Shamanism and the Drug Propaganda: Dionysos

The Hymn To Demeter, written down c.700 BC, is the foundation legend of Athenian culture, as the legend of Moses on the Mountain is the founding legend of Israeli culture. Classical writers and the Hymn itself attribute the origin of the Great Mysteries at Eleusis, 14 miles from Athens, to Crete. 'Persephone' means 'she who brings destruction.' Her shamanic trip into winter is described in the first lines of the Hymn To Demeter: "I begin to sing of rich-haired Demeter, awful goddess - of her and her trim-ankled daughter whom Aidoneus rapt away, given to him by all-seeing Zeus the loud-thunderer."

"It was a thing of awe whether for deathless gods or mortal men to see: from its root grew a hundred blooms and it smelled most sweetly, so that all wide heaven above and the whole earth and the sea's salt swell laughed for joy. And the girl was amazed and reached out with both hands to take the lovely bauble; but the wide-pathed earth yawned there in the plain of Nysa, and the lord, Host of Many, with his immortal horses sprang out upon her - the Son of Kronos, He who has many names."

The root of narkissos, the fragrant 'narcissus' of a hundred blooms that ensnared Persephone, is narki, 'drowsiness,' likewise the root of narkotikos, 'narcotic.' 'Ivy' is kissos: Pausanias: "they speak of the Singer Dionysos and of Ivy as the same god." The Hymn, then, describes a 'narcotic ivy' of a hundred flowers that Persephone picked on the plain of Mount Nysa, in Crete, satyric gift of the Zeus of Nysa, Dionysos. The Cretan signet ring below, c. 1500 BC, pictures Demeter handing three bulging opium poppies to Persephone .

Persephone was also known as 'Korykia,' 'Lady of the Bulb,' from krokus, bulb. Greek midwives carried the staff of the winged snake-nymph Korykia, below, the entwined psychopompic snakes that escorted their charges into the precincts of the Goddess. This is the same staff, the kerykeion, in Latin 'caduceus,' that became the symbol of modern medicine. Hippokrates got it from Korykia. Both images below date to c.500 BC. Korykia, Iris of the Rainbow, is the prototype of Hermes.

Evans says the word 'Korykia' may be derived from krokus, which he identifies with Crocus sativus, saffron, the most important Cretan dye and perfume plant. Saffron was used to dye the robes of ecstatic dancers. Saffron is identified as a promoter of menstruation by Grieve, and so, possibly, is an abortifacient as well if taken in large doses. Krokus is the old Hebrew karkom. (S.of Sol:4:14) Whether Korykia's krokus was saffron or some other powerful bulb, it does seem that Korykia was Eileithyia, Demeter, Persephone, Artemis or Iris in her incarnation as 'Lady of the Bulb.'

Persephone's need to return underground for a third of the year was insured by Aidoneus' gift of a single pomegranate seed. This is a symbolic entheogen: the blood red pomegranate seed, Rhoa, was a reference to the ancient aspect of Demeter, Rhea, whose spell cannot be broken. It is the seed that must be reborn. Below is a cult plate from Marathon, c.550 BC. Persephone holds a pomegranate flower. Aidoneus holds his horny cornucopia. The plate, to judge from its design, seems to have held sacramental bulbs.

Six psychoactive bulbs are pictured on an elaborate ritual cup from Knossos, c. 1450 BC, one of which is painted with the floating eyes and menacing stare of a gorgoneion, a shaman keeper of the mysteries. As we have seen, sprouting Korykian bulbs are shown supporting Cretan shrines on many stamp seals and signet rings. The winged Gorgon below is from the island of Rhodes, c.700 BC.

The first lines of The Bacchae, which won for Euripides the prize at the Great Dionysia, are these: "I, Dionysos, son of Zeus, am back in Thebes./I was born here, of Semele, daughter of Cadmus,/blasted from her womb by a bolt of blazing thunder." Later the Chorus of Maenads explains: "Him,/whom his mother carried/to premature and painful birth/when in a crash of thunder/she was death-struck by a fiery bolt./But quicker than death,/Zeus swept him up and plunged him/into a makeshift womb-/secure from Hera's eyes-/in the thick of his thigh,/stitched with stitches of gold./As time ripened into fate/he delivered the bull-horned God/and crowned him with a crown of serpents./Thus was created the custom/for thyrsos-carrying maenads/to twine snakes in their hair./Oh, Thebes, Semele's nurse,/crest your walls with ivy./Burst into greenness, burst/into a blaze of bryony,/take up the bacchanalian beat/with branches of oak and of fir,/cover your flesh with fawnskin/fringed with silver-white fleece/and lifting the fennel,/touch God/in a fit of sanctified frenzy./Then all at once, the whole land will dance!"

The design on the sacramental vase below, which dates to the time of Euripides, illustrates the function of the contents of the vase, that is, the function of the Great Dionysia.