The proposed psychoactive ingredients of C. purpurea, ergonovine and methylergonovine, are not exceptionally psychedelic when taken as synthesised compounds, nor have preparations of C. purpurea been made and pharmacologically tested which demonstrate it might have been of a psychoactivity presumed sufficient to have provided the undoubted powerful psychedelic reaction to the kykeon.
Objection 3. Concerning the C. Paspali variant of the hypothesis, it is objected that this fungus is known to produce tremors in cattle grazing on infected grass, and, similarly to C. purpurea, that no one has processed the fungus into a preparation shown to be psychedelic to a degree in agreement with the properties of the kykeon.
Although true, this objection is not as serious, for C. paspali does indeed exhibit an alkaloidal spectrum similar to that of ololiuhqui and we may intuit that it could well have had potent enough properties for the kykeon on the basis of its close similarity to a known psychedelic preparation. And perhaps we may find that different strains of C. paspali, grown perhaps on different hosts, have an even more psychoactive capability than the naturally-occurring wild variety that must have grown in ancient Greece. Indeed, C. paspali has been well researched in the quest to produce lysergic acid alkaloids in saprophytic culture, and is known to exhibit strains producing high yields of ololiuhqui-type alkaloids. Perhaps the secret of the kykeon can be elucidated further without the immediate necessity to conduct the human pharmacological trials required by the objectors.
The C. purpurea naturally parasitising the barley crop was unlikely to have been the active ingredient as discussed above, even though it surely must have been common. Its alkaloidal content is, and presumably was, only moderately psychoactive, and with unfavourable side-effects. C. paspali is a far more likely candidate on the basis of its alkaloid content. In addition, if C. purpurea were the active ingredient, and easy to process with a simple water extraction, could the secret so easily have been kept for so long?
Naturally-occurring C. paspali could not have been the ingredient by itself. Growing wild, it probably wouldn't have been reliable enough to produce the quantities necessary, and collecting large amounts would have easily been observed by spies, and the recipe become easily known.
The requirement for large amounts of the active ingredient, available on demand, indicates that the priests must have grown the supply. Although artificial cultivation of ergot using contemporary methods is tricky and requires considerable skill and equipment, the secondary infection of grasses by using a solution of the honeydew produced by already growing ergot is straightforward. What makes this hypothesis interesting is that, using honeydew from C. paspali growing on the wild grasses surrounding the barley fields, the priests could have infected significant quantities of the young barley with C. paspali, thus producing from the barley a variety of ergot containing the ololiuhqui-type alkaloids. Although C. paspali only rarely infests barley on its own account, perhaps because its ascospores find it difficult to penetrate the growing grain, the secondary infection of barley by honeydew solution of C. paspali should be far more successful. The resulting ergot might even exhibit an alkaloidal spectrum superior to that of wild C. paspali.
The proposed method requires no special equipment or technique, only the knowledge that it works. It could have been discovered by accident, and a knowledge of exactly what was happening also unnecessary; only a knowledge of trial-and-error methods and results was required. Such a procedure could have easily been accomplished by the priests, and in addition, the procedure and the true reasons for it could have easily been concealed by pretending that it was a rite or ceremony having entirely other reasons for its performance. A blessing of the young barley, in which the priests roamed the fields whilst shaking "sacred water" on the young grain (to "promote its growth," perhaps) from a receptacle not unlike those used to disperse "holy water" by Catholic priests, would have been a ceremony well separated in time from the Eleusis ceremony, and its purpose easily disguised as something else entirely. For a certain portion of the barley crop, on certain fields, the "holy water" would have been a solution of C. paspali honeydew, and for the rest, plain water. Thus only the priests would have known where the active ergot was growing. The parasitised barley would have been harvested normally, the priests selecting a quantity for the kykeon which to all outsiders seemed the exact equivalent of the entire crop, yet this portion would have the psychedelic ergot growing on it, while the rest of the crop would have the normal infestation of C. purpurea. Neither would spies suspect ergot of being the ingredient, as it was common in the form of the dark spikes of C. purpurea, and probably very well known as something toxic to be separated from the grain as much as possible.
C. paspali, growing in the wild grasses around the barley fields, also has a very different appearance than C. purpurea, and the grasses on which it grows mature earlier than the barley. Thus its honeydew stage would correspond well to the stage of the growth of barley most suitable for secondary infection. And to the uninitiated, C. paspali would probably have passed unnoticed, and not be suspected as an ergot. Even the priests might have been unaware that the honeydew on the weed grasses surrounding the fields resulted from an ergot. C. paspali is small, round and mostly light in colour compared to the dark purple and larger, elongated spikes of C. purpurea. Thus the priests could have collected some at the time when it was producing honeydew, perhaps in the process of "weeding" the fields, taken it to the temple and prepared a water solution for use in the infection of the barley. A modest amount of honeydew containing the C. paspali infestation would have been sufficient to infect a much larger amount of barley, thus satisfying the requirement that significant quantities of the active ingredient be available.
Rather than a blessing of the grain using honeydew-infected water, an alternative might have been that the hierophants simply cut some weeds at the edge of the field and used them to brush the young barley. Perhaps this might have been done as a ceremony indicating the belief that wild grasses, and ergot itself, were a primitive and debased form of the edible grains, and the intention of the ceremony to produce barley "primitivised" for use in the kykeon. Perhaps the secret of raising C. paspali on barley was originally discovered in such a fashion, and later a more complex procedure and rite evolved, such as the "holy water scenario" I have hypothesised. There seem a number of possible hypotheses that could be explored concerning the particulars of the "Paspali-on-Barley Hypothesis."
It remains now to try to repeat the proposed method, and if indeed C. paspali can be grown on barley by producing a secondary infection using the honeydew from a natural C. paspali infestation on Paspalum distichum, for example, the resulting ergots must then be analysed and their alkaloid spectrum identified. In The Story of Ergot by F.J. Bové, we read that "Dr. Robert Stäger of Bern, Switzerland, devoted his whole life to the discovery of hosts and parasites... In 1898 he began to systematically cultivate grasses and infested them with ergot - and then used the honeydew produced to infest and cross-infest other plants." From this research it would seem that the infestation of barley with the honeydew of adjacent-growing C. paspali is a distinct possibility worth researching
