The Road to Eleusis. Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries

Jameson, Michael H.; Wasson, Gordon R.; Ruck, Carl A. P.; Hofmann, Albert

doi:10.2307/4349163

Cited by 7 publications

(9 citation statements)

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“…The fear, judgment, and prohibition of these medicines were often a cultural reaction by European colonizers and concerned governments. Therefore, as recent medical research appears as a discovery, it might be better described as a recovery of ancient knowledge and practices once known in places as geographically and culturally distinct as South, Central, and North American, Central Africa, Siberia, and even Ancient Greece (Wasson et al, 2008). In this context, forms of neo‐colonialism and cultural appropriation (Herzberg & Butler, 2019; Lagarde, 2021) also have to be considered when discussing the modern use of psychedelics.…”

Section: The Psychedelic Renaissance—a Brief Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Chasing the Numinous: Hungry Ghosts in the Shadow of the Psychedelic Renaissance

Osterhold

Fernandes-Osterhold

2023

J Analytical Psychology

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In recent years a renewed scientific, public and commercial interest in psychedelic medicines can be observed across the globe. As research findings have been generally promising, there is hope for new treatment possibilities for a number of difficult‐to‐treat mental health concerns. While honouring positive developments and therapeutic promise in relation to the medical use of psychedelics, this paper aims to shine a light on some underlying psycho‐cultural shadow dynamics in the unfolding psychedelic renaissance. This paper explores whether and how the multi‐layered collective fascination with psychedelics may yet be another symptom pointing towards a deeper psychological and spiritual malaise in the modern Western psyche as diagnosed by C. G. Jung. The question is posed whether the West’s feverish pursuit of psychedelic medicines—from individual consumption to entheogenic tourism, from capitalist commodification of medicines and treatments to the increasing number of ethical scandals and abuse through clinicians and self‐proclaimed shamans—is related to a Western cultural complex. As part of the discussion, the archetypal image of the Hungry Ghost, known across Asian cultural and religious traditions, is explored to better understand the aforementioned shadow phenomena and point towards mitigating possibilities.

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Section: The Psychedelic Renaissance—a Brief Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Chasing the Numinous: Hungry Ghosts in the Shadow of the Psychedelic Renaissance

Osterhold

Fernandes-Osterhold

2023

J Analytical Psychology

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“…Potential problems include, first, that the members of these communities often embrace historical narratives that are not supported by the historical and archaeological data. Scholars and entheogenic activists (admittedly, that line is blurry, if it exists at all) have associated entheogens with ancient Hinduism (Kuddus et al., 2013; Wasson, 1971), Buddhism (Badliner, 2002; Crowley, 2019; Osto, 2016), ancient Chinese religions (Touw, 1981), ancient Greek religion (Wasson et al., 1978), African religions (Duvall, 2019), Native American religions (Lee, 2013), Judaism (Lattin, 2023), Christianity (Allegro, 2009), Islam (Khalifa, 1975; Rosenthal, 1971), and with other major so‐called world religions (Wasson, Kramrisch, Ruck, and Ott, 1986). As evidenced by the New York Times Best Selling book The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name (which argues that the original Christian sacrament was psychedelic—Muraresku, 2020), this literature is often engaging and interesting, although it stretches the boundaries of credible academic historical analyses as it often speculates on historical innuendo and reaches historical conclusions on information that is subject to reasonable interpretation.…”

Section: Entheogenic Communities Todaymentioning

confidence: 99%

Entheogens: Psychedelic religion in the United States, part two

Stoddard

2023

Religion Compass

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Scholars across the academic spectrum have written about the renewed interest in psychedelics that is commonly called the Psychedelic Renaissance (PR). Psychedelic religion is a major component of the PR, as psychedelic churches are growing exponentially and as people who consume and who research psychedelics routinely contend that these substances induce or occasion religious, spiritual, or mystical experiences. Scholars have noticed the growing association of psychoactive substances and religiosity, and they have addressed this association from a variety of academic fields, methods, and methodologies. Part one of this article (“Entheogens: Psychedelic religion in the United States, Part One”) explored the historiography of associations of psychoactive substances and religiosity in the United States from the 1800s to the 1980s. Part two of this article continues the historiographical analysis of this literature beginning in the 1980s and ends with recent scholarship. Collectively, this analysis highlights the evolving political, legal, and sociocultural capital associated with psychoactive substances and religion.

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“…The placement of these plant remains suggest that tekh was consumed with forms of beer, possibly in a ritual context (Goyon 1992). In Classical Greece, darnel was known as "aίρa" (aira), the plant of frenzy, and was again used in a ritual setting, this time associated with the Eleusinian rituals of the cults of Demeter and Persephone (Wasson et al 1978). It was used as an anesthetic in medieval Arab-Islamic medicine (Haddad 2005), and in works such as Celsus' De Medicina (c. 47 CE) is listed among the ingredients of Mithridate, the mythical universal antidote to poisoning attributed by Celsus to the first century BCE King of Pontus, Mithridates VI (Celsus 1935).…”

Section: Darnel In Ancient Culturesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Remembering Darnel, a Forgotten Plant of Literary, Religious, and Evolutionary Significance

Thomas¹,

Archer²,

Turley³

2016

Journal of Ethnobiology

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This paper explores the complex interactions between people and the psychotoxic crop contaminant and wheat mimicker darnel (Lolium temulentum). Bringing together knowledge from literary, historical, religious, medical, and scientific sources, we trace the ways in which the plant?s cultural story has been informed by its cultivation (accidental and otherwise) by humans. Darnel is a man-made plant that evolved from a perennial progenitor and was subject to the same human-mediated selection pressures as the ancestral cereal species it infested. The toxicity of darnel grains is due to a cocktail of phytochemicals secreted by genetically complex endophytic fungi of the genus Epichlo?, closely related to ergot (Claviceps purpurea). We show how darnel?s reputation as a poisonous cereal mimic that corrupts the food-chain made the plant a symbol of malign subversion, notably invoked in crises around religious heterodoxy and political subversion. We consider the ways in which literary allusions, from Shakespeare to Dickens, identified the corrupting influence of darnel with psychological and social breakdown. Darnel is classified as extinct in the United Kingdom and other developed countries with intensive agriculture, and its significance as a food chain contaminant and literary and religious symbol is vanishing from experience and understanding. This paper, then, is intended to serve as a textual seed bank to collect darnel?s cultural traces, and to demonstrate the ways in which the plant has annotated key debates and moments of crisis in human history.authorsversionPeer reviewe

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The Road to Eleusis. Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries

Cited by 7 publications

References 0 publications

Chasing the Numinous: Hungry Ghosts in the Shadow of the Psychedelic Renaissance

Chasing the Numinous: Hungry Ghosts in the Shadow of the Psychedelic Renaissance

Entheogens: Psychedelic religion in the United States, part two

Remembering Darnel, a Forgotten Plant of Literary, Religious, and Evolutionary Significance

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