to his brothers that they should contemplate this
also. The other two – Shem and Jaffa – preferred not to look and covered
his nudity. When he recovered his sobriety, Noah blessed the latter and
cursed the first and his progeny. Nothing posterior in Genesis suggests
that the patriarch had blemished his state of righteousness by becoming
drunk. It is only made clear that wine brings with it foolishness to those
who do not know it and dispense with moderation. The true fault lies in
irreverence before a drunk, who as a farmer has the right to find solace in
the fruits of his own labour.
So thinks a profoundly Hellenized biblical scholar like Philo of
Alexandria (ca. 20 BC – 50 AD), for whom the nudity of Noah is an
infantile act as well as a symbol of the truth that tears away the disguises
of virtue and vice, returning man to his innocence; in effect, Noah adopts
the same attitude as Adam and Eve before sinning, when they had no
shame about their bodies. And although it demonstrates clumsiness, no
less true is that it avoids the worst of scandal, taking place completely
inside the house, in private. In reality, Cain is cursed because Ham
“related the change of [Noah’s] soul abroad.”44
43 Bereshit - Genesis, IX: 20-21, http://wwwjewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Bible/

Genesis9.html.
44 “(A)nd on this account he curses Canaan also, because he related the change of his
soul abroad, that is to say, he extended it into the parts out of doors, and gave it
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PROFANE EBRIETY
Figure 24. The Drunkenness of Noah,

the basilica of San Marcos, Venice, twelfth century.
Some chapters later, Genesis returns to the theme of wine and

nudity in the story of Lot and his two daughters:
And Lot went up out of Zoar, and dwelt in the mountain, and his two daughters with
him; for he feared to dwell in Zoar; and he dwelt in a cave, he and his two daughters.
notoreity, adding to his evil intention an evil consummation by means of his actions: but
Shem and japhet are praised, because they did not attack his soul, but rather concealed
its deterioration” (De Allegorii: Lgurn, H: 62; http://cornerstonepublications.org/Philo/
Philo_Allegorical_Interpretation_II.html).
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THE PAGAN ERA
And the first-born said unto the younger: “Our father is old, and there is not a man in
the earth to come in unto us after the manner of all the earth.
Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve
seed of our father.”
And they made their father drink wine that night. And the first-born went in, and lay
with her father; and he knew not when she lay down, nor when she arose.
And it came to pass on the morrow, that the first-born said unto the younger: “Behold, I
lay yesternight with my father. Let us make him drink wine this night also; and go thou
in, and lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father.”
And they made their father drink wine that night also. And the younger arose, and lay
with him; and he knew not when she lay down, nor when she arose.
Thus were both the daughters of Lot with child by their father.45
Having fied from the recently annihilated Sodom and Gomorrah,

their mother“ converted into a pillar of salt, the two daughters of Lot lack
a man “to come in unto us after the manner of all the earth.”47 Drink
allows each of them to cling to their father who has no consciousness of
when either one “lay down nor when she arose.”48 Neither their
progenitor nor the daughters nor their children will be cursed.
But an incongruity in the story merits attention. Either some type
of philtre was added to the wine – analogous to the Egyptian nepenthes
though distinct in composition (perhaps mandragora) – capable of giving
45 Beresleit — Genesis XIX: 30-36, http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Bible/

Genesis19.html.
46 Philo comments about the mother, “who was afterwards turned to stone, whom, using
an appropriate appellation, one may call habit, a nature at variance with truth, and always,
whenever any one tries to lead it on, lagging behind and looking round upon its ancient
and customary ways, and remaining in the midst of them like a lifeless pillar” (De ebreitate,
XL: 164, http:/ /cornerstonepublications.org/Philo/Philo_On_Drunkenness. html).
47 Beretleit — Genesis, XIX: 31.
48 Ilu'd., XIX: 33.
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PROFANE EBRIETY
Lot the extraordinary energy required to leap the taboo of incest,

provoking total unconsciousness and hyperactivity at the same time, or if
it was only wine then the whole show appears to be a search for a pretext
on the part of the father and the daughters, actors in some ambiguous
rustic comedy. The degree of alcoholic intoxication required to fall into
an amnesia and complete ethical insensibility tallies poorly with the
considerable feat – for a man of advanced age – to deflower and
impregnate the two maidens on successive nights, without being aware of
it.
The next item of interest in the Bible is a demand for sobriety for
the Levite priests, though it is restricted to their official acts and is not
applicable to their private lives:
And HaShem spoke unto Aaron, saying:

“Drink no wine nor strong drink, thou, nor thy sons with thee, when ye go into the tent
of meeting, that ye die not; it shall be a statute forever throughout your generations.
And that ye may put difference between the holy and the common, and between the
unclean and the clean;
and that ye may teach the children of Israel all the statutes which HaShem hath spoken
unto them by the hand of Moses.”49
Evidently, something capable of deranging to such a degree two

venerable patriarchs would be inadmissible in the sight of the Lord or in
acts related with Him. Yet, wine is celebrated in the beautiful Psalm 104,
which sings almost dionysiacally of the splendours of the world, as that
”50
which “maketh glad the heart of man. It is not associated with the
4° I/ayikra - Leviticus, X: 8-11.

511 “Who sendest forth springs into the valleys; they run between the mountains. They
give drink to every beast of the field, the wild asses quench their thirst. Beside them
dwell the fowl of the heaven, from among the branches they sing. Who waterest the
115
THE PAGAN ERA
deity and for this reason is not an entheogen, but it can inspire a joy that
the Jewish spirit considers desirable and even enlightened, a sign of
wisdom:
For the wise man, when he is intoxicated, becomes more good-humoured than when he
is sober; so that in this respect we should not be at all wrong in saying that he may get
drunk. And besides all this, we must likewise add, that we are not speaking of a stern
looking (austeron) and sordid kind of wisdom, contracted by profound thought and ill
humour; but, on the other hand, of that wisdom which wears a tranquil and cheerful
appearance, being full of joy and happiness, by which men have often been led on to
sport and divert themselves in no inelegant manner, indulging in amusements suitable to
their dignified and earnest character, just as in a well-tuned lyre one may have a
combination uniting, by means of opposite sounds, in one melodious harmony.51
Such variations of joy could be acceptable inside a legalism as

ferocious as the religion of Moses since there one is not forbidden to
fornicate, but only to commit adultery.” Indeed, the story of Lot and his
mountains from Thine upper chambers; the earth is full of the fruit of Thy works. Who
causeth the grass to spring up for the cattle, and herb for the service of man; to bring
forth bread out of the earth. And wine that maketh glad the heart of men, making the
face brighter than oil, and bread that stayeth man’s heart” (Kenn/iin — The Writings, Book
IV, Psalms 104: 10-15, www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/ jsource/Bible/ Psalms 104.htm).
51 Philo, De plantation , XL, 166-167, http://cornerstonepublications.org/Philo/Philo_
Concerning_Noahs_Work_as_a_Planter.htrnl.
52 “Of the second table, the first commandment is that against adulterers, under which
many other commands are conveyed by implication, such as that against seducers, that
against practicers of unnatural crimes, that against all who live in debauchery, that against
all men who indulge in illicit and incontinent connections; but the lawgiver has set down
all the different species of such intemperance, not for the sake of exhibiting its manifold,
and diverse, and ever-changing varieties, but in order to cause those who live in an
unseemly manner to show most evident signs of depression and shame, drinking in with
their ears all the reproaches heaped together which they incur, and which may well make
116
PROFANE EBRIETY
daughters categorically affirms the aphrodisiacal powers of wine; so

categorically, that to accept it means to admit without reservation the
pleasures of sexual congress, while Christianity insists on the procreative
end as the only justification for its enjoyment. But when Psalm 104 sings
of wine as that which gladdens the hearts of men, this does not appear to
be independent of its use specifically as an aphrodisiac; this is indicated,
for example, in the commentary of Philo on the scene where Abimelech
sees through the window” Isaac caressing Rebecca:
For what employment is more suitable for a wise man than to be sporting, and rejoicing,
and diverting himself with perseverance in good things? From which it is plain that he
will become intoxicated, since intoxication contributes to good morals, and also produces
relaxation and advantage.54
them blush” (Philo. Decalogue, XXXII: 168-169 (http://cornerstonepublications.org/

Philo/Philo_The_Decalogue.html). He expounds upon the verse in Shernoz‘ - Exodus,
XX: 14: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house; thou shalt not covet thy
neighbour’s wife, nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor
any thing that is thy neighbour’s” (http: / /www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org.jsource/Bible/
Exodus20. html).
55 “(A)nd, behold, Isaac was sporting with Rebekah his wife” (Bereshit— Genesis, XXVI:
8, http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Bible/Genesis26.html).
54 Philo. De plantatione, XLI: 170 (http://cornerstonepublications.org/Philo/Philo_
Concerning_Noahs_Work_as_a_Planter.htrnl); According to Philo, Rebecca means in
Hebrew ‘perseverence’ and Isaac ‘laughter:’ “At all events, according to the most holy
Moses, the end of all wisdom is amusement and mirth, not such mirth as is pursued by
foolish people, uncombined with any prudence, but such as is admitted even by those
who are already grey, not only through old age alone, but also through deep thinking.
Do you not see that he speaks of the man who has drunk deeply of that wisdom which is
to be derived from a man’s own hearing and learning, and study; not as one who partakes
of mirth, but who is actually mirth in itself? This is Isaac, for the name Isaac being
interpreted means ‘laughter,’ with whose character it is very consistent that he should
117
THE PAGAN ERA
Finally, along with its disinhibitorial value, the Old Testament also
recognizes alcohol as an analgesic, in a sufficiently realistic fashion: “Give
strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto the bitter in
soul; Let him drink, and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no
more.”55 Alongside these references, however, there also exists a current
that upbraids alcoholic excesses, even though this is restricted to the
prophets and especially Isaiah, who is indignant about the drunkenness
among the leaders of the city,56 and any kind of boasting related to
drinking.” Some centuries after Isaiah, written during a period of
Hellenization and not included in the Hebrew Bible, the Wisdom of
Solomon reacts before the Dionysian cults and the philosophy of carpe
die/u:
For the ungodly said, reasoning with themselves, but not aright, Our life is short and
tedious, and in the death of a man there is no remedy: neither was there any man known
to have returned from the grave.
For we are born at all adventure: and we shall be hereafter as though we had never been:
for the breath in our nostrils is as smoke, and a little spark in the moving of our heart:
have been sporting with ‘perseverance,’ which the Hebrews call Rebekkah” (Philo. De
p/autatioue, XL: 168-169,//cornerstonepublications.org/Philo/Philo_Concerning_Noahs
_Work_as_a_Planter.html).
55 Proverbs, XXXI: 6-7, / /www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Bible/Proverb31.html.
56 He says for example: “But these also reel through wine, and stagger through strong
drink; the priest and the prophet reel through strong drink, they are confused because of
wine, they stagger because of strong drink; they reel in vision, they totter in judgment”
(Isaiah, XXVIII: 7, http://www.jewishvirmallibrary.org/jsource/Bible/Isaiah28.html).
57 “Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink;
that tarry late into the night, till wine inflame them! Woe unto them that are mighty
to drink wine, and men of strength to mingle strong drink” (Isaiah, V: 11, 22). Similar
admonitions appear in Isaiah XXII: 13 and in Amos, I: 6.
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Which being extinguished, our body shall be turned into ashes, and our spirit shall vanish
as the soft air,
And our name shall be forgotten in time, and no man shall have our works in
remembrance, and our life shall pass away as the trace of a cloud, and shall be dispersed
as a mist, that is driven away with the beams of the sun, and overcome with the heat
thereof.
For our time is a very shadow that passeth away; and after our end there is no returning:
for it is fast sealed, so that no man cometh again.
Come on therefore, let us enjoy the good things that are present: and let us speedily use
the creatures like as in youth.
Let us fill ourselves with costly wine and ointments: and let no flower of the spring pass
by us:
Let us crown ourselves with rosebuds, before they be withered:
Let none of us go without his part of our voluptuousness: let us leave tokens of our
joyfulness in every place: for this is our portion, and our lot is this.58
However, neither the severity of some of the prophets nor the

rejection of paganism should lead one to believe that wine must have been
an object of contempt in Jewish culture, where even today it accompanies
every important social event (from the circumcision of a child, the
celebration of the Sabbath, the feasts and marriages up to the communion
with the souls of the dead). Wine is a means of emphasizing sanctity, and
rightly so because without exception everyone who drinks it is firmly
rooted in a strong cultural rejection of alcoholism. It is an instructive
paradox that in a place like Israel where practically no one is abstemious,
the consumption per capita of alcohol by adults is comparatively quite
59
low. The acceptance in Judaism of wine is an important factor for
58 Lble, King James Version, Wisdom of Solomon, II: 1-9, www.earlyjewishwritings.

com / text/wisdom.html.
59 “WHO Global Status Report on Alcohol 2004,” Geneva, Switzerland: WHO, 2004,
pp. 9, 11-12, “Table 3. Total recorded alcohol per capita consumption in adults (15+) in
119
THE PAGAN ERA
understanding its posterior enthroning as divine blood by the Christians,

as if it were unimportant its intrinsic virtues as a drug and its deep
religious roots in ancient cults of possession like that of Dionysus and
others like it in the Mediterranean area.
2. Cannabis. At present, physical evidence from Israel of

medicinal cannabis dates only to the fourth century AD “in a tomb in Beit
Shemesh (midway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv)”:
(T)he skeleton of a 14-year-old girl was found with fourth century C. E. Bronze coins.
Contained in her pelvic area was the skeleton of a term foetus, of a size to that would
disallow a successful vaginal delivery. In her abdominal area, grey carbonized material
was noted and analyzed, yielding TLC and NMR spectroscopy evidence of delta eight
THC, a more stable trace component of cannabis. It was surmised that the cannabis had
been burned at an unsuccessful attempt at delivery of the foetus, perhaps paralleling the
ancient Egyptian usages/‘11
The issue of whether cannabis is mentioned in the Bible is more

controversial. The geographic argument is proposed: that cannabis was
known throughout the region by every other culture (Indian, Greek, Arab,
Scythian, Syrian, Egyptian, Assyrian, Persian, Chaldean)61 so that it would
be strange indeed if the Hebrews of that era had not known of it. The
philological argument is less easily dismissed: “It is cana in Sanskrit,
qunnabu in Assyrían, kenab in Persian, kannab in Arabic, and kanbun in
litres of pure alcohol,” from www.who.int/substance_abuse/publications/global_status

_report_2004_overview.pdf. Compare Israel (1.99) with that of Mauritania (0.01), the
US (8.51), the UK (10.39), Luxembourg (17.54), Uganda (19.47) or the global mean (5.1).
611 Russo (2007), pp. 1633-1634, citing Zias, et al. “Early Medical Use of Cannabis,”
Nature (1993), 363: 215.
61 Russo (2007), p. 1633.
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Chaldean. The Talmudic and modern Hebrew word for hemp,

kanahor, is tantalizingly similar.”62 So much so, that Sula Benetowa (1967)
believes the word is of Semitic origin:
For example, let us look at the original text of the Old Testament and its Aramaic
translation, the Tagurn Onculos. The word /éane or /éene sometimes appears alone and
sometimes linked to the adjective bosrn (in Hebrew) or buxrna (in Aramaic) meaning
“odorous, smelling good, aromatic.” As I demonstrate in detailed fashion in this study,
the Biblical /éane bornr and the Aramaic /éene burnra both mean “hemp.” The linguistic
evolution of the terms in question leads to the formation of the unique term kanabos or
/éanbos. This is encountered in the Mischna, the collection of traditional Hebrew law which
contains many Aramaic elements. The astonishing resemblance between the Semitic
/éanbos and the Scythian /éannabis lead me to suppose that the Scythian word was of
Semitic origin.“
Direct and incontrovertible references to cannabis in the Bible are

difficult to find, but if accepted can quickly become significant. Benet
(1975) further argues that the perceived lack of citations has been due to a
mistranslation from the Hebrew:
In many translations of the Bible’s original Hebrew, we find /éaneh bosrn variously and
erroneously translated as “calamus” and “aromatic reed,” a vague term. Calamus
(Calarnus arornaticus) is a fragrant marsh plant. The error occurred in the oldest Greek
translation of the Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, in the third century B.C., where the terms
/éaneh, kaneh bosrn were incorrectly translated as “calamus.” Another piece of evidence
62 Ibid.
63 Benetowa, Sula. “Tracing One Word Through Different Languages,” The Book of
Grass: An Anthology of Indian Hemp (George Andrews and Simon Vinkenoog,
editors). New York: Grove Press, 1967, p. 16 (http://www.scribd.com/doc/
10560831 /The-Book-Of-Grass-An-Anthology-On-Indian-Hemp, 14 Mar 09), reprinted
from the 1936 essay.
121
THE PAGAN ERA
regarding the use of the word kaueb in the sense of hemp rather than reed among the
Hebrews is the religious requirement that the dead be buried in /eaueb shirts. Centuries
later, linen was substitutued for hemp.64
Mistranslations of the Bible, of course, are neither new nor

controversial and if this were all that was being alleged, a few random
references to the cannabis plant could be expected in so large and long a
history. Benet gives only five examples:
In Exodus 30: 23 /eane/J 170101 is translated as “sweet calamus.” In Isaiah 43: 24 kaneh is
translated as “sweet cane” although the word “sweet” appears nowhere in the original.
In Jeremiah 6: 20 kane/J is translated as “sweet cane.” In Ezekiel 27: 19 /éane/9 is translated
as “calarnus.” In Song of Songs 4: 14 kane/9 is translated “calamus.”65
In Isaiah 43: 24, the deity is displeased at the lack of sacrifices

while in Jeremiah 6: 19-20 it is the hollowness of ritual that is decried.
Ezekiel mentions kane/9 in passing as a trade good of Tyre. In Song of
Songs, it is one more spice to be compared to the fragrance of one’s
beloved.“ But Exodus 30: 23 is HaShem’s recipe for the holy annointing
oil of the Levites and the prohibition of its use by all others:
Moreover HaShem spoke unto Moses, saying: “Take thou also unto thee the chief
spices, of flowing myrrh five hundred shekels, and of sweet cinnamon half so much,
64 Benetowa, Sula. “Early Diffusion and Folk Uses of Hemp,” Cannabis and Culture
(Rubin, Vera and Lambros Comitas, editors). The Hague, NL: Mouton, 1975, pp. 39
49, a reprint and translation of a separate 1936 paper “Kauqbie 11/ u/iergeuiatb z’ gljtgeyat/J
/udoug/eh” found at www.inorml.org/pdf/early_diffusion_and_folk_uses_of.htm, citing
Klein, S. Tad uud Berdbuis in Palettiua. Berlin: H. Itchkowshi, 1908 for the /éaue/9 shirts
used in early Hebrew burials, http:/ /nnk.art.pl/bujnos/blada/ocr/benetowa/index.html.
65 Benet (1975), www.inorml.org.
66 See the online jewish Virtual Library.
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PROFANE EBRIETY
even two hundred and fifty, and of sweet calamus [kaneh l70.Wt, according to Benet] two
hundred and fifty, and of cassia five hundred, after the shekel of the sanctuary, and of
olive oil a hin. And thou shalt make it a holy anointing oil, a perfume compounded after
the art of the perfumer; it shall be a holy anointing oil. And thou shalt anoint therewith
the tent of meeting, and the ark of the testimony, and the table and all the vessels
thereof, and the candlestick and the vessels thereof, and the altar of incense, and the altar
of burnt-offering with all the vessels thereof, and the laver and the base thereof. And
thou shalt sanctify them, that they may be most holy; whatsoever toucheth them shall be
holy. And thou shalt anoint Aaron and his sons, and sanctify them, that they may
minister unto Me in the priest’s office. And thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel,
saying: ‘This shall be a holy anointing oil unto Me throughout your generations. Upon
the flesh of man shall it not be poured, neither shall ye make any like it, according to the
composition thereof; it is holy, and it shall be holy unto you. Whosoever compoundeth
any like it, or whosoever putteth any of it upon a stranger, he shall be cut off from his
people.’”57
From this, Bennett (1995, 2001) extrapolates other metaphorical

but intriguing references to cannabis in biblical stories such as Exodus 3 (a
bush that “burns with fire” but is not consumed causes a cognitive
dissonance in a pre-Jaynes bicameral mind):
And the angel of HaShem appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a
bush; and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not
consumed.
And Moses said: “I will turn aside now, and see this great sight, why the bush is not
burnt.”
67 Shemet – Exodus 30: 22-33, jewishvirtuallibrary.org. One shekel equals 16.37 grams,
one hind is equivalent to 6.5 litres. Benet reads Kupjf Nun, He’, Bet, Shin, Mern as kaneh
borrn in the original Hebrew of the Book of Shernet— Exodus 30: 23, found, for example,
in the Hebrew–French line-by-line facing pages at www.mechon-mamre.org/ f/ ft/ ft
0230.htm.
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THE PAGAN ERA
And when HaShem saw that he turned aside to see, G-d called unto him out of the midst
of the bush, and said: “Moses, Moses.” And he said: “Here am I.”68
Bennett also supposes that Christ the Messiah (Annointed) was

able to cure leprosy, lameness and cast out demons with this same
cannabis-laden, medicinal holy oil. Though the idea is anathema for
some, it certainly ought not to be regarded as impossible that a mixture
containing cinnamon (Cinnainon zeylanicu/n, a known antioxidant and anti
microbial), myrrh (C0/n/niplaora /nyrrlaa, an antiseptic used in Chinese
medicine to treat rheumatism, arthritis and circulatory problems), cassia
(Cinna/nonu/n aromaticu/n, called rou gui and gui zhi in Chinese medicine, one
of fifty fundamental herbs, vasodilator, antimicrobial, sedative, anti
convulsant, analgesic), and cannabis (Cannabis sativa, a demonstated
antibiotic, antiviral, antipyretic, antiemetic, antispasmodic, vasodilator, and
analgesic) with a transdermal carrier such as olive oil (Olea europaea) would
be useful in treating ailments of the skin (pruritis, eczema), muscles (MS,
MD, cystic fibrosis), or nerves (epilepsy, formerly demonic possession).69
68 Shemet – Exodus 3: 2-4, jewishvirtuallibrary.org. See Bennett, Chris. Green Gold the
Tree of Life: Marijuana in Magic and Religion. Frazier Park, CA: Access Unlimited,
1995; the same, with Neil McQueen, Sex, Drugs, Violence and the Bible. Gibsons, B.C.,
Canada: Forbidden Fruit Publishing, 2001; Jaynes, Julian. The Origin of Consciousness
in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1990.
69 Iliid. See also, Bennett, Chris. “Cannabis and the Christ: Jesus Used Marijuana,”
Cannabis Culture, Issue 11, www.cannabisculture.com/backissues/cc11/christ.html. As to
medicinal properties, see for example, Atta-ur-Rahman, et al. “Antifungal Activities and
Essential Oil Constituents of Some Spices of Pakistan,” Third International Electronica
Canference on J")/ntlaetic OQMIZY Cnernirtgl (ECSOC-3), September 1999,
//pages.unibas.ch/mdpi/ecsoc-3/d0002/d0002.html; Singh, G. et al. “A comparison of
chemical, antioxidaant and antimicrobial studies of cinnamon leaf and bark volatile oils,
oleoresins and their constituents,” Food and Che/nical Toxicology (2007), vol. 45, no. 9, pp.
124
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Another careful religious linguist, Burgess Shale (2007) finds 62

references in 38 verses to qaneh in the Bible and retranslates qnh in Ezekial
not as reed, but as a hemp measuring rope, raising the argument that
whatever qnh is, it must be both an ingredient of a sacred annointing oil
and a source of fiber. He adds that in this context the Hebrew seven
branched (branch, qaneh) menorah can be viewed as a two dimensional
symbolic morphing of the three dimensional cannabis plant.70
While the mythic-ritual use [see chapter one] of a holy annointing
oil (that may have used cannabis as one of its ingredients) is impossible to
minimize, in Exodus 30 the more immediate context is profane,
specifically, medicinal. It is within this chapter that the children of Israel
1650-1661; www.botanical.com /botanical/myrrh/ m / myrrh-66.html; Dharmananda,

Subhuti. “Myrrh and Frankincense,” www.itmonline.org/art/myrrh.htm, May, 2003;
Zhu, You-ping. Chinese Materia Medica: Chemistry, Pharmacology, and Application.
Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 1998 (GB), pp. 51-53; Clendinning, John. “Observations
on the Medicinal Properties of the Cannabis sativa of India,” Medico-Chiugical Transactions,
vol. 26, 1843, pp. 188-210, http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid
=2116906&blobtype=pdf; Mikuriya, Tod. “Medicinal Uses of Cannabis,” (2002),
http://www.mikuriya.com/cw_meduses.htrnl;
“Marihuana: The Forbidden Medicine,” “featured
Grinspoon,
patient L.
accounts,”
and and
Bakalar,
“shared
experiences,” www.rxmarijuana.com; and Masiz, J. “Molecular Transdermal Transport

System,” US Patent 5460821 (1995), http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5460821/
description.html.
70 Shale, Burgess. God’s Gift: A Survey of Cannabis in the Bible. Budapest, Hungary:
Mu Press, 2007, pp. 20-22, 32-34, www.qaneh.com/godsgiftbs080420.pdf, 9 Mar 09.
Ezekiel 40: 3: “And he brought me hither, and, behold, [there was] a man, whose
appearance [was] like appearance of brass, with a line of flax in his hand, and a measuring
reed; and he stood in the gate” (www.blueletterbible.org). The measuring rope can be
seen on Egyptian statues of Seshat or Babylonian statues of Hammurabi or the Sumerian
Ur-Nammu. Pro-reed arguments invite an investigation of the properties of DMT (see
Shales, pp. 23-24).
125
THE PAGAN ERA
are
thatnumbered
there be no
and
plague
each among
must pay
them
a half
[verse
skekel,
12],”“a
this
ransom
atonement
for his
money
soul to
be appointed “for the service of the tent of meeting [verse 16].” Having
collected the ransom, Moses is immediately instructed to build a brass
laver so Aaron and his sons “shall wash their hands and their feet, that
they die not [verses 20-21].” The recipe for the holy annointing oil with
its expensive, imported ingredients is next described and the entire tent,
ark, altars, lavers, table and vessels are washed with it so that “whosoever
toucheth them shall be holy [verses 26-29].” As myrrh, cassia, cinnamon
and cannabis have antiseptic, antibiotic, and antifungal properties, within
the context of a large, desert gathering it would not be strange to consider
this use of such an annointing oil (though certainly holy) also a perfectly
reasonable and practical measure for the prevention and spread of disease.
“Upon the fiesh of man shall it not be poured [verse 32]” suggests that
any inherent psychotropic value was both well-understood but secondary.
Never forgetting that alternative meanings also exist, the philology has
been accepted by a number of Jewish and non-Jewish theologians.”
In the ensuing chapters when we turn to discussions of sacred
ebriety, it will become commonplace to encounter references to various
drugs (some known, some unknown) at the basis of a number of major
71 Alternative translations include reed, stalk, bone, balances, water-plant, calamus

(aromatic reed), and derived meanings such as measuring rod, reed (unit of six cubits),
beam (of scales), shaft (of lampstand), branches (of lampstand), shoulder-joint, and
spearmen (http: / /www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?Strongs=H7070&t
=K]V). Those accepting cannabis as a possible translation include Navigating the Bible,
http: / /bible.ort.org/books /pentd2.asp?ACTION Idisplaypage&BOOK=2&CHAPTER
=30#C1800. Other authors cite Ben Yehuda's Pocket Hebrew-English[English
Hebrew Dictionary (Ehud Ben-Yehuda and David Weinstein, editors). New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1964, p. 140 and M. Ménange’s Dittiouuaire Egyma/oigue de /a Lauue
Frantaite. Paris, 1750, as well.
126
PROFANE EBRIETY
religions (some current, some defunct) from around the world. Nor
should this seem out of place if one considers that within the range of
available conscious experience, the religious epiphany most closely
resembles that of the entheogenic voyage. As it may be more comfortable
for Western scholars to accept drugs in the foundation of other, foreign,
exotic religions than in the roots of their own Judaeo-Christian tradition,
the obvious logical consequences of the translation of kaneh bot/n as
cannabis are certain to remain capable of exciting and sustaining confiict
among both Christian and Jewish believers for many long decades to
CO1’I1€.
3. Other Drugs Mandrake (/ltropa /nandragora, Strong’s

H1736 duwday, Hebrew dudaiin, or “love plant”) appears as early as
Genesis 30: 14-16, specifically as a plant that helps barren women
conceive:
And Reuben went in the days of wheat harvest, and found mandrakes in the field, and
brought them unto his mother Leah. Then Rachel said to Leah: “Give me, I pray thee,
of thy son’s mandrakes.” And she said unto her: “Is it a small matter that thou hast
taken away my husband? and wouldest thou take away my son’s mandrakes also?” And
Rachel said: “Therefore he shall lie with thee to-night for thy son’s mandrakes.” And
Jacob came from the field in the evening, and Leah went out to meet him, and said:
“Thou must come in unto me; for I have surely hired thee with my son’s mandrakes.”
And he lay with her that night. And G-d hearkened unto Leah, and she conceived, and
boreJacob a fifth son.72
The same plant also shows up in the Song of Songs as an aphrodisiac in

the midst of a love poem:
72 Bereshit – Genesis 30: 14-17, www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org. Later, Rachel also

conceives, perhaps with the help of the same mandrakes.
127
THE PAGAN ERA
I am my beloved’s, and his desire is toward me.

Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field; let us lodge in the villages.
Let us get up early to the vineyards; let us see whether the vine hath budded, whether the
vine-blossom be opened, and the pomegranates be in flower; there will I give thee my
love.
The mandrakes give forth fragrance, and at our doors are all manner of precious fruits,
new and old, which I have laid up for thee, O my beloved.”
Several writers have found references to opium in the Bible,

arguing that the ancient Hebrews must have known about it since it was
so prevalent in the neighbourhood, often reading I’0.f£lfl (head) as meaning
the capsule of the poppy, not water of gall as usually translated:
Why do we sit still? Assemble yourselves, and let us enter into the fortified cities, and let
us be cut off there; for HaShem our G-d hath cut us off, and given us water of gall to
drink, because we have sinned against HaShem.
Therefore thus saith HaShem of hosts, the G-d of Israel: Behold, I will feed them, even
this people, with wormwood, and give them water of gall to drink.“
Others think the gall and vinegar offered to Jesus to ease his sufferings on
the cross must have been either opium or spiked with opium.” Here
again, theories can multiply unceasingly.
73 Song of Songs 7: 11-14, www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org.

74 Neviirn – The Prophets, Jeremiah 8: 14, 9: 14, jewishvirtuallibrary.org; see on this
subject, Kapoor, L. D. Opium Poppy: Botany, Chemistry and Pharmacology.
Binghanpton, NY: Haworth Press, 1995 (GB), pp. 7-8; Gesenius's Lexicon, http://
www.blueletterbible.org/lang/ lexicon/lexicon.cfm?Strongs=H721 9&t= KJV.
75 Duke,James A. Duke’s Handbook of Medicinal Plants of the Bible. Boca Raton, FL:
CRC Press, 2008(GB), p. 320.
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Figure 25.
Ancient Menorahs used clay cups

filled with oil, each with its own wick.
129
THE PAGAN ERA
D. China
1. Alcohol. Seven hundred years after Hammurabi demands

the surrender of outlaws or rebels who assemble in a tavern, the Duke of
Zhou (Zhou Gong) enacts very much the same statute in China. Further,
he will issue moral admonitions regarding alcohol similar to those of
Amen-em-an. The other drugs in China will be conspicuous by the
absence of any regulation regarding their use, either in medical or religious
practice.
According to Chinese legend, the Duke of Zhou (Zhou Gong)
himself is supposed to have written the now famous book of divination,
the I Ching (Yi/1 Kz'ug).76 “Confucius regarded his memory with reverence,
and spoke of it as an evidence of his own failing powers and disappointed
hopes, that the Duke of Chou no longer appeared to him in dreams.”77
Still a symbol of good governance in China, the Duke of Zhou “is
credited with ensuring that the [Zhou/ Chou/ Chow] dynasty would
outlive its founders.”78
Upon good authority, the Duke of Zhou probably penned (ca.
1050 BC) “The Announcement about Drunkenness” or the ]z'u Gao.” It
76 Shaughnessy, Edward L. “Western Zhou History,” in The Cambridge History of

Ancient China VI: From the Origins to 221 B.C. (Michael Lowe and E. L. Shaughnessy,
editors). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999, Cambridge Histories
Online, 15 Feb 09.
77 Legge, James. The Chinese Classics, Volume Three, Part Two. Hong Kong: At the
Author’s, 1865, p. 352 (GB); http://plato.stanford.edu.
78 Shaughnessy, E. L., Cambridge Histories Online.
79 In Chinese, the title is composed of two signs: jiu (third tone, EMCW, 3116.0)
meaning wine (especially rice wine), liquor, spirits or any alcoholic beverage generally and
gao (fourth tone, YRHGR, 0486.1) meaning inform, notify, admonish, or order
(according to various websites beginning with www including mdbg.net,
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forms the tenth book of the Books of Chowso belonging to the Shujing
(Shoo King/Shangshu) often referred to as the Book of Historical
Documents (Classic of History/Book of Documents/Venerated
Documents).81 The compilation, though not the writing, of these fifty
eight books covering the Yao, Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties is loosely
attributed to Confucius himself.” While many of the earlier books in the
mandarintools.com, and chinese-tools.com, for example). James Legge (1815-1897), the

Victorian missionary scholar who translated the Shujing and the other Chinese Classics in
the 1860s and 1870s (termed the “most prodigious single-handed contribution of British
scholarship to sinology” by Norman S. Girardot in The Victorian Translation of China:
James Legge's Oriental Pilgrimage. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002,
pp. xiv, 460, found at GoogleBooks), writes that althoughjiu is often translated simply as
“wine,” there can be “no doubt that the term in the ancient Books signifies ‘spirits
distilled from rice,’ or our ‘ardent spirits.’ The title might be correctly translated ‘The
Announcement about Spirits,’ but the cursory reader would most readily suppose that
the discourse was about spiritual Beings (Legge, V3, P2, p. 399).” As previously noted,
the art of distillation has been known in the East for much longer than many European
writers have traditionally supposed (see Ch. 1).
811 See Legge’s Errata, Vol. 3, Part 1, p. Page 399, Vol. 3, Part 2 (1865) has it
incorrectly labelled as one of the Books of Shang.
81 The five jing (King) are “recognized as of the highest authority in China” and “are
probably the earliest writings in China’s traditional literature” (Legge (1861), Vol. 1, p. 1;
Shaughnessy, “Western Zhou History,” //histories.cambridge.org). “The five jing (or
King) are the “five canonical Works, containing the tmth upon the highest subjects from
the sages of China, and which should be received as law by all generations. The term
Shoo simply means Writings or Book:. The term King is of textile origin, and signifies
the warp threads of a web, and their adjustment (and also) indicate their authority on
the subjects of which they treat (Legge, Vol. 1, p. 1).” The five King are the Yih (Book of
Changes), Shoo (Book of History), She (Book of Poetry), Le Ke (Record of Rites) and
Ch ’un T.r’ew (Spring and Autumn Chronicles).
82 Originally, the Shoo may have had as many as 100 or 120 books but a number were lost
during the “calamity inflicted under the Ts’in dynasty [220-202 BC], when the literary
131
THE PAGAN ERA
Shujing are probably apocryphal, the “Books of Chow were contemporary

with the events which they describe and became public property not long
after their composition.’””
The ]iu Gao begins with the Duke of Zhou advising his brother
Fung in the name of the 13 year-old king Ch’ing, for whom the Duke is
acting as regent. First, he reviews the status quo ante, the instructions of
their father (King Wan) regarding alcohol: “For sacrifices spirits should
be employed” but that in Wan’s day “spirits were used only in the great
sacrifices.” The former king admonished his people that “they should not
ordinarily use spirits” and “required that they [spirits] should be drunk
only on occasion of sacrifices, and then that virtue should preside so that
there might be no drunkenness.’””
documents were destroyed by fire, in order to keep the people in ignorance” (Legge, Vol.
1, p. 3 quoting from the Han dynasty (201BC – 24 AD) memoir “History of Literature”).
Legend has it that the prime minister Le Sze, counselled the Ts’in king: “When they [the
scholars] hear that an ordinance has been issued, every one sets to discussing it with his
learning. In the court they are dissatisfied in heart; out of it, they keep talking in the
streets. And so they lead the people to be guilty of murmurring and evil-speaking. --
I pray that all the records in the charge of the Historiographers be burned, excepting
those of Ts’in” (Legge, Vol. 1, p. 8 quoting “Historical Records”). Not only books were
burnt but many of the literati were slain as well. In the second century BC some 29
books of the S1900 were recovered from the wall of the house of the scholar Fuh Shing.
In the following century, others were discovered in the wall of the house of the K’ung
family, known as that where Confucius himself had lived (Legge, Vol. 1, p. 12 and Vol. 3,
Part 1, p. 16).
83 Legge (Prolegomena, Vol. 1, p. 48); the “Announcement about Drunkenness” is found
in both the modern and ancient texts and is generally accepted as being authentic
(Baumler, Alan (2007), note 21, p. 239 citing Loewe, Michael, editor. Early Chinese
Texts: A Bibliographical Guide. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993, p.
379).
111 Legge (1865), Vol. 3, Part 2, pp. 399-403.
132
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4% Pa E
Figure 26.
Zhou Gong (The

Duke of Zhou)
wrote the jiu Gao,
“The
Announcement ‘
about
Drunkenness,”
one of the first
Chinese
prohibitions
having to do ;
with alcohol
(ca. 1050 BC).
The Duke then enumerates the occasions when the people of his
new kingdom may use spirits. For example, they may use them after the
harvest “if you can employ your limbs, largely cultivating your millet, and
hastening about in the service of your fathers and elders.” They might use
them when carrying the harvest to market “and if with your carts and
oxen you traffic to a distance, that you may thereby filially minister to your
133
THE PAGAN ERA
parents: - then, when your parents are happy, you may set forth your
spirits clear and strong, and use them.”85
Spirits are, of course, approved of for use in sacrifices but only
under certain conditions: “And to speak of greater things: - when you can
maintain a constant watchful examination of yourselves, and your conduct
is in accordance with correct virtue, then may you administer the offerings
of sacrifice, and at the same time indulge yourselves in festivity.”86 Legge
adds a footnote: “The critics all call attention to the various relaxations of
Wan’s original rule, that spirits should be used only for sacrifices. They
say we have in them an instance of prohibition by permission.”87 He adds
a now famous commentary by the Sung poet Su-tung-po (1036-1101 AD):
Spirits are what men will not do without. To prohibit them and secure a total abstinence
from them is beyond the power even of the sages. Here, therefore, we have warnings on
the evils of drunkenness in the abuse of them, and the joy that is found in the virtuous
use of them is set forth; - such is the way in which the sages lay their prohibitions upon
men.88
Notice that the Duke of Zhou nowhere tries to ban alcohol altogether. It
is not the substance itself that is evil. It is only the use men make of it. In
order to better explain this attitude, Legge quotes at length from
Nanheen, a critic of the Sung dynasty, giving a comparison between the
Buddhists and the Learned School:
85 Legge (1865), Vol. 3, Part 2, p. 404,

86 Legge (1865), Vol. 3, Part 2, p. 405.
87 Legge (1865), Vol. 3, Part 2, p. 406.
88 Legge (1865), Vol. 3, Part 2, p. 406; the dates are given by Chung, Tan. China and the
Brave New World: A Study of the Origins of the Opium War (1840-1842). Durham,
NC: Carolina Academic Press, 1978, p. 147 and Chang, Hsin-pao. Commissioner Lin
and the Opium War. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., Inc., 1964, p. 16.
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The Buddhists put away as well the use of them which Heaven has prescribed. It is
not so with us of the Learned (i.e., the Orthodox) School; - we only put away the use of
things to which Heaven has annexed its terrors. For instance, in the use of meats and
drinks, there is such a thing as wildly abusing and destroying the creatures of Heaven.
The Buddhists, disliking this, confine themselves to a vegetable diet while we only abjure
the wild abuse and destruction. In the use of clothes, again, there is such a thing as
wasteful extravagance. The Buddhists, disliking this, will have no clothes but those of a
dark and sad colour, while we only condemn the extravagance. They, further, through
dislike of criminal connection between the sexes, would abolish the relation between
husband and wife, while we only denounce the criminal connection.”
Legge appends a personal note: “(T)he contrast drawn between

Buddhism
the controversies
and Chinese
in theOrthodoxy
West about will,
the perhaps
subjects suggest
of vegetarianism,
to the reader
and
total abstinence from all spirituous liquors.”90

But the Duke’s announcement is not just a list of rules for
virtuous drinking, it is also political. He blames the downfall (and
overthrow by his brother, King Wu) of the previous dynasty on the last
Shang emperor’s alcoholism:
I have heard it said likewise, that in these times the last successor of those kings was
addicted to drink Greatly abandoned to extraordinary lewdness and dissipation, for
pleasure’s sake he ruined all his majesty he gave himself wildly up to spirits, not
thinking of ceasing, but continuing his excess, till his mind was frenzied, and he had no
fear of death. (T)hough the extinction of the dynasty of Yin [Shang] was imminent,
this gave him no concern the drunkenness of his herds of creatures, went loudly up on
high so that Heaven sent down ruin on Yin and showed no love for Yin, - because of
such excesses.91
89 Legge (1865), p. 402, quoting a commentary from Choo He.

90 Legge (1865), p. 402.
91 Legge (1865), pp. 408-409.
135
THE PAGAN ERA
Earlier, he says generally that “the ruin of States, small and great, by these
terrors, may be also traced invariably to their crime in the use of spirits.”92
This is not the first time that the authors of various books of the
Shujing blame alcohol for political problems. In Book Four of the Books
of Hea, both He and Ho are ministers of the Board of Astronomy but
“neglected the duties of their office, and were sunk in wine in their private
cities They have entirely subverted their virtue, and are sunk and lost
in wine.”93 In Book XI of the Books of Shang, the Viscount of Wei lists
the reasons for the downfall of the Shang dynasty:
(T)he House of Yin can no longer exercise rule over the four quarters of the empire.
The great deeds of our founder were displayed in former ages, but by our being lost and
maddened with wine, we have destroyed the effects Heaven in anger is sending down
calamities, and wasting the country of Yin. Thence has come about that lost and
maddened condition through wine.”
And again in Book I of the Books of Chow, the crimes of the last king of
the Shang dynasty are recited: “But now, Show, the king of Shang, does
not reference Heaven above, and inflicts calamities on the people below.
He has been abandoned to drunkenness, and reckless in lust. He has
dared to exercise cruel oppression.”95
Why has the Duke of Zhou transformed an inanimate object into
the subject of a political diatribe? In part, he does so in order to argue
that “drinking has caused the Shang to lose their virtue and thus lose the
92 Legge (1865), p. 401, reading in part xia03 a'a4 l¢ang7 J/0ng4 .rang7 J/i4 n/ang3fei7 jiu3 u/ei2
gu7.
93 Legge (1865), Vol. 3, Part 1, p. 162, 165.
91 Legge (1865), Vol. 3, Part 1, pp. 273, 276.
95 Legge (1865), Vol. 3, Part 2, p. 284.
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mandate of Heaven.”% The Mandate of Heaven was supposedly the

spiritual authority by which a particular dynasty ruled. To overthrow
such would be to go against the obvious wishes of the gods themselves.
Thus, the Duke must explain why he has the right to usurp the previous
dynasty: “Most historians today agree that the theory of the Mandate of
Heaven was an invention of the Zhou to justify their overthrow of the
Shang.”97
But after listing all of his exceptions and admonitions for the use
of spirits and justifying them with historical examples, the Duke then
issues what seems like a ferocious command: “If you are told that there
are companies that drink together, do not fail to apprehend them all, and
send them here to Chow, where I may put them to death.”98
The contrast with the previous paternal instructions couldn’t be
more striking. A number of commentators have tried to explain this
suddenly belligerent proscription. Legge (1865) writes:
The punishment here threatened is so far beyond the crime, that the critics fall upon
various devices to explain it, or to mitigate the force of the language. First, the coming
together in companies to drink is supposed to carry with it the design of their
assembling, as being not merely to drink, but, under the cloak of that, to plot against the
government. Second, the king would examine for himself into their guilt, and
according as he found they had treasonable designs would put them to death. If they
really only met to drink, he would inflict on them some lighter penalty. I have allowed
the second remark by using the “may” in the translation.”
96 Baumler (2003), p. 17 (GB).

97 From / /acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu, for example.
98 Legge (1865), Vol. 3, Part 2, p. 411.
W Legge (1865), Vol. 3, Part 2, pp. 411-412.
137
THE PAGAN ERA
Baumler (2007) agrees: “That these people were to be put to death may
seem harsh punishment, but they were executed for their social
deviance.”100
In fact, Zhou Gong almost immediately softens his demand (just
as he had when he declared the ancient rule for using spirits only in major
sacrifices and then followed it with a number of religious and social
exceptions). He will not immediately put them all to death but will
attempt to rehabilitate the gentry: “As to the ministers and officers of
Yin, who have been led to it, and been addicted to drink, it is not
necesssary to put them to death; - let them be taught for a time. If they
keep these lessons, I will give them bright distinction.”“"
But the Duke then addresses the officers of the previous dynasty
directly: “If you disregard my lesson, then I, the one man, will show you
no pity. As you cannot cleanse your way, you shall be classed with those
who are to be put to death.’’‘‘’‘ He concludes with a personal message to
Fung: “O Fung, give constant heed to my admonition. If you do not
manage right your officers, the people will continue lost in drink.”“”
Strikingly, in the “Announcement about Drunkenness” there are
two ancient examples of twenty-first century practice regarding political
and pharmaceutical dissidence. First, there is the Chinese re-education
camp or the involuntary treatment centers of the U.S. where the convicted
go under judicial threat to be rehabilitated. Second, there is the class
distinction. “The officers of the previous Shang dynasty, who had
become addicted to wine, were to be educated not to repeat these errors,
1110 Baumler, Alan. The Chinese and Opium Under the Republic: Worse than Floods
and Wild Beasts. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2007, p. 17 (GB).
181 Legge (1865), Vol. 3, Part 2, p. 412.
1112 Legge (1865), Vol. 3, Part 2, p. 412.
1113 Legge (1865), Vol. 3, Part 2, p. 412.
138
PROFANE EBRIETY
so these people who drank in groups were presumably commoners.’”O4 In

the United States in the 21st century, white users of cocaine are routinely
not arrested, not prosecuted, not convicted nor are they sentenced to the
same length of time in prison as hispanic or black users of crack.105
2. Cannabis. Nothing analogous with alcohol occurs

with other drugs in China. To the lack of any mythic-ritual value for other
psychoactive preparations in China corresponds a considerable wealth of
knowledge about medicinal plants. For example, the oldest known fibres
of cannabis (dated to the fourth millennium BC) have been found in
China, and only a millennium later in Turkistan, with a strong possibility
that the plant was originally cultivated there.105’ Hemp cloth accompanied
burials in the early Bronze Age [ca. 1500 – 1000 BC].107 Evidence of the
earliest religious use of cannabis in China (2700 years BP) comes from a
104 Baumler (2007), p. 17.

105 “Crack vs. Powder Cocaine: A Gulf in Penalties,” US News and World Report, 1 Oct
2007, http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/national/2007/10/01/crack-vs-powder
cocaine-a-gulf-in-penalties.html. See Whitebread’s Iron Law of Prohibition: “Pro
hibitions are always enacted by US, to govern the conduct of THEM” (Whitebread,
Charles. “The History of the Non-Medical Use of Drugs in the United States, A Speech
to the California Judges 1995 annual conference,” http://www.druglibrary.org/
schaffer/ History/whitebl .htm).
106 “For example, the villagers of Pan-p’o outside Sian about 4000 BC lived on millet,
supplemented by hunting and fishing, used hemp and silk for fabrics, and built floors of
stamped earth” (Fairbank,J. K. The United Status and China. Fourth Edition, enlarged.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976 (GB), p. 9).
107 “Coffinless burials occasionally show traces of rudimentary planking, a mat, or a piece
of hemp cloth laid over the corpse, but generally the lower classes of the early Bronze
Age were buried with no container or protection at all” (Loewe, l\Iichael and E. L.
Shaughnessy, editors. Cambridge History of Ancient China. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 1999 (GB), pp. 138, 268).
139
THE PAGAN ERA
burial near the Gobi Desert of a presumed shaman of the Gushi clan with
a sample of 789 grams of cultivated, cleaned, female cannabis fiowers.1O8
Hemp was considered by Han scholars as one of the so-called “five
grains,” the staples of ancient China.1°9
In fact, very old documents mention it in realistic terms if one
compares them with the devout Hindu hymns of praise. The Tribute of
Yu, Book I of the Books of Hea (by oral tradition dated between 2204
and 1766 BC) mentions it: “Its articles of tribute were salt, fine grass
cloth, and the production of the sea, of various kinds, with silk, hemp,
lead, pinetrees, and strange stones from the valleys of the Tae.”110 The
Shen Nung Pen Txlaao Claing, a treatise of medicine first transcribed in the
second century AD but whose writings by oral tradition are supposed to
date back to the legendary Shen Nung (ca. 2800 BC), states:
Ma Fen (Herba Cannabis Sativae) is acrid and balanced. It mainly treats the seven
damages, disinhibits the five viscera, and precipitates the blood and cold qi. Taking
much of it may make one behold ghosts and frenetically run about. Protracted taking
may enable one to communicate with the spirit light and make the body light. The seed
[Semen Cannabis Sativae] is sweet and balanced. It mainly supplements the centre and
108 “One tomb, M90 contained the skeletal remains of a male of high social status of
an estimated age of 45 years, whose accoutrements included bridles, archery equipment, a
kongou harp, and other materials supporting his identity as a shaman The HPLC,
GC and MS analyses confirm the identity of the supplied plant sample as Cannabis sativa
L” (Russo, et al. “Phytochemical and genetic analyses of ancient cannabis from Central
Asia,” Journal ofExperi/nental B0ifltt)I, Vol. 59, no. 15, pp. 4171-4182, 2008, doi:10.1093/
jxb / ern260).
111° Needham, J. Science and Civilization in China. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 2000 (GB), p. 23.
110 Legge,James. The Chinese Classics, Volume Three, Part 1. The Books of Hea. Hong
Kong: At the Author's, 1865 (GB), p. 102.
140
PROFANE EBRIETY
boosts the qi. Protracted taking may make one fat, strong and never senile. [Herba
Cannabis Sativae] is also called Ma Bo [Hemp Erection]. It grows in rivers and valleys.111
Notice the difference observed between “the protracted taking” of the

flower versus the seed in China and also that recipes from the Rasmussen,
Ebers and Hearst papyrii do not distinguish the two.
3. Opium. Though today often associated with the Chinese

because of the Ch’ing dynasty prohibition and two Opium Wars in the
nineteenth century, the poppy appears to have been a relative latecomer to
China. Some references suggest it was being used by the first or second
century AD when the caravans of silk and spices began to arrive in the
Mediterranean, since several of the routes passed through zones where the
intensive cultivation of the poppy had begun thousands of years before
Christ. Buddhist priests from Tibet around the first century AD and the
Chinese surgeon Hua To (c. 220-264 AD) are both said to have used
preparations made from the poppy.”2 The Chinese called the plant ying
suhm However, Chang and Chung say that the plant was also “calledying
su (the jar with millet), rni-nang (rice bag) or transliterated as po-pi (poppy,
in English) and a-fujung (from the Semitic ajj/un, using - lotus, in
Chinese - as a suffix).’”14
111 Evans-Schultes and Hofmann, 1982, p. 95; Shou-zhong, Yang, translator. The Divine
Farmer’s Materia Medica: A Translation of the Shen Nong Ben Cao Ping. Boulder, CO:
Blue Poppy Press, 1998 (GB), p. 148.
112 Booth, p. 104.
113 Shuck,J. L. Portfolio Chinensis. Macao, China: Shuck, 1840, p. ix (GB).
114 Chang, p. 16; Chung, p. 147. The reported etymological connection between poppy
(a-fujung) and lotus (fu or is curious. Lotus has both modern and ancient
references as a mild sedative, especially the white lotus (l\7]rnphaea arnpla) or pink lotus
(Nelurnho nuafera): “The dried flowers of certain species of N)/rnphaea and Nelunrho are
141
THE PAGAN ERA
By the eighth or ninth centuries, a number of travel accounts from

that period bear witness to fields of the poppy plant (yiugtu), while the
poppy was mentioned in an official pharmacopeia (laeutao) in 968.115 A
recipe survives from the Song dynasty (960-1279): “The (poppy) capsule
was cleaned, its outer skin removed, then dried in the shade, sliced and
soaked in rice vinegar or honey.”“" Poppy soup made from the capsules
(yiugsuke) was used by travelers against diarrhoea in Sichuan around the
same time.“7 The poppy is mentioned in the Pen-tt’a0 t/22'/9-2'
(Supplementary herbalist), written in the first half of the eighth century by
Ch’en Ts’ang-ch’i. The Tang poet T’ao Yung of Szechwan province
wrote the verse Ma-t/a’z'eu £/J ’u-t/aieu /uzluaug-/aua (In front of the horse I saw
the poppy fiower for the first time) in the closing years of the dynasty.
Another reference to the plant appeared at about the same time in K ’az'-pao
pen-tt’a0 (The herbalist of the K’ai-pao period), compiled in 973 by Liu
Han.‘”’ Chang also says that the “Sung poet Su Tung-p’o (1036-1101
AD) penned the following line in a poem: ‘The boy may prepare for you
the broth of the poppy.’ His brother Su Ch’e also wrote a poem on the
cultivation of poppies for medicinal purposes.’”‘9 Dikotter, Laaman and
sometimes smoked, made into a tea, or macerated in alcohol for a mild sedative effect”
(www.erowid.org/plants/lotus/lotus.shtml, for example). Besides Egyptian frescoes
depicting the lotus and the references in Homer, the flowers appear on the pedestals of
the Buddha and bodhisattvas in India, China, Tibet and Korea (www.dangjingo.kr,
www.travelguide.com, www.buddhanet.net).
115 Dikotter, Frank, et. al. Narcotic Culture: A Histoijy of Drugs in China. Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press, 2004, p. 76.
116 Dikotter, et al., p. 76.
117 Dikétter, et al., p. 76, quoting from Fang Shao, Bo;/aai luau (Collected work from years
of wandering), orig. c. 1125, Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1983, p. 47.
118 Chang, p. 16.
119 Chang, p. 16; Chung gives the dates, p. 147.
142
PROFANE EBRIETY
Xun write that a formula known as “combat powder” (dou/nen san)

contained “poppy capsules, Chinese angelica and root of sanguisorba.” It
was promoted by the “Yuan (1279-1368) physician Wang Gui to treat
infections, abdominal pains and diarrhoea.”12°
References to opium, not simply the poppy and medicines made
from it, also arrive relatively late in the history of China. Some authors
have it being introduced by seagoing Arab traders. By this chronology,
the etymology of opium is said to come through the Arab a ion or ujj/oon 121
about the 7th or 8th century.122 Booth writes that opium is named in the
herbarium K ’ai pao pen tsao of 973 AD as a cure for dysentery and by Su
Tung-Pa’ as a cure for diarrhea in 987 AD.123 Medicinal works of “the
12th century alluded to a fish-shaped pill made of opium powder which
was extremely effective in stopping dysentery, but would cause death if an
over-dose was taken.”124 Editions of official books of herbal remedies
published in “the Chin, Yuan, and Ming dynasties did not fail to include
opium and describe its medicinal uses.”125 During the Ming dynasty
(1368-1644), “the Yu)/ao J/uanfang (Collection of prescriptions from the
Imperial Medicine Bureau) cited opium in nine different formulas.”126 In
the 16th century Li Ting gives an account of how a-fu-yong should be
”1Z7
prepared in his “Introduction to Medicine. Portuguese merchants
presented a Ming emperor “with two hundred catties of opium and his
12° Dikotter, et al., p. 76.

121 Chang, p. 16; Chung, p. 147; www.clearchinese.com.
122 DEA 20026, p. 2, for example.
125 Booth, pp. 21, 23, 104; Latimer and Goldberg, pp. 44, 47-48.
124 Chung, p. 147.
125 Chang, p. 16.
127 Booth, pp. 21, 23, 104; Latimer and Goldberg, pp. 44, 47-48.
143
THE PAGAN ERA
empress with a hundred catties.”128 Particular popular were “preparations

such as the “golden elixir pills” recommended in Li Shizhen’s (1518-1593)
Materia /nedica.”m Opium as a medicine “in premodern China was always
swallowed raw ”1‘10 No matter which chronology or etymology is
accepted, what is certain is that the Chinese were well acquainted with
opium and the poppy for at least a thousand years before these became
the subject of major conflicts with the West.
4. Other Drugs. The same ancient herbal of Shen Nung also

mentions Ma Huang (Ephedra vulgaris), especially for treating “wind stroke
cold damage, headache and warm malaria.” It is the “first choice in
treating cold damage and resolving the muscles. Ephedra never fails to
open and free the interstices to drive out the evil through sweating.”131
Ephedrine, the active ingredient in ephedra against asthma, was isolated
for the first time in 1885 from Ma Huang by the Japanese chemist
Nagayoshi Nagai (1844-1929), who synthesized methamphetamine eight
years later.132
The origins of tea (Ca/nellia sinensis) are lost in legend, specifically
Shen Nung himself who discovered the detoxifying power of tea by
accident when falling tea leaves drifted into a pot of boiling water, though
this may be an invention of the Classic of Tea (Claa by Lu Yu (733
128 Chang, p. 17.

138 Chang, p. 16.
131Iliid., p. 51.
132 “Legendary Japanese Pharmaceutical Scholars,” The Pharmaceutical Society of Japan,
www.pharm.or.jp/eng/legend.htrnl; Nagai N. (1893). "Kanya/éu inaau seibun kenk)/uu reire/éi
({oku)". Yakugaku Zashi 13: 901.
144
PROFANE EBRIETY
803 AD).133 The first definitive reference appears to date only from the
publication of An Indentured Servant’s Contract (Tong Yue) by Wang Bao
in 59 BC.134 Tea leaves supposedly contain more caffeine than coffee
beans though the variety and brewing significantly alter this percentage so
that tea has somewhat less stimulating power than coffee, cup for cup.135
One of the principal medicines (indeed listed as a “Superior
Medicine”) in the Shen Nung Pen Tshao Ching is ginseng, used with many
other herbs for millennia as something closer to a panacea than a drug:
Ren Shen (Radix Panacis Ginseng) is sweet and a little cold. It mainly supplements the
five viscera. It quiets the essence spirit, settles the ethereal and corporeal souls, checks
fright palpitations, eliminates evil qi, brightens the eyes, opens the heart, and sharpens
the wit. Protracted taking may make the body light and prolong life. Its other name is
Ren Xian (Human Incarnation). Yet another name is Gui Gai (Ghost Shield). It grows in
mountains and valleys.136
Li Dong-yuan (1180-1251) recommended it as a febrifuge in combination

with liquorice and Astragalus. Jiang Ju-zhi, in the Ben Cao Zhai Yao Gang
Mu (Outlined Extractions from the Materia Medica) written during the
Qing dynasty (1644 to 1911 AD), enumerated more than a dozen different
symptomatic conditions in which it was either demanded or prohibited.137
133 Sen, Soshitusu. The Japanese Way of Tea (V. Dixon Morris, translator). Honolulu,
HI: University of Hawaii Press, 1998 (GB), p. 3.
134 “It is the earliest record of the practice of drinking tea in China: that is to say, the
Chinese practice of drinking tea orginated in Chengdu” (Quian, Jack. Chengdu.
Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2006 (GB), p. 71).
135 Tea contains not only caffeine but theophylline and theobromine.
136 Huard and Wong, 1972, vol. 1, p. 179; Shou-zhong, Yang, translator. The Divine
Blue Poppy Press, 1998 (GB), pp. 24-25.
137 Shou-zhong, Yang (1998), p. 24.
145
THE PAGAN ERA
Figure 27. The legendary Shen Nung.
There appears to be no known lethal

dose for a human being.""
The herbal of Shen Nung is
composed very early, at least a good
half millennia before the earliest
European, and contains descriptions
of hundreds of different plants and
useful medicines. Any attempt to
single out this or that remedy,
regardless of its psychoactivity, would
demand that the others be included as
well.
138 “Data have indicated that the LD50 of ginseng root extract in mice was 5g/ kg after
oral administration. No significant adverse effects have been reported in ginseng
clinical trials” (Xie, J.-T., et al. “Is ginseng free from adverse effects?” in Textbook of
Complementary and Alternative Medicine, edited by Chun-Su Yuan and Eric Beiber.
NY: Parthenon Publishing, 2003 (GB), pp. 219-220); “There are no confirmed reports
of adverse reactions in humans due to ginseng alone” (Carabin, I. G., et al. “Safety
Assessment of Panax Ginseng,” Internationaljournal ofToxicology, Volume 19, No. 4, 1 July
2000, pp. 293-301, www.ingentaconnect.com).
146
Figure 28. Shiva, god of the creative and destructive aspects of the universe, associated
with both daturas and cannabis in the form of flowers braided in his waving hair.
Figure 29. Vishnu reclining upon the serpent of eternity. The ecstatic cults of Vishnu
and Shiva were later absorbed into the ritualized, anti-ecstatic religion of Brahmanic
Hinduism.
4
Sacred Ebriety
O Sornaflowing on thy way,

win thou and conquer high renown,‘
And niake us better than we are.
Win thou the light, win heavenly
light, and, Sonia, all]'elicitier,'
And niake us better than we are.
-- Hymn IV, Book IX, I/eda1
The cultures previously examined treated substances capable of altering

the spirit within essentially a secular framework. In these we now
encounter, exactly the opposite occurs. The power of shamanic traditions
and generally the predominance of sacrifices of model B over those of
model A will be two important motifs within this sociological complex
known as the sacred. Naturally, we will be dealing with large geographical
areas with a wealth of diversity and any attempt to reduce it will face
immediate and important dissent.
A. India
1. Cannabis and Other Drugs. From at least the XVth

century BC, all of the many different preparations of cannabis are well
1 Griffith, Ralph T. H. The Hymns of the Rigyeda, vol. 3. Benares: C. Lazurus and
Co., 1891 (GB), p. 365. Griffith adds a footnote: “Better than we are: or, happier than
we are (n. 1, p. 365).”
THE PAGAN ERA
known and even celebrated in these territories. The plant – which is also
called vijohia (fount of happiness, victory) – shows up in some of our
earliest religious literature, the Vedas, specifically in the fourth or At/Jan/a
Veda.2 Liquid preparations of cannabis are the favorite drink of Indra, the
warrior god, personalized image of the /lg/an invaders. According to
Vedic traditions, cannabis sprouted where drops of ambrosia (a/urita) fell
from heaven. In orthodox Brahman traditions, cannabis makes the mind
agile, brings health and long life, offers joy and bravery and potentiates
sexual desire.
Besides its religious and recreational use, manifest in innumerable
forms of oral, subcutaneous and pulmonary administration, cannabis was
used then and is still used today in rural areas as an almost absurdly
versatile panacea, capable of alleviating fever, insomnia, dysentery,
leprosy, dandruff, headaches, whooping cough, ophthalmic and other
affiictions of the eye, venereal diseases and even tuberculosis. In Sanskrit
it is denominated sana (in Greek, kana) as well as bhaaug, a term twinned
with b/Jaw’ (disrupting the sensorial routine).
Its widespread popularity did not suffer with the subsequent
spread of Buddhism, because the Mahayana (especially the Tantric sect) as
well as the Hinayana saw the substance as an aid to meditation. Within
these complicated techniques can be found some based upon fixing the
attention upon images that persist on the retina after closing ones eyes,
for example, and those who have used good ganja (marijuana) or good
hashish will understand that this drug can be of great help for all kinds of
analogous ends.
2 “The five kingdoms of plants, having Soma as their chief (crest/ya), we address; the dark/ea,
hemp, barley, saha – let them free us from distress” (11.6.15, The Atharva-Veda Samhita,
second half, Books VIII to XIX, ed Charles Rockwell Lanman, tr. William Dwight
Whitney. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1905 (GB), p. 642).
150
SACRED EBRIETY
Opium is at least as ancient, known from the second millennium

BC. From the reign of Sargon of Acadia (2334 – 2279 BC), there is
evidence of an intense commerce between the Mesopotamian and Indian
civilizations, evidenced today in abundant seals and decorative objects
from Harrapa and Mojenjo-Daro found in Uruk and Nineveh. Yet opium
Islam. The daturas, which also are

said to arise from the afore
mentioned drops of arnrita, are
prescribed in many different medical
treatments in spite of their high
toxicity} India is also a pioneer in
very powerful tranquilizers, for
example Rauwohia ser]Jentina4 which
appears to have been used from
time immemorial.
More interesting and
mysterious than all these drugs – in
the framework of ancient India – is
one in particular, so/na, that appears
in the first Sanskrit texts and, with a
minimum of phonetic alteration, as
hao/na in the Iranian religion prior to
Zoroastrianism.
Figure 30. Indra, the Vedic divinity
related with Mlttfl and cannabis.
5 Vinkenoog and Andrews (1977) as well as Solomon (1968).

4 With an alkaloid, reserpine, the first neuroleptic or “major” tranquilizer commercialized
in the twentieth century.
151
THE PAGAN ERA
2. The Question of Soma. Varuna, the god of the underworld,

put “Sonia in the mountains,”5 so that with its strength Indra could
victoriously overcome the dragon of chaos. Some but not all historians of
religion interpret this struggle as a mythic representation of the battles
between the Vedic Aryans and autochthonous population, when the
former began their conquest of India from the territory of the Sindh, in
the Punjab.6 Another tradition from the Vedanta relates that it was an
eagle (falcon or hawk) – the king of shamanic animals – which brought
so/na from the heavens so that it could grow in the mountains.
But what exactly does this word so/na mean? The first answer is
that So/na is the third god in the Vedic pantheon, to whom is dedicated
the 114 hymns of Book IX of the Veda. Yet nothing distinguishes the
deity from the beverage made from the plant. Whether or not the
mountains unite the celestial regions with the subterranean, what is certain
is that so/na is vegetal in nature and that its preparation as a beverage
supposes a mill, a filtration through wool and the obtaining of a juice.
The hymns also prescribe ceremonies for buying the plant and preparing
the beverage, yet all without specifying which plant exactly they are
dealing with. From that day to this, Hindus continue to observe the ritual
though the original botanic vehicle is now missing.
5 “He [Varuna] has extended the firmament over the tops of the trees, has given strength
to horses, milk to cows, determination to the heart; he has placed fire in the waters, the
sun in heaven, the $0/na in the mountains” (Ri-Veda Sanhita, Third and Fourth Ashtakas,
tr. H. H. Wilson. London: Wm. H. Allen and Co., 1857 (GB), p. 375, 4th Ashtaka, 4th
Adhyaya, Sukta XIII, or Mandala V, Hymn 85, Verse 2).
6 Eliade, 1980, vol. 1, p. 218. The mountain, according to Eliade, is the point of contact
between the powerful feminine telluric principle of the autochthones and the uranic
masculine principle that the invaders brought with them.
152
SACRED EBRIETY
But the Vedic hymns – written down over three thousand years
ago – do specify a particular preparation from a very special plant:
We have drunk the Sonia; we have become immortal; we have gone to the light; we have
found the gods. What can the hatred and the malice of a mortal do to us now, O
immortal one?7
We havefound the gods is a strong expression, repeated in other hymns. Are

we to understand it as a metaphor, based upon a ritualistic symbolism
highlighting the powers of a particular faith? The description recalls the
psychic excursion or ecstatic voyage of the shaman, its nucleus (after the
initial episode of magical flight) being the experience of death and
resurrection. But the soina ritual not only constitutes the most important
act in the life of a devotee, but also a birth: “Verily, unborn is man in so
far as he does not sacrifice. It is through the sacrifice of sorna that he is
born.”8 Before the celebration he had been only a sleepwalker dominated
by meanness; he must now periodically renew the ceremony because
contact with the daily routine and its trickery (rnaya) will bewilder his
7 O’Flaherty, Wendy Doniger. The Rig Veda: an anthology with 108 selected hymns.
London: Penguin Books Ltd., 1981 (GB). Compare Griffith, “We have drunk Sonia and
become immortal; we have attained the light, the Gods discovered. Now what may
foeman’s malice do to harm us? What, O Immortal, mortal man’s deception?” (Rig Veda,
VIII, 48, 3 from www.sacred-texts.com) or H. H. Wilson, “We drink the Soma, may we
become immortal; we have attained the light (of heaven), we have known the gods; what
now should the enemy do to us, or what, O immortal, should the aggriever do to the
mortal?” (Rig-Veda Sanhita, 6th and part of the 7th Ashtaka, ed. E. B. Cowell and W. F.
Webster. London: Trübner and Co., 1888, p. 93 (GB), 6th Ashtaka, 4th Adhyaya, Sukta
VI).
8 Jainiiniya-Upanishad Brahniana (3, 14, 8), found in W. O. Kaelber’s Tapta Marga:
Asceticism and Initiation in Vedic India. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1989 (GB), p. 41.
153
THE PAGAN ERA
sensibility or awareness. But this birth also contains the experience of a

death foreseen; in other words, the devotee is able to see himself die and
become as one already dead. Within this context, when one dies, one dies
for a second time:
Verily, man is born thrice, namely in this way: first he is born from his mother and
father, and when he to whom the sacrifice inclines performs offering he is born a second
time; and when he dies and they place him on the fire, and when he thereupon comes
into existence again, he is born a third time – wherefore they say, “Man is born thrice.”9
Through the sacrifice of so/ua the devotee encounters the gods and
becomes converted into one of them: “and this sacrificer, being indeed
born in this world, is really intended to be born in the heavenly world.”10
Once dead within the daily routine, now reborn spiritually, a devotee’s
sensibility is awakened and manifests the divine principle in the
innumerable singularity of existence. Just as this illumination makes man
attentive, say the hymns, in the same way “so/ua confers immortality upon
9911
the gods.
9 Eggeling, Julius, translator. The Satapatha-Brahmana, according to the text of the

Madhyandina School, Part V. Oxford: at the Clarendon Press, 1900 (GB), pp. 23-24,
Book IX, Second Adlgyay/a, First Brahmana.
10 Eggeling (1894), Part 3, .S'atai_>atl2a Bra/J/uana, VII, 3, I, 12, www.sacred-texts.com. This
suggests, of course, a connection with the luck of Adam and Eve, who by eating the
forbidden fruit did not (according to Genesis) make themselves “as the gods
themselves,” but were expelled from the Garden of Eden because they might have done
so.
11 “Thy drops that swim in water have exalted Indra to delight: the Gods have drunk
thee up for immortality” (Griffith, Ralph T. H. Rt Veda, IX, 106, 8, www.sacred
texts.com); “Your drops, going to the water, have exalted Indra to exhilaration; the gods
have quaffed you, the delighter, for immortality” (Wilson, H. H. Rig-Veda San/vita.
London: Wm. H. Allen and Co., 1857 (GB) and www.srivaishnava.org).
154
SACRED EBRIETY
The interpretation of these and various other passages had moved

some specialists, already at the end of the 1951‘ century, to suggest that the
vehicles employed for the so/na sacrifice long after the decay of the Vedic
spirit should not be considered as being the original because the ceremony
only makes sense with substances capable of directly altering the soul.
a. The identification ofthe plant. A German scholar12 opened

this line of inquiry, followed by others in India and the West. The first
concrete suggestion came from a Brahman, who identified the ancient
sorna as cannabis in virtue of various common motifs.” A little later G.
Dumézil in his doctoral thesis, without risking the identification of the
ecstatic medium, suggested that so/na might be an “archaic barley beer”
drunk by the proto-Aryans.14 In the 1930s another European philologist
proposed that so/na must have been an hallucinogenic vine the Aryans
brought with them from Central Asia,15 within a much wider
interpretation attempting to explain the surge of Hindu asceticism as a
consequence of the difficulties caused by an undersupply of the plant.
Altering its pharmacological nature, one Indian scholar suggested that
12 Hillebrandt, 1891, vol. 1, pp. 1-18.

13 Cf B. L. Mukherjee, 1921, pp. 241 ff in Wasson, 1964. The hypothesis may be
supported by various texts of the Satapatha Brahrnana and circumstances like the love of
Shiva for bhang, or the fact that the Tibetans call cannabis soniarasta. He was able to
personally verify that some very illustrious Brahmans continue to think so today. It is
also possible that bhanj (upsetting the sensory routine) could have been a term applied to
the original sonia, and that only later was it employed to designate cannabis.
14 Dumézil, 1924, p. 279.
15 De Felice, 1936, pp. 363 The present botanical data indicates there are a multitude
of vines with powerful visionary effects (;/age’, iboga, etc), though not precisely on the
route followed by the primitive Aryans.
155
THE PAGAN ERA
sonea must be a vigorous stimulant.“ Other Indian and European

specialists were continuing to advance adventurous explanations when the
voluminous study of Wasson was published,” overturning all of these
with the thesis that sonea was without any doubt whatsoever the A/nanita
/nutearia.”
Upon reviewing this hypothesis, the impression one receives is
twofold. On the one hand, it seems sensible to relinquish a definitive
identification for the substance that might have been the original so/na, at
least while no new (and improbable) findings have been discovered such
as ancient Vedic texts or something similar. On the other hand, this does
not imply renouncing the idea that the ancient sacrifice had some kind of
drug as catalyst, more probably visionary than of any other nature,
because the description of the ritual in the Vedanta most closely parallels
that of the ecstatic trance than the trance of possession, in agreement with
the terminology proposed in chapters one and two.
16 N. A. Qazilbash, 1960, p. 497 and following. His suggestion is based on some

passages in the Veda and data about the existence in Khyber and Afghanistan of
Ephedra paeloyclada (a plant very rich in alkaloids), whose effects are comparable to
caffeine, cocaine and amphetamine.
17 Wasson, 1968.
18 It is impossible to review here the many clues and suppositions which support \Wasson
and his collaborator W. D. O’ Flaherty. Nor is it any less decisive for their arguments a
personal familiarity with this type of amanita. As Wasson said later: “it seems that two
groups have formed; those who have ingested the mushrooms and lived through the
experience, and those who speak on the subject with total ignorance (Wasson, 1985, p.
75).” F. B. Kuiper (1970, pp. 279-285) and Brough (1971, pp. 331-362) have made
both large and small reservations in their commentaries on his book. The general tone
of the criticism received by Wasson among the professionals on the subject has been to
“put him in his place, as if it didn’t matter.”
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As a consequence, the true questions become: first, if in fact the

original substance was lost, how was this possible? More importantly, in
the second place, why?
According to De Felice, the plant grew in the territories occupied
by the Aryans prior to their penetration of the Punjab on the route toward
the Hindustan peninsula. Its availability could have become more
problematic as they migrated farther away from its place of origin, because
the plant “in the same way as with a good wine,” might not acclimatize
well to new soils.” Taking it one step further, De Felice suggested that
these difficulties in provisioning were the initial impulse for the
development of the techniques of yoga, an attempt to fill the void with a
system that would allow one to achieve abnormal states of consciousness
without the necessity of recurring to the plant itself. In the background of
Wasson’s thesis, which Eliade would consider prototypical of the
aberrant, is the affrmation that the mysticism provoked by vegetal agents
preceded the mysticism provoked by ascetic practices.
What remains to be explained is how so widespread an
entheogenic vehicle could disappear without leaving any clues. However,
this is not difficult. All over Central America, the cults linked to
teonana'catl retreated from public view to the point where illustrious
Western botanists declared such mushrooms nonexistent. Moreover,
19 From this perspective it seems more probable that son/a ought to have been the
Anianita rnurcaria than a climbing vine. The Anianita niuriaria grows profusely (and is
considered entheogenic) in the northern territories from whence the Aryans arrived, and
continues to grow in the high valleys of the Ganges (Schultes and Hofmann, 1982, p.
127), but it ceases to exist when the great coniferous forests cease and the vegetation of
hotter climates begins because it lives in symbiosis with its host trees. Add to this, many
species of mushrooms (and the Anianita niurcaria in particular) are notoriously difficult to
cultivate.
157
THE PAGAN ERA
those in the West have available a phenomenon even closer at hand,

which is the ceremony of the Christian Eucharist. In the Coptic rite, one
of the most ancient (later condemned as heretical), the communion
(which today demands only nine hours of fasting) previously required four
days of near total fasting, three more only on water, and on the eighth day
the drinking of a glass of wine with a morsel of bread. Those who have
seriously fasted know to what extent a glass of wine and a bit of bread can
be psychoactive after eight days of a progressively severe diet. Later, the
ritualization of this act led to reserving the wine for the priest while giving
the faithful a thin wafer of bread before breakfast whatever may have
been the previous night’s dinner, a ceremony where the least effect is to
induce an anomalous state of mind, symbolic of a certain creed
periodically renewed, closer to rituals like swearing an oath before a fiag
than participation in a mystical banquet. This is not to say that in the
origins of the Christian Eucharist there were not similar characteristics in
the beginning.
Elaborating upon the intuitions expressed by De Felice, R. G.
Wasson suggested that the lack of specific references to the plant could be
attributed to a sociopolitical transformation. When a more or less
integrated group of shamans is converted into a priest caste, mystery
comes to be reserved for a select few, analogous to that at Eleusis and
other secret cults in the Mediterranean region. First, the lack of supply
causes the use of the entheogen to be restricted to religious ceremonies,
avoiding its conversion into a simple recreative or therapeutic substance
for the people (as cannabis, the poppy, the solanaceas, and the alcoholic
beverages), and then it becomes the object of rigorous ritualization as
referenced earlier, noting the difference between the Coptic rite and
posterior Christian orthodoxy. Though Wasson does not expound upon
these steps with complete clarity, and passes lightly over some historical
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aspects of the greatest transcendence, his suggestion remains within the

bounds of the credible.
As the essence of the sacrifice was diluted until it ended by disappearing, and the
intoxicating vehicle was reduced to a priestly memory, more and more the hierophants
emphasized the efficacy of pure liturgy The contemplative adventure, the mystical
experience that the priestly caste (and perhaps others) of the Indo-Aryans had known
through the A/nanita rnuscaria could only later be achieved through mortification of the
flesh, and the Hindus, who had fully known the rapture that went hand in hand with the
contemplation, were converted into masters of these techniques.20
Having sketched out how the ancient so/na sacrifice could have
disappeared through repression, undersupply or ritualization inevitably
requires us to ask why. This demands that we leave to one side for the
moment the line of inquiry promoted by De Felice and Wasson in order
to speak in terms that are better adapted to resolving the dilemmas in
which the Brahman religion was then immersed.
b. Castes and ebriety. The evolution previously outlined appears

to have been enormously complex. Behind the decadency of the Vedic
spirit, and even before, was a millennial struggle between Brahmanism and
a non-Brahman religion of an ecstatic type but corresponding to those
previously defined as a sorcery of possession, characterized by orgiastic
rites, with the consumption of raw animals and an extravagance of
alcoholic beverages.21 These drunken “orgies of flesh and sura” flowed
into unrestrained sexuality and may have been the origins of the
2° Wasson, 1968, pp. 69-70.

21 Weber, 1987, II, 2.
159
THE PAGAN ERA
Mediterranean Bacchus cults,“ in which raw animals were also devoured

and the celebrants drank copiously.
Whether or not the first Vedic priests evolved from shamans
linked to a sorcery of visionary ecstasy analogous to others in Central
Asia, the opposition of Brahmanism to this orgiastic religion cannot be
explained only because it would constitute a deviation with respect to
Vedic guidelines but because it also negated the very essence of Brahman
society. The Brahmans tried to install a system of perfectly closed castes,
where the position of the priest would not be so much the most
economically elevated as the nucleus of order itself, charged with defining
the ritual comportment of each of the other castes, including the routine
ceremonies (water baptism, sacrifices, gifts). It’s clear that these orgies
violated the most basic order of Brahmanism, implying the union
however briefly of roof, table and bed, and worse, the communication
between castes. This is enough to explain their unconditional rejection of
the alcoholic beverages. On the other hand, the system of castes carried
with it an intrinsic tendency toward ritualization and was behind its
conversion into an official religion with monotheistic pretensions. This
tendency was reinforced with the difficulties that the Brahmin
encountered later, with the coming of the anti- and extra-Brahman sects
(principally Jainism and Mahayana Buddhism). In order to annihilate an
orgiastic autochthonous competitor, that not only threatened dogma but a
rigid compartmentalization as well, the priests (voluntarily or as a form of
resignation) would have already thought of reducing the to/na sacrifice to
22 In one version of the Greek myth, Dionysus arrives at Thebes from the East, after
leaving “the gold-abounding Lydian meads/ And Phyrgian, o’er the Persian’s sun-smit
tracts,/By Bactrian strongholds, Media’s storm-swept land/ Still pressing on, by Araby
the Blest,/ And through all Asia, by the briny sea ...” (Way, Arthur S., transl. Euripides,
vol. III. London: William Heinemann, 1925, verses 13-17 of “The Bacchanals,” p. 7).
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Figure 31. Hindu Ascetic.
liturgy because one way to

resolve the conflict between
visionary ebriety and the ebriety
of possession would be to make
difficult (arcetica) the modifi
cation of consciousness, recog
nized in the practice for example
of yoga.
Ironically, this tendency
acquired an urgency with the
proliferation of Buddhist and
Jam holy men who were using
entheogenically certain drugs
(chiefly cannabis) and whose
sects were centered about the
character of the hermit with
magical powers over the spirits,
though they were not drinkers
of sorna. As a consequence,
those who had once been the
traditional drinkers of soina (the Brahmin) were confronted not only with
an anti-caste rebellion but a phenomenon closely akin to that of their own
ancestors in the Idttidfld Buddhists, who had moreover the support of the
small ksatriya princes and the large patrimonial estates.
It’s curious that quite a bit later Brahmanism will manage to insert
into itself both Jain and Buddhist heterodoxies, just as it had Hinduism,
legitimizing these primitive orgiastic ceremonies in the cults of Shiva and
161
THE PAGAN ERA
Vishnu. But within this absorption it managed also to save the

fundamental principle of the closure of the castes, while excluding along
with alcohol and meat the feared connubiu/u.
Nor will it be the last time that we witness a state priesthood deny
its roots so as not to renounce its power. The final victory occurs
through a sublimation, which ritualizes the ecstatic communion of so/ua as
well as the orgiastic communion of sura, resulting in a cult of redemption
and piety with neither teeth nor danger of social change. In sum, this
revolution closely parallels the victory of Christianity, in which a promise
of redemption and charity sublimate not only the unbridled orgies of early
mystery religions but also the hopes for equality between men.
c. Disembodiment and or1'g1'na1pur1'tan1'sm. The contrast

between the primitive Vedic religion and subsequent Brahmanism is not
without its corresponding sociopolitical aspect.
The principal disparity observed between the old hymns and the
new spiritual compass represented by the Upanit/aads concerns the value of
the body. This distinction is not completely independent of the material
employed in the sacrifice of so/ua. If the substance is some kind of plant,
inert in itself, that which the celebrant does by ingesting it and then
offering it in sacrifice to the gods is to reiterate a longing for
disembodiment and transcendence. If the substance is something active
in itself, spirit and matter inseparably fused, that which the celebrant does
is to reconcile himself with the physical world, solemnly celebrating his
own body, as the entheogen has returned him to a state of awareness.”
23 Soma is a both material substance and a divine entity. That it should be both things
indisassociably is precisely the heart of the concept. It appears to be pure chance that in
Greek the same word means “body.”
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But this fundamental distinction shows up in many other areas as

well. It is generally accepted that the Aryans were vital men, possessed by
the pleasure of existence.” The hymns speak of men who wanted to
achieve a century, who enjoyed carnal love, who fused themselves with
the beauty of the universe, launching themselves upon adventures and
voyages while praising the very real existence lucky enough to have
befallen them.
The post-Vedic priest wanted nothing of the sort. He believed in
the vicious cycle of a soul whose residence is ignorance (avicfi/a) that sets in
motion a train of consequences (kar/na) and which, upon their
completion, falls into a river of reincarnation (sa/nrara). He proposed
knowledge (vicfi/ia) that freed one from the will to live. Instead of dying
and being reborn, as in the ancient sacrifice of so/na, he hoped to die once
and for all, closing the cycle of reincarnation.
Could these two be connected, directly or indirectly, with the
change from a substantial to a formal so/na? It is completely evident that
the Vedanta is utterly foreign to the quintessence of the pessimistic
philosophy expressed by a posterior Brahmanism. A soul that weighs on
its body never appears in its hymns and the negation of the will to live as a
goal is contrary to the ecstatic acceptance found in the Vedas:
O Pavarnana, place me in that deathless, undecaying world

Wherein the light of heaven is set, and everlasting lustre shines.
Make me immortal in that realm where dwells the King, Vivasvan’s son,
Where
Make me
is the
immortal
secret in
shrine
that of
realm
heaven,
wherewhere
they are
movethose
even
waters
as they
young
list, and fresh.
Make
In the me
third
immortal
sphere of
in that
inmost
realm
heaven
of eager
where
wish
lucid
andworlds
strongare
desire,
full of light.
The region of the radiant Moon, where food and full delight are found.
24 Eliade, 1980, vol. 1.
163
THE PAGAN ERA
Make me immortal in that realm where happiness and transports, where

Joys and felicities combine and longing wishes are fulfilled. Flow, Indu, flow for Indra’s
sake.25
The post-Vedic priest, without recourse to this transcendent joy, feels

trapped in a vale of tears and pretends to cure the wound of life with
depreciation of life itself.
Where it can be documented, in the Americas for example, a
religion linked to a ritual consumption of visionary substances finds
theological parallels in this same attitude of Vedic man whose gods are
natural principles hidden in the ordinary, obstinate before any kind of
faith and incodifiable in any creed. These principles do not appear as laws
of the universe but only as a profundity of the spirit and a richness of
detail on an horizon of terrible and sumptuous experiences where the
senses achieve an intensity bordering on the absolute. The divine is not
an agent that governs from afar but something essentially plural that
animates everything from within in place of creating some particular
thing. As a contemporary orientalist said (after some experiences with
psilocybin mushrooms) the Vedic divine is a spiritual materialism where
the corporeal is not something inert, ruled by the will of a personal rector,
with neither order, motive nor active intelligence of its own.“
The pagan gods and demons are immanent principles, in which
spirit and body are fused in an inseparable manner. This is implied by
phy/xis in Greek, so/na in Sanskrit, loao/na in Iranian, teonana'ratl in Nahuatl,
though only in Greece do we find the explicit unity of both that is the
25 Griffith, Ralph T. H. The Hymns of the Rig Veda, second edition, volume II.
Benares: E. Lazarus and Co., 1897 (GB), Book IX, hymn 113, verses 7-11, pp. 381
383.
26 Watts, 1962, pp. 3-9.
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religion of nature as a work of art. Yet also in Greece, more than likely
due to the influence of early Brahmanism, there is a disconnect between a
subject-soul and an object-body using Pythagorean terms sonia-senia (body
jail) that Dodds rightly calls original Puritanism. “Labors are good; but
pleasures are in every respect bad,” goes the old Pythagorean catechism.
“For as we came into the present life for the purpose of punishment, it is
necessary that we should be punished.”27
The opposition between this original puritanism and the religion
of nature as work of art in Greece can also be observed in India between
the doctrine of the I/edas and that of the Upanishads, as the sacrifice of
sonia began to enter its decadence. Whether or not there is a causal
connection between the two, what is true is that the Puritan spirit has had
a formidable influence in all of posterior culture, first as Pythagoreanism,
later as Platonism and finally as Christianity, to the point where it has
achieved a schizophrenic split between external things and internal
thought, a defining characteristic of modern Western philosophy with rare
exceptions.
27 Iamblichus’ Life of Pythagoras, tr. Thomas Taylor. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions,
1986 (GB), p. 45.
165
THE PAGAN ERA
Figure 32. Stele with nobles drinking baoma.
B. Iran
The same fundamental optimism found in the Vedas penetrates

every page of the A1/e.rta (sometimes Zend-A1/esta) one of the sacred books
of the ancient Indo-Iranian religion. It also rejects corporeal mortification
and prohibits except in exceptional circumstances both excessive fasting
and celibacy. The opposition between good and evil has no correlation
there to spirit versus matter or soul versus body because, exactly as
happens in the Vedic hymns, the corporeal is essentially spiritual.
Within the A1/esta are the hymns or gat/flas, attributed in some cases
to the mythical Zarathrusta, as well as the liturgical canon for preparing
the sacred liquor (/aao/ua) for the ceremonial sacrifice. In Iranian, sacrifice
is J/atua and Yama is the title of this central part or canon of the Avesta.
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Much of the Yasna is dedicated to an important elixir which, like the so/na,
is the juice of a macerated and filtered plant. The relative singularity of
the Indo-Iranian religion lies in the fact that the consumption of hao/na is a
union with other celebrants as well as being a communion with the deity.
In the sacrifice of sorna there is only a single devotee and one or more
ministers within a ritual that includes an initial libation to the god within
followed by a libation for those officiating. In the sacrifice of hao/na there
are also various officials but Hao/na is presented as the son of the supreme
being, /lhura-Mazda, and high priest of his own cult. The plant is his
reincarnation and whoever manages to extract the deity from the plant by
correctly obtaining the juice or divine elixir will achieve immortality. As
hao/na must be triturated and must also be dead, it is at once expiatory
victim and hierophant of the sacrament. Precisely because of this, the
ZoroastrianJ/asna presents precursory features of the Christian Eucharist.
The hypothesis that so/na and hao/na have as their fundamental
ingredient the A/nanita /nuscaria finds indirect support in the reference to
8
the urine of intoxication handled by the priests.2 As already mentioned,
28 “When, O Mazda, are the heroes ready (to be those of I on the side of ?) the
*memorizer? When did the urine of his intoxication smash (this) evilness by which
the ‘mumblers’ are causing indigestion, and (what about this) ‘guiding thought’ by which
they have had command over the lands?” (Skjaervo, Prods Oktor. “Smashing Urine: On
Yarna, 48.10” in Zoroastrian Rituals in Context, ed. Michael Stausberg. Leiden, the
Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill, 2004 (GB), p. 272). The verse is the subject of much
interpretation. Compare: “Yes, when shall come the men / best skilled for action?
When drive they hence this soil / of frenzied seer? With whose foul rites the Karp /
murd’rous would rob us, and by whose oracle tyrants are here?” (Mills, Lawrence H.,
translator. The Gathas of Zarathushtra (Zoroaster), second edition. Leipzig: F. A.
Brockhaus, 1900 (GB), p. 97) and “When will (someone) kick over the (vessel of) urine
of that (demon of) intoxication?” (Humbach, Helmut. The Gathas of Zarathustra, two
volumes. Heidelberg, 1991, found in Skjaervo). Some consider that the passage “has
167
THE PAGAN ERA
the Finno-Ugrics, the Balts and many Siberian tribes who ritually use the
amanita, and whose mythologies and languages exhibit many points of
contact with the Indo-Iranian, drink the urine of the shaman and that of
he who has drunk it in turn from the drinker even down through three or
four drinkers to the point where there is a specific name for each specific
recipient in such a ritual. The reasons behind this (for Westerners a
completely nauseating) custom are evidently that the active principles do
not simply arrive intact but are in fact purified in the urine and that the
amanitas are not plentiful (or at least not as plentiful as these groups
would like), possession being a sign of wealth according to the testimony
of travelers and explorers equivalent to the value of an elk or several dogs.
Given such circumstances, those who had privilege of receiving the
entheogen either directly or indirectly would have to drink great quantities
of water so that others might obtain a communion. There is, of course,
certainly no shortage of other candidates for loao/na including the sacred
lotus (Nelu/noo nucifera), cannabis, Psilocybe culoensis (T. McKenna, Food of
the Gods), Ephedra distarlo)/a, and Syrian rue (Peganu/n loarvnala).
The reference in the Yasna also has echoes in the one of the gatloas
attributed to Zarathustra which deplores the ecstatic excesses provoked
by the drink. What is being rejected however appears to be a lack of
moderation, more specifically its profane and uncontrolled use, not the
substance itself which the Zend-Avesta celebrates as a vehicle for the re
creation of the world and a rebirth for those who correctly offer the
libation in sacrifice. Moreover, these negative references may be
describing precisely that moment when the entheogen began to become
more and more ritualized following a process analogous to that already
described for India, though very different in the details. It must not be
nothing remotely to do with” loaonia (Flattery and Schwartz, Haoma and Harmaline,
1989), in a note added by Joseph H. Peterson at www.avesta.org).
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forgotten that this sacrificial technique was in the hands of a religious

elite, the so-called inaga or inagos, who conserved it as an esoteric tradition.
This may have facilitated even more its transformation into a formal and
non-substantial ritual.
Just as in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece and India during the
archaic epoch, the exercise of medicine in Iran comprehended a diversity
of practitioners, from the military surgeon-barber to the herbalist and
rural shamans, together with a swarm of astrologists, music therapists,
quacks and so forth. Within this context, the sacrifice of haoina was
reserved for the guild of priest-physicians, the only ones competent to
administer what the Avesta calls “the remedy that cures and returns one to
health,”29 especially effective for rheumas, hemorrhages and diseases of
the bladder. Neither the stone nor the metallic press required for its
preparation could be found in any household, though the priests were
always provided with everything necessary.
Similarly as in India, the use of cannabis was widespread. A
considerable variety of objects such as copper incense holders, table
cloths and pipes discovered in the tomb of a Scythian chief and his slaves
attest to its ceremonial consumption.” In Book I of his History,
Herodotus barely sketches a ceremony of the Massagetae, a Scythian race
that Cyrus the Great hoped to conquer:
(T)hey also have a tree which bears the strangest produce. When they are met together
in companies they throw some it upon the fire round which they are sitting, and
presently, by the mere smell of the fumes which it gives out in burning, they grow drunk,
as the Greeks do with wine. More of the fruit is then thrown on the fire, and, their
2° Elgood, 1972, vol. I, p. 235.

50 Eliade, 1980, vol. I, p. 219.
169
THE PAGAN ERA
drunkenness increasing, they often jump up and begin to dance and sing. Such is the
account which I have heard of this people.31
Later, in the context of a ritual purification after the funeral of a king and
the strangling, disemboweling, impaling and mounting of fifty of his
attendants and fifty of his horses in a ghastly tableau, he describes with
particular detail a kind of vapor bath:
After the funeral, those engaged in it have to purify themselves, which they do in the
following way. First they well soap and wash their heads; then, in order to cleanse their
bodies, they act as follows: they make a booth by fixing in the ground three sticks
inclined towards one another, and stretching around them woolen felts, which they
arrange so as to fit as close as possible; inside the booth a dish is placed on the ground,
The
into which
Scythians,
they asputI asaid,
number
take of
some
red-hot
of this
stones,
hemp-seed,
and thenand
addcreeping
some hemp-seed.
under the felt
coverings, throw it upon the red-hot stones; immediately it smokes, and gives out such a
vapour as no Grecian vapour-bath can exceed; the Scyths, delighted, shout for joy, and
this vapour serves them instead of a water-bath; for they never by any chance wash their
bodies in water.32
The second example is clearly part of a sacred purification ritual but it is

not clear whether he is describing religious or profane ceremonies in the
first example so it may be wiser to assume it may have been both.
31 Rawlinson, George, tr. The History of Herodotus, volume one, third edition.
London: John Murray, 1875 (GB), p. 326 (Book I, Clio, verse 202).
32 Ileial, volume three. New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1889 (GB), pp. 53-54 (Book IV,
Melpomene, verses 73-75). Again, as in chapter three, notice the assumed identity between
the seeds and the flowers of cannabis in the Mediterranean basin. Those who have seen
an example of a well-seeded branch of this plant will understand the confusion as the
seeds often appear to overwhelm the remaining flowers though it is, of course, the
trichromes which contain the vast majority of the active principles.
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Finally, botanical data prove that there were poppy plantations in

many parts of the northeast, as would be expected considering the
proximity of the plantations of Mesopotamia. But opium is, as in the
Mediterranean basin, strictly a profane substance, respected but without
any mythic-ritual connotations.
Figures 33 and 34.

Receptacles for the libation of hao/na.
171
THE PAGAN ERA
C. Pre-Columbian America
In spite of the diversity of their habitats and because of their

genetic and morphological affinities the peoples that resided in the
American continents prior to European colonization are generally
considered to have disseminated from the Bering Strait to Tierra del
Fuego in successive waves of Asiatic migration before the end of the last
glaciation.” The ancient history of their use of plants must almost
necessarily be restricted to the cultures of Central America and the Andes
because only there they formed strongly centralized structures with the
accompanying good archaeological and written evidence. The inhabitants
of North America, with few exceptions, did not develop a modern State
in the pre-Columbian era and the same can be said of groups that lived in
the enormous basins of the Amazon, the Orinoco and the Paraná. Most
did not abandon the status of hunter-gatherers, basically nomads, and as
their past is practically impossible to reconstruct with any certainty it
would be better to speak of them when we begin to examine the
contemporary epoch.
On a botanic scale, two factors stand out regarding these
continents. The first is the incomparable wealth of psychoactive flora,
chiefly stimulants and plants that contain phenylethylamines and indolic
alkaloids.” The second is the connection with their consumption in
religious cults, both on the level of great civilizations and in small isolated
communities. One could say that Euroasiatic shamans using the A/nanita
niuscaria found to their surprise in the southern part of the Americas a
33 For example, seeJenness, 1941, pp. 383-396 and Von Heine-Geldern, 1950, pp. 350-2.
34 Only relatively recently have systematic ethnobotanical investigations begun, with a
view to describing new psychoactive drugs. See, for example, Naranjo, 1969, pp. 5-63;
Schultes, 1969-70, and 1970.
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variety of substances inconceivable in colder climates but they quickly

adapted to them from the very beginning.
It is enough to point to the nature of certain American honeys to
get some idea of the many different psychoactive plants available in the
New World. Bees not only obtain their food from flowers but also from
tree sap and the scat of certain birds.” Most of the sugar in these honeys
is usually some combination of dextrose and laevulose, the latter having a
much greater sweetening power. Levi-Strauss commented, for example,
on the “widely varied aromas, always with an indescribable richness and
complexity exquisite to the point of becoming intolerable sometimes”
of the honeys he sampled in Brazil. But bees and wasps not only
elaborate honeys intolerable to the palate but also those that cause
drunkenness, such as that made by the wheat bee and called naturally
enough feiticeira (sorceress) or Vat7i0.f—fl0.l‘—€t7ih07‘a (let’s get drunk) in the State
of Sao Paulo, Brazil, and even those that are violently toxic, employed by
indigenous tribes as poisons for hunting and fishing. Other groups
ferment them into strongly alcoholic meads that also contain visionary
and hallucinogenic drugs such as are found in the daturas. Although
psychoactive honeys were known and described by the ancient Greeks,
the much larger variety in the Americas will serve as an introduction to
the psychoactive plants available in those continents.
1. Central America. Around the tenth century BC on what is

today the Atlantic coast of Mexico, the astonishing Olmec civilization
flourished. Their techniques of sculpture and architecture are so
remarkable that only carbon dating fnally convinced archeologists and
historians of their true antiquity. A culture close to the Olmec also
55 Levi-Strauss, 1970, vol. II, pp. 431??
173
THE PAGAN ERA
appeared in the southeast, in present day Guatemala, today represented by

the surprising monuments of Izapa.
a. Mushrooms. There for the first time were found, chiefly

in the more sumptuous tombs, mushroom-stones” some thirty
centimeters tall which had been continually produced over some fifteen
centuries.” The religious meaning of these mushroom-stones is
reinforced when observing that upon their trunks are often carved the
figures of gods, shamanic animals or human faces with appropriately
ecstatic expressions. If to this one adds that the Olmec and later the
Zapotec zone of influence is one of the places in the world where
Figures 35, 36, 36, 37, 38, 39 and 40.

Mayan mushroom stones. Found in Guatemala, Mexico and El Salvador, human
faces in ecstacy or mythological and shamanic animals are crowned with mushrooms.
36 Borhegy, 1963, pp. 328-338 and Lowy, 1971, pp. 983-993. Consult Wasson, 1961, pp.
137-162 for a discussion of the apparent similarities between the Indo-Iranian and
Olmec religious use of psychoactive mushrooms.
37 The most ancient date from the ninth century BC and most recent are from
approximately the sixth century AD. Up to now more than two hundred similar stones
have been discovered, some of them in funerary monuments of other cultures.
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psilocybin mushrooms grow profusely, it does not seem adventurous to

imagine that their ritual use in Mexico and other parts of Mesoamerica
had many millennia of existence.
No less mysterious (for us) are the Mayan and Toltec cultures
whose works reveal a knowledge and technology comparable or superior
to that of the ancient Middle East. The presence of nine mushroom
stones in the tomb of a high Mayan dignitary leads one to suspect that
they might have had a connection with the so-called nine lords of Xibalba
mentioned in the Popul I/uh. As well, a singularly explicit ceramic, similar
in workmanship to those found in Colirna (Mexico), has been dated to the
first century AD and exhibits a scrupulously carved example of Psiloc)/he
rnexicana around which dance four celebrants.
Though it is still difficult to be sure, the majority of these
civilizations appear to have lacked the goal of constant military expansion;
rather, there are features of a shockingly disinterested mercantilism if one
compares the attitude of many recorded empires. Like what will be said
of the Greeks, neither the Olmecs nor the Mayans seem to have achieved
supremacy by anything other than their arts and their spirit. Similarly to
what will be recorded in South America with the Incas and in the
Mediterranean basin with the Romans, this rich tradition of knowledge
175
THE PAGAN ERA
will finally succumb before the encroachment of a bellicose tribe, poor in

arts and lacking in culture (in this case, the Aztecs) which, by the
beginning of the sixteenth century will govern a region with many millions
of subjects.
If the information contained in numerous early Spanish chronicles
can be believed, the Aztecs also consumed psilocybe mushrooms, calling
them teonana'ratl 38 and no more eloquent testimony to how they were used
among the natives is that the first European ecclesiastics regarded their
mere ingestion idolatry.” Various illustrations of teonana'tatl40 have been
preserved in codices written just after the conquest and their principal
value is to show the difference between the indigenous vision and the
European. In the first codex the drawing was made by a native and he
drew with careful precision a clutch of mushrooms being consumed by an
individual, at whose right is a chimerical being with the claws of a cat, the
body of a human and the head of a gargoyle, probably the image of
Mictlanteculotli, a god of the underworld. A little afterwards, an illustration
made in Europe (obviously taken from the previous) converts the being
38 An expression that Frey Bernadino de Sahagún translates as “flesh of the gods,”

nanácatl means “mushroom” and the literal translation of the expression would be better
“mushroom of marvels.” R. Simeón defines it as a “species of small mushroom, an
intoxicant and hallucinogen” (Dictionnaire de la lengue naloualt, entry teonanácatl). Schultes
identifies it as Paneolus canipanulatus L. var. Sploinctrinus (Fr.) Bresadola (“Teonanacatl: the
Narcotic Mushroom of the Aztecs,” Anierican Anthropologist, New Series, vol. 42, no. 3,
part 1 (Jul-Sep 1940), pp. 429-443, www.jstor.org).
39 For example, in the text of Sahagún, in the Manual de niinistros de indiospara el conocirniento
de sus idolatrías (1625) of de la Serna, and in the great treatise of F. Hernández (De
loistoriaplantaruni Novae Hispaniae).
40 Specifically, in the Codex Vindobonense, in the Magliabecchi (held in the Biblioteca
Medicea Laurenziana) and in that of Sahugún, called the Florentino, in the custody of the
Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale.
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Figures 41 and 42. Two visions of

mushroom eating. Above, an
image from the Codex
Magliabecci, representing an
indigenous priest ritually
consuming mushrooms while
behind him is the lord of the
underworld, Mictlantecuhtli. At
right, an illustration from the
Codex Florentine — the history in
which Sahagun denounces the
sacramental use of teonandcatl —
shows a diabolical being above
what appear to be mushrooms.
with gargoyle’s head into a kind of goat with monkey paws who floats
above some mushrooms barely recognizable as such while it significantly
omits the individual who ingests them. The oldest depiction, prior to the
177
THE PAGAN ERA
arrival of the Europeans, appears in the Codex Vindobonense and shows

Quetzalcoatl himself brandishing two mushrooms in his left hand.
Both Sahagún and Benavente, two of the first chroniclers of native
societies in the New World, considered teonana'tatl to be directly connected
with Lucifer. “Of those mushrooms which are called in the Mexican
language ,Quantlannaiuacat,” wrote Padre Jacinto de la Serna “they take
them, attributing to them a deity. It has the same effect as ololiuqui or
peyote, because eaten or drunk, it intoxicates them, deprives them of their
senses and makes them believe a thousand absurdities.”4 1 A more sober
opinion from the same era comes from Francisco Hernández (1515
1587), physician to Phillip II, who traveled extensively in New Spain
(Mexico) during the years 1571-1577 and who had already shown himself
to be an excellent naturalist. He mentions the visions produced by the
mushroom, adding details that demonstrate a precise enough knowledge
of the subject:
Others [mushrooms] when eaten cause not death but madness, that on occasion is
lasting, of which the symptom is a kind of uncontrollable laughter. Usually called
teyleuintli [intoxicating], these are deep yellow, acrid and of a not displeasing freshness.
There are others again which, without inducing laughter, bring before the eyes all kinds
of things, such as wars and the likeness of demons. Yet others are there not less desired
41 Serna, Manual de los Ministros para el conaiirniento de sus idolatria: 11 extigation de €//0.1‘, part
of the Colección de Docu/nentos ineditos para la Historia de E ggaña, vol. 104, Madrid, 1892
(GB), p. 61. The original reads in part: los die/J0: hongos, que .re llarnan en la lengua niejicana
Quantlannamacati (E)ntonces los cogían, atriliigléndoles deidad, )/ teniendo el miitnia efecto que el
ololiuqui 0' e/peg/ate, porque co/nidos 0' bebidot, /at enilmaga] prii/a de sentida, )1 /es /1516611 treer mil
diiparatei.
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by princes for their fiestas and banquets, of great price. With night-long vigils are they
sought, impressive and terrifying. This kind is tawny and somewhat acrid.42
Figure 43. Sculpture of Xochipilli

— god of flowers, music, and
mundane pleasures — found on the
slopes of the Popocatepetl volcano.
The body and pedestal are covered
with clearly identifiable plants: the
tobacco flower, the tendril of
olo/iuhqui or Morning Glory, the
button of siniquiche and stylized
mushrooms of P.ti/og/he agtecorurn.
42 Schultes and Hofmann, 1979, p. 145 found at www.erowid.org, translated from Q

historia /antarurn Novae Hi aniae, vol. II. Madrid, 1790 (GB), Book IX, p. 357. His Latin
reads in the original: alii, qui rnortern ingesti non inferant, sed anientiarn aliquandiu perrnanenteni,
incondito quodarn risu testata/n, inducant, quos Te)/huintli vocare rnos est, fulvi, acres, et non ingrati
cujusdani 1/iroris. Sunt et alii, qui citra risu/n nihil non versari sub oculos cogant, 1/elut bella, et
daernonuni sirnulacra, atque alii non minùs a wris hisce princijfiibus per sua praecipuè festa, et convivia
exoptati, et pretio rnaxi/no, et pervigili cura conquisti, quani irn/nanes, atque horrendi: quod genus
fuscuni est et quadani acrinionia praedituni. There is no species of Psilocybe that produces
permanent madness. Hernández perhaps is transmitting an indigenous knowledge but he
is incorrect with regards to the agent, which may have been the dangerous red
floripondio (Brugrnansia sanguinea), considered today an insanity producer by certain tribes.
179
THE PAGAN ERA
b. Other entheogens. Judging only from the archeological data,

the earliest example of an entheogen in Central and Northern America
seems to have been the red seeds of Soploora secundiflora containing the
active principle cystine, too abnormally toxic to be visionary and which
can kill in very high doses. The seeds are found in the settlements of the
Pleistocene dated to more than 7000 years ago” and as botanic knowledge
and the phytochemical capabilities of the American Indians progressed,
they were replaced by other less toxic plants.”
The first Spanish botanical information regarding the New World
was published in 1496 and comes from Friar Ramon Pané who
accompanied the second voyage of Columbus. He describes the Tainos
of Hispanola inhaling cohoooa or J/opo (niopo) powder in order to
communicate with the spirit world, specifically for the purpose of healing.
Cohoooa is made from the seeds of /lnandenantloera pergrina and contains
both N,N–dimethyltryptamine and 5-methoxy-DMT.” From that period
a number of missionary tales from what is presently Venezuela and
Columbia also record the “abominable” custom. Pané gives first hand
information:
Cohoolia is a kind of powder, which they take sometimes to purge themselves and for other
reasons which I will speak of later. They take it with a cane half an arm long, and put
‘13 Adovasio and Fry, 1976.

‘14 As a yardstick, some groups employed the bitter yucca, rich in nutrients, using simple
processes that decomposed its high concentration of hydrocyanic acid (prussic) into
various sugars. Other subtle chemical interactions, such as that the tryptamines are only
readily psychoactive in humans united to a monoamine oxidase inhibitor, were resolved
in a practical manner without the least difficulty (Furst, 1980, pp. 258-259).
‘15 Stafford, Peter G. and Jeremy Bigwood. Psychedelics Encyclopedia, 3rd edition.
Berkeley, CA: Ronin Publishing, Inc., 1992 (GB), pp. 309-310. Cohoolia is used also
throughout the adjacent islands, the litoral of the Orinoco and the north of Argentina.
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one end in the nose and the other in the powder. In this way they breathe it in through
the nose and this purges them greatly. The doctor is obligated to keep the same diet
as the patient and even to mimic his facial expressions. Also, the doctor purges
himself like the patient. In order to purge themselves they use a certain powder, called
cohoha, breathing it in through the nose, which makes them so intoxicated that they do
not know what they do. In this state, they say many crazy things, while affirming that
they are speaking with the ceniier [spirits, idols] and these are telling them from whence
came the infirmity.“
DMT and tryptamine derivatives are also found in a number of other

plants in Central America and the Caribbean, including a cactus in South
America.”
Two important ceremonial psychotropic plants were and are the
seeds of two vines, ololiuhqui (morning glory, Rii/ea cog/inhosa) and badoh
negro (Ipoinea tricolor), of which the latter is very common today in Europe,
both wild and cultivated, and can be identified by its violet or red
bellflowers. Of the former, says Sahagún,
There is an herb that they call coatlxoxouhqui, and it grows from a seed named ololiuhqui;
this seed makes them drunk and maddens them. They give it in beverages to cause harm
46 Pané, Friar Ramon. Relacion acerca de las antigiiedades de los indios, 13th edition, José Juan
Arrom, editor. Mexico: Siglo Veintiuno, 2004 (GB), pp. 19-20, 26-27 (chapters IX, XV),
tr. gwr. Originally, la cual cohoba es un cierto poli/o, que ellos tonian a veces para purgarsey para
otros efectos que después se dirán. Ésta la tonian con una caria de niedio brazo de lago, y ponen un
extrenio en la narigy el otro en elpoli/o; así lo aspiran por la narigly esto les hace purgan grandeniente.
El niédico esta' obligado a guardar dieta, lo miirnio que elpaciente, y a poner cara de enfernio. Es
preciso que tanihién se pugue conio el €I1fifI‘7fl0,' y para purgarse tonian cierto poli/o, llaniado cohoba
aspirándolo por la nariz, el cual les eniliriago de tal niodo que no salren lo que hacen; y así dicen niuchas
cosarfuera dejuicio, en las cuales afirnian que halilan con los ceniies, y que e'rtos les dicen que de ellos le
ha venido la enferniedad.
47 For example, the cactus Nwrainiondia niairortiliar.
181
THE PAGAN ERA
to those who wish them evil, and those who eat of this seed appear to see visions and
horrible things: the sorcerers or those who detest someone in order to hurt them offer it
to be eaten or drunk. This herb is medicinal, and its seed is used for the gout, ground up
and placed in the proper site.48
Hernández is the more careful naturalist but he also records the visions
produced by the seeds:
Oliliulequi, which some call coaxi/Juitl, or snake plant, is a twinning herb with thin, green
cordate leaves, slender, green terete stems and long, white flowers. The seed is round
and very like coriander Formerly, when the priests wished to commune with their
gods and to receive a message from them, they ate this plant to induce a delirium. A
thousand visions and satanic hallucinations appeared to them ....49
48 Fr. Bernadino Sahagún. Historia eneral de las L'0.ffl.f de Nueva Etgaiia, vol. III. Mexico:
Imprenta del Ciudadano Alejandro Valdés, 1830 (GB), p. 241 (Ch. 7), tr. gwr. The
original Spanish reads: Hay una yerlia que se llama matlxoxou/Jqui, )1 ma una semilla que se dice
ololiulequi; esta semilla emliorrat/ya)1 enloquece, danla por lieliedizos para hacer a/an"0 a' /0.!‘ que quieren
mal, _y los que la comen pare'tele.t que ven 1/isiones )1 60J'flA' espantali/es.‘ danla á comer 0' a lielier, /at
/Jet/Jiteros 0' los que aliorrecen á algunospara dáñarlos. Estayerba e.t medicinal, y su semilla usase para
la gota moliéndola)1 poniéndola en el lugar donde esta'.
49 Hernández, Francisco. Rerum Medicarum N01/ae Hi gganiae T/Jesaurus seu Plantarium
Animalium Mineralium Mexicanorum Historia. Rome, 1651 (GB), p. 145 (chapter XIV), tr.
from Albert Hofmann’s “The Discovery of LSD and Subsequent Investigations on
Naturally Occurring Hallucinogens,” in Discoveries in Biological Psychiatry, Frank
Ayd and Barry Blackwell, eds., 1970,J. B. Lippincott and Co., found at www.psychedelic—
library.org. The original reads: Oliliu/Jqui, quam maxi/Juitl, seu /Jerlian serpentis alii vocant
1/olubii/is /Jerlia est, folia 1/iridiafirrens, renuia, cordiijigura cau/ex l‘€I"€Z6’.f, 1/irides, renue.tq;fl0res albas Q’?
/angiuxtu/0:. Semen rotundun simile coriandro, unite nomen Ina/arum samficicum via/eri volebant
1/ersari cum Superis, ac reposiperent, milleq; p/Jantasmata, Q’? a'aemonu' obversátium egfigies
circumspectarent. This is not to deny to this important plant medicinal virtues that may
include the ability to alleviate syphilis, mitigate the cold sweats of a fever, moderate
flatulence, reduce tumors, chase away phobias and act as an aphrodisiac.
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Another historian of the XVIIIth century observed that “they set

the preparation before their idols, swearing that it is the food of the gods
. and with it they are transformed into physician-magicians and they
commingle with the devil.”50 In contrast with other entheogens, ololiuhqui
is not appropriate (according to some present day shamans) to be
administered in collective celebrations, but only to one subject at a time in
a tranquil and isolated locale “where one can no longer hear the crow of a
rooster.” Hernández once again demonstrates his good sources of
information, writing that he “who drinks ololiuhqui must confine himself in
his home and no one may enter during the divinatory trance.”
Along these lines one should mention a sculpture of Xochipilli,
god of flowers, music and mundane pleasures, discovered in the foothills
of the Popocatépetl volcano. The body and the pedestal are covered with
various clearly identifiable psychotropic plants: the tobacco flower, the
tendril of ololiuhqui or /naravilla, the button of siniquiche51 and a stylized
mushroom belonging to Psiloc)/he aztecoru/n. The statue, conserved in the
Museum of Anthropology in the Mexican capital, is considered one of the
most beautiful pieces of Aztec art. This species of mushroom is
indigenous to the slopes of Popocatépetl.
Another widely distributed entheogen was peyote, the name given
to the meaty buttons of Lophophora willia/niii (also called /lnhaloniu/n
lewinii), a cactus. Making use of a strange number, Sahagún asserts that
the Toltecs and Chichimecs had been using peyote “for at least 1890 years
before our arrival.” Very similar opinions appear in the works of Juan de
Cárdenas, writing at the end of the sixteenth century and in those of the
50 Schultes and Hofmann, 1982, p. 159.

51 Also called siniquichi and sinuicuichi, this plant (Heirnia salicifolia) contains a drug still
insufficiently investigated, used today in the form of a beverage by natives of certain
mountainous regions of Mexico in apparently non-religious contexts.
183
THE PAGAN ERA
Figure 44. Pipe in the form of a

deer chewing a peyote button.
Dated to the fourth century BC,
it is the oldest archeological
evidence for the ritual consump
tion of peyote.
Jesuit, Andrés Pérez de Rivas, a century later. The oldest archeological

data available is a ceramic pipe in the form of a deer (a totemic animal
associated with the plant throughout the region) which holds a peyote
button between his teeth, dated to the fourth century BC. Sahagún gives
a description connecting the plant to “pagan rituals and superstitions.” In
another passage in his History he calls the plant a “satanic fraud” though
he does not doubt its ability to alter consciousness, relating some opinions
of its native users:
There is another herb like the fruit of the prickly pear, called peiotl. It is white, it comes
from a place in the north and those who eat or drink it see terrifying or hilarious visions.
This intoxication lasts two or three days and afterwards is over; it is a common delicacy
among the Chichimecs, because it maintains them and gives them the spirit to fight and
not to have fear, hunger or thirst and they say that it keeps them safe from all danger.52
52 Fr. Bernadino Sahagún. Historia general de las 170567! de Nueva España, vol. III. Mexico:
Imprenta del Ciudadano Alejandro Valdés, 1830 (GB), ch. 7, p. 241, tr. gwr. Originally:
Hay otra)/erlia co/no tunas de tierra, se lla/na peiotl, er lrlanea, loaiiere aria la parte del norte, lo: que la
184
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The more empirical Hernández lists in his History two varieties, Pej/otl
xochiinulcensi and Peyotl zacatecensis. Of the latter, he recounts:
The root is of nearly medium size, sending forth no branches or leaves above the
ground, but with a certain wooliness adhering to it on account of which it could not be
aptly figured by me. Both men and women are said to be harmed by it. It appears to be
of a sweetish taste and moderately hot. Ground up and applied to painful joints, it is said
to give relief. Wonderful properties are attributed to this root if any credence can be
given to the common wisdom. It causes those devouring it to be able to foresee and
predict things.53
From a chemical perspective, all the plants mentioned contain

visionary alkaloids. The so-called active principles of the different species
of teonana'catl are psilocine and psilocybin. Peyote contains mescaline and
ololiuhqui the amide of lysergic acid, one of the alkaloids present also in the
fungus called ergot of rye, which in fact can parasitize a number of known
cereals.
Together with these psychotropic plants, it should be mentioned
that when the conquistadors arrived, the natives of the region were also
using the Datura strainoniuin or toloache, whose active principles are non
cornen o hehen uén oirioner egoantorar o’ irririliler; dura erta horrachera dor o' trer diary derpuer re quita;
er coniniun niaryar de lor Chichiniecar, puer lor niantiene y da aninio para peleary no tener niiedo, ni
red ni hanilire,y dicen que lor guarda de todo peligro.
55 The translation is from R. E. Schultes’ The Plant Kingdom and Hallucinogens found
at www.lycaeum.org taken from the Hirtoria (GB), chapter xxv, pp. 70-71: Radix quaedani
ert niediocrir, nullor proferenr ranior rupra terrain, foliai/e, red lanugineni quandani ei adhaerecenteni;
quanichreni a nie non potuit apte delineari. Ajunt are 1, faeniinanique wfendi. Dulcir oideturgurtu,
ac nioderati calorir. Tura, adniotaque dolorihur articuloruni diiitur niederi; illudferunt de hac radice
niirahile (ri niodo fider rit i/ulgatirriniae inter eor rei hahenda) deuoranter illani quodlihet praeragire,
praedicereque.
185
THE PAGAN ERA
indolic alkaloids,” like certain brugmansias with similar but more toxic
compositions and which still today grow profusely by the side of houses
of campesinos in the interior. Apart from some medicinal applications that
require small doses (rheumatism, for example), the use of this plant as a
vehicle for trance would have been reserved for the shaman or priest,
given the risks. Nevertheless, in some places today it is used in orgiastic
ceremonies where women dance frenetically for long periods of time. In
fact, they are ideal plants for the sorcery previously defined as that of
possession, often in combination with pulque or other alcoholic beverages.
We don’t know if these ceremonies were also celebrated in ancient times
but this could well have been the case.
To this list we must add the cacao bean or cam/atl, whose
cultivation appears to have originated in Mexico where the Aztec
emperors served the plant ceremonially (as we shall see, not completely
dissimilar to the customs of the Incas with coca), reserving bowls, spoons
and other golden instruments for its consumption. The first Western
description of the plant arrives in letters from Hernán Cortés to Carlos I,
spoken of in such laudatory terms that Linnaeus later classified it as
T/aeolaroma cacao.” Pedro Mártir de Anglería, in his Décadas, also rendered
an elegy to its qualities as a medium of exchange,” reiterated in the
chronicles of Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés:
54 Hyoscyamine and scopolamine, alkaloids also called tropinic like those of various other
psychoactive solanaceas including belladonna, henbane, and mandragora.
55 Theealiroma signifies “divine food” or “food of the gods.”
56 “Oh happy coin which gives to human beings so smooth and useful a drink, and to its
possessors the freedom from the stink of greed because one cannot bury them nor store
them for very long” (Perez de Barradas, 1957, p. 172).
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(I)n that province of Nicaragua a rabbit is worth ten of these beans and a slave twenty
And because in that land there are women who give for a price their bodies, as
among the Christians the public prostitutes those who wish them for their libidinous
use, give for their pleasure eight or ten beans, as he or she is agreed. I wish, then, to say
that there is no other thing among these people, where this money is in circulation, that
lets them buy and sell in the same manner as the Christians often do with good
doubloons or ducados of two,“
The modern treatment of cacao annuls a good part of any

supposed entheogenic effects that may have been enjoyed in pre
Columbian America; the psychoactive alkaloid in it is, of course, directly
related to caffeine.58
57 La General y natural historia de las Inalzas, Madrid, 1851 (www.archive.org), chapter 30,
book VIII, part one, p. 316: (E)n aquella provincia de Nicaragua, un ¡anna vale diez almendras
destas, ¿por quatro almendras dan 00/90 parnas 0' nísperos de aquella excelente fructa que ellos llanzan
/nnnonçapot;y un esclavo vale çiento, e’ mas e’ menos almendras a'e.rz‘a.r, segund es lapieça 0' la voluntad a'e
los contrayentes se conciertan. Yporque en aquella tierra hay rnugeres que dan porpresfla In; enerpos,
£0010 entre los chripstz'anos las pala/icas nzeretriçes y viven demo (é á tal ¡anger [llámanla guatepol, que es
lo mismo que dear nzeretrix 0' rarnera), quien las quiere para su libidinzJJ0 0:0, les ala’ por una carrera
00/00 0' diez a/rnendras, turna e’! e’ ella se conciertan. Quiero, pues, decir que ninguna cosa hay entre
aquella gente, donde esta nzoneda corre, que se dexe a'e comprar e’ de venaler de aquella misma manera que
entre /0: rlm]>.rz‘z'an0: /0 Jnelen hacer con buenos dale/unes 0' dnmdax de a’ dos.
58 Theobromine, averaging 2%. Caffeine is 1,3,7 trimethylxantine and theobromine 3,7
dimethylxantine. See the exhaustive text of Ott, 1985. The importance given by the
Aztecs to cacao is somewhat, though not exactly, similar to that accorded coca by the
Incas. A plant in common use is elevated to the status of the divine. The Aztecs also
expand suddenly in the early 1400s. Both the Incan and Aztec pre-Columbian
expansions remain unexplained. Gavin Menzies (2004) argues that the Chinese admiral
Zheng He sent treasure fleets to and established settlements on the coasts of South and
Central America in the first decades of the same century, but his research has been
disputed and, some say, debunked (www.1421exposed.com). What both sides concede is
that the Chinese built ocean-going vessels, made a number of long voyages to Southeast
187
THE PAGAN ERA
2. The Andean Civilizations. Excavations made just recently in

Ecuador give testimony that the human experience with the coca bush is
at least five thousand years old.” The first civilized evidence for the use
of psychoactive plants in this territory is connected with the Chavín
culture which flourished around the tenth century BC and which is
conserved in monuments like the great pyramid of Lima and the so-called
Old Temple as well as in pottery and fabrics. Surviving from this period
are two representations, one in clay and the other in stone, of the cactus
known today as San Pedro or Trirloorereuxparloanoi.60 The most striking is a
frieze in the Circular Plaza in the Old Temple at Chavin where the
principal deity is depicted holding a piece of the cactus that has four
sections or ribs, instead of seven.“ The second object is a ceramic piece
upon which a jaguar (one of the basic shamanic animals in the southern
hemisphere) crouches between the columns of the cactus which here also
have four ribs.”
Asia, the Middle East and Africa during this period and certainly had the ability to
traverse the globe. An influx of new, foreign technology that tips the scales of an
existing balance of power between local tribes in both areas satisfies the principle of
economy and might explain the simultaneous expansions but the issue remains
unresolved.
58 Van Dyke and Byck, 1982, p. 102.
60 The name reveals evidence of the influence of Christianity replacing a pure paganism.
San Pedro (Saint Peter) is the keeper of the keys to the Christian heaven and the plant
promises an introduction to the Other World. Ololiuloqui is also called “seeds of the
virgin” and the more visionary mushrooms “San Isidros.”
61 Present day Ecuadoran and Bolivian shamans more highly esteem the four-ribbed
variety of this cactus though it is more rare, probably because it contains a higher
proportion of alkaloids or is less toxic than others.
62 See figure 45, following page.
188
SACRED EBRIETY
Figure 45. Ceramic, Chavin culture. A

jaguar, shamanic animal par excelence,
crouches between the columns of a
psychoactive cactus, Trichocereur.
The Chavin culture was followed

by the hegemony of the
aggressive Moche state, from
which there are the remains of
pottery with a psilocybe
mushroom carved on the front
of a statue. After the Moche
came the Huari empire and then,
corresponding to the lower
Middle Ages in Europe, the Chimú empire. A Chimú ceramic from the
twelfth century depicts a San Pedro cactus in the hands of idols with the
faces of owls, representing either deities or possibly herbalists.
Spontaneous as well as cultivated, the cactus proliferates in a wide swath
that runs from Ecuador through Bolivia and northern Chile, passing
through the Peruvian Andes, where its use survives in religious rituals and
shamanic cures. It can be found today all over the world and is often
found in Spain. A chemical analysis of the plant reveals that its principal
alkaloid is trimethoxyphenylethylamine or mescaline, precisely the same
alkaloid found in peyote. However, there is one variety, Trichocereus
tershekii, which contains in place of mescaline, dimethyltryptamine (DMT),
an indolic alkaloid of spectacular and brief visionary effects.
189
THE PAGAN ERA
a. The Incas and coca. Of this tribe, originating in the

region of Cuzco, one can say something similar to that which had been
said earlier with respect to the Aztecs. Their politics of incursion and
depredation were only converted into imperial expansion at the beginning
of the fifteenth century with Viracocha. They showed no genius for the
arts or sciences and the positive realizations of their reign are principally
great public works. Besides popularizing the use of metal-tipped field
plows, they made splendid shoes and seeded their territory with way
stations and warehouses. The atrocities committed by Pizarro and his
successors have since led many to idealize the Inca period as a monument
of peace, social justice and political rationality.” This ignores the fact that
this State died by its own hand as the Spanish recruited, from the very
beginning of their conquest to the extermination of the last Inca, many
63 This attitude can be perceived in texts as remote from one another in purpose and date
of publication as the very well-documented book of W. Golden Mortimer (1901, 1970)
and that of a studious modern volume like that of N. Wachtel (1976). It passes for
theological tolerance, for example, that the Incas carried off the principal idol and high
priests of every conquered territory to Cuzco, when the motive was to keep them as
hostages to dissuade rebellions. It passes for perfect socialism that the State
proportioned to each subject land and wife, when the reward meant condemning the
people to exorbitant tributes of work and women. In fact, the most select of the Empire
were recruited as damsels and converted into virgins of the Sun, destined for service in
the temples or awarded to soldiers with distinguished service. The first of these would
feed the harem of the emperor, which in the case of Huayna Cápac (according to
Garcilaso) eventually numbered more than seven hundred, each one attended by several
servants. Any contact with these vestals by a man was punished by burying both alive
and cutting the throat of anyone related to the sacrilegious lothario. Taking into account
that not even the Caesars hoped to be able to convert their priestesses into concubines
or gifts to their troops, one can begin to understand to what sublime level the concept of
privilege meant to the Incas.
190
SACRED EBRIETY
allies among the peoples oppressed under the splendid shoe soles of the
Incas.
A similar partiality can be observed when speaking of the Incas
and coca, as if on this ground alone they should have demonstrated their
magnanimity. Naturally, the use of this plant predates by many millennia
the Inca empire. It seems that the word “coca” is derived from the
Aymara language and means simply plant or tree. Confrming Jensen’s
distinction between paleocultivators and agriculturists in the modern
sense, there exist separate legends regarding the origins of coca. For the
Yunga Indians, this bush allowed one to overcome an evil spirit while in
the Inca tradition Manco Cápac gave the benediction of Mama Coca to an
astonished humanity to make them capable of supporting hunger and
fatigue. “In the case of the Yunga,” observed a contemporary historian,
“the plant was discovered and used by man in spite of authority, while in
the case of the Incas that very authority awarded it like a gift,”64 its
everyday use subject to many limitations. The Yunga myth is closely
related to the theft of cereals by Prometheus and the Inca myth justified
an organization that used the plant like a manufacturer of engines uses
bearings and lubricants.
The liberal use of coca was a privilege of the oligarchy, conceded
as a gracious favor to soldiers, peasants and messengers. To chew the
leaves of the plant without authorization constituted a crime of lese
majestad. A considerable part of the corvea or work tribute turned around
the production of coca leaf, consumed by the Court in enormous
quantities, while at the same time the control of its consumption by the
people below amounted to a prohibition. The Incas vigorously stimulated
64 Arnao, 1980, pp. 81-82.
191
THE PAGAN ERA
the cultivation of the plant and at the same time applied the penal code to
unauthorized use by the very same cultivators.‘”
The oldest sculptural examples of the consumption of coca come
from the third century BC. Statues on the coasts of Ecuador and Peru
exhibit faces with cheeks inflated by the bocado or cocada.“ Just from this
however it is not easy to determine the nature of the use, whether
religious or profane, up until the domination of the Incas where it was
used by the priest caste in divinatory ceremonies and other religious
rituals. Much earlier, coca leaf is found in the mouths of mummies and
full sacks of coca leaves are buried with the dead in their tombs; the leaves
also served as good luck charms to prosper in amorous trysts and business
65 There is argument over whether or not coca leaves were the subject of a pre
Columbian monopoly: “In the time of the Incas all leaves harvested form the rnontana
estates were delivered to Cusco, where imperial functionaries supervised their
distribution” (Gagliano, Joseph A. Coca Prohibition in Peru: The Historical Debates.
Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1994, p. 13, quoting Pedro Cieza de Leon).
However, much of this evidence comes from “colonial prohibitionists” who “claimed
that coca was raised in only a few imperial plantations and that its consumption was
reserved for members of the minute aristocracy. (T)hey employed the perceived Inca
policies to argue that unless vice-regal authorities imposed similar restrictions on growing
the plant, the value of its leaves would diminish as an inducement to have them
(peasants) work in the mines” (Gagliano, p. 13).
66 The leaves are chewed but always mixed with an alkaline powder (vegetable ash,
ground up seashell or lime) and the custom was considered merely accessorial until D.
Paly, working in the laboratories of Yale, proved that the addition of calcium carbonate
increased by a factor of ten the concentration of cocaine (principal alkaloid of the plant)
in the blood stream. Some instruments used by the Incas, for example tubes of gold for
nasal absorption, testify to the use of pulverized coca leaf, still used by some Amazonian
tribes today under the name of ipadu, also the name of a variety of Erythroag/luni coca
grown in Peru, Columbia and Brazil.
192
SACRED EBRIETY
deals. These are all clues to its entheogenic status, though perhaps
insufficient in themselves.
It does seem clear that the plant always possessed a function
parallel to the other stimulants like tea and betel in the Far East, cola and
cat in Africa, coffee in Asia Minor and Europe. Its religious aura did not
come from expanding its recreational use, but from the dignity that its
legal consumers, the Incas, gave it. They converted a custom of the
commoners into a lofty, sublime“ ritual with the priests incorporating
coca leaves into their ceremonies.
The fact of finding the leaves in tombs or amulets does not
provide proof of its religious use unless other food or ornamental
offerings, rabbit’s feet or other good luck charms can also be considered
sacred items in themselves. It appears to be as impossible to obtain
memorable visions or mystical experiences chewing coca leaves as it
would be by drinking several cups of mate’ or coffee because all these
substances give energy in the abstract without notable alterations of
consciousness or changes in the soul other than a diffuse excitability,
except in very high doses. It may have been a tonic for the oligarchy and
a balm against the hunger and harsh labor of their vassals in accord with
‘*1 It is curious to observe that a certain cultural elitism has been, during the latter half of
the twentieth century, so significant a supposed characteristic of the users of the
principal alkaloid of this plant (cocaine), to the point of its becoming in the 1980s in the
United States the drug of choice (though illegal) for privileged winners and those who
aspired to this status. Curiously, as part of a campaign to prohibit the (legal) alkaloid in
the early part of the twentieth century, it was demonized by white government
bureaucrats and a compliant white press as the abominable custom of “crazed Negroes,”
one of the lowest socioeconomic groups in the same country, not without the obvious
accompanying sexual overtones, of course. This change in the perceived socioeconomic
status of its users brought about by a change of legal status will recur with other drugs,
notably cannabis and the opiates.
193
THE PAGAN ERA
their respective social positions, but this use would be far from the
purpose of disturbing the psychic routine of either. The effect produced
by chewing coca leaves does not correspond to the goals of the sorcery of
possession nor to the purpose of provoking memorable visions, leading
one inevitably to the conclusion that any entheogenic character derived
from the chewing of coca leaves must have been something merely formal
or symbolic.
The only caveat to this impeccable logic is that (as mentioned
earlier) a change in status signifies a change in state. True, there is little to
account for this disconnect between a recorded use in sacred ceremonies
by the Incas and the effects observed today in the chewers of the leaf.
What can be observed, however (with the present data), is that in contrast
with the mastication of the leaf, consistent and repeated intoxications with
large amounts of the leaf s principle alkaloid, cocaine, can indeed lead to
the “hearing of voices” and “delusions”°4’ (perhaps associated with a
chronic lack of sleep), phenomena observable with other concentrated
stimulants as well, most notably methamphetamine. Both might once
have been readily confused with divination and other religious
experiences. To date, however, other than the use of lime with the laocado,
there is no evidence to suppose the Incas were able to extract and isolate
this alkaloid or enhance its concentration with some (so far unknown and
undiscovered) technology.”
68 For example, “Toxic Mental Disorders,” a lecture delivered by George H. Savage on

March 6th, 1905 recorded in the Transactions of the Medical Society of London, Vol. 28
(GB), p. 177 or Jennifer R. Jamison’s Maintaining Health in Primary Care published in
Edinburgh by Harcourt in 2001 (GB), p. 194.
69 Though others had made partial extractions, the isolation of cocaine is usually
attributed to Dr. Albert Niemann (1834-1861) working at the University of Gottigen,
Germany in 1859. He ground and soaked the leaves in a slightly acidified solution of
194
SACRED EBRIETY
An additional datum on this theme is that the conquistadors and

ecclesiastical hierarchies ceased to consider the mastication of coca leaf as
idolatrous almost as soon as the power of the Incas succumbed while they
never ceased in the crusade against leonandral/, peyote, J/opo, 0/0/in/aqui, San
Pedro and other plants with psychoactivity derived from indolic alkaloids
or phenylethylamines. True, any attempts at prohibition quickly came
face to face with the fact that the new serfs of the Catholic church could
hardly do the quantity of work they had been able to do previously,
without the use of the leaf.70 Nevertheless, had their experiences stepped
outside the bounds of the therapeutic or recreative, the practice would
have been the immediate target of an accusation of idolatry.
b. Mate’ andguarana. Much of the Americas is

rich in plants with effects similar to coca leaf, though documentation
about them does not precede European colonization. The principal
alkaloid of these plants is often caffeine which in small quantities
strong alcohol, then treated the resulting liquid with slaked lime. The solution was
neutralized with a bit of hydrochloric acid and the alcohol was evaporated off in a water
bath. After separating the resin with water, the alkaloid was precipitated with carbonate
of soda. It was then further purified with ether and more alcohol. See W. G. Mortimer,
1901 (GB), pp. 296-297; The C/?€lfli£fl/ N€WI, vol. II, no. 34, July 28, 1860, ed. \Y/illiam
Crookes. London: C. Mitchell and Co., 1860 (GB), p. 83 also reported his results. It is
completely speculative and unnecessary to point out that impure versions of each of
these ingredients (except for the ether) were readily available to the Incas. A
technological advance in concentrating the alkaloids of the coca plant might have
permitted this otherwise undistinguished tribe to advance militarily against its neighbors,
an expansion that began inexplicably in the early 1400s. It might also explain reports of
the substance used in ceremonies of divination.
70 For example, see Mortimer, W. Golden. Peru: History of Coca. New York: H.
Vail and Co., 1901 (GB), p. 9.
195
THE PAGAN ERA
produces some of the characteristic effects obtained by the Peruvian or

Bolivian chewer of coca leaf: the suppression of appetite, reduction of
fatigue and augmentation of a sense of vigilance. The two principal plants
that contain caffeine derivatives are /nate' or loierba /nate' (Ilex paraguariensis)
and guarana or pasta de guarana’ (Paulinia cupana).
Mate grows in territories that today cover the southeast of Brazil
and practically all of Paraguay as well as parts of northern Argentina. Its
concentration of caffeine is slightly less than half that of coffee and cola
nut.” Guarana grows in a vast
zone that comprises the southern
tributaries of the Amazon and
contains a much higher
concentration of caffeine, in the
best varieties almost triple. In
' .--.4» . contrast with the use of coca by
-:~ §'.-.|.|
the Incas, there is no evidence so
far that these two were ever used
in any but profane (medicinal and
recreational) contexts.
Figure 46. Woodcut from the Nueoa

Croniea (1600) of Felipe Huaman
Poma de Ayala. The Incas celebrate the
Fierta del Sol.
71 Mate’ contains 1.7% on average and coffee and cola slightly more caffeine. In 1920
Argentina consumed six kilos of mate’ per person per year, while the consumption of
coffee did not exceed 250 grams and tea a kilo. Uruguay consumed 10 kilos per person
annually of mate’, importing the product chiefly from Brazil (Lewin, 1970, p. 289).
196
Greece
“Whenpatients exhibit these syinptoinr,

exercises are in excess offood Accordingly,
Thesepatients
a due correspondence
ought to take
inust
their
be baths
restored
warin,
to sleep on a .l‘l_)fl bed, to get drunk once or twice

but not to excess, to have sexual intercourse
aftera inoderate indulgence in wine, and to
slack of exercises except wal,éing.1
--Hippocrates of Kos
Before the Greeks, no demographically dense society had felt enough

pride to respect the individual spirit within each citizen, oriented around a
civic duty and the recognition of the rights of every adult male to a fully
rational autonomy. Until the Greeks there did not exist for a single
individual any other choice than to remain a self-sufficient nomad in
1jones, W. H. S., tr. Hippocrates, with an English translation, vol. IV. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1959, p. 419, Regimen III, LXXXV. Also available online at
/ /infomotions.com. Littré has: 85. (Reniarque ge'ne'rale rur ler car on ler exeriicer l’eniportent
rur ler alinientr.) Defait, cheg tour ceux quiprerentent cer ryniptdnier, ler exercicer l’eniportent rur ler
alinientr. Ilfout donc re'z‘ahlir l’e'egaliz‘e'. Quelquer-unr n’ont par tour cer accidentr, niair ler unr ont
ceux-ci, ler autrer ceux-la‘. Ai/ec tour cer rigner ler exercicer rur niontent ler alinientr, et le traiternent ert
le niénie. Il coni/ient de prendre der lrainr chaudr, de dorniir niollenient, de r’enii/rer une foir ou deux
niain non d’unefa;on excerrioe, de re liorer au coit quand l’occarion r’en prérente, de lairrer ler exercicer
excepté lerpronienader (Littré, Emile. Oeuorer Conigléter D’HiQpocrate, vol. IV. Paris: Chez j.
B. Bailliere, 1849 (GB), Du Reginie III, no. 85, p. 637; see also the BIUM).
THE PAGAN ERA
reduced numbers surrounded by virgin territories or adopt the mold of

ant-man in the great agricultural and urban cultures submitted to the
exploitative logic of theocracy and empire. The Greek po/it inaugurated an
intermediate type of society, that of a meeting of individuals who could
govern themselves without forgetting their common interests. For a man
in these city-states the highest honor was parr/aeiia (the right to speak
freely) granted to every citizen‘ without any contradiction between the
autonomy of conscience and the respect for laws that protected
individuals and their private possessions. “Poverty,” wrote Democritus of
Abdera (ca. 460 — ca. 370 BC), “under a democracy is as much to be
preferred to so-called prosperity under an autocracy as freedom to
slavery.”’ Euripides (480 — 406 BC) has his Jocasta affirm the same within
a dialogue on the problems of living in exile:
Jocasta: What is it like? What annoys the exile?

Polynieces: One thing most of all; he cannot speak his mind [parrêsian].
Jocasta: This is a slave’s lot you speak of, not to say what one thinks.4
2 Particularly revealing is the lack of a Latin word equivalent to parreltia. For a Roman,
the freedom to speak was an attribute of subjects with auctoritas; the nearest
approximations available were directly pejorative (licentia, contumacia, petulantia).
3 Freeman, Kathleen. Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers: A Complete Translation
of the Fragments in Diels (from Fragmente de Vorso/erati/eer, 5th edition, B series).
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1948, republished by Forgotten Books, 2008
(GB), no. 251, p. 166.
4 The Phoenician Women, tr. E. P. Coleridge, vv. 390-2, from //old.perseus.tufts.edu.
“In what wise? Where for exiles lies its sting? Polynieces: “This most of all – a curb is
on the tongue” (Way, Arthur S., transl. Euripides, vol. III. London: William
Heinemann, 1925, pp. 374-375, “The Phoenician Maidens,” vv. 390-391).
198
GREECE
Figure 47. The Exaltation of the Flower, archaic stele from Pharsalia.
Two women offer one another flowers, possibly poppies.
In contrast with the sacred royalties that preceded and followed it,
the classical Greek world is a culture that celebrates differences in place of
canonizing uniformity and instead of trying to eternalize time, fixing the
citizenry in a permanent infancy, it accepts history and the basic
ephemeral nature of human existence. This is also the first social
organization based upon a progressive civil reason rather than a
foundation of military force or some type of politico-religious dogma. As
a logical result, the Western world traces its ethics, philosophy and science
to the inventions of the Greeks whose artistic achievements continue to
be an insuperable model for contemporary culture.
199
THE PAGAN ERA
A. Medicine and Pharmacology
The mythical physicians, like the centaur Chiron and Orpheus, and
the semi-mythical (Melampus, Musaeus, Macaeon) were renowned
herbalists, as experienced in the virtues of single plant concoctions
(simples) as they were skilled in the preparation of their many
compounds.5 Theophrastus of Eressos (371 – 287 BC) lists in his History
experts in herbs (ploarvnacopolae or vendors and ploarvnacopoiia or
manufacturers) who lived as stationary or traveling physicians thanks to
their products. In the Historia Plantaru/n, often called the first botanical
treatise, he notices: “It seems that almost all places take their share in
producing drugs, but they differ in the extent to which they do so; for the
regions of the North, South and East have herbs of marvelous virtue.”6
Significantly, he omits the West, corresponding to the territory of Western
Europe.
The Greek genius shines brightest in the theoretical aspect rather
than in practical collections of remedies. Thraysus of Mantineia and his
disciple Alexias (both middle 4th century BC) seem to have been the first
to formulate the principles of tolerance and individual differences in
assimilation. According to Theophrastus:
The virtues of all drugs become weaker to those who are accustomed to them, and in
some cases become entirely ineffective. For it seems that some poisons become
poisonous because they are unfamiliar, or perhaps it is a more accurate way of putting it
to say that familiarity makes poisons non-poisonous; for, when the constitution has
accepted them and prevails over them, they cease to be poisons, as Thraysus also
remarked; for he said that the same thing was a poison to one and not to another; thus
5 Gil, 1969, pp. 115-6.

6 Hort, Sir Arthur, tr. Historia plantaruni (An Enquiry into Plants), vol. 2. London:
William Heinemann, 1916 (GB), p. 291, book IX, chapter 15, 1-2.
200
GREECE
he distinguished between different constitutions, as he thought was right; and he was

clever at observing the differences]
The text demonstrates that he well understood the phenomenon

of tolerance. Notice that neither here nor in other writings is the
phenomenon of habituation considered a problem nor is it ignored;
rather, on the contrary, it is presented as a “familiarity” that destroys the
poison of the remedy. Equally as interesting is that Thraysus was
celebrated as the discoverer of a sweet euthanasia made from “the juices
of hemlock, poppy and other such herbs” and capable of inducing “an
easy and painless” death.8
With regards to general medicine, a text by the Pythagorean
Alcmaeon of Croton (5th century BC) is considered one of the first fully
secularized treatises on the theory of illness:
Health is the equality of rights of the functions, wet-dry, cold-hot, bitter-sweet and the
rest; but single rule (nionarchia) among them causes disease; the single rule of either pair is
deleterious. Disease occurs sometimes from an internal cause such as excess or
deficiency of food, sometimes in a certain part, such as blood, marrow or brain; but these
parts also are sometimes affected by external causes, such as certain waters or a particular
rite or fatigue or constraint or similar reasons. But health is the harmonious mixture of
the qualities.9
This essential confidence in pluralism, evidenced also in politics,

flourishes in the school of Hippocrates, of whom we know almost
nothing but whose teachings are consumed with the task of separating
7 Ihid., IX, 17, 1-2, pp. 305-307.

5 Ihid, IX, 16, 8, p. 303. Such a compound is denominated in the previous section not as
a pharniakon but a thanatophoron (“death-bearer”).
9 Freeman, M, no. 4 (Diels), p. 57.
201
THE PAGAN ERA
cathartic therapy from the transferencial. Scientific medicine is born

when certain healers finally decide to foreswear absolutely magical
religious techniques of transforming evil from one person to another
(model A of the sacrifice). Together with this teaching, Hippocratic
medicine offered instead a variety of techniques and a theoretical though
non-dogmatic system of criteria for diagnosis and treatment. On the
historical level, what is new is the “tacit or express conviction that
something divine in the reality of the world and in all things, call it destiny
or necessity, places fundamental limits upon any magical action.’’‘‘’ This
divine force was named ph)/iii (nature) and justly so as nature has within
itself its own principle that faith in miracles constitutes something midway
between blasphemy against the truth of the world and the swindling of
others. Speaking of epilepsy in On the Sacred Disease, to Hippocrates is
attributed the following thought:
And they who first referred this disease to the gods, appear to me to have been just such
persons as the conjurors, purificators, mountebanks and charlatans now are, who give
themselves out for being excessively religious, and as knowing more than other people.
Such persons, then, using the divinity as a pretext and screen of their own inability to
afford any assistance, have given out that the disease is sacred, adding suitable reasons
for this opinion, they have instituted a mode of treatment which is safe for themselves,
namely, by applying purifications and incantations, and enforcing abstinence from baths
and many articles of food which are unwholesome to men in diseases.11
10 Laín Entralgo, 1982, p. 23.

11 Adams, Francis, transl. The Genuine Works of Hippocrates, vol. II. New York, NY:
William Woods and Co., 1886, p. 335, from //classics.mit.edu; “They added a plausible
story, and established a method of treatment that secured their own position” (Jones, W.
H. S., transl. Hippocrates, vol. II. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959, p.
141, “The Sacred Disease,” para. II).
202
GREECE
For Hippocrates and his disciples the physical universe is an end

to be accepted in and of itself, without the necessity of the deforming lens
of superstition or the delirium of persecution; gods and spirits are barred
from being the cause of illness or cure, while in their stead appear natural,
physical processes addressable through material methods. The paranoid
pretension of the pharmzakós was converted into a program for the
utilization of one kind or another of phármakon, because the Greeks
repudiated the transferencial catharsis as a mix of idiocy and savagery.
Sickness continued to be a form of impurity but the means of purging it
no longer were projective; on the contrary, it was now integrated within
an understanding not dissimilar to that found in the Vedas, opposed to
the abominable practices of fakirs and other mortifiers of flesh.”
1. The Concept of the Phármakon. In Afectiom, the Hippocratic

Corpm describes remedies by their action on the body:
Medicinal potions Uflnimra/éa] which neither evacuate the bile nor the phlegm, should,
introduced into the body, manifest their properties by cooling, heating, drying,
12 “To be in health is the best thing for mortal man; the next best, to be of form and
nature beautiful; the third, to enjoy wealth gotten without fraud; and the fourth, to be in
youth’s bloom among friends.” Taken from Simonides, Esc. At. 7, (Diel); see also
Symonds, A. Studies of the Greek Poets, 3rd edition, vol. I. London: Adam and
Charles Black, 1893 (GB), p. 284, translating a nolia or popular song attributed to
Simonides of Ceos (556-468 BC). Jones adds a preliminary note: “All phenomena, he
[the author of “The Sacred Disease”] says, are both natural and divine. He holds that
epilepsy is curable by natural means, intending, apparently, to imply that it can be cured if
the right remedies are discovered, and not that cures actually did occur” (Hippocrates,
vol. II, p. 133).
203
THE PAGAN ERA
humidifying, contracting or relaxing. The remedy [Dlnirniakon] which brings on sleep

ought to calm the constitution.13
In order to arrive at so secular a definition, the Greeks trod a long path.

In the Odyssey, Helen receives the nepentloes (painless, giving no
pain, or better, canceling any pain) from Polydamna (giving pain in many
ways or, better, to many people),14 a queen of Egypt, where “the earth, the
giver of grain, bears greatest store of drugs [ploa'r7na,éa], many that are
healing when mixed, and many that are baneful.’”5 The text is often badly
translated, as if the poet were saying that some drugs are good and some
bad, forgetting the reference to mixture (/ne/nig/nena)“ and the error in the
translation reveals the conceptual confusion in the translator.
Ploa'r7na,éon means remedy and toxin, not one thing or the other,
but both. The word can also be used figuratively. Pindar, for example,
uses the term in an ode to Epharmostus of Opus who won a wrestling
match in 466 BC: “Again, among the Parrhasian people he was marvelous
to look at, at the festival of Lycaen Zeus, and when at Pellana he carried
13 Littré, Emile. Oeuorer Cointglete: D’Hit_>poerate, vol. VI. Paris: Chez J.-B. Bailliere, 1849
(GB), Des Ajectiont, paragraph 36, pp. 246-7, tr. gwr.
14 Arata, Luigi. “Nepenthes and Cannabis in Ancient Greece,” ]anu.r Head 7(1): 2004, p.
36, / /openpdf.com, partially available at www.janushead.org.
15 Murray, A. T. The Odyssey, with an English translation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1919, book IV, card 219, from //old.perseus.tufts.edu. Compare
Butler: “Egypt, where there grow all sorts of herbs, some good to put into the mixing
bowl and others poisonous” (/ /classics.mit.edu). The Greek transliteration is pnarrnaka —
polla rnen estlola rne/nigrnena polla de lugra.
16 Luigi Arata entertains the idea “of nepenthes as a mixture of plants rather than a single
plant, as has been suggested until now” (lanur Head 7(1): 2004, p. 39, www.openpdf.com,
www.janushead.org).
204
GREECE
off as his prize a warm remedy [pha'rnia,éon] against chilly winds.’”7 The
Hippocratic treatise On the Articulations advises: “In fractures of the ear all
sorts of bandages do harm (F)or it is a good remedy [pha'rnia,éon]
sometimes to apply nothing at all, both to the ear and to many other
cases.”18 At the same moment, drugs [remedies, pharinaka] make up the
philtres of the witches and the entirety of the plant niateria inedica.
Attentively reading Theophrastus, one perceives that the origin of this
concept may be derived from insufficiencies detected in the ideas of the
all-good plant (panákeia) and the all-bad plant (strychnos). The Greeks
understood that all substances partake of both states so that no one of
them can be considered either completely benign or totally harmful.
Homer, for example, uses the same word to name the beneficial potions
of Helen and Agamede as he does for the malign mixtures of Circe.
The toxicity of a substance was defined then (as today with the
LD 50) as a specific proportion between active and lethal dose; no
substance can be properly said to belong only to the innocuous or only to
the poisonous. As will be said much later by Paracelsus, only the dose
makes the poison (sola dosirfacit venenuin). Speaking of the thorn apple, for
example, Theophrastus comments:
Of this three twentieths of an ounce in weight is given, if the patient is to become merely
sportive and to think himself a fine fellow; twice this dose if he is to go mad outright and
17 Pindar, Olympian Odes, Olynipian IX, line 97, from //old.perseus.tufts.edu. “The
prize was a woolen jacket” (Carne-Ross, D. S. M. Yale University Press, 1985 (GB),
p. 16).
18 Adams, Francis. The Genuine Works of Hippocrates, vol. II. New York: William
Woods and Co., 1886 (GB), paragraph 40, p. 113. Littré has: Dans lerfractures de l’oreille,
tous les bandages sont nuisibler c’est par_7‘ois un bon reniéde que de ne rien niettre, aussi bien dans ce
cas que dans beaucoup d’aui‘res (volume IV, pp. 172-173; see also Withington, vol. III, p. 277
in the Loeb).
205
THE PAGAN ERA
have delusions; thrice the dose if he is to be permanently insane; (and then they say that
the juice of centaury is mixed with it); four times the dose is given if the man is to be
killed.1°
The substance itself is a gift of contrary elements and an excess is

consubstantial with all of them; its very therapeutic virtue is to cure by
threatening the organism, as one might disinfect a wound with fire or
repair an injury with a surgeon’s scalpel.” This is a precise and profound
concept, scientific in its foundation with no demonstration of local
prejudice.
Curiously, the first time that the word ph)/iii appears in Greek
occurs in the Odyssey where it is applied to the drug which acts as an
antidote to the potion of Circe which had converted the companions of
Ulysses into pigs: “So saying, /ligeiphontes [Hermes] gave me the herb,
drawing it from the ground, and showed me its nature [P/7)/.fl’.f]. At the root
it was black, but its flower was like milk. Moly, the gods call it, and it is
hard for mortal men to dig; but with the gods all things are possible.”“
Such a useful antidote has been remarked upon from that day to
this, encouraging much speculation. Pliny the Elder notices and names it:
“There is another kind, again, also called halicacabum, which possesses
narcotic qualities, and is productive of death even more speedily than
opium: by some persons it is called morio, and by others moh/.”2‘ Not a
1° Hiitaria Q/antarum, vol. II, book IX, 11, 6, p. 273.

20 “Those diseases that medicines do not cure are cured by the knife. Those that the
knife does not cure are cured by fire. Those that fire does not cure must be considered
incurable” (“Aphorisms,” VII, LXXXVII, p. 217 from Jones’ Hippocrates, vol. IV).
21 Murray, A. T. The Odyssey, with an English translation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1919, book X, vv. 302-5, from //old.perseus.tufts.edu.
22 Bostock, John and H. T. Riley, eds. The Natural Histogg of Pliny. London: Taylor
and Francis, 1855, book XXI, 105 (31), www.old.perseus.tufts.edu. Bostock adds a
206
GREECE
few interpreters have suggested that the drug of Circe must have been a
solanacea,23 and there has been another24 suggestion that the prophylaxis
given to Odysseus by Hermes must have been a psilocybin mushroom
because of the ability of its indolic alkaloids to counter the atropinic
alkaloids of the solanaceas. More recently, some investigators surmise the
may may have been the snowdrop, Galanthus niva/z'x.25 Yet, these
arguments are based upon unnecessary suppositions26 and it is clear that
the Homeric text cannot be deciphered safely.
footnote identifying it with the “P/ayia/2‘: J0/nnzfem of Linnaeus, the somniferous

nightshade.”
23 Sticker, 1938, pp. 18-19.
24 Phillip, 1959, pp. 509-516.
25 Plaitakis, A. “Homer’s fl10_/)/iClCI1LlfiC(l as Galant/am m'1/alis L.: physiologic antidote to
stramonium poisoning,” Clinical Neurop/mmrara/0,gy, March 1983, 6(1): 1-5: “Centrally
acting anticholinergic agents are thought to have been used by Circe to induce amnesia
and a delusional state in Odysseus’ crew. We present evidence to support the hypothesis
that may might have been the snowdrop, Galanthus nil/alis, which contains galanthamine, a
centrally acting anticholinesterase” (www.ncbi.nlm,gov/pubmed/ 6342763).

26 Phillip believes that the drug of Circe was a datura, a plausible hypothesis, and that the
antidote was some variety of teonanáctal, venturing further that the island of Circe (Kir/ée =
azor, hawk) was one of the Azores which could have been in contact with the continents
of the Americas. This is all artifice because at least one kind of these mushrooms (the
family Stropharia mbensis) grows on cow manure and originates in Asia. Allowed to
fantasize, the mfifl that reverses the effects of Circe’s potion might even have been the
Amanita /flmmria because the foot of its stalk always has dark humus adhered to it and its
cap is abnormally white without its red, speckled membrane, that many shamans throw
away before ingesting the fungi. As an aside, in English Homer’s reference seems to
have been the origin of the expression “holy moley,” an expression of surprise first used
in a Captian Marvel comic in 1941.
207
THE PAGAN ERA
2. The Principal Greek Drugs. As has happened with a

large part of the ancient pharmacopeias, many plants and the names of
many drugs are no longer identifiable, sometimes because their botanical
description is insufficient, other times because they are not even described
and still others because of the reserve surrounding artisanal remedies,
frequent between pharmaceutical manufacturers and doctors even today.
Of those that can be identified, black hellebore (Helleborus niger)
and also the white (Veratru/n albu/n) must be mentioned if only because
they seem to have been so popular among the Hippocratics: the physician
of this school “did not fail, when it was desirable to make a more
powerful impression, to administer the white hellebore with a degree of
boldness, which his successors in the healing art were afraid to imitate.”27
The plant is quite toxic, causes convulsions and can kill but the doses and
treatments were carefully specified:
Persons who are not easily purged upward by the hellebore, should have their bodies
moistened by plenty of food and rest before taking the draught. When any one takes
draught of hellebore, one should be made to more about and indulge less in sleep and
repose. When you wish the hellebore to act more, move the body, and when to stop,
let the patient get sleep and rest. Hellebore is dangerous to persons whose flesh is
sound, for it induces convulsions.28
The plant was used by them to cure melancholy, sprinkled on

wounds in medicines like the caricu/n, for malignant ulcers, broken and
protruding bones, to remove tumors, in cases of gangrene, and to induce
27 Adams, Francis, tr. The Genuine Works of Hippocrates, vol. I. London: Printed for
the Sydenham Society, 1849 (GB), p. 20, preliminary discourses.
28 Adams, Francis, tr. The Genuine Works of Hippocrates, vol. II. New York: William
Wood and Co., 1886 (GB), p. 221, Aploorir/nr, sect. IV, nos. 13, 14, 15, 16.
208
GREECE
abortion, though this last was left to their competitors.” It was a

medicine of last resort; for completely dislocated ankle joints, the author
of the Articulations recommends “it does not appear to me that hellebore
will do any good, though administered the same day, and the draught
repeated, and yet it is the most likely means, if any such there be.”30 It is
prescribed often in the treatises Regiinen in Acute Diseases and Epideinics for
defluxions from the head, pains in the side, to open the belly, in cases of
trichiasis, pleurisy, heat in the lower intestine, renal problems and even
cholera.”
Apart from opium, beers and wines, it is known with some
certainty that the Greeks also knew about and used cannabis, henbane and
mandragora, sometimes through the use of medicinal saunas and incense.
As already noted, the “smoke offerings no doubt contained active
ingredients that led to ecstatic states.”32 Dionysus of Halicarnassus (ca. 60
BC – ca. 7 AD) speaks of certain “odors” that provoke a corybantic
[korybantika] furor.” Lucius Apuleius (ca. 125 – 180) defends himself
2° Ihid., pp. 220, 301, 291, 173, 322, 140, 279, in the treatises Aphorirnir, Articulations,
Mochlichus, Ulcers, Heniorrhoids, and Fractures.
30 Ibid., p. 140, sect. 63.
31 Adams, vol. I, pp. 327, 290, 334, 325, 331, Regimen; É. Littré, tr. Oeui/res coniglètes
d’Hippocrate, vol. V, pp. 211, 269, Epideniics, book V, sect. 10, book VI, sect. V, BIUM.
Littré devotes a full page and a half to it in his index to his translation of the Hippocratic
Corpus (vol. X, pp. 628-630).
32 Gil, 1969, p. 387.
33 Estienne, Henri. Opera Oninia: Graece et Latine, vol. 6. Leipzig: in Libraria
Weidmannia, 1777 (GB), pp. 1021-1022, De adniirandi vi dicendi in Deniosthene (On the
Admirable
I am like those
Style of
whoDemosthenes),
are being initiated
section into
XXII;wild
“When
mystic
I take
ritesup...”
one(W.
of his
Rhysspeeches
Roberts.
Dionysus of Halicarnassus: Three Literary letters. Cambridge: At the University Press,

1901(GB), p. 23).
209
THE PAGAN ERA
from a charge of witchcraft by noticing the effects produced by the

burning of various herbs:
You will say that there is nothing in the world, however harmless, that may not be put to
some bad use And yet we do not on that account put a bad interpretation on
everything, though for instance, you should hold that incense, cassia, myrrh and similar
other scents are purchased solely for the purpose of funerals; whereas they also are used
for sacrifice and medicine. Moreover, it is my own personal opinion that the human
soul, especially when it is young and unsophisticated, may by the allurement of music or
the soothing influence of sweet smells be lulled into slumber ....34
Galen (130 – 201 AD) defines the enthusiasmus that takes hold of devotees
during the making of sacred offerings in the temple.” Plutarch (ca. 46 –
120 AD) describes the effects of aromatic herbs on the spirit within a
discussion of the /éjp/7]:
The /éjphi is composed of sixteen ingredients: honey, wine, raisins, sweet-rush, resin,
myrrh, frankincense, seselis, and besides, of calamus, asphalt, thryon, dock, and besides
these of both arceuthids (one of which is called the greater, the other the less), and
cardammis, and orris-root. These are compounded not at random, but sacred books are
read aloud to the perfume-makers whilst they are making the ingredients. (B)ut the
majority of the ingredients possessing aromatical properties send out a sweet breath and
salubrious For things smelt at often call back the failing sense, often on the other
34 H. E. Butler, tr. The Defense (Apologia, section II, parts 32, 43 from www.chieftainsys.
freeserve.co.uk and //classics.mit.edu).
35 Kiihn, D. Carolus Gottlob. Claudii Galeni Opera Omnia, vol. XIX. Leipzig: Cnoblochii,
1830 (GB), VIII Definitiones medicae, CDLXXXVII, p. 462, also available at //web2.bium.
univ-paris5.fr. In Latin: Enthusiasmus efflatio numinis est veluti quum quidam mente in sacris
faciendis capiuntur si qua 1/iderint aut si tympana vel tibia vel signa audiverint.
210
GREECE
hand blunt and stupify the same; their evaporation diffusing themselves through the
body ....36
In antiquity the custom of using pipes only seems to have been extensive
among the Celts but the simpler practice of placing a substance upon
coals or hot rocks was particularly adapted for perfuming temples and
large reunions throughout much of the Mediterranean.
The Greeks also drank a concoction of cannabis with wine and
myrrh, perhaps the so-called resinous wine, in order to animate private
social gatherings,” as already mentioned. The solanaceas were employed
for various purposes, from poisoning to laughter, for analgesia or to
induce sleep, always to be administered carefully.
Finally, one must observe that the ancient Greeks were well
acquainted with the peculiar richness of the ergot of rye in their area and
there are a number of references to the intoxicating power of this plant,
absurd in any other context. One could list the already cited De I0/71710 of
Aristotle and various Latin references including that by Theophrastus that
36 King, Charles William, transl. Plutarch’s Morals: Theosophical Essays. London:

George Ball and Sons, 1898 (GB), De Iside et Osiride (Of Isis and Osiris), LXXXI, pp. 69
70. The Babbit translation can be found at //penelope.uchicago.edu. William Baxter
translates the recipe as: “Kyphi is a kind of a composition made up of sixteen
ingredients, that is, of honey, wine, raisins, cyperus, rosin, myrrh, aspalathus, seseli,
mastich, bitumen, nightshade, and dock: to which they add the berries of both the
junipers (the one whereof they call the greater, and the other the lesser sort), as also
calamus and cardamon” (Clough, A. H. and W. W. Goodwin, eds. Plutarch’s Essaijys
and Miscellanies, vol. IV. Little, Brown, and Co., 1909, p. 137); the calamus may in fact
have been cannabis, with which it has often been confused by various translators over
time, explaining the correspondence between the Moroccan kifand cannabis today.
37 Schultes and Hofmann, 1982, p. 96. See also the word /eyp/J] (Ganszyniec) in Pauly
(vol. XV, 1).
211
THE PAGAN ERA
the Sicilian /nela/np)/ron can be distinguished from the Greek darnel (Loliu/n
te/nulentu/n): “Some kinds [of cereals] are free from darnel, as the Pontic
and the Egyptian Peculiar, however, to the Sicilian is the plant called
/nela/npjron, which is harmless and not, like the darnel, injurious and
productive of headache.”38 Plautus (c. 254 — 184 BC) says in one of his
comedies that a character must have eaten darnel (the Biblical tarex)
because of the effect on his eyesight:
Sceledrus: ‘Tis a wonder that you are in the habit of feeding on darnel, with
wheat at so low a price.
Palaestro: Why so?
Sceledrus: Because you are so dim of sight.39
As well, Pliny the Elder observes that bread prepared with flour
contaminated with darnel causes vertigo, an effect typical also of a small
initial dose of entheogenic alkaloids:
The seed of darnel is extremely minute, and is enclosed in a prickly husk. If introduced
into bread, it will speedily produce vertigo; and it is said that in Asia and Greece, the
38 Hort, Historia plantaruni (An Enquiry into Ple1Lts), vol. 2, p. 291, book VIII, chapter 4,
6, p. 193 (GB).
39 Riley, Henry Thomas. The Comedies of Plautus, vol. I. London: George Bell and
Sons, 1889 (GB), Miles Gloriosus (The Braggart Captain), Scene VI, p. 85, emphasis Riley.
Riley adds a footnote: “He means to say that his sight must have failed him, and, by way
of accounting for it, that he must have lived on bread made of darnel. This grain was
supposed not only to cause the person eating to appear as if intoxicated, but very
seriously to affect the eyesight. Ovid says in the Fasti, B. I, 1, 691, ‘Let the fields, also, be
clear of darnel that weakens the eyes.’”
212
GREECE
bath-keepers, when they want to disperse a crowd of people, throw this seed upon
burning coals.4°
Botanic investigations demonstrate that the Greek mainland contains one

of the least toxic of all the varieties of this fungus known on the planet,
and it is more than probable that some drug makers used various plants
parasitized by ergot to obtain drugs of great activity, related to the amide
of lysergic acid, one of which some say could have been the Homeric nidl .
3. Myths and Therapies related with Opium. None of these

drugs ever acquired the popularity comparable to that of opium and wine
in the Greek world.
a. Myths. One debatable legend describes how Asclepius (the

Greek Esculapius), god of medicine, was struck with lightning by Zeus for
daring to reveal to mortals the secret of the virtues of the poppy (inefiéon),
until then the privilege of the Olympians.“ The city that will later come
to be called Sicyon was originally Mekone in the time of Hesiod, the city
where Prometheus deceives Zeus,“ named probably for its poppy
40 Bostock,john and Riley, H. T., eds. and transls. The Natural Histo1_"y of Pliny, vol. IV.
George Ball and Sons, 1890 (GB), Book XVIII, chapter 44, p. 57. See also //old.
perseus.tufts.edu.
41 The tradition is suspect because of later interpolations and it cannot be confirmed in
the extraordinary source of data of Pauly, whose articles Mohn and Ariélepior contain
nothing even similar. The legends tell moreover that Asclepius was struck down for
raising Hippolytus from the dead and accepting gold for it. Other legends appear as
European additions from the XVII and XVIII centuries when physicians were
unanimous in considering opium as a divine gift. The first mention shows up in the
Histoi_y of the Plants by K. Sprengel (article Nepenther), a text from 1813.
42 White, Hugh G. Evelyn. Hesiod: The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an
213
THE PAGAN ERA
plantations where we know the plant was widely used domestically. The
goddess Hecate, mother of Circe, cultivated it in a shadowy garden
guarded by Artemisia; as much on the mainland as in the Greek colonies
the poppy was cultivated in gardens and orchards and this allowed a rapid
self-supply through a simple infusion of the capsules (the traditional
“calming tea” of Spanish campesinos) in case of accident or episode of pain.
The poppy was also a symbol of fecundity” and accompanies
Demeter in many depictions. Married women with children conjured up
pregnancy with broaches, pins and amulets in the shape of poppy heads.
From this perhaps comes the association of opium with carnal love seen
in the legend that lovers must rub between their fingers the petals of the
poppy in order to determine by the cracks the future of their
relationship.” Equally well known is the ability of opium to prolong
coitus, preventing male premature ejaculation.
b. Medical use. The foremost therapeutic institutions of the

ancient Greeks were the temples of Asclepius, attended by priest
physicians (the caste of Asclepius). In the oldest Greek hospital of which
English translation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1920 (GB), p. 119,
Theogony, line 535: “For when the gods and mortal men had a dispute at Mecone, even
then Prometheus was forward to cut up a great ox and set portions before them, trying
to deceive the mind of Zeus.” See also Hamilton, H. C. and W. Falconer, transls. '%
Geography of Strabo, vol. II. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1856 (GB), p. 66, Book VIII,
Casaub 382: “Sicyon was formerly called Mecone, and at a still earlier period, Aegioli. It
was rebuilt high up in the country about 20, others say, about 12, stadia from the sea,
upon an eminence naturally strong, which is sacred to Ceres.”
43 Linnaeus calculated that a single head or capsule contained 30,000 seeds and that
germinating all of the seeds from all of the capsules from a single plant would be enough
to seed the entire planet and cover with petals the entire land surface of the earth.
44 Aparicio, 1972, p. 105.
214
GREECE
Figures 48 and 49. Reliefs from the temple

of Asclepius in Epidaurus (c. 350 BC). Left,
the god of medicine. Above, visitors arrive at
the temple-hospital bearing gifts.
we have memory, the sanctuary of

Asclepius in Epidaurus, the first treatment administered to a patient upon
his entry was to hide him away in the dormitory and provoke the inmbatio
(temperate sleep) while requiring cleansing baths and purges, complete
fasting during the day and abstinence from wine for three days
beforehand.” Porphyry (c. 245 – 345) visited the site:
In Epidaurus, therefore, there was the following inscription on the doors of the temple:
Into an odorous temple, he who goes
Should pure and holy be; but to be wise
In what to sanctity pertains, is to be pure.“
45 Gil, 1982, vol. I, p. 287.

46 Taylor, Thomas. The Selected Works of Porphry. London: Thomas Rodd, 1823
(GB), p. 58, De abstinentia (On Abstinence from Animal Food), Book II, 19; see also
www.animalrightshistory.org.
215
THE PAGAN ERA
With luck, the god would appear to the patient in dreams and
priest-physicians would then interpret these dreams to find a regimen that
might cure the illness. In Epidaurus, there is much personal testimony to
the use of opium for afflictions of the eyes and in surgery, but it is
debatable whether or not the priests of Asclepius used psychoactive drugs
in the incubatio. The question probably cannot be resolved with any
certainty but there are various clues that must be taken into account in any
discussion of this sleeping cure.
The first is the antiquity of the procedure whose antecedents can
already be found in the Hittite empire and the Babylonian from the
second millennium BC, where the use of opium was extensive. The
second is the therapeutic results achieved, as much for causing sleep
without delay to patients many times afflicted with serious illnesses as for
producing pleasant dreams; if this does not imply an hypnotic analgesic, it
must imply divine (as the pagans believed) or satanic (as the Christians
thought) intervention or phenomena of magnetism, autosuggestion, or
hypnosis. The third clue is that Epidaurus (and perhaps other temples of
Asclepius) had a pictorial representation of Metloe (ebriety), the nymph of
drunkenness and companion to Dionysus, or so Pausanias” testifies, and
as wine had been denied the visitor for at least three days prior to the
cure, this suggests the possibility of a modification of the patient by some
47 “But beyond the temple there is a place in which those that supplicate the god sleep.
and in a building not far from hence there is a painting, too, of Intoxication, by the same
person, who is represented drinking out of a glass cup; and you not only perceive the
glass cup in the picture, but through it the countenance of a woman. In my day there are
six left of the stone tablets standing in the enclosure, though there were more in
antiquity. The names of men and women healed by Asclepius are engraved on them,
with the diseases and how they were healed” (Taylor, Thomas. The Description of
Greece by Pausanias, vol. I. London: Priestley and Weale, 1824 (GB), pp. 197-198).
216
GREECE
other pha'rnia,éon. But the fourth and perhaps most revealing indication are
the declarations of witnesses who describe the temperate sleep as a
wakeful sleep,” completely different from the deep stupor induced by the
solanaceas or the visionary trances induced by cannabis and visionary
alkaloids, in other words an exact description of the effects of opium.
This hypothesis is accepted by a number of historians of medicine, though
in some cases they recur to other drugs or to unlikely optical
phenomenon.” Otherwise, it’s clear that the institution in itself (whatever
were the methods employed) was linked to magical arts and possession by
an oracular spirit, who revealed the hidden to the needy.
On less hypothetical ground, the therapeutic use of the white and
black varieties of poppy seed shows up in the Hippocratic Corpus:
48 Aelius Aristides took the cure at the sanctuary in Pergamon (Bergama, Turkey) for
relief from a long-term illness and relates: “One listened and heard things, sometimes as
in a dream, sometimes as in waking life” (Van der Plas, Dirk. Effigies dei: Essays on the
history of religions. Leiden: E. Brill, 1987 (GB), p. 49); “(O)ne was between sleeping
and waking, one wanted to open one’s eyes ...” (Dodds, E. The Greeks and the
Irrational. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1951 (GB), p. 113); Or. panat.,
XLVIII, 31 ff Iamblichus (250 – 325 AD) describes it this way: “The dreams, however,
which are termed God-sent, do not have their origins in the way which thou describest.
On the contrary, either when sleep is leaving us and we are beginning to awake, it
happens that we hear a brief expression in regard to things to be done; or it may be that
the voices are heard during the period between being awake and asleep, or when we have
become entirely awake” (Wilder, Alexander. Theurgia or the Egyptian Mysteries by
Iamblichus. New York: Metaphysical Publishing Company, 1911 (GB), p. 110, De
mysteriis Aegyptioruni, III (Origin of the Art of Divination), VII, 2). Almost all the
testimonies preserved on the treatment offered at Epidaurus begin with the “creation (or
so it must have seemed) of a dream” (Deubner, 1900, p. 15, in Gil, 1969, p. 359).
49 Taffin, 1960, pp. 326-336.
217
THE PAGAN ERA
Poppy [seed] is binding, the black more than the white, but the white also. It is
nourishing, however, and strengthening. Of all these seeds [sesame, cucumber, hedge
mustard, clary, linseed, poppy, etc.] the juices are more laxative than their substance.50
The white poppy, and sometimes the red, can be found in a number of
treatises in the Corpus, most often in recipes to help with the health
problems of women, in conditions termed uterine suffocation or bloody
discharge:
When there is a bloody discharge, grind up an equal quantity of the rinds of white and
red poppies and the fruit of the blackthorn (acacia) in wine thinned with water, add fresh
polenta and drink it. If you like it better, place a pomegranate under the ashes and drink
it in wine, after having thrown in equal parts flour of barley and wheat.“
It is known that the Greeks often attributed hysterical ailments to

perturbations caused by sexual repression, prefiguring the Freudian thesis,
and it does not cease to be curious that opium was considered an ideal
medicine for confronting the consequences of remaining chaste while
palpitating with lust. Within the framework of the patriarchal society of
58 Jones, W. H. S. Hippocrates, vol. IV. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,

1959, p. 317, “Regimen,” book II, paragraph XLV; the distinction between seed and fruit
(capsule) is still not clearly defined in this era.
51 Littré, De la Nature de la Femme, vol. VII, paragraph 15, p. 333, tr. gwr. Originally:
Quand ily a leumrrhée, pilez quantité égale d’e'r0rce de pavot blanc et de pal/at rouge, pilez le fruit de
l’épine (acacia) dans du vin coupe’ d’eau, ajoutez de la polenta fraîche, etfaites boire; si vous aimez
mieux, mettez une grenade sous la cendre, etfaites-la boire dans du 1/in, aprèsy a1/oirjetépartie efgale de
farine d’o@e et de ble'. See also Des Aflections Internes (vol. VII, pp. 197, 267, sections 12, 40),
De la Nature de lajemme (vol. VII, pp. 357, 389, 393, 399, sections 32, 44, 50, 58), Des
Malades detfirmmes, book I (VIII, pp. 121, 133, 229, sections 50, 60, 64) and book II (vol.
VIII, pp. 245, 253, 261, 269, 325, 373, 387, 399, sections 113, 117, 119, 124, 149, 201,
206) and Du régime dans les maladies aigues (vol. II, pp. 519, 527, sections 30, 39).
218
GREECE
the Greeks, the Hippocratics mention poppy juice (opox mekonox, mekonion)
most often for female complaints, making the drug the valium of its day.
For contrast, Hippocrates (or one of his disciples) recommends henbane,
hellebore and mandrake as remedies for strong fevers.”
From this moment forward, the references to opium are constant.
One could say that those who least widely recommend it are the very
same Hippocratics, whose tendency is to cure letting the p/2)/xis work alone
and with a minimum of pharmacopoeia; other schools show no such
confidence in the ability of the body to heal itself. In the IV century BC,
Diocles of Caristo (c. 335 -280 BC) writes a Rhizotomzléon or treatise on
medicinal herbs, Herophilus of Chalcedon calls drugs the “hands of god,”
and Erasistratus (304 – 250 BC) euthanizes with opium.53 The systematic
use of opium for conditions as distinct as hysteria and surgery probably
begins in the third century BC with the sect of the empirics, also called the
materialist monists, led by Heracleitus of Tarentum, one of the physicians
of Phillip the Second, father of Alexander the Great. The empiric school
borrowed heavily from their predecessors, the r/aizoto/nos (literally, the
cutters of roots), especially an interest in all kinds of psychoactive plants,
whether for therapeutic or voluptuous purposes.” Heracleitus, some say,
“was the first to use opium to calm any kind of pain and to bring on
52 Littré, vol. 7, Des Malades, Book II, section 43, p. 61; see also Adams: “When narcotics
were indicated, he [Hippocrates] had recourse to mandragora, henbane, and perhaps to
poppy juice” (The Genuine Works of Hippocrates, vol. I, p. 17). Of course, these are all
completely distinct botanical species. The poppy is of the family Papal/eraea whose
principle psychoactive alkaloids are codeine and morphine. The solanaceas have tropinic
alkaloids, chiefly atropine and scopolamine; the first are analgesic and the second
hallucinogenic. However, in small doses the solanaceas can be used as local analgesics
and in higher doses as hypnotics.
53 Sigerist, 1949, pp. 25-53.
54 Leonzio, 1971, p. 109.
219
THE PAGAN ERA
sleep,”55 in agreement with its habitual purpose in Asia Minor, later

consolidated under Islam.
c. The idea ofa universal antidote. The pharmacological

knowledge gained from long clinical experience with opium is the origin
of the theriaca tradition and the first Western treatises on toxicology.
Although the five pharmacological books of Heracleitus were lost, the
tradition of a medicine like the one he foresaw comes to fruition with
Nicander of Colophon (second century BC),56 who expounds upon all
kinds of practical questions. In his judgment, tebaico opium can be lethal
at two drachmas (some seven grams) ingested for the first time by
someone not familiar with the drug, though the dose certain to produce a
definitive poisoning is three drachmas. He also lists remedies for
involuntary intoxication.57 The juice of the poppy is the prototype of the
alexiploarvnaka or protective medicines; much later Paracelsus will call
opium heroic because it can refrigerate the organism up to the point of
making it succumb, and due to this ability it serves to confront any form
of excessive heat, in agreement with the principle contraria contrariis curantur.
From the second century BC, Hellenic medicine becomes
fascinated by the idea of a compound, the tloeriaka or theriaca, capable of
immunizing a person against any kind of toxin. The only ingredient
55 Eloy, N. F. Dittionnaire loirtorigue de la /nedetine, vol. II. Mons, Belgium: Chez H.

Hoyois, 1778, p. 493, from www.bium.univ.paris5.fr: C ’est .2 lui qu’on attrilrue le prernier
urage de l’Opiuni dan: lintention de talnier lei douleur: et deproeurer le to/nrneil.
56 Nicander wrote a very long poem entitled Tlaeriaka, translated for the first time into
Latin by Esteve (Nitandri Colopnonii poetae et rnedieini antiquirri/ni tlarirsi/nique Tl7€7id£et,
Valencia, 1552) and another shorter and more useful, the Alexzpnarrnaka.
57 Schneider, Johann Gottlob. Theriaca. Leipzig: Gerh. Fleischeri Ivn., 1816 (GB), pp.
35-38, vv. 851 and 934-958, for example.
220
GREECE
common to the vast majority of all of these theriacas, along with hemlock
and aconite employed in homeopathic doses and an interminable diversity
of other vegetable, animal and mineral substances from which the chemist
might choose, is opium. The search for such a universal antidote, which
appears to be connected to the very high frequency of poisonings in the
ancient world, will receive an important boost from Mithridates the Great
(120 - 63 BC), who as monarch used slaves and criminals as guinea pigs
and dedicated much effort to producing a medicine capable of protecting
him against any toxic substance. The result of such investigations (his
inithridaticuin) seems to have been a success, because the tale is that by
consuming them periodically he tried vainly to commit suicide with
poison at the hour of his defeat and had finally to turn to the sword of a
Gaul mercenary. Though Greek pharinacopolae had already described the
phenomena of individual tolerance to and antidotes for a given drug,58 it is
safe to say that no one before Mithridates had undertaken such an
extensive and meticulous experimental project to increase that tolerance
and find a universal antidote for every poison. His investigations did not
perish; the library was brought to Rome by Pompey in 62 BC as part of
his booty and served as a foundation for the later work of Scribonius
Largus, Dioscorides and Pliny, whose works encapsulated the knowledge
of the ancient niateria inedica.
55 Besides Thraysus, it was also known to both Eudemus and Eudemus of Chios, or so
records Theophrastus: “Eudemus, the vendor of drugs drank a quite moderate dose,
and it proved too strong for his power of resistance; while the Chian Eudemos took a
draught of hellebore and was not purged. However, this man was able to hold out
because he had provided himself with an antidote It was then by this antidote that
Eudemus was able to contain himself in spite of the large quantity of hellebore which he
took” (Hort, pp. 305-307, Hist. pl., IX, 17, 2-4).
221
THE PAGAN ERA
By way of summary, opium was for the Greeks the perfect

example of the laic pha'rma,é0n, equally a panacea and a simple poison.
Every medical school used it, and from the political decline of Athens it is
the medicine most studied in the Mediterranean basin. During a period of
five centuries, from its first listing as a treatment for headaches in
Herodotus to the investigations of Mithridates the Great, there is not a
single mention of persons enslaved or bewitched by its use. Neither is
there any mention of social evils associated with using it. Absolutely no
one considers a person administering opium to himself or to others to be
degraded or a threat to the civil order so long as both know and consent.
As the Arabs will declare much later, the habit of taking the substance not
only is not prejudicial in itself but is favorable for one’s health (of course
so long as it is kept within the dosis required of other drugs or of food,
generally) because by taking it one becomes familiar with something
which could otherwise be dangerous or might make too strong an
impression.
Figure 50. Vase, painted by Exequias,

representing the mystical voyage of
Dionysus to Greece.
222
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B. Entheogenic Drugs
This peaceful use of opium does not mean that the Greeks did not
recognize the problems associated with a general toxicomania nor that
their culture was fundamentally foreign to disputes created by the
presence of socially and individually disruptive drugs.
1. Dionysus and the Orgy. Though the ethyl alcohol pathology

had from antiquity been considered the model of stupefaction and
spiritual enervation,59 until the tragedy, Barr/Jae, by Euripides, we don’t
have preserved a generalized analysis focused upon the fundamental
dynamic of prohibition.60 This theme of temperance by decree was also
addressed by Aeschylus and other Greek tragedists but their works have
since been lost and their dramas were staged when the orgiastic rites of
59 Hesiod wrote: “Such gifts as Dionysus gave to man, a joy and sorrow both. Who ever
drinks to fullness, in him wine becomes violent and binds together his hands and feet, his
tongue also and his wits with fetters unbreakable: and soft sleep embraces him” (Evelyn
White, Hugh G. Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns and Homerica. London: William.
Heinemann, 1914, p. 211, “The Catalogue of Women and Eoriae,” sect. 87). Heracleitus
of Ephesus (c. 500 BC) likened alcohol intoxication to being guided by a child: “A man
when he has become drunk is led by a mere stripling, stumbling, not knowing where he
walks, having his soul moist. A dry soul is wisest and best” (Jones, Hippocrates, vol. IV,
p. 493, “On the Universe,” numbers LXXIII and LXXIV).
60 “Scholars have argued about it for centuries, variously reading it as a clash of Asian
and Hellenic cultures, a battle of ego and id, and a study in the tenacious hold of the
primitive in the face of an imposed modernity The only consistent interpretive thread
in this production has to do with the societal repression of women ...” (Brantley, Ben.
“God vs. Man in an Open-Air Fight,” The New York Times, Tuesday, August 25, 2009, pp.
C1, C5). Significantly, contemporary critics and theatre directors do not see in the play
the obvious interpretation of the follies of prohibitions.
223
THE PAGAN ERA
Bacchus-Dionysus were in Athens and the cities of the League of Delphi

not only an authorized but an official cult monopolizing several weeks of
public celebrations every year.‘” But Dionysus was, like the Vedic Soma, a
plant god belonging to a transition cult between the archaic and the
civilized, whose consolidation could not avoid conflicts with civilized
demands. Though by the fifth century BC the officialization and
ritualization of its mysteries had moderated the explosive character of the
ceremonies, Euripides knew through his journeys to Macedonia the
violence that could arise when these celebrations collided with the law.
He narrates in the form of a parable the vicissitudes that accompany the
appearance, persecution and triumph of wine that
releases wretched mortals from grief, whenever they are filled with the stream of the
vine, and gives them sleep, a means of forgetting their daily troubles, nor is there another
cure flduirnia/éon] for hardships. He who is a god is poured out in offerings to the gods,
so that by his means men may have good things.62
His treatment fluidly interlaces a theological question, an historical event

like the commercial distribution of alcohol, and even more important the
complex framework of move and countermove that any dry law provokes.
61 In December the processions of the Great Phallus and the masked parades took place;
in January the Bacchic leneas, in March the Antesterias and in April the so-called Grand
Dionysiacs.
62 The Tragedies of Euripides, //old.perseus.tufts.edu, verses 280-285. Way: “there is
none other balm filoarniakon] for toils” Euripides, vol. III, p. 27, verse 283. Buckley, T.
A.: “nor is there any other medicine [ploarrnakon] for troubles” (The Tragedies of
Euripides, vol. I. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1850 (GB), p. 255).
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a. The dynan11'cs of the shadows and the law ofthe day. The
tragedy Bacchae of Euripides shares certain parallels with the Antigone of
Sophocles. The tyrant-king (Pentheus/Creon) defends an apparently
sensible norm that in reality violates a natural law. The rules of tragedy
can and must demand a scene of repentance. But Euripides is more
psychological than Sophocles and along with a song of redemption he
offers an examination of the mechanism that millennia later Freud will call
“the return of the repressed.” The succession of scenes depicts with
implacable logic how an initial hypocrisy leads to a catastrophe foretold
from the beginning by its own repression. Without modifying this order,
I will limit myself to highlighting the subtle chain of events recorded by
Euripides.
The play begins with a lack of respect for the plant god on the part
of the city and its inhabitants.“ To be exact, they deny he is a nephew of
65 Especially on the part of Pentheus: “Now Cadmus gave his crown and royal estate/
To Pentheus, of another daughter born,/ Who wars with Heaven in me, and from
libations/ Thrusts, nor makes mention of me in his prayers” (Way, Arthur. “The
Bacchanals,” verses 43-46, in the Loeb Euripides, vol. III, 1925, p. 9). Following Rohde,
many Hellenists agree that Dionysus is a Thracian or Phrygian god, although later,
Mycenic inscriptions from the thirteenth century BC were discovered with the name di
wo-ni-sojo (Otto, 1993). According to tradition, he is returning from Asia after defeating
the Amazons, whose rigid matriarchy is identical, and by coincidence opposed, to the
ultra-vigilant patriarchy then in Thebes. Nor can he be considered a new deity due to his
archaic roots in a radical primitivism of phallic rites and forest magic. The religious
message he incarnates is a threat as much to the patriarchal table of values as to the basic
civic rationality (in the psychoanalytic sense of being filtered through an immediate
censor) which both Creon and Pentheus represent. Basic in each of their characters is
not so much patriarchy in the abstract as faithful service to an incipient nationalization
(reasons of State) and a capacity for submitting the common law to every kind of abuse,
ironically underlining the irreducible singularity of local custom.
225
THE PAGAN ERA
Agave, Ino and Autonoe, though these are the sisters of his mother,
Semele; they deny he is a first cousin of the regent, Pentheus, although
Pentheus is the son of Agave; and they deny that he is the son of Zeus.
In reality, they deny the ecstatic religion that he represents, a promise of
orgiastic fusion between the individual and the group, the visible and the
invisible, life and death, the virile and the feminine, delirium and the
supreme light. Directly confronting the provincial reasoning of the State
and the virtues of urbanity (routine, fear, price), Dionysus embodies a
universal religion of flora, sap and sperm, invoking pleasure and offering
each the possibility of temporarily suspending his strict, personal identity.
Figure 51. Greek vase decorated with Bacchic motifs.

The bacchantes, intoxicated with
wine, dance in ecstasy.
226
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This negation of ecstasy by the State immediately produces a

pathological symptom,“ and it is precisely those who seek to avoid any
contact with the god of drunkenness who fall completely under his spell.
The women of the royal family and other Thebans, young, old and
maidens, desert their social duties and go off to the woods. There they
throw off their clothes and like troglodytes cover themselves with skins of
roe deer and celebrate bacchanals, enthusiastically singing and dancing at
all hours in a return to animality:
Young wives, old matrons, maidens yet unwed.

First down their shoulders let they stream their hair:
Then looped they up their fawn skins, - they whose bands
Had fallen loose, - and girt the dappled fells
Round them with snakes that licked their cheeks the while.
Some cradling fawns or wolf-cubs in their arms,
Gave to the wild things of their own white milk, -
Young mothers they, who had left their babes, that still
Their breasts were full.“
The appearance of these symptoms sets in motion the trial of a

cure. But in this cure the same ambivalence can be observed that caused
the symptoms and the initial denial. In fact, two cures, diametrically
opposed to each other, are proposed. One is that of the prudent old
people of Thebes, Cadmus and Teiresias, who propose to accept as nature
(p/2)/xis) what had been denied and to recognize in this plant god a
‘*4 Such as might be found in an hysterical abomination of copulation in which one

cannot sleep without peering under the bed (an unconscious search, Freud will say, for
the rapist) or like a refusal of any kind of sex though unable to clear one’s mind of
obscene fantasies.
65 Way, Arthur. Euripides, vol. III, “The Bacchanals,” verses 694-702, pp. 59-61, Loeb.
227
THE PAGAN ERA
permanent element of human existence. The only sensible men of the

city, the two old men render homage to Dionysus. Confronting them
appears Pentheus, imposing a kind of therapy in the form of a politics of
intimidation and incarceration. He speaks in the name of health and
public decorum:
It chanced that, sojourning without this land,

I heard of strange misdeeds in this my town,
How from their homes our women have gone forth
Feigning a Bacchic rapture, and rove wild
O’er wooded hills, in dances honouring
Dionysus, this new God – whoe’er he be.
And midst each revel-rout the wine-bowls stand
Brimmed: and to lonely nooks, some here, some there,
They steal, to work with men the deed of shame,
In pretext Maenad priestesses, forsooth,
But honouring Aphrodite more than Bacchus.
As many as I have seized my servants keep
Safe in the common prison manacled.
But those yet forth, will I hunt from the hills –
Ino, Agave, who bare me to Echion,
Autonoe withal, Actaeon’s mother.
In toils of iron trapped, fall soon shall they
Cease from this pestilent Bacchic reveling.
Men say a stranger to the land hath come,
A juggling sorcerer from Lydia-land,
With essenced hair in golden tresses tossed,
Wine-flushed, Love’s witching graces in his eyes,
Who with the damsels day and night consorts,
Making pretence of Evian mysteries.
If I within these walls but prison him,
Farewell to thyrus-taboring, and to locks
Free-tossed; for neck from shoulders will I hew.
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Is not this worthy hanging’s ruthless doom,

Thus to blaspheme, whoe’er the stranger be?“
Applied to any non-alcoholic drug, the deliberations of Pentheus

would be understood today as completely logical and inspired by the well
being of the public good. Yet, his speech proposes a cure seeded with
incongruencies that Euripides observes with irony: the stranger he would
decapitate is a simple, shameless mortal yet he works portentous miracles
like converting all the domestic Thebans into companions at an orgy; the
stranger is effeminate yet possesses an immeasurable sexual magnetism
for the opposite sex; and the stranger can be put in prison but not a plant
that grows naturally in the fields, the renewable fruit of Mother Earth. If
the denial of the aphrodisiac cure provokes in women something
appearing to be hysteria followed by disinhibition, in the government it
evokes something more akin to a prosecutorial delirium. Like the
paranoiac, Pentheus is motivated to seek an aggressor who he can
persecute in self defense but he is incapable, also like the paranoiac, of
compassion for the one he pursues who (as Euripides will show) is as
much inside him as the abhorred bacchantes. The answer of Teiresias to
the speech of Pentheus is that no one can flee from his own shadow:
1*‘ Way, verses 215-247, pp. 21-23. It is striking that the protection of the female
persuasion from unscrupulous seductors and purveyors of drugs should be the
justification most often wielded in modern prohibitionist campaigns. As if the
sociopolitical mechanism staged by Euripides were historically indisputable, it will be
precisely adolescents of the female sex in Spain who in the 1970s will massively support
the use of certain psychedelic drugs in a climate of liberation through music, return to
nature and open eroticism. The speech of Pentheus finds a perfect correlation in the
Curso nionorafico solire drogas nocivas, edited by D. G. of the Guardia Civil [the federal police
of Spain, notoriously corrupt] where cannabis is “an epidemic and an aggressive threat
leading to uninhibited and repugnant incidents of promiscuity” (1969, p. 33).
229
THE PAGAN ERA
Figure 52.
Statue of a drunken satyr.
Two chiefest Powers,

Prince, among men there are: divine Demeter –
Earth is she, name her by which name thou wilt; -
She upon dry food nurtureth mortal men:
Then followeth Semele’s Son; to match her gift
The cluster’s flowing draught he found, and gave
To mortals, which gives respite from grief to men
Woe-worn, soon as the vine’s stream filleth them.”
But Pentheus has decided to substitute

the transferencial ritual-murder of the
pharmakós for the ritual ingestion of the
pha'rma,é0n at the celebratory sacrifice-banquet;
.. he refuses to listen either to the discourse of
Teiresias or to that of his uncle Cadmus, though he pardons them by
virtue of their age, contenting himself with overthrowing the seat of
augury of the blind seer.68 When he is ready to capture Dionysus, who
has been brought to the palace, Teiresias asks him one last time to
reconsider his attitude, with a thoughtfulness that defines the Greek spirit:
Pentheus, heed thou me:

Boast not that naked force [krátos] hath power o’er men;
Nor, if it seem so to thy jaundiced eye,
Deem thyself wise. The God into thy land
67 Way, “The Bacchanals,” verses 274-281, p. 25.

68 Verses 345-350, Way, vol. III, p. 31. Teiresias says to Pentheus: “Most grievous is thy
madness, and no spell/ May medicine [phármakon] these, though spells have made thee
mad” (Way, verses 326-327, p. 29).
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Welcome: spill wine, be bacchant, wreathe thine head.

Dionysus upon women will not thrust
Chastity: in true womanhood inborn [nature,p/J)/sei]
Dwells temperance touching all thing evermore.
This must thou heed; for in his Bacchic rites
The virtuous-hearted shall not be undone.“
Figure 53. Stele with an ecstatic

bacchante holding sword and the
hindquarters of a small fawn.
The coming of the god to the palace and

the vain attempts by the regent to arrest him
unleash a dementia. Confused and vacillating,
intoxicated by the presence of the stranger,
Pentheus can find no other solution than to go in
person to the wild places in order to observe the
bacchantes as close as he can, literally undercover,
disguised as a maenad because his servants have
told him that the women possess an
unconquerable physical force that is capable of
overcoming any kind of aggressive animal or
human. This part of the drama is theatrically the
apogee of the work with a sardonic and tranquil
“Q Way, verses 309-318, pp. 27-29. See also “(D)o not boast that sovereignty [/ém'z‘0.r] has
power among men Dionysus will not compel women to be modest in regard to
Aphrodite, but in nature [D/y/rel] [modesty dwells always] you must look for that” from
//old.perseus.tufts.edu; “Dream not that force is power In them it lies,/ And their
own hearts” (Murray, Gilbert. The Bacchae of Euripides. London: George Allen and
Unwin Ltd., 1920 (GB), p. 21).
231
THE PAGAN ERA
Dionysus and a Pentheus who is led, dressed as a travesty in women’s

clothes, to the nether world. But as dementia carries with it grotesque
fear, this fear unfolds in a massacre where the sacrificer is sacrificed.
Pentheus will be discovered by his mother and aunts who, ignoring his
supplications, claw him to death and devour him raw. At this moment
lucidity returns to the women who contemplate with horror their own
work.
The tragedy closes with a song of redemption (the palinodia) given
by the chorus. The god has punished impiety and the wise understand
that evil comes from pretending to usurp legitimate rights; criminal acts
and death expiate the denial of a part of oneself that only death can erase.
Dionysus-Bacchus is pacified with periodic public ceremonies that
suspend the urban routine. The orgiastic drunkenness is recognized and
domesticated at the same time, transformed into a religious ritual, and the
vanity of political power dedicated to mere repression will be periodically
abolished in the ecstasy of a community festival.70
Such is the teaching of Euripides and doubtless of other Greek
tragedists who staged now-lost dramas of the sad history of Pentheus
(whose name etymologically is “repentance”), the governor who wished to
impose sobriety in the name of an ever more fragile order while ignoring
the permanent prerogatives of the underworld. The Greek illustration
teaches an unexpected lesson to posterity that any drug may comfort the
70 M. Nilsson observes that “the Greeks took the sting out of the Dionysian rites by
including them in the lists of official rituals” (1969, p. 31). Dodds (1980, p. 254) adds
that “channeling this hysteria into a ritual ..., the Dionysian cult was contained inside its
limits and acted as an inoffensive escape valve To resist Dionysus is to repress the
elemental in one’s own nature; the punishment is the complete collapse of internal dikes,
where the elemental opens a passage by force and civilization disappears.”
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wise but it will as surely punish the insensate with dementia as it will their
paranoid persecutors:
There be many shapes of mystery.

And many things God makes to be,
Past hope or fear.
And the end men looked for cometh not,
And a path is there where no man thought.
So hath it fallen here.71
b. Drinkers of water and drinkers of wine. Together with the

political masterstroke of the religious domestication of wine, the Greeks
also addressed the connection between ethyl alcohol ebriety and
inspiration“ in a polemic between oinopotai (drinkers of wine) and
hydropotai (drinkers of water). This is basically a dispute between literary
styles, and not all those faithful to the water of the Muses could be said to
be abstemious. But the argument merits a brief mention.
A number of the great Greek lyric poets (Archilochus, Alcaeus,
Anacreonte) sang without reserve of the fermented juice of the vine as a
vehicle for artistic illumination and among the dramatic authors the
situation was closely analogous. Some traditions suggest Sophocles
reproached Aeschylus for not knowing what he wrote, though he wrote
well, because he composed his works in a state of drunkenness.
Epicarmus of Kos (c. 500 BC) thought lyric poetry incompatible with
sobriety and Simonides of Ceos (c. 556 – 468 BC) believed the same with
regards to comedy. Disagreement arose during the spread of the doctur
71 Murray, p. 82, verses 1388-1392. “And the things that we looked for, the Gods deign
not to fulfill them;/ And the paths undiscerned of our eyes, the Gods unseal them./ So
fell this marvelous thing” (Way, verses 1390-1392, p. 121).
72 Gil, 1967, pp. 171-176.
233
THE PAGAN ERA
poeta program promoted by Callimachus and Theocritus (both third

century BC), where creation resulted from purely formal effort, viscerally
opposed to the enthusiastic. As Callimachus selected the water of the
Muses for his cult and sought poetry that extolled it, the enemies of this
orientation took advantage of his symbol to speak disparagingly of the
hydropotai as lovers of empty forms, foreign to the heat of true inspiration.
Carrying their criticism to the extreme, a number of poets challenged the
abstemious to drink a toast to authenticity in honor of the virile poets like
Homer, declaring their horror of the cold and mannered drinkers of
water. The polemic continued later in Rome where the greatest lyric poets
(Ovid, Horace, Catulus) were inclined with little hesitation to the stimulus
of one or another form of ebriety for the sake of poetry.
Without attempting to mediate the literary and symbolic
arguments of the past, it seems that the Greeks habitually debated the
question: Could wine damage a well-fortified wisdom or not? Plato’s
Socrates, for example, resisted without alteration any dosis while the
Stoics thought that the wise would never need drink. As a result, two
traditions arose. One side, connected with the mythographers tells how,
after being defeated by Hera, the god of wine took his revenge by
inventing the Bacchic transports and dances of delirium, bringing wine to
mankind in order to make him mad.” The other defended its virtues for
the achieving of ecstasy” but also for ethical and therapeutic ends.” In
73 “The other story implied that wine was given man out of revenge, and in order to
make him mad; but our present doctrine, on the contrary, is, that wine was given him as
a balm” (Jowett, vol. V, Laws, Book II, p. 52).
74 “He hath no shame thereby./ A prophet is he likewise. Prophecy/ Cleaves to all
frenzy, but beyond all else/ To frenzy of prayer. Then in us verily dwells/ The God
himself, and speaks the thing to be” (Murray, p. 20); “A prophet is this God: the Bacchic
frenzy/ And ecstasy are full-fraught with prophecy:/ For, in his fullness when he floods
234
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the Ig, which is largely devoted to this theme, Plato has his Athenian
defend wine as a substance that can teach “the habit of courage and
fearlessness”76 and that “it permits the soul to acquire modesty and the
body good health and energy.”77 Those accustomed to high doses will
find it difficult to understand how Plato could think that intoxication with
ethyl alcohol could defend us from recklessness and contribute to the
acquisition of modesty. Yet Plato’s idea was that in his rational utopia
wine would be properly administered so as to teach these very qualities:
Are not the moments in was g ve are apt to be bold and shameless such as these? —
when we are under the influence of anger, love, pride, ignorance, avarice, cowardice? or
when wealth, beauty, strength and all the intoxicating workings of pleasure madden us?
\What is better adapted than the festive use of wine, in the first place to test and in the
second place to train the character of a man, if care be taken in the use of it? What is
there cheaper, or more innocent?78
our frame,/ He makes his maddened votaries tell the future” (Way, “The Bacchanals,”
verses 298-301, p. 27); “Blessed is he who, being fortunate and knowing the rites of the
gods, keeps his life pure and has his soul initiated into the Bacchic revels, dancing in
inspired frenzy over the mountains with holy purifications, and who, revering the
mysteries of great mother Kybele ...” (Bacchae, verses 73-80 from perseus.tufts.edu); see
also Murray (GB), p. 11.
75 Plato has his Athenian say: “Let us not then simply censure the gift of Dionysus as
bad and unfit to be received into the State. For wine has many excellences ...” (Jowett,
Benjamin. The Dialogues of Plato, vol. V, third edition. Oxford: At the Clarendon
Press, 1892 (GB), p. 51, Laws, Book II, 672).
>s
76 “But vol.
(Jowett, now,V,asp.the
28, habit
Il, of courage
Book I). and fearlessness is to be trained amid fears
77 “... in order to implant modesty in the soul, and health and strength in the body”
Qowett, vol. V, p. 52, Laws, Book II).
78 Jowett, vol. V, Ii, Book I, pp. 28-29.
235
THE PAGAN ERA
Hippocrates also recommended getting drunk occasionally but neither he

nor Plato denied the calamity of the habitual drunk or the abstinence
syndrome (deliriu/n tre/nens) that followed a too-quick retirement from the
substance by those who had previously overindulged. The lg however
proposes a path midway between Pentheus and Teiresias:
Shall we begin by enacting that boys shall not taste wine at all until they are eighteen
years of age; afterwards they may taste wine in moderation up to the age of thirty, but
while a man is young he should abstain altogether from intoxication and from excess of
wine; when, at length he has reached forty years, after dinner at a public mess, he may
invite not only the other Gods, but Dionysus above all, to the mystery and festivity of
the elder men, making use of the wine [remedy, pnarnrakon] which he has given men to
lighten the sourness of old age; that in age we may renew our youth, and forget our
sorrows; and also in order that the nature of the soul, like iron melted in the fire, may
become softer and so more impressible.79
Wine and other substances were already related with some of the
more fundamental Greek institutions. Using the Bacchic mysteries as an
example, one might think that the Greek world secularized practically
everything, with few exceptions. Though Socrates and the schools that
followed him denied the efficacy of any material sacrifice offered to the
gods, those engaged in certain rituals linked to profound modifications of
the soul (such as the gift of prophecy, the Dionysian cult and other
ecstatic initiations) would never admit that their vegetable hosts were
merely prosaic in nature. A people so proud of being able to examine
freely into the nature of all things has in this field left us a collection of
enigmas, prophetic trances and mysterious initiations. A dialog between
Pentheus and Dionysus serves as an introduction:
79 Jowett, vol. V, p. 44-45, Laws, Book II.
236
GREECE
P—Ay, of what fashion be these mysteries?

D—‘Tis secret, save to the initiate.
P—What profit bring they to his votaries?
D—Thou mayst not hear: yet are they worth thy knowing.
P—Shrewd counterfeiting, to whet lust to hear!
P—Cam’st
D—His ritesthou
loathe
the him
first that
to bring
worketh
his godhead
godlessness.
hither?
D—All Asians through these mystic dances tread.

P—Ay, far less wise be they than Hellene men.
D—Herein far wiser. Diverse wont is theirs.
P—By night or day dost thou perform his rites?
D—Chiefly by night: gloom lends solemnity.
P—Ay – and for women snares of lewdness too.
D—In the day too may lewdness be devised.
P—Now punished must thy vile evasions be.
D—Ay, and thy folly and impiety.3°
Figure 54. The oracle

stone in the ruins of the
sanctuary of Apollo at
Delphi.
50 Way, “The Bacchanals,” verses 471-490, pp. 39-41.
237
THE PAGAN ERA
2. The Oracle of Apollo. The sanctuary of Delphi, symbol of

Hellenic unity, was said to have been erected over a natural chasm on
Mount Parnassus in honor of Apollo, a son of Zeus, who like the Vedic
Indra had triumphed over a dragoness [Python]:
Whosoever met the dragoness, the day of doom would sweep him away, until the Lord
Apollo, who deals death from afar, shot a strong arrow at her. Then she, rent with bitter
pangs, lay drawing great gasps for breath and rolling about that place. An awful noise
swelled up unspeakable as she writhed continually this way and that amid the wood: and
so she left her life, breathing it forth in blood.81
One etymology suggests the slowly decomposing corpse of the

monster snake named the place and the oracle: “(W)herefore the place is
now called Pytho [rotten] because on that spot the power of piercing
Helios made the monster rot away.”82 Ovid envisioned the defeated,
rotting serpent as : “spread so far athwart the side of a vast mountain, 1783
Parnassus. The defeat of a monster represents the victory of invaders
over an autochthonous cult, in this case “the Achaeans’ capture of the
Cretan Earth-goddess’s shrine.”4’1 It was followed by a reconciliation that
was celebrated in the same Delphic sanctuary. The agreement between
81 Evelyn-White, Hugh G. Hesiod, Homeric Hymns and Homerica. London: William.

Heinemann, 1920 (GB), p. 349, “Hymn to Delian Apollo,” vv. 334-360.
82 Evelyn-White, 1920, “Hymn to Delian Apollo,” vv. 361-387.
83 Ovid, Metamorphoses, tr. More, Brookes. Boston: Cornhill Publishing, 1922, book I, vv.
438 ff: “Unwilling she created this enormous Python. – Thou unheard of serpent spread
so far athwart the side of a vast mountain, didst fill with fear the race of new created
man. The God that bears the bow destroyed the monster till envenomed gore
oozed forth from livid wounds” from www.theoi.com.
84 Graves, Robert. Greek Myths, 1960, p. 10, www.slideshare.net/star3salonica/robert
graves-the-greek-myths-1462503.
238
GREECE
Figure 55. Attic relief, fifth century BC.

The Pythia enters into an oracular trance.
the subterranean powers [Poseidon,

earth-shaker] and the celestial gods
culminated in the oracular gift of the
P)/I/aoniia or P)/I/aia.
For comparison, a more
prosaic description of the founding
of the sanctuary arrives via Diodorus
Siculus:
It often happened that when any goat came

near to the gulph, and looked down, it would
fall a-leaping and dancing in a wonderful
manner, and make an unusual noise, far
different from that at other times. A
shepherd wondering at the novelty of the
thing, drew towards the place to learn what
might be the cause; and looking down, he
acted the same part with the goats: for as
they were moved and acted upon as by some
enthusiasm, so he likewise was inspired with
a spirit of prophecy.85
As at Eleusis and in early

Christian churches, the temple at
Delphi was a variation on the cavern
85 Booth, G. The Historical Libraijy of Diodorus the Sicilian, vol. II. London: Davis,
1814 (GB), p. 101, book XVI, ch. VI.
239
THE PAGAN ERA
(antron) where the light never came from ground level but from above. In
the case of the Delphic sanctuary, Apollo also represented serene
harmony, the perfect ratio sought by mathematicians and the vital”
understanding in the creed “know thyself.”‘” One can add sexual
connotations, more striking in light of the fact that Delploji means womb
and the enclosure was a Il0777tl0.f meaning mouth or vagina. In the center
was the o/nploalos (navel), situated above a fissure (eloai/na) from which
emanated, according to ancient writers, vapors that could make one
drunk.
The earliest descriptions of the divinatory trance have the P)/tloia
dictating the predictions of Apollo once a year” in an ecstatic trance in the
ad)/I077 (do not enter), the inner sanctum in the basement of the temple,
after a preparation involving being seated upon a tripod over a that/na
86 On the antithetical attributes of Apollo, Heracleitus of Ephesus advises: “They

understand not how that which is at variance with itself agrees with itself. There is
attunement of opposite tensions, like that of the bow and the harp” (Jones, Hippocrates,
vol. IV, p. 485, “On the Universe,” no. XLV (see also LVI, p. 489), Fr. 51, Diels).
87 At his trial, Socrates defends himself by appealing to the authority of the oracle of
Delphi: “Well, Chaerephon, as you know, was very impetuous in all his doings, and he
went to Delphi and boldly asked the oracle to tell him whether anyone was wiser than
I was, and the Pythian prophetess answered, that there was no man wiser. (B)ut the
truth is, O men of Athens, that God only is wise; and by his answer he intends to show
that the wisdom of men is worth little or nothing And so I go about the world,
obedient to the god, and search and make inquiry into the wisdom of any one, whether
citizen or stranger, who appears to be wiser in utter poverty by reason of my devotion
to the god” Qowett, B. The Dialogues of Plato, vol. I. New York: Random House,
1920 (GB), pp. 404-406, “Apology”).
88 “Originally the oracle delivered its pronouncements on an annual basis, the day chosen
for the event being the seventh day of Bysios, Apollo’s birthday” (Salt, Alun and
Efrosyni Boutsikas. “Knowing when to consult the oracle at Delphi,” Antiquiy 79
(2005), p. 565 quoting Flacèliere 1965: 39).
240
GREECE
from which emanated the pneuina, (spirit or breath), while chewing laurel
leaves and drinking water from a holy spring:
The place where the oracle is delivered, is said to be a deep hollow cavern, the entrance
to which is not very wide. From it rises up an exhalation D5fl€tt”tct] which inspires a divine
frenzy: over the mouth is placed a lofty tripod on which the Pythian priestess ascends to
receive the exhalation, after which she gives the prophetic response in verse or prose.
. . . so
The prose is adapted to measure by poets who are in the service of the temple.
The procedure was not without risk. Sometimes the trance of the
prophetess was converted into something resembling a “bad trip.”
Plutarch, who resided at the site as one of the chief priests, tells the story
of what happened to one such Pythia:
She went down into the hole against her will; but at the first words which she uttered,
she plainly showed by the hoarseness of her voice that she was not able to bear up
against so strong an inspiration (like a ship under sail, oppressed with too much wind),
but was possessed with a dumb and evil spirit. Finally, being horribly disordered and
running with dreadful screeches towards the door to get out, she threw herself violently
on the ground, so that not only the pilgrims fled for fear, but also the high priest
Nicander and the other priests and religious which were there present; who entering
within a while took her up, being out of her senses; and indeed she lived but few days
after.”
59 Hamilton, H. C. and W. Falconer. The Geography of Strabo, vol. II. London: Henry
G. Bohn, 1856 (GB), p. 117, book IX, ch. 3, para. 5. Compare the description given by
Euripides’ Ion: “On the tripod most holy is seated the Delphian Maiden/ Chanting to
children of Hellas the wild cries, laden/ With doom, from the lips of Apollo that ring./
Unto Castaly’s silvery-swirling spring/ Pass ye ...” (Way, Arthur S. Euripides, vol. IV.
London: William Heinemann, 1922, p. 13, Ion, verses 91-96).
90 Clough, A. H. and Goodwin, William W., eds. Plutarch’s Essays and Miscellanies, vol.
IV. Boston, MA: Little, Brown, and Co., p. 63, “Why the Oracles Cease to Give
241
THE PAGAN ERA
On the other hand, the role of prophetess carried with it great

prestige: “No seer or diviner stood higher. No voice, civil or religious,
carried further. No authority was more sought after or more influential.
None. She quite literally had the power to depose kings.”91 This is even
more significant in light of the subordinate position of women in
patriarchal Greek society generally and the absurd contradiction that
female petitioners had to put their questions through male intermediaries
to this highest of Greek authorities, a woman.”
How she was selected for the office is still unclear. At the height
of Greek civilization during the fifth and fourth centuries BC, she was a
woman “of high social standing, cultivated and discerning” though by
Plutarch’s day she was as she had been originally, “brought up in the
home of poor peasants” with little education or experience of the world, a
condition he blames for the lack of ability of the P)/thia of his day to speak
in rhyme:
(H)ow is it possible to make a grammarian of one that never knew his letters In like
manner it is impossible the Pythian priestess should learn to speak learnedly and
elegantly; for, though it cannot be denied but that her parentage was virtuous and honest,
and that she always lived a sober and a chaste life, yet her education was among poor
laboring people; so that she was advanced to the oracular seat rude and unpolished, void
. 93
of all the advantages of art or experience.
Answers (De P)/thiae Orarulu.r),” translated by Robert Midgley and Coll. Med. Lond Cand.,
paragraph 51, 438b—c; the Loeb translation can be found at / /penelope.uchicago.edu.
°1 Broad, William The Oracle: The Lost Secrets and Hidden Message of Ancient
@pp. New York: Penguin Press, 2006, p. 11.
92 Broad, p. 13.
93 Broad, pp. 33-34; Clough and Goodwin, eds. Plutarch’s Miscellanies and Essays, vol.
III. Boston, MA: Little, Brown, and Co., 1909, “Wherefore the Pythian priestess now
242
GREECE
According to Plutarch, in the beginning only virgins were selected:
For as it is the opinion of Xenophon, that a virgin ready to be espoused ought to be

carried to the bridegroom’s house when she has seen and heard as little as possible; so
the Pythian priestess ought to converse with Apollo, illiterate and ignorant almost of
every thing, still approaching his presence with a truly and pure virgin soul.94
Diodorus Siculus wrote that though this may have been true at one time,
in his era the so-called virginity of the Oracle was merely symbolic:
But it is said, that of latter times one Thessalus Echecrates, coming to the oracle, upon
sight of the virgin prophetess, for her admirable beauty, fell in love with her, and
ravished her; which wicked act caused the Delphians to make a law that no young virgin
for the future but a grave women of fifty years of age (in a virgin’s dress, to keep up the
memory of the ancient mode in divination) should preside, and return the answers.”
It also seems that the people of Delphi were unwilling to entrust the
lucrative business of prophecy to any particular woman, instituting an
interpreter-priest (male) to record her words and a number of other (male)
priests to sacrifice animals and operate the institution.% As well, at the
height of its fame, there were three oracles, not one: “(\X/)hen Greece
became populous and full of towns, they had two women prophetesses,
ceases to deliver her oracles in verse,” translated by John Philips, pp. 92-93, sections 21
22.
94 Clough and Goodwin, eds., vol. III, 1909, pp. 93-94.
95 Booth, G. The Historical Library of Diodorus the Sicilian, vol. II. London: Davis,
1814 (GB), pp. 101-102, book XVI, ch. VI, section 26.
96 Broad, pp. 38-40.
243
THE PAGAN ERA
who went down one after another into the cave. Moreover, there was a
third chosen, if need were; whereas now there is but one ....”97
Nor was the inspiration of the oracle constant and unchanging,
but instead her ability varied over time:
(T)ell me the reason wherefore now the Pythian prophetess no longer delivers her
oracles in poetic numbers and measures. (O)f necessity one of these things must be
true, either that the Pythian prophetess does not approach the place where the deity
makes his abode, or that the sacred vapor that inspired her is utterly extinct, and its
efficacy lost.98
Plutarch had noticed that the exhalation “which comes out of the ground
is not always of the same kind, being at one time slack, and at another
strong and vigorous.”” He even suggested what he calls the principal
cause for this variation in the divinatory exhalation:
The same we must say of the prophetical exhalations which spring from the earth, that
their virtue also is not immortal, but may wax old and decay; or else (which I look
upon to be the principal cause) they are sunk lower into the earth or utterly destroyed by
the shock of earthquakes and the confusion that attends them, as here in this place there
still remain the tragic monuments of that great earthquake that overthrew the city.100
As with the shrine at Epidaurus to Asklepios, Dionysus was also

honored at Delphi:
97 Clough and Goodwin, eds., vol. IV, p. 12, tr. Robert Midgley et al.
98 Clough and Goodwin, eds., vol. III, p. 86, para 17 of “Wherefore the Pythian Priestess
Now Ceases to Deliver Her Oracles in Verse,” translated by John Philips.
99 Clough and Goodwin, eds., vol. IV, p. 61, para 50.
100 Clough and Goodwin, eds., “Why the Oracles Cease to Give Answers,” p. 54, para.
44.
244
GREECE
The oracle spoke only nine months of the year. In wintertime, from November through
February, when blizzards and high winds could blow across Parnassus, when springs
could freeze, Apollo left Delphi and the Pythia no longer made proclamations on his
behalf. Instead, Apollo’s rowdy young brother, Dionysus, took control of Delphi,
and his devotees joined him in orgiastic rites. His coming meant the spiritual refuge
now had two very different masters, one representing light and reason and life; the other
darkness and ecstasy and rebirth.101
Again, this connection between the two very different gods supposes (but
certainly doesn’t prove) some other pha'rnia,éon may have been present
when wine was not.
Though the Stoics and Peripatetics attributed the enthousiarinos of
the Pythia to sacred vapors,102 scholars of the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries only spoke of solanaceas or cannabis, due perhaps to
references in Euripides’ Ionm or to Plutarch’s description of the effects of
various kinds of incense, such as the kyphy, a substance which influenced
the body so as to acquire
a temperament conducive to sleep; and without the disorders of drunkenness, as it were,

it loosens and unties, like a sort of knots, the doziness and intenseness of the thoughts by
daytime; and the fantastic part and that which is receptive of dreams it wipes like a
mirror and renders clearer, with no less efficacy than those strokes of the harp which the
Pythagoreans made use of before they went to sleep, to charm and allay the distempered
and irrational part of the soul.104
101 Booth, p. 40fl

102 Dodds, 1980, p. 96, n. 71.
103 “To the roof-ridge of Phoebus the fume of the incense of Araby burning/ As a bird
taketh flight. Bower-maidens, ye which keeping watch the altar-steps beside/ Of the
incense-clouded fane, your master’s coming forth abide ...” (Way, vol. IV, pp. 13, 51, Ion,
W. 88-90, 510-512).
104 Clough and Goodwin, eds. Plutarch’s Essays and Miscellanies, vol. IV. “Of Isis and
245
THE PAGAN ERA
With the beginning of the twentieth century and the contemporary

attitude toward drugs, these opinions were voiced less frequently.
Wilamowitz considered it an Hellenic invention, an opinion reiterated
throughout an account of the French excavations of the sanctuary by the
influential classicist Oppé, who denied the existence of any chasm, holy
spring or intoxicating vapor.105 The long-suffering scholar T. K.
Osterreich proved that the Pythia was not drugged because part of the rite
consisted in the chewing of laurel leaves and he chewed a great quantity of
them without achieving anything other than a distinct case of
indigestion.106
While Plato and Aristotle spoke of a delirium in the Pythia
comparable, according to the former, to the transports of Aphrodite and
the Stoics and Plutarch insisted upon an enthousiasmos near to rapture,
scholars like M. Eliade were content simply with viewing the entire
ceremony (as with the figures of Apollo and Orpheus, his apostle) as
being charged with “shamanic echoes. 77107 Arguments like these were
Osiris, or of the Ancient Religion and Philosophy of Egypt,” translated by William

Baxter, p. 138, section 81. See also Babbit, (Loeb) vol. V, 1936, p. 189, De Lride et Oiiride,
F 384 B, //penelope. uchicago.edu and the work of archeologist Leicester B. Holland of
1933 opting for the smoke of Cannahi: satii/a, reported in Broad, pp. 100-101.
105 Oppé, A. P. “The Chasm at Delphi,” Journal ofHellenic Studies 24 (1904): pp. 214- 241;
“With regard to the mephitic chasm one can only say that with the best will in the world
the French excavations have failed to find a trace of it” (Oppé, p. 233); “The notion that
any natural gas can create a prophetic excitement is totally erroneous ...” (Oppé, p. 215);
“Such vapours, like all others which issue from the earth, do nothing more to those who
inhale them than suffocate and choke” (Oppé, p. 234). He also denied the existence of a
spring, later found by the same archaeological team. See also Homolle, Theophile.
Exploration Arche'aloique de De'l0i. Paris: Fontemoing et Cie, 1909 (GB).
106 POJ'JOJ'Il0fl, Demoniacal and Other, in Dodds, 1980, p. 79.
107 Eliade, 1980, vol. I, pp. 285-287.
246
GREECE
repeated throughout the twentieth century in any scholarly account of the

subject,108 repudiating a thousand years of descriptions (some of them
first-hand) of vapors, chasms and springs by classical Greek and Roman
authors. Plutarch, for example, describes a perfume emanating from the
a¢_l)/ton:
For the room where those do wait who come for answers from the oracle is sometimes –
though not often and at certain stated times, but as it were by chance – filled with such a
fragrant odor and scent, that no perfumes in the world can exceed it, and this arises, as it
were, out of a spring, from the sanctuary of the temple.109
Yet investigators of the late twentieth century were unable to discover any
such vapor and it was standard scientific orthodoxy to reject the existence
of both 0/aaxma and spring. As with so many others, the subject remained
surrounded with conjecture.
Admitting that the Pythia was someone filled with the god
(enl/aeos), her trance could be explained by self-suggestion, magical arts, a
spiritual faith, or for more material and prosaic reasons, the use of certain
drugs. If a physical agent is supposed as a catalyst for such an ecstatic
trance, such an agent would have to fulfill (at a minimum) the following
criteria: (1) it would need to be capable of causing an alteration in the
spirit of an entheogenic nature (in general, stimulants and depressants
need not apply); (2) it would need to be capable of causing severe distress
and even death in large enough doses; (3) it would have had to have
varied over time; (4) it would have to be local to the adyton in the
sanctuary at Delphi; and (5) it would need to have, at least occasionally, a
108 Dodds, Amandry, Fontenrose, Levin, for example, quoted in Broad, pp. 103-105.
109 Clough and Goodwin, eds. Plutarch’s Essays and l\liscellanies, vol. IV., p. 61, “Why
the Oracles Cease to Give Answers,” translated by Robert Midgley et al., sect. 50, 437c.
247
THE PAGAN ERA
detectable and sweet scent. While cannabis meets conditions one and
five, the difficulty (if not impossibility) of finding a single substance to
fulfill all five conditions is obvious, and for this reason, as well as many
others, the idea of a physical agent as cause of the trance of the P)/tloia was
logically rejected by most investigators.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, however, a
multidisciplinary team led by geologist Jelle Zeilinga De Boer carefully re
examined the site and the original records of the French excavations
nearly a century old. De Boer had been invited by the Greek government
to find sites suitable for nuclear power plants. During a series of visits to
Delphi he identified the exposed face of a limestone fault scarp running
under the ruins of the sanctuary:
(B)y definition, the exposed face marked the junction between two massive blocks of
rock. Such faults lie hidden all over the planet, often extending down miles into the
depths. They originate when monumental stresses build up to the point that something
has to give. The resulting split manifests as an earthquake, during which the blocks slide
past each other.110
On a later visit he uncovered evidence of a series of springs running along

a second fault line intersecting the first. Further, both fault lines (termed
the Delphi and Kerna) intersected under the sanctuary of Apollo:111
We have named this structure the Kerna fault, after the Kerna Spring northwest of the
temple. The location of the fault as it passes under the Temple of Apollo is indicated by
110 Broad, p. 124.

111 Broad, pp. 170, 189.
248
GREECE
an ancient spring house built into the massive foundations, below and just to the south
of the oracular chamber.112
Another geologist, Luigi Piccardi partially confirmed the results: “Our

field analysis confirms that the Delphi fault is the only active fault
affecting the archaeological area. There is no evidence of a Kerna
fault.’”13 He did however confirm that the sanctuary was located directly
above the Delphi fault:
The strongly asymmetric organization of this shrine, the very unusual orientation of the
main temples and lateral positioning of the main altar, supports evidence of an
intentional placement of the buildings directly above the fault trace. This temple and
altar are therefore perfect archaeological seismological markers. They appear to have
been broken by slip on the fault, most probably in the earthquake of 373 B.C.114
A second member of the team, archeologist John R. Hale, reread

the original records of the French excavators and discovered that not only
had the earlier dig uncovered evidence of a spring beneath the temple but
fissures in the bedrock they had attributed to the action of water: “Le roc
firrurépar l’action des eaux (The rock fissured by the action of the waters).”115
Indeed, inspection of the foundations exposed by the French revealed a
number of incongruities:
112 De Boer,j. Z.,J. R. Hale,j. Chanton. “New evidence for the geological origins of the
ancient Delphic oracle (Greece),” Geology, August 2001, vol. 29, no. 8, p. 708.
113 Piccardi, L., et al. “Scent of a myth: tectonics, geochemistry and geomythology at
Delphi (Greece),” Journal ofthe Geographical Sociey, London, vol. 165, 2008, p. 6.
114 Piccardi, L. “Active faulting at Delphi, Greece: Seismotectonic remarks and a
hypothesis for the geologic environment of a myth,” Geology 2000: 28, p. 654.
115 Broad, p. 141.
249
THE PAGAN ERA
First, the inner sanctum is sunken, lying two to four meters below the level of the
surrounding floor. Second, it is asymmetrical: a break in the internal colonnade
accommodates some now vanished structure or feature. Third, built directly into the
foundations next to the recessed area is an elaborate drain for spring water, along with
other subterranean passages. Thus, the temple of Apollo seemed designed to enclose a
particular piece of terrain that included a water source, rather than to provide a house for
the image of the god, the normal function of a temple building.116
Having confirmed the existence of a chasm and the ruins of a

cistern beneath the temple, there remained the problem of the vapors.
But geologist De Boer knew that the limestone beneath the temple had
been laid down on the floor of a gigantic ocean that existed in the
Cretaceous known as Tethys, rich with strata impregnated with the
biological remains of plants and animals, especially plankton:
As these rocky beds grew thicker, the weight of the accumulated sediments pushed them
deeper into the earth and closer to its hot interior. The rising heats and pressures cooked
(“cracked” in the argot of oil geologists) their layers of organic sludge, breaking the long
molecules into simpler hydrocarbons of oil, tar, bitumen, and such gases as methane,
propane, and ethylene. The latter gas is unusual because of its sweet bouquet.117
More specifically, geologic studies of Mount Parnassus showed that
the local geology is dominated by a thick formation of Upper Cretaceous limestone.

Some of its strata are bituminous, having a reported petrochemical content of as much as
20%. Seismotectonic activity increases the porosity and permeability of the rock units
and can heat rock adjacent to faults to temperatures high enough to vaporize the lighter
116 Hale, R., et al. “Questioning the Delphic Oracle,” Siientzfit American, vol. 289, issue
2, August 2003, p. 70.
117 Broad, p. 115.
250
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petrochemical constituents. Sulfur compounds, carbon oxides, and hydrocarbon gases

can then be produced in the fault zones.11s
A third member of the team, geochemist Jeffrey P. Chanton

analyzed samples taken from accumulated deposits of travertine beneath
the sanctuary as well as water samples obtained from the Kerna spring
immediately above it with gas chromatography:
The results of these samples have identified the trapped gases as primarily methane,
ethane, and ethylene. Results showed the presence of methane and ethane in the
travertine deposits with no ethylene detected. Evaluation of the spring water, however,
showed a greater concentration of ethylene than ethane, with 0.3 and 0.2nM/L,
respectively. Ethylene is a significantly less stable molecule than ethane and methane,
and may not have remained intact in the travertine deposits in the proportions that
originally existed.119
The fourth member of the team, toxicologist Henry A. Spiller had

already been studying the effects of hydrocarbon inhalation while
investigating
a hidden epidemic of huffers, kids who have too little money to buy street drugs and
instead get high on such cheap, legal products as glue, gas, solvents, lighter fluid, and so
on – all different kinds of hydrocarbons. The effects could include sensory distortions
. 120
and damage to various organs.
118 De Boer, et al. “New evidence for the geological origins of the ancient Delphic oracle
(Greece),” Geology, August 2001, v. 29, no. 8, p. 709.
119 Spiller, Henry A. et al. “The Delphic Oracle: A Multidisciplinary Defense of the
Gaseous Vent Theory,” Clinical Toximlogy, 40 (2), 2002, p. 192.
120 Broad, p. 203-204.
251
THE PAGAN ERA
Both ethylene and ethane “could ease pain and induce euphoria and
dreamlike states, usually with a physical detachment and a loss of
inhibitions,” very much like nitrous oxide.121 Indeed, ethylene (like
nitrous oxide) had been used in surgery as an anesthetic in the nineteenth
and early twentiethm centuries:
Ethylene is a simple aliphatic hydrocarbon gas (C2H4), with a sweet odor detectable at
700 ppm. It was one of the major inhalational anesthetic gases used in general anesthesia
from the 1930s through the 1970s. Induction of full anesthesia with ethylene occurs
rapidly. In less than 2 minutes after inhalation, levels of ethylene in the brain are capable
of producing full anesthesia. Bourne found ethylene to be approximately 2.8 times as
potent as nitrous oxide or ether.123
But ethylene could not only induce anesthesia in patients but “a sense of
2:124
well-being and even exhilaration, according to early experimenters with
low concentrations of ethylene gas, A. B. Luckhardt and B. Carter:
Experiment 1. —J. B. Carter, reclining, Jan. 21, 1923, held the mask to the face with one
hand and held up the other arm. He was given gas plentifully mixed with oxygen until
121 Broad, p. 205.

122 “The recent discovery and widespread use of ethylene gas in anesthesia has opened a
new field for experimental pharmacology ....” Taken from Kistler, G. H., A. B.
Luckhardt, and R. D. Templeton, “The Pharamacology of Some Ethylene-Halogen
Compounds,” Anestloesia and /lnalgesia, Mar-Apr 1929 (GB).
123 Spiller, et al., p. 193.
124 “A. B. Luckhardt and J. B. Carter have found that a mixture of ethylene and oxygen
possesses marked analgesic and anesthetic properties, without giving rise to a sensation
of asphyxia, but producing on the contrary a sense of well-being and comfort” (Weicker,
Theodore, editor. “Ethylene as an Anesthetic,” Mere/é Report, vol. 32 (GB), October
1923, publ. Merck Co., New York).
252
GREECE
the extended arm wavered. Administration was discontinued. just enough was given to
give a sense of well—being and exhilaration.
Experiment 2. – A. B. Luckhardt reclined and held the mask and extended the arm as did
Mr. Carter. Mr. Carter gave the gas mixture. The arm soon wavered and dropped (in
less than a minute). There were no asphyxial sensations. There was a sense of
contentment and well being.1
However, in further experiments on deeply anesthetized subjects, a

different set of responses was elicited:
A.
Blumenstock
laughed
Carlson
a great laughed
deal
states
before
athat
good
complete
he deal
was atslightly
anesthetization.
the start.
nauseated
This subsided.
Onforrecovery,
several hours
Archer
he talked
after.
C. excitedly
Sudan
and incoherently of his experience. Only after several minutes did his speech assume a
logical tendency. [N. Kleitmann] while recovering from the anesthetic but while still
dazed, vomited up a large breakfast taken several hours previously. B. Carter] went
through a period of excitement in coming out of the anesthesia so that restraint by
holding down the extremities was found necessary. G. Turner passed through a
period of excitement during recovery from the anesthetic.126
De Boer and his colleagues also proposed how the Greeks might
have been able to concentrate the gas in sufficient quantities to induce
altered mental states:
Ethylene has a slight smell that is described as sweet with odor recognition at 700 ppm.
That this odor was detectable in the outer sections of the temple, after diffusion over a
large area, strongly suggests that greater concentrations existed in the enclosed flt_l)lf0I1
where the Pythia sat. The unique setup of the temple at Delphi, with a history of a
125 A. B. Luckhardt and B. Carter, “The Physiological Effects of Ethylene,” journal of

the Anierican MedicalArrociation 80, no. 11 (March 17, 1923), p. 768.
126 Luckhardt and Carter, jAMA, vol. 80, no. 11, p. 769.
253
THE PAGAN ERA
recessed enclosed cell, would tend to concentrate the fumes around the Pythia allowing
for a more significant exposure. Also there is archeological evidence of efforts by the
Greeks to concentrate the fumes by capping the vent and funneling it through a directed
opening. It is suggested that the tripod of Pythia was then placed directly over this
funneled gas jet.127
They speculated that this concentration would likely have varied over time
depending upon seismic activity:
Because of changes in the solubility of calcium in enriched ground water the spaces in
the fault zones would be slowly and inexorably filled with calcite. Such a process would
inevitably clog or close the exit pathways for the trapped gases. To reopen such
pathways brecciation is needed. Such a process commonly results from motion along a
fault. Periodic seismic activity, as has been recorded in the area, is necessary to produce
a ten-century-long venting of gas deposits. Additionally, seismic activity is also probably
responsible for the final silencing of the gas vents and of the oracle. 128
The hypothesis has been widely reported but also carefully

critiqued by Foster and D. Lehoux as lacking evidence to support its
conclusions because (1) the concentration of ethylene was too low to have
caused a trance; (2) the concentration of ethylene drawn from spring
waters 150 km from Delphi is higher than that of the Kerna spring,
though that site shows no oracular shrine; (3) the concentration found is
similar to that found in humans who follow a gasoline powered
lawnmower or are stuck in urban traffic; (4) samples taken today say
nothing of the concentrations or even existence of volatile gases present
2500 years ago; (5) ethylene in a concentration sufficient to produce a
127 Spiller, et al., p. 195.

128 Spiller, et al., p. 192. Breccia is a conglomerate, a type of rock made up of angular
fragments in a solidified matrix, sometimes produced under great heat and pressure.
254
GREECE
trance would be extremely flammable and there is no record of explosions

or fires at the sanctuary; (6) there is no evidence that ethylene and nitrous
oxide intoxications are similar beyond a mild anesthesia; and (7) the team
7
assumed that “like effects imply like causes,’ a logical fallacy known as
petitioprincipii:
For example, a class of undergraduate students might exhibit all of the effects [of the
Pythia]. The undergraduates may be in a trance-like state yet conscious, remain seated,
give answers not obviously connected with questions and recover quickly after class. It is
clearly fallacious to infer from these observations that the class of undergraduates is
suffering from the effects of mild ethylene anesthesia.129
Piccardi also critiqued the work of De Boer. He took twenty

water samples from Delphi and surrounding areas but “no compounds
that originated at depth were found in the springs. ’’130 His team also
analyzed samples of travertine but found it had a “clear meteogene
[shallow] origin. A deep (hydrothermal) contribution, if present, is
negligible suggesting that the shallow hydrological system is isolated
from any system at greater depth.”131 Nevertheless, Piccardi noted CO2,
H2S, NH4 and B in Corinthian Gulf waters “suggesting the existence of
two aquifers, which are probably also present at Delphi. Any connection
(leakage) between these two aquifers could be provided by the seismic
”132
rupture of the Delphi fault during earthquakes. He proposes a
mechanism in which, during a rupture,
129 “The Delphic Oracle and the ethylene-intoxication hypothesis,” Clinical Toxicology
(2007) 45, 85-89, www.erowid.org.
130 Piccardi, et al., 2008, pp. 10, 12.
131 Piccardi, et al., 2008, p. 13.
132 Piccardi, et al., 2008, p. 13.
255
THE PAGAN ERA
gases stored in the deep-seated aquifer and accumulated pockets can rise to the surface.
This is a common process that mainly involves CO2-H2S-rich gases (frequently
associated with methane and radon). The CO2-H2S-rich gas discharges from the
sacred chasm can also explain the psychoactive effects. Medical investigations indicate
that CO2 has an impact on the human brain at concentrations of about 10000 – 15000
ppm by volume, causing dizziness, confusion, and hearing and visual dysfunctions.133
With this hypothesis, Piccardi et al., explains the “rotten” reference in the
Homeric Hymn, and the upwelling of the fumes of hydrogen sulfide and
carbon dioxide as the source of the mantic vapours, while observing that
the “discoloured and reddish appearance of water from some springs
observed after the 1870 earthquake recalls the blood breathed forth by the
Homeric dragoness after her death.’’134 Plutarch’s perfume is written off
as religious metaphor and unreliable.
A third group of investigators has proposed benzene in place of
ethylene for the pneu/na and a fourth carbon dioxide.135 It seems a number
of Greek temples in Asia Minor (now Turkey) were built over toxic vents
or active springs, though only some of them were oracular.136
Divinatory trances are of course distinct from feelings of well
being or anesthesia. It is impossible to deny the contribution of cultural
phenomena and no positivist agenda or geological trigger will be able to
explain away the underlying belief systems, or the sociopolitical and
religious functions of the Oracle. Yet just such a catalyst is clearly being
133 Piccardi, et al., 2008, p. 15.

134 Piccardi et al., 2008, pp. 9, 15.
135 Etiope, G. et al., “The geological links of the ancient Delphic Oracle (Greece): a
reappraisal of natural gas occurrence and origin,” Geology (2006) 34, 821-824 and Higgins,
l\lichael Denis and Reynold. A Geological Companion to Greece and the Aegean.
Cornell University Press, 1996 found in Piccardi (2008) and Hale (2003) respectively.
136 Hale (2003), pp. 70, 72.
256
GREECE
described in the many accounts that have survived of the procedures of

divination at Delphi. More than a millennia and a half later, Plutarch’s
appeal to geology as principal cause appears to be popular once again.
For nearly 2000 years the Pythia consulted with Apollo, symbolic
of the unity of the Greek world. The sanctuary was rebuilt after
earthquakes, invasions and plunderings. But it could not withstand the
onslaught of the newly minted cult of Christianity. Today the springs are
mostly dry, the original chasm is difficult to find, and local reports of
vapors are rare. Julian the Apostate was the last Roman emperor to send
an emissary (in 361 AD) to question the Pythia. She is said to have
replied: “Tell the king, on earth has fallen the glorious dwelling,/ And the
watersprings that spake are quenched and dead./ Not a cell is left the
God, no roof, no cover;/ In his hand the prophet laurel flowers no
1,nOre.>s137
Figure 56.
A vase decorated by Herion (fourth century BC). Triptolemus ascends to Olympus
where he receives from the gods an ear of cereal, water and the receptacle of kykeon.
157 Swinburne, Algernon Charles. Selected Poems, ed. William Morton Payne. Boston,
MA: D. C. Heath and Co., 1905 (GB), p. 80.
257
THE PAGAN ERA
3. The Mysteries at Eleusis. If the Delphic sanctuary had an

incomparable political importance for the Greek world as a symbol of
unity within a plurality, the chief importance of the sanctuary at Eleusis
was spiritual, bringing together the Hellenic civilization as well as a rich
diversity of other rituals that were widely disseminated throughout the
Mediterranean over nearly two millennia.138 Even more than the fall of
Rome, the annihilation of Eleusis by the bishops of the Christianized
Alaric in the year 396 marked the end of the Pagan era.
From very ancient times (some think toward the fifteenth century
BC), well before the composition of the M and Odyssey, the village of
Eleusis, sited on a land-locked bay with an exceptionally rich plain4” only
fourteen miles northwest of Athens,140 had hosted a number of festivals of
“local or national importance (Eleusinia, Thesmophoria, Proerosia, Haloa,
Kalamaia), but the fame of Eleusis was due primarily to the annual festival
138 “Originally it constituted an exclusive privilege of the citizen of Athênai, for whom, as
late as the date of the war of Peloponnêsos, it was regarded as an almost indispensable
obligation. Afterwards the rigour of these precepts was relaxed in practice making
initiation an Hellenic and no longer an exclusively Attic privilege (A)t a still later date
the privilege of the Hellênes was granted to the Romans ...” (Lenorment, François.
“The Eleusinian Mysteries: A Study of Religious History,” part IV, Contemporary Review,
vol. 38 (GB),July-Dec 1880, p. 121).
139 Price, Simon and Emily Kearns, eds. The Oxford Dictionary of Classical Myth and
Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 186, entry “Eleusis.” One tradition
supposes that “Demeter gave the gift of wheat first to the Athenians and taught them
how to prepare it for food, and the Athenians shared the seeds and knowledge of it with
their neighbors, until agriculture spread throughout the inhabited world” (Hansen,
William. Classical Mythology. Oxford: University Press, 2004, p. 147).
140 Carman, Rev. Austine S. “The New Testament Use of the Greek Mysteries,” in
Goodrich, 1893
Bibliotheca (GB),
Sacra, vol.p.50,
616.no. 200, ed. G. Frederick Wright. Oberlin, Ohio: E.
258
GREECE
of the [Eleusinian] Mysteries, which attracted initiates from the entire

Greek-speaking world.”141 The ritual was divided into two groups of
ceremonies: the Lesser Mysteries (consisting of fasting, purification and
sacrifice accompanied by explanations to the pilgrims) celebrated every
year in Aflll7€Il€7i0fl, the month of germination in the Spring, and the
Greater Mysteries originally celebrated only once every five years
beginning on the fifteenth of Boedromion, “close upon the season of
sowing” in the Autumn though “from a time prior to that of Herodotus
the Great Mysteries took place every year, and continued to do so down
to the close of the institution.”142
The Great Mysteries lasted nine days in imitation of Demeter who
wandered for nine days looking for her missing daughter (Persephone):
“Thereafter for nine days did Lady Deo roam the earth, with torches
burning in her hands, nor ever in her sorrow tasted she of ambrosia and
sweet nectar, nor laved her body in the baths.”143 The first part of the
celebration was taken up with various purifications, fasts, processions,
preliminary rites and sacrifices, including those to Asklepios and Iakchos
(Bacchus).144
But the defining moment was the nocturnal initiation ceremony
during which the my/itai wandered about the region with torches. On this
141 Price and Kearns, eds, p. 186. More ancient still were the Mysteries of Samothrace,
those of Andamia and Sabazio. Those of Samothrace had perhaps a Pelasgian and not a
Greek origin.
142 Lenorment, François. “The Eleusinian Mysteries,” part I, Contemporary Review, vol. 37
(GB), pp. 863, 866.
143 Lang, Andrew. The Homeric Hymns: a new prose translation. New York:
Longmans, Green and Co., 1899 (GB), p. 186, “Hymn to Demeter,” vv. 43-62.
144 Lenorment, François. “The Eleusinian Mysteries,” part IV, Contemporary Review, vol.
38 (GB),]uly-Dec 1880, pp. 139, 141.
259
THE PAGAN ERA
night the pilgrims partook of a potion (the kykeon) which was known only
to contain water with barley flour and mint, again in imitation of Demeter:
This evening of mourning ended, like Demeter’s own journeys, by drinking the mystic
kykeon, a drink made of flour diluted in water perfumed with pounded mint. The mystai
thus broke the fast which they had kept all that day, and which they had again to observe
on the [following two days].145
The night time ceremony also included “the touching, tasting and
handling of certain articles contained in a sacred chest [kisté] and a sacred
basket [,éalathooi]’”16 with the formal recitation: “I have fasted; I have
drunk the kykeon; I have taken out of the ,éiste' and after having tasted I
have deposited in the kalathooi; I have taken out of the kalathooi again, and
put back in the ,éiste'.”147 At some point the /nystai
waited with extinguished torches outside the great telesterion in darkness and silence.
\When suddenly the doors were flung open and they were admitted to the brilliantly lit
temple, the contrast was startling and impressive, as it was intended to be.14'3
In the final ceremony, the initiates gathered to witness “the spectacle at

dawn of an ear of corn appearing in the midst of a profound silence,”
145 Lenorment, vol. 38, p. 143.

146 Carman, “New Testament Use of the Greek Mysteries,” 1893, p. 620.
147 Lenorment, François. “The Eleusinian Mysteries,” part IV, Conteniporary Review, vol.
38 (GB),July-Dec 1880, p. 144. “The rockrose [Cists Cyprus], kiths, lends its name to the
“Mystery basket” or, more exactly, a lidded hamper, the kite in Greek; in Latin the cist
/nystic” (Rock, Carl A. P., Blasé Daniel Staples, and Clark Heinrich. The Apples of
Apollo: Pagan and Christian Mysteries of the Eucharist. Durham, NC: Carolina
Academic Press, 2001, p. 52).
148 Carman (1893), p. 621.
260
GREECE
symbolic of the resurrection of Persephone.149 No one has ever known

for sure exactly what took place during these night time ceremonies.
There are a number of versions of the myth as to how the
sacrament of the kykeon came to be celebrated at Eleusis. The Homeric
Hymn relates that the grieving Demeter assumed the form of a widow
seeking employment as a wet-nurse and was welcomed into the palace of
Celeus and Metaneira:
A long time she sat upon the stool without speaking because of her sorrow, and greeted
no one by word or by sign, but rested, never smiling, and tasting neither food nor drink,
because she pined with longing for her deep-bosomed daughter, until careful Iambe
[daughter of Metaneira] – who pleased her moods in aftertime also – moved the holy
lady with many a quip and jest to smile and laugh and cheer her heart.1511
In this version of the myth the smiles and laughter of a new child, Iambe,
help to relieve her sorrow for the loss of her own daughter. Afterwards,
in a second substitution, Demeter taught her hosts the formula for the
kykeon which was then accepted in place of red wine:
Then Metaneira filled a cup of sweet wine and offered it to her [Demeter], but she
refused it, saying that it was not permitted for her to drink red wine; but she bade them
mix meal and water with the tender herb of mint, and give it to her to drink.151
In the alternative152 Orphic Hymn to Demeter, a thing offered is

first refused and only afterwards is her mood lightened. Many of the
149 Carman, p. 622.

150 Evelyn-White, 1920, “Hymn to Demeter,” p. 303.
151 Evelyn-White, 1920, “Hymn to Demeter,” p. 303.
152 “According to Clem. Alex. (Strom. I. 21), the greater part of the Orphic corpus was
composed by various hands in the 6th cent. B.C., although both the hymns and the
261
THE PAGAN ERA
Orphic hymns survive today only in fragments and then only in the
antagonistic writings of the early fathers of the Christian Church. In the
version offered by Bishop Clement of Alexandria (c. second century AD),
for example, it is an old nurse of the palace, Baubo [belly], who offers
Demeter
a draught of wine and meal.153 She declines to take it, being unwilling to drink on
account of her mourning. Baubo is deeply hurt, thinking she has been slighted, and
thereupon uncovers her secret parts and exhibits them to the goddess. Demeter is
pleased at the sight, and now at last receives the draught, - delighted with the spectacle!
These are the secret mysteries of the Athenians!154
Both Clement and Eusebius of Caesarea (who paraphrases him but passes
over the contents of the offered drink), ignore the presence of Iacchus:
She spake, and quick her flowing robes withdrawn

Showed all the secret beauty of her form.
The child Iacchus, laughing, stretched his hand
To touch her tender breasts, and Baubo smil’d;
Then, too, the goddess smil’d with cheerful thought,
And took the shining bowl which held the draught.155
poems were universally believed to be older than Homer” (Hastings, James, ed.
Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, vol. 7. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1915
(GB), p. 42).
153 Butterworth adds a footnote: “The Greek word represents a mixed drink composed
of barley-meal, grated cheese and Iranian wine. The same word is used for the draught
mentioned in the formula of the Eleusinian mysteries” 42).
154 Butterworth, G. W. Clement of Alexandria. London: William Heinemann, 1919
(GB), p. 43, “Exhortation to the Greeks,” Postreptikos, ch. II, 18P.
155 Gifford, E. H. Eusebiou tou Pamphilou Euangelikelt proparai/éeue‘: [The Preparation for the
Gospel], logoi 15, volume 3, part 1. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1903 (GB), p. 65,
262
GREECE
Similarly, the Homeric Hymn to Demeter also ignores the presence of

Dionysus, though his worship played an important part in the preliminary
sacrifices and celebrations before the formal initiation.156
In a later version retold by ardent convert to Christianity Arnobius
(c. fourth century AD), the kjkeon is wine thickened with spelt which the
translators in a footnote describe as “Cinnni, the chief ingredients,
according to Hesychius (quoted by Oehler), being wine, honey, water and
spelt or barley.”157 Both Iambe and Iacchus have completely disappeared
from the hymn and Baubo causes “that part of the body by which women
both bear children and obtain the name of mothers to assume a purer
appearance, and become smooth like a child, not yet hard and rough with
hair: 7;
With these words she at the same time drew up her garments from the lowest [hem],
And exposed to viewfoimata: ingninilan: res,
Which Baubo grasping with hollow hand, for
Their appearance was infantile, strikes, touches gently.
Then the goddess, fixing her orbs of august light,
Being softened, lays aside for a little the sadness of her mind;
ch. III: “Of the secret initiation and cryptic mysteries of their polytheistic delusion.”
Clement cites the Orphic verses as: “This said, she drew aside her robes, and showed/ A
sight of shame; child Iacchus was there,/ And laughing, plunged his hand below her
breasts./ Then smiled the goddess, in her heart she smiled,/ And drank the draught from
out the glancing cup” (Butterworth, 1919, p. 43).
156 “In some way, no one knows clearly how or when, the God of the Vine, Dionysus,
came to take his place, too, at Eleusis, side by side with Demeter It was natural that
they should be worshiped together, both divinities of the good gifts of the earth, both
present in the homely daily acts that life depends on, the breaking of bread and the
drinking of wine” (Hamilton, Edith. Mythology. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Co.,
1942, pp. 55-56).

157 Bryce, Campbell (1871), p. 249, footnote 4.
263
THE PAGAN ERA
Thereafter she takes the cup in her hand, and laughing,

Drinks off the whole draught of cyceon with gladness.158
The classicist Robert Graves combines several of these foundation myths

into one:
While still young and gay, she bore Core and the lusty Iacchus to Zeus, her brother, out
of wedlock On the tenth day, Demeter came in disguise to Eleusis, where King
Celeus and his wife Metaneira entertained her; and she was invited to remain as wet
nurse to Demophoon, the newly-born prince. Their lame daughter Iambe tried to
console Demeter, and the dry-nurse, old Baubo, persuaded her to drink barley-water by a
jest: she groaned as if in travail and, unexpectedly, produced from beneath her skirt
Demeter’s own son Iacchus, who leaped into his mother’s arms and kissed her. “Oh,
how greedily you drink!” cried Abas, an elder son of Celeus’s: Demeter metamorphosed
him into a lizard.159
Those who wished to be initiated and partake of the kykeon swore

on their lives to guard in absolute secrecy the apporloeta (unrepeatable
158 Bryce, Archibald Hamilton and Hugh Campbell. The Seven Books of Arnobius
Adversus Gentes. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1871 (GB), p. 250, Book 5, sections 25,
26. Baubo’s act is known as anasyrrna [lifting up of skirts], part of ritual obscenity also
popular in the Tloeirnoplooria, a three-day celebration to which only women were invited;
forrnatas inguinibus res is coy Latin for “the appearance of [her] sexual organs.”
159 Graves, R. H. The Greek M§gl_1s, illus. edition. London: Penguin, 1981, p. 35,
“Demeter’s Nature and Deeds.” See also www.slideshare.net/star3salonica/robert
graves-the-greek-myths-1462503; Demophoon (voice of the people) is slowly roasted all
night by Demeter in the Orphic version of the myth, separating the mortal from the
immortal or spirit, suspiciously close to a description of an early technique of distillation.
164
GREECE
details)“'0 of the experience, and so they did. The goddess evidently

demanded this from the princes of Eleusis at the very beginning:
Then she went, and to the kings who deal justice, Triptolemus and Diodes, the horse
driver, and to doughty Eumolpus and Celeus, leader of the people, she showed the
conduct of her rites and taught them all her mysteries, to Triptolemus and Polyxeinus
and Diocles also, - awful mysteries which no one may in any way transgress or pry into
or utter, for deep awe of the gods checks the voice.1(‘1
Beyond this vow of secrecy, the criminal laws prescribed severe

punishment for revealing any of the details: “The penalty of death was
enacted for every profanation of the mysteries; the goods of the accused
were also confiscated.”162
The jealous guarding of the secret and the general lack of any testi
mony of betrayal speaks to their authenticity, remembering that among
those who made the pilgrimage to Eleusis were men like Plato, Aristotle,
Pausanias, Pindar, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Cicero, not to mention the
emperors Adrian and Marcus Aurelius, individuals of indisputable sobriety
and intellect, none of them liable to the tricks of swindlers or
superstitions, intimidations or threats. Though it is likely that the number
of those aspiring to initiation increased over time,163 reaching a figure of
150 The Deiiénuniena, Droniena, Legoniena (things shown, done and said) were considered the
essence of the Mysteries and deep secrets (Chambers’s Encyclopaedia, vol. 7. London:
William and Robert Chambers, 1891 (GB), p. 369).
151 Evelyn-White, Hugh G. Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica. London:
William Heinemann, 1920, p. 323, “The Homeric Hymn to Demeter,” verses 470-483.
162 Lenorment, François. “The Eleusinian Mysteries,” part III, Conteniporary Review, vol.
37 (GB), p. 868.
163 Pisistratus and Pericles were the principal expanders of the temple and one could
suppose that the rise of the poleis would have led in the beginning to a certain decrease in
265
THE PAGAN ERA
several thousands every year from the fourth century BC,“’'’ there is no
doubt that for many centuries the Eumolphid priests had the means to
produce in a large number of people an incomparably strong experience,
inspiring respect and gratitude. Such is the testimony of those who
personally attended, suggesting “the undoubtedly miraculous character of
the Eleusinian events.”4""
2. The effect of the ceremonies. They did not engender a religion

like Judaism, Brahmanism, Christianity or Islam. The Eleusinian
Mysteries were allowed only once in the life of each person and the
pilgrims waited many years and sometimes decades to be incorporated
into the groups that would be initiated each year. The priests, who were
members of two families, the Eumolpidae166 and the Kerykes, remained in
the turnout. The essentially pan-Hellenic and ecumenical message at Eleusis must have
run up against the recently premiered civil cults of the city—state. But from the sixth
century BC, successive architectural reforms made to accommodate more and more
pilgrims testify to the growth in the popularity of the ceremonies. Under Pericles, the
temple which functioned as the hall of initiation [telesterien] was “the largest public
building of its time in Greece” (Price and Kearns, p. 186).
164 The orator Aelius Aristides, a man of the second century, relates that the number of
the mystai averaged some three thousand a year in his day: “But you alone of the Greeks
each year hold a national assembly which is inferior to no quinquennial festival and you
receive more people in the precinct of Eleusis than others do in their whole city” (Behr,
C. A. P. Aelius Aristides, the Complete Works: Orations I-XVI. Leiden: E. Brill,
1986 (GB), p. 73, “The Panathenaic Oration,” sect. 373).
165 Otto, 1955, p.20.
166 The mother of Eumolpus was the daughter of Oreithyia: “This Eumolpus they say
came from Thrace, being the son of Poseidon and Chione. Chione they say was the
daughter of the wind Boreas and of Oreithyia” (Jones, W. H. S. Pausanias’ Description
of Greece, vol. I. London: William Heinemann, 1918 (GB), p. 203, vol. I, ch. 38, para.
2; see also //old.perseus.tufts.edu,). One of her companions was Pharmakeia (“the use
266
GREECE
the sanctuary without maintaining any relations with the initiates. There
was no creed to believe in and so, no dogma beyond the telling of an
ancient story.197 There was no administrative organization in the cult
outside of the ceremonies themselves and no one was invited or obligated
to be initiated. Nevertheless, for over a millennia and a half, kings and
courtesans, commercial traders and poets, slaves and men of high position
and wealth came to Eleusis. At the base of the rite was a promise of
immortality,“’9 though not of an ethical kind as with Christianity where the
of drugs’), nymph of a well with poisonous powers: “I might have a rational explanation
that Orithyia was playing with Pharmacia, when a northern gust carried her over the
neighboring rocks” (Jowett, Benjamin. The Dialogues of Plato, vol. I. New York:
Random House, 1920 (GB), p. 235, Phaedrus, 229c at //old.perseus.tufts.edu).
167 The mythic nucleus of the tale, beautifully told in the Homeric hymn, are the
adventures of Demeter, goddess of fertility, after the rape of her daughter Persephone by
Hades, god of the underworld. Taking refuge in the court of the king of Eleusis,
Demeter decrees a general plague of sterility: “(F)or now she plans an awful deed, to
destroy the weakly tribes of earth-born men by keeping seed hidden beneath the earth,
and so she makes an end of the honours of the undying gods” (Evelyn-White, “Homeric
Hymn to Demeter,” vv. 350-354). The compromise to avoid this catastrophe was that
Persephone would pass two-thirds of the year above ground, flourishing beside her
mother, and one-third, winter, in the depths of the earth with her husband-rapist Hades.
The agreement is celebrated with the institution of the Mysteries. This theme, in
versions modified by the Sumerians and other ancient civilizations [on the Assyrian
Babylonian version, see Escohotado, 1978, pp. 13-18] exposes the beginnings of the
intellectual revolution represented by the Neolithic. Its content is the mysterium magnum,
the very process of life that gives fruit, is then hidden in the earth and disappears, only to
resurge in the Spring, flourish and continue the cycle.
168 Sophocles wrote: “Thrice happy they, who, having seen these rites,/ Then pass to
Hades: there to these alone/ Is granted life, all others evil find” (Plumptre, E. H.
Sophocles: Tragedies and Fragments, part II. Boston: D. C. Heath and Co., 1902 (GB),
p. 177, Fragment 719). Compare the Homeric “Hymn to Demeter:” “Happy is he
267
THE PAGAN ERA
entry into heaven or hell is often based upon conduct exhibited in the
earthly sphere, but within a framework oriented more toward the kind of
death and mystic rebirth parallel to that promised by the Indo-Iranian
to/na-loao/na. According to Pindar, regarding the mysteries of Eleusis:
“Blessed is he who hath seen these things before he goeth beneath the
earth; for he understandeth the end of mortal life, and the beginning (of a
new life) given of god.”162
Christianity and other follower religions teach a belief in
immortality with logical arguments or the pretence of such, though mostly
thanks to the strength of a faith that believes in things that cannot be
perceived. Something like that is, of course, impossible to reliably predict
or induce within a ritual that begins and ends in a few hours or even days,
without some kind of external stimulus. Yet, Cicero felt that he had been
taught just such a belief with neither logic nor pretence:
(T)here is nothing better than the mysteries by which we are polished and softened into
politeness, from the rude austerities of barbarism. Justly indeed are they called initiations,
for by them we especially learn the great principles of philosophic life, and gain, not only
the art of living agreeably, but of dying with a better hope.170
among men upon earth who has seen these mysteries; but he who is uninitiated and who
has no part in them, never has lot of like good things once he is dead, down in the
darkness and gloom” (Evelyn-White, p. 323). The popular belief was that the initiated
would live “in a happy place in Hades surrounded by dances and the games of the
subterranean gods” (Bianchi, 1970, vol. III, p. 300). It’s worthwhile to observe that for
the Greeks, the core of the earth was not an infernal place but simply the place where the
dead were destined to go.
168 Sandys, Sir John. The Odes of Pindar, including the principal fragments. London:
William Heinemann, 1915, pp. 591-593, fragment 137.
170 Bashan, Francis, tr. The Political Works of Marcus Tullius Cicero, vol. II. London:
Edmund Spettigue, 1842, “Treatise on the Laws (De Legilius)”, para. 482, //oll.liberty
268
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Figure 57. Attic relief, fifth century BC, of Demeter,

Persephone and Triptolemus. The young hero has
made his voyage to the underworld to bring mortals
the cereal ear that produces grain.
All this points to
an experience as brief as it
was intense where, says
Pindar, the initiate was
introduced to the end and
the beginning of life, to
death and rebirth,
purifying his conception
of reality. The priests
offered an epopteia, a word
that is normally translated
as transcendent vision or
illumination. But the
word also has a legal
meaning, and we know
that in Greek law it
indicated something that
instead of being supposed
had been presented to the
senses directly. The epoptes
in a legal case was what today we would call an eyewitness,171 significant
considering a fragment attributed to Aristoteles on the Mysteries: “The
fund .org.
171 “For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you
the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses [epoptai] of his
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THE PAGAN ERA
initiates [myitaz] are not supposed to learn [methein] anything, but rather to
experience and to be disposed in a certain way [diathethenaz], that is,
becoming manifestly fit/deserving.”47‘
Along similar realistic lines is a text of Plutarch via Themistius
(very similar to another of Apuleius on the Egyptian mysteries) which
describes what happens during the visionary trance:
The soul (at the point of death) has the same experiences as those who are being initiated
into great mysteries at first one wanders and wearily hurries to and fro, and journeys
with suspicion through the dark as one uninitiated; then come all the terrors before the
final initiation, shuddering, trembling, sweating, amazement: then one is struck with a
marvelous light, one is received into pure regions and meadows, with voices and dances
and the majesty of holy sounds and shapes ....173
Finally, it is appropriate to consider some words of Heracleitus of

Ephesus (c. 500 BC), not mentioned until now – an error – in an effort to
understand the Eleusinian phenomenon in a realistic manner:
Night-walkers, magians [magoi], priests of Bacchus and priestesses of the vat, the initiated
[/fl]J'l‘fll]. The mysteries that are celebrated among men it is unholy to take part in. And
to these images they pray, as if one were to talk to one’s house, knowing not the nature
of gods and heroes.174
majesty” (2 Peter 1:16, www.blueletterbible.org). In contemporary Greek, curiously, the

epoptes is, among other things, one who is suspected of having committed a crime.
172 Ogden, Daniel. A Companion to Greek Religion. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing,
2010 (GB), p. 343, fr. 15 (Rose); Bidez, 1928, vol. IV, p. 171; and Croissant, 1932, p. 145.
173 Farnell, Lewis Richard. The Cults of the Greek States, vol. III. Oxford: At the
Clarendon Press, 1907 (GB), p. 179, De anima (On the Soul), fragment 178, preserved in
Stobaeus, vol. IV. The description of Apuleius is mentioned when alluding to the
Egyptian mysteries.
174 Jones, Hippocrates, vol. IV, p. 507, “On the Universe,” nos. CXXIV, CXXV, and
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One can detect here a critique of irrationality, even a

condemnation of indecent practices,17‘7 though it may be another way of
indicating the convergence of opposites that Heracleitus suggests from so
many points of view, being here the dichotomy between the sacred and
the sacrilegious in the initiation. The idea is comprehensible when taking
into account the unbridled bacchanals; but the parallelism between the
Dionysians, possessed by wine, and nightwalkers is surprising. The magoi
or Magians are undoubtedly the Persian priests that sacrifice with haa0ma,176
while the initiates are of course the Eleusinian /7!)/Ilfll. Considering that the
fragment suggests that irnpious ebriety is the origin of pious illumination
and that the nocturnal ecstatic trance is behind the phenomenon of the
serene light, one can ask the question why, if there does not exist a vehicle
of intoxication in every case, does Heracleitus place on the same footing
the initiates at Eleusis with the Dionysian entourage and the
administrators of the Indo-Iranian entheogen?
Beyond these more or less attention grabbing references, one must
remember that the sacred objects (tá laierá) of the Eleusinians may have
been different types of comestibles whose acquisition or possession was
sacrilegious for non-priests, but in some unspoken manner. Much
speculation has existed ever since as to the exact nature of these sacred
foods. Clement of Alexandria was determined to reveal what he thought
they were, in the interests of denigrating the pagan ceremonies:
CXXVI; Fr. B 14 (Diels). Compare CXXVII: “If it were not to Dionysus that they
made procession and sang the phallic hymn, it would be a most disgraceful action”
(]ones, p. 509).
175]. Bollack and H. Wismann, 1972, pp. 92-97.
176 The term Heracleitus uses is practically the same in Iranian as in Greek. If he had
wanted to mention simP lY wizards and shamans he would not have written ma3 oi.
271
THE PAGAN ERA
Consider, too, the contents of the mystic chests; for I must strip bare their holy things
and utter the unspeakable. Are they not sesame cakes; pyramid and spherical cakes,
cakes with many navels, also balls of salt and a serpent, the mystic sign of Dionysus
Bassareus? Are they not also pomegranates, fig branches, fennel stalks, ivy leaves, round
cakes and poppies? These are their holy things! In addition, there are the utterable
symbols of Ge Themis, marjoram, a lamp, a sword, and a woman’s comb, which is a
euphemistic expression used in the mysteries for a woman’s secret parts. What manifest
shamelessness!177
The writer of comedies, Pherecrates parodies the Eleusinian

ceremony in one of his works, The Kitchen or the All-Night Dinner,
where a notorious profanation takes place in the house of one Pulytion,
also mentioned in works of Isocrates and Plutarch.178 It seems that certain
“licentious ones” belonging to the Athenian aristocracy celebrated on
occasion trances of ebriety with these same sacred foods acquired on the
177 Butterworth, George William. Clement of Alexandria. London: William Heinemann,

1919 (GB), pp. 43, 45, “Exhortation to the Greeks,” 18P, 19P, Portreptikor, ch. II.
178 “They knew that there were two circumstances which chiefly excited your indignation
— committing impiety with regard to the mysteries of Ceres, and preparing an alteration
in your free system of government accusing him before the Senate of having conspired
with a faction against the present constitution, and of having celebrated the mysteries of
Ceres in the house of Polytion, in company with his impious partisans” (Gillies, John,
transl. The Orations of Lvsias and Isocrates. London: Murray, 1778 (GB), “The
Oration of Isocrates in defense of Alcibiades,” p. 208); “During this examination,
Androcles, one of the demagogues, produced certain slaves and strangers before them,
who accused Alcibiades and some of his friends of defacing other images in the same
manner, and of having profanely acted the sacred mysteries at a drunken meeting, where
one Theodorus represented the herald, Polytion the torch-bearer, and Alcibiades the
chief priest, while the rest of the party appeared as candidates for initiation, and received
the title of Initiates” (Dryden, John, transl. Plutarch’s Lives. New York: P. F. Collier
and Son, 1909, p. 127 from //classics.mit.edu).
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black market. Such a sacrilegious banquetm was attributed to Alcibiades

in 415 BC (with the possible presence of the highly esteemed Socrates).
The condemnation to death of Alcibiades (dictated in his absence) would
be decisive for the triumph of Sparta in the Peloponnesian War and the
consequent ruin of the Delphic League, presided over by Athens. One
philologist has suggested that this episode may also explain, at least in
part, the trial and subsequent death of Socrates as well.189
b. Suggestion orperception. Philologists and modern historians

have dedicated countless pages to discussing whether the origins of
Eleusis were Egyptian,181 Cretan or Nordic. But practically no one has
tried to understand, without falling back on miracles or mere credulity, the
“efficacy” of these rituals over so long a period of time, instead simply
noting in passing the severe pledges of secrecy imposed upon the initiated.
And so it continued until K. Kerenyi, a specialist in mythology, suggested
that the venerable and surprising institution could best be understood by
explaining the ,éy,éeon.182
Illuminating in itself, this hypothesis encounters certain
inconveniences a priori. Admitting that the drink contained a psychoactive
substance, such a catalyst would have to fulfill at least three conditions.
First, it could not be a drug of possession but must be visionary, because
all the testimony refutes the phenomenon of the enthusiastic or frenetic.
179 See the erudite commentary of Ruck, 1980, p. 131p?

180 Ruck, 1981; see depictions of Socrates in Aristophanes’ “The Birds” and “The
Clouds.”
181 Such is the opinion of Herodotus (II, 49, 146).
182 Kerenyi, 1967. In the second edition (1977), after contacting A. Hofmann, Kerenyi
expanded on the theme. Singularly useful is the book by Hofmann, Ruck and Wasson
(1978), a collection of monographs all focused on Eleusis.
273
THE PAGAN ERA
Second, it had to be something available year in and year out over more
than a millennium, in quantities required by the attendance of a very large
populace. Third, it must have been something that was effective in small
doses because in no other way could it pass unnoticed. Kerenyi’s idea has
the advantage of leading one toward a realistic or positivist solution to the
enigmas surrounding any such substance that might fulfill these three
conditions, once again a very difficult if not impossible task.
Against this, the classical position continues to be anchored in a
sea of contradictions. Though sensitive to the astonishment in the
Eleusinian phenomenon, the traditional view forces one to believe that
the essence of the Greater Mysteries was the showing to the crowd of
pilgrims some sacred objects (ta' hierá), assuming a mechanism of
suggestion or autosuggestion if not collective hypnosis. Yet, this seems
unlikely. Would this alone have provoked such an unforgettable
reverence in Sophocles or Cicero? But this seems improbable for more
prosaic and less contentious reasons as well. The ceremonies were
nocturnal and if one takes into account the dimensions and form of the
temple, as well as the absence of light other than bonfires or torches,
thousands of persons would have had difficulty seeing with much clarity
anything other than the column, shadows or head of the person nearest to
him.
The nature itself of these sacred objects may give us an unforeseen
clue to help lead us out of the labyrinth. No one disputes that the kykeon
contained, at least, water, barley flour and mint,“” and no one disputes
183 The Homeric hymn and many other sources indicate this. It is almost the only
indisputable thing about the ceremonies. The mint [glethan or hlerhon] may have been the
pennyroyal (Mentha pulegium) that supposedly has mild psychoactive properties and may
have been used as an abortifacient (Wasson, et al. (1978), pp. 100-101).
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GREECE
either that the symbol of these Mysteries was an ear of a cereal grain.184
Without doing violence to the testimony, in order to resolve the issue
either in the favor of Kerenyi or the official thesis of philologists and
historians, it is sufficient to be able to answer positively or negatively a
simple question. By chance is there an ear of grain, and a flour made
from it, in which one can find a drug of great visionary power? The
question seems strange and even absurd. But the answer must be
unconditionally, yes.
Tul.) that
Ergot
parasitizes
is the English
many kinds
name of
forgrains
a fungus
and (Clavice1>ipaij>area
possesses an unusual
chemical complexity.” 5 Ancient references to its existence come from

China and the near East; an Assyrian text written in the seventh century
BC for example speaks of a “noxious pustule in the ear of the grain.”189
184 There is a rich iconography and various texts on this point. One of the clearest is that
of Hippolyte: “The Phrygians also say, however, that he is a ‘green ear of corn reaped;’
and following the Phrygians, the Athenians when initiating [anyone] into the Eleusinian
[Mysteries] also show to those who have been made epopts the mighty and wonderful
and most perfect mystery for an epopt there – a green ear of corn reaped in silence”
(Legge, F. Plailosoglaanmena or the Refutation of all Heresies. London: Society for
Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1921 (GB), p. 138, book V, “The Ophite Heresies.”
See also Eliade, 1980, vol. IV, p. 314).
185 R. Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann, and Carl A. P. Ruck. The Road to Eleusis:
Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.,
1978, p. 25.
186 “(T)he earliest authenticated reports of the effects of ergot occurred in Chinese
writings in approximately 1100 BC, when the substance was used in obstetrics. A magic
spell found in a small temple in Mesopotamia dating to 1900-1700 BC referred to
abnormally infected grain as mehru, while Sumerian clay tablets of the same period
described the reddening of damp grain as samona” (Schiff, Paul L. “Ergot and its
Alkaloids,” AM J Plaarm Educ 2006 Oct 15; 70 (5): 98, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov); Schultes
and Hofmann, 1982, p. 103.
275
THE PAGAN ERA
In fact, it has long been known that flour ground from parasitized grain
can cause grave pathological symptoms. Sadly, bread is the principal food
of the poor and when this plague arrived in their fields, they were obliged
to risk death or starve:
Figure 58.
Cereal ears parasitized by Claoiteprpuipurea.
l\lillers in the Middle Ages

frequently kept clean rye flour for
the affluent, selling flour made from
“spurred rye” – that infected with
Ergot – to poorer customers. Once
the cause was known, vigilance in
the mills quickly reduced the
epidemics of St. Anthony’s fire.187
When the proportion of ergot

in the flour reached a certain
concentration and ingestion
of bread made from the flour
was high enough, the subject
fell into a condition of
ergotii/nus convulsivus or
ergotii/nus gangrenosus that
frequently ended in a horribly
agonizing death. These
epidemics, known also as
Saint Anthony’s fire, were
276
GREECE
especially dramatic when no other grain was available, showing up in

Europe until not so long ago.188 Equally well-known among midwives
was its ability in small doses to cause abortion, precipitate childbirth or
halt postpartum hemorrhage.189
Ergot contains a mix of alkaloids, extremely variable according to
geography and especially dosage. The fungus began to be chemically
deconstructed in the early twentieth century. In 1918, Arthur Stoll
isolated ergotamine, “the first ergot alkaloid that found widespread
therapeutic use [specifically] against migraine and nervous disorders.’”50
Isolated in 1935, ergonovine prevents bleeding after childbirth in
medicinal doses, acts like LSD at higher levels while a toxic dose can lead
to gangrene “because of [its] vasoconstricting properties.’”91 Three years
later, Albert Hofmann, working with Stoll at Sandoz labs in Basle,
Switzerland, began testing the properties of a series of ergot derivatives, a
line of inquiry that led to the discovery of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD
25) in 1943.192 With Wasson’s help, Hofmann also found not only
155 Saint Anthony lived as a religious hermit in Egypt in the fourth century AD. His
bones were reburied by Crusaders in Dauphiné, France where the earliest recognized
plague of “holy fire” occurred in 1039 (Schultes and Hofmann, Plants of the Gods
(1979), p. 103). The last case of intoxication attributed to ergot is said to have occurred
in “mid-August of 1951, [when] 230 villagers of the popular French tourist town of Port
Saint-Esprit on the Rhone river were sickened after ingesting contaminated goods from a
local baker” (Schiff, 2006). Today, given its recognized utility in different pharmaceutical
preparations, ergot has come to be a blessing for farmers who can sell advantageously
their harvest to the laboratories.
189 Wasson, Hofmann, Ruck. Road to Eleusis (1978), p. 27.
190 Wasson, et al., (1978), p. 27.
191 Schultes and Hofmann, 1979, p. 105; Hofmann in Wasson et al. (1978), p. 31.
192 “I prepared lysergic acid diethylamide for the first time in 1938 as part of a systematic
chemical and pharmacological investigation of partially synthetic amides of lysergic acid
277
THE PAGAN ERA
ergonovine but two other highly visionary alkaloids, the amide of lysergic
acid (LSA) and lysergic acid hydroxyethylamide, in the psychotropic
Mexican plant ololiuhqui, specifically in the seeds of two species of
morning glories, Turhina tog/mhoia Raf. and Ipomoea nilarea L392
All three hallucinogenic alkaloids are soluble in water “in contrast
to the non-hallucinogenic medicinally useful alkaloids of the ergotamine
and ergotoxine type.’”84 In order to extract them, it would be sufficient,
then, to soak them in water and then throw away the ears of the infected
plants. This simple baptism by water would be enough to retain the
entheogenic substances in the liquid, which once dosified could be used
for visionary ceremonies. “The separation of the hallucinogenic agents by
simple water solution from the non-soluble ergotamine and ergotoxine
alkaloids was well within the range of possibilities open to Early Man in
Greece:” 48’
What suitable kinds of ergot were accessible to the ancient Greeks? No rye grew there,
but wheat and barley did and Claaireptpurpurea flourishes on both. We analyzed ergot of
wheat and ergot of barley in our laboratory and they were found to contain basically the
in the Sandoz pharmaceutical-chemical research labs in Basle, headed at that time by

Professor Arthur Stoll. Lysergic acid is the characteristic nucleus of the alkaloids of ergot
and can be obtained by alkaline hydrolysis of these alkaloids. Thus among other
compounds, I synthesized the diethylamide of lysergic acid with the intention of
obtaining an analeptic [circulatory and respiratory stimulant]” (Hofmann, Albert. “The
Discovery of LSD and Subsequent Investigations in Naturally Occurring
Hallucinations,” in Discoveries in Biological Psychiatry, Frank Ayd and Barry
Blackwell, eds. B. Lippincott, 1970, www.psyche-delic-library.org).
1°3 Hofmann, A., “A Challenging Question and My Answer,” in Wasson, Hofmann,
Ruck’s Road to Eleusis (1978), p. 29.
194 Hofmann, in Wasson (1978), p. 32.
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GREECE
same alkaloids as ergot of rye, viz alkaloids of the ergotamine and ergotoxine group,
ergonovine, and sometimes also traces of lysergic acid amide. We have no way to tell
what the chemistry was of the ergot of barley or wheat raised on the Rarian plain in the
2nd millennium B. C. But it is certainly not pulling a long bow to assume that the barley
grown there was host to an ergot containing, perhaps among others, the soluble
hallucinogenic alkaloids.196
Further, another closely related species, Clavicepipamali, parasitizes a wild

grass (Paspalum disticlanm), growing everywhere around the Mediterranean
basin.197 This wild grass not only contains visionary substances but it only
contains these alkaloids (of the more than thirty present in the ergot).
Consequently, those who wished to use them did not need to employ
water but could have used them directly, in the form of a ground up
powder.198 Finally, Hofmann analyzed in his laboratory samples of ergot
that parasitizes another wild grass, Lolium temulentum, also called darnel,
cockle, tares, or wild rye grass.
Samples of ergot grown on L. temulentum collected in Germany, France and

Switzerland showed large variation in their alkaloidal composition. Some contained
substantial amounts of ergonovine together with alkaloids of the ergotamine and
ergotoxine group. A species of ergot growing on darnel may have existed in ancient
Greece that contained mainly hallucinogenic alkaloids of ergot such as we have found in
ergot of Paspalum.199
Thus, “the men of ancient Greece could have obtained the alkaloids of
ergot from cultivated cereals although a simpler process would have been

197 Hofmann, in Wasson et al. (1978), p. 33.
198 Hofmann, 1978, p. 49flT
279
THE PAGAN ERA
to use the parasitized grass common in that region.”200 Indeed, Schultes

and Hofmann believe that “the intoxicant underlying the ecstasy
experienced in the mysteries was induced by Claviceps paspali, and possibly
other species, growing on various Loliums and other cereal grasses native
to Greece.”201
The data also explains the odd references in Aristotle,
Theophrastus, Plautus, Ovidus and Pliny to the darnel as an intoxicating
vehicle, including the differences observed between how it grew in Greece
and its cultivation in Sicily. As a result, it was now possible to look with
new eyes on nearly everything, beginning with one of the most beautiful
Greek funeral urns dated to the middle of the fifth century BC where
Triptoleme, the brother of Eumolpus, holds sheaves apparently
parasitized by ergot.
Ergot (and particularly ergonovine), prototype of the ploarvnakon,
medicine, entheogen, and terrible toxin depending upon the manner in
which it was used, could then have contributed to the official experience
of death and resurrection at Eleusis. The Greeks thought, with reason,
that comestible crops were forms evolved from non-comestible plants
and that agriculture was a triumph of culture. As the cereals heavy with
grain represented in the archaic epoch the maximum achievable of
technology, diligence and human genius, the fact that these sheaves were
parasitized presented a challenge, a threat of a sterilizing plague
comparable to the one that Demeter unleashed to punish the
sequestration of her daughter. Though it was not a wild mushroom, like
the A/nanita /nuiearia or the family of psilocybes, it very well could have
been a fungus that threatened cultivated cereals, causing grave problems
to the peasants and general population while permitting the midwives at
268 Hofmann, 1978, p. 52.

281 Schultes and Hofmann, Plants of the Gods, 1979, p. 102.
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GREECE
the same time to cause abortions, induce labor, or save many lives while
the priests of Eleusis enriched many more. The Homeric and especially
the Orphic traditions concealed this phárniakon of many uses under layers
of a complex and improbable, but memorable tale in which the god of
blood-red wine is symbolically birthed from beneath the skirts of a wise
old crone who offers a young mother pining for a lost child a medicine
not only for postpartum hemorrhage but one equally useful for
melancholy.202
In itself, this would have justified its use as a vehicle of ecstasy in a
cult similar to that of Demeter-Persephone, centered around fertility. It
was a triumph of ancestral drug manufacture, later monopolized by the
Eumolpus clan, to have filtered its poison to the point of transforming it
into a vehicle of religious communion for limitless pilgrims, in the process
demonstrating something that the Greek genius always knew: that good
and evil are indisassociable. In order to germinate, the seed had to
disappear under the ground; and to give a generous grain it had to express
the powerful parasite. To be able to accept joyously mortal life, man has
to conquer his fear of death and more than that to accept the feeling of
being already dead, to see it from the outside, as the shaman, the yogi, the
sacrificers of soina and haoina and the mystic had already learned to
contemplate it.
202 “Orpheus could be said to have used an allegorical mode of expression because he
was writing for a community of mystics: he deliberately made his text enigmatic,
ainigrnatŇdēs, in order that the uninitiated might not be able to penetrate the literal surface
of the text. The attribution of allegoresis to Homer and Hesiod must be explained
differently: their prestige as the teachers of the Greeks par excellence induced the
audience of a new age to see in their works hidden verities of natural science or ethics,
without apologetic intention” (Graf, Fritz. Greek Mythology: An Introduction tr.
Thomas Marier. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993, p. 185).
281
THE PAGAN ERA
Provocative and probable, the hypothesis makes one think of what

even the unbelieving man of today would feel, preselected to exclude the
unsuitable, as in Eleusis, if variations of lysergic acid were administered in
a mythic-ritual framework protected by similar secret mysteries, prepared
for months in advance, something that their fathers, grandfathers and
great grandfathers all agreed would be the most reverential of experiences.
It might reduce the risk of uselessly painful psychic excursions; it is
probable that just one night would be enough to know the end of life and
the beginning of the divine, to paraphrase the words of Pindar. It would
also mean, and this goes without saying, a grave threat to any religion of
followers and faith.
c. The experiments ofPahnke and others. It is impossible to

improvise an institution like the Eleusinian mysteries, requiring structures
particular to time and mind. Yet, the analysis of the enigma can be
complemented with data from the twentieth century when the
diethylamide of lysergic acid (LSD) and psilocybin were still widely
considered promising substances from the scientific and spiritual
perspective.
Wishing to put to the test the ability of these drugs to evoke non
quotidian experiences, the theologian W. N. Pahnke collected together
some twenty volunteers for his sample space in a
double-blind, controlled experiment with subjects whose religious background and

experience,
In the weeksas before
well asthe
personality
experiment,
had each
been subject
measured
participated
before their
in five
drughours
experiences.
of various
preparation and screening procedures, which included psychological tests, medical
282
GREECE
history, physical examinations, questionnaire evaluation of previous religious experiences,

intensive interviews and group interaction.203
All were seminarians and all had to remain for the duration of the
experiment in the interior of his church. Ten received a considerable (30
mg) dose of psilocybin (the alkaloid of teonanácal) and ten a placebo (200
mg nicotinic acid) capable of provoking “transient feelings of warmth and
tingling of the skin, in order to maximize suggestion for the control
group.”204 After waiting some minutes they listened to a sermon,
completely analogous to the ordinary ones, and were left meditating in the
church with the accompaniment of an organ. At the end of five hours he
asked them to briefly explain in writing the result of their meditation.
“Data were collected during the experiment and at various times up to six
months afterward” including a one hundred and forty seven item
questionnaire, subjective accounts, group discussions, a one and one-half
hour tape recorded interview, and a three-part follow-up questionnaire
after six months.205
To avoid prejudices on the part of the team that had designed the
experiment, neither the experimenter nor any of the participants knew the
specific contents of the capsules, which were identical in appearance, and
the responses were evaluated by three university housewives who had not
been informed beforehand about the administration of psilocybin and
nicotine, of whom he asked only that they classify the answers in terms of
intense mystical experience, light mystical experience and no mystical
293 Pahnke, W. N. “Drugs and Mysticism,” International]0nrnal of Parap.g/chology, vol. VIII,

no. 2, Spring 1966, pp. 295-313, www.psychedelic-library.org.
204 Pahnke, 1966, www.psychedelic-library.org.
205 Pahnke, 1966.
283
THE PAGAN ERA
experience, using as criteria for their evaluation a nine-category typology

proposed by one of the most well-known books on the subject.“”
The result was that ninety percent of the theological students who
took the indolic alkaloid (and one of those who received the placebo,
perhaps through empathy) gave responses that were classified in the first
category, that is, indiscernible from mystical trances:207
(T)he experimentals as a group achieved to a statistically significant degree a higher score

in each of the nine categories than did the controls. The control subjects did not
experience many phenomenon of the mystic typology, and even then only to a low
degree of completeness. The experience of the experimental subjects was certainly
. . . 208
more like mystical experience than that of the controls.
Further there were low probabilities that “the difference between

experimental and control scores”209 were due to chance in almost every
category.
In another series of tests, sixty-nine already consecrated priests
served as volunteers, showing very similar results. Seventy-six percent
mentioned intense mystical-religious experiences and more than half had
286 That of W. T. Stace, 1960. The presupposition for using a “nine-category typology of
the mystical state of consciousness” based on the work of Stace was that “in the mystical
experience there are certain fundamental characteristics that are universal” (Pahnke,
1966). The nine categories identified were unity, transcendence of time and space, a
deeply felt positive mood, a sense of sacredness, objectivity and reality, paradoxicality,
alleged ineffability, transiency, and persisting positive changes in attitude and behavior
(Pahnke, 1966).
297 Pahnke, 1966, pp. 295-320.
208 Pahnke, 1966, www.psychedelic-library.org.
298 Pahnke, 1966.
284
GREECE
the best spiritual experience of their life.210 Factors like a priestly

vocation, the ambiance of a church and sacred music were not decisive in
any way, as even under laic conditions and among lay people similar
phenomenon were observed. Two psychiatrists, using a statistical
universe far more extensive, with more than 200 patients, wrote that some
96 percent had experienced images or religious sensations of some kind.211
Even the official commission named by the Canadian government in 1970
to investigate the nonmedical use of LSD, psilocybin and mescaline
maintained that the subjects were penetrated by a notable degree of
religious experience.212
The overwhelming success of an edition specially adapted for
psychedelic voyages of the Bardo Thodol,213 also called the Tibetan Book of
the Dead, speaks expressively to the connection between the effects of
these drugs and more classical manifestations of mysticism. The work,
one of the great texts of Mahayana Buddhism centers around three
successive moments that, curiously, served as a compass for innumerable
Westerners, completely foreign to religious preoccupations before
initiating themselves in the use of visionary drugs. The first moment, or
instant of death (which for the Bardo lasts three or four days until being
accepted) represents the experience of pure light. The second, or
transitional state of experiencing reality, includes visions of great beauty
and countrysides with terrible monsters. The third, or transitional state of
wanting to be reborn, contains the act of embracing a new life.214 This, of
219 Leary, 1964, p. 325.

211 Masters and Houston, 1966, pp. 253-4.
212 Interini Report, 1970, p. 19.
213 Leary, Alpert and Metzner, 1964 (trans. Evans-Wendz).
214 Clark, 1969.
285
THE PAGAN ERA
course, is nothing more nor less than the phenomenon already known as
the piythir 6’.>6£tI7‘.fl071.
But the testimony and descriptions from the twentieth century
come from persons conscious of using certain chemical substances, with
the corresponding desacralization that accompanies it. The completely
religious effect would have been multiplied to an extraordinary degree if
the subjects had attributed their experiences to the magical power of
priests and rituals. Only from this perspective can we truly understand
the advantage afforded a religious monopoly on similar drugs in antiquity.
Figure 59.
Ruins of the sanctuary at Eleusis.
286
6
Rome and the Celts
Alas! how lIttll.lT7‘€€l_l}/ do we ordain

a severe law against 0fl7‘.f€lW.l‘/
For no one is born without vicer
Nor can nature separate what is njust
from what ii/nit, nor will reasonpersuade men to this,

that he who breaks down the cabbage-stalk ofhis neighbor,
fill! in as great a measure, and in the same manner,
it! he who steals by night things consecrated to the gods.1

-- Horace, Satire III
It has been said that the Romans exported law and imported spirituality.
The mythology of their origins (fathered by the god of war, suckled by a
she-wolf, the rape of the Sabines, the assassination of Remus and the first
kings) bespeaks a population of highwaymen, orphans without maternal
love, incapable of courtesy, wrapped up in fratricide and subject to a
foreign yoke. The Roman Republic at the height of its power never was
able to overcome an oligarchy that presided over a cult of material wealth,
a venality barely controlled by its greatest and most ferocious creation, the
civil law.
1 Smart, C., transl. and T. A. Buckley, annot. The Works of Horace. New York: Harper
and Brothers, 1869 (GB), pp. 151, 153, “We ought to connive at the faults of our friends,
and all offenses are not to be ranked in the catalogue of crimes.” See also www.
perseus.tufts.edu.
THE PAGAN ERA
A. Statutes on Drugs
The stern laws of the Twelve Tables (Lex Duodeci/n Tabularu/n), a

compilation of traditional rulings and foreign legal codes (esp. Greek),
were first written down around 450 BC, the result of a revolt by plebians
against patricians:
It was clear that the [unwritten] law, public and private, had two fundamental defects: on
the one hand it was indefinite and unfamiliar to the common herd; and, on the other, it
bore unequally on the two orders of society. And, with this object in view, they [the
plebians] demanded that the positive laws of the republic should be reduced to writing
and promulgated.2
Pillars of the ancient law, the Twelve Tables constructed a society

in which the submission of the male citizen before a State constantly
hungry for new territory was compensated by his absolute power over his
household, with the power of life and death over his family and servants,
assimilated like mere bits of furniture. The peculiar privilege of patria
potestas in Table IV, for example, enshrined “the control of the father over
his children, the right existing during their whole life to imprison, scourge,
keep to rustic labour in chains, to sell or slay, even though they may be in
the enjoyment of high state offices.”3
2 Ortolan, J. L. E. History of Roman Law, trs. Iltudus T. Prichard and David Nasmith.
London: Butterworths, 1871 (GB), pp. 109-110. Originally: En eyffet, le droit, soitpublic,
soitprii/e’, a1/ait deux vices capitaux; il e'tait d’une part incertain, caeloe au 1/ulgaire; et de lautre, inégal
entre les deux ordrer. [C]e fut dans cet esprit qu’il.r récla/nerent la rédaction et la promulgation de
lois positives pour la répulilique (Histoire de la Léislation Romaine et Ge'ne'rali.ration du Droit, third
edition. Paris: Videcoq Fils Ainé, 1851 (GB), pp. 76-77).
3 Ortolan, p. 107, and S. P. Scott, tr., ed. The Civil Law, vol. I. Cincinnati, OH: Central
Trust Co., 1932, www.constitution.org.
288
ROME AND THE CELTS
On the subject of drugs, it could be said that the first European

prohibitionists were the western Locrians, whose law prohibited the
drinking of alcohol except for medicinal purposes under penalty of death:
Zaleucus the Locrian made many excellent and convenient Laws, of which this was not the
worst. If any of the Epizephyrian Locrians, being sick, drank pure Wine, unless by
prescription of the Physician, though he be returned to his former health, yet he was to
be put to death for drinking it without leave.4
Such a law against self-medication with alcohol could only have ensured
business for the medical profession.
The Romans were lovers of wine but an ancestral custom denied
the drink to women and young men below the age of thirty. Penalties
were harsh:
At Rome it was not lawful for women to drink wine. Among the various anecdotes
connected with this subject, we find that the wife of Egnatius Mecenius was slain by her
husband with a stick, because she had drunk some wine from the vat, and that he was
absolved from the murder by Romulus. Fabius Pictor, in his Book of Annals, has stated
that a certain lady, for having opened a purse in which the keys of the wine-cellar were
kept, was starved to death by her family.5
Yet, when it did not interfere with the sacred auctoritas (as
happened with the cult of Dionysius), the Roman criterion on other drugs
4 Lewin, 1970, p. 204; Smith, Wm, ed. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and
Mythology, vol. 3. Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1867, p. 1309, www.ancientlibrary.
com; Stanley, Thomas, tr. Claudius Aelianus: His Various History. London: Thomas
Dring, 1665, book II, ch. 37, //penelope.uchicago.edu.
5 Bostock and Riley, trs. The Natural History of Pliny, vol. III. London: George Bell,
1892 (GB), p. 252, book XIV, ch. XIII.
289
THE PAGAN ERA
generally copied the Greek. This nuanced attitude is exemplified in a

commentary by the Roman jurist Aelius Marcianus" (c. third century AD)
on the Lex Cornelia concerning assassins and poisoners issued by general,
politician, consul and dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla (c. 138 — 78 BC):7
The ex P ression “in'urious

l P oisons” shows that there are certain P oisons which are not
injurious. Therefore the term is an ambiguous one, and includes what can be used for
curin1% disease as well as for causin8 death. There also are P reP arations called love
philtres. These, however, are only forbidden by this law where they are designed to kill
people. It is provided by another Decree of the Senate that dealers in ointments who
rashly sell hemlock, salamander, aconite, pine-cones, bu-prestis, mandragora and give
cantharides as a purgative, are liable to the penalty of this law.8
Another law related with drugs was an edict by Alexander Severus,

which prohibited the use of spiny apples (datura) and cantharides powder
or Spanish fly in the homes of prostitutes in Naples.9 But within a general
context of strict punishments for slight offenses, the Romans often
displayed on the subject of drugs a remarkable ability to differentiate
objects from the use men make of them, embracing the double-edged
sword of the Greek phármakon.
6 Smith, William, editor. A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology,
vol. II. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Co., 1867, p. 942, from www.ancientlibrary.com.
7 Bouvier, John. Bouvier’s Law Dictionary and Concise Encyclopaedia, vol. II, third
revision (by Francis Rawle), eighth edition. St. Paul, MN: West Publishing Co., 1914
(GB), p. 1939.
8 Scott, S. P., tr. The Civil Law (1932), p. 59, The Digest or Pandects, Book XLVIII,
Title VIII, www.constitution.org.
9 Brau, 1973, p. 80.
290
ROME AND THE CELTS
B. Cannabis, Belladonna, Mandrake, Henbane and Hellebore
Pliny the Elder (c. 23 – 79 AD) noticed the many medicinal

properties of cannabis:
Hempseed, it is said, renders men impotent; the juice of this seed will extract worms
from the ears, or any insect which may have entered there, though at the cost of
producing head-ache. A decoction of the root in water, relaxes contractions of the
joints, and cures gout and similar maladies. It is applied raw to burns, but it must be
frequently changed, so as not to let it dry.10
Dioscorides (c. 40 – 90 AD) devotes a chapter to the plant and

distinguishes two varieties:
Cannabis [emeros] is a plant of considerable use in this life for twisting very strong ropes.
It bears leaves with a bad scent, similar to the ash; long hollow stalks, and a round seed.
Eaten in quantities these quench conception. The herb (juiced while green) is good for
earaches. Cannabis ._r)/lvestris bears little stems similar to those of althea but darker,
sharper and smaller. The root (boiled and applied) is able to lessen inflammation,
dissolve oedema, and disperse hardened matter around the joints.11
10 John Bostock and H. T. Riley, trs. The Natural History of Pliny, vol. IV. London:
George Bell and Sons, 1890 (GB), p. 298, book XX, ch. 97. An oblique reference may
also exist in Celsus in his chapter on remedies for complaints of the ears: “Now the
medicines for injection are the juice of roses, and the roots of reeds, and oil, in which
worms have been boiled ...” (James Grieve, tr. A. Corn. Celsus of Medicine in Eight
M. Edinburgh: University Press, 1814 (GB), p. 282, book VI, ch. VII). The Latin is
radicum harundinis .\'tt[l4.f, and harundo or arundine is reed, cane, culmus or calamus; given the
context, he may be repeating an old remedy for ear pains based upon cannabis.
11 Osbaldeston, Tess Anne and R. P. A. Wood, translators. The Greek Herbal of
Dioscorides. Johannesburg, S.A.: Ibidis Press, 2000, pp. 534-535, book III, chs. 165,
166, www.cancerlynx.com. This is denominated as a single chapter in the Latin, number
291
THE PAGAN ERA
From Claudius Galen (129 – 199 AD) we learn that it was not
unusual to offer in social gatherings cannabis seeds insufficiently
separated from the dried female flowers (marijuana), a custom learned
from the Athenians or perhaps from the Celts:
It is not the case that since the Indian hemp plant itself resembles the chaste tree, its seed
is somehow similar in property to that seed. Rather, it is completely different from it,
being difficult to concoct and unwholesome, and produces headaches and unhealthy
humours. Nevertheless, some people roast and eat it with other sweetmeats. The
seeds are quite warming, and consequently when they are taken in quantity over a short
period they affect the head, sending up to it a vapour that is both warm and like a drug.12
In another book, he expanded on the use of the plant in medicine: “The

cannabis’ fruit does not create gas and is so dry that it can dry male sperm,
if it is eaten in a quite big quantity. Some people, pulling out the juice
from it when it is not ripe, use it against ears’ pains due to an occlusion, as
I believe.’”13
Oribasius (c. 320-400 AD), the personal physician to Julian the
Apostate, repeats much the same descriptions but substitutes seed for
141 of book III, Pedanii Dioxeoridir /lnagarliei de Medieinali nrateria Liliri xex, Ioanne Ruellio,
tr. Lugduni: Apud Balthazarem Arnolletum, 1552 (GB), pp. 463-464, also found at
//alfama.sim.ucm.es, but later translators divide the chapter in two. For example: De:
Cananio doniestieo. El Canarno er una planta niuy util a la oida lournan, para nager della tuerda:
f0I7iISiWfl!. Produte la: noja: sennyantet a la; delfragno, _y de ahorninahle olor (Andres de
Laguna. Pedaiio Di0.\'£07itl€.!' /lnagarlreo, Aoerta de la /nateria rneditinal y de lo: 1/enenos /nortifieros.
Salamanca: Mathias Gast., 1563, p. 369, book III, chapters 159 and 160).
12 Evans-Schultes and Hofmann, 1982, p. 96; Galen, On the properties of Foodstuffs (De
alinientorum facultatilius), tr. Owen Powell. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press,
2003 (GB), p. 68, book I, section 34.
13 Galen, De si/ngliciuni rnedicanientorurn teranientis ac facultatilrus, book VII, ch. 10,
www.janushead.org and www.antiquecannabisbook.org.
292
ROME AND THE CELTS
fruit: “The seed of cannabis is difficult to digest and bad for the stomach,
causes headaches and is unwholesome; it is somewhat heating.”14 Aetius
of Amida (sixth century AD) is said to have classified it as among the
most mitigating and the driest.”
Luigi Arata of the University of Genoa cites multiple references
from the classical era that the plant was used to
cure gonorrhea and epistaxis treat inflammations and melt corns and is one of the
ingredients of a medicine used against tumors of various types. In veterinary medicine, it
seems to have been used in cataplasms against inflammations or as a cathartic of wounds,
especially of the rachis or even against taenias; it is interesting to observe that a portion
of cannabis is said to be useful against taenias in human beings or for injuries.“
As well, both Pliny and Marcus Tarentius Varro (c. 116 -27 BC)
recognized the many non-drug uses of the same plant.“
14 Grant, Mark. A Translation of Books 1 and 4 of Oribasius’ Medical Compilations.

Leiden: Brill, 1997 (GB), book 1, section 32: La graine du chanvre est diflicile à dige'rer et
niauvaise pour l’ori]‘ice de l’estoniac; ell cause de la céphalalgie, contient de niauvaises hunieurs, niais ell
échauffe fortenient (Bussemaker, Daremberg, trs. Oeuvres d’orilrase, vol. 1. Paris: A
l’imprimerie nationale, 1851 (GB), p. 43, book I, Des alinients, no. 32). Seeds and fruit are
still insufficiently differentiated in this era by many authors in the Mediterranean basin.
15 Arata, Luigi. “Nepenthes and Cannabis in Ancient Greece,” Janus Head, 7(1): 2004, p.
44, n. 22, www.janushead.com.
16 Arata, L. “Nepenthes and Cannabis in Ancient Greece,” pp. 41, 44, 45, notes 22, 25,
/ /openpdf.org and www.janushead.com.
17 “Then, too, there is hemp, a plant remarkably useful for making ropes The best
hemp is that of Alabanda, which is used more particularly for making hunting-nets ...”
(Bostock (1890), p. 198, book XIX, ch. 56); “In another place you may raise hemp, flax,
bulrush, broom, of which you may make Gear for the oxen, lines, halters, ropes” (Owen,
Thomas, tr. The Three Books of M. Tarentius Varro concerning Agriculture. Oxford:
293
THE PAGAN ERA
Dioscorides relates that the Romans drank a concoction of the

roots of deadly nightshade (Atropa belladonna), one of the most toxic
solanaceas, in carefully calculated doses mixed with wine:
A teaspoon of a decoction of the root (taken as a drink with wine) is able to effect not
unpleasant fantasies [hallucinogenic]. Two teaspoonfuls of a decoction (taken as a drink)
make one beside himself for three days, and four (taken as a drink) kill him.18
Many European women, from the XV to the XVII centuries were

transported to an ineffable voluptuous stupor with unguents made from
the plant, commonly called belladonna.” Celsus recommended it for
feverish insanity.2°
At the University Press, 1800 (GB), p. 81, book I, ch. 23). See also //penelope.uchicago.
edu.
18 Osbaldeston, The Greek Herbal of Dioscorides, p. 623, book IV, no. 74, Strychnos
manicus, www.cancerlynx.com. A second variety, Strychnos somnificum he said was “sleep
inducing, milder than the poppy” (p. 620, book 4, no. 73).
19 The celebrated physician Andrés Laguna, who annotated an early translation of
Dioscorides into Castellano, called the plant solanum manicum, 1/el Fueriosum, literally, “the
solanacea that causes madness or fury” (Pedacio dioscorides Ana arbeo Annotado or el doctor
Andres Launa, vol. II. Madrid: En la Imprenta de Alonso Baleas, 1733 (GB), p. 67,
book IV, cap. LXXV). The name is still current today in rural areas of Spain, France and
Italy. From Linnaeus comes the denomination Atropa belladonna. Atropos was one of the
parcae or furies of Greek mythology, specifically the one charged with cutting the thread
of life. The reference to bella donna (beautiful lady) is connected to a feminine esthetic in
renaissance Italy, where it brightened the eye and dilated the pupil due to the effect of
midriasis, a use still popular into the 19th and 20th centuries (Ruddock, E. Harris. @
Homeopathic Vade Mecum, 2nd ed. London: Jarrold and Sons, 1867 (GB), p. 503;
Felter, H. W. and U. Lloyd. King’s American Dispensary, 19th ed., 4th rev., vol. I.
Cincinnati, OH: The Ohio Valley Co., 1909 (GB), p. 306; see also www.henriettes
herbal.com). Laguna adds that the plant formed the basis of unguents used by witches:
294
ROME AND THE CELTS
Pliny recommended mandragora for surgery: “It is given, too, for

injuries inflicted by serpents, and before incisions or punctures are made
in the body, in order to ensure insensibility to the pain. Indeed, for this
last purpose, with some persons, the odour of it is quite sufficient to
induce sleep.”21 It was used in a great variety of pathological conditions.“
Strange tales abound about the mandrake. Pliny writes: “Persons,
when about to gather this plant, take every precaution not to have the
wind blowing in their face; and, after tracing three circles round it with a
sword, turn towards the west and dig it up.”23 Josephus, who calls it
Baaras, also cautions the root-cutter:
[I]t is not easily taken by such as would do it, but recedes from their hands, nor will yield
itself to be taken quietly, until either the urine of a woman or her menstrual blood, be
poured upon it; nay, even then it is certain death to those that touch it It may also be
taken another way tie a dog to it, and when the dog tries very hard to follow him that
tied him, this root is easily plucked up, but the dog dies immediately ....24
Aquella, pnes, alehe ser, (regun pienxo) la oirtml cle lo: nnguentor con qne re inelen nntar la: hrtya:
(Peclacio Diorcoriilei, p. 68, book IV, ch. 75).
29 ‘‘Night-shade and the wall-herb are also two others which are useful in any state of the
strength, provided the head be saturated with the juice expressed from either of them”
(Collier, 1831, p. 101, book III, ch. XVIII).
21 Bostock, Riley, trs. The Natural History of Pliny, vol. V. London: Henry G. Bohn,
1856 (GB), pp. 139-140, book XXV, no. 94.
22 Hydropesia, hyperchloridia, duodenal ulcer, sea sickness, asthma, convulsive cough,
constipation and colic among others. Pliny lists it as a remedy for joint pain, gout, pain
in the eyes, female diseases and abortion (Bostock, Riley, vol. 5, pp. 194, 193, 138, 211,
212, book XXV, ch. 94, book XXVI, chs. 66, 74, 90).
23 Bostock, Riley (1856), vol. V, p. 139, bk 25, no. 94.
24 W. Whiston, tr. The Works of Flavius osephus. Halifax, N. S.: Milner and Sowerby,
1864 (GB), p. 620, Wars of the ews, book VII, ch. VI, sect. 3.
295
THE PAGAN ERA
Pliny also admires the juice of another of the .f0lflflfl£€fl€ family,

henbane, for cough “attended with the spitting of blood,” the entire plant
with its leaves for asp bites, the root for “uterine affections” and the seed
in a liniment for diseases of the “/na/nillae.”25 But he does not do all of this
without adding some cautions:
Hyoscyamos, like wine, has the property of flying to the head, and consequently of acting
injuriously upon the mental faculties. [I]t is a fact that the leaves even will exercise
a deleterious effect upon the mind, if more than four are taken Oil of henbane is of
an emollient nature, but it is bad for the nerves; taken in drink, it disturbs the brain.26
For local analgesia, Celsus lists henbane, mandrake and poppies as

roughly interchangeable:
In TOOTH-ACHE [s]hould the pain become more severe cinquefoil root is boiled
in diluted wine, and henbane root either in posca [vinegar and water] or mixed wine,
adding to both these liquors a small portion of salt, so also poppy-heads not too dry and
the root of mandragora. But especial care must be taken lest either of these three be
swallowed.27
Similarly, for inducing sleep: “When, nevertheless, they continue wakeful,

some try to obtain sleep by giving a decoction of poppies, or henbane:
others, by placing mandrake apples under the pillow. "28
25 Bostock, Riley, vol. V, pp. 163, 121, 187, 210, book XXV, ch. 58, book XXVI, chs. 15,
26, and 58.
26 Bostock, Riley, vol. V, p. 92, book XXV, ch. XVII; Bostock, Riley (1856), vol. IV, p.
493.
27 Collier, G. F., tr. A Translation of the Eight Books of Aul. Corn. Celsus on Medicine.
London: Simpkin and Marshall, 1831 (GB), p. 245, book VI, ch. IX, sects. 1, 2; see
/ /penelope.uchicago.edu for the translation by Spencer (Loeb).
28 Collier, 1831, p. 102, book III, ch. XVIII.
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ROME AND THE CELTS
The popularity of the hellebore purge continues, following the

Greek tradition. Celsus uses the black variety to purge the bowels in cases
of epilepsy, sadness, elephantiasis and liver disease among others.” White
hellebore he prescribes to induce vomiting in cases of feverish insanity,
lethargy and fever with convulsions of the mouth.” But he also uses the
same plant in the form of a powder to excite sneezing, triturated with
vinegar to extract hard to reach ear worms, and “with propriety” to
disperse tumours in scrofula.” Hellebore also provides a convenient
prognosticator: “Nor can he be saved he who is attacked with
convulsions, after having drunk hellebore.”32
Pliny tells two myths about a particular variety of hellebore:
The repute of Melampus, as being highly skilled in the arts of divination, is universally
known. This personage has given a name to one species of hellebore, known as the
“melampodion.” Some persons, however, attribute the discovery of this plant to a
shepherd of that name, who remarked that his she-goats were violently purged after
browsing upon it, and afterwards cured the daughters of Proetus of madness, by giving
them the milk of these goats.33
He passes along an old wives’ tale (“If a dead scorpion is rubbed with
white hellebore, it will come to life, they say”) and remarks that Cato “tells
us how to make hellebore wine from black hellebore.”34
29 Collier, 1831, pp. 116, 104, 119, 143, book III, chs. XVIII, XXIII, XXV and book IV,
C11. VIII.
30 Collier, 1831, pp. 103, 106, 128, book III, chs. XVIII, XX, book IV, ch. II.
31 Collier, 1831, pp. 177-178, 241, 208, book V, chs. XXII, XXVIII, book VI, ch. VII,
sect. 5.
32 Collier, 1831, p. 37, book II, ch. VI.
33 Bostock, Riley, vol. V (1856), p. 96, book XXV, ch. XXI.
34 Bostock, Riley, vol. V, book XXV, ch. 77, p. 128 and vol. III, p. 259 (1892), ch. 19.
297
THE PAGAN ERA
The best black hellebore, says Pliny, comes from Mount Helicon
and is used “in fumigations, and for the purpose of purifying houses;
cattle, too, are sprinkled with it, a certain form of prayer being repeated.”35
The black is administered for
the cure of paralysis, insanity, dropsy – provided there is no fever – chronic gout, and
diseases of the joints; it has the effect too, of carrying off the bilious secretions and
morbid humours by stool. [It] acts detergently upon scrofulous sores, suppurations,
and indurated tumours, as also upon fistulas.36
It is sometimes “inserted into carious teeth.”37

The white hellebore he prescribes for
epilepsy, as already stated, vertigo, melancholy, insanity, delirium, white elephantiasis,

leprosy, tetanus, palsy, gout, dropsy, incipient tympanitis, stomach affections, cynic
spasms, sciatica, quartan fevers which defy all other treatment, chronic coughs,
fiatulency, and recurrent gripings in the bowels.38
The best of the white comes from Mount Aeta and Pliny lists four
different varieties in order of quality.”
Specifically, the island of Anticyra was famous for its hellebore
and accompanying cures of insanity and epilepsy.” Only the “thinnest
and shortest roots are selected” and the best is that “which has an acrid,
burning taste, and when broken emits a sort of dust,” after which it is
35 Bostock, Riley, vol. V, book XXV, ch. 21, p. 97.

36 Bostock, Riley, vol. V, book XXV, ch. 21, pp. 98-99.
37 Bostock, Riley, vol. V, book XXV, ch. 107, p. 148,
38 Bostock, Riley, vol. V, book XXV, ch. 24, pp. 100-101.
39 Bostock, Riley, vol. V, book XXV, ch. 21, p. 97.
40 Bostock, Riley, vol. I (1893), book IV, ch. IV, p. 277; vol. V, bk. XXV, ch. XXI, p. 98.
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ROME AND THE CELTS
“passed through a sieve, upon which the pith makes its way through,
while the outer coat remains behind. The latter acts as a purgative, while
the former is used for the purpose of arresting vomiting when that
evacuation is in excess.”41
Hellebore is not to be administered to “aged people and children,”
never in “cloudy weather,” summer is a better time than winter and wine
should be abstained from for the week before. Pliny lists side effects
including “cold shivering, suffocation, unnatural drowsiness, continuous
hiccup or sneezing, derangements of the stomach and vomitings, either
retarded or prolonged, too sparing or in excess.”42 But in spite of these
warnings, Pliny says: “The great error, however, on the part of the
ancients was, that in consequence of these fears, they used to give it too
sparingly.”43
Indeed, in his day, hellebore was not merely medicine for the sick
but tonic for the well:
In former days hellebore was regarded with horror, but more recently the use of it has
become so familiar, that numbers of studious men are in the habit of taking it for the
purpose of sharpening the intellectual powers required by their literary investigations.
Carneades, for instance, made use of hellebore when about to answer the treatises of
Zeno; Chrysippus [another Stoic philosopher] thrice purged his brain with hellebore,
to stimulate his capacity and inventiveness.44
41 Bostock, Riley, vol. V, bk, XXV, ch. 21, p. 98; ch. 23, p. 100.
42 Bostock, Riley, vol. V, bk. XXV, ch. 23, p. 99; ch. 25, p. 101.
43 Bostock, Riley, vol. V, bk. XXV, ch. 23, p. 100.
44 Bostock, Riley, vol. V, bk. XXV, ch. 21, pp. 97-98; Carrington, Charles, tr. @
Satyricon of Petronius. Paris: Charles Carrington, 1902 (GB), p. 238.
299
THE PAGAN ERA
C. Opium
One of the most widely cultivated plants within and outside the
Roman empire is the poppy. From this point on, the number of
references to poppies and its most common extract explodes
exponentially. Both in the literature and the medical texts that have
survived, poppies and the juice obtained from it show up constantly and
repeatedly, reflecting the acceptance and importance they had in Roman
society over many hundreds of years. Metaphorically and medicinally, the
poppy is found as often in their legends as in their basic pharmacopeia.
1. Literature. Virgil’s sorrow-crazed Queen Dido, resolved on

death as Aeneas flees, sings of the entwined virtues of Moroccan opium:
I know a way – O, wish thy sister joy! –

To bring him back to love, or set me free.
On Ocean’s bound and next the setting sun
Lies the last Aethiop land, where Atlas tall
Lifts on his shoulder the wide wheel of heaven,
Studded with burning stars. From thence is come
A witch, a priestess, a Numidian crone,
Who guards the shrine of the Hesperides
And feeds the dragon; she protects the fruit
Of that enchanting tree, and scatters there
Her slumb’rous poppies mixed with honey-dew
(rnella soporiferuinquepapaver).
Her spells and magic promise to set free
What hearts she will, or visit cruel woes
On men afar.45
45 Williams, T. C., tr. The Aeneid of Virgil. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1908
(GB), p. 131, Book IV, lines 467-490, www.perseus.t.ufts.edu and Bennett, Charles E., tr.
300
ROME AND THE CELTS
Livy writes that Tarquin Superbus [Proud], instead of speaking, cut

the heads from the tallest poppies in his garden when an untrustworthy
envoy arrived, sent by his supposedly rebellious son, Sextus, by then
entrusted with the sole management of all affairs at Gabii, an enemy city.“
Pliny the Elder (23 AD - 79 AD) breaks off from a list of poppy recipes
to repeat the same story of deception and betrayal, adducing it as proof
that “the poppy (papai/er) has always been held in esteem (honore) among
the Romans.”41
Virgil’s Aeneid, Books I-VI. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 1905 (GB), p. 89, line 486.
Dryden has “Th’ Hesperian temple was her trusted care;/ ‘T was she supplied the
wakeful dragon’s fare./ She poppy seeds in honey taught to steep,/ Reclaim’d his rage,
and sooth’d him into sleep” (//classics.mit.edu). Opium, not poppy seeds, is arguably
what was meant by Publius Vergilius Mara (70 BC – 19 BC): “and they search for full
grown plants/ With brazen sickles in the moonlight cut,/ Swollen with the milk of
poison black” (Cranch, Christopher Pearse. The Aeneid of Virgil, vol. I. New York:
Houston Mifflin and Co., 1906, p. 161, Book IV, lines 680-682).
46 “To this courier no answer by word of mouth was given, because, I suppose, he
appeared of questionable fidelity. The king going into a garden of the palace, as it were
to consider of the matter, followed by his son’s messenger; walking there for some time
in
As silence,
soon asheitisbecame
said to evident
have struck off thewhat
to Sextus headshisoffather
the tallest poppies
wished, with his
and what staff. he
conduct
recommended by those silent intimations, he put to death the most eminent men of the
city By the sweets of corruption, plunder, and private advantage the state of Gabii
was delivered without a struggle into the hands of the Roman king” (Spillan, D, tr.
The History of Rome by Titus Livius vol. I. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1887
(GB), pp. 86-87, book I, chapter 54).
47 “Of the cultivated poppy there are three kinds, the first being the white poppy, the
seed of which, parched, and mixed with honey, used to be served up in the second
course at the tables of the ancients” (Bostock, John and H. T. Riley, trs. The Natural
History of Pliny, vol. IV. London: George Bell and Sons, 1890 (GB), p. 196, book XIX,
chapter 53, section 169). Ovid has lilies, not poppies: “There Tarquinius receives the
301
THE PAGAN ERA
The goddess Juno called on Somnus” when she intervened to

keep Hannibal far from Rome in the poem of Tiberius Catius Silius
Italicus (ca. 25 — 101 AD):
The daughter of Saturn was disturbed by Hannibal’s design. At once she summoned
Sleep, the regent of silent night Swiftly he did her bidding and winged his way
through the darkness, carrying juice of poppy-seed in a curving horn. In silence he
glided on, and went first to Hannibal’s tent, then he waved his drowsy wings over the
recumbent head, dropping sleep into the eyes, and touching the brows with his wand of
forgetfulness.49
Somnus is often represented in the form of an anthropomorphic, bearded

being inclined toward sleep with poppy juice being poured over his eyelids
from a horn from which he liked to drink. The image became so habitual
that the receptacle he carried was known as the horn of opium regardless
of whether or not it was used for other purposes.
In the art of the ancient Mediterranean the poppy is generally a
symbol of sleep, but more specifically of the healing sleep that divides the
night from the anxieties and memories of the long coarse vigil of the day.
Virgil, for example, speaks of the “pale Lethean poppy drenched with
sleep.”5°
secret despatches of his son, and with a staff he knocks off the heads of the tallest lilies”
(Riley, H. T., tr. The Fasti, Tristia. Pontic Epistles, Ibis. and Halieuticon of Ovid.
London: H. G. Bohn, 1851 (GB), p. 78, Patti, book II, vv. 695-717).
48 In Greek, Hypnos, brother of Thanatos and son of Nyx (night).
49 Duff, D., tr. Silius Italicus: Punica, vol. II. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1941, pp. 74-77, lines 340ff www.archive.org.
50 Burghclere, Lord. The Georgics of Virgil, second edition. London: John Murray,
1905 (GB), p. 17, Geogics, 4, 131, textually, Lethaeo perfusa papavera somno, indicating the
river of forgetfulness that the dead cross to get to the underworld. Besides the previous
302
ROME AND THE CELTS
Demeter’s symbol in the Mysteries was an ear of cereal, though

not a few times, in memory of that which assuaged her pain for the loss of
her daughter Persephone, she appears holding poppies. Aphrodite also is
accompanied with the plant on occasion,” as well as Artemis and even
Athena.” Ceres, the Latin Demeter, systematically carried instead of the
sheaf, a capsule or a bundle of poppies, even though her own name
contains a reference to cereals.”
mention in the 1~ (IV, 486), Virgil uses the poppy later in the same poem as a
metaphor for the death of Euryalus: “as when some purpled flower,/ Cut by the
ploughshare, dies, or poppies proud/ With stem forlorn their ruined beauty bow/ Before
the setting storm” (Williams (1908), p. 311, book IX, lines 432-451). He notices poppies
on at least two other occasions in the Georgics (I, 178, I, 212). Ovid repeats the sleep
motif in the Fasti [Calendar]: “In the meantime the night comes, her gentle brow
crowned with the poppy, and, with her, escorts the shadowy dreams” 162, book IV,
vv. 639-670). In the Tristia [Lament], Ovid also uses poppy seed as a metaphor for his
illnesses: “As many as the shells which the sea shore contains as many as the grains
which the drowsy poppy holds by so many adversities am I overwhelmed” (Riley, p.
347, book V, Elegy II); compare Elegy VI: “Nuts were thy food, and poppy caus’d thee
sleep” (Dyce, Alexander, ed. The Works of Christopher Marlowe, vol. III. London:
William Pickering, 1850 (GB), p. 154, from P. Ovicli Nasonis, Amorum, Liber Primus, line
31: Nux erat esca tibi, caniaeqnepapaaer Jomnz).
51 Specifically, for example, in the statue by Canachus the Sicyonian: “But the statue of
Venus is made from ivory and gold; and on her head she bears the pale, in one of her
hands a poppy, and in the other an apple” (Taylor, Thomas, tr. The Description of
Greece by Pausanias, vol. I. London: Richard Priestley, 1824 (GB), p. 153, book II,
chapter 10, section 4).
52 Pauly-Wissowa, vol. XV, 2, p. 2445.
53 “Now is the time to sow your crops of flax and Ceres poppy” (Burghclere (1905), p.
28). An image of Ceres holding poppies taken from a Roman coin can be seen at
www.forumancientcoins.com.
303
THE PAGAN ERA
Figure 60.
Ceres
In Ovid’s retelling of the Demeter
myth, before she is abducted, Persephone
gathers flowers with her girlfriends: “One is
gathering marygolds, to another the beds of
violets are an object of searelo; another, with her
nail, is cropping the blossom of the poppy.”54
At Eleusis, her mother Ceres makes a remedy
for Triptolemus with poppies:
Her guide tells his companion how that his son is ill and
enjoys no repose, but is kept awake by his malady. As
she is about to enter the humble abode, she gathers the
soporiferous poppy from the soil of the field. The
genial Ceres fasts, and gives to thee, O boy, poppies, the
promoters of sleep, to be drunk with warm milk.55
In the same work Ovid describes the drink given to new brides on their
wedding night:
And be not reluctant to take the poppy bruised with the snow-white milk, and the honey
trickling from the squeezed combs. When first Venus was led home by her eager
husband, she drank of this; from that time she was a wife.56
54 Riley, tr. The Fasti etc. of Ovid. London: H. G. Bohn, 1851 (GB), p. 153, The Fasti
or Calendar of Ovid, book IV, vv. 420-439, italics Riley.
55 Riley (1851), The Fasti or Calendar of Ovid, p. 157, book IV, vv. 519-551.
56 Riley (1851), p. 139, book IV, vv. 138-159. Riley adds a footnote: “A drink made of
milk, honey, and bruised poppies, was given to the bride on the day of her nuptials, as we
are informed by Pliny, Nat. Hist., Book xix, c. 8. It was called ‘cocetum’” (n. 41, p. 139).
304
ROME AND THE CELTS
But for the Romans, opium is more than the Valium of its day.
Tongue firmly in cheek, Juvenal prescribes the opium-based inithridatiuin
as a prophylactic for fathers of teen-age boys: “You are already in your
son’s way; you are delaying his prayers; your long and stag-like old age is a
torment to the young man.”57 He adds:
Send for Archigenes at once! and buy what Mithridates compounded [quod Mithridates
coniposuit], if you would pluck another fig, or handle this year’s roses. You must possess
yourself of that drug which every father, and every king, should swallow before every
meal.58
In what may or may not be a 2000 year old pun, Quintus Horatius
Flaccus (65 BC – 8 BC) notes that “poppies mixed with Sardinian honey
give offense, because the supper might have passed without them.”59
Sextus Empiricus (2nd cent. AD) records individual tolerances: “As for
the body, we have different figures and constitutional peculiarities.
There used to be an old woman of Attica, they said, who could take thirty
drams of hemlock with impunity, and Lysis used to take four drams of
opium without harm.’’“’ The bucolic poet Theocritus (3rd cent. BC)
repeats a popular story that the poppy sprouted from the tears Venus
57 G. G. Ramsay, tr. Juvenal and Persius. Biblio Life, LLC, 2009 (GB), p. 282-283, Satire
XIV. See also www.thelatinlibrary.com and www.ccel.org.
58 Evans, Lewis, tr. The Satires of uvenal, Persius, Sulpicia, and Lucillus. New York:
Harper and Brothers, 1889, p. 175, Satire XIV, v. 252.
59 Smart, Christopher, tr., T. A. Buckley, anot. The Works of Horace. New York:
Harper and Brothers, 1855 (GB), p. 321, from the Art of Poetry [Ars Poetica].
60 Cahn, Steven M., ed. Classics of Western Philosophy, sixth edition. Indianopolis, IN:
Hackett Publishing, 2002 (GB), p. 326, book I, ch. XIV, “Outlines of Pyrrhonism,” tr. R.
G. Bury (1933).
305
THE PAGAN ERA
shed upon the death of Adonis.“ And the courtier Gaius Petronius (c. 27
— 66 AD), Viagra-less, parodies Virgil in the Sag/riron with his “address to
a recreant member” which he describes as: “Like bended osiers trembling
o’er a brook,/ Or wounded poppies by no zephyr shook.”"‘
2. Medicine. A large proportion of the emperors generously

consumed the drug, alone or in mixtures. The celebrated physician, Philo
of Tarsus who practiced in the Augustan era, invented a triaca (mixture)
named after him, the Theriaca Philonium or Philonium Romanum that
“survived over 1,700 years. It became included in many of the
Pharmacopeia of Europe, and remained in the London Pharmacopeia”63
until 1746: “I am the blessed invention of Philo, physician of Tarsus,/
Bringing assistance to mortals tormented by countless diseases. /
Finally take ten drachms of “pium” with the article added.”64 Depending
on the given recipe, it may have contained “opium, pepper, ginger,
caraway, syrup, honey and wine” or “opium, saffron, pyrethrum,
euphorbium, pepper, henbane, spikenard (/lralia racemosa), honey and
other ingredients.”65
61 Hallard,J. H. The Idylls of Theocritus. London: Rivington’s, 1901 (GB), p. 58, Idyll
XI.
62 The Satyricon of Petronius. Paris: Charles Carrington, 1902 (GB), p. 371, ch. 15.
63 Thompson, C. J. S. Mystery and the Art of the Apothecary. London: Bodley Head,
1929 (GB), p. 60.
64 Withington, E. T. Medical History from the Earliest Times. London: the Scientific
Press, Ltd, 1894 (GB), p. 405, “Appendix VI: Ancient and Medieval Medical
Prescriptions.”
65 Thompson (1929), p. 60; Burton, Robert. Anatomy of Melancholy, vol. II, part II, ed.
A. R. Shilleto. London: George Bell and Sons, 2002 (GB), (a Kessinger reprint of what
appears to be the edition of 1904), p. 597.
306
ROME AND THE CELTS
The chief physician of Augustus was Antonius Musa, of whom

Pliny writes that he saved the life of the emperor with poppy-lettuce, as
sometimes translated:
There is still another variety, a kind of white lettuce, called “meconis,” a name which it
derives from the abundance of milk, of a narcotic quality, which it produces. At all
events, we find it stated that the late Emperor Augustus, when ill, was saved on one
occasion, thanks to the skill of his physician, Musa, by eating lettuces.66
From the same era, the eight books of De Medicina by Aulus

Cornelius Celsus (ca. 25 BC – ca. 50 AD) are replete with remedies that
prescribe both poppies and opium. First, he recommends them for sleep:
“The articles adapted for procuring sleep, are the poppy, the lettuce,
especially the summer variety, at the time when its stalk is full of milk;
mulberries, and leeks.”67 For the healing sleep, he advises opium to be
used carefully: “Such as alleviate pain by procuring sleep they call anoduna:
To use anodynes, except in urgent cases, is bad practice, for they are
composed of powerful medicines. There is one, however, which even
promotes digestion; it contains of opium ....”68
Pain generally is alleviated with the poppy: “When the pain is
more violent, the rind of the poppy is to be boiled in wine But when
the pain will not permit of anything being laid on we may foment with a
66 Bostock and Riley, trs. The Natural History of Pliny, vol. 4, pp. 181-182. Various
legends suggest cold compresses, the red poppy or “Lacnea airoia, the milky juice of
which strongly resembles opium in its effects” (Bostock, p. 181, n. 4).
67 Collier, G. F., tr. A Translation of the Eight Books of Aulus Cornelius Celsus on
Medicine, second edition. London: Simpkin and Marshall, 1831 (GB), p. 72, book 2,
chapter 32.
68 Collier (1831), pp. 179-180, book V, chapter XXV, section 1.
307
THE PAGAN ERA
sponge dipped in the decoction of poppy-rinds ....”69 But Celsus also lists
opium as part of common remedies for many diverse conditions including
“head-ache, ulcerations, lippitude, tooth-ache, dyspnoea, ileus,
inflammation of the womb, pains of the hip, or liver, or spleen, or side, or
in case of any female falling into a fit of hysteria, and losing her speech.”70
Nor is Celsus alone in this practice; he mentions popular preparations
containing opium manufactured by Euelpides, Theodotus, Cleon,
Themison, Athenion, and Heraclides the Tarentine for inflammations of
the eyes, ears and throat.71
Tiberius, the successor to Augustus, in contrast, “was harsh in his
manner and disposition, and was easily overcome with wine. Hence the
Romans used to call him Biberius, which with them means a wine
imbiber.”72 Tacitus relates that he moved to the island of Capri to indulge
69 Collier (1831), p. 158, book IV, ch. XXIV.

70 Collier (1831), p. 180, book V, ch. XXV, section 3. In section 4 he provides a method
of procuring the substance: “Moreover, a handful of the papaver sylvestris, when it is
just ready for collecting its tear, is put into a vessel, and as much water poured thereon as
suffices to cover it; and it is thus boiled. After it has cooled, boluses are made of it, as
large as our native bean; their use is multifarious.”
71 Euelpides formulated a number of remedies for ophthalmic diseases all of which
contained opium including the nienuginenon, phynon, sphaerion, pyxinum, and lrasili/éou
(Collier, pp. 232-236, book VI, ch. VI, sections 16-33). Theodotus lists “toasted poppy
tears” for the same ailment (Collier, p. 237, book VI, ch. IV) and a collyria for the eyes
by Cleon contained opium (pp. 225-226). For “mitigating inflammation and pain of the
ears” there was “Themison’s composition which contains of castor, opopanax, opium ...”
castor,
(Collier,and
p. 239,
opium
book
...”VI,(Collier,
ch. VII).
p. 181,
“For book
cough,V,there
ch. is
XXV,
Athenion’s:
section of
9) myrrh,
and “ifpepper
a cough
produces watchfulness, the bolus of Heraclides the Tarentine [containing saffron, myrrh,
opium, etc] will relieve both” 181, V, XXV, 10).
72 Earnest Cary, tr. Cassius Dio’s Roman Histoi_"y, vol. 7. London: William Heinemann,
Ltd., 1924, p. 259, book 58, fragment 3, //penelope.uchicago.edu and www.archive.org.
308
ROME AND THE CELTS
in a voluptuous life: “Finally, he plunged into every wickedness and

disgrace, when fear and shame being cast off, he simply indulged his own
inclinations.”73
The personal physician of Nero, Andromachus of Crete, created
the so-called antidotus tranquillans or Theriaca Androinachi made with opium
and a number of other ingredients including viper meat, a formula with a
long pedigree dating back to Mithridates:
Galen mentions that Mithridates, king of Pontus, had, by repeated experiments upon
condemned malefactors, acquired a most thorough knowledge of the proper antidotes
for almost every venomous reptile and poisonous substance, and hence he constructed
the composition bearing his name, which was long esteemed as a general antidote to
deleterious substances.74
Nero’s physicians then reformulated it:
This was elaborated into a prescription containing 55 ingredients by Damocrates, Nero’s

physician, and called Mithridatium Damocratis. It was again elaborated by
Andromachus, another of Nero’s physicians, the flesh of the poisonous snake Tyrus
being added and the number of ingredients increased; it was now called Theriaca
Andromachi. The name Treacle, or Mithridate, was commonly applied to it; and because
of its syrupy nature the word treacle has come down to us with its familiar meaning.75
E. Cobham Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable of 1896 suggests his full name,
Tiberius Claudius Nero was often replaced with Biheriur calidur niero (drink-loving, hot
with wine), www.bartleby.com.
75 Church, Alfredj. and W. Brodribb, trs. The Annals of Tacitus. London: MacMillan
and Co., Ltd., 1906 (GB), p. 180, book VI, para 51; see also //classics.mit.edu.
74 Adams, Francis, tr. The Seven Books of Paulus Aegineta, vol. 3. London: the
Sydenham Society, 1847 (GB), p. 525, book VII, section XI.
75 Burton (1904), Anatomy of Melancholy, vol. II, part II, p. 571.
309
THE PAGAN ERA
According to Paulus, the “prescription for it was translated into verse by

Damocrates, and the poem, consisting of 174 lines, is preserved in Galen’s
work, ‘De /lntidotis.’”76 Also known as Venice Treacle, triaca magna or
galenica, a favorite recipe of the Arab and European pharmacopeias until
well into the Middle Ages, it was “found in every work on the treatment
of fevers for 1800 years.”77
Trajan’s doctor, Criton of Heraclea, invented another mixture
consumed daily by the emperor, and Antoninus Pius used one, supposedly
composed of more than 100 ingredients,” made up in his palace in his
presence with great solemnity. Marcus Aurelius inaugurated his mornings
with the Mithridatium “in a dose measured to the size of an Egyptian bean
[quotidie Aegyptiae fabae magnitudinem assumebat]”79 as counseled by Galen
himself and did so over more than twenty years. Nor could the drug have
been uncommon in the households of Nerva, Trajan, Adrian, Septimus
Severus and Caracalla.
Many of the emperors that followed seem to have been more
inclined to the alcoholic beverages, something incompatible with the
systematic use of opium, with rare exceptions. Maximinus I (c. 173 –
238), so it has been said, “often in a single day drank a Capitoline
76 Adams, Francis, tr. The Seven Books of Paulus Aegineta, vol. 3. London: the
Sydenham Society, 1847 (GB), p. 525, book VII, section XI.
77 Corner, George W. “Mithridatium and Theriac, the most famous remedies of old
medicine,” Bulletin of the Johns Hop/éins Hospital, vol. 26, no. 292, June 1915 (GB), p. 223.
“In brief, the theriaca of Andromachus was an opiated sudorific, a sort of glorified
Dover’s powder.”
78 Aparicio, 1972, p. 123.
79 Ibid., p. 124; Porter, Roy and Mikuláš Teich, eds. Drugs and Narcotics in Histoijy.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995 (GB), p. 17; Kuhn, D. Carolus
Gottlob, tr. Claudii Galeni: Opera Omnia, vol. XIV. Lipsiae: Cnoblochii, 1827, pp. 3-4,
De antidotis, book I, ch. 1, / /web2.bium.univ-paris5.fr.
310
ROME AND THE CELTS
amphora of wine.”80 Elagabalus (c. 203 — 222 AD) had an even larger
capacity:
And once he invited the common mob to a drinking bout, and himself drank with the
populace, taking so much that on seeing what he alone consumed, people supposed he
had been drinking from one of his swimming pools.81
Galerius Maxirninus (c. 250 – 311 AD) had some self-control and though
of a “quiet nature, he was rather keen on wine. Drunk on wine, his mind
addled, he used to give some harsh orders; but if he regretted the act, he
decided to postpone the orders until sober the next morning.”82 Jovian
(331 -364 AD) may have died of it:
[T]he next morning the emperor Jovian was found dead in his bed. The cause of this
sudden death was variously understood. By some it was ascribed to the consequences of
an indigestion, occasioned either by the quantity of the wine, or the quality of the
mushrooms, which he had swallowed in the evening. According to others, he was
suffocated in his sleep by the vapour of charcoal ....83
Yet the popularity of opium never ceased in the long history of the
Roman empire. Alexander of Tralles, physician to Justinian, invented a
new opium mixture“ that later passed into general use in the West. After
86 Magie, David, tr. “The Two Maximini,” in Historia Augusta, vol. II, part 2, taken from
the 1924 Loeb, p. 321, section 4, //penelope.uchicago.edu.
81 Magie, “The Life of Elagabalus” in Historia Augusta, vol. II, pt. 2, p. 149, sect. 21.
82 Anonymous. “Epitome about the Caesars,” in Roger Rees’ Diocletian and Tetrarchy.
Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2004 (GB), p. 104.
83 Gibbon, Edward. The Histoi_"y of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. III.
New York: MacMillan Co., 1914 (GB), p. 6.
84 Puschmann, Theodor. Alexander von Tralles, vol. 2. Vienna: Wilhelm Braumijller,
1879 (GB), p. 160. It contained not only hyoscyamus but cynoglossa (also called
311
THE PAGAN ERA
that, until the flowering of Arab medicine, Byzantine physicians will

preserve these complicated triacal recipes.
Based upon this admittedly unrepresentative sample, one would
need to be very uncautious to ascribe to the quotidian use of a drug what
could be better explained by sociopolitical circumstance. Even so, it
would hardly be thought strange if the reigns of the dipsomaniacs
exhibited some of the chaos and madness so beloved of Dionysus.
Accepting this, it must be equally unsurprising that of all the different
imperial Roman dynasties, the most unconditionally bent toward the use
of opium appear to have been the Antonines (Hadrian, Trajan, Antoninus
Pius, and Marcus Aurelius), whose reigns coincidentally were also those
most representative of human dignity and political wisdom.”
houndstongue, Cynoglottuni qfliiinale), whose pills could be found until recently in country
pharmacies: “The hound’s tongue (cynoglossa) was accredited with specially sedative
virtues, and was usually added to the opium and henbane (hyoscyamos) in medical
narcotic pills” (Withington, E. T. (1894), p. 405).
85 Gibbon, Edward. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. I. London: M.
Dent and Sons, 1914 (GB), p. 1: Gibbon refers to it as “a happy period (AD 98-180) of
more than fourscore years.” Niccolò Machiavelli wrote that they “had no need of
praetorian cohorts, or of countless legions to guard them, but were defended by their
own good lives, the good-will of their subjects, and the attachment of the senate”
(Discourses on the First Ten [Books] of Titus Livius (Discorsi sopra la prinia deca de Tito
Livio), book I, ch. 10 (1519), tr. Ninian Hill Thomson, www.intratext.com, //digilander.
libero.it). Machiavelli suggested a different reason: that “all were good who succeeded
by adoption, as in the case of the five from Nerva to Marcus. But so soon as the empire
fell once more to the heirs by birth, its ruin recommenced,” forgetting the adoptees
Tiberius, Caligula and Nero. Naturally, Nero’s fondness for opium would be evidence
against the proposition that an opium-using emperor by itself guarantees a happy empire.
312
ROME AND THE CELTS
Figure 61. Codex juliana.

Dioscorides receives from the
goddess of discoveries, Heurisis,
a mandragora plant.
3. Pharmacological Descriptions. The first systematic

analysis of botanical therapy was made by a Greek military surgeon in the
time of Nero, Pedanius Dioscorides of Anazarbos (c. 40 – 90 AD),86
whose Materia rnedica was one of the most influential and prized
pharmacological treatises in the ancient world. Like Hippocrates and later
Galen, Dioscorides traveled to the temple of Imhotep, in Memphis, to
familiarize himself with the Egyptian knowledge of the various kinds of
drugs. Naturally, his work mentions opium many times, enumerated by
variety, means of preparation and specific virtues.
It is applied with water on the forehead and temples for those who cannot sleep, but the
liquid itself (taken) is more cooling, thickening, and drying. A little of it (taken with as
much as a grain of eri/uni is a pain-easer, a sleep-causer, and a digester, helping coughs
and abdominal cavity afflictions. Taken as a drink too often it hurts (making men
lethargic) and it kills.57
55 Now Nazarba, near Tarsus, Turkey.

57 Osbaldeston, T. A. and R. P. A. Wood, trs. The Greek Herbal of Dioscorides.
Johannesburg, S.A.: Ibidis Press, 2000, pp. 607-608, book IV, ch. 65, www.cancerlynx.
com. Lovers of old books may now consult the beautiful version in Castellano of
313
THE PAGAN ERA
Of practically the same opinion was Caius Pliny Segundus the

Elder (23 BC – 79 AD), author of the enormous Historia natural, whose
Books XIX and XX contain descriptions of poppies and opium. Pliny is
in error for believing that opium could only be obtained from black
poppies,” a common idea in his day, but he recognized the same soporific
value in the different varieties:
With reference to the cultivated varieties, the calyx of the white poppy is pounded, and
taken in wine as a soporific; the seed of it is a cure, also, for elephantitis. The black
poppy
This juice
acts isaspossessed
a soporific,
notbyonly
the juice
of certain
whichsoporific
exudes from
qualities,
incisions
but, if
made
taken
in in
thetoo
stalk
large
quantities, is productive of sleep unto death even: the name given to it is “opium.”89
Pliny’s work anticipates contemporary judgments with its critique

of the idea of the universal antidote or triaca. It is also interesting to see
how some physicians considered the drug too toxic:
It was in the way, we learn, that the father of P. Licinius Caecina, a man of Praetorian
rank, put an end to his life at Bavilum in Spain, an incurable malady having rendered
existence quite intolerable to him. Many other persons, too, have ended their lives in a
Andres de Laguna, Pedaeio Diotroridet Anagarheo arerta de la materia mediiinal, 11 de lot 1/enemot
mortiferot, Salamanca, 1563 online at a website of the Universidad Complutense de
Madrid, //alfama.sim.ucm.es. The edition of 1570 in the Biblioteca Nacional, excised by
the Inquisition in several places, lacks the first four pages.
88
[which]
“Of the
the cultivated
country people
poppysprinkle
there are on
three
the kinds,
upper crust
the first
of their
beingbread
the white
The
poppy
second
kind is the black poppy, from which, upon an incision being made in the stalk, a milky
juice distils; and the third is that known to the Greeks by the name of ‘rhoeas,’ and by us
as the wild poppy” (Bostock, Riley (1856), vol. IV, p. 196, book XIX, ch. 53).
89 Bostock and Riley, trs. The Natural History of Pliny. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1856
(GB), pp. 275-276, book XX, ch. 76.
314
ROME AND THE CELTS
similar way. It is for this reason that opium has been so strongly exclaimed against by
Diagoras and Erasistratus:98 for they have altogether condemned it as a deadly poison,
forbidding it to be used for infusions even, as being injurious to the sight. Andreas says,
in addition to this, that the only reason why it does not cause instantaneous blindness, is
the fact that they adulterate it at Alexandria. In later times, however, the use of it has not
been disapproved of — witness the celebrated preparation known as “diacodion.”91
Pliny himself did not agree with every use of opium but recognized its
value:
For my own part, however, I do not approve of opium entering into the composition of
eye-salves, and still less of the preparations from it known as febrifuges, digestives, and
coeliacs: the black poppy, however, is very generally prescribed, in wine, for coeliac
affections.92
Dioscorides defends the drug, though he repeats the same warnings as the
others as a means to discarding them as simply not in accordance with his
own very real practice:
Erasistratus says that Diagorus disallows the use of it for those who are sick with ear
sores or eye sores, because it is a duller of the sight and a causer of sleep. Andreas says
that if it were not adulterated they would be blind who were rubbed with it. Mnesidemus
says that the use of it is only effective to inhale, good to cause sleep, and that otherwise it
98 Of Erasistratus, who flourished around 250 BC and is considered by some as the

founder of physiology, it is said that he practiced euthanasia on himself using opium. See
Sigerist, 1949, p. 33.
91 Bostock, Riley, vol. IV (1856), Nat. hist., XX, 76, p. 276. The translators add a
footnote: “Syrop of white poppies was, till recently, known as sirop of diacodium.
Opium is now universally regarded as one of the most important ingredients of the
Materia Medica” (ftnt. 62, p. 276).
92 Bostock and Riley (1856), pp. 276-277, bk XX, ch. 76.
315
THE PAGAN ERA
is hurtful. These things are false, disproved by experience, because the efficacy of the
medicine bears witness to the work of it.93
The only individual comparable to Hippocrates in the classical

Roman era, Claudius Galen (129-199 AD) practically consecrated its
medicinal use while recognizing its toxicity. Galen was born in Bergamo
(present-day Bergama, Turkey), a city famous for its poppies and its
temple to Asclepius, even perhaps where the therapy of the temperate
sleep or incubatio was initiated. Anticipating the hypothesis of heroic
medicine, Galen considered the juice of the poppy as the paradigmatic
plant ploa'r7na,éon: something magically active that was inseparably poison
and remedy. Without trying to explain step by step why (this was the
magic of opium), he recognized it was a substance that both cured and
killed. To be exact, it cured because it threatened to kill; and not vainly, as
Galen wrote that it, like hemlock, was “cold to the fourth degree, and
therefore required some correspondingly hot medicine to moderate its
frigidity, "94 while drugs like mandragora belonged to the third. Few drugs
93 Osbaldeston, Wood, trs. The Greek Herbal of Dioscorides. Johannesburg, S.A.:

Ibidis Press, 2000, p. 608, book IV, ch. 65, wWw.cancerlynx.com. In Latin: Diagorut, ut
Eratittratut autor ett, utuni eint darnna uit, otuloruni lippitudinihut et auriuni uityt infundi uetant:
quoniarn uitut atieni laehetaret, et toporern gzgneret. Addidit Andreat, illitot eo protinut extaetari, ti
non adulteraretur. Mnetideniut utuni duntaxat ofiattandip, 7 7, , ' ad on 7' J 1'
eonueniret, alioqui nohit ut noxio interdiiit. Quae eonrrnentitia ette, experiniento depreloendunt /.
tiquidenr eflettut, uiriuni l9uitt.\'£€ nieditainentijidenifaiiunt: quare non alienunifuerit ttriptit nianda 0,
quona/n niodo it exiipiatur tuttut (Ruellio, Ionne, tr. Pedanii Diottoridit Anagarlrei de Meditinali
rnateria Lilrri .!'€X. Lugduni: Apud Balthazaren Arnolletum, 1552 (GB), p. 526, book IV,
ch. 55).
84 “This theory seems to be still applied in the confection of opium of the U. S. P. of
1870” (McDonald, George. “Pharmaceutical Literature — its Character and Growth,”
316
ROME AND THE CELTS
possessed comparable soporific or analgesic powers,95 and rightly this

made opium an unsurpassed recourse for many ailments. Galen explicitly
dissented from those who saw it as inutile or prejudicial in ophthalmic
afflictions, maintaining that “all acknowledge that eye-salves [collyria] made
with opium, mitigate the most vehement pains of the eyes.”96 Its principal
virtues, cooling (refrigerare) and stupefying (stupe)"acere),97 were evidence of
its utility for treating the opposite conditions in the body.
4. Mortal and Mercantile Aspects. What strikes the modern

investigator with regards to Roman pharmacological descriptions of
opium, as it does those of the Greek, is the total lack of any reference to
the so-called phenomenon of addiction.9 8 Neither Dioscorides nor
W/ertern Druggirt, vol. 9. Chicago: G. P. Englehard & Co., 1887 (GB), p. 308); see also Q’
Sinitgl Med Faculz‘, book VIII.
95 “Opiuni itaque fortirriniuni ert ex iir, quae renruni rtupefaciunt ac roninuni roporiferuni inducunt”
(Galen, OQ. Onin., (Kuhn), 1827, vol. XIII, p. 273, De coniporitione rnedicanientorurn,
web2.bium.univ-paris5.fr).
95 jani i/ero colh/ria, quae ex opio fiunt, i/ehenientirrinior oculoruni dolorer reniittere oniner norunt
(Galen, Ogera Oninia, vol. X (Kuhn), 1827, pp. 868-869, De niethodo niedende, book XII (tr.
gwr), BIUM).
97 Galen, OQ. Orrin. (1827), vol. XIII (Kuhn), p. 155, De coniporitione niedicanientoruni, book
VIII: Alio auteni niodo reperieniur etiani renrur rtupefactioneni per refrigerantia etperniutationern ac
dircurrioneni niordaiiuni per attenuantia et rericcantia. Coniponitur auteni ex hinur niodi ipruni
niedicanientuni. Opiuni enini et rorae etpryllii ruccur ex refrigerantiliur runt.
95 “There is not even a word in Greek to identify the ‘addicted’ nor does Greek contain
any concept of drug dependence” (L. Arata. “Nepenthes and Cannabis in Ancient
Greece,” janur Head 7(1): 2004, p. 34). In Latin, the addictur was “one who has been
given up or made over as servant to his creditor. [He] was not properly a slave I
reri/ur — he could become free again by canceling the demand” (Lewis, Charlton T. and
Charles Short. A Latin Dictionaijy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879, www.perseus.tufts.
edu, and Lewis, C. T. A Latin Dictionary for Schools. New York: American Book Co.,
317
THE PAGAN ERA
Scribonius nor Galen nor any other physician mentions that opium
produced an undesirable tolerance syndrome with an iron necessity of
employing ever larger doses to achieve the same effect, nor the grave
threat of an abstinence syndrome if one did not. On the contrary, they
adopted the same Greek criterion of taking the drug little by little until
one had achieved a familiarity that avoided the dangers of sudden
intoxication. Neither do the detractors previously mentioned (Diagorus,
Erisistratus, Andreas) oppose opium for its addictivity but only for its
toxicity, seeing it as unuseful except for curing certain specific ailments.
For the Romans, the habit of consuming this plant extract cannot be
distinguished from the habit of eating certain foods, doing certain bodily
exercises or sleeping and rising at some determined hour. They were also
in general agreement on two other aspects of major importance. One was
the necessity of sedation and sleep as inherent in human life, or seen
inversely, the indisputable right to anything in the struggle against the
anxiety of pain in the most effective manner. Opium (not cereals) was the
symbol of Ceres, the generous. The second was that it was not a panacea,
1916, see addico), something akin to being underwater on one’s mortgage. The modern
use of the word has been repeatedly criticized: “(T)he crucial element in drug (ab)use is
personal choice” (Szasz, Thomas. Our Right to Drugs. New York: Praeger, 1992 (GB),
p. xi); “(T)he state we describe as ‘addicted’ is too mechanistic and remote from the
realm of human desires” (Davies, B. The Myth of Addiction. Amsterdam: Harwood
Academic Publ., 1992, p. vii). Typically, the image of the “mechanism” of addiction
arrives via observations of rats in cages endlessly pressing levers. Yet, when a more
natural environment was provided, “the animals in the cages consumed nearly twenty
times as much morphine as the rats in Rat Park” suggesting that “self-administration of
drugs by laboratory animals affords little real support for the belief [in drug-induced
addiction]” which may instead be an “artifact of social isolation” (Alexander, Bruce K.
“The Myth of Drug-induced Addiction” (2001), www.parl.ge.ca).
318
ROME AND THE CELTS
because its ability to numb certain evils and remedy others carried with it
the evident price of putting one’s life in danger.
Figure 62. Altorelief of

Marcus Aurelius sacrificing.
Accepting both things, its

consumers knew to abide by the
rules and the law knew it only as
something to be defended from
adulterations like any other
commercial product. Its
consumption in the Greco-Roman
world by its many millions of
steady users over many long
centuries produced not the least
indication of individual or
collective problems. Though
numerous, opium eaters are totally
unknown as a clinical or social category. It is curious to observe,
moreover, that some of the more celebrated, like Marcus Aurelius, appear
to have used for decades the same dose with no ill effects, causing
additional embarrassment to those who would attempt to consider him a
drug addict.”
99 Nevertheless, some modern writers see in this an ethical lapse leading to excessive
indulgence in licentious conduct by his wife (Varenne, 1973, p. 87); others maintain that
this custom of Marcus Aurelius was a passion at the edge of the moral (Lewin, 1970, p.
54). Recently, the scholastic trend is to defend the author of the Meditations: “Since we
do not know how much opium Galen gave the emperor, the debate must perforce
319
THE PAGAN ERA
The widespread use of the drug not only testifies to its use as
sedative, hypnotic, analgesic and generic prophylactic for those who
desired to live, but as well, as an aide for abandoning this desire when the
very real conditions of existence became inadequate. Venal and coarse in
other ways, the Roman spirit contemplated with great serenity the
advantages of the /nort te/npettioa.
And indeed this constitutes the great comfort in this imperfect state of man, that even
the Deity cannot do everything. For he cannot procure death for himself, even if he
wished it, which, so numerous are the evils of life, has been granted to man as our chief
goodviot)
More than an inalienable right, euthanasia was an ethical duty for
the sick and those around him. Pliny the Younger movingly relates how a
peasant woman committed suicide with her husband, afflicted with a
terrible infirmity, hurling themselves tied together into Lake Como:
I was sailing on our lake Larius, when an elderly friend pointed out to me a villa and
moreover a saloon projecting over the lake. “From that spot,” said he, “a townswoman
remain inconclusive” (McLynn, Frank. Marcus Aurelius: A Life. Cambridge, MA: Da

Capo Press, 2009 (GB), p. 103); “Marcus never sought out opium for its own sake, but
for its medicinal effects, and thanks to Galen he seems to have found the proper balance
in his dosage” (Hadot, Pierre. Philosophy as a Way of Life. Oxford: Blackwell
Publishing, 1995 (GB), p. 181); “Admittedly the amounts of opium could vary, and, on
the basis of the antidote of the younger Andromachus, a /éyarnos (Marcus Aurelius’ daily
dose) would contain about 0.033 grams of opium, hardly sufficient for addiction”
(Africa, T. W. “The Opium Addiction of Marcus Aurelius,” Journal of the History of Ideas,
vol. 22, no. 1 (Jan-Mar 1961), p. 102, n. 78).
188 Bostock, Riley, trs. The Natural History of Pliny the Elder, vol. I. London: George
Bell and Sons, 1893 (GB), pp. 24-25, book II, ch. V; the 1855 translation is at
www.perseus.tufts.edu. A second, separate translation can be found in Jennifer Michael
Hecht’s Doubt: A Histogy. New York: Harper Collins, 2003 (GB), p. 154.
320
ROME AND THE CELTS
of ours, once upon a time, precipitated herself in company with her husband.” I
enquired the reason. The husband had for a long time been an invalid, suffering from
putrid ulcers in the groin. [S]he advised him to die, and became herself his
companion in death, nay rather his example and leader, the compelling cause of his
death; for she tied her husband to her, and jumped into the lake.151
Compared with such stoicism, the horror of the Greeks before old
age and illness seems frivolous.102 Valuing above all else that which
Epicetus called the autonomy of moral decision, any drug that would
augment the power of man to govern his own destiny was something
completely venerable, even more so if it could assure a timely death.
The Roman market in opium must be mentioned. Strong
demand, a variety of species and procedures of manufacture ensured that,
together with domestic poppies extracted from gardens and private fields,
there would flourish a commerce in Egyptian (tebaico) and Mesopotamian
opium, primarily from Alexandria, the latter routinely denounced by
experts in botanic medicine for its falsifications and trickeries. Scribonius
Largus, for example, demanded that the latex itself (ex lacte ipso)103 be
191 Lewis, John Delaware. The Letters of the Younger Pliny. London: Kegan Paul,
Trench, Trübner and Co., 1890 (GB), pp. 204-205, book VI, letter 24.
102 Pliny the Younger commented about illness: “The illness of a certain friend lately
reminded me that we are best while we are sick. For what sick man is tempted either by
avarice or lust? Such an one is not the slave of his amours, has no appetite for honours,
is neglectful of riches, and holds the smallest portion of them for enough, seeing that he
is about to part with it” (Lewis, tr. The Letters of the Younger Pliny (1890), p. 243,
book VII, letter 26).
103 Sed opiuni ez‘ in hoc et in onini collyrio niedicanientoque i/eruni adicere oportet, quod ex lacte ipso
sili/atici papai/eris capitum it, non ex suco folioruni eiur Ilud enini cuni niagno labore exiguuni
conficitur, hoc sine niolestia et abundanter (Helmreich, Georgius, ed. Scribonii Lagi
C0ltil_70!iti0l1€S. Lipsiae: B. G. Teubner, 1887 (GB), p. 13, no. XXII, lines 17-22); also at
www.forumromanum.org. The very similar version recorded by Marcellus Empiricus (c.
321
THE PAGAN ERA
extracted through incisions in the poppy capsules. Dioscorides and Pliny

also list criteria for avoiding scams, their extensive explanations revealing
a personal admiration for the product. According to Dioscorides:
That liquid is best which is thick, heavy, and sleepy in smell, bitter to the taste, easily
pierced with water, smooth, white, not sharp, neither clotted nor growing thick in the
straining (like wax), and when set in the sun flowing abroad, and when lighted at a candle
not with a dark flame, and keeping strength in its smell after it is put out.104
Pliny gives much the same criteria, showing no less familiarity with the
item:
The principal test of the purity of opium is its smell, which, when genuine, is so
penetrating as to be quite insupportable. The next best test is that obtained by lighting it
at a lamp; upon which it ought to burn with a clear, brilliant flame, and to give out a
strong odour when extinguished; a thing that never happens when opium has been
drugged, for, in such a case, it lights with the greatest difficulty, and the flame repeatedly
goes out. There is another way of testing its genuineness, by water; for, if it is pure, it
will float like a thin cloud upon the surface, but, if adulterated, it will unite in the form of
blisters on the water. But the most surprising thing of all is the fact, that the sun’s heat
in summer furnishes a test; for, if the drug is pure, it will sweat and gradually melt, till it
has all the appearance of the juice when fresh gathered. Mnesides is of opinion that the
best way of preserving opium is to mix henbane seed with it; others, again, recommend
that it should be kept with beans.1°5
410) is in Marrelli De Mediramentit Liher, ed. Georgius Helmreich. Lipsiae: B. G.

Teubneri, 1889, p. 60, ch. VIII, www.archive.org. Roughly: “But with opium and all
medicinal eye-salves, the genuine article ought to be used, that made from the juice of
wild poppy heads, not from the juice of the leaves With the former, only a little is
collected with great labor; the latter can be had abundantly and without trouble (gWr).”
184 Osbaldeston (2000), p. 608, book IV, ch. 65, www.cancerlynx.com.
105 Bostock (1856), Nat. hist., XX, 76, p. 277.
322
ROME AND THE CELTS
These meticulous observations are warnings as well to the user of

what to expect if he should buy without taking precautions. Dioscorides
cannot repress a subtext of outraged dignity:
They counterfeit it by mixing glaucium, gum, or juice of the wild lettuce. But dissolved,
that made from glaucium is a saffron colour. That of the wild lettuce is faint in its smell
and rougher. That of gum is without strength and transparent. Some are come to so
much madness as to mix grease with it.106
Today we are accustomed to adulteration in some drugs but we

become angry when it happens with others (the legal ones), such as
frequently occurs with spirits and wines purchased in bulk which are then
introduced into bottles and labeled as superior products. Similarly,
Romans became incensed with the adulterations in opium for the same
reason as it was a perfectly legal product, ambivalent for the Lex Cornelia
unless it was used to harm others. To a large number of users and points
of sale, the emperors added price controls and would not permit
speculation on a product of primary necessity like flour or wool. This
may have been done originally for humanitarian reasons but the demand
often exceeded the supply and the result was a flight of capital to Asia
Minor, location of the largest plantations and the highest quality product.
A great part of Asia Minor was under Roman control and the
legality of the product permitted a healthy tax on sales. In the middle of
the first century, Pliny the Elder listed the prices of expensive drugs but
makes no reference to opium. At the beginning of the fourth century,
specifically in the year 301, the edict De pretiis Rem/m I/enaliam of
166 Osbaldeston (2000), p. 608, book IV, ch. 65, www.cancerlynx.com. Wild lettuce is
also a psychoactive solanacea, whose addition not only adds weight but potentiates the
effects of the adulterated opium.
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Diocletian (c. 245 – 313) fixed the maximum price for a castrensis /nodius
(18.5 quarts) of poppy seed at 150 relatively debased denari, an extremely
modest figure if one compares it with 50 denari for the same quantity of
hemp seed.107 For context, legally, the same measure of oats or of
Phalerian wine could be sold for no more than 30 denari, 150 for mustard
seed or 200 for cumin seed, cleaned.
Any attempt to extract from this limited data any comparison
with, say, the prices of hashish and opium today is a job for the unwary.
Prices routinely fluctuate for many reasons, the percentage of hemp seed
used for rope is unknown, in Rome to smoke Egyptian hashish was
almost an eccentricity while opium was considered a minimal requirement
in the house of every citizen, black markets obstruct data collection while
the figures of the UNODC are systematically swayed by national politics,
Diocletian’s edict was quickly ignored suggesting his prices by decree
reflected little more than wishful thinking, and neither heroin nor
morphine were available in Rome while henbane and mandragora are
essentially unused today. Even so, a quick and informal survey reveals
that the ratio between the price per gram of cannabis and that for a gram
of opium is roughly one to two, not far from that in ancient Rome.
What can be said is that today both opium and hashish are illegal
over much of the planet and traffic in them is castigated with penalties
equal to or greater than those for murder while in Rome both were legal
and their botanic precursors were routinely classified with other common
agricultural products. In the year 312 AD, for example, a fiscal census
made in the city indicated that there were 793 shops dedicated to the sale
107 Molon (Steier), in Pauly, vol. XV, 2, p. 2440; Leake, W. Martin. “On an Edict of
Diocletian,” Transaction of the Royal Sociegg of Literature of the United Kingdom, vol.
I. London: J. Murray, 1829 (GB), p. 204 and as an appendix to the ournal of a tour in
Asia Minor by the same author (1824).
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ROME AND THE CELTS
of the product, whose total volume of business brought in a not

insignificant portion of the total tax collection.108 A century earlier, in the
reign of Caracalla, an inventory of the imperial palace revealed one of the
items to be some 17 tons of opium.109 A review of the literary and
medical evidence reveals that it is opium’s metaphorical nature, social
status and the symbols that surround it that have changed; its
pharmacological nature has not.
D. Mystery Cults
Together with the medicines promoted by therapists and druggists

and those that were an object of self-medication, other drugs in the
Greco-Roman world were used within non-profane frameworks, linked to
secret rituals. The discussion of the Eleusinian mysteries has already
highlighted certain possibilities and now is a good time to briefly examine
the character of some of these different cults.
Rome’s ascension to the status of solitary superpower of its day
helped expose a phenomenon not obvious in its beginnings. As the
atomization of the citizenry progressed, more and more the individual felt
195 Behr, 1981, p. 44.

109 Iliid. It is very difficult to evaluate the transcendence that this consumption had on
the balance of payments, chronically unfavorable for Rome in its trade with the East.
The latest historical studies insist that this deficit was one of the decisive causes
explaining the crisis of the Empire and to include or not opium together with spices and
other luxury goods from the East requires more careful investigations. Notwithstanding
great differences, from the data available one could easily compare the consumption of
opium during the Antonines or the Severuses with the volume of tobacco consumed
today by the countries of southern Europe, where a considerable part comes from its
own cultivation and the rest is imported, always supposing that the price of tobacco was
maintained at artificially low levels.
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THE PAGAN ERA
the need to obtain mystical personal experiences. Combined with the

hard Roman character, the tendency toward superstition,”‘’ and the influx
of all kinds of peoples and institutions, it is not difficult to understand
that the internal misery masked by the gleaming exterior successes of the
Empire made more and more necessary a new kind of religion,”‘ less
prosaic and coarse than the official cult of laret, penatet and lemuret. In
other words, the conditions were ripe for the flourishing of all kinds of
redemptive religions, especially if they had a good measure of cruelty and
the sublime at the same time, a mix of truculence and abandonment, of
bloody sacrifice and anxiety over one’s approaching death.
This internal misery that progressively overwhelmed Rome was
not disconnected to the liquidation of the last features of Republican
government. The author of the work On the Sublime, written in the first
century, accused the pax romana of resolving itself into a cult of public
order that from the cradle to the grave taught a submissive obedience to
opulence and the exploitation of the weak.
[\W]e seem in our boyhood to learn the lessons of a righteous servitude, being all but
enswathed in its customs and observances, when our thoughts are yet young and tender,
and never tasting the fairest and most productive source of eloquence (by which I
mean
For thefreedom),
love of money
so that we
andemerge
the love
in of
no pleasure
other guise
makethan
us their
that of
thralls,
sublime
or rather,
flatterers.
as one
may say, drown us body and soul in the depths, the love of riches being a malady which
makes men petty, and the love of pleasure one which make them most ignoble.112
110 It was the threat of Hannibal after the Roman defeat at the Battle of Cannae, for
example, that introduced into Rome the Asiatic cult of Cybele as auxiliary mother
goddess, after consultation with the mystical Sibylline Books and a voyage by historian
and praetor Quintus Fabius Pictor (c. 254 BC) to consult with the Delphic oracle.
111 Eliade, 1980, vol. II, p. 140.
112 Roberts, W. Rhys, tr. Longinus on the Sublime. Cambridge, UK: At the University
326
ROME AND THE CELTS
1. Cybele, Theurgia, Hermetism, Mithraism. The

first secret cults introduced into Rome were those of the Phrygian
goddess Cybele, known as the Mysteries of Attis. Depreciated by the
patricians but favored among the poor, the rites included the self
castration of priests; the other faithful limited themselves to self
flagellation in a trance excited by music, frenetic dances and tattoos in an
atmosphere that the Marquis de Sade would have enjoyed if it were not
the playing out of the torments of Attis, a sacrificial lamb who suffered his
own afflictions (as does Christ) for the sins of the world. Before being
admitted to the larger ceremonies, those hoping for initiation and the
already initiated celebrated a communion banquet with bread and wine,
after a severe fast.
Though these kinds of Mysteries began to be celebrated in Rome
before the second century BC, their popularity chiefly occurred in the
imperial epoch. Various Caesars promoted the cults directly or indirectly,
to try to stop the progress of Christianity. As for the ceremonies
Figure 63.
Eunuch priest in the mysteries of Attis,
celebrated in honor of the Phrygian
goddess, Cybele, Magna Mater of the
Roman cult.
Press, 1899 (GB), pp. 155-159, ch. 44, para. 3,6.
327
THE PAGAN ERA
Figure 64. Followers of the

goddess Isis with cult
objects.
Figure 65.
Mithra slits the throat of the bull.
themselves, they were sacrifices

of model A (the transference of evil through a human victim or ploarinakós)
and model B (communion or participation through a ploa'r7na,éon), though
with a decided predominance of the first. After fasting, the feast of bread
and wine was no doubt mildly psychotropic though some historians of
religion are inclined to see in the greater mysteries some kind of
hallucinogenic intervention.11‘7 Given the frenetic nature of the rite, one
could easily suppose that it would probably have been a drug more
adapted to the trance of possession than the visionary.
113 Eliade, 1980, vol. II, 283-4.
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ROME AND THE CELTS
The Eleusinian ritual, in contrast, was linked to the Mysteries of

Isis and Osiris, also called Egyptian, which the Pharoah Ptolemy Soter
established in the second century BC for the purpose of giving his
dominions the cohesion of a religion acceptable to all. Its structure and
ceremonies were established by a Eumolpa of Eleusis, Timoteus, who had
been initiated in numerous mysteries and who doubtless knew the most
minute details of the Athenian ritual. The testimony preserved by the
rnystai indicate clear parallels with the sequence described by Plutarch
where first there is a transit through the darkness and then a trembling
followed by an experience of pure light and a seraphic vision.
Iamblichus distinguished two types of trances, which in terms of
vehicles of intoxication would correspond to the difference between
visionary drugs and drugs of possession, in his book on the Egyptian
mysteries: “Neither is enthusiasm simply an ecstasy; for it is a re-elevation
and transition to a more excellent condition of being. But delirium and
ecstasy evince a perversion to that which is worse.”114 Iamblichus
believed that the common goal of the Mysteries was “a knowledge of the
Gods accompanied with a conversion to, and the knowledge of,
ourselves.’”15
114 Taylor, Thomas, tr. Iamblichus on the Mysteries of the Eggtian, Chaldeans, and
Assyrians, 2nd ed. London: Bertram Dobell, 1895 (GB), p. 126, sect. III, ch. 7.
115 Iliid., p. 238, sect. X, ch. 1. This prima-facie contemplation is also insisted upon by
typically Hellenized texts such as the Chaldean Oracles: “The Oracles of the Gods
declare, that through purifying ceremonies, not the Soul only, but bodies themselves
become worthy of receiving much assistance and health, for, say they, the mortal
vestment of coarse Matter will by these means be purified” (W. W. Westcott, tr. @
Chaldean Oracles of Zoroaster. London: Theosophical Society, 1895 (GB), pp. 55-56,
no. 178; www.esotericarchives.com, www.sacred-texts.com). Compare this with the
contemporary experience described by the poet Henri Michaux on a high dose of
mescaline: “Among silent breakers, the tremors of the shining surface in the
329
THE PAGAN ERA
The book of Iamblichus was expressly written to refute a lost

work of his master Porphyry which had rationalized altered states,
comparing them to sickness, madness or witchcraft:
The ecstasy, also, of the reasoning power is the cause of divination, as is likewise the
mania which happens in diseases, or mental aberration, or a sober and vigilant condition,
or suffusions of the body, or the imagination excited by diseases, or an ambiguous state
of mind, such as that which takes place between a sober condition and ecstasy, or the
imagination artificially procured by enchantment.116
The position of Iamblichus both reaffirmed and contravened the principle

of sobria ebrietas of Philo, and originally Plato.”7
Thus, there was a certain polemic, not over the particular ecstatic
vehicles (that would have meant arguing against the essence of the secret
mystery) but about the ecstasies themselves, some declaring in favor of
certain initiations and others not, depending upon its ability to provoke
the perfect trance, whether visionary or possessed. The critique by the
philosopher Porphyry of Tyre (c. 232 – 305 AD) of the cults of Isis and
Osiris was based upon his adherence to theurgic, visionary practices,
occultations and reappearances of dancing bursts of light being decomposed,

recomposed my calm violated a thousand times by the tongues of infinity I mat and
I ma: not, I was caught, I was lost, I was in a state of complete ubiquity. The thousands
upon thousands of rustlings were my own thousand shatterings” (Varese, Louise, tr.
Miserable Miracle. New York: New York Review of Books, 2002 (GB), p. 12, italics
Michaux).
116 Taylor, tr. “The Epistle of Porphyry to the Egyptian Anebo,” in ~ (1895),
pp. 7-8.
117 “I might tell of many other noble deeds which have sprung from inspired madness”
(Jowett, B., tr. The Dialogges of Plato, vol. I, 3rd ed. New York: Oxford University
Press, American Branch, 1892 (GB), p. 451, Phaedrut, section 245b; see the Fowler
translation at www.perseus.tufts.edu).
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ROME AND THE CELTS
considered more suitable for that sought by Iamblichus, which was to

make the psyche ready “through certain theurgical consecrations, which
they call teletai (initiations), to be received by spirits and angels and to see
the gods.”118 Theurgia, founded by one Julian the Theurgist (who
flourished during the reign of Marcus Aurelius and to whom some
attribute the Chaldean Oracles) exhibits strange shamanic notes because
its founder claims not so much to be related with the spirits as to work
through them. Proclus (412 – 485 AD), one of the first neo-Platonists,
said of theurgic power that it was “more excellent than all human wisdom,
and which comprehends prophetic good, the purifying powers of
perfective good, and in short, all such things as are the effects of divine
possession.”119
Another of the mystery religions that thrive in the imperial epoch
is Hermetism, whose distinctive feature with respect to the others
previously mentioned is a serious conceptual apparatus, or if one prefers,
the fact of being philosophical. It is a religio mentis, offering to the divine
purely spiritual sacrifices 120 and (like Socrates) understands the sacrifice of
118 [P]er quaialam consecrationes theurgicas, qua teletas 1/ocant, iiloneam fieri atque aptam susceptioni
.5Dirz'tuum et angelorum et ail 1/iileniles a'eo.r (Bremmer, Jan N. and Fan R. Veenstra, eds. '%
Metamorphosis of Magic from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period. Leuven, NL:
Peeters, 2002 (GB), p. 100); Fowden, Garth. The Egyptian Hermes. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1986, p. 131; Dods, Marcus, tr. The Works of Aurelius
Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, vol. I. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1888 (GB), p. 395, book
X, section 9 of Augustine’s The Cit_y of God quoting from Porphyry’s De regressu animae
“On the Return of the Soul;” www.thelatinlibrary.com/augustine/civ10.shtml.
119 Taylor, Thomas, tr. The Six Books of Proclus, vol. I. London: Printed for the
Author, 1816 (GB), p. 81 of The Theology of Plato (Theologica Platonica).
120 “[And] I reply: I long to learn the things that are, and comprehend their nature, and
know God. This is, I said, what I desire to hear. He [Poemandres, the Shepherd of
Men] answered back to me: Hold in thy mind all thou wouldst know, and I will teach
331
THE PAGAN ERA
virtue as the cultivation of intelligence. Yet, the inexistence of dogma,

clergy and hierarchical organization does not imply an absolute fault of
mystical ritual. Among the Hermetists, the ingestion of a certain secret
liquor contained in a cup led over time to the tradition of the holy grail or
Graal.121
Finally, standing alone among all the Hellenic mystery cults is that
of Mithra, an Iranian deity connected with the patriarchal symbol of the
bull and whose initiation ritual included being sprinkled with the blood of
the animal at the moment of its death.122 Based partly upon an oblation of
bread,123 Mithraism became the religion par excelence of the military and was
extraordinarily widespread in the Roman world.124 In his biography of
thee” (Mead, G. R. S. Thrice-Greatest Hermes. London: Theosophical Publ. Soc., 1906

(GB), p. 4, Coiput Hernietituni, vol. II, Sermons, I, 3; www.gnosis.org; www.sacred
texts.com).
121 A. M. Festugiére [his La Révélation d’Herni-s Trit/negiste (1954)], in Eliade, 1980, vol.
II, pp. 293 and 489; “Holy Thou art, Thou better than all praise. Accept my reason’s
[logileas] offerings pure, from soul and heart for aye stretched up to Thee, O Thou
unutterable whose Name naught but the Silence can express” (Mead, Thrice-Greatest
Hermes, section 31, pp. 19-20); see for example, Henry and Renée Kahane. The Krater
and the Grail: Hermetic sources of the Parzival. Urbana, IL: Univerity of Illinois Press,
1965 (GB), p. 113: “Wolfram [von Eschenbach, Parzival (1210)] has worked into his
adaptation of Chrétien’s Percei/al the contents, character and basic concepts of the Corpus
loerrneticuni.”
122 The bull was placed over a grill, under which were the ni_ystai, so that when its throat
was cut they were showered with its blood.
123 Telwall, Sidney and Philip Holmes, trs. The Prescription against Heretics (De
praetmptione laereticoruni) of Tertullian in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. III, eds. Alexander
Roberts and James Donaldson. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1903 (GB), p. 262;
www.tertullian.org has also the translation by T. Herbert Brindley (1914), p. 90.
124 “But more than all the others, the Mithraic worship enjoyed in the second and third
centuries an extraordinary popularity” (Clement, Clara Erskine, tr. The English
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ROME AND THE CELTS
Marcus Aurelius, the French philosopher M. Ernest Renan went so far as

to say: “[11] Christianity had been arrested in its growth by some mortal
malady, the world would have been Mithraistic.”125 Christian apologists
saw in this cult (as in the others mentioned) a diabolic imitation of the
Eucharist:
The resemblance of this cult to Christianity was so striking that St. Jerome and Tertullian
saw in it a Satanic plagiarism. Mithraism had baptism, the eucharist, the agapes,
penitence, expiations and anointings. Its chapels much resembled little churches. It
created a bond of brotherhood among the initiated. We have said it twenty times, it was
the great need of the age.126
Tertullian (c. 160 – c. 220 AD), one of the first Christian Latin writers,
was certain this mimicry was no coincidence:
The Question will arise, By whom is [it] to be interpreted the sense of the passages which
make for heresies? By the devil, of course, to whom pertain those wiles which pervert
the truth, and who, by the mystic rites of his idols, vies even with the essential portions
of the sacraments of God.127
The historical evidence, however, shows that those who imitated this
model were the Eucharists themselves.
Conferences of Ernest Renan. Boston, MA: james R. Osgood and Co., 1880 (GB), p.
33, “The Sense in which Christianity is a Roman Work” delivered 6 April 1880).
125 Renan, M. Ernest. Marcus Aurelius and the End of the Ancient World, volume seven
of The History of the Qrigins of Christianity. London: Mathieson and Co., 1875, p. 332,
ch. 31, “Reasons for the Victory of Christianity,” www.archive.org.
125 Renan (1875), p. 331.
127 Telwall, Holmes (1903), ch. XL, www.tertullian.org.
L29 L29 L29

THE PAGAN ERA
One of the most interesting documents, both in scope and

content, tries to tie together many of these different Mysteries. It comes
from the Metamorphoses of Apuleius (c. 125 – 180 AD), at the moment
when Lucius sees a vision and is transformed back into human form:
Then little by little I seemed to see the whole form of her body, mounting out of the sea
[I]n the middle of her forehead was a compasse in the fashion of a glasse, or
resembling the light of the Moone which shone like a flame of fire Behold, Lucius
I am come my divinity is adored throughout the world for the Phrygians call me the
mother of the Gods: the Athenians, Minerva: the Cyprians, Venus: the Candians,
Diana: the Sicilians, Proserpina: the Eleusians, Ceres: some Juno, other Bellona, other
Hecate: and principally the Aethiopians doe call mee Queene Isis.128
Such were the ways of salvation prior to the victory of

Christianity. We see in each one (more in some rites and less in others)
the decisive step between an individual experience of death/resurrection
and a group guilt/redemption complex managed collectively, ritually and
hierarchically.
After defining in his great work on shamanism all psychoactive
drugs as narcotic, Mircea Eliade appears to believe in his history of
religious belief that all psychoactive drugs are also hallucinogenic. During
the fifteen years that elapsed between the two volumes of his work, his
ideas matured for reasons left unexplained, thanks to which he was able to
attribute “the consumption of hallucinogenic plants in the Hellenist
mysteries to primitive behaviors attempting an approximation of the
divine or the achievement of the unio m)/ttica.”129 Of course, if this mystic
128 Adlington, W., tr., S. Gaselee, rev. Apuleius: the Golden Ass. London: Win.
Heinemann, 1915 (GB), pp. 543-547, book XI, ch. 47 [Metamorphoses]; www.intratext.com
and www.sacred-texts.com.
129 Eliade, 1980, vol. II, p. 283. However, in his text on shamanism he maintained that
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ROME AND THE CELTS
union could be achieved by the suggestion of another or through

autosuggestion or directly by supernatural means, few would recur to the
use of psychoactive substances even if they were cheap, accessible and
little known in some cases by the majority of people.
It might be opportune here to remember the principle of economy
applicable in any other field. This principle maintains that when a
behavior or mental state can be induced in greater or lesser degree
through a drug not difficult to obtain (especially if it is undetectable by the
recipients), the drug will be employed as a general rule. The criterion is
valid in the civil arena but particularly for everything linked to magical arts
and religious rites where any sign of supernatural powers can be
capitalized upon. An immediate consequence of this principle is that not
only will there tend to be employed some kind of drug as catalyst but that
there will also tend to be concealment of the means of producing and
preparing it, of which the purpose is simply monopoly.
In the second place, the testimony preserved today of the ancient
world and its religious practices isn’t just what can be explained by what
has survived natural accidents (fires, erosion, and so forth) or the disgust
of centuries of hostile cultures, as if this subject in particular had not been
filtered originally through the screeds of careful censors. In another
the use of narcotics was only a modern substitute for the ecstatic path. It’s difficult to
understand how the same thing could be both primitive and modern at the same time.
But the change of position was already foreseen in a recompilation of his previous essays
(Eliade, 1977), whose last chapter (dedicated to sexual symbolism and hallucinatory
visions) misses a good work on the world mythology of hallucinogenic plants. He also
recognizes there that chemically induced experience can enrich and restructure a
traditional religious system. Otherwise, though there still does not exist a specific work
on the myths related to the ingestion of psychoactive drugs, the monumental
Pharmacotheon of Ott will satisfy and fulfill the curiosity of historians and
anthropologists for many years (Ott, 1993).
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THE PAGAN ERA
chapter there will be time to examine to what point the triumph of

Christianity set in motion techniques never tried before in the West for
remodeling the past whenever it seem appropriate. But this is especially
manifest in any discussion of the Greco-Roman mystery rites, for a long
time fierce competitors with the Christian faith and which ultimately
became the prototype of the unspeakable and nefarious heresy.
With both things in mind, deciding if these cults did or did not use
drugs asks questions previously addressed. The mystical mind can be
augmented by a particular state of mind, fasting, monasticism, corporeal
exercise, techniques of mortification and similar ascetic procedures, to
which list can be added (in the epoch we are dealing with here) the
phenomenon of collective hysteria sociologically assisted by the uprooting
(ano/nia) of groups, classes and even entire territories. Yet, none of this
excludes the use of drugs, at least until Christianity is enthroned. The
systematic pretension of denying it, so habitual among philologists and
contemporary historians, creates the dilemma. Programmable ecstasy
(that which occurs neither before nor after but precisely during the
initiation ceremonies) could indeed have been due to a credulity or
spiritualism supported by mass hypnosis and paranormal factors, or it
could have been aided by common plants and plant extracts known to
excite the same. Each must select the causal factors that seem best
adapted to a scientific understanding.
Of course, it would have to be at least as likely a possibility that
not just one but many different coadjutants were used in the Hellenic
mysteries. If one were to try to attempt to explain the painful and
glorious Mysteries of Holy Week in Spain, one can hardly ignore the
overwhelming influence of alcohol. Using the word hallucinogenic in the
technical sense previously defined, the fermented must is at least as
plausible an explanation for these rituals (frenzied dances, bloody
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ROME AND THE CELTS
sacrifices, flagellation, self-mutilation, shuffling under weighty crosses and

gilded icons) as any appeal to the irrational.
As for theurgia and the so-called great magic of the Greco
Romans, the testimony we have of it is so intellectually gaseous and seems
so much like the talk of modern con artists, that it practically invites one
to believe in Circe and her drugs so as not to have to admit to the infinite
natural ingenuity of our fellowman. Although the goals of theurgia share
much with those of shamanism (a shamanism à la inode, with worshipful
citations from the classics proffered by speaking statues and other
niceties), it survived by giving birth to theosophy and much contemporary
spiritualism, which of course does not use drugs except in the variants of
African origin such as Voodoo, Mandinga and so forth. But this does not
mean that its Greco-Roman progenitor (in an age when the law was
indifferent to it) would not have employed some kind of drug to reinforce
an experience of the prodigious that every wandering niago would have
been able to offer his clientele.
2. The Dionysian Plague. The reaction of the austere Roman

character to the arrival of the cult of Bacchus offers much in the politics
of repression and its consequences. Though they had already enjoyed
many decades of popularity in Rome, it seems that only in 186 BC did the
consuls Spurius Postumius Albinus and Quintus Marcius Phillipus manage
to discover that within the city there existed bacchanals or orgiastic
nocturnal mysteries.130 Their fulminate reaction is interesting for us as it
neatly describes the parameters that surround a declaration of moral
159 “The following year diverted Spurius Postumius Albinus and Quintus Marcius
Phillipus, from the care of armies and wars, and provinces, to the punishing of an
intestine conspiracy” (M’Devitte, W. A., tr. Histoi_"y of Rome, vol. IV. London: George
Bell and Sons, 1890 (GB), p. 1799, book XXXIX, chapter VIII).
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plague. In its magnitude and specifics, this campaign against the

bacchanals with its stereotypical accusations and lack of due process
(something completely unusual within Roman judicial norms at this time)
is one of the first precedents for the religious persecutions chronicled in
the Lower Empire as well as the later prosecutions for witchcraft.
Particularly arresting is the tale of the senate consul Livym regarding the
bacchanals, one of the first rigorous historical examples of the same
conflict dramatized centuries earlier by Euripides.
a. The circumstances surrounding the accusation. In the

tragedy Bacchantes, the basic criticisms of Dionysus were his foreignness or
character of a traveler. So the story of Livy speaks of an unknown Greek
(ignobilis) who comes from Etruria, supposedly learned in sacrifices and
prophecy:
A Greek of mean condition came, first, into Etruria, not with one of the many trades
which his nation, of all others the most skillful in the cultivation of the mind and body,
has introduced among us, but a low operator in sacrifices, and a soothsayer; nor was he
one who, by open religious rites, and by publicly professing his calling and teaching,
imbued the minds of his followers with terror, but a priest of secret and nocturnal
rites.132
He then becomes the origin of an evil that literally spreads like the
plague.‘” However, the explosion will arrive somewhat later, enveloped
131 The description of the events is in the History of Rome (Ab Urbe Condita Libri) by
Titus Livius (Livy), book XXXIX, chapters VIII-XX.
132 M’Devitte, W. A., tr. Histoijy of Rome, vol. IV. London: George Bell and Sons,
1890(GB), p. 1799.
133 “A few years later rites of the most abominable character came to the knowledge of
the Roman authorities; a secret nocturnal festival in honour of the god Bacchus had been
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within a very particular family history that will echo the problem of
parentage that confronts Dionysus on his return to Thebes.
On one side is the young Publius Ebutius, orphaned of his father
and placed under the tutelage of his mother and godfather, perhaps not
scrupulous in the administration of the paternal inheritance. On another
is the well-known courtesan (nobile libertina) Hispala Fecenia, a former
freed slave whose office permitted her to maintain Publius generously and
whose love for him was demonstrated by naming him her sole heir.
Lastly, there is the boy’s paternal uncle, indignant at the management of
the estate, who is also the friend of the noble Sulpicia, a grand dame of
great character, mother-in-law to the consul Postumius.
After Ebutius becomes ill, his mother promises to initiate him in
the rites of Bacchus if he regains his health, which does in fact happen.
first introduced into Etruria through a Greek priest, and, spreading like a cancer, had
rapidly reached Rome and propagated itself all over Italy ...” (Mommsen, Theodore. '%
Histoi_"y of Rome, vol. III, W. P. Dickson, tr. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1908
(GB), pp. 116-117, book III, ch. XIII).
339
THE PAGAN ERA
Figures 66 and 67. Bacchic Roman steles, showing the change in Roman
attitudes toward the ceremonies of the cult. Previous page, a representation
of the Dionysian rites in the classic era. Below, two images realized during
the epoch of persecution of the bacchanales, both tinged with a certain
alcoholic psychosis.
The consecration demands of him ten days of erotic abstinence before the
purification ritual and when Ebutius communicates to Hispala the need to
remain away from her due to his religious duties, he finds a strong and
unforeseen opposition. Hispala tells him that the bacchanals are a factory
of vice; during the last few years they have initiated only the young under
twenty, a fact she knows for certain because she assisted at the rites when
she was a slave. She assures him that his virtue will be violently assaulted
by the priests and priestesses. The boy is convinced by these stories and
relates them to his mother who violentlym counterattacks, throwing him
134 “Immediately the woman observed, that “he could not deprive himself of the
company of Hispala for ten nights; that he was so fascinated by the caresses and baneful
influence of that serpent, that he retained no respect for his mother or stepfather, or
340
ROME AND THE CELTS
out of the paternal home. Ebutius turns to his aunt, through whom he
obtains a secret meeting with the consul Postumius, who decides to call in
Hispala.
The interview between the two of them is admirably described.
The noble Sulpicia is present when the courtesan throws herself at his
feet, begging “not to let the private conversation of a freedwoman with
her lover be turned not only into a serious business, but even [a] capital
charge.’”95 But Postumius is disposed to obtain a legal denunciation,
furious when he hears her speak of the betrayal of Ebutius.
He promises her substantial recompense if she will become his
informant, lodging her in the house of Sulpicia and threatening her with
harsh measures if she does not repeat before him what she had said days
earlier to Ebutius. Seeing the course of events unfolding and tranquilized
as regards to her personal safety, Hispala decides to talk. In the
beginning, she says, the bacchanals were rites where only women were
admitted, whose ceremonies occupied only three days every year.
However, over the course of time a high priestess decided to incorporate
her sons and also to initiate men, transferring the ceremonies to the night
and expanding the number of days to five: “From the time that the rites
were thus made common, and men were intermixed with women, and the
licentious freedom of the night was added, there was nothing wicked,
nothing flagitious, that had not been practised among them.’”99 Hispala
added that their “number [of the devotees] was exceedingly great now,
even the gods themselves” (M’Devitte, tr., Histogg of Rome, pp. 1802-1803, book
XXXIX, chapter In Rome the vow was practically a contractual obligation, as
effective as a sentence from a judge.
155 M’Devitte, tr., 1890 (GB), chapter XIII.
136 M’Devitte (1890), p. 1804, chapter XIII.
341
THE PAGAN ERA
almost a second state in themselves, and among them were many men and
women of noble families.”137
b. Political measures and religious background Given the

scarcity of impartiality and spontaneity of the witnesses and the lack of
any other specific denunciation of specific crimes, it seemed that
Postumius, in accord with Roman penal law, would have to initiate an
investigation, perhaps even infiltrating observers into the ceremonies, in
order to insure that some particular crime against some particular person
had been perpetrated. But the conduct of the consul was very different:
“When both the informers were by these means in his power, Postumius
represented the affair to the Senate, laying before them the whole
circumstance, in due order; the information given to him at first, and the
discoveries gained by his inquiries afterwards.”138
Once he had obtained Senate approval, he installed armed guards
throughout the city as well as guards at the gates. For the first time, Rome
was not closed to block the entry of invaders, but to keep its own citizens
from leaving. Livy describes what happened when it was announced the
amount of money to be paid to the informants:
On the assembly being dismissed, great terror spread throughout the city; nor was it
confined merely within the walls, or to the Roman territory, for every where throughout
137 M’Devitte, p. 1804, ch. XIII.

138 M’Devitte, p. 1805, ch. XIV. “Great consternation seized on the senators; not only
on the public account, lest such conspiracies and nightly meetings might be productive
of secret treachery and mischief, but, likewise, on account of their own particular
families, lest some of their relations might be involved in this infamous affair” 1805,
ch. XIV). Naturally, the “senate voted, however, that thanks should be given to the
consul because he had investigated the matter with singular diligence, and without
exciting any alarm” 1805, ch. XIV).
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ROME AND THE CELTS
the whole of Italy alarm began to be felt. During the night, which succeeded the day
in which the affair was made public, great numbers, attempting to fly, were seized, and
brought back by the triumvirs, who had posted guards at all the gates; and informations
were lodged against many, some of whom, both men and women, put themselves to
death. Above seven thousand men and women are said to have taken the oath of the
association. But it appeared that the heads of the conspiracy were the two Catinii,
Marcus and Caius, Roman plebians; Lucius Opiturnius, a Faliscian; and Minius Cerrinius,
a Campanian: that from these proceeded all their criminal practices, and that these were
the chief priests and founders of the sect. Care was taken that they should be
apprehended as soon as possible. They were brought before the consuls, and, confessing
their guilt, caused no delay to the ends of justice.159
Livy is unclear, perhaps it was impossible to be so, how a cult introduced

by a nameless Greek and maintained by priests from its beginnings could
have been founded by the two Roman plebeians.
It was clear that the pleas of the accused would not be heard:
But so great were the numbers that fled from the city, that because the lawsuits and
property of many persons were going to ruin, the praetors, Titus Maenius and Marcus
Licinius, were obliged, under the direction of the senate, to adjourn their courts for thirty
days, until the inquiries should be finished by the consuls.140
The consuls pressed on with their actions and when the tribunals met
again, a small part of the accused were in the dungeons and the majority
had their throats slit or were crucified: “A greater number were executed
than [were] thrown into prison; indeed, the multitude of men and women
158 M’Devitte, pp. 1809-1810, ch. xvii.

149 M’Devitte, p. 1810, ch. XVIII.
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THE PAGAN ERA
who suffered in both ways, was very considerable.”141 Mommsen puts the
number at some 7000.112
The last provision of the Senate was to elevate the social status of
Ebutius and Hispala: the senate voted that “the city quaestors should give
to each of them, out of the public treasury, one hundred thousand asses”
and other benefits and liberties, “leaving to the discretion of the consuls
the impunity and recompense for the informants.”143
The charge brought against the Dionysians was specifically related
with alcohol:
To their religious performances were added the pleasures of wine and feasting, to allure a
greater number of proselytes. When wine, lascivious discourse, night, and the
intercourse of the sexes had extinguished every sentiment of modesty, then debaucheries
of every kind began to be practised From this same place, too, proceeded poison and
secret murders, so that in some cases, even the bodies could not be found for burial.
Many of their audacious deeds were brought about by treachery, but most of them by
force; it served to conceal the violence, that on account of the loud shouting, and the
noise of drums and cymbals, none of the cries uttered by the persons suffering violation
or murder could be heard abroad.144
In reality, not a single victim had been found before payments for
informants were established. But the discourse of Postumius cited by
Titus Livius, whose authenticity cannot be doubted,145 contains interesting
141 M’Devitte, p. 1810, ch. XVIII.

142 “More than 7000 men were sentenced to punishment, most of them to death ...”
(Mommsen (1908), vol. III, book III, ch. XIII, p. 116).
143 M’Devitte, p. 1811, ch. XIX.
144 M’Devitte, pp. 1799-1800, ch. VIII.
145 The measures taken and their judicial foundation appear to be confirmed by the
discovery of one of these decrees near Catanzaro, in ancient Brutium, preserved today in
the Museum of Vienna. See Mommsen’s account in vol. III, 1908, bk III, ch. XIII, pp.
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ROME AND THE CELTS
declarations on the Roman spirit in general and on some of the true

causes of the persecution. After beginning his speech to the Senate by
saying that whatever “I shall say, be assured that it is less than the
magnitude and atrociousness of the affair would justify, 99146 one of the
consuls proceeded to ask and resolve the background theme:
I am not secure, lest some, even of yourselves, may have erred through mistake, for
nothing is more deceptive in appearance than false religion. When the authority of the
gods is held out as a pretext to cover vice, fear enters our minds, lest, in punishing the
crimes of men, we may violate some divine right connected therewith. Numberless
decisions of the pontiffs, decrees of the senate, and even answers of the aruspices, free
you from religious scruples of this character. For they, completely versed in every
divine and human law, maintained, that nothing tended so strongly to the subversion of
religion as sacrifice, when we offered it not after [the manner] of our own forefathers,
but after foreign customs.147
c. The future of the bacchanals. Even though “rigorous

enactments were issued as to the future yet they did not succeed in
repressing the ongoings,” and some six years later in 180 BC “the
magistrate to whom the matter fell complained that 3000 men more had
been condemned and still there appeared no end of the evil”148 The
matter lasted exactly as long as the legal epidemic was decreed. It was the
first historic crime against the salus publica. Postumius saw the ultimate
destructive power in the celebration of sacrifices according to “foreign,
non-native rituals.” But rituals and foreign officiants already characterized
another Eastern religion long established in Rome: the orgiastic cult of
115-117.
145 M’Devitte, p. 1806, ch. XV.
147 M’Devitte, p. 1808, ch. XVI.
14* Mommsen (1908), vol. III, p. 116, book III, ch. XIII.
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THE PAGAN ERA
the Great Mother (Cybele) and her sacrificial lamb Attis. On the other
hand, the consular speech suggests between the lines that accusations of
sexual promiscuity and drunkenness, like the offense of not being a true
religion, faded in importance when compared to an opportunity to settle
personal grudges and the fear of social revolt, which did, in fact, a little
afterwards, spill out into scattered peasant rebellions.
The spirit of club and political gang was very extensive at that time
in Rome, with the subsequent deterioration of the sacred auctoritas and the
brotherhood of religious drinkers of wine serving on the one hand as a
powerful symbol of the anti-Hellenic reaction and on the other as a Turk’s
head for the liquidation of associations inclined toward any form of
political pluralism. In spite of the fact that the voluptas vim was suddenly
considered the source of all evil, women and minors under thirty were not
being persecuted for the use of the drug, but for eluding the majestas of the
State. The power was directed chiefly against the idea of the secret
society, because of the possibility it might evolve into subversion against
the prevailing institutions. So it is that the decree of 186 BC did not place
the Bacchus cult completely outside the law; it only prohibited Roman
citizens from participating in them, prescribing that no ceremony with
more than five members could be celebrated without previous
authorization of the Senate.
The truly interesting thing about these facts is that they illustrate
the mechanism of the moral plague, seemingly based upon law and
reason, that unleashes a general suspension of justice and rationality in
favor of methods that are simply fulminatory. The phenomenon, rich in
historical examples from this decree onwards, has a series of common
features: paid informers, secrecy and torture, which are reiterated
successively in every crime of lese majestad It follows that campaigns of
decontamination against such plagues are not only justified but are the
346
ROME AND THE CELTS
only viable and effective means for the political authority. Mommsen, for
example, does not hesitate an instant, accusing the Bacchanals of
“everywhere corrupting families and giving rise to the most heinous
crimes, unparalleled unchastity, falsifying of testaments, and murdering by
poisons.”149 A less hasty legal scholar might have asked why none of
these monstrosities could have been demonstrated in due form, without
information extracted by threats or by a system of paid denunciations,
simply conceding to the accused an ordinary trial. The criterion of
traditional historian, so well exemplified by the Prussian Mommsen, can
be compared to that of a contemporary Romanist:
The Senate had decided to control social life but could only do so by considering the evil
customs as acts of political subversion, which is to say, as a conspiracy against the State
There is no armament more dangerous in the hands of any government than the
power to intensify its political action based upon arbitrary re-interpretations of the law.
Seventy years later, the Senate would resort to the same arms against their opponents, the
Gracos; here we have in embryonic form the “ultimate decree,” the decree in favor of
the “defense of the State” that introduced the element of force into the internal politics
of Rome.150
With no prior denunciations of the victims or their relatives and

without an audience at their trials, we simply don’t know if these followers
of Bacchus were a group of true villains or a multitudinous sacrificial
lamb. It only seems clear that certain sectors of Rome felt threatened for
a variety of reasons and that their first reaction was to convert this fear
into a stain or impurity, erasable with the elimination of a foreigner, a
nuclear mechanism of social cohesion linked to model A of the sacrifice.
149 Mommsen (1908), p. 116, vol. III, book III, ch. XIII.
150 McDonald, 1966, p. 33.
347
THE PAGAN ERA
The principal historical importance of the decree on the

bacchanals derives from the fact that it never was repealed and centuries
later would serve to prosecute (with the same lack of due process and
substantive guarantees) the Christians, another mystery cult with a bright
future and also one very closely connected to wine. Those who emulated
Pentheus suffered the fate of their mythical predecessor. Thousands
abandoned villages and fled to the countryside where starvation, exposure
and inadequate sanitation caused sickness that became “mass poisonings”
and soon a very real plaque that decimated the military and winnowed the
oligarchy. But the reprobation disappeared and a decades later the Roman
triad of Ceres, Liber and Libera was once again assimilated as Demeter,
Bacchus and Proserpine, with the god of wine achieving exceptional
success from the first century BC onwards. In the year 83 AD, Dominian
signed a law ordering half the vineyards ripped out in order to cultivate
cereals, given the scarcity of grain. But his pusillanimous nature caused
him to revoke it upon the appearance on the walls of Rome an epigram
attributed to the very same Bacchus: “Gnaw at my root, an you will; even
then shall I have juice in plenty / To pour upon thee, O goat, when at the
altar you stand.”“”
Figure 68.
Old shepherdess,
drunk on wine, Hellenist period.
151 Rolfe (1914), p. 371; Gil (1969), p. 167, quoted in Escohotado (2010), vol. I, p. 348.
348
ROME AND THE CELTS
E. Drugs of the Celts
The Celtic people spoke an Indo-European language and their

institutions share much with the so-called Aryans, especially in the
tripartite division of their society, controlled by Druids or priest-wizards,
cult shamans converted into an hereditary caste in an agrarian but not
underdeveloped society, whose last vestiges were Arthurian characters like
Merlin and Morgana. One group of these wizards personally mastered a
number of otherwise violent drugs and later this use was restricted only to
them, employed to make up medicinal potions, often accompanied by
various charms:
To herbal medicine was chiefly confined all the curing code of the Druids. When this
failed, they had recourse to charms and spells. For an extreme emergency of this kind
they had their si-adhradh-na-fuilla, that is, the prayer or adoration (charm) of the blood;
their si-adhradh-na-peiste, that is, the prayer, or adoration, (charm) of the worm; and in the
same way, a-si-adhradh, or “charm,” for every evil, accident, or disease, to which man or
beast was liable.152
Not surprisingly, some have connected this culture to the use of

the Ainanita inuscaria. Rupestrian images found in southern France and
northern Italy appear to at least one investigator to be depictions of
mushrooms:
152 Smiddy, Richard. Essay on the Druids, Ancient Churches, and Round Towers of
Ireland. Dublin: W’. B. Kelly, 1871 (GB), p. 120.
349
THE PAGAN ERA
I always believed that the famous “Altar-Rock” features an explicit representations of

Amanita muscaria. [I see] many psychoactive mushrooms, [both] Amanita and
Psilocybe in the area of the engraved rocks of Valcamonica.153
A particular variety of psilocybe mushroom is consumed at Christmas en

familia in traditional Celtic neighborhoods in Wales.154 The argument from
geography suggests a large part of what was the original territory occupied
by this culture corresponded to great forests where a number of
mushrooms would have grown naturally in abundance, the amanitas in
“symbiotic, mycorrhizal relationship with the roots of birch, spruce and
some conifers [although] Ireland [and much of Europe] has been almost
totally deforested over the last thousand years.”155
Admittedly, there is at present a dearth of archaeological and
direct literary evidence of such practices. Part of the problem of finding
objective data is the “prohibition on writing that surrounded the practices
of the ancient Celtic druids and Irish filidh (poet-seers).”156 In spite of the
mists which envelop the history of this people, their pharmacological
modifications of consciousness are as marked as those in the Americas,
though what evidence there is arrives less through archaeology and old
documents than through accounts from outside observers, linguistics,
etymology and an examination of the symbolism in their oral legends.
153 Samorini, Giorgio. “Further considerations on the mushroom effigy of Mount

Bego,” Entheogen Review, vol. 7(2): 1998, pp. 35-36; photographs can be viewed at
//samorini.it/ doc1/sam/beg.htm.
154 According to first-hand information, though it may have been Psilocybes semilanceatas,
generally of a small size and not spectacularly powerful, that induces a warm hilarity.
155 Laurie, E. R. and Timothy White. “Speckled Snake, Brother of Birch: Amanita
Muscaria Motifs in Celtic Legends,” .S’haman’s Drum, no. 44, 1997, p. 53
156 Laurie, White (1997), p. 53.
350
ROME AND THE CELTS
Some of this symbolism can be interpreted in a manner that can

be persuasive:
Considering that the old Celtic legends of Ireland and Wales are filled with motifs of
sleep-inducing apples, berries of immortality, and hazelnuts of wisdom, it is remarkable
that Celtic scholars have largely ignored the possible shamanic use of psychoactives and
entheogens in the British Isles.157
With the caution that not all red or speckled foods in Celtic legends
necessarily indicate the /lmanita muscaria, it is possible to read the dream
inducing mushroom into the oarless coracle (skin boat) that floats Conn
MacConn to a Land of Promise, the red berries of immortality in “The
Pursuit of Diarmuid and Grainne,” the intoxicating juice of the apple
sized berries in “The Voyage of Maelduin,” and the golden apple in the
vision voyage of Teigue MacCian: “That apple tree’s fruit it is that for
meat shall serve the congregation which is to be in this mansion.”158 A bit
of linguistic evidence may be the untranslated letter edad of the secret
ogham alphabet with associated color erc (red-speckled) and word oghams,
“discerning tree” and “brother of birch.”1” Laurie and White also note
that “one-eyed, one-legged” references to soma in the Vedas show up as
well in mushroom beings of Siberia and certain Irish sagas.160
The daturas, henbane, mandragora, the mulberry and belladonna
are all related to phenomena of levitation, fantastic physical feats,
157 Laurie, White (1997), p. 53.

158 Laurie, White (1997), pp. 55-57; of Maelduin: “So he took some of them, and,
squeezing the juice into a vessel, drank it. It threw him into a sleep of intoxication so
deep ...” (Wilson, Peter Lamborn. “Irish Soma,” //hermetic.com).
158 Laurie, White (1997), p. 58.
169 Laurie, White (1997), p. 63, n. 8; Schultes, von Reis (1995), p. 387: “ma e/éapacl ‘not
born, single-foot. an
351
THE PAGAN ERA
telepathy, divination and delirium, as we will see when discussing the

drugs of medieval Europe. The Spanish word beleno or henbane
(Hyoscya/nus niger), for example, comes from the Gallic god Belenus,
consecrated in this plant for the purpose of e/nloelenarse (enchanting) or
poisoning their arrows.161 In Gallic mythology, Belenus came to represent
what Apollo was for the Greeks and Romans. Pliny calls him Apollonaris
Belenus, and others knew him as Apollonaria, Polonaris and Polonaria.162
Within the family solanacea we can add a reputed fondness for dried lettuce
leaves whose extract may have formed part of the magic drink of
Asterix.163 Dioscorides had already classified the juice of wild lettuce as a
coarse drug.“” As one of the most ancient cultures in Western Europe, it
is not unlikely that the Celts were involved in the gathering of the
extraordinary diversity of hallucinogenic solanaceas found there.
It should be noted that cannabis is said to have arrived in Europe
from the north and not from the south.165 Both the Greeks and the
Romans later cultivated the plant because its derivatives were so
economically useful but early on they were able to obtain it from the
Celts, who already in the seventh century BC had a settlement in Massilia
161 There is argument, however, that this might refer to the so-called herb of the liallestero,
a totally different plant. Pliny says the same of hellebore: “The people of Gaul, when
hunting, tip their arrows with hellebore” (Bostock, Riley, vol. V, book XXV, ch. 25, p.
101).
162 Bostock, Riley, vol. V, book XXV, ch. XVII, p. 92: “Hyoscyamos, known also as the
Apollinaris;” also supported by a number of works from the 19th and early 20th
centuries that believe that henbane was used in the Delphic sanctuary of Apollo.
163 The cooking of lettuce heads results in a powerful hypnotic proportional to the
quantity of vegetable reduced. Rural traditions surviving today in France and Spain
(especially in Andalucia) recommend this juice for dreaming.
164 Brau, 1973, p. 20.
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ROME AND THE CELTS
(present-day Marseille), and from there they offered cords, sails and cloth
to all parts of the Mediterranean. It would be unlikely if the Druidic
peoples did not intensely cultivate the plant and take advantage of its
properties as a drug. There are varieties of artistic pipes of the Gallo
Romans in the arqueological museum in Sevilla, Coulmier-le-Sec“’9 and
Tarragona.197 It is absolutely certain they were not smokine tobacco. the
possibility of their having smoked other plants stops one from concluding
that they used them only to smoke cannabis.
Undoubtedly, they knew of opium. Poppy capsules are
extensively found around the Mediterranean, including four beautifully
preserved poppy capsules dated to 2500 BC, retrieved from the Cueva de
los Murciélagos near Albufiol, southern Spain.19 8 They were one of the
155 Brau, 1973, p. 20.

167 Font Quer, 1982, p. LII.
168 Lewin, 1970 (1927), p. 54. The original data comes from the book by Herr about the
plants of these lakeside settlements and from E. Neuweiller (Nachtrage urgeschichtlicher
Planzen. I/iertehahrschrift der naturforschendedn Gesellschrift in Zurich 80: 98-122) about the
remains of prehistoric plants in Central Europe, reviewed in Pauly-Wissowa,
Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertunirwissenschaft, vol. XV, 2, p. 2435. Specifically,
waterlogged and carbonized seeds showing diploid (2n=22) and tetraploid (2n=44)
chromosome types have been discovered in early to middle Neolithic Linearbandkeramik
(LBK) sites, primarily lake dwellings (Pfahlliauten) near Lake Constance, Switzerland and
Lagozza, northern Italy, as well as from wells in Kückhoven and Ulm, Germany. Also
worth mentioning in this context are the better preserved remains from the middle to
late Neolithic (5000-3500 cal BC) of other psychoactive and medicinal plants including
mistletoe leaf (1/icuni alliuni), black henbane (Hyorg/anius niger), lemon balm (Melissa
offiinalis), dill (Anethuni grai/eolens) and catnip or field balm (Nepeta cataria). In fact, it could
be argued that what F. Klopfleisch has called the “first true farming communities in
central Europe (5400 to 4900 BC)” were accompanied by a full range of medicinal
remedies including, perhaps, opium (Zohary, Daniel and Maria Hopf. Domestication of
Plants in the Old World. Third edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, pp.
353
THE PAGAN ERA
first cultures on the planet to cultivate the poppy because in the very early
settlements of Hallstat (Austria) and La Tene (Switzerland) seeds have
been found of a variety intermediate between the wild Papaoer tetzgerum and
tomni erum.4"3
Their connection with alcoholic beverages is not so clear. Plato
includes the Celts indirectly among those warrior peoples who imbibed
wine without water and allowed their women to accompany them:
I am not talking about the mere practice of drinking wine in general, but about
downright intoxication. Are we to follow the custom of the Scythians, and Persians, and
Carthaginians, and Celts, and Iberians, who are all warlike nations, or to follow your
countrymen, who, as you say, wholly abstain? Whereas the Scythians and Thracians,
both men and women, drink unmixed wine, which they also pour on their garments, and
this they think a happy and glorious institution.17°
Many centuries later, the historian Ammianus Marcellinus (c. 325 — c. 391
AD), working from first hand data, writes that they may have continued
the practice, in spite of the warning of Cicero:
The nation is fond of wine, and of several kinds of liquor which resemble wine. And
many individuals of the lower orders, whose senses have become impaired by continual
intoxication, which the apophthegm of Cato defined to be a kind of voluntary madness
[firrorit aoluntariam], run about in all directions at random; so that there appears to be
135-138 (GB); Jacomet, Stephanie. “Neolithic plant economies in the northern Alpine
Foreland from 5500-3500 cal BC,” in The Origin and Spread of Domestic Plants in
Southwest Asia and Europe. Eds. Sue Colledge and James Conolly. Walnut Creek, CA:
Left Coast Press, 2007, pp. 225-226, 235-236 from http://pages.unibas.ch/arch/
archbot/pdf/295_Jacomet_2007.pdf retrieved 23 Jan 09).
169 Pauly-Wissowa, vol. XV, I, p. 2425.
178 cowett, B. The Dialogues of Plato, vol. IV. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1908
(GB), p. 168, @, book I, section 637d; //classics.mit.edu.
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ROME AND THE CELTS
some point in that saying which is found in Cicero’s oration in defense of Fonteius, “that
henceforth the Gauls will drink their wine less strong [ililutius] than formerly,” because
forsooth they thought there was poison in it.171
The Germanic tribes like the Nervii and Suebi, though often
classified among Celtic peoples by the Romans, were more abstemious:
Their next door neighbors were the Nervii, and when Caesar inquired as touching the
nature and character of these, he discovered as follows. Traders had no means of access
unto them, for they allowed no wine nor any of the other appurtenances of luxury to be
imported, because they supposed that their spirit was like to be enfeebled and their
courage relaxed thereby. The Suebi are by far the largest and the most warlike nation
among the Germans. They suffer no importation of wine whatever, believing that
men are thereby rendered soft and womanish for the endurance of hardship.172
Much of what is known in writing of these tree-worshipping

peoples comes from Greek and Latin observers during their pre-literate
171 Yonge, C. D., tr. Ammianus Marcellinus: Roman History. London: Bohn, 1862,
book XV, ch. XII, sect. 4, www.tertullian.org, www.thelatinlibrary.com; see also Yonge,
C. D., tr. The Roman Histoi_"y of Ammianus Marcellinus. London: George Bell and
Sons, 1894 (GB), p. 81.
172 Edwards, H. J., tr. Caesar: The Gallic War. London: Wm. Heinemann, 1909 (GB),
pp. 109, 111, 181, 183, books II and IV. Caesar classed the Nervii with the Belgae “who
I have already described as a third of Gaul” but that “most of the Belgae were of
German origin” (book II, pp. 90-93, Edwards (1919), omnes Belgas, quam tertiam €.\'.f€ Galliae
partem dixeramn: plerosque Belgas esse ortas ab Germanis). Strabo calls them the “Nervii,
another German nation” (Hamilton, H. C., tr. The Geography of Strabo, vol. I.
London: George Bell and Sons, 1892 (GB), p. 289, book IV, ch. III, section 4) and
Tacitus writes that “the Nervii openly boast of their claim to German blood” (Fyfe, W.
Hamilton, tr. Tacitus: Dialogues, Agricola, and Germania. Oxford: At the Clarendon
Press, 1908 (GB), p. 106, book I, section 28, www.sacred-texts.com).
355
THE PAGAN ERA
period. The European white berry mistletoe (Viteu/n allou/n L.), which
sprouts from bird feces and lives semi-parasitically on a number of species
of trees and shrubs [actually only one of many mistletoes belonging to the
taxonomically related families Lorantloaeeae and I/iteaeeae],177 came to the
attention of Pliny the Elder:
The Druids – for that is the name they [the Gauls] give to their magicians – hold nothing
more sacred than the mistletoe In fact, it is the notion with them that everything that
grows on it has been sent immediately from heaven, and that the mistletoe upon it is a
proof that the tree has been selected by God himself as an object of his especial
favour.174
It was gathered on the fifth day of the moon and called “in their language,
the all-healing [O/nnia sanante/n]” in an elaborate ceremony:
Having made all due preparations for the sacrifice and a banquet beneath the trees, they
bring thither two white bulls Clad in a white robe the priest ascends the tree, and cuts
the mistletoe with a golden sickle, which is received by others in a white cloak. They
then immolate the victims ....175
The tree upon which the plant grew was also considered holy and was
then cut down and distributed to the people for their winter fires,
becoming the traditional yule logs.176 Indeed, the mistletoe has often been
173 Büssing, Arndt. “Introduction: History of Mistletoe Uses,” l\¢istletoe: the genus
Viscum, ed. Biissing. Amsterdam, NL: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000 (GB), p. 1.
174 Bostock, Riley, vol. III, book XVI, ch. 95, pp. 435-436.
175 Bostock, Riley, vol. III, book XVI, ch. 95, p. 436.
176 All-heal in Gaelic is uile-eekeej/. The tree’s name was liloc-na-nuadlo-uile-iceadlo or,
abbreviated, bloc-na-nodhlog, and the log itself, uile-ìci (Smiddy, 1871, pp. 92-93).
356
ROME AND THE CELTS
identified as the sacred plant of the Druids, and the Golden Bough,
Aeneas’ passport to the infernal regions.177
Pliny writes that mistletoe “disperses tumours, and acts as a
desiccative upon scrofulous sores; combined with resin and wax, it heals
inflamed swellings of every description” and that the Gauls believe “that
the mistletoe, taken in drink, will impart fecundity to all animals that are
barren, and that it is an antidote for all poisons.”178 Recent investigations
suggest that the plant can act as a nervine, antispasmodic, tonic, narcotic
and that “laboratory studies have found that mistletoe kills cancer cells
and stimulates the immune system.”179
Of another plant, vervain [I/erbena ojicinalis], Pliny seems
ambivalent. He notes that “the people in the Gallic provinces make use
of [it] for soothsaying purposes, and for the prediction of future events.”
But he then adds: “[I]t is the magicians that give utterance to such
ridiculous follies in reference to this plant.” It was also known as
Enchanter’s Herb, sacred to the Druids, “common in their many rites and
incantations. It was so highly held that offerings of this herb were placed
on altars.’”99 Pliny’s nineteenth century translators add that it “was much
used in philtres, and was as highly esteemed as the mistletoe by the people
of Gaul. It is no longer used in medicine.’”91
177 Aeneas wishes to visit his dead father and consults the Sibyl who advises him that “a
certain tree/ Hides in obscurest shade a golden bough,/ Of pliant stems and many a leaf
of gold,/ Sacred to Proserpine, infernal Queen./ No pilgrim to that underworld can
pass/ But he who plucks this burgeoned, leafy gold” (Williams, Theodore C. '@
Aeneid of Virgil. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1908 (GB), p. 187, bk VI, vv. 129-150).
178 Bostock, Riley, vol. V, book XXIV, ch. VI, p. 6; vol. III, book XVI, ch. 95, p. 436.
179 See, for example, www.botanical.com, www.cancer.gov, and / /nccam.nih.gov.
180 Conway, D. Celtic Magc. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 1990 (GB), p.
144; vervain may be derived from the Celticferfaen (www.botanical.com).
181 Bostock, Riley, vol. V, book 25, ch. 59, p. 121 and ftnt 50.
357
THE PAGAN ERA
Figure 69.
A shaman plays a drum in the shape of a mushroom.
Ceramic from the culture of Remojadas, Mexico (first century BC).
358
7
Paganism and Ebriety
Knowing therefore, that the use and

enjoyment ofwine require much care,
they did not drink unmixed wine
either in great quantities or at all times,
but onfl in moderation and onfitting occasions.
-- Philo of Alexandria1
Perhaps the only rational way of classifying drugs is by some measure of

what they promote within the human nervous system, whether it be a)
peace, b) energy or c) psychic excursion. Of course, the action of a drug
varies with the individual and more importantly, with the specific dose
employed. Given these caveats, nevertheless, it should be possible to
organize drugs by their pharmacological interaction. Yet, from the data
we have examined, this seemingly objective classification is not sufficient
to explain the place of drugs in ancient societies.
Instead, it must be complemented with criteria expressing a
cultural dimension. Some were used in predominantly magical-religious
contexts (like teonana'catl and /lmanita muscaria, for example). Others, like
the kykeon, may have begun in this manner but were occasionally used
recreationally, as by Alcibiades and friends in classical Athens. Strong
alcohol in China may have been used originally only for sacrifices, but this
quickly expanded to the recreational. Some seem to have been used
1 Yonge, C. D., tr. The Works of Philo udaeus, vol. I. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854
(GB), p. 449, De Plantatione, ch. XXXIX.
THE PAGAN ERA
almost always for therapeutic purposes (as with opium and ephedra),
though incantations to the gods often accompanied any cure. Still others
might fall into one camp or another, being sometimes used in a profane
context like the simple euphoriants (alcohol, cannabis, coca) and
sometimes in the sacred (Dionysus, Indra, the Incas). Occasionally a
society in the pagan era used a particular drug for all three purposes
(Greece with wine or India with cannabis), without fear of contradiction.
The distinction, then, between therapeutic, recreative and entheogenic
drugs, when applied dogmatically is unsustainable, requiring a more
flexible analysis.
A. Profane
Reviewing concepts extensively discussed in chapter one, we

arbitrarily divided sacrifices into those which celebrate the death of a
victim and those the communal feast, models A and B. In terms familiar
to Christians, the crucifixion was divorced from the last supper, in order
to better distinguish the ploarvnakot from the ploarvnakon. In a given society,
the mythic-ritual use of a particular ploarvnakon (drug, remedy, poison) was
then separated into the sacred and the profane. The profane were further
arranged into those used therapeutically or for recreation.
1. Recreative. It is, of course, nearly impossible to wall off

this category from the others. The recreational nature of a given
substance lies not in its chemistry but the use men make of it. A few
examples will suffice.
Perhaps the earliest reference to the recreational use of a drug is to
beer. In Sumeria and Babylonia, women were often the keepers of
taverns. The Sumerian creation myth of Enki and Ninhursaga describes
360
PAGANISM AND EBRIETY
Eden (Dilrnun): “When a widow has spread malt on the roof, the birds did
not yet eat that malt up there.”2 Later in the same myth, Enki seduces
Uttu: “He poured beer for her in the large han measure.”‘1 Laws 108-111
of the Code of Hammurabi regulated these taverns.4 A letter from the
Egyptian nineteenth dynasty suggests Amen-em-an the chief librarian
berating his scribe Penta-our: “[T]hou hast forsaken books, and devoted
thyself to pleasure thou goest from tavern to tavern, smelling of
beer.”5 After the biblical flood, “Noah the husbandman planted a
vineyard. And he drank of the wine, and was drunken.”9 The daughters
of Lot spike their father’s wine, possibly with mandragora.7 With
mandrakes, Leah and Rachel lie with jacob.9 Zhou Gong decries the
drunkenness of the previous emperor and of his newly conquered
subjects.9 The Scyths “shout for joy” in their hemp-seed vapor baths.19
Plato defends the “many excellences” of wine.” Alcibiades and friends
celebrate a profane banquet with the kykeon.“ Galen suggests cannabis is
welcome at certain parties among the Romans.” Dioscorides relates that
2 Enki and Ninhursaga, t.1.1.1, lines 17-19, from ETCSL, //etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk.

5 Enki and Ninhursaga, t.1.1.1, lines 167-177.
4 King (1910), www.fordham.edu.
5 Lewin, 1970, p. 173-4; Goodwin, C. W., 1858, p. 253.
5 Bererhit — Genesis, IX: 20-21, www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org.
7 Bererhit— Genesis XIX: 30-36, www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org.
5 Bererhit— Genesis 30: 14-17, www.jewishvirtuallibraryorg.
9 Legge (1865), Vol. 3, Part 2, pp. 399-403.
19 Rawlinson, 1889, pp. 53-54.
11 jowett, 1892, p. 51, N, Book II, 672.
12 Gillies, 1778, p. 208.
15 Galen, De rinigliciuni niedicanientoruni teranientir ac facultatihur, book VII, ch. 10,
www.janushead.org and www.antiquecannabisbook.org.
361
THE PAGAN ERA
a small dose of deadly nightshade produces “not unpleasant fantasies.’”1

The Celts drank unmixed wine “which they also pour on their garments,
and this they think a happy and glorious institution.’”5
Beyond this, a large number of peoples have found in the flora of
their environments some kind of plant with stimulating properties,
capable of reducing appetite and increasing the ability to work, but
generally used within the rubric of the recreational. Cola, cat, coffee,
betel, coca, mate, guarana, cacao, tea and ephedra have been used for such
ends in America, Africa, Asia and Oceania. Curiously, the part of the
planet that genealogically produced the Western world did not use these
plants until well into the Modern Age and in fact does not seem to have
looked for them,” adapting themselves to plants that produce the inverse
effect like opium, the solanaceas and wine. As the hunters of the
Mediterranean basin from the Paleolithic onwards were doubtlessly
confronted with hunger, fatigue and exhaustion, it is illustrative to observe
to what point they were able to overcome these challenges with basically
depressive substances in seach of stimulants of the nervous system,
suggesting analgesia is what is sought from both.
This demonstrates a phenomenon of interchangeability that often
passes unnoticed. For someone exhausted who must work, a stimulant
can equal an analgesic; and for those who cannot concentrate on work
due to mental or physical ailments, an analgesic equals a stimulant. Many
drugs like the alcohols supply first a stimulating effect and then a calming
one, pacifying the moral conscience. Tobacco, in particular, is considered
14 Osbaldeston, The Greek Herbal of Dioscorides, p. 623, www.cancerlynx.com.

15Jowett, 1908, p. 168.
16 Statistically, it would seem probable that in the European flora there exists some plant
with compounds related to caffeine or some analogous substance, whose collection or
cultivation would progressively increment the proportion of such an alkaloid.
362
both calming and stimulating at the same time. With a conceptual error
comparable to ordering architectural styles by the type of stone employed
and not to the aspirations that each art tries to express, it is habitual to
classify drugs by their chemical structures and to leave aside as secondary
their fundamental relationship with those who consume them.
The solanaceas are excellent examples of substances with multiple
uses. Part of a large botanic family, its psychoactive varieties are drugs of
power for sorcerers and shamans, today as yesterday. They were used in
orgiastic cults in the Americas and could well have formed part of
mystical European rites during the archaic and classical periods, and are
well-documented in medieval witchcraft. These are drugs requiring
careful administration due to the activity of their alkaloids, the ease with
which they provoke fantasies in the user (which often times cease being
visions and become hallucinations) and because of the large differences in
concentration of those alkaloids in different plants, though they grow side
by side. On the other hand, these plants are also specific remedies for a
multitude of pathological conditions, as analgesics and hypnotic sedatives,
especially effective when concentrated in theriacar and philters. Their
reputation as magical substances had no equal, particularly true with
mandragora used by Leah to entwine with Jacob.”
The scarce Greco-Roman data on cannabis suggests a recreational
use among the comfortable classes, indisputable in the case of the toasted,
poorly separated seeds in Rome. The Celtic culture, in comparison,
appears to have used the plant generously and is responsible for an
extensive cultivation, leaving a botanic footprint from Austria to the
British Isles. In the north of Africa, Asia Minor and the Far East, it
became one of the most important medicinal remedies, as well as an
habitual drug ingested in purely profane contexts. In India and Iran it
17 Generir, XXX, 14-15.
363
THE PAGAN ERA
formed part of religious ceremonies, enjoying a renown as an entheogen

and as the drug of choice for social gatherings, in the manner of alcohol in
the West. Its therapeutic, recreative and magical-religious uses fluidly
overlap.
In the pagan world, euphoria is a valid goal in itself, needing no
justification. All drugs have a divine patron, all are venerable and all
require familiarity to ensure best practice. Essentially, this marks the
difference between antiquity and what has followed. To understand this,
nothing is better than returning for a moment to wine and the concept of
ebriety its elf.
a. The neutral spirit. Entheogenic for a number of mystery cults,

a remedy for many ailments, a vehicle of artistic inspiration, a balm to
soften interpersonal relations, an unconquerable habit for a few, alcohol
during the pagan era is the only drug that suggests ethical degradation,
drunken pleasure and an undignified flight from reality. Echoes of
reproach arise during the Babylonian First Empire, the Egyptian
nineteenth dynasty, Duke Zhao’s China, the ancient Indo-Iranian religion
and the diatribes of Isaiah. Alcohol arrives in the Mediterranean and
provokes the immediate dilemma: Does Dionysus-Bacchus bring a gift of
salvation or one that drives mortals mad?
For two millennia, the users of other drugs have no clinical or
social classification while the dipsomaniac is a common character,
inspiring a mix of derision, pity and rejection. But what is deplorable is
not an organic deterioration but a conduct and not because there is a
danger for others but only a danger for one’s own virtue. There is always
a current of thought directed toward the exculpation of the thing itself,
that insists upon distinguishing the virtues of alcohol from its very human
vice.
364
A classic from the first century examines where virtue lies with
regard to wine:
Now, among many philosophers, this question has been investigated with no slight
degree of pains, and the question is proposed in this manner, whether the wise man will
get drunk: Therefore, to get drunk is a matter of a twofold nature, one part of it being
equivalent to being overcome with wine; another, to behaving foolishly in one’s cups.15
Plato expressly discriminates between ebriety and the drinking of

wine, never considering the extreme form of ebriety which is habitual
drunkenness. Putting his own thoughts into the mouth of Pausanias, he
writes:
Now actions vary according to the manner of their performance. Take, for example, diat
which we are now doing, drinking, singing and talking — these actions are not in
themselves either good or evil, but they turn out in this or that way according to the
mode of performing them; and when well done they are good and when wrongly done
they are evil.19
Applied to wine specifically, this criterion implies the ability to

make a sharp distinction between drinking and drinking badly. Wine is
something neutral in itself. Defending Noah, Philo of Alexandria (20 BC
— 50 AD) observes:
15 Yonge, C. D., tr. The Works of Philo udaeus, vol. 1. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854
(GB), pp. 444-445, De plantatione (Concerning Noah’s Work as a Planter), ch. XXXV,
sect. 142; see also www.earlychristianwritings.com.
19 jowett, Benjamin, tr. The Dialogues of Plato, vol. I. New York: Random House,
1937 (GB), p. 309, The Syniporiuni, 181a.
365
THE PAGAN ERA
From which it is plain that he will become intoxicated, since intoxication contributes to
good morals, and also produces relaxation and advantage; for unmixed wine seems to
increase and render more intense all the natural qualities, whether they be good or the
contrary, as many other things do too.2°
Read literally, it would seem there is no drunkenness without witnesses,

capable of seeing and hearing the drunk, as Genetit indicates indirectly in
the history of Noah. Who has a clean heart will have a clean intellect
and who has a clean intellect will drink well. Plutarch of Chaeronea (c. 46
— c. 120 AD) compared drinking well with speaking well:
And the philosophers even in their very definition of drunkenness say that it is
intoxicated and foolish talking; thus drinking is not blamed if silence attends the
drinking, but it is foolish talk which converts the influence of wine [methe] into
drunkenness [le'retit]. |J]ust as wine, discovered for the promotion of pleasure and
good fellowship, is sometimes misused to produce discomfort and intoxication so
speech, which is the most pleasant and human of social ties, is made inhuman and
unsocial by those who use it badly and wantonly ...21
Wine was the object of a polemic about knowing to what point it

was really possible to hold one’s tongue. The most realistic schools, like
the Epicureans and Peripatetics, thought it impossible to guard one’s
good judgment beyond a certain dosis. Lucretius (c. 99 — c. 55 BC), for
example, writes that wine could alter the soul:
29 Yonge, C. D., tr. The Works of Philo udaeus, vol. I (1854), p. 451, Deplantatione, ch.
XLI, sect. 171.
21 Shilleto, A. R., tr. Plutarch’s Morals: Ethical Essays. London: George Bell , 1888
(GB), p. 217, De garrulitate (On Talkativeness), sections 504B and 504E; see also
//penelope/uchicago.edu which has the Loeb (1939), vol. VI, pp. 408, 412 and
Wyttenbach, Daniel. Plutarthi Chaeronentit Moralia, vol. III. Oxford: At the Clarendon
Press, 1797 (GB), p. 32.
366
Again how is it when the strong fierce wine

Is in a man, and all its fiery heat
Is coursing through his veins, the body grows
Quite heavy, and his limbs are hampered sore
As he reels about, his stuttering tongue is dumb,
His mind is limp, his eyes they swim, while shouts
And quarrels and hiccups spread around, and all
That follows such a scene? How does it come
Unless wine’s strength with all its fiery force,
Is able to upset and disarrange
The soul within the body?22
Of the contrary opinion, the Platonists, Stoics and also perhaps

the Cynics defended the proposition that the wise would be able to drink
limitlessly until falling asleep, without being carried away with foolishness.
In support of this idea they allege the examples of those who fall into a
deep river, and the ones who cannot swim, drown, while those who have
swum before, float calmly. But only fish can live in water and even the
best swimmer drowns after floating for as long as he can.
To understand this Byzantine dispute, one must take into account
a difference of culture. The Greeks, like the Romans during the Republic,
watered their wine, rigorously excluded women and young men, opposed
drinking contests and did not value boastfulness over tolerance. Socrates
was said to be able to drink with Alcibiades and other friends without
being moved, while they fell one by one. Socrates did not boast of it and
did not think it worthy of mention. Wine was a drug reserved for
maturity and virility, unthinkable before the age of thirty for a male, that
22 Allison, Robert, tr. Lucretius: On the Nature of Things. London: Arthur L.

Humphreys, 1919 (GB), p. 99, De rerum natura, book III, lines 455-485.
367
THE PAGAN ERA
could and should only be used in a more liberal fashion by those over
fifty.
Some young men might drink until delirium, as was said of
Alexander the Great. But Alexander was a Hellenized Macedonian and an
exception. The peoples the Greeks called warriors — Scythians, Persians,
Carthaginians, Germans, Iberians, Thracians — had in common the same
attitude. They were proud of drinking pure wine,” of having a great
tolerance,” did not exclude women and authorized its use by every adult.
For the Greeks, such an attitude was the height of barbarism.
Yet, the argument between drinking well and drinking badly does
not touch the foundation of the subject, which is the concept of ebriety in
itself and the moral nature of the trance experienced by the drinker. To
know this requires one to know what it is to be sober and what it is to be
drunk, and what it is to have the power to choose the most appropriate so
as to be a virtuous human being.
b. Sober ebriety. Once more, it is Plato who is the central

point of reference, with his exaltation of Bacchic entlooutiat/not as a vehicle
of creative inspiration and religious illumination. However, the one who
realized the most detailed analysis of drunkenness was Philo, whose ideas
were a synthesis of Platonism andJudaism.
23 “But the Spartans themselves say that [king] Cleomenes became mad from no divine
influence, but that by associating with the Scythians he became a drinker of unmixed
wine, and from that cause he became mad” (Cary, Henry, tr. The Histories of
Herodotus. New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1904 (GB), p. 345, book VI, sect. 83-85).
24 Cyrus the Younger, for example, “wrote to the Lacedaemonians, bidding them come
to his assistance And among many other high praises of himself he said he had the
stronger soul and could drink more and bear more wine than his brother” (Clough, A.
H., rev. Plutarch’s Lives: The Translation Called Dg[den’s, vol. V. Boston: Little,
Brown and Co., 1859 (GB), p. 425, “Life of Artaxerxes”).
368
Perhaps because he was not pagan and did not venerate Dionysus,
Philo had no reservations to breaking down the effect of the drug into
five mundane (and possibly negative) elements: 1) clumsy, troublesome
and stupid small talk; 2) insensibility and bewilderment; 3) avidity or
gluttony; 4) joviality and satisfaction; and 5) the state of being naked. He
placed the first two in the single category labeled ignorance. The next
indicates at the same time both the cause and effect of alcoholism, where
an individual is seized by an insatiable desire to modify his mental state,
indiscernible from the thirst for drink itself. The fourth defines the purely
positive aspects of drunkenness. The fifth is ambivalent, because to be
drunk allows us to express ourselves shamelessly to others while
discarding our own masks, unchaining the internal tyrant of personality
and permitting the authentic to rise to the surface in an innocence in
which the ordinary appears under a new light.
His description is realistic, without a trace of mythology. Others
suppose that the sobriety of the just implies abstaining from intoxication.
But Philo recalls to our attention the old forgotten criterion: there is no
true sobriety that does not happen within ebriety, in his words, a rohria
ehrietar".
Wine, then, is said to produce all these effects. But great numbers of persons who,
because they never touch unmixed wine, look upon themselves as sober, are involved in
the same accusation. And one may see some of them acting in a foolish and senseless
manner, and others possessed by complete insensibility; and others again who are never
satisfied, but are always thirsty for what cannot be obtained, because of their want of
knowledge; others, on the other hand rejoicing and exulting; and others in good truth
naked.25
25 Yonge, C. D., tr. The Works of Philo udaeus, vol. 1. London: George Bell and Sons,
1870 (GB), p. 453, De ehietar (On Drunkenness), II.
369
THE PAGAN ERA
Not only wine but other drugs also cause the effects described
above as drunkenness. The nature of life and the bodily spirit of man
carries within it the temptation of necessity, bewildering and eager. If
someone believes he can avoid this danger by renouncing drink, he only
tricks himself by losing joviality, satisfaction and the positive aspects of
becoming emotionally naked before others. In other words, “ebriety is
limited to discovery, as if parting a curtain or as if forcing the door of a
deep crypt; it is one key, among many others.’’“'
Figure 72. Roman mosaic, crushing the grapes.
..‘ i4 7‘-Lurt." 1K|'il='i?‘u
Sobriety must not be confused with abstemiousness, because the

former implies rationality with or without the drug while the latter
26 Jiinger, 1974, p. 129.
370
rationality only without it, meaning in very scarce measure. One person
can penetrate deeply into the folds of his own character because he is his
own best friend while another must flee from his own emotional nudity
so as not to be ashamed before others and his own conscience. Instead of
taking advantage of the enthusiasm of ebriety to correct rigidity, routinely
required to cultivate the personality, abstemiousness in principle prefers to
maintain the mask of exterior composure that cannot hide its own
subterranean bad faith.
The true measure is that of knowing how to drink occasionally (as
recognized by Hippocrates and Euripides’ Tiresias) in order to celebrate
fiestas and to inquire within, without the veil of custom because sobriety
is defined as “the eye of the soul fit to act, which is able to penetrate every
where and to open every thing, being in no part hindered or dimmed.”27
One condemns the chronic drunk for lack of self awareness, but a
rigorous abstemiousness decrees for the soul something as undesirable as
an arbitrary imprisonment. Only because this constitutes false piety, “the
pagan counseled getting drunk from time to time to relax the soul.”28
Philo’s take on ebriety and the rest of his work exercised early on a
notable influence on theologians and Christian moralists. Centuries later,
due to the initiatives arising within his diocese to impose a decorous
abstemiousness, the golden-mouthed archbishop of Constantinople, John
Chrysostom (c. 347 — 407 AD) commented:
I hear many say, when excesses happen, “Would there were no wine.” O folly! O
madness! When other men sin, dost thou find fault with God’s gifts? And what great
madness is this? What? did the wine, O man, produce this evil? Not the wine, but the
27 Yonge, C. D., tr. The Works of Philo udaeus, vol. I. London: George Bell and Sons,
1870 (GB), p. 501, De rohriey (On Sobriety), I.
28 Montaigne, 1965, p. 412.
371
THE PAGAN ERA
intemperance of such as take an evil delight in it. Say then, “Would there were no
drunkenness, no luxury;” but if thou say, “Would there were no wine,” thou wilt say,
going on by degrees, “Would there were no steel, because of the murderers; no night,
because of the thieves; no light, because of the informers; no women, because of
adulteries;” and, in a word, thou wilt destroy all.28
Naturally, this discharges from any responsibility the only drug accused of
attacking virtue in the pagan era; but in still greater measure is it valid for
any other vehicle of ebriety. Except in the case of alcohol, pre-classic and
classic antiquity did not know of any so-called abuse of drugs.
2. Therapeutic. We almost never encounter substances in

the pagan era that belong always and everywhere solely to the medicinal to
the exclusion of various religious beliefs, incantations or charms. As well,
it is difficult to say precisely just what within paganism would have been
considered purely therapeutic, never to be used recreatively; the general
tonic, for example, forces one to parse the difference between need and
want. Even so, it may be useful to re-examine some of the more
important medicines used in this epoch.
1. Medicinal Drugs. The Sumerian earth goddess Ninhursaga

cures Enki with eight medicinal plants, after Enki has made himself sick
by eating these same plants.” This previews the Greek notion of the
ploarvnakon, something both toxin and remedy, and the famous motto of
Paracelsus: sola dosis facit venenuin. No blame is attached to the plants
themselves, but the myth only illustrates the danger inherent in the
28 Roueché, 1960, p. 150-1; Schaft, Philip, ed. The Works of St. Chggsostom, vol. 10.
New York: The Christian Literature Co., 1888 (GB), p. 356, “Homilies on the Gospel of
St. Matthew,” no. LVII.
36 ETCSL t.1.1.1, “Enki and Ninhursaga,” Black, J.A., et al., 1998-2006, lines 198-219.
372
precipitous behavior of the consumer, Enki. None of this early

pharmacopeia has been successfully and definitively translated but context
suggests that the “honey” plant much resembles the sacred lotus, and the
fourth may have been an early form of barley because of its associated
goddess, Ninkasi, goddess of beer. Sumerian tablets from the XXII
century BC recommend beer for women who are breastfeeding, as
hospitals in Ireland and Belgium did until recently and forums and
websites continue to do today.” From the same period comes the oldest
known remedy for toothache: ground henbane seeds in mastic.“
Greek physicians learn their skills from the Egyptians, evident in
the story of Helen, Polydamna and the nepenthes “that banishes all care,
sorrow and ill humour,” often supposed to be either opium or cannabis.”
The Ebers papyrus enumerates nearly 900 remedies based on some 700
different drugs, including opium, lotus, mandragora, henbane and many
others that remain untranslated.” The Ramesseum and Hearst papyri
recommend cannabis for sore eyes and toenails.” The demonstated
antibiotic and antiviral properties of Cannabis satii/a arguably form part of a
prophylactic against epidemics in Exodus.“ The mandrake aids
conception in Genesis and Song of Songs.” The herbal of Shen Nung
51 Roueché, 1960, in Szasz, 1985, p. 44.

52 Prinz, Herrmann. Dental Materia Medica and Therapeutics, 5th ed. St. Louis, MO:
C. V. Mosby Co., 1920 (GB), pp. 515-516.
26 Homer. Odyssey, Book IV, line 219 et seq., tr. Samuel, www.classics.mit.
27 Caton, R. The Harveian Oration, delivered before the Royal College of Physicians.
London: C.J. Clay and Sons, 1904, pp. 24-25, www.archive.org.
28 Russo (2007), p. 1623; Manniche (1989), p. 176 (Ram III A 26); Ghalioungui (1987);
Joachim (1890), p. 134.
29 Benetowa, 1967, p. 16; 1975, pp. 39-49; Bennett (1995).
57 Bererhit— Genesis 30: 14-17; Song of Songs 7: 11-14, www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org.
373
THE PAGAN ERA
carefully distinguishes between the seed and flower of cannabis;28 another

of his favorites is Ma Huang (Ephedra uulgarit), especially for treating “wind
stroke, cold damage, headache and warm malaria.”” The Chinese surgeon
Hua To (c. 220-264 AD) is said to have used preparations made from the
poppy.” The Anetta finds haoma especially effective for rheumas,
hemorrhages and diseases of the bladder.” Sahagun observes the natives
of the New World use the seeds of ololiuhaui (morning glory, Riuea
tog/mhota) to combat the gout.“ Hernandez mentions that ground up
peyotl applied as a cataplasm relieves joint pain.” Mama Coca is still used
to fight off fatigue and altitude sickness in the Andes.
The Pythagorean and Hippocratic schools substantially increase
the number of medicinal remedies available. Thraysus of Mantinea
discovers a euthanasia made from “the juices of hemlock, poppy and
9944
other such herbs. Black and white hellebore purge melancholy, are
sprinkled on wounds, heal malignant ulcers, broken and protruding bones,
remove tumors, cure gangrene, and induce abortion/45 The Asclepians
38 Evans-Schultes and Hofmann, 1982, p. 95; Shou-zhong, Yang, translator. The Divine
Blue Poppy Press, 1998 (GB), p. 148.
39 Chang, p. 51.
48 Booth, p. 104.
41 Elgood, 1972, vol. I, p. 235.
42 Fr. Bernadino Sahagun. Hittoria general de lat totat de Nueua Etparia. vol. III. Mexico:
Imprenta del Ciudadano Alejandro Valdés, 1830 (GB), p. 241.
43 R. E. Schultes’ The Plant Kingdom and Hallucinogens found at www.lycaeum.org
taken from the Hittoria (GB), chapter xxv, pp. 70-71.
44 Hort, Sir Arthur, tr. Hittoria Dlantarum (An Enquiry into Plants), vol. 2. London:
William Heinemann, 1916.
45 Adams, Francis, tr. The Genuine Works of Hippocrates, vol. II. New York: William
Wood and Co., 1886 (GB), p. 221, Aphoritmt, sect. IV, nos. 13, 14, 15, 16.
374
provoke the incuhatio (temperate sleep), perhaps with opium.“

Hippocrates recommends henbane, hellebore and mandrake as remedies
for strong fevers” while opium is the prototype of the alexipharmaka or
protective medicine” and ergot stops post-partum hemorrhage.” Pliny
the Elder and Dioscorides relax contracted joints, shrink inflammation
and cure gout with the root of cannabis59 and Celsus prescribes deadly
nightshade for insanity.” Pliny recommends mandragora for snakebite
and surgery while henbane is good for cough “attended with the spitting
of blood.”52 Celsus purges the bowels with black hellebore in cases of
epilepsy, sadness, elephantiasis and liver disease among others;” white
hellebore he prescribes to induce vomiting in cases of feverish insanity,
lethargy and fever with convulsions of the mouth, to excite sneezing, to
extract ear worms, and disperse tumours in scrofula.” Philo of Tarsus
invents the opium-based Theriaca Philonium or Philonium Romanum that
46 Wilder, Alexander. Theurgia or the Egyptian Mysteries by Iamblichus. New York:

Metaphysical Publishing Company, 1911.
40 Littré, vol. 7, Des Malades, Book II, section 43, p. 61.
41 Schneider, Theriaca (1816).
42 Schultes and Hofmann, 1979, p. 105; Hofmann in Wasson et al. (1978), p. 31.
43 John Bostock and H. T. Riley, trs. The Natural History of Pliny, vol. IV. London:
George Bell and Sons, 1890 (GB), p. 298, book XX, ch. 97.
44 Collier, 1831, p. 101, book III, ch. XVIII.
45 Bostock/Riley, vol. V, pp. 163, 121, 187, 210, book XXV, ch. 58, book XXVI, chs. 15,
26, and 58; vol. V, pp. 163, 121, 187, 210, bk XXV, ch. 58, bk XXVI, chs. 15, 26, 58.
46 Collier, 1831, pp. 116, 104, 119, 143, bk III, chs. XVIII, XXIII, XXV; bk IV, ch. VIII.
54 Collier, 1831, pp. 116, 104, 119, 143, book III, chs. XVIII, XXIII, XXV and book IV,
ch. VIII; pp. 103, 106, 128, book III, chs. XVIII, XX, book IV, ch. II; pp. 177-178, 241,
208, book V, chs. XXII, XXVIII, book VI, ch. VII, sect. 5.
375
THE PAGAN ERA
survived over 1700 years.” The personal physician of Nero, Andromachus

of Crete, created another, the so-called antidotut tranquillant or Tneriaea
/lndro/naeloi made with opium “found in every work on the treatment of
fevers for 1800 years.”5° Celsus lists opium as part of common remedies
for pain and to induce sleep but also for headache, ulcerations, lippitude,
toothache, dyspnoea, ileus, inflammation of the womb, pains of the hip,
or liver, or spleen, or side, or in case of any female falling into a fit of
hysteria or losing her speech.57 Pliny writes that mistletoe “disperses
tumours, and acts as a desiccative upon scrofulous sores; combined with
resin and wax, it heals inflamed swellings of every description” and that
the Gauls believe “it is an antidote for all poisons.”58
In spite of the heterogeny of use of these powerful plants,
including some sinister resonances as the principal ingredients of magic
potions (preparations tending to annul the discernment of another), in
neither the specialized nor the general literature are they ever considered
as something undesirable.
48 Thompson, C. J. S. Mystery and the Art of the Apothecary. London: Bodley Head,
1929 (GB), p. 60.
49 Corner, George W. “Mithridatium and Theriac, the most famous remedies of old
medicine,” Bulletin of the ]0l9tt.!' Hop/éins Hospital, vol. 26, no. 292, June 1915 (GB), p. 223.
“In brief, the theriaca of Andromachus was an opiated sudorific, a sort of glorified
Dover’s powder.”
50 Collier (1831), p. 180, book V, ch. XXV, section 3. In section 4 he provides a method
of procuring the substance: “Moreover, a handful of the papaver sylvestris, when it is
just ready for collecting its tear, is put into a vessel, and as much water poured thereon as
suffices to cover it; and it is thus boiled. After it has cooled, boluses are made of it, as
large as our native bean; their use is multifarious.”
51 Bostock, Riley, vol. V, book XXIV, ch. VI, p. 6; vol. III, book XVI, ch. 95, p. 436.
376
Figure 70. Minoan goddess, thirteenth century BC.

The diadem she wears on her head is crowned with
three poppy capsules.
If someone uses them to kill,

he is an assassin but the drugs
themselves are not inert
assassins. Not even their use
by creatures as fearsome as
witches caused people to think
differently about them, in
curious contrast with the
enormity of people burned
alive at the beginning of the
modern era in Europe for
simple possession of unguents
in which these drugs were
present or even suspected of
being so.
Opium, for example, is
the aspirin of the ancient
world, an aspirin at once more
effective and less toxic, except
in large doses, than ours. By
itself, no physician recom
mended it for more than the alleviation of local pains and afflictions or as
a calmative. As an ingredient in complex remedies, it is the basic antidote
of the theriaca. Excepting wine, no drug was more widely used in Asia
Minor and the Mediterranean basin. By itself or combined with
solanaceas and cannabis, it fulfilled the functions of analgesic, sedative,
THE PAGAN ERA
aphrodisiac, sleeping pill and euthanist. In contrast with wine and other
drugs, opium is not seen as a euphoriant but is only used to induce sleep
and repress pain. What pleasure there is comes from the absence of pain
and those who use it frivolously can expect a sharp coldness as
recompense. Its moral use is the mors tempestiva.
2. The Practice ofmedicine. The collection of customs

and unwritten principles that governs the subject of psychoactive drugs
would not be complete without an allusion to the status of physicians and
drug sellers, not to be confused with the priest castes so predominant in
the Egyptian, Indian, Chinese, Iranian, and Celtic cultures.
Conscious of the fact that the objective interest of professional
medicine is health not sickness, many peoples including the Chinese and
Persians only paid their physicians when they were healthy, assuring by
this action that they would do as much as possible so that it should
continue. In the West, tradition took another road and over the course of
centuries as one crisis after another within the theocratic state caused it to
be succeeded by the therapeutic state, medical hierarchies began to
assume many functions previously exclusive to the ecclesiastical. Driven
by the phenomenon known as the death of god, the monopoly on
methods for curing the soul conferred on the clerical estate has been
followed by the monopoly on the means of curing minds and bodies,
conferred upon the therapeutic. Its most obvious manifestation is the
obligatory system of medicine by diploma-ed faculty, closely related to the
obligatory system of religious instruction by duly ordained priests.
During the pagan era the situation was completely different, and
not only because they lacked an ecumenical monotheism. In Greece, as
we have seen, music therapists, iatromateis and sorcerers of various kinds
coexisted with ensalmadores, diviners, drug makers, therapeutic astrologers
378
Figure 71.
Aeneas, accompanied with his son Ascanius

and the goddess Aphrodite, has his wounds
treated by a physician. Roman mosaic, 70 BC.
and mathematicians,
root cutters, empirics,
adscripts to the temple
of Asclepius and the
current that crystallized
as scientific or Hippo
cratic medicine, among
other schools. In par
ticular, the Hippocratics
were largely Asclepians
who had abandoned the
status of being mem
bers of a closed family
sect
Bequeathing an
enduring inheritance
and a rejection of any
pretence to influence
the gods through
sacrifice and charms, the Hippocratics from the beginning had a marked
corporate tendency, whose exemplary expression is the Oath. The Oath
is a compromise of union cooperation, which historically sealed the
alliance between sacred medicine (offered in the sanctuaries of Asclepius)
and a particular current of empiricism, a union calculated to effectively
379
THE PAGAN ERA
combat the medicine of magic. “But I would more especially commend,”

says the author of the Hippocratic work Regimen in Acute Diseases, “the
physician who, in acute diseases, by which the bulk of mankind are cut
off, conducts the treatment better than others.”” Yet, the frequency with
which this untouchable pretension to practicality was converted in the
Corpus Hippocraticu/n into attacks on the other schools suggests that their
competitors also enjoyed a noteworthy social and economic success.
Precisely because popular preferences were far from unanimous
and the political power did not award special privileges to any one school,
the citizenry enjoyed an unlimited ability to choose. This free market
continued for two millennia until the creation of the first official medical
schools, which quickly prohibited professional intrusion. Under the
circumstances of intense competition, the therapist could only survive and
prosper by achieving a certain prestige. His profession was on the same
level of other wandering artisans, obliged to knock on doors and ask if
anyone needed their services.53 “He raised his tent where he could,” says
one historian, “and tried to obtain notoriety and a clientele.”54
He was not a representative of the state power, subordinate to the
public good as Plato would have wished. In the best of cases he could be
an ally of the sick, in the beautiful words of Galen “a servant to an
individual’s nature.” His existence did not at all interfere with the
inclination of people to treat themselves, and his power was restricted to
58 Adams, Francis, tr. The Genuine Works of Hippocrates, vol. I. New York: William
Wood and Co., 1886 (GB), p. 235, sect. II; ]e donnerait turtout det e'loget au rnedeiin qui taurait
te tonduire aoet une loaliileté tupe'rieure, dant let nialadiet aiguet, qui tont let plutfunettet .2 l’l2unianite'
(Littré, E. Oeuoret to/ngletet a"HiQpotrate, vol. II. Paris: Chez J.-B. Bailliere, 1840 (GB), p.
233, //web2.bium.univ-paris5.fr).
66 Edelstein, in Lain Entralgo, 1982, p. 371.
61 Lain Entralgo, 1982, p. 372.
380
knowing his own practice. If he was professionally capable, he could

become rich and sought after, but if he lacked the clinical eye and the
other necessary virtues like affability, diligence, and honor, he could also
become rich and sought after. Either way, no badge would shelter him
from competition with alternative therapies, and no regulation would
confer upon him a monopoly on dispensing medicine. As today, some
amassed immense fortunes at the cost of the superstitions and
hypochondria of the people.92
The situation in Rome is instructive. In the year 46 BC, Julius
Caesar conceded citizenship upon any freeborn doctor who wanted to
establish himself in the city, producing a great influx of professionals from
all corners of the future empire.“ The overpopulation of the cities,
proletarianization of the plebeians, the crowd of slaves, the great armies
and other factors contributed an enormous impetus to medicine. Yet,
while the shameless bought with gusto drugs at exorbitant prices, and the
humble surrendered their last sestertius for costly treatments, the masses
tended toward self-medication with harsh criticism for the flowering
therapeutic state.
Seneca (c. 4 BC – 65 AD) commented that some doctors viewed
the sick as buyers of services instead of fellow human beings afflicted with
illness:
55 Gil, 1969, p. 67 and succeeding pages.

56 “He likewise made all those who practised physic in Rome, and all teachers of the
liberal arts, free of the city, in order to fix them in it, and induce others to settle there”
(Thomson, Alexander, tr., T. Forester, rev. C. Suetonius Tranquillus: The Lives of the
Twelve Caesars. London: George Bell and Sons, 1901 (GB), p. 29, “The Life ofjulius,”
sect. 42).
381
THE PAGAN ERA
If my physician does no more than feel my pulse and class me among those whom he
sees in his daily rounds, pointing out what I ought to do or to avoid without any personal
interest, then I owe him no more than his fee, because he views me with the eye not of a
friend, but of a commander.57
Martial (c. 43 – 104 AD) ironically laments the mildness of the

fever that killed one doctor: “Never did Carus [the quack] do anything
worse, Maximus, than to die of fever; the fever, too, was much in the
wrong. The cruel destroyer should at least have been a quartan, so that he
might have become his own doctor.”"5 In another epigram he compares
the work of an ophthalmologist to a gladiator: “You are now a gladiator;
you were previously an oculist. You used to do as a doctor what you now
do as a gladiator.”59 The same attitude can be observed in the fable of
Phaedrus about the shoemaker who became a doctor.60
Indulging in a rare diatribe, Pliny the Elder opines that the
members of the medical profession are, with rare exceptions, vulgar
64 “Non tamquam amicus videt sed tamquam imperator” (Stewart, Aubrey, tr. L. Annaeus
Seneca: On Benefits. London: George Bell and Sons, 1887 (GB), p. 170, De Beneficiis,
VI, 16).
65 Bohn, Henry G., tr., ed The Epigrams of Martial. London: George Bell and Sons,
1897 (GB), p. 486, book X, no. LXXVII.
59 Ibid., p. 387, book VIII, no. LXXIV.
60 “A bankrupt Cobbler, poor and lean,/ (No bungler e’er were half as mean)/ Went to a
The
foreign
quack,
place,
through
and there/
dreadBegan
of death,
his med’cines
confessed/
to That
prepare
he was
[and
of after
no skill
being
possessed/
found out]But
all this great and glorious job/ Was made of nonsense and the mob” (Riley, H. T. and
Christopher Smart, trs. The Comedies of Terrence and the Fables of Phaedrus.
London: Henry G. Bohn, 1853 (GB), pp. 480-481, book I, fable XIV; www.perseus.
tufts.edu). The moral: “This story their attention craves/ whose weakness is the prey of
knaves.”
382
delinquents, supporting themselves on the saddest weakness of their

fellows:
In fact, this is the only one of all the arts, by Hercules! in which the moment a man
declares himself to be an adept, he is at once believed To all this, however, we give
no attention, so seductive is the sweet influence of the hope entertained of his ultimate
recovery by each. And then besides, there is no law in existence to punish the
ignorance of physicians, no instance before us of capital punishment inflicted. It is at the
expense of our perils that they learn, and they experimentalize by putting us to death, a
physician being the only person that can kill another with sovereign impunity.61
He then compiles a long and detailed list of poisonings, will

seizures, adulterers and abuses of every kind “as if he took pleasure in
presenting to his readers an x-ray of the Hippocratic Oath.”62 He and
other critics observed the greatest deterioration of professional ethics
particularly in the Hippocratics, alleging that they did not practice psalms
or conjurings but instead used a pedantic and foreign terminology that hid
their ignorance, hurry and rapacity. This jargon appealed to the
superstition of the patient exactly like the magical words of the sorcerers.
By an ironic smile of destiny, the use of surreptitious methods of
influence like philters is with us again, presented under the rubric of
medication or scientific treatment. A patient today may complain of some
harm or unwanted effect of some prescribed medicine, be it a stimulant,
sedative or psychoactive preparation, received from a physician who does
not know of its dangers or has not tried to investigate it (naturally not
having actually tried it himself). Nor must we forget to speak of
psychiatric therapy, notorious for the over-prescribing of overwhelming
68 Bostock, Riley, trs. The Natural History of Pliny, vol. 5. London: Henry G. Bohn,
1856 (GB), p. 377, book XXIX, Ch. VIII.
68 G11, 1969, p. 72.
383
THE PAGAN ERA
medicines without any need to give honest explanations about their nature
and consequences. Curiously, in all these cases the doctor will only be
guilty if he shows bad faith or lacks certification, while in antiquity he
would have been prosecuted for rashly selling strong remedies.
In vain we search for a single scientific or literary authority in the
Greco-Roman world that supports the contemporary counsel to “consult
your doctor” for anything medical, a proposition imitating the old
admonition to consult one’s priest regarding anything literary. The tone
of the epoch is well expressed by Trimalchio, the bourgeois, ostentatious,
overbearing host of a chapters-long feast in the Satyricon, a convinced
partisan of self-medication who says of doctors, “truly I hate ‘em like
fury: >9
“Pardon me, my friend,” he said after a brief pause, “but for several days I have been
costive. My physicians were non-plussed. However, pomegranate rind and an infusion
of fir-wood in vinegar has done me good. And now I trust my belly will be better
behaved.”63
Only when the illness was serious and persistent would a patient feel the
need to turn to physicians of one kind or another, without first having
tried a collection of drugs and home remedies.
The logical final victory of the Hippocratic school over the other
methods of healing, which in general terms is the victory of the scientific
method, truly had as a side effect the burying and forgetting of an
incalculable number of the prescriptions of herbalists and curanderos,
inheritors of that extraordinary explosion of botanical knowledge, the
76 Sage, 1936, pp. 186-192; Carrington, Charles, tr. The Saggricon of Petronius. Paris: by
the Author, 1902 (GB), pp. 130, 151, ch. 7. Petronius is partly satirizing the Syinpotiuni
and Pbaedo of Plato: by the end of the feast, Trimalchio stages his own mock funeral.
384
agricultural revolution of the Neolithic. This sector, like the tradition of

home practitioners, ran up against State and private interests and not only
magic but all of the alternative practices ended up being thrown into the
sack of useless superstitions to be thrown into a river of forgetfulness like
so many unwanted stray cats.“
B. Sacred
just as we subdivided the profane into the therapeutic and the

recreational, with equal lack of justification we might also subdivide sacred
psychopharmacology into blessing and curse.“ This requires us to
commit the Manichean heresy but only in so far as one can affirm that evil
is non-quotidian. A completely arbitary classification, this will allow us to
distinguish between the sacred use of teonana'catl before and after the
arrival of the Spanish in the New World or that of wine before and during
the persecution of the Bacchae. Each of these four cateegories could be
ordered by decreasing frequency, for example:
Mythic-Ritual Use How Often Used
1) Recreational As Wanted
2) Therapeutic As Needed
3) Blessed Rarely
4) Cursed Never
71 Very recently, in some cases patronized by international organizations, one observes an

attempt to reassemble the pharmacological cast of the drama staged by the world’s
primitive sorcerers. Today, there are investigations in Africa and Latin America that
offer very promising results on the level of scientific inquiry, or so one may hope.
72 See the introduction, the tree of science and the tree of life.
385
THE PAGAN ERA
The last category, the null case, might describe the result expected by a
political hierarchy attempting to alter the mythic-ritual nature of a
substance by law. No doubt other representational schemes are possible
as well.
1. Blessed. Naturally, the substances that were blessed in

antiquity are almost impossible to define only by their chemical bases, a
priori. In spite of this, many habitually pretend that plants of the gods are
only those connected with shamanic trances and tribal peyote ceremonies,
essentially only those with indolic alkaloids or phenylethylamines. This
ignores the sorcery of the ecstatic trance, shamanic in the strict sense of
the word, as well as the phenomena of rapture and possession, based
upon different pharmacological agents; it excludes the orgiastic from the
visionary. Wine and the alcohols have been and are as entheogenic from
the historical-cultural perspective as ololiuhaui and]age', and any pretence of
denying this betrays a personal preference that is completely out of place
in any serious examination of the subject. It is only possible in a limited
manner to exclude as entheogens the drugs that provide energy in the
abstract, stimulants like ephedra and coca whose users are able to fight
colds and endure high altitudes; neither of these effects border on the
sacred (divining the fates, hearing voices) except when concentrated and
used continuously at high, nearly psychotic doses.
From the modern viewpoint, entheogenic (“engendering the god
within”) does not imply a profession of faith. On the contrary, it only
indicates that mysticism is connected in some way still unexplained to our
physical being and that the mental states traditionally linked to veneration
such as awe, terror, joy and praise have chemical foundations. To speak
of entheogens with any precision, then, is to speak of their use rather than
their chemistry, especially considering their diversity.
386
a. Entbeogenic drugs. The earliest archaeological evidence

(perhaps 7000 BC) of the shamanic use of plants are Neolithic cave
paintings from Tassili-n-Ajjer, Algeria of a bee-headed, anthropomorphic
being in full mushroom trance, while others race inside a cave to safely
store their mushrooms before they lose their entheogenicity (figures 9 and
10, chapter two). Those who have undergone heroic doses of psilocybe
mushrooms will appreciate the metaphorical images immediately. Across
the Atlantic Ocean, the Olrnecs decorated their tombs with hand-hewn
mushroom stones.” A ceramic deer chews a peyote button from the
fourth century BC (figure 44, chapter four). A shamanic jaguar of the
Chavin culture crouches between the porcelain columns of a San Pedro
cactus (figure 45, chapter four).
Psychotropic plants and the drugs derived from them appear in
our earliest legends and myths, often connected with the initial cultivation
of cereals and the mystery of vegetation. The Sumerian mother-goddess
Ninhursaga cures the incautious Enki with eight sacred plants, including
the “honey plant” which may have been the sacred blue water lily
(IV)/mphaea caerulea).74 The nineteenth century BC “Hymn to Ninkasi,”
goddess of barley and beer, provides brewing directions so explicit they
could be recreated four millennia later.75 Enki, the father of the Sumerian
Persephone, Inana, sprinkles her lifeless corpse in the underworld with
73 Borhegy, 1963, pp. 328-338; Lowy, 1971, pp. 983-993; Wasson, 1961, pp. 137-162.
74 “Enki and Ninhursaga,” t.1.1.1, ETCSL, Electronic Corpus Text of Sumerian
Literature, lines 190-281, “Enki and the World Order,” t.1.1.3, lines 89-99, 162-165,
“The Home of the Fish,” t.5.9.1, lines 68-80, //etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk.
75 “Hymn to Ninkasi,” ETCSL t.4.23.1; Civil, Miguel. “Modern Brewers Recreate
Ancient Beer,” The Oriental Institute News and Notes, No. 132, Autumn 1991; Katz,
Solomon H. and Fritz Maytag, “Brewing an Ancient Beer,” Archaeology, July/ August
1991.1991, pp. 24-33; “The Sumerian Beer Project,” www.anchorbrewing/beers
/ninkasi.htm.
387
THE PAGAN ERA
the “life-giving plant” and “life-giving water,” so that she might ascend to
meet her consort Dumuzid at the “great apple tree in the plain of
Kulaba.”7" The biblical story of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden
may be derived from this same myth;77 they are expelled for eating from
the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, like the apple in Celtic
legends a symbol for the A/nanita /nutearia, evidenced in many medieval
depictions (figures 8, 11, 12, 13, chapter two).78 Gilgamesh, the Sumerian
Odysseus, adventures in search of everlasting life and retrieves a magical
plant (sometimes associated with the blue lotus) from the bottom of the
sea, only to lose it to a serpent.” In India, cannabis and datura sprout
where drops of a/nrita fell from heaven.
As well, our recorded history reveals the entheogenic use of
various plants and drugs in almost every part of the planet. Scyths
purified their bodies with soap and water and their souls with toasted
hemp-seed.” The hymns of book IX of the Rig Veda and the gatloat of
the Yatna sing the praises of the sacred plant, to/na-loao/na.81 The
76 ETCSL t.1.4.1, “Inana's Descent to the Nether World,” lines 90-113, 217-235, 254
289, 348-358, and 384-412.
77 Genesis 2:21 KJV; see for example, S. H. Hooke, Middle Eastern Mythology. NY:
Penguin Books, 1963, et al.
78 Wasson, 1968; Samorini, 1997; Allegro, 1970.
78 Sin-liqi-uninni et al, editors. The Epic of Gilgamesh: A new translation from a
collation of the cuneiform tablets in the British Museum rendered literally into English
hexameters. Translated by R. Campbell Thompson. London: Luzac & Co., 1928.
88 Rawlinson, George, tr. The Histogg of Herodotus, volume three. New York: D.
Appleton and Co., 1889 (GB), pp. 53-54 (Book IV, ll/I€lp0/716116’, verses 73-75).
81 Griffith, Ralph T. H. The Hymns of the Rig Veda. Benares: E. Lazarus and Co.,
1897 (GB), Book IX, hymn 113, verses 7-11, pp. 381-383; Skjaervo, Prods Oktor.
“Smashing Urine: On Yatna, 48.10” in Zoroastrian Rituals in Context, ed. Michael
Stausberg. Leiden, the Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill, 2004 (GB), p. 272.
388
Chichimecs conquered their fear with pej/otl92 and the Aztecs consumed
the deity teonana'catl and ate the seeds of ololiuhqui to commune with their
gods.99 The Tainos of Hispanola snuffedyopo and Columbian tribes cohoha
to speak with their £€t7il€.l‘.84 The Greeks inhaled the pneunia for divination
and honored Dionysus with alcohol and Demeter with ,éy,éeon,99 as did the
Romans. Celtic stories abound with berries of immortality and hazelnuts
of wisdom.99 The Gauls worshipped the god Belenus, patron of the
solanacea, henbane.97 The Druids ceremonially slew the mistletoe99 and
predicted the future with vervain.99
b. Evolution in entheogenic cults. There has also been much

evidence and more supposition presented to suppose that certain drugs
were present at the birth of many religions and cults in the ancient world,
from the Ainanita niurcaria in Hinduism and Zoroastrianism, the kykeon in
52 Fr. Bernadino Sahagun. Hirtoria general de lar corar de Nueua Ergaria, vol. 111. Mexico:
Imprenta del Ciudadano Alejandro Valdés, 1830 (GB), ch. 7, p. 241.
55 Serna, Manual de lor Minirtror para el conociniiento de rur idolatriar y extigation de ellar, part
of the Coleciio'n de Docunientor ineditor para la Hirtoria de Eggaria, vol. 104, Madrid, 1892
(GB), p. 61; Hernandez, Francisco. Reruni Medicaruni Nooae Hirganiae Theraurur, reu
Plantariuni Aninialiuni Mineraliuni Mexicanoruni Hirtoria. Rome, 1651 (GB), p. 145, ch. 14.
54 Pane, Friar Ramon. Relacion acerca de lar antigiiedader de lor indior, 13th edition, josé juan
Arrom, editor. Mexico: Siglo Veintiuno, 2004 (GB), pp. 19-20, 26-27, chapters IX, XV.
55 Hamilton, H. C. and W. Falconer. The Geography of Strabo, vol. 11. London: Henry
G. Bohn, 1856 (GB), p. 117, book IX, ch. 3, para. 5; Murray, Gilbert. The Bacchae of
Euripides. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1920; Graves, R. H. The Greek
L, illus. edition. London: Penguin, 1981, p. 35, “Demeter’s Nature and Deeds.”
55 Laurie, E. R. and Timothy White. “Speckled Snake, Brother of Birch: Amanita
Muscaria Motifs in Celtic Legends,” Shanian’r Druni, no. 44, 1997, p. 53.
57 Bostock, Riley, vol. V, book XXV, ch. XVII, p. 92.
55 Bostock, Riley, vol. 111, book XVI, ch. 95, pp. 435-436.
59 Conway, D. Celtic Magc. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 1990 (GB), p. 144.
389
THE PAGAN ERA
the cult of Demeter, alcohol in that of Dionysus, and Amanita muttaria and
cannabis in Judaism and Christianity. Accepting that religious experience
has often been catalyzed by certain drugs, we can trace the change in
status over time of these drugs within those religions that have survived
and in those that have not.
The simplest use (no more ancient than the verifiable data
permits) is autonomous or that seen in illiterate tribes across the
Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania. Here, groups prepare and administer
the drugs themselves, whether or not sorcerers participate in these
ceremonies. Due to the environment in which they live, their entheogens
are based simply on the flora found in their immediate surroundings,
plants or parts of plants, their simple extracts or uncomplicated mixtures.
We can also speak of a use within sorcery where specially
designated individuals collect, prepare and serve the entheogens.
Immediately, we can discern two kinds of magical use by shamans:
sometimes these substances are taken only by the shaman or wizard for
divinatory or cathartic ends, while on other occasions these same shamans
direct collective communal ceremonies in restricted rituals designed to
form disciple-successors. Pharmacologically, the former substances are
often more varied and complex as the wizard dares to take personally very
toxic drugs with effects difficult to control but that are part of an attempt
to achieve maximum power, deepening his own knowledge of botany and
symptomology. At this level, there is a clear difference between the
possessed shaman who leads trances of orgiastic rapture with the help of
alcohol and the solanaceas, for example, and voyaging shamans who
temper their own powers with solanaceas but only collectively lead trances
with drugs based on indolic or benzene rings and, of course, cannabis.
On the next sociopolitical level, castes of priests administer drugs
to localized, urban cults in a mystical use that begins with the convenience
390
of having sects of initiated and sects of initiators. The mystical use of

drugs is almost unthinkable without considerable pharmacological
refinement and specific institutional interests. At first, this corresponds
only to that of specific temple, village and city-state.
These are then endangered by the founding of the first empires.
Transtribal and transcontinental nets of wizards are converted into a
priest class, administering a bequeathed myth sometimes supported by a
fixed, complex scripture, often the only thing they have in common. The
discovery of more active and less toxic substances than previously
available, more suitable for being received by multitudes more or less
unconscious of the fact, would be more than coincidental. The severe
duty of secrecy suggests that the initiates might have been somewhat
suspicious, and to prevent this inconvenience the priests enacted the
prohibition of communicating absolutely any detail of the particulars of
the rites, a thing progressively unnecessary with the passage of time as the
prestige acquired by these new national cults made this possibility more
and more remote. Nor is it difficult to imagine that the vehicle that
propitiated the experience would have possessed a status much like that
enjoyed by military and state secrets today, due to its formidable power.
Going a little deeper, it can be useful to ask whether this
progression from shamanic use (administered over large territories by
informal associations of wizards) to established mystery-religion wasn’t
over-determined by economic development and general demography,
especially with the rise of political institutions in the modern sense like the
city-states, whose own local cults would compete with these now
dangerous, primitive forms of ecstatic religion. The tendency toward the
development of the urban-nucleus must have contributed to the
transformation of these ancient shamans (until then only united by a
common mythic-ritual framework) into castes of priest-mystagogues,
391
THE PAGAN ERA
bound by consanguinity and made powerful by their monopoly over the

mystery itself. The former manifest within their rituals the survival of the
archaic orgy and the trance of death and rebirth with neither church nor
dogma, celebrated once in a lifetime or only rarely. But they also
represent the opposite of autonomous use, the prerogative of personal
shamanism, absorbed into its own estate. Together with their jealously
guarded secret knowledge, the latter could do no better than to emphasize
the universal and permanent in their rites when confronted with local
changes in domestic cults and citizenry, an attitude as manifest in the fixed
sanctuaries (Eleusis, Sabazios, Somothrace, Andania) as in the itinerant
mystery cults (Attis, Bacchus, Isis, Mithra), which opened temples only
when they were solicited by a large enough parish.
Yet, this ecumenical conspiracy to both mimic and destroy the
primitive found its limits in the natural evolution of the administration of
its own cult. If the mystagogue is no longer vocational”) like the shaman,
even though he preserves by family tradition his recipe of power, the one
who at first coexisted with and later supplanted him is the ritualistic priest,
an administrator who is neither vocational nor endowed with botanic
power in the original sense, and who became perfectly inserted into the
dynamics of institutional power controlled by the internal politics of his
society.
The final stage in the use of entheogens is the priestly use which is
turned against itself in two separate stages. In the first, the previous
traditions are preserved almost intact but the initiation is only a periodic
distribution of a symbolic sacrament slowly freed from its original ecstatic
ingredient as alternative paths to mysticism are authorized. This stage can
‘>6 Vocational in the sense of having a calling, that is, not being completely determined by
family tradition, economic incentive or social convenience: sign of a certain loylirit in the
original Greek sense.
392
clearly be seen in the transition of Vedic officiant to Brahman priest,

begun perhaps with the development of yoga techniques before the
complete abandonment of the ancient Sonia sacrifice, but preoccupied also
with erasing the necessary clues so that none of the other castes would be
able to identify the original botanic vehicle. It is also perceptible in the
first Christian priests, demanding severe fasts prior to communion,
assuring with this an intense trance, participating in a minimalist Bacchic
consumption of wine (blood of Christ) while at the same time
recommending ascetic paths like monasticism, the life of the hermit, or
physical mortification of the flesh. Only in the second stage, when the
principal focus of the older religion has been uprooted, can it be said that
the idea of the entheogenic plant has completely succumbed, now
substituted by the patient work of faith. Over centuries the original
ecstatic vehicle becomes weaker, less toxic, more ritualized and finally
forgotten and denied as local cult gives way to monotheistic state religion
ministering to multitudes.
2. Cursed. Within most societies in the pagan era there is a

more or less stable regime under which a particular pha'rnia,éon is treated.
Opium under both the Greek and Roman civilizations seems to have been
uniformly accorded the status of medicine, esteemed and used as needed.
The kykeon was for a thousand years celebrated entheogenically in the
Demeter cult, taken only once a year during the Greater Mysteries, always
excepting the banquet of Alcibiades. Psilocybe mushrooms were ingested
ceremonially by numerous devotees in Central America over the course of
many successive civilizations for at least two millenia. Cannabis does not
seem to have arroused much legal interest for many thousands of years,
either as a medicine in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and Rome or as an
entheogen in the Hindustan peninsula.
393
THE PAGAN ERA
On the other hand, we have also encountered examples of a

“time of mutation”” when the myths and rituals surrounding a drug are
suddenly altered. Customs that once might have been considered an
innocent recreational pasttime or even a blessing worthy of an offering to
the gods become cursed by large powerful groups within a society. It is
worth reviewing some of these early prohibitions.
a. Enechthrogenic“ drugs. The Code of Hammurabi

prohibits “conspirators” meeting “in the house of a tavern-keeper” with
death for the poor widow who does not capture and deliver them to the
court.” Amen-em-an forbids the scribe Penta-our “to go to the taverns”
adding that beer degrades him “like the beasts.”9" The Duke of Zhou
warns his brother Fung to apprehend “companies that drink together” so
that he may “put them to death.’”"’ Yahveh demands of his caretaker
Adam that he “must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”9 6 HaShem won’t allow
Aaron or his sons or their sons to drink “wine nor strong drink when ye
91 Jiinger, 1974, p. 504; see introduction, the complexity of the subject.

92 An admittedly clumsy neologism, from the Greek erhthrot (the enemy, the devil), as in
the Parable of the Tares, Matthew 13: 25: “But while men slept, his enemy (eehthrot,
Stong’s G2190) came down and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way” and
13: 39: “The enemy (eehthrot) that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the
world; and the reapers are the angels” (KJV; Easton, M. G. “Tares,” Easton’s Bible
Dictionary, 1897; www.blueletterbible.org).
93 King, Leonard W. The Code of Hammurabi, www.fordham.edu.
94 Goodwin, C. W. “Hieratic Papyrii” in Cambridge Essays Contributed by Members of
the Universigg. London: John Parker and Sons, 1858, p. 261.
95 Legge (1865), Vol. 3, Part 2, p. 411.
96 Barker, Kenneth, ed. The NIV Study Bible, tenth edition. Grand Rapids, MI:
Zondervan Publishing House, 1995, p. 9, Genesis 2: 16, 17.
394
go into the tent of meeting.’”47 Nor will He permit a Levite to pour His
cannabis-drenched holy oil upon the “flesh of man” nor put any “upon a
stranger” with the penalty of being “cut off from his people.”88 Pentheus
seizes the followers of Dionysus and keeps them “in the common prison
manacled” while he hunts others “from the hills” promising to hew “neck
from shoulders” of their god.” The Athenians condemn Alcibiades to
death in ahrentia for a sacrilegious banquet involving the /éj/é€0fl.100
Zaleucus the Locrian “put to death” his sick countrymen for drinking
“pure Wine, unless by prescription of the Physician.”181 The Roman
consul Postumius imprisoned, tortured and executed some 7000 devotees
of Bacchus.194 Early European ecclesiastics considered the mere ingestion
of teonana'catl to be idolatry.103 Reputedly, the Inca royalty of the fifteenth
century criminalized the use of coca by camperinor without imperial
permission.104 In each of these twelve examples, the myths and rituals
surrounding a particular drug are suddenly altered from seemingly well
established traditions.
b. Evolution in eneclitbrogenic cults. Cults disappear for

many reasons, especially those where the ecstatic vehicle is a local
phenomenon, its preparation is a closely held secret or it does not survive
geographic or climatological change. The oracle at Delphi answered
97 Vayikra — Leviticus, X: 8-11, www.blueletterbible.org.

98 Shemet — Exodus 30: 22-33, www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org.
99 Way, Arthur. Euripides, vol. III, “The Bacchanals,” verses 215-247, pp. 21-23.
199 Ruck, 1980, p. 131155
191 Lewin, 1970, p. 204; Smith, 1867, p. 1309; Stanley, 1665, book II, ch. 37,
/ /penelope.uchicago.edu.
192 Mommsen, 1908, Vol. III, book III, ch. XIII, p. 116.
193 See the works of de la Serna, Sahagun, and F. Hernandez, for example.
194 Gagliano, 1994, p. 13.
395
THE PAGAN ERA
questions until a series of earthquakes eliminated her intoxicating pneu/na.

Initiates celebrated the mysteries at Eleusis until the sanctuary was sacked,
its chemists murdered and its fields burned. The Vedic optimistic
acceptance of life died when Aryan invaders but not their to/na came down
from the mountains. But when either a cult or its ploartnakon is forbidden,
this is no guarantee of the extinction of either, as both Christianity and
wine attest.
When cursed, not merely the social and legal status of a drug
change but also the fundamental myths and rituals that surround it within
that culture. Sometimes this indicates a change in the political structure,
as a new hierarchy supplants an old. Drinking date wine and talking
politics with friends may once have been a popular village pastime in
Mesopotamia but the newly formed First Babylonian Empire forbids it
entirely. Similarly, the sudden change in the status of companies drinking
jiu in Zhou Gong’s “Announcement About Drunkenness” mirrors a
change in that society, the newly formed Zhou Dynasty. Here, a
recreational/medicinal/entheogenic drug is cursed when associated with
latent discontent, as a new society shores up its support. One could say as
much about the use of psilocybe mushrooms, peyote, San Pedro, and
morning glory seeds in Central America. If we distinguish, as seems
inexcusable, between hallucinogens and visionary drugs,105 pre-Columbian
165 Within an analogous capacity for modifying quotidian consciousness, the

hallucinogens could be classified as those capable of suspending the memory, causing the
subject to forget that he is being submitted to abnormal experiences, in this manner
annihilating the critical judgment, when not in a stupor without motor coordination.
Visionaries could be classified as those that open horizons hidden from ordinary
perception and that induce terrifying voyages but do not suspend the memory of having
ingested the substance, except in persons with manifest or latent dementia. Prototype of
the first are the psychoactive solanaceas as well as substances that are in principle not
hallucinogenic except in very high doses such as cocaine, alcohol and barbiturates. Some
396
America offers up many examples of both (with a noteworthy

predominance of the second), motivating a number of inquisitions.
The first clerics in the New World were confronted with the
disagreeable surprise of preaching the Eucharist to peoples, the majority
of whom had already partaken, not with a formal vehicle like the Christian
host but with substances capable of profoundly moving the human soul.
With the coming of the conquirtadorer these same substances that were
once almost exclusively offered to the gods were religiously and socially
cursed, graphically represented in the progressively diabolic images of
teonana'catl in the Codices Vindobonense, Magliabecci, and Florentine (see
figures 41 and 42, chapter four). After an initial period characterized by
an abundant demonization of these plants, a more complete silence
gradually grew up around the subject as the pagan cults and their botanic
vehicles were nearly extirminated by Catholic and Protestant missionaries.
The repression was so severe that during a journey to Mexico, one
of the richest zones of the globe for species of these mushrooms, the
illustrious botanist W. E. Safford199 did not hesitate in judging the
existence of psilocybe mushrooms “fictional,” explaining that the
traditions about them were an indigenous invention oriented toward
avoiding desecrations with peyote. Safford defended this nonsense in
1915 when the ancient rites had retreated to rural areas or were being
carried on in secret, buried beneath a syncretism in which autochthonous
deities were rebaptized with the names of imposed saints. There is no
better example than the San Pedro cactus, door to what would have been
an infernal heaven for the conquistadors, hidden in plain sight behind an
indigenous insult to an orthodox porter of an orthodox heaven.
psychedelic mushrooms, depending upon the dose, can be both visionary and
hallucinogenic.
195 W. E. Safford, 1915, pp. 291-311; also Guzman, 1959, pp. 13-14.
397
THE PAGAN ERA
Much later, Vudu and other African cults endured even the
enslavement of their entire congregations. But here once again, the
source of the cult’s power was widely known and small group use was able
to preserve their botanic ceremonies secretly, in the face of intolerant and
disrespectful invaders. In all of these cases, what was never hidden (the
botanic vehicle) only became so when it came into conflict with the
culture of an invader from without.
Othertimes this cursing of a pharmakon and its cult indicates an
existing society hoping to forestall inevitable changes occurring from
within. The reactions against the Dionysus cult by Pentheus in the play of
Euripides and of the Bacchus cult in the reality of early Rome by the
consul Postumius presage a change in each of these regimes, the death of
the leader of Thebes in the one and a coming civil war in the other. In
the case of the Roman persecutions, there is no better pictorial example
than the ecstatic and diabolic steles depicting a Bacchic celebration from
prior to and just after the persecutions (figures 66 and 67, chapter six).
Both civic leaders attempted to forbid by law an underlying and ongoing
change in the society itself, overtly encountered first in form of a cult.
One might add the influential priests of Eleusis who had forbidden all but
the strictest religious use of the kykeon, causing the prosecution in ahtentia
and subsequent exile of one of their most able generals, Alcibiades,
foreshadowing the destruction of the Athenian city-state. In this second
group are examples of a society confronting a change from within. In all
three examples, though the particular use of the drug was persecuted, it
was the political regime that ended by being destroyed.
Arguing just from the few examples given, one could tentatively
propose an hypothesis partially broached by Durkheim‘°7 that a change in
the myths and rituals surrounding the use of a drug is a clue indicating
167 Durkheim, 1912, p. 136; see introduction, the complexity of the subject.
398
either a change in the drug or a change in the society. We will see more of
the former in volume two when Islamic and then Christian societies
confront the entirely new stimulants, coffee, tea and chocolate. Naturally,
the predictive value inherent in such an historical hypothesis198 must
establish its utility.
Further, these two variables may not be independent of one
another. If a new hierarchy supplants an old and then alters the myths
and rituals surrounding an existing substance, not only the society has
been altered but there may also be a change in the use of the drug itself,
necessitating more changes in the society and so on. Similarly, when an
older society confronts a new pha'rma,éon or even an existing one used in a
new fashion, this same Hegelian spiral of reaction and counter-reaction
often plays itself out until a new equilibrium is achieved.
Though it seems clear that a change in the one variable at least
suggests a change in the other, not every example of prohibitionist
language will fit within such an ad-hoc schema. For example, HaShem’s
restrictions laid upon His holy oil sound more like a matriarch guarding an
old family recipe. His rules for drinking among the Levites appear to be a
regulatory minimum; depending upon the circumstances, the forbidding
by Zaleucus of “pure” wine to invalids without a physician’s receipt may
be more of the same. Amen-em-an’s proscribing of beer to a particular
scribe may or may not have wider cultural significance.
Yahveh’s jealous prohibition on eating the fruit of the Tree of the
Knowledge of Good and Evil presents a different problem. This myth
founds a number of religions and is not so easily dismissed. Whatever
pha'rma,éon is meant, Yahveh clearly intends to be the sole source of moral
illumination just as He denies the influence of the human pharmakor in the
198 See introduction, a history within a history.
399
THE PAGAN ERA
tale of Abraham and Isaac. If amanitas are described, this may represent
an early rejection of the Indo-Iranian cults of to/na-loao/na.
The most difficult example to assimilate into such a back-of-the
napkin theory is that of the Incas and coca. Clearly, the myths and rituals
surrounding Mama Coca were altered beginning in the early 1400s, just
prior to the Incan expansion. Missionaries reported an imperial
monopoly on the leaf and a crime of lete /najette for unauthorized
consumption by the peasantry. The Incan society changes, this much is
certain, but whether there was a corresponding change in the substance
itself is unknown.
C. A Sketch of an Older Religion
We only know a small proportion of natural psychotropic plants

given the variety in the botanical world. The majority of their active
principles are alkaloids derived from amino acids, the basis of proteins,
and (especially with tryptophan) the majority vigorously promote the
growth of plants. Their “chemical structure is similar to neurohormones
of the human brain”109 and corresponds closely to growth factors found in
manure or fertilizer on a botanic level.
Understanding this, a fundamental question was posed by
Schultes. Eurasia is considerably larger in terrestrial area, contains as
many or more plants and has been habitated by humans over millions of
years. The Americas are geographically smaller with an equal or inferior
botanic variety and human remains do not date beyond a dozen or more
188 Singh, Rita. Psychoactive Medicinal Plants: Hallucinogens and Narcotic Plants. New
Delhi: Global Vision Publishing House, 2006 (GB), p. 21.
400
thousand years.119 How is it that the New World knows so many more
species of psychoactive plants, largely visionary, than the Old? Is botany
the answer? Ethnicity? The former was defended by W. La Barrel“ with
arguments that complemented those of De Felice and Wasson.
Figure 73.
A ceremony of
Amazonian Indians.
Nach de Bry,
America, Frankfurt,
1593.
Although in the
Americas man
arrives relatively
recently and the
territory is much
smaller, a hunter
and gatherer culture took root and was maintained while in the larger area
119 On the difference generally in plant and animal species between the two land masses,
see Jared Diamond’s lecture, “Why did human history unfold differently on different
continents for the last 13,000 years?” on April 23, 1997, found at www.edge.org.
111 La Barre, 1970. “As La Barre (1970) has pointed out, we cannot explain the greater
use of plant hallucinogens in the New World as compared to the Old merely by noting
the greater number of psychoactive plants available in the Americas” (Dobkin de Rios,
Marlene and Balaji Mundkur. “On the Serpent Cult and Psychoactive Plants,” in Current
Anthropology, vol. 18, no. 3 (Sep. 1977), p. 556, found at www.jstor.org/stable/2741428).
401
THE PAGAN ERA
of the Old World they did not last out the Paleolithic or Mesolithic; it’s
also useful to point out that in the Americas these particular groups have
only been persecuted for some centuries while in other places they faced
the same repression for some thousands of years. The first human groups
approximating the organization of termites and beehives don’t appear
before the Neolithic and mark a decadency in a way of life which in other
corners of the earth subsisted much longer.
These contrasts can be seen in Mesoamerica. During the Aztec
domination for example, an imperial project such as that of Moctezuma
and his predecessors had a caste of priests devoted to the sacred public
rituals including fasting, sexual abstinence, self mutilation and other
ascetic practices. But there persisted naguales or shamans unconnected to
any outward show of mortification who dedicated themselves to private
sacred rituals of divination, cures and other magic.96 Those who
consumed most of the shamanic remedies were the aristocracy;97 in some
territories an offering of psychoactive mushrooms formed part of the
periodic tribute.98 It is also clear that this nobility adopted practices
foreign to hierarchical societies where the botanically induced ecstatic
trance conserved the prestige of pure authenticity like the dream or the
orgasm.
In contrast with the spirit/ matter duality that as frequently
connects as it divides a ritualistic priesthood, shamans conceive spirit as a
subtle form of matter or as intelligence,99 a conception that avoids being
112 Garza, 1990, pp. 29-31.

113 See Hernandez on the use of the mushrooms by the wealthy at their fiestas
(previously referred to) and Mufioz Camargo, p. 191.
114 Garza, 1990, p. 63.
115 It is curious that Aristotle does not attribute the philosophic concept of nout
(objective intelligence) to Anaxagoras but to his master, the shaman Hermétimo of
402
concretized or pressed into finite forms. The opposition is not between

active and inert but between ordinary and extraordinary. Dream,
Figure 74.
“Smoker” in the Templo de la Cruz,
Palenque.
hallucination and orgasm are visits

from the tonal (the shadow of the
body) to the solitary places inhabited
by the gods or the dead; to
interrupt those in such states is as
impious as it is dangerous, as
proximity to the sacred makes them
susceptible to rapture and terror.
The mural of Tepantitla,
representing the tree of Tamoanchan
or Tlalocan, origin of all the gods, is
like a compendium of these ideas
with images of psychotropic plants
and the visions achievable using
them. Both the Nahuatl and
Mayans, like their predecessors the
Clazomene (Metaphysics, A 984 b 18). The traditions surrounding Hermótimo describe

how he frequently abandoned his body, sometimes reincarnating himself in other living
beings and other times traveling to etheric or telluric realms. He flew to heaven,
descended to hell and transformed himself into sacred animals (jaguar, serpent, eagle and
deer) which are of course the essential shamanic powers.
403
THE PAGAN ERA
Olmec and Toltec, left painting and architecture with non-Euclidean

geometries, marvelous animals and humans in exotic headdresses,
pursuing profoundly organized themes within a seeming arbitrarity.
The Chavin and Olmec cultures, like the ancient Indo-Iranian
religion, achieved their apogee between the tenth and eighth centuries BC,
during the flourishing of the Eleusinian mysteries and other analogous
rites in the Mediterranean basin with their clues and proofs of the use of
entheogenic plants; as well there are Chinese traditions about toads that
conjure unheard of, exquisite visions,100 crowned by a visit to where the
immortals live, the Taoist Island of Paradise, Penglai xiandao, in the center
of which grows, once again, a World-Tree with magical fruits that cure all
diseases, itself a fountain of eternal youth.101 One can find almost
identical ornamental motifs, clearly related to visionary experiences, both
in the temples of Teotihuacán and in objects from the culture of
Mycenae.118
Today it is undeniable that cultural identity “is learned and
reaffirmed through experiences with psychoactive plants in traditional
societies all over the planet.”103 It is, of course, scandalous to what extent
the topic has been omitted in the classic texts of anthropology and even in
so many contemporary manuals. The same could be said for the standard
works of philosophy and the history of religion where a fundamental
116 Some species of toads, metaphorical animals par exeellenee, together with certain
butterflies that pass from an aquatic to a terrestrial and carnivorous existence, possess in
their glands psychoactive and visionary substances (bufotenine and 5-methoxy-N-N
dimethyltryptamine) along with fulminating poisons. Some Mexican traditions show
Tlaltecuhtli, the mother-earth goddess as a toad.
117 Furst, 1980, p. 278.
118 Ott and Wasson, 1983.
118 Dobkin de Rios, 1984, p. 198.
404
chapter on the evolution of revealed truth is often dispatched with silence or

disdain, perhaps for ethnocentric or ideological motives. Before truth
became concentrated in written dogma, before individuals and castes
proclaimed testaments from omnipotent deities, what was perceived in
altered states of consciousness was the very heart of natural religion,
labeled revealed knowledge precisely because it was just exactly that.
Between this before and the after represented by triumphant
monotheism, there is a long period where societies derived from the
agricultural revolution produced transitional forms. The ancient promise
Figure 75.
Mayan mural of a vision of ecstasy. The
dreaming figure below receives the vision of
Quetzalcoatl, with the body of a serpent
brandishing a lance and shield.
of being able to eat and drink with the

gods persisted, not yet having adopted
exclusively metaphorical channels
combined with the ever more ambitious
projects of the State. Especially in the
cities, one observes that certain elites
aspire to a monopoly on religious
revelation. We see this also in the
numerous mystery cults of the
“?
Mediterranean basin.
When De Felice proposed that a mysticism linked to plants could
have preceded the pure or authentic experience, his hypothesis appeared
ridiculous and a fancy bordering on the obscene. This would mean, as
405
THE PAGAN ERA
much for the Brahman as the Rabbi or ecclesiastic Christian, placing a

worship of plants before a worship of animals, a much greater
abomination when one considers, as do these theologians, that it not only
incarnates the divine in a lower animal but in an inert plant. Nonetheless,
some kinds of plants differ greatly from inert substances when
considering human consciousness. It is an abuse of logic to confuse a
vehicle with its destination or a means with an end because with the same
logic it would be possible to reduce the Christian divinity to a wooden
crucifix or a morsel of bread, things considerably still more inert.
It is enough to begin to investigate the present and past on the
American continents with a minimum of rigor, by means of botanists,
anthropologists, historians and chemists, to leave no doubt whatsoever
that a mushroom, cactus or vine were once the objects of religious
devotion and furthermore continue to be so. From Canada to the Rio de
la Plata, innumerable indigenous peoples have affirmed that one plant or
another has “carried them to where the gods were,” as a village butcher in
Huautla de Jiménez tranquilly explained to a visiting mycologist. This
Mexican did not say that the plant was in itself a deity but only that it
could transport one to the land or dimension where the sacred could be
found. A review of the available historical data indicates that the opinion
of his ancestors was basically the same.‘‘‘’
After examining as many hypotheses as solid documents
concerning the use of entheogens in India, Europe and the Americas, a
mystery arises that must be explained. As noted above, the Chavin and
Olmec cultures, like the archaic Indo-Iranian religion, achieve their
apogees in the tenth century BC at the same moment when the Eleusinian
mysteries flourish along with other Mediterranean cults based upon
128 In order to get a sense of the variety of psychoactive substance in the Mayan and
Nahuatl languages, see the list prepared by Garza (1990, pp. 222-272).
406
entheogenic plants. Though we are dealing with data points

geographically remote from one another, the chronological and structural
coincidences leave floating in the air like smoke a sketch of a primitive
religion, a unique polytheism still close to shamanic concepts and with
techniques of ecstasy based upon psychotropic plants, occupying
dominant positions in cultures covering wide zones of the earth. Soma
and haoma grow in the mountains, brought down from heaven by an eagle;
an eagle also drops his fruits in the wild mountains from which are
descended the shamans and peoples who ritually use plants with visionary
activity in the Americas. In essence, the question arises if it was not at the
beginning of the first millennium before the Christian era when we see the
point of departure from this older religion toward formalization and a
religious Puritanism, based upon State-approved priest castes lacking any
vocation, which will triumphantly define religious rituals from then on.121
121 This may not be independent of the spread of the technology of distillation occurring
during this same period. Zhou Gong’sjiu is clearly not merely wine but spirits of wine,
indicating an early ability in China to concentrate the percentage of alcohol in a beverage.
While the cooled serpentine coil may be an invention of medieval Muslim alchemists, a
crude first distillation can be accomplished with a much simpler apparatus. Chinese data
from 1000 BC (Legge, 1865, Vol. 3, Part 2, p. 399), archeological evidence of a distilling
apparatus from northern India in 500 BC R. Allchin, Man. 14 (1979): 55-63), the
Biblical reference in Leviticus to “strong drink” (Vayikra - Leviticus, X: 8-11), the
Demophoon (“voice of the people”) metaphor in the Orphic hymn to Demeter (Graves,
R. H. The Greek Myths, illus. edition. London: Penguin, 1981, p. 35), the proscription
by Zaleucus of “pure” wine to be used only as a medicine (Stanley, Thomas, tr. Claudius
Aelianus: His Various History. London: Thomas Dring, 1665, book II, ch. 37,
//penelope. uchicago.edu), the fact that Dionysus (not wine, but its spirit) arrives from
the east (Way, A. S., tr. Euripides, vol. III. London: William Heinemann, 1925, vv. 13
17 of “The Bacchanals,” p. 7), and the engineering expertise of Maria the Jewess of first
century Alexandria (R. Patai The Iewish Alchemists: A Histogg and Sourcebook.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994) all suggest the cities of Greece and
407
THE PAGAN ERA
D. Conclusion
The history of ebriety in the pagan world exhibits the universal

validity of the concept the Greeks understood in the word, ploarvnakon.
With the exception (sometimes) of alcohol, which from then until now is
reviled over large regions of the planet, drugs are generally neutral
Rome were facing in the Bacchic cult not wine but our hard liquors or ardent spirits. For
more on this issue, see the pioneering food historian C. Anne Wilson. Water of Life: A
History of Wine-Distilling and Spirits: 500 BC — AD 2000. Totnes, UK: Prospect
Books, 2006 (GB) or her “Distilling, Sublimation, and the Four Elements: The Aims
and Achievements of the Earliest Greek Chemists,” in Science and Math in Ancient
Greek Culture, eds. C. Tuplin, T. E. Rihll. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press,
2002 (GB), pp. 316-7. This technology could have arrived in Europe slowly via overland
trade routes, provoking a cult of worship where the preparation of this ploarniakon would
have been a closely held secret. Though mere supposition linked by coincidence, this
correlates well with the beginning of the end of an older religion based upon the hunting
and gathering of entheogens. The worship of natural but rare entheogenic plants might
decline with the increased ability to manufacture and more importantly store one’s own
entheogen made from otherwise common substances. There may be more truth to the
observation in the previously cited eighteenth century Swedish school manual that “the
art of distillation is putting an end to this ignominious abuse (of the use of the An:/anita
niuttaria by primitive tribes)” than the author was aware (see the end of chapter two).
Where this advance did not happen so early, cults based on the worship of mushrooms
and other natually occurring plant entheogens continued into the contemporary epoch.
The excavation in northwest Mexico of “double gourd-shaped pottery vessesls” of Asian
design by the anthropologist Isabel Truesdell Kelly means “the question of a possible
pre-Columbian origin of distillation in Central America remains quite open,” but none of
the artifacts found so far date to earlier than the middle 1400s (Needham, Science and
Civilization in China: Apparatus, Theories and Gifts, vol. IV. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 1980 (GB), p. 110; Lumholtz, Carl. Unknown Mexico: A
record of five years’ exploration among the tribes of the western Sierra Madre. New
York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1902 (GB), pp. 183-186).
408
substances that can cure as well as kill, just as rope can be used to keep
one from falling from a precipice or for hanging oneself. The only
stupefacient is, occasionally, the alcoholic beverage: but not so much for
being so in itself as for developing into orgiastic episodes of violent joy
that contravene the aspirations of compartmentalization and control
maintained by priestly estates, seen for example in the relations between
the State and the Brahman caste. There are of course drugs that bewilder
(stupefy) like wine, among which shine the solanaceas and opium, but
there does not exist a single mention of people who used them for such
ends to remain continually stupefied. Not even this follows for cannabis,
lacking any evidence whatsoever that it was either addictive or dangerous.
If we ignore the moral admonitions and the rare prohibition on alcohol, it
is difficult to find in this epoch the idea of the inherently “dangerous
drug.”
For the historian, the basic lesson from this examination of the
sources is to affirm, from many different perspectives, how much in the
pagan era stupefaction is never an attribute of an inanimate substance but
only a property exclusive to its users. There are no better or worse drugs,
but only judicious and foolish ways to consume them.
As for the partisans of foolishness, these cases are so completely
out of the ordinary, as interesting as those who sleep standing up or stare
blindly at the sun. Otherwise, both States and individuals testify
repeatedly that any drug can be noxious when consumed in excess or
ignorance, and that not one of them has to be so if used according to
reason. Even with regards to the frenetic bacchanals, Euripides makes it
clear that continence is always found in individual nature. Dionysus does
not obligate women to be chaste: “(D)o not boast that sovereignty
[,éra'tos] has power among men Dionysus will not compel women to be
modest in regard to Aphrodite, but in nature [physei] [modesty dwells
409
THE PAGAN ERA
always] you must look for that.’”‘2 To cure a man of drunkenness by

prohibiting alcohol or drugs is equivalent to freeing a family from adultery
by doing away with one of the sexes.
In large measure, one should speak of orthodoxy in general as
being still incipient, cultivated only in Ts’in dynasty China (for books) and
India (for alcohol), though in India alcohol was not prohibited with legal
sanction but only seen as something false. Prohibitionist language in the
Code of Hammurabi and the Announcement on Drunkenness proclaim
capital punishment not for drinking but upon groups advocating
treasonous acts in a tavern. Whatever moral admonitions there are as to
alcohol are limited, local and come with many reservations. One could
say that, with very rare exceptions, that during the pagan era individuals
freely used all the drugs that alter consciousness then known.
The Roman example is singularly instructive. One ancestral
custom banned wine for women and males under thirty. However, the
Lex Cornelia denied the conferring of a legal penalty upon those who
violated this custom, leaving it free to be punished within the home, as it
was, sometimes ferociously. Though the Romans enact penalties for
“rashly selling” certain common medicinal substances, there is no
evidence of any laws barring possession, consumption, use, manufacture,
distribution or sale. When speaking of drugs, the law insisted it was
ambivalent so long as they were not used for murder.
An example, no less curious for being anecdotal, of classical Greek
thought regarding the inevitable confrontation with a new and unfore
seen, dangerous drug can be found in the Anabasis, also known as the
Retreat of the Ten Thousand. Xenophon, narrator and witness to the
122 From //old.perseus.tufts.edu; “Dream not that force is power In them it lies,/
And their own hearts” (Murray, Gilbert. The Bacchae of Euripides. London: George
Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1920 (GB), p. 21).
410
facts, relates how after some skirmishes the army was situated in the high
land of Colquida, where some soldiers were overcome with drunkenness,
delirium and even became comatose. The source of this intoxication was
a honey, probably that made by bees from psychoactive flowers or
adulterated by the natives with extracts from such a plant:
Here, generally speaking, there was nothing to excite their wonderment, but the number
of beehives were indeed astonishing; and so were certain properties of the honey. The
effect upon the soldiers who tasted the combs was, that they all went for the nonce quite
off their heads, and suffered from vomiting and diarrhea, with a total inability to stand
steady on their legs. A small dose produced a condition not unlike violent drunkenness,
a large one an attack very like a fit of madness, and some dropped down, apparently at
death’s door. So they lay, hundreds of them, as if there had been a great defeat, a prey to
the cruelest despondency.106
Though the generals were very frightened, and it was foreseeable

that the strange nectar would be condemned as a diabolic poison (as the
Christians will do two millennia later), the event in 401 BC did not
provoke a reunion of diviners, nor require propitiary sacrificial offerings:
But the next day, none had died, and almost at the same hour of the day at which they
had eaten they recovered their senses, and on the third or fourth day got on their legs
again like convalescents after a severe course of medical treatment (pharma/eon .124
For these trapped infrantrymen continually harried by local tribes, clearly

this was understood as but one more case of a typical pha'rma,éon, in which
risk and cure are mixed inseparably.
123 Dakyns, H. G., tr. The Works of Xenophon, vol. I. London: MacMillan and Co.,
1890 (GB), p. 207, Anabasis, book IV, ch. VIII; also at //ebooks.adelaide.edu.au.
124 Dakyns, 1890, p. 207.
411
THE PAGAN ERA
Figure 76.
Ceramic, red figures on black, Greek banquet scene.
412
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INDEX
Aguardiente, in macumba 58
Alcoholic drinks, Vedas opposed 53; beers and wines, as entheogens 55;
in possession or rapture 59; Li Bai 65; Sumerian beer 68; Choo
He 91; in Code of Hammurabi 95-99; admonition by Amen-em
an 108-109; Noah 112-113; Lot 113-114; HaShem’s prohibition
for Levites 115; wine in Psalm 104 115; in Philo 116-117;
analgesia in Proverbs 118; in Wisdom of Solomon 118-119; and
Duke Zhou 130fl loss of Mandate of Heaven 137; pulque 186;
in Hesiod n59 223; in the Bacchae 223p‘, and Roman emperors
310-312; in Dionysian plague 327 if‘, as source of evil 346
Arnanita rnurcaria, in Siberia 56; as plant of immortality n12 72; and
Eve 74; ibotenic acid n16 75; with Indo-Europeans 78; in
Catalunya 85; versus fermented must 87; mushroom trees 87, 88;
as soma 156; as haorna 167; in Americas 172; Celts 3491?’
Aniok, Indonesia 60
Arnrita, Vedic ambrosia 150
Areca catechu, active ingredient in betel nut n25 84
Atropa helladonna (deadly nightshade), in Europe 85; in Kyphi n36 211;
doses in Dioscorides 294
Badoh negro (Ipornea tricolor), 181

Bakhor 54
Betel nut, in Far East 83; Pacific islands 84; gwaka of Theophrastus n25
84
Book burning, in Ts’in dynasty n82 131
Cacao, in Americas 82; cacolatl 186-187; alkaloids n58 187

Cannabis, and Scythes et al 55; in Zend-Avesta 55; hhanga 55; imported
to Americas 82; in Assyria 99; in Egypt 106; pollen from Thebes
106; themthemet 106; treatment for the eyes in Ramesseum III
papyrus 107; and glaucoma in US Compassionate Use program
n36 107; in skeleton at Beit Shemesh 120; in other languages
120-121; kaneh hotm 121-122; in Exodus 122-123; burning bush
123; as Israelite antiseptic 126; in China 139; in Shen Nung 140
141; in hair of Shiva 147; uiohia 150; in Atharva Veda 150; in
Tantric sect 150; in Herodotus 169-170; in Pliny, Dioscorides
291; in Galen 292; in Oribasius 292-293; price controls 324
Cartesian, body-mind duality 11
Cassia (Cinnamonum aromaticum), in holy anointing oil 124
Catha edulit (khat), and alkaloids n23 83
Ceramic, mushroom dancers 45
Cinnamon (Cinnamon geylanicum), in holy anointing oil 124
Coca, in the Americas 82; Incas 190; in Yunga myth 191; sculpture 3rd
c. BC 192; with lime or ash n66 192; as ritual 193-194
Cocada, compared to betel nut chewing 83
Coffee, in Africa 83
Cohoba (Anandenantherapergrina), and DMT 180-181
Cola nitida (cola nut), alkaloids of n24 83
Cola nut, and caffeine 83
Datura, in Kunama trances 61; native to Africa 83; in Shiva’s hair 147;
ttramonium (toloache) 185; prohibited in homes of Naples’
prostitutes 290
Demophoon, in Demeter myth 264; metaphor for distillation n159 264
Dihydromethysticin, 7-8, in kava, n26 84
446
Dilmun, Sumerian paradise 68-69

Distillation, of alcohol, development of n21 407
DMT, and toads 404
Drug treaties, International Convention on Psychotropic Substances
(1971) 22
Drugs, blessing and curse 14; and familiarity 200-201
Duhoiria hopwoodii, in Australia n27 84
Durkheim, social change 19; drug and society 399
Ebers papyrus 91; discovery 103; partial list of drugs in 103

Ebriety, wines and beers 53; possession 59; ecstatic 59; sober ebriety
368
Eleusis, see ergot
Enechthrogenic, derived 394
Enki and Ninhursaga, and eight plants 68
Enkidu, and Gilgamesh 70
Entheogenic, derived 54
Ephedra (Ephedra uulgarir), as Ma Huang 144
Ephedrine, and asthma 144
Eremophilia alternifolia, alkaloids of n27 84
Ergot, at Eleusis 82; Lolium temulentum, in Greece and Rome 211-212;
and mysteries 258 if‘, kjkeon 260yf Alcibiades 273; Clauicepr
purpurea 275; Hofmann 277; Parpalum dirtichum 279; ergonovine
280
Ethane, see Python
Ethylene, see Python
Fermentation, in barley bread n31 86; in rice and honey n31 86

Foxglove, with Marfan’s Syndrome and Akhneten 111
447
Gilgamesh, quest for plant of immortality 70-72; and Willow (Salix) n11
72; and Egyptian blue lotus (Ny/nploaea eaerula) n12 72; and
A/nanita /nutraria n12 72
Ginseng (Radix Panaeit Ginteng), Shen Nung 145-146
Golden Bough, examples from 41
Grape vine, imported to America 82; native to Caucasus 85; crushing the
grapes, Roman mosaic 370
Guarana (Paulinia eupana), in Americas 82; in Amazon 196
Halieaeahu/n, see Mofl

Hammurabi, Code of, laws on alcohol 95; stele of 97; detail on stele 100;
compared to Code of Ur-Nammu 100
Hao/na (see also So/na), in Zend-Avesta 166; as A/nanita /nutraria 167;
as remedy 169; in receptacles 171; in Heracleitus 270-271;
rejection of, by Yahveh 400
Hashish, see Cannabis
Hegel, master-servant dialogue 11
Hellebore, black (Helleloorut nzger), with Hippocrates 208-209; Celsus
297; Pliny 298-299
Hellebore, white (Veratru/n albu/n), with Hippocrates 208-209; Celsus
297; Pliny 298-299
Henbane, see Hyotg/a/nut niger
Hofmann, Albert, see Ergot
Honey, psychotropic 173, 410-411
Hyotg/a/nut niger (black henbane), in Europe 85; in toothache recipe from
2250 BC 98; for coughs 296; in Celsus 296; in Tloeriaea
Ploiloniu/n 306; arrow poison 352
Hyoscyamine, in Dulooitia n27 84
448
Iatronianteir 35
Iboga, versus fermented must 53; native to Africa 83
Ibotenic acid, in Arnanita rnurcaria n16 75
Inana/Dumuzid, Sumerian Persephone myth 65
Incense, in Greece and Rome 209-210
Indoles, visionary 59; list of, n46 59
juliana, Codex, mandragora 313
Katharsis 37
Kawakawa (kava), versus fermented must 53; in Pacific 84; kavalactones
84
Khat (see also Catha edulir), and caffeine 83
Kykeon, see Ergot
Kyphy, Plutarch’s recipe 210
Lairrega-faire 26
Lotus (Nyrnphaea caerulea), as honey plant 93
LSD, see Ergot
Mana, of Hebrews 54
Mandragora oflicinarurn (mandrake), in Europe 85; with Nefertiti and
Akhenaten, possibly 111; in story of Lot, possibly 114; in Genesis
127; in Song of Songs 128; in Roman statute on poisons 290; in
surgery 295; Pliny’s tales 295; in Celsus 296; Codex juliana 313
Mandrake, see Mandragora oyjicinarurn
Manicheans, eaters of fungi 79
Maté (Ilexparaguarienrir), in Americas 82; in Paraguay and Argentina
1 95
449
Menorah, as two-dimensional cannabis plant 125, 129

Miasma 37
Mistletoe (Vitcum alhum), with Celts 356-357
Mob, in Odyssey 206
Morning glory (Ric/ea cog/mhota), 181-183
Munihood 54
Mushrooms, hymns to 55; Dogrib 58;Amanita mutcari and psilocybe in
medieval sculpture n12 72; and spirituality, Graves 76; bee
shaman 77; in Encyclopedie 79; in Canada 81; in Wales 85;
stones 174-175; psilocybe in Wales 350; fictional 397
Mutation, time of 18
Myrrh (Commzphora myrrha), in holy anointing oil 124; in Kyphy 210; in
resinous wine 211
Narcotic, misnamed 63
Narkoun, definition 21
Nepenthes, and Helen 101; as opium 102; as cannabis 102; mixture 204;
solanacea 207; psilocybe mushroom as antidote 207; snowdrop
207; Amanita mutcaria 207; holey moley 207
Neurohomones, structure similar to drugs 400
Nicotine, in Duhoitia hopu/oodii n27 84
Ninkasi, and Sumerian beer 68-69; and Anchor Brewing Company 69;
hymn to 94-95
Nitrous oxide, see Python
l\lymphaea caerulea (see also Lotus), as plant of immortality n4 93
Olive oil (Olea europaea), in holy anointing oil 124

Ololiiuaui, in la Serna 178; in sculpture 179; in early Spanish accounts
181-183; as remedy n49 182; amide of lysergic acid 185
450
Opium, in Egypt 101; tehaico 102; headache remedy for god Ra in Ebers
104; remedy for crying children in Ebers 105; in Bible, as rorch
128; in China 143-144; Sargon of Acadia 151; in Greek myth
213; in Greek medicine 214-220; tehaico, lethality 220; in
theriakar 221; in mithridaticum 221-222; Virgil 300; Juvenal 305;
Theriaca Philonium 306; Theriaca/lndromachi 309; Dioscorides 313;
Pliny the Elder 314-315; Galen 316-317; lack of addiction 317;
habit of Marcus Aurelius 319; morr tempertiua 320; Roman
market 321; price controls 323-324
Orgy (confusion) 59; and rura 159
Panakeia, the all-good plant 205

Papauer retigerum (wild poppy), in Mediterranean 85
Papauer romniferum (opium poppy), in Mediterranean 85; as plant of
immortality n4 94
Pean (Peean), in Odyssey 48
Penicillium chg/rogenum 91
Peyote (Lophophora williamrii), in Native American Church 58; in New
Spain 183-184; deer pipe 184; types 185; mescaline 185
Pharmakoi, sponges 49
Pha'rma,éon, cure and poison 20; Plato 36; communal sacrifice 46; in
Greece 203; reaction to unknown by Greeks, 410-411
Pharmakor, victim 46; and Pentheus 230
Phenylethylamines, in ecstatic ebriety 59
Physicians, in antiquity 378 yj‘
Piper hetel, leaves used in betel nut n25 84
Poppy, in Fertile Crescent 81; in Asia Minor 81; Swiss lakes 82; in
empires 82; imported to Americas 82; HUL GIL 93; rhepen, in
Ebers Papyrus 104; in China 141-142; in Hippocrates 218-219;
451
in Celsus 296; Pliny 301; myth of Somnus 301; myth of Demeter

301-302; lettuce 307; anoduna 307-308; Cueoa de lot Mureielagot
353; Neolithic 353-354; in Minoan diadem 377
Ptiloeyhe agteeoru/n (see also Mushrooms), in sculpture 179
Ptiloeyhe /nexieana (see also Mushrooms), in stones 174-175
Psilocybin (see also Mushrooms), experiments of Pahnke 282j’
Pulque 186
Python, at Delphi, 238 yf and Socrates n87 240; bad trip of 241; and
Dionysus 244; and kyploy 245; laurel leaves 246; cannabis 248;
ethylene, ethane 252yj‘, nitrous oxide 252; carbon dioxide 256;
hydrogen sulfide 256; benzene 256
Quest, of Gilgamesh for plant of immortality 70-72
Rauu/ofiia terpentina, in India 151

Rats, electrodes 12; orgasm 13; Rat Park 318
Saccharification, amylolysis n31 86

San Pedro (Trielooeereutpaeloanoi), with jaguar 188-189; T. tertloekii 189
Sloertu, Assyrian ailment and divine rage 37
Siniquieloe (Hei/nia talieifolia), in sculpture 179; in Mexico 183
Snowdrop (Galantlout nioalit), as Mofl 207
Sobria elorietat, in Philo 368yj"
Solanaceas, in possession or rapture 59; list of, n45 59; in Greece 211
So/na, versus tura 87; Hymn IV 149; in Vedas 152)}; Jairningi -
Upanitload Bralo/nana 153-154; as beer 155; as Eploedra
paeloyelada n16 156; as A/nanita /nutearia 156; compared to
teonana'eatl 157; rejection by Yahveh 400
Soploora teeundiflora, in North America 180
452
Stg/chnor, the all-bad plant 205

Sunrises, guilty and innocent 21
Tassili-n-Ajjer, mushroom bee-shaman 77

Tea (Caniellia rinenrir), Far East 83; Shen Nung 144; caffeine content
compared to coffee 145
Tehaico, see Opium
Teonana'catl, in codices 176-177; psilocine and psilocybin 185
Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), delta-9 as active ingredient of cannabis n16
75; in Egyptian mummy 106
Thorn apple, in Theophrastus 205-206
Toads, and DMT 404
Tobacco, in macumba 58; in sculpture 179
Toloache (Datura rtrarnoniurn) 185; compared to brugmansia 186
Trimethoxyphenethylamine, 3,4,5 in mescaline n16 75
Trois-freres, horned god 40
United Nations, laws overthrown 16

Urine, of ebriety n28 167, 168
Ur-Nammu, Code of 100
Uta-Napishtim, Sumerian Noah 70
Vervain (Verhena ojicinalir), in Gaul 357
Wine (see also Alcoholic drinks), and Bacchus cult 62; in Coptic rite 158;
and the Bacchae 224 if‘, oinopotai versus hydropotai 233; and Plato
n73 234 if‘, Euripides n74 234-235; rejected by Demeter 261
262; with Dionysus at Eleusis n156 263; Zaleucus the Locrian
289; Roman penalties on 289; in mystery cults 328 if‘, in
453
Dionysian plague 327 yf in sculpture 348; Celts and Germans

354-355; unmixed, in Philo 359; as neutral spirit 365 yf and
barbarians 368; tohria ehrietat, Philo 369; Chrysostom 371-372
Witch hunts 39
Xenophon, Retreat of the Ten Thousand, 410-411

Xiandao, Penglai, the World Tree of Taoist Paradise, 404
Yopo, inhaled by Tainos 180
Zaleucus the Locrian, medical prohibition on unmixed wine 289
454
HISTORY THE GENERAL
HISTORY OF DRUGS
Volume One
“Our civilization suffers because of plants whose existence
dates back to unremberable times, and whose respective virtues
were deeply exploited by all the great cultures. For millennia no
one has been particularly worried over their seeding or harvest,
while today these simple botanical facts have achieved the
dimension of a planetary catastrophe.” -- Introduction, GHD
This first English edition of volume one of the GHD

covers the entheogenic, medicinal and recreational drugs of the
pre-Christian civilizations of Central and South America, India,
Iran, China, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Israel, Greece, Rome and
Gaul. The long human experimentation with opium, cannabis,
alcohol, mushrooms, peyote and other drugs is sketched out by
consulting many thousands of years of archaeologcial, mythological,
ethnobotanical, literary and medical data. Part encyclopedia
and part philosophical treatise, it introduces the reader to the
transferencial and participative sacrifices and the idea of the
pharrnakon, an ancient Greek word that encompasses cure
and poison, not one thing or the other but both.
Rarely has the subject been approached from the pragmatic and
rational. When it is, almost never is it studied in depth with such
uncompromising precision and profundity. It is also difficult to find
one so organized, rigorous, meticulously documented and erudite.
Add accessability, expressive language, "I wa_n_ “!mh__3_n
and an ear for a good story and not £I'[ll.'l‘.][l 2|
surprisingly this unique work has been
through twenty editions in Spanish
and been translated partially or
completely into a dozen languages. El

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i I _-.*R‘o!

Realigg and Substance (1986)

Philosophv and Methodologv in the Sciences (1987)

The Spirit of Comedy (1991)

Whores and Wives (1993)

From Physis to Polis (1995)

The Question of Cannabis (1997)

Portrait of a Libertine (1998)

Chaos and Order (2000)

Learning About Drugs (ZQUZ)

Sixgg Weeks in the Tropics (2003)

Elementary Histog of Drugs (2003)

Four Myths on Sex and Dug; (2003)

The Enemies of Commerce (2008)

translated and edited by

GRAFFITI MILITANTE PRESS

All rig/alx rexerv/ed

Firxl Eng/ix/9 Edition

“This endeavor to achieve that everyone should approve that

I owe gratitude also to Pablo Fernandez-Florez, who was always

establishment with no small number of kilos of index cards and notes,

1 Volumes I and II in the Alianza edition.

Antonio has written a guilty pleasure, an encyclopaedia with a plot,

I. Magic, Pharmacy and Religion 35

II. Myths and Geography 65

III. Profane Ebriety 91

IV. Sacred Ebriety 149

1. The Concept of the Pha'r/ezakon 203

VI. Rome and the Celts 287

D. Mystery Cults 325

VII. Paganism and Ebriety 359

2 Lewin, 1970 (1927), P. 17.

In fact, many today perceive the use of certain substances as a new

3 De Ropp, 1960, p. 13.

delinquent — came to be treated as some users of some drugs have been

unanimous, the managers controlling a society understand that, by

various adulterants,8 clandestine laboratories continuously launching new

The complexity of the subject. Fifth horseman of the apocalypse,

In effect, as its principal champions have repeatedly declared, from Nixon

validation of techniques for inducing crime, the suspension of the

alternative offered to the user is to submit himself voluntarily to a psychiatric cure or

of temporary weaknesses into a new integration – massive scorn for the

14 Durkheim, 1912, p. 136.

Centered around the mechanism of collective integration known

The point of departure for a scientiﬁc examination. One might

problem unsolvable for reasons outside of pharmacology,15 proposing

judges and police brigades, feeding a progressive divorce between

18 Byck, 1980, p. 43.

ebriety makes it seem understandable that different functionaries should

A history within a history. After millennia of festive, therapeutic and

1° Cf. Musto, 1973, p. 26 and 260, footnote 8.

examination. But to form concepts on this subject instead of myths and

20 Gil, 1969, p. 22.

a general history, requiring constant references to it just as one would

use of drugs accompanied the moral pestilence, viewed as a crime against

Respecting the present study, there have been some attempts to

21 Foucault, 1978, p. 35.

hope of an initial benevolence on behalf of the reader, perhaps as would

Count: Happiness? Happiness doesn’t exist. None of the

In the earliest literature there is no safe way to distinguish empirical

1 Cf. for example Hofschlaeger, 1909, pp. 81-83.

A. Sickness and Sacriﬁce

If we look for a common factor in the many diverse institutions of