" Psilocybe mushrooms are not plentiful in Greece "

Where does that information come from ? They grow from at least as far north as north scotland and southwards down to the pyrenes in abundance . Greece also has areas that fit in that zone . Why would Psilocybe mushrooms grow in the other areas but not in greece ?

By abundance i mean from personal experience a normal day without even looking comeing home with 50 G dry semilanceata . On a normal day looking with no effort 100 - 200 G dry alone . The best day i ever had was 4 kilos dry in one day . With P.Cyanescens a bad day for me was 50 G dry . A normal day was 200 - 500 G dry in not more than 3 hours . When i did it fo money we were picking 500 G a day each = 1.5 kilos dry weight . Everyday . In the middle of the city . People dont realise the quantitys that are growing and one can pick if one trys .

@ Trade

There was trade across what was later called the silk road to china before the mysterys . There was sea trade between the middle east and india 30000 years ago .

= NO poblem getting enough Psilocybe mushrooms to dose all the visitors .


The only argument brought against it is the claim that Kykeon took ten days to brew ? How reliable is that information ? Exactly where does it come from ? Is it direct information or hearsay ?

If it is true ...... What would happen if we soaked dry semilanceata in water for ten days and then dunk the water ?


What about the argument that Paspali is rare ? = Someone comes up with the idea that they cultivated it ?????

@ Research ...... I read the road to eleusis when it came out + lots of other things on the subject . I grew and picked mushooms profesionaly in the unUK , holland , germany and france from 1974 - 1998 .

Of course Greece has mushrooms, mostly in the north and mountainous regions. Psilocybes are however not that common. Especially not in the summer months.
Look at the temperatures and rain for Athens, just south of Eleusis
Now, with our experience of mushroom hunting, I think you see the problem matching the optimal mushroom season with the Eleusian cermonies in September...


I have picked P. semilanceata for >10 years and I consider 100g-200g (2000-6000 mushrooms) is extremely rare to find per day, even in the peak seasons and the perfect habitats. I'm not suggesting you exaggerate your harvests, I know it's possible to find this much, but honestly, it's only reported a few times every year in the international report threads at different forums. Most experienced hunters don't even find half of that in a complete season. In any way, it cannot be directly transfered to Greece, where reports of this species is rare, and it's one of the very few active species, some of them are probably even less common, like P. bohemica (=P. serbica) which isn't even considered common in the countries with most occurrences...


I would gladly accept this if there was any good archaeological evidence of psilocybin use in Asia or Europe around this time... From what we know, kykeon's active ingredient was a hidden knowledge, and this kind of trade would spread the secrets among the outsiders.


Huh? I made no such claims. The Hernandez paper tells us the fermentation of the Claviceps went on for 10 days in his scientific setup, and I use this to argue that sterility and absolute cleanness might not be of greatest importance, contaminants might not colonize the substrate to a great degree before it's ready.


I don't think it's rare around the Mediterranean, but it's anyway not the species I proposed as the kykeon ingredient. Before I knew about this growing method of C. puprurea, yes - It has psychedelic alkaloids (LSA, LSH) from the beginning, we can gather and eat it right away... But now, after discovering C. purpurea as a good ergonovine source, in my opinion it seems even more well suited.



In this thread I also see mentions of the lack of reports about cold water extractions of ergot. There was actually one person who made a successful CWE of ergot and reported LSD-like effect, which was posted on entheogen.com (edot) back in 2006 (mentioned in the bluelight thread, also linked in #1 in this thread). I unfortunately can't find it anymore on the successor of edot. Anyway, I happened to be a member of that forum and this experience report sparked my interest for Kykeon and methods to use Claviceps as a a drug without using it to get lysergic acid for a LSD synthesis. So I started researching everything about ergot, collected sclerotia from the wild and finally had enough to try CWE bio assays. This didn't work very well because of too low doses, but I felt some slight psychoactive effects.

The point I want to make here is that there is a big fear of the toxic effects from ergot, like St. Anthony fire, limbs falling of, death etc. This effects occur when you eat ergot over longer times, like several weeks. It takes a quite large single dose to reach LD50, and like I stated earlier, the dangerous alkaloids are not soluble in water, which creates a very simple and safer method to use it than eating the scerotia (I highly advise against trying doing that)...

Perhaps it was a mistake of me to post the info about the solid substrate growing method this Kykeon thread, but since this is the LSD, LSA and LSH forums, I thought it would balance the debate about possible Phalaris, mushroom and harmala ingredients and bring it back on topic...

But it's more a interesting method to make your own lysergic brew, whether it ever was used in any way by the ancient Greeks or other people. Think about it.

"When i did it fo money we were picking 500 G a day each = 1.5 kilos dry weight . Everyday . In the middle of the city . People dont realise the quantitys that are growing and one can pick if one trys ."

GOD, there is NO TALK OF BUYING OR SELLING ILLEGAL SUBSTANCES!!!!! at the DMT nexus. Please re-read the forum rules.

"I would gladly accept this if there was any good archaeological evidence of psilocybin use in Asia or Europe around this time... From what we know, kykeon's active ingredient was a hidden knowledge, and this kind of trade would spread the secrets among the outsiders."

There is a large body of evidence for use of psilocybin mushrooms in the vedic culture...and less solid evidence for they're use in Europe, though not as well established.

In regards to ergot being a secret though endemic to just the Greek mysteries, I personally do not think so. Do I think ergot was used as an entheogen in old world mysteries?..Yes I do. However, I think there is some pretty compelling evidence for ergot use right through the old world especially into Scandinavia.

It is, in my opinion, time to finally look beyond simply the Greek mysteries to a larger mystery cult that spanned all of Europe. The mysteries at Eleusis were just one incarnation of a much older tradition that was widespread. I am utterly convinced of this based on my studies of the Edda, which I am also convinced describes an entheogenic mystery tradition of initiation, with many elements shared with the mysteries at Eleusis...and that common thread spans all the way into the the east as well. Herodotus described hyperborean priestesses making they're way all the way into Greece just to do ceremonies to Artemis, carrying with them some kind of object wrapped in "wheaten straw" that was brought to many of the European tribes. I subscribe to the idea that the hyperboreans were simply Scandinavians, because it makes the most sense logically. What was inside the wheaten straw? No one knows. There is also some interesting speculations that the story of Beowulf is an allegorical story describing the fall of an ergot cult.

In reality, greek pharmacology was likely far more advanced than we assume. Trade routes right through europe into the east were extensive.

here are some relevant links from a well studied scholar that for me, are strong support for a larger, more ancient mystery tradition of innitiation..

http://freya.theladyofth...byrinth.com/?page_id=654

http://freya.theladyofth...byrinth.com/?page_id=560

http://freya.theladyofth...byrinth.com/?page_id=331

As a historically interested scandinavian, I don't find it that logical... The location of Hyperborea is very vague and has been associated to a lot different places . Snorre's Edda is not considered to be a reputable historical source, but unfortunately we only have a handful of sources telling us about our old mythology and it's quite detailed. Great stories but weak evidence base.

European prehistorical cultures sharing a common drug is plausible, but until I see some better evidence, I tend to see it as just another mind tickling theory. Kykeon could be such a drug, but if it was a shared/common knowledge, it's weird it got lost.