Shamanism and the Drug Propaganda: Copper

Of the Goddess symbolism recovered from Europe's hundreds of well-excavated sites, an enormous percentage is painted or engraved on drinking vessels. Virtually all the drinking vessels display entheogenic symbolism, and virtually all Neolithic and Bronze Age temples and shrines yield a profusion of cups, bowls, vases, funnels and ladles. In fact most Neolithic houses reveal a corner shrine with the same paraphernalia. Archeologists often call these 'libation' vessels, when, in fact, they are clearly communal drinking vessels.

Another consistent feature of the Neolithic temple and shrine assemblages are kernoi, ceremonial footed dishes with a large central bowl encircled by many small cups, obviously for sharing the contents of the central bowl. Above left from Malia, Crete, c. 1500 BC, above right from the island of Samos, c. 650 BC. Below left from Melos, also c.650 BC. Below right is the famous kernos found at Classical Eleusis. It was also the symbol of initiation carved into the walls of the great temple. Wasson, Ruck and Hofmann have shown that the kernos was used for sharing entheogenic brew made from the microscopic mushroom Claviceps purpurea, the mold that grows on barley and wheat, mainstay crops of Old Europe. The Athenian Eleusinian rite, according to both its own mythology and the archeological record, was a Mycenaean import from Crete, the last island survival of the great Old European, pre-Indo-European, civilizations.

Within the Hagar Qim temple, which dates to 3300 BC, was a stone table-altar into which had been carved a bowl. It was decorated in front with a tree of life growing from a pot, an obvious reference to the contents of the bowl. Next to it was a standing slab, a 'baetylic pillar,' with floating eyes, double-spiral 'oculi' out of which grew sacred plants. In the temple's central courtyard were two large, carefully carved mushroom-shaped limestone altars with cups carved into the stone mushroom caps, obviously to hold the sacred mushroom juice.

Evans unearthed a gold signet ring from Knossos, above, c.1500 BC, which shows a young male God, floating in mid-air, greeting the Great Goddess. Inside her sanctuary, on top of which grows a sacred tree, stands a mushroom, as large as the young male God, as the central object. The 'baetylic pillar,' as archeologists call it, is often depicted as a mushroom.

Female Neolithic images, many with the head of a snake or bird, outnumber male images 30 to 1. Like the bison-men of the Upper Paleolithic caves, the male god's principal Neolithic manifestation was in the form of a bull or bull-man, the Son of His Mother. The Snake-Bird Goddess, a figure of cthonic transformation and ecstatic resurrection, was the original Creatrix. Gimbutas: "The 'Fertility Goddess' or 'Mother Goddess' is a more complex image than most people think....Throughout the Neolithic period her head is phallus-shaped suggesting her androgynous nature, and its derivation from Paleolithic times...divine bisexuality stresses her absolute power." The Goddess below comes from Knossos, c. 1700 BC.

Marshack reproduces a 20,000 year-old lunar counting bone which is simply a phallic head with two pendulous breasts. A 16,000 year-old lunar counting baton from France is a phallic bone with a vulva. A Goddess figure from Hungary, c.5400 BC, is shaped like a penis and testicles. Just as it was obvious that life came from the womb or egg, so it was obvious that the conjunction of the sexes produced a numinous power. Respect for the power of the Bull was in no way contrary to respect for the Goddess, who bore the Bull.

Evans: "The Gournia...relics dedicated to the snake cult are associated with small clay figures of doves and a relief showing the Double Axe./These conjunctions are singularly illuminating since they reveal the fact that the Snake Goddess herself represents only another aspect of the Minoan Lady of the Dove, while the Double Axe itself was connected with both. Just as the celestial inspiration descends in bird form either on the image of the divinity itself or on that of its votary...so the spirit of the Nether World, in serpent form, makes its ascent to a similar position from the earth itself." The Double Axe, then, cuts both ways.

Thousands of bull-head images have been recovered from Neolithic to Iron Age levels. They are consistently shown sprouting transformed shamans and magical plants, many with holes between the horns for the insertion of the stem of the sacramental plant itself.  The bull, the mushroom, the snake and the phallus, of course, aren't really separable images, as both Neolithic art and contemporary dreams suggest.