KYKEON - Elusinian Mysteries - Why can't we all enjoy our own LSD(like) brew?

[Psilodelix]

As part of the infamious Eleusinian rites. The large sacred religious Rituals preformed in the city of Eleusis (15 miles NW of athens) were preported by the Wasson-Hoffman-Ruck model to include "WATER BASED ERGOT EXTRACTIONS". Why the fuck is it that the greeks were brewin up 'acid on tap' but 2000 years later we have no simple formula like theirs?

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"The notion that consciousness-altering drugs might have been employed in the mystery rites was not new when R. Gordon Wasson, Carl A.P. Ruck, and Albert Hofmann proposed in a 1978 study that the sacred kykeon with which the initiates ended their week-long fast contained a hallucinogenic compound. As early as 1964 Huston Smith had reached that very conclusion, and Robert Graves in the same year published an essay suggesting the priests of the Eleusinia had discovered a variety of hallucinogenic mushroom that could be baked into offering cakes and yet retain psychedelic potency. [35] Carl Kerényi, in conjunction with Hofmann, was considering the possible narcotic effects of pennyroyal in connection with the mysteries.[36] But of the three ingredients of kykeon mentioned in the Homeric Hymn--water, barley and pennyroyal leaves--it is barley which is the most likely source of an hallucinogenic drug.
Barley, wheat, rye and other cereals may be visited by the parasitic fungus ergot (Claviceps purpurea). Ergot contains a number of alkaloids, several of which are psychoactive, including ergine (d-lysergic acid amide) and ergonovine. Ergine is the botanical source of one of the most powerful psychedelic compounds known, the modern synthetic LSD, and produces similar effects.[37] The theory of Wasson and his colleagues (the Wasson-Hofmann-Ruck model) is that the inhabitants of Eleusis had discovered the psychedelic properties of ergot and that the mystery rites enacted there were an outgrowth of powerful hallucinogenic experiences."

Albert Hofmann (http://nepenthes.lycaeum.org/People/hofmann.html) guessed that a water-based extraction from ergot infested barley would have isolated the LA-111 and left behind those substances responsible for the horrific phenomenenon known as ergotism. Ergine has been present in other cultures and has been present in other plant sources.

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My question is: ...why can't we devise a method of household ergot cultivation and then devise some simple water based extraction method... enrich the brew for flavor and enjoy. It would most likely be significantly less potant than LSD but if the method were perfected it could be done simply and on a large sacle... Imagine a new outbreaks of gatherings in the sun drenched fields to worship and bask in the beauty of the universe... all free and imposible to stop because anybody could make some in their kitchen.

Just a thought

-PsDX

[EllisDTripp]

As far as I can tell, the problem isn't a lack of an extraction technique, but lack of a suitable plant source to extract.

The Greeks were supposedly using Claviceps paspali, which grew in the area naturally, and which apparently doesn't contain dangerous or unpleasant alkaloids that would come out in a simple water extraction. Using Claviceps purpurea (rye ergot) or any of the other botanical sources (MG seeds, HBWR seeds, etc.) requires a polar/nonpolar extraction to remove unwanted or dangerous alkaloids from the ones that you do want.

I will NEVER understand why people act as if a simple extraction is such a difficult procedure. It's not like we're talking about the total synthesis of lysergic acid here! :) Psychedelics favor the prepared mind, and the tiny bit of mental discipline needed to understand and perform the extraction and preparation procedures is best viewed as a means of forming a personal relationship with the sacraments you wish to use, and (heaven forbid!) actually LEARNING something. Since western society doesn't have much of a "shamanic model" for training people to use these substances safely, we need to make do with what we have. A basic exposure to "kitchen chemistry" is a good introduction into the realms of "secret knowledge" that would-be psychonauts seek.

[weekend warrior]

Ok cool, how do we obtain this "claviceps paspali?" time for a web search......

[weekend warrior]

check this site... http://www.dsmz.de/strains/no000833.htm

[Psilodelix]

I did some aditional reading and am interested in the posibility of reproducing the processes that were proformed by the priests of the Eluses... although I'am ignorant to many of the methods, with all the technology and 'established science' of today... through a corridinated effort, i believe we could rediscover the origional formula and soon learn how to perfect it. This would be an amazing discovery for the psychedelic freedom movement to be able to have an naturally occuring (less potent and intense, as well) alternative to acid freely avaliable... then the dream can be born...
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"The requirement for large amounts of the active ingredient, available on demand, indicates that the priests must have grown the supply. Although artificial cultivation of ergot using contemporary methods is tricky and requires considerable skill and equipment, the secondary infection of grasses by using a solution of the honeydew produced by already growing ergot is straightforward. What makes this hypothesis interesting is that, using honeydew from C. paspali growing on the wild grasses surrounding the barley fields, the priests could have infected significant quantities of the young barley with C. paspali, thus producing from the barley a variety of ergot containing the ololiuhqui-type alkaloids. Although C. paspali only rarely infests barley on its own account, perhaps because its ascospores find it difficult to penetrate the growing grain, the secondary infection of barley by honeydew solution of C. paspali should be far more successful. The resulting ergot might even exhibit an alkaloidal spectrum superior to that of wild C. paspali.
The proposed method requires no special equipment or technique, only the knowledge that it works. It could have been discovered by accident, and a knowledge of exactly what was happening also unnecessary; only a knowledge of trial-and-error methods and results was required. Such a procedure could have easily been accomplished by the priests, and in addition, the procedure and the true reasons for it could have easily been concealed by pretending that it was a rite or ceremony having entirely other reasons for its performance. A blessing of the young barley, in which the priests roamed the fields whilst shaking "sacred water" on the young grain (to "promote its growth," perhaps) from a receptacle not unlike those used to disperse "holy water" by Catholic priests, would have been a ceremony well separated in time from the Eleusis ceremony, and its purpose easily disguised as something else entirely. For a certain portion of the barley crop, on certain fields, the "holy water" would have been a solution of C. paspali honeydew, and for the rest, plain water. Thus only the priests would have known where the active ergot was growing. The parasitised barley would have been harvested normally, the priests selecting a quantity for the kykeon which to all outsiders seemed the exact equivalent of the entire crop, yet this portion would have the psychedelic ergot growing on it, while the rest of the crop would have the normal infestation of C. purpurea. Neither would spies suspect ergot of being the ingredient, as it was common in the form of the dark spikes of C. purpurea, and probably very well known as something toxic to be separated from the grain as much as possible. "
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More from this article...check this one out. It gives a few detailed hypothsyses for the origional cultivation methodlogy...and has the rest of the story at http://www.psychedelic-library.org/paspali.htm

How dificlut is it to cultivate C. paspali? Which climates support it?

-PsDX