3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Dusting Off Myths and Legends to Uncover the Mysteries of Soma, July 30, 2006
This review is from: Ploughing the Clouds: The Search for Irish Soma (Paperback)
At its dawn, the very heart, foundation and inspiration of the Vedic religion (what we today call Hinduism) was a sacred substance called Soma. Soma was both a living, growing thing made of matter (an entheogenic plant) and a god. It was the sacrifice and the deity receiving the sacrifice. The g Veda, one of the oldest of the world's sacred literature, contains many verses concerning Soma. Though it seemed clear that Soma was some psychoactive substance that would transform the consciousness of the worshipper, its actual identity had long been lost in the mists of time. Today Vedic priests use symbolic substitutes that are either non-psychoactive or only mildly psychoactive (the non-psychedelic stimulant ephedra being one common stand in for Soma today).
In the area of Iran, the ancient people of the Zoroastrian religion had their own sacrament called Haoma. It fulfilled the same function as the Vedic Soma but its identity too has been lost in the distant past.
In ancient Greece there were the Delphic and Eleusian mystery schools to which seekers hoped to gain admittance and partake in the life changing experience kept secret there. It is known that some sacramental drink called Kykeon was given there and that this drink, along with the guided experience orchestrated by the keepers of the mysteries, would give the seeker the experience of the divine. Some of the most influential thinkers of Greek culture were profoundly inspired by these experiences. Again, the actual identity of the sacrament was unknown; in this case it was deliberately kept a secret.
In the Jewish tradition, there was manna, some bread-like substance that would transform the consciousness of the worshipper. Again, if manna ever actually existed historically, its actual identity had long been lost. Of course, the Christian religion has its own sacrament, the body and blood of Christ. Was this Eucharist at one time more than just bread and wine? Was it a consciousness-transforming substance like Soma, Haoma, Kykeon and Manna?
In any case, these psychedelic sacraments were lost to western civilization, and lived on only in the woods where witches and warlocks had to hide their occult herb-craft from the witch-hunts and inquisitions of the establishment and the zealous villagers.
When the Spanish Conquistadors encountered the Aztecs, they found that these people had their own sacraments. These sacraments were unquestionably effective; substances like peyoté cactus, psilocybian mushrooms and a plant called pipiltzintzintli that may have been Salvia divinorum. But ironically this would make the Spaniards think of these substances as blasphemous false sacraments rather than long lost genuine sacraments. They considered them something the Devil used to mock Christianity. As such, these practices were exterminated with extreme prejudice.
It was not until the 1800's that attention was given to the peyote the Native Americans of the American South West and it was not until this century that Westerners were aware of ayahuasca, the powerful sacrament of the Amazon. But for the most part, all these psychoactive sacraments remained obscure.
That is until R. Gordon Wasson gave us his ground breaking book Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality in 1968. In this work, Wasson, an amateur mycologist, proposed that the Soma of the Vedic tradition was originally the entheogenic mushroom Amanita muscaria still used by the shamans of the indigenous people of the Arctic Circle. Using his intimate knowledge of mushrooms and a careful reading of Vedic verses concerning Soma, Wasson made such a good case for Amanita as the original Soma that many scholars became convinced that his theory was true. It seemed that the identity of one of the great mysterious sacraments had been solved. Shortly after this book was published, Wasson, following up on earlier searched by the great ethnopharmacologist Richard E. Schultes and others, Wasson rediscovered the sacramental use of psilocybian mushrooms among a remote tribe in the jungles of Southern Mexico and published his findings in LIFE magazine. Another entheogenic sacrament was recovered.
Later, speculations would be made as to the identity of Haoma (Amanita muscaria and Peganum harmala being among the candidates).
In 1986, Wasson, along with Carl Ruck, Stella Kramrisch and the Jonathan Ott gave us Persephone's Quest: Entheogens and the Origins of Religion that discussed the possibility of psychoactive mushrooms and other fungi as sacraments in ancient Greece, the Middle East, Siberia, Mesoamerica and elsewhere. In this book, Carl Ruck first put forth the theory that the Kykeon of the ancient Greek mysteries may have been a drink containing a variety of the fungus ergot. This drink may have given the worshipper LSD like effects.
This last theory was later elaborated in 1998 in The Road to Eleusis by Wasson, Ruck and the father of LSD, Albert Hofmann. Though other classicists and historians have largely ignored this work, it also has not been seriously challenged. It seems an other entheogenic sacrament may have been rediscovered.
A point should be made here concerning the common Indo-European origin of many of these entheogenic sacrament traditions. Before history, a large group of people anthropologists call the Indo-Europeans occupied a wide area of Eurasia. At different times, large groups would depart from this general area and move into new areas, conquering the indigenous people there and both subduing and merging with their culture and religions. It seems these Indo-Europeans already had a long used an entheogenic sacrament and brought this with them when they migrated to other areas of the world. When the Indo-Europeans moved into the Middle East, it seemed they brought Haoma with them or replaced their own sacrament with an other entheogen available in the Middle East. When they moved into the India subcontinent they brought Soma with them. When they moved into the Mediterranean area, it seems they brought a sacrament with them or else replaced their old one with a new one - Kykeon. It is also known that the Indo-Europeans who moved into the Nordic and Siberian areas used Amanita muscaria as their sacrament.
But what of the Indo-Europeans that moved into North-Western Europe, the Celts? Their folktales, myths and legends all suggested the influence of entheogens. We have tales of elves, gnomes, people being taken to the land of the faeries, magical red berries and other red fruit that seemed to give magical powers or magical awareness, magical hazel nuts, potions, the association of faerie creatures with mushrooms and so on. But we have no direct references to identifiable entheogens or hard evidence of entheogen use among the Celts. Indeed, although Terence McKenna had made casual suggestions about the possible use of psilocybian mushrooms among the Celts, the question of Celtic entheogen use has never really been given serious scholarly consideration at all.
This is where Peter Lamborn Wilson comes in with Ploughing the Clouds - the Search for Irish Soma, a much needed look at the possibilities of entheogen use among the Celts of the British Isles, particularly those of Ireland. Wilson is a very well read literary genius displaying both an extensive knowledge of the literature of folklore, myth, and religion (unorthodox Islam being his specialty) and an original, unconventional and penetrating intellect. His ideas and hypotheses are both reasonable and wild and as an author he displays a thorough knowledge of classic literature yet what he puts forth is often revolutionary. His presentation is intelligent, sophisticated and at times his prose swells into poetic musing. Often it seems that Wilson could elaborate extensively on numerous topics but is forced to merely mention these tangents and move on so as to not overwhelm the reader with too much information or over-pack his books. Thankfully he does offer leads - bibliographic, branches of philosophy and so on - for readers to pursue the various subjects he touches upon. His bibliographies alone are valuable.
In this book Wilson draws upon a variety of disciplines to tease the "Soma" out the Irish Celtic past. Anthropology, mythology, entheogen studies, archetypal analysis and comparative religion (like that of Joseph Campbell), linguistic and etymological analysis, and other approaches are employed but Wilson's particular focus in this book is the analysis and comparison of the Vedic literature of India and the folklore, sagas, poetry, and legends of the of Ireland. With that in mind, it should be said that the reader must have an appetite for Vedic verse, Irish folklore and the minutia of etymology and linguistic comparisons to enjoy the greater bulk of this book. Some may find Wilson's hypothesis itself to be more interesting than the actual examination of the evidence. However, to come to any reasonable conclusion the reader will need to patiently follow along with Wilson's multitude of details because it is in these many bits of evidence that the strength of Wilson's argument lays and not in any easily summarized pivotal evidence.
The reasonable reader will appreciate that Wilson makes no unfounded claims. He doesn't push his hypothesis with positive assertion, claiming that it is true. Rather he presents his theme as a reasonable suspicion, one that may lead to further evidence if experts of various fields should use his book as a starting point to look further. Indeed, this is perhaps Wilson's major motive for writing this book, to stimulate others to look further into what he has so insightfully and studiously noticed and gathered together in this book.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Search for Irish Soma., February 21, 2006
This review is from: Ploughing the Clouds: The Search for Irish Soma (Paperback)
_Ploughing the Clouds: The Search for Irish Soma_ by Peter Lamborn Wilson, published by City Lights Books, is an attempt to discover the use of the hallucinogenic mushroom among the early Irish and Celts. This book principally rests upon a theory advanced by maverick investment banker turned ethnomycologist R. Gordon Wasson that the mysterious substance "soma" mentioned in the writings of the earliest Indo-European peoples was actually the hallucinogenic mushroom Amanita muscaria (the fly agaric) in his book _SOMA: Divine Mushroom of Immortality_. However, contrary to Wasson who argued in his book that the ancient Celts did not partake of the hallucinogenic mushroom, Wilson claims that the wide abundance of the growth of that mushroom in Irish lands would seem to indicate otherwise. In order to present his thesis, Wilson examines various tales from both ancient Indo-European myth (the Rg Veda) and ancient Irish and Celtic folklore. Indeed, the ancient Irish constituted one of the oldest Indo-European peoples and they may have originated in India before making their way to Ireland (although Wilson argues for an African origin for the Irish peoples). The phrase "ploughing the clouds" is an old Irish expression meaning to undertake a futile task, to analyze the ineffable. Wilson finds this particular phrase very appropriate to his undertaking here in demonstrating the existence of soma among the ancient Celts.
This book begins by discussing the history of psychedelic substances (entheogens: "God-within-us") and their use among primitive peoples. In particular, the Indo-Europeans actively made use of the hallucinogenic mushroom which is mentioned extensively in the Vedas as "soma". Wilson turns his attention also to evidence for Irish soma. Here, he discusses his belief that the Druids may have made use of the mushroom in their rites. Similarly other peoples and mystery cults made use of the mushroom around the world.
In the second part of this book, the author offers a comparison between various Vedic and Irish sources of soma. Here, he notes the roles of Vrtra, Vena, Fionn, Indra, and Agni. In particular, he mentions various legends from Ireland as they relate to the mystical initiation undergone by the partaker of the soma. The book also discusses the Gandharvas and Maruts, the firebird and the calendar, snakes and their chthonic power, "one-eye", and the jealousy of the gods. This book also includes a section featuring illustrations from various Celtic and Indo-European motifs which the author beliefs show evidence for soma among the ancient Irish. In particular, the snakes (supposedly driven out of Ireland by Saint Patrick) constitute a primitive link to the soma legend. The snake people may have been the original inhabitants of Ireland, and as Wasson has noted in his writings the snake is linked to the hallucinogenic mushroom. Wilson also discusses the role of women in the various legends concerning the soma.
This book offers a fascinating perspective on the use of the hallucinogenic mushroom among the ancient Irish. While the thesis advanced in this book is radical, it nevertheless provides for very interesting reading concerning the ancient legends and folklore of this primitive people.
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