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Immortality (1976) where he postulated that the
mysterious SOMA in the Vedic literature, a red
fruit leading to spontaneous enlightenment for
those who ingested it, was actually a mushroom.
The Vedic symbolism carefully disguised its true
identity: Amanita muscaria, the hallucinogenic
Fly Agaric. Many cultures portray Amanita
muscaria as the archetypal mushroom. Although
some Vedic scholars disagree with his
interpretation, Wasson's exhaustive research still
stands. (See Brough (1971) andWasson (1972)).
Aristotle, Plato, Homer, and Sophocles all
participated in religious ceremonies at Eleusis
where an unusual temple honored Demeter,
the Goddess of Earth. For over two millennia,
thousands of pilgrims journeyed fourteen miles
from Athens to Eleusis, paying the equivalent
of a month's wage for the privilege of attending
the annual ceremony. The pilgrims were
ritually harassed on their journey to the temple,
MUSHROOMS, CIVILIZATION & HISTORY 3
apparently in good humor.
Upon arriving at the temple, they gathered
in the initiation hall, a great telestrion. Inside
the temple, pilgrims sat in rows that descended
step-wise to a hidden, central chamber from
which a fungal concoction was served. An odd
feature was an array of columns, beyond any
apparent structural need, whose designed purpose
escapes archaeologists. The pilgrims
spent the night together and reportedly came
away forever changed. In this pavilion crowded
with pillars, ceremonies occurred, known by
historians as the Eleusinian Mysteries. No revelation
of the ceremony's secrets could be
mentioned under the punishment of imprisonment
or death. These ceremonies continued
until repressed in the early centuries of the
Christian era.
In 1977, at a mushroom conference on the
Olympic Peninsula, R. Gordon Wasson, Albert
Figures 3, 4, 5. Meso-American mushroom stones, circa 300 years B.C., from the Pacific slope of Guatemala.
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