• Psychedelic Drugs Welcome Guest
    View threads about
    Posting RulesBluelight Rules
    PD's Best Threads Index
    Social ThreadSupport Bluelight
    Psychedelic Beginner's FAQ

Any evidence of psilocybin mushroom use among ancient peoples of the British Isles?

Dondante said:
619Xa56BvoL._SS500_.jpg


"In Ploughing the Clouds, Peter Lamborn Wilson suggests that the ancient Celts of Ireland may have possessed a “Soma” ceremony similar to one described in the Rig Veda, one of the oldest scriptures in the world. Written in India in 1500 BC, the Rig Veda praises a holy plant called Soma or “magic mushroom” that grants the drinker enlightenment and ecstasy. By comparing Celtic myth and folklore with the Rig Veda, he uncovers an Irish branch of the great Indo-European tradition of psychedelic (or “entheogenic”) shamanism, and even reconstructs some of its secret rituals. He uses this comparative material to illuminate the deep meaning of the Soma-function in all cultures: the entheogenic origin of “poetic frenzy,” the link between intoxication and inspiration."

I read this book years ago. IIRC, it was quite speculative, but interesting nonetheless.
Click to expand...

No disrespect Dondante, as I've always really enjoyed your posts, but that book was a load of gobshite IME. And I still think wasson was off with soma being muscaria. For so many reasons. People get fixated on an idea, and ignore all evidence to the contrary. For example, soma was described as a branching plant. . .

Good post ismene.
 
Hey Ismene google the Eleusinian Mysteries. It seems to me that psychedelic plants have been known to humans for a long time. The 60's were not the first time mankind formed cults stemming from psychoactive drugs. It would be foolish to assume so.

The Eleusinian Mysteries

http://www.uwec.edu/philrel/faculty/beach/publications/eleusis.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleusinian_Mysteries

http://www.amazon.com/Road-Eleusis-Unveiling-Secret-Mysteries/dp/1556437528

If ayahuasca could be discovered by people in South America it seems likely that these people would be capable of utilizing psychoactive drugs. Whether it is some kind of ergot based concoction, mushroom, morning glory seed, or several, we may never know. I believe Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates all spoke of the validity of the mysteries. Revealing the last secret of the mysteries was punishable by death, and was honored by people for almost 2000 years.

To me it seems obvious that something else was at play here. This went on before Christianity spread and the temple was destroyed. Thus was the end of polytheism.



Terrance Mckenna speaks about this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PG2v6Mh12_c
.
 
Last edited:
amanitadine said:
No disrespect Dondante, as I've always really enjoyed your posts, but that book was a load of gobshite IME. And I still think wasson was off with soma being muscaria. For so many reasons. People get fixated on an idea, and ignore all evidence to the contrary. For example, soma was described as a branching plant. . .

Good post ismene.
Click to expand...

Heh...none taken.

It's been 7-8 years since I opened it...and, taking it off the shelf, it looks like I never made it past page 30.

Based on the excerpts above linked by webbykevin, perhaps 'speculative' was too generous a description.
 
Fagott said:
So, some people will say "how could they not know of magic musrooms?" Well, I wonder that too. The thing is, I think we sometimes exaggerate the knowldge they would have had of plants. For instance, the indians of the rain forest who use ayahuasca didn't know that it was mimosa hostilis which was the crucial ingredient, they call/called banisteriopsis caapi ayahusca vine, they consider that the main ingredient. Not mimosa hostilis.
Click to expand...

First, mimosa hostillis isn't really used in South America to make ayahuasca, the dmt-containing plant is usually chacruna or sometimes chaliponga, MH is really just used for extracting dmt. And second, b. caapi IS the main ingredient of ayahuasca. It isn't the one with the most powerful psychedelic effects, but the shamans brewing ayahuasca are well aware of this, and drinking ayahuasca isn't just about tripping and seeing a bunch of pretty colors to them. B. Caapi is the main ingredient because of its own spiritual properties, beyond just the fact that it orally activates DMT. That's my understanding anyway, I am no expert on the subject.
 
Fagott said:
Everything else falls under the field of "speculations and musings", guesswork, as it were.

That's how science works! opposed to religion which is based on "faith".
Click to expand...

Apart from the big bang, The THEORY that the universe sprang from nothing in a single instant for no reason !
As McKenna put it "science is saying, Give us one free miracle and we can lay the rest out for you from there".

And dark matter - no evidence for this whatsoever, it's just a hypothesis, but if something gets repeated often enough people will start talking about it as if it is fact.

By the way, not everything you find on wikipedia is factual - just saying.
 
webbykevin said:
Apart from the big bang, The THEORY that the universe sprang from nothing in a single instant for no reason !
As McKenna put it "science is saying, Give us one free miracle and we can lay the rest out for you from there".

And dark matter - no evidence for this whatsoever, it's just a hypothesis, but if something gets repeated often enough people will start talking about it as if it is fact.
Click to expand...

^^ if you view science as a religion, something that can give an answer to everything, it fails (And I agree that many scientists unfortunately do so stupidly)

That still doesn't change the fact that there is no evidence or reason, what so ever, to think that the celts/vikings/druids used entheogens in a fashion that the aztek or maya indians did.

Just because science has it's obvious limits doesn't justify dissolving consensus reality.
And it doesn't relieve the field of archeology and history of the need of evidence. Otherwise we might aswell put it all in the category "fiction".

How ever, if you want to believe that druids used magic mushrooms in their rituals, and that aliens built the pyramids, go ahead.

webbykevin said:
By the way, not everything you find on wikipedia is factual - just saying.
Click to expand...
I know. I wasn't meaning argument against your quote. I've just been dissapointed by Erowid a few times, that's all.

You can google Xochipilli. Lot's of different sources for information on the aztek "god of tripping" besides wikipedia.
 
Given how long mushroom networks persist for and the the fact that during proper season Psilocybin mushrooms are bloody EVERYWHERE in the UK makes it pretty damn likely that people would have consumed them in ancient times, even if only by accident when trying to produce new medicines and find new edible fungi etc.

The question imo should be more whether or not it was a wide-spread practice with the intention of getting high/tripping or just something done by the odd handful of people with a particular interest in plants and fungi, potentially by accident.
 
webbykevin said:
Wrong !

"The velada would begin in total darkness so the visions would be bright and clear. After the mushrooms were adorned and blessed by María Sabina, she would slowly pass each one through the swirling smoke of burning Copal incense. The mushrooms are always consumed in pairs of two, signifying one male and one female. Each participant in a ceremony consumes five to six pairs; though more will be given if requested. Because the spiritual energies of the sabia would always dominate the velada, María Sabina would normally consume twice as many mushrooms as her voyagers, sometimes up to twelve pairs."

http://www.erowid.org/plants/mushrooms/mushrooms_article6.shtml
Click to expand...

I think that was the time she was being paid by Wasson to let him trip with her.

Read Wassons writings and she only ever trips to give medical diagnosis - like the poor retarded kid who she trips for and then says "He's going to die" and a few days later he does.
 
velmwend said:
Sadly not the case anymore. 8(
Click to expand...

Unless it's dramatically changed in the last 2 years, they're still damn easy to find. Just got to know where to look ;)

I've heard a few decades ago they absolutely flooded the place in comparison to the state of things now though.
 
Jesusgreen said:
Unless it's dramatically changed in the last 2 years, they're still damn easy to find. Just got to know where to look ;)

I've heard a few decades ago they absolutely flooded the place in comparison to the state of things now though.
Click to expand...

At the elephant fair in cornwall in the 1980's we had car boot loads of them.
 
Ismene said:
I think that was the time she was being paid by Wasson to let him trip with her.

Read Wassons writings and she only ever trips to give medical diagnosis - like the poor retarded kid who she trips for and then says "He's going to die" and a few days later he does.
Click to expand...

Ditto. The Curandura was the imbiber and soothsayer, the quote does relate to Wasson and his experience.

As far as xochipili, he is on one of the peso notes, in full splendor. Sure beats the shit out of Alexander Hamilton. I saw the statue in person, I think it might have been in the incredible Natural History Museo of DF, (which is mind blowing) and worthy of a visit for anybody who can get there. Mexico as a whole man, from DF make your way to Teotihuacan, south to Oaxaca, and cross over to Chiapas. And if you really want splendor, hit up Guatemala while you are it, Tikal and friends will blow tour mind. Bribed a guard to sleep (well, trip on local cubensis) on top of temple IV. Such a sunrise I have never seen!
 
Vikings using amanita muscaria for their berserker rage is just a urban legend or at best speculation that cannot be proven, but by coincedence I found this really interesting paper on a grave from 980 that was dug up in Denmark, most likely containing a volv (a traveling seer or oracle).

In a small leather pouch wrapped around her wrist they found seeds of Henbane.

Considering that all evidence points to her being a volv, I find it very likely these seeds were ingested in one way or another to induce a "divinatory state", to travel to the spirit world and bring back information about the future.

The paralels to the medieval witches and their flying oitnments are also obvious.

NSFW:
In 1954, at the military ring fortress Fyrkat near Hobro from around 980, a highly distinctive woman’s grave was excavated. She had been laid in a carriage body, and had been given special grave goods such as exotic jewellery, a possible vølvestav (seeress’s wand or staff), a cup of copper, a cooking spit and a so-called box brooch.
New laboratory analyses show that the box contained white lead, which can be used as make-up or ointment. She had also been given a round-bottomed vessel of copper alloy, whose closest parallel is to be found in the Middle East or Central Asia. Inside it, the remains of fatty substances could be identified.
Her possessions also included a small thin-walled glass that contained a white substance made of phosphorus, lead and calcium. A large number of poisonous seeds from the plant henbane, which can induce hallucinations, must have lain in a leather purse.
New textile analyses show that when she was buried the woman was wearing a blue costume, very fashionable for the time, with red details and ornamentation in gold thread .
There is much to indicate that the woman, with her distinctive grave goods, played a special role. The things she was given in her grave, for example the henbane seeds and the fat in the bowl, could be used as a kind of hallucinatory witch ointment, known in more recent times from the written sources of the 1500s. This ointment could have been used by the woman from Fyrkat for rituals or ‘consciousness-expanding’ seances. The seeds could also have been used as medicine or as an anaesthetic for surgical operations.
The possible ‘seeress’s staff ’ too points to her special status. Perhaps she was the last in the succession of heathen vølvas or seeresses that was broken by the official introduction of Christianity in the 960s.
It is even conceivable that she was King Harald Bluetooth’s ‘court prophetess’ – after all, she was buried by the royal castle. The Viking Age vølvas are mentioned on very rare occasions on runic stones and far more often in the later written sources. Perhaps what we have found here is a very tangible example of the type?

http://www.nnu.dk/makro/Kong%20Haralds%20voelve.pdf
 
Interesting book, specialspack. lol :D
Is Santa Claus really a magic mushroom in disguise? Was Alice in Wonderland a thinly veiled psychedelic mushroom odyssey? Did mushroom tea kick-start ancient Greek philosophy?

The 'magic mushroom' was only rediscovered fifty years ago, but has accumulated all sorts of folktales and urban legends along the way. In this timely and definitive study, Andy Letcher strips away the myths to get at the true story of how hallucinogenic mushrooms, once shunned in the West as the most pernicious of poisons, came to be the illicit drug of choice.
Click to expand...
 
webbykevin said:
Apart from the big bang, The THEORY that the universe sprang from nothing in a single instant for no reason !
As McKenna put it "science is saying, Give us one free miracle and we can lay the rest out for you from there".

And dark matter - no evidence for this whatsoever, it's just a hypothesis, but if something gets repeated often enough people will start talking about it as if it is fact.

By the way, not everything you find on wikipedia is factual - just saying.
Click to expand...

Your argument on the Big Bang is either due to ignorance of the theory and evidence, or a deliberate straw-man. Quickly, Bang Bang Cosmology says that at some point in the past, the mass/energy content of the Universe was compacted down to an EXTREMELY, hot, dense, small point. Then it began expanding out very rapidly. It does not claim it came from nothing, just that it was hella compact before. It does not address where the stuff came from. (And therefore the claim that the theory states it came from nothing is false. )

Dark matter has evidence for it. It's gravitational effects are readily apparent in the motion of galaxies. Uranus was discovered by the way it perturbed the orbits of other planets, binary stars have been discovered that way, exoplanets, etc. They where all a kind of "Dark matter" until sufficiently advanced imaging technology came along. (Or it might be matter that only interacts via gravity and the weak nuclear force, in which case you can't "see" it with photons.) Just take the term dark matter as "We can detect it's gravitational effects, but we can't see with electromagnetic radiation"

Not that unsolved problems involving the sparse environment of intergalactic space, and the issue with not being able to get there and look up close bear any relevance on assessing historical artifacts here on Earth from 1500 years ago.

I've never read any mention of any sort of psychedelic mushroom (or Psychedelic period) in any European mythology, nor seen any mushrooms in religious artwork, or otherwise heard of pre-christian Britain having any cultural use of mushrooms.
 
Fagott said:
Interesting book, specialspack. lol :D
Is Santa Claus really a magic mushroom in disguise? Was Alice in Wonderland a thinly veiled psychedelic mushroom odyssey? Did mushroom tea kick-start ancient Greek philosophy?
Click to expand...
Letcher's answer to all of those questions is a resounding no, btw. ;)
 
MOGQF.jpg

this is another book that my be of use to your research, it's been a few years since i read it but i remember it being pretty informative. since everything is of pre-historical consideration most of the claims are necessarily speculative, but the author, if i recall correctly, did a fairly good job of remaining objective and impartial.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top