Summary Review of Entheogens, Myth, and Human Consciousness

This was written for Blossom Analysis.

Entheogens, Myth & Human Consciousness by Carl A. P. Ruck and Mark A. Hoffman makes the case for entheogens being at the foundation of the religions and myths of the Western world. Entheogens make sense of the ancient myths, especially the ancient Greek ones, and the myths provide a framework for understanding what occurs in experiences utilizing these substances.

Ruck and Hoffman do an incredible job weaving together the stories we’ve told and how they derive from plants. This is a very broad-stroke work, merely skimming the surface of the work these authors have done. As such, it leaves the reader wanting a bit more detail frequently as well as wondering what sources the authors are drawing from for many of their claims, much of which can probably be found in some of their other writings.

While probably not of interest to people interested solely in the science or medicinal approaches to psychedelics, this book would definitely be of interest to anyone working in mythology, religion, or the history of entheogens.

Chapter 1 – Myth of Ecstasy

Fire is metaphoric for the semen of deity.
The fire of the intellect, the spirit of the soul, was mankind’s portion of divinity.
The theft of fire is equivalent to the theft of a magical plant whose spiritual persona is fire. This is a theme that runs through mythologies across the world.
Likewise, the theme of a forbidden fruit of a special tree, a container for these ecstatic plants, is found across the world.

Chapter 2 – Semen From the Heavens

Ruck and Hoffman suggest that semen, fire, and the plant of divinity are all analogous metaphors.
Fire is the mediator between gods and men, so the burning of sacrificial offerings ritually enact the significance of fire.
Fire is also a cognate with consciousness or intelligence. It is the “spark of the soul”. It also exists in the empyrean heaven and is thus the mythical destination while also being the fiery core of consciousness and the place of being.
The ecstatic journey takes one to this realm and is the ultimate secret of religions.
Ecstasy means one stands outside oneself in Greek. Through ecstasy, after stepping outside oneself, the Other is free to journey to distant realms and learn of the skills of the shamans found in the cosmic consciousness. To do so requires a roadmap and a vehicle for the journey which the plants provide.
Manichaeism arose in the 3rd century CE with an essential doctrine of the dual battle between light and dark. Light is fire, knowledge, and cosmic consciousness. The forces of Light created an angel called Sophia, or Wisdom, to bring people back to the light. Some of the stolen light fell to earth and from this sprouted the entire realm of plants.
The forbidden fruit, like the burning bush of Moses, can access the Cosmic Mother. These plants need a new word because of prejudice against drugs and hallucinations, so entheogen was coined. Entheogen designates a sacramental plant that was considered to be animate and is on fire with a spark from the empyrean.

Chapter 3 – Origins of Religion

Humans have left record of cognitive experiences dating back to when homo sapiens first appeared in the Paleolithic Age around 32,000 years ago through paintings in caves. Paintings require preconceptions for interpretation so most investigators only record their occurrence rather than place religious significance on them.
Doing this marks humans as originally materialistic manipulators of their environment.
These original paintings were probably meant as means of accessing communication and spiritual empathy with the animals, hence the Zoomorphism. This same theme runs through the Minoan and later Greek society.
Paintings from the Tassili n’Ajjer Saharan plateau in Algeria suggest entheogens in the ceremonies. One shows an antlered male with a bee mask and a body sprouting mushrooms. Others depict women warriors with heads of fungal caps spotted with white, reminiscent of Amanita muscaria.
Paintings from Indonesia develop the motif of the bee hunter as a pscyhoactive experience.
Petroglyphs from the Pegtymel River in Siberia portray tiny females with mushroom crowns. Folk tales say that these little girls, found on the forest floor, seduce people into a trance.
In Nordic myth, spit from Odin’s horses cause mushrooms to be grown and then are taken by the famous Berserkers.
In Northeastern America, the Algonquin people tell of Younger Brother who journeys to the otherworld and returns as an anthropomorphic Amanita muscaria with cures for all ailments. There are numerous other stories and paintings that depict similar phenomena.
Caves are the crucible for transcendence in prehistory.
Peter Webster argues that before the Last Supper, there was a First Supper, mythologized by the Tree in Eden that led to the increased cranial capacity and cognitive ability.
Entheogens, as cave paintings indicate, were at the very origin of Homo spiritualis.

Chapter 4 – Toxic Eucharist

It appears that an entheogen is at the origin of the Eucharist.
In one of the earliest documents regarding the church at Corinth, around 59 CE, Paul reprimands the congregation for not performing the Eucharist correctly. Because of this, a number of people had become sick and many even died. It’s quite unlikely that people died from too much bread or wine.
It is possible, even likely that Paul invented the Eucharist as a Christian ceremony. It is also possible he may have modeled it on his induction into Mithraism since he came from Tarsus, a stronghold of Mithraism. Mithraism had a holy bread that was a metaphor for a psychoactive agent.
Paul, someone educated in Hellenism, references Plato’s myth of the Cave. And, as a philhellene, he may have been initiated at Eleusis.
Paul was condemning the recreational use and abuse of the sacred psychoactive Eucharist.
Ruck and Hoffman then convey the oft-cited reports of Albert Hofmann, Aldous Huxley, and the Good Friday Experiment.
Historians of religion describe the period of the psychedelic renaissance as a marketplace for religions. Buddhism and Hinduism seemed to be attractive alternatives and some monks even said that the mystical trances induced by entheogens mimicked nirvana.
Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, likely was involved with entheogens using jimsonweed, the fly-agaric toadstool, and perhaps cannabis or peyote. The Algonquin shamans used the former two plants in their ceremonies. Smith would have also picked up traditions of voodoo magic from African American slaves, one he met while both were out digging for treasure named Black Pete.
It is unbelievable that so many of the people in Smith’s congregations had such frequent visions and mystical revelations but the entheogenic Eucharist would routinely open the heavens.

Chapter 5 – Closed to the Public

Gordon Wasson precipitated the psychedelic revolution when he published his account of his visionary experience under the care of Maria Sabina. He and his wife spent years researching the usage of the mushroom in various cultures across the globe. Wasson published his book on Soma in 1968.
John Allegro validated Wasson’s theory in his 1970 book, but Wasson did not accept it. Wasson also distanced himself from Andrija Puharich’s work investigating the paranormal aspects of the experience, despite Wasson affirming the usage of the entheogen for clairvoyance and astral projection.
Ruck and Hoffman elucidate two sides to the psychedelic revolution: the liberals seeking entheogens to free the psyche and conservatives seeking to control the mind using the same substances as drugs. Today the empyrean has been commercialized and sacred plants have been reduced to chemicals. Herbal lore has been secularized. Without the shaman and the resident deity, the plants no longer speak or heal. Cosmic consciousness has become a colonized party drug.

Chapter 6 – Strange People

An entheogen might appear as a “little soul guide” as in the case of iboga.
Salvia divinorum commonly materializes as female, Mother Salvia. She’s been assimilated into Christianity through the Virgin Mary.
Ayahuasca visions are often of serpents, pumas, and jaguars. The serpents symbolize the male and female, the binary dichotomy.
DMT, a chemical in ayahuasca, materializes as an inner voice, or an other a “DMT elf”.
Some entheogens, such as Amanita muscaria induce alterations of perception of size as made popular in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.
In the myth of Hercules’ encounter with the pygmies, after he fell asleep, the miniscule creatures tied him down to succumb him. These miniscule creatures were playful, not harmful, and the guides of ancient mysteries.

Chapter 7 – Court Dwarfs

One of the characteristics of gods of primordial times is they can materialize as dwarfs.
The Sade-foots or One-foots were a mythical tribe of India with just one foot but had extreme agility who, when they fell out of weariness, their single foot cast a large shade. They were one of the epithets of the plant god, Soma and called the “Not born Single-foot.”
One-Eyes are a version of the Cyclopes, the dwarven workers at Hephaestus’s forge.
When Odysseus shoves the burning stick into Polyphemus’s eye, a single tear drops down in the shape of a mushroom and the surrounding area is covered in visionary grecas.
The wee folk in Celtic lore, or fairies, have their origin in the foretelling of the ultimate journey to the realm of the dead and of ecstasy and madness. They are commonly depicted as fungal anthropomorphisms.

Chapter 8 – Confronting Self

Many myths and tales share the motif of contrasting the self with its reflected image. The entheogen is key in bringing the two parts into an alliance and a myth is a pathway for self-discovery.
The strangest creature you encounter with entheogens is your self, the reflection of you, the essential polarity of you that allows for you exist.
A battle between the parts exists, but neither can surrender because then only half of you would survive. There has to be a reconciliation and integration.
The myth of the hermaphrodites and the twin sons of Zeus are mythological examples of this.
The space in which this occurs is liminal and multi-faceted, like the Roman two-faced god, Janus and it is the space in which psychedelic psychoanalysis can occur.

Chapter 9 – Homoeroticism

The hero entering the journey has two antithetical identities as mentioned previously and each identity has a different name. Ruck and Hoffman break down the story of Perseus and parse out the different ways he could be identified or understood based on his actions and familial story. This leads to the claim that a recurrent motif of the monomyth is a hero with two fathers, a turncoat mother, and two names. They further claim that botanic consubstantiality is a recurrent theme as is a figure that either enables or disables the hero based on the version of the story.
They also propose a broader interpretation of Jung’s Anima and Animus. Jung assigns an anima to a male and an animus to a female. Ruck and Hoffman say males and females have both as guides.
There is a consubstantiality of the trio of the human, the plant, and the deity. This is the compact that man makes with the divine and must be continually reenacted through ritual with entheogens. Otherwise, the recurrent theme of the figure that enables or disables will always turn out negatively.

Chapter 10 – A Stunning Beauty

There are three faces or three halves reflected in the mirror for the female compared to the two for the male: the maiden, the mother, and the crone. These three stages are expressed in the goddess Hecate. Hecate guards a juncture where one road branches into two other direction, a comparison to the two roads for the masculine Janus.
Hecate is the same name as Hecuba, as in the myth of Hecuba in the play of Euripides.
Hecuba is a paradigm for the heroine who walks the liminal doorway in order to access the power of her totality as a female.
Ruck and Hoffman then walk the reader through the story of Eros and Psyche. Psyche is given a series of tasks while searching for Eros, equivalent to the heroic tasks of the male hero. But unlike the male hero, instead of conquering nature, Psyche performs the impossible tasks by letting nature do them for her. Psyche then entered the underworld to perform the fourth task after which Psyche was given a drink of ambrosia which made her a permanent resident in the empyreal realm.
The image of Psyche and Eros imply the yearning of the soul to embrace the flesh, redeemed to the empyreal realm through drinking the divine elixir, derived from entheogens, which the authors conclude permeates the entire mythos of the Western civilization.