The Mysteries of Eleusis

For two thousand years, the Mysteries of Eleusis, a sacred, bi-yearly ritual performed just outside of Athens, served as the central impetus for the creative output of the great sages and poets of the ancient world; from Plato to Sophocles to Ovid; all were initiates, inspired by and given to praise the secrets revealed during these ceremonies in honor of the Goddess Demeter. The following is a brief excerpt from "Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge: A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution" by the visionary scholar Terrence McKenna:

It is an incredible testament to the obtuseness of the scholars of the dominator society that not until 1964 did someone make bold to suggest that a hallucinogenic plant must have been involved. That person was the English poet Robert Graves in his essay 'The Two Births of Dionysus':

"The secret which Demeter sent around the world from Eleusis in the charge of her protege Triptolemus is said to have been the art of sowing and harvesting grain... Something is wrong here. Triptolemus belongs to the late second millennium B.C.; and grain , we now know, had been cultivate at Jericho and elsewhere since around 7,000 B.C. So Triptolemus's news would have been no news... Triptolemus's secret seems therefore concerned with hallucinogenic mushrooms..."

This was the first of many observations Graves made on the underground tradition of mushroom use in prehistory. He suggested to the Wassons [who then "discovered" psillocybin mushrooms and brought them back to the "civilized" world] that they visit Mazatecan Mexico for evidence supporting their theories on the impact of intoxicating mushrooms on culture.... Graves readily grants that "you are at liberty to call me crazy," but then goes on to defend his thesis very well.