Sacred Mushrooms of the Goddess: Secrets of Eleusis

Description

Sacred Mushrooms of the Goddess: Secrets of Eleusis

In the ancient world, men and women joined cults known as Mysteries to unite with the deities of the otherworld and achieve eternal life. The most important of the Mysteries existed for two millennia at the village of Eleusis. Its deities were Demeter and Persephone, interchangeable in their roles as mother and daughter. The initiations and other rituals of this goddess-based cult were a profound secret: divulging information was punishable by death. For centuries, scholars have probed the secrets of the Eleusinian Mysteries and kykeon, its sacramental Eucharist a sacred drink containing psychoactive chemicals similar to those in LSD. Their discoveries have been buried in the arcane language of alchemy, the occult sciences, and secret societies. Here, in prose accessible to all readers, Carl Ruck unravels the Mysteries, revealing the awesome powers of the goddesses, as well as the pagan underpinnings of Western culture.

About the Author Carl A.P. Ruck

Carl A.P. Ruck is a Professor of Classical Studies at Boston University and an authority on the ecstatic rituals of the god Dionysus. With theethno-mycologist R. Gordon Wasson and Albert Hofmann, he identified the secret psychoactive ingredient in the visionary potion that was drunk by the initiates at the Eleusinian Mystery in their seminal book, The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries. Ruck’s other books include Entheogens, Myth, and Human Consciousness, Mushrooms, Myth and Mithras: The Drug Cult That Civilized Europe, and Persephone’s Quest: Entheogens and the Origins of Religion. Carl Ruck was a character in Brian C. Muraresku’s NYT bestselling nonfiction book, The Immortality Key (2020).