Ethnobotany: evolution of a discipline- Please see link

In Mr.Richard Evans Schultes wonderful book Ethnobotany: Evolution of a discipline he discusses the Eleusinian Mysteries and the Kykeon which I'm sure most of you are familiar with.

What intrigued me was the ingredients listed to make the Kykeon-

Mentha pulegium ~ "Pennyroyal"
Hordeum vulgare ~ "Barley" and/or Paspalum distichum ~ "Knotgrass"
Claviceps purpurea & Claviceps paspali ~ "Ergot"
H2O ~ "Water"



It is interesting that a Mentha species is added, perhaps the conversion of ergot-compounds into more entheogenic structures has been know for 1000s of years!

Have we found a source for natural "LSD"?

This needs more investigation!

Well I have done a little research on this. And I found it interesting that pennyroyals main active constituent is Pugenol. Which may or may not effect the ergot alkaloids in solution.

The question I ask myself is, was it fermented?

Here's a post I made on the shroomery about it:

"I was doing some research on ancient entheogen use. I stumbled upon something called Kykeon and I think it really fits the idea's of this board on a couple levels.

From one of the recipes I found while wiki'ing this the ingrediants for Kykeon(atleast this version) are hypothesized to be Water - Barley - Pennyroyal.

We know that barley can host the ergot fungus. We know that ergot contains LA-111 Lysergic Acid Amide(s). We know that when barley and water are allowed to ferment they produce ethanol(sometimes other alcohols depending on the yeast culture).

Penny-royal is a poisonous plant of the mint family. But it also contains Pulegone. I'd never heard of it but here's some information on it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulegone .
It is said that this pulegone can have lasting bad mental side-effects. It's insoluble in water, which I find strange because it's soluble in ethanol.

Kind of makes me curious as to why these primitive chemists would design this drink/drug "Kykeon" with an plant that's mostly active chemical(alkaloid?) being only soluble in ethanol.

Is it possible that this pulegone would be reactive with lysergic acid amides? I don't know much about chemistry at all. or perhaps if the pulegone is reactive with acetaldehyde( to form another reactive chemical and their product would react with the's LSA's?I'm more into the history of it.

We know that the reacting temperature would have to be lower than the temp that destorys the LSA but not colder than a casual temperature as there were no freezing aparatuses at this time.

I think this could be the "holy grail" to understanding the LSH theory which quite possibly stemmed from this tale. Or it could just be proof that our ancestors liked poison and LSA. "(Wish I had real info on it but this is as far as I got with my research on kykeon)

Great post!

I'm wondering what 69ron has to say about this!

I am not familiar with the Kykeon, and I thought I was well-read.

I know it now that i've read your post. What the h**l?? natural LSD?

Could you explain about the conversion of the poisonous ergot alkaloids?
how does this occur? enzymes? please enlighten us all here at the nexus?

very intreuiged!

I believe pennyroyal serves the same purpose that peppermint does in the Sergeant Pepper's Tea recipe. Pennyroyal belongs to the same familiar as peppermint, and likely also contains lots of acetaldehyde which would supposedly convert LSA into the more LSD-like alkaloid known as lysergic acid hydroxyethylamide or LSH for short. LSH is sometimes called “Organic LSD” by the old time hippies where SWIM lives on the west coast.

I think that hoffman did some tests back in the day and found that the good LSA's were soluble in water but the toxins were not..
I am guessing that the peppermint would aid in conversion of LSA into LSH.

Im still not sure if I beleive that peppermint converts LSA into LSH.
Sure must be nice to live near old time hippies!

There is no proof other than the fact that the effects of LSA are more like LSD after it's done.

SWIM has done it with pure white LSA crystals and it works, but has no way of verifying that the results are actually LSH. But the effects are VERY DIFFERENT. It's no longer a sedative and becomes a stimulant with very close LSD effects it previously did not have.

Enough people have tried this and found that it works to know that SOMETHING happens to greatly enrich the experience. Whether it’s converting to LSH or doing something else, is something I don’t really care about. The fact that the effects become more like LSD is what’s important.

They must have used something to diminish the side effects as well.
Otherwise, it would have never gotten it's 'holy grail' status.

I think, some tropane plant: mandrake or datura, of wich they are known to be familiar with.

I have had one experience with morning glories and if the kykeon was anything like that I could definatily see them looing at it as the wholy grail..there were uncomfortable side effects..but with eyes closed I had very intense vivid visions of ancient pyramids and other ancient desert landscpaes..I was flying through them..and hearing weird voices in my head like I was going insane..I had eated 300 seeds..did a cold water extraction and drank it and then ate all the seed mush.

I dont know how similar ergot would be..but it's extremely likely that tropane plants were added as they were widely used in the area..amanitas could have been added as well.

I've read that people have even speculated that it was an aya analogue of rue and phalaris grass. Only on Wikipedia though.

I don't know, I personally think that the ingredients that people said were in it is probably all that there was... unless they're adding tiny extra secret things. Wouldn't the booze reduce unpleasant effects somewhat? And maybe the processing helps?

I've heard that kykeon was a peasant's drink, so maybe the list refers to just the peasants drink, and not the special version for the mysteries... maybe the mysteries started, because some peasant drank some kykeon contaminated with ergot, and it blew their mind! Pennyroyal was a common flavouring at the time. Also, the barley had symbolic meaning for the teachings.

Don't South Americans use piri piri because it has some kind of ergot thing growing on it?

Fractal- when the bread got contaminated in medieval villages, people would freak out and it was believed that they were all horrifically possessed by demons. But maybe they were having a ball and the church just recorded it as awful wickedness!

"Fractal- when the bread got contaminated in medieval villages, people would freak out and it was believed that they were all horrifically possessed by demons. But maybe they were having a ball and the church just recorded it as awful wickedness!"

Yes it was what caused St anthony's fire as well I think..I think it gave people gang green from the constriction as they kept eating the bread
But I thought that hoffman did experiments with ergot and found the less toxic psychoactive to be water soluble, while the deadly protions were not..

I have heard about the phalaris as well..but I have also read that some people dont think it was growing in the area at the time of the mysteries..I have read other places that it might have been liberty caps..but I dunno..it would be hard for them to obtain that many mushrooms since they apparently needed large ammounts of the kykeon.

And the ceremony was a group thing, promoting togetherness/oneness, which gives hints to what kind of experience would be required. That might help, finding out more about the ceremony and the feelings it evoked. Then you can match candidates to that. I'll bow out here, with Wikipedia as my main source, I should leave it to the experts now

The more i think about it, the more unlikely i find it that this kykeon was actually based on lysergics from ergot.

-firstly rye is not always infected with ergot, so you have an unreliable source of this substance. It will not always work.

-secondly it won't always be infected to the same degree so you could have very weak experiences one time and almost lethal doses the next time.

-thirdly, it seems totally counterintuitive to extract and ingest something that causes such horrible and often lethal symtoms like ergot poisoning.
I heard of people getting of from snakebites, but i don't think that many people would be interested to do psychedelic experiments with snakevenom.
If you don't know exactly how it works and what's safe or not, the results are just too horrible.
If you don't die, you'd lose a limb and if you're very luckily spared from that you at least suffer from terrible pains for maybe days.

Given the fact they used honey, you'd think they used something that contained many bitter alkaloids.

I find it most plausible that they used a mixture of known herbs.

Laudanum is a much more likely candidate, since this was known to the greeks and they where fond of it.
Combined with datura, you can expect simmilar 'visionary' effects as from dissociatives like ketamine.

Both laudanum and datura are very plausible candidates. Both are surounded by myths, even in those days.

That we would consider them to be inferiour substances compared to the substances we have acces to might blur our vision in this matter.

The poppy was very sacred for the greeks and datura very magical.

They also must have been familiar with hemp.
given the fact that they used milk in their kykeon, this could also be an ingredient.

I would rather think they used any of those three plants or any mixture of any of them (7 options that is) than some very scary toxic of wich they probably didn't know it's origin.

The cause for this terrible gangrene epidemics was only definately discovered in europe, more than 1500 years later.

It's not hard to only pic the one's infected with ergot, they look different.

Albert Hofmann himself argued that ergot could easily be spread in a solution of water being misted over rye, in large enough quantities for the whole populations to partake. The collected ergot would only be ingested after a sol'n is basified in some manner (to make mostly LSA) then probably converted to LSH, as suggested by 69ron. Mushrooms could have been added but in smaller quantities and/or only sometimes because of the lack of wild mushrooms in the geographical area at the time. Fermentation was probably performed as well and some ethanol and other solvents produced. But it happened so long ago and the recipe was lost so it's all conjecture.

People risked the gangrene but that is why the recipe was well guarded and commoners did not attempt to make it themselves only elites made it, much like chemists make pharmaceuticals today.

This implies that they knew what caused the gangrene epidemics and that they did some research on the fungus.

That doesn't make sense to me.
I'd rather think that people with little chemical or medical knowledge would stay away as far as possible from something as mysterious and horrible as this poisonous fungus.
Just like we don't mess with poisonous snakes, instinctively.

Remember, these people must have SEEN how ordinary people suddenly became 'posessed' by demons and then developping gangrene, leading to the slow blackening of apendages accompanied by terrible pain and agony and then eventually death. A proces that could last for days.
Often a limb would already be death while the persons themselves where still dying, being poisoned by their own rotting flesh.

It's completely counter-intuitive to start experimenting with something like that, if you have as little knowledge about chemicals or the human body as the greeks had.

As far as i know there are no stories about the kykeon being that dangerous and you would expect such dangers to atribute to the myths surrounding it.

And there where many plants available that where considered sacred. They loved opium. Even today, some people look at opium as a 'sacred substance' that gives entry to the divine world.
We may associate opium with junkies on the street, but the greeks certainly didn't.

If one wants to honestly research what kykeon was, it has to be taken into account that it might have not been psychoactive at all ,it could have been just a barley drink. Eleusinian mysteries are not adequately documented so as to have definite clues,they could have just been ecstatic mysteries without anything psychedelic.

Actually, in Greece, the country i am from no scholar has made mention to psychoactives as far as kykeon is concerned, although ancient Greeks knew of psychoactive plants (cannabis and opium for sure!).

I can understand that the above opinion might not be favored over theories of psychoactives, since its a forum dealing with psychoactives and since also the "kykeon was psychoactive" is something reitterated so many times that....almost is incorporated to the collective unconscious of the online psychedelic community.So there might be a tendency in some circles to view many aspects of history ,sociology ,religion through "psychoactive glasses".

The above is just a consideration. My opinion? I sincerely remain undecided: Kykeon could have been psychoactive ,it could also have been just a drink. Hmmm if vessels holding kykeon are found one could possibly run analysis on whatever remnants can be salvaged: a chemical analysis -if possible- could answer what was in there from a chemical point of view, and a DNA analysis could show if DNA of Claviceps can be found there...

Believe it or not there are people that do that as part of a religion...look up holy ghost people on youtube..

In the case of Ayahuasca, the plants tell you what to do.

If we could only determine which plants that were used in the Kykeon, we would have a better chance of understanding how these people made the drink. *foot in mouth*

...I will go ask Ayahuasca.

But, in seriousness, there is no real mathematical way to understand how people came upon Ayahuasca, biodiversity of climate taken into effect, and people swear up and down it is an intuitive process; so, what I mean to say, is, perhaps there was a degree of this other "knowing" or intuition at play with the Kykeon.

(What fumes came out of the earth at Delphi...?)