Bread of heaven or wines of light: entheogenic legacies and esoteric cosmologies.

Summary

The article explores the historical use of psychoactive ergot preparations in various religious traditions, particularly within Persian, Greek, Jewish, and Islamic contexts. It highlights evidence from poems and scriptural writings that suggest these substances played a role in philosophical and ritual practices among ancient sects. The second part will focus on modern research methods that make ergot alkaloids safe and entheogenic, which is vital for substantiating theories about their use in mystery traditions.

Study at a glance

Abstract

This is an article in two parts. The first part discusses current research in psychoactive preparations of ergot in various religious systems with a particular emphasis on Persian, Greek, Jewish and Islamic sources. Certain poems, hadith, and scriptural writings suggest an entheogenic heritage to various ancient sects that exerted and received philosophical and ritual influences over large distances and over time. Particularly, some esoteric Shia and Sufi writings are highly suggestive of a "celestial botany" that employed psychoactive plants for initiatory and ritual purposes. The second part will address current research methods that render ergot alkaloids nontoxic and entheogenic, a most crucial part of the discussion in the absence of a modern bioassay. This is essential, as without a chemical reality to support that such a preparation of entheogenic ergot is possible, all ergot theories concerning mystery traditions would remain largely speculative.