Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Entheogens, Myth, and Human Consciousness
    Entheogens, Myth, and Human Consciousness
    Entheogens, Myth, and Human Consciousness
    Ebook179 pages2 hours

    Entheogens, Myth, and Human Consciousness

    By Carl A. P. Ruck and Mark Alwin Hoffman

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    ENTHEOGENS, MYTH AND HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS is a much needed accessible exploration into the role of psychoactive sacraments - entheogens - in religion, mythology, and history, and also includes most treatments of the subject focus on modern scientific research, psychotherapy, are auto-bibliographic accounts, or are agenda-driven or otherwise naive and myopic.

    A great mystery of altered states of consciousness and species development is expanding with new archeological and anthropological discoveries. Religious story telling (myth) is a timeless journey. Surprisingly it’s not about truth. It’s about finding one’s self in the midst of the discovery of the Other.” It is the story of what is separate and unknown that creates self-consciousness. Our entire life consists ultimately in the discovery of the Other,” which gives meaning to the discovery of the self. The arts and language are the fossil remnants scattered on our path.

    ENTHEOGENS, MYTH AND HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS discusses the influence of psychoactive substances on consciousness, human evolution and mystical experiences. It explores how religion, mythology, art and culture stem from entheogenic consciousness and why it's important to us today.

    "Entheogens, or psychoactive sacraments, have a long, storied history that has played an essential role in the evolution of consciousness, mythology, culture, religion, art - and even history and politics. ENTHEOGENS, MYTH AND HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS outlines this suppressed - yet seminal - undercurrent of history, giving examples of the role of entheogens from the primal shamanic religions through, the historical religions, esoteric mystical traditions including the Mystery Religions, alchemy and Freemasonry, and into contemporary expressions.

    Authors Ruck and Hoffman draw upon decades of research and personal experience in discussing the best documented examples of historically important entheogenic evidences, various ongoing threads of research and speculation to muse upon the 'meaning' of it all..."

    Our hominid ancestors experienced a spiritual wakening at the very dawn of consciousness that set them apart from the other creatures of our planet. It was a journey to another realm induced by a special food that belonged to the gods. This was a plant that was animate with the spirit of deity. It was an entheogen. It was the visionary vehicle for the trip of the first shaman.

    The story was told over and over again until it achieved the perfect form of a myth. The realm was imagined as a topographical place, the outer limit of the cosmos, the fiery empyrean, or its geocentric opposite, our own planet Gaia. Myths multiplied over time, but they always preserved this primordial truth.

    These myths provide a road map, a scenario, if you can read them, for whoever today wants to follow. However, it is not an easy journey, and it is also fraught with many dangers, of getting lost, of finding no return. Access to the entheogens is now largely prohibited or strictly licensed. The restrictions constitute an infringement of cognitive freedom, limiting the further evolution of human potential into productive creative imagination and experiences that lie beyond the normal, the traditional province of shamans, who can understand the speech of plants and animals, change shape at will, and journey, both physically and in the spirit, to distant exotic realms.

    In addition, religions have staked out territorial claims to this realm of spiritual consciousness. They have colonized it, identified it with their god, often reserving the access for their own elite. Similarly, trade in drugs, both medicinal and illegal, has colonized the etheogens, making them only chemicals, rationally depriving them of their spirit.

    ENTHEOGENS, MYTH AND HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS is a guide for the curious that provides a historical overview of the role that entheogens have played in the development of our unique supr
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRonin Publishing
    Release dateDec 11, 2012
    ISBN9781579511647
    Entheogens, Myth, and Human Consciousness

    Related to Entheogens, Myth, and Human Consciousness

    Related ebooks

    Body, Mind, & Spirit For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Age Of Alchemy

      Mar 8, 2022

      The Age Of Alchemy
      8 min read

    • Article

      SETI Dreams

      Aug 13, 2020

      Wade Roush MIT Press 2020 Pb, 221pp, £12.99, ISBN 9780262538435 If for some reason or another you feel the need to consume a history of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) – the effort to contact aliens over vast cosmic distances via

      8 min read

    • Article

      Challenging Orthodox Science

      Jul 15, 2021

      TO SEND REVIEW COPIES, CONTACT THE BOOK REVIEWS EDITOR AT DVBARRETT@FORTEANTIMES.COM Imants Barušs Imprint Academic 2021 Pb, 228pp, £14.95, ISBN 9781788360418 The late William Corliss was very fond of a particular quotation from the 19th-century psyc

      11 min read

    • Article

      Michael Wood On…

      Sep 1, 2022

      In my job, travelling the world making films on history and culture, I’ve spent a lot of time exploring religion in its many manifestations. Religion, after all, is a gift for the camera: full of colour, action and often moving rituals. It’s also a c

      3 min read

    • Article

      We’re Naturally Supernatural

      Jan 5, 2023

      Historical Precedents, Moral Objections, New Realities Jeffrey J Kripal University of Chicago Press 2022 Hb, 256p, £28, ISBN 9780226820248 As a young Catholic, Jeffrey Kripal visited some Protestant churches in his American Mid-West town. He was baff

      11 min read

    • Article

      A Language Beyond Reason

      Feb 27, 2020

      I grew up in a scientific family. My grandmother Irene was the daughter of the physicist Max Born, who won the Nobel Prize for his work on quantum mechanics and was a close friend of Albert Einstein. She was herself scientifically well educated and h

      4 min read

    • Article

      Also Received

      Jul 14, 2022

      Plants, Charms, and Amulets of the Healers of the Crusades Jon G Hughes Destiny Books, 2022 Pb, £17.99, 416pp, ISBN 9781544113301 The Knights Templar do not readily come to mind when we think if healing organisations of the Middle Ages, but the bad p

      4 min read

    • Article

      The New Exorcists

      May 17, 2023

      The evening shadows are creeping over the colonnades and piazzas of Rome as an elderly, white-haired priest leaves the comforts of his home and heads through the streets towards a room in an apartment block where others are waiting. He walks slowly,

      8 min read

    • Article

      The Lure Of Merfolk

      Jan 28, 2021

      A Human History Vaughn Scribner Reaktion Books 2020 Hb, 320pp, £20, ISBN 9781789143140 Lusty, dangerous, pious, monstrous, thought provoking, ancient, modern. These are only a few of the ways in which merpeople can be described in Vaughn Scribner’s i

      8 min read

    • Article

      Acorns and Octavia

      Nov 25, 2022

      Acorns and Octavia
      10 min read

    • Article

      “Magic Is A Really Important Strand Of What It Means To Be Human”

      Jul 9, 2020

      Ellie Cawthorne: Your new book surveys a vast array of magical beliefs throughout human history. How do you define magic? Chris Gosden: My definition of magic is a human openness to the universe. And a universe’s openness to people. Let me give you

      9 min read

    • Article

      CONSCIOUSNESS v CATASTROPHE

      May 31, 2018

      CONSCIOUSNESS v CATASTROPHE
      5 min read

    • Article

      Gods, Saints And Spellcraft

      Mar 27, 2020

      Gods, Saints And Spellcraft
      6 min read

    • Article

      Lives Of The Great Occultists

      Sep 10, 2020

      Personally, I blame that Aleister Crowley. If my memory serves me well (which, these days, it seldom does), Hunt Emerson and I more or less drifted into creating ‘Lives of the Great Occultists’ after I told him a couple of my favourite yarns about th

      7 min read

    • Article

      Miracles and Magic

      Dec 17, 2020

      “WE CAN SEE no easy origin to magic,” Chris Gosden writes in Magic—A History, “because it has always been with us.” Every culture that we know of has had magical beliefs and practices. Sometimes, as with divination or astrology, those practices aim t

      5 min read

    • Article

      Rosicrucianism

      Feb 28, 2020

      Europe in the early 17th century was not a happy place. It was a continent marked by religious divisions and political strife which would escalate into the bloody Thirty Years’ War that led to eight million lives being lost. At the same time, it was

      5 min read

    • Article

      Lighting the Pyre

      Jan 31, 2024

      Lighting the Pyre
      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Entheogens, Myth, and Human Consciousness

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Entheogens, Myth, and Human Consciousness - Carl A. P. Ruck

      1

      MYTH OF ECSTASY

      The worldwide myth about how fire was stolen from the heavens reflects humankind’s first conscious awareness of its relationship to the divine. Fire is metaphoric for the semen of deity and is found in the psychoactive plants that figure in the primordial rituals of shamanism that established the plant as a metaphoric tree affording a pathway of transcendence. A flaming pillar extends from the fiery surround of the cosmos through the sacred mountain to the volcanic crucible in the netherworld. The dietary restrictions of an ancient Christian heretical sect that continued into recent times reflect this myth of ecstasy.

      And Azazel taught men metallurgy, the metals of the earth and how to work them, and metallic distillates. And his fallen angels copulated with humans and taught enchantments, root-cuttings, astrology.

      —Book of Enoch

      Man at first did not have fire. It was hidden away, deep in the earth, far in the sky. Many are the stories of the thieving tricksters who stole it, rebellious angels, culture heroes, shape-shifters, shamanic familiars, coyote, rabbit, beaver, pigeon, crow, and even grandmother spider. They stole it either from the highest heavens beyond the sun or from the fiery crucible beneath the volcano, and they gave it as a great boon to mankind. These thieves were at the very beginning of our species; and we humans were creatures that the trickster fashioned, often out of clay, hardened to durability in the volcanic forge like a potter’s vessel, to contain the burning gift. The theft of fire and the making of the first humans are interchangeable themes, synchronous events in the evolution of our species. Fire was at the origin of man’s superiority, when humans first noticed their nakedness, the primordial sign of their awakening consciousness, and thus rose above the other beasts.

      Thou, O Agni, art highest vital power, the life- and death-bestowing Fire, the treasure found far away in the highest firmament, deeply hidden in the earth. The hero who knows brought you back from where you were hidden from mankind.

      —Rig Veda

      With fire came also enchantments, charms, witchcraft, the art of cutting medicinal and magical roots, the gathering of drug plants, herbs, metallurgy, ecstasy, all knowledge. Fire was Light, spiritual Illumination. With fire, the creatures of clay might dare encroach upon the realms of the gods, who jealously had hidden it away for themselves. The thieves who stole it were labeled as enemies, cast from the heavens into eternal torment for revealing the secrets of the gods. In Judeo-Christianity, the fire-thief was Azazel, who was also called Lucifer, the ‘Bearer of the Light,’ the brightest of the angels, condemned for the theft and identified as Satan.

      The fire became like a pillar of light, a flaming column, and a shining pathway for transcendent flight right through the molten core of the mountain back to the zenith of the cosmos. Before man learned to master it with the fire-stick, the two naturally available sources of fire would have been the erupting mountain and the fall of the lightning bolt, the dual termini of the pathway. It was the seminal flux of the heavens penetrating the vulva of Gaia, the Earth, the fiery potion caught in the chalice of clay that was a human. It was the copulation with angels. The fire of the intellect, the spirit of the soul, was mankind’s portion of divinity.

      Plants of Illumination

      The most famous of these tricksters was the Greek titan Prometheus. The same themes, however, can be traced in mythologies worldwide. The theft of fire is a mythical motif analogous to the theft of a magical plant whose spiritual persona is quintessential fire. Among the Huichol Indians of the Sierra Madre Occidental of northern Mexico, it is the great ancestral shaman Tatewari, named as ‘Grandfather Fire,’ who still leads the three hundred mile initiatory pilgrimage of the vision quest to gather the sacred peyote. In performing the arduous trek, those participating in the hunt are repeating the original mythic quest for the sacred plant.

      In Vedic tradition, Agni, the god of the sacred fire, found the intoxicating Soma plant in the highest firmament, but also in the deepest recess of the Earth. Agni is the first word of the Vedas, perhaps the first word ever written. He represents the cause of all change, the metabolism of the cosmos, the guiding Light.

      Apollo in the Forge of Vulcan

      Apollo in the Forge of Vulcan

      In Greek mythology, the titans were the children of Gaia, the race before the Olympian gods. Prometheus’s theft of fire is analogous to acquiring access to the magical food of the gods, the food that made them divine. Metaphorically, it was called nectar and ambrosia, but it was found as the fiery spirit resident in special plants and botanical potions whose intoxicating properties were the vehicle for human transcendence along the axis of the flaming pillar. Prometheus is often a thematic double for Hephaestus, who is called Vulcan in Latin. Both Hephaestus and Vulcan are named for the ‘volcano,’ whose forge they tend as blacksmiths. Prometheus is named as the ‘one who knows.’ The fire-thief and the volcanic forge are associated in mythologies around the world, along with the goblin henchmen who assist them in their metallurgy.

      Ihunted fire, stolen, stuffed in a reed cage for botanical drugs and medicines, herbs of ecstasy, the fount that taught humans all they know, how to cope with every need.

      —Aeschylus

      Prometheus

      The Greek traditions are one of the best-preserved mythologies, documented in extensive literature and art for over two and a half millennia. The motif of the stolen fire as a plant of ecstasy is explicit in the earliest accounts. We are told that Prometheus stole fire hidden in the special container that herbalists use to gather their botanical specimens. In Greek, it was named the narthex, traditionally made of a hollow reed. In it were placed magical herbs, potent roots, dug and cut, like hidden treasure, alchemical gold, the same knowledge that Azazel taught. The narthex etymologically designates a ‘repository for narcotics,’ a narco-thex. In retaliation for his gift to humankind, Zeus chained Prometheus to a volcano. An eagle gnaws eternally at his liver, the organ of the body that filters toxins. It was considered the seat of divine perception and clairvoyance because it mirrored exactly the shape of the cosmos.

      Forbidden Fruit

      These plants of ecstasy worldwide are metaphorically the forbidden fruit of a special tree. Many are the tales also of this forbidden fruit. Most famous are Yahweh’s Tree in Eden, and the Nordic Yggdrasil, for which Odin sacrificed an eye. Like the Vedic Kalpavriksha, the Tree satisfied a hunger for every need. Like the Nordic apples of Idunn, it offered a food of immortality.

      In Greek myth, the tree grew in the Garden of the Western Sisterhood, called the Hesperides. It was located topographically at the straits of Gibraltar. Many heroes confronted the serpent guarding the Tree. When Hercules took on the task, Prometheus told him not to enter the garden himself. Instead, he was to send Atlas, who was Prometheus’s brother in the West, into the garden. Prometheus chained to the volcano in the east and Atlas as the pillar forced to hold aloft the heavens in the West are complementary figures. The high Atlas Mountains, which the titan personifies, show evidence of massive volcanic eruptions; and in the eastern Caucasus Mountains, Mt. Elbrus, which is now dormant, was once one of the world’s most active volcanoes. These mountain ranges were the limits of the Mediterranean world.

      Perseus with harvested head of the Medusa.

      Perseus with harvested head of the Medusa.

      Jason and his fellow Argonauts, the sailors of the ship Argo, found the Tree instead in the Far East, where Prometheus was tormented for his theft of fire. There its fruit was described as a Golden Fleece, but it was recognized even in antiquity that the word for ‘fleece’ and ‘apple’ was homonymous. Both fleece and apple are merely metaphors for the psychoactive fruit.

      Odin holding a shamanic drinking goblet while seated on his Sleipnir

      Odin holding a shamanic drinking goblet while seated on his Sleipnir

      The hero Perseus was the first to visit the Garden of the Hesperides, and he picked the fruit of the Tree with a harvesting knife as a mushroom, metaphorically anthropomorphized as the head of the Gorgon Medusa.

      Jason and his crew also visited the Western Garden the day after Hercules passed through, and the guardian serpent’s tail was still writhing, attracting flies that withered and died in its festering wounds. Flies do not die in rotting flesh. The particular species of the mushroom involved in all these mythological accounts, including the Tree in Eden, was the Amanita muscaria, commonly called the fly-agaric, for its attractiveness to flies that seem to wither and die in its juice. The prototypic exemplar of all the drug plants and golden apples of Illumination was a magically sacred mushroom.

      The horse is also a motif in these myths since the fruit affords the hero a marvelous steed for his heroic flight.

      When Perseus severed the neck of the Gorgon Medusa, the flying horse Pegasus emerged. The horse is also a motif in these myths since the fruit affords the hero a marvelous steed for his heroic flight. Pegasus is named for the fountain of inspiring waters that flowed from his hooves. Yggdrasil means Odin’s horse, who was the eight-legged Sleipnir. He is depicted riding Sleipnir holding a shamanic goblet. The fruit of the forbidden tree was the food of ecstasy.

      That this shamanic food was indeed a mushroom is made even more explicit in the Greek rituals of herb gatherers. The Mushroom itself, in fact, was the Tree. The narthex or narcotic container was also called the thyrsus. It was the emblem of Bacchus, the god of ecstasy and intoxication. In common culinary terminology, the stipe or ‘trunk’ of the mushroom Tree was called a thyrsus in Latin, with its psychoactive cap spreading above like twigs stuffed into the narthex container. It fruited when a bolt of lightning transfixed the pathway from the celestial highest to the chthonic depths, bursting suddenly upward exactly where the bolt had fallen.

      Dante’s View of the Universe

      The Empyrean, seen as the opposite of Hell, extending through the circular (volcanic) holy mount of Jerusalem,.

      The Empyrean, seen as the opposite of Hell, extending through the circular (volcanic) holy mount of Jerusalem,.

      In the volcanic forge the blacksmith employs the thunder hammer as his implement. Numerous sacred replicas of these thunder hammers, worn as jewelry, resemble mushroom caps. Thor himself is depicted as a fungal anthropomorphism in a 9th century statuette from Iceland.

      2

      SEMEN FROM THE HEAVENS

      The Tree of the Western Sisterhood, with the Gorgon head as its fruiting apple, first sprouted at the spot where the sun goes down, and the narrow Straits of Gibraltar suggest a gateway to a world beyond. There, Zeus consummated his wedding to Hera with a lightning bolt molded in the volcanic forge and plunged into her receptive vulva. Thus the upper and lower realms were joined along the fiery pathway, the volcanic vulva of Gaia or earth in the persona of Hera with the inseminating fire of the cosmos. Semen, fire, and the plant of divinity are analogous metaphors, as is also the blood of the menstrual flux. Semen is fire in water.

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1