Elsevier

Journal of Ethnopharmacology

Volume 102, Issue 2, 14 November 2005, Pages 275-288
Journal of Ethnopharmacology

The entheomycological origin of Egyptian crowns and the esoteric underpinnings of Egyptian religion

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jep.2005.07.028Get rights and content

Abstract

In this paper, I theorize that the Egyptian White and Triple Crowns were originally primordia of the entheogenic Psilocybe (Stropharia) cubensis, which an Egyptian tale known as Cheops and the Magicians allegorically explained grew on barley, and that Osiris was the God of spiritual rebirth because he personified this and other entheogenic mushrooms. I go on to theorize that the plant known commonly as the Eye of Horus, which the Egyptians included in cakes and ales designed to spiritually rebirth the living and the dead, was an entheogenic mushroom cap entirely analogous, if not identical, to Soma. Finally, I explain why so many scholars failed to discern these identities and relationships for so long.

Introduction

Ethnopharmacology was derived from the Greek words ethnos for people and pharmacology for the characteristics, properties, and effects of a drug. Accordingly, ethnopharmacology is, by definition, as much a social science as it is an experimental science, in that it is concerned with the way people used and continue to use drugs derived from plants.

Ethnopharmacologists must therefore often rely as much on the methods and materials historians, archaeologists, and various other specialists use to study a culture as they do on the more rigid methods and materials clinical and experimental pharmacologists use to study a culture's drugs. In fact, when the drugs in question are those of an ancient culture, ethnopharmacologists must often rely to a far greater extent, and in some cases solely, on that culture's literature and art, than on scientifically derived data.

This is particularly true if the drugs in question were used in an ancient culture's religious rituals, for such rituals were typically performed covertly, as the following passage of the Egyptian Book of The Dead (Budge, 1969a, Budge, 1969b) makes clear:

And you shall perform these ceremonies secretly in the Tuat-chamber of the tomb, for they are mysteries of the Tuat, and they are symbolic of the things which are done in Khert-Neter… Let no stranger anywhere have knowledge of it. Do not speak about it to any man. Do not repeat it. Let no [other] eye see it. Let no [other] ear hear it. Let no one see it except [thyself] and him who taught [it to thee]. Let not the multitude [know of it] except thyself and the beloved friend of thy heart.

Moreover, this is particularly true when the drugs in question were used in the ancient Near East, for paleobotanical evidence from this region is remarkably rare (Merlin, 2003).

Nevertheless, the literature and art of many ancient Near Eastern cultures have shed a great deal of light on the way members of these cultures used drugs recreationally, medicinally, and religiously. For example, La droga en el Antiguo Egipto noted pictures of the following psychoactive plants on the tomb walls of Egyptian Pharaohs and their bureaucrats: (1) the lotuses Nymphaea alba and Nymphaea caerulea, which contain the psychoactive alkoloid apomorphine; (2) Lactuca verosa, a substitute for opium with mild hypnotic effects; (3) the poppy Papaver somniferum, from which opium is, of course, extracted.

It is therefore not surprising that ancient Egyptian priests were designated by the Egyptian word sem for plants, or that these priests contemporaneously served as physicians—for the Egyptians, like all ancient peoples, believed that health and disease could be attributed to the actions of Gods. However, unlike the modern, Western medical practice of prescribing drugs for an afflicted person to take, an ancient Egyptian physician-priest would often himself take a drug that would presumably allow him to commune with the Gods on behalf of the afflicted person, and he would often administer drugs to spiritually rebirth, or even physically resurrect, the dead. Hence, Egyptian medicine and religion were inseparable.

In fact, since Egyptian physician-priests apparently had a considerable amount of expertise in the medico-religious use of botanicals, especially in the pursuit of immortality, it is not surprising that Medieval alchemists, whose occult religious pursuit of immortality ended up fathering pharmacology, were extremely interested in Egyptian religion, to the extent that our word chemical can ultimately be traced back through alchemy to the Greek word Khemia for Egypt. Heinrich (2002) presented a great deal of iconographic and textual evidence supporting his theory that the alchemical pursuit of immortality originally revolved particularly around the covert ingestion and investigation of the Amanita muscaria, and possibly the Psilocybe cubensis, just as Wasson (1968) presented a great deal of evidence that the ancient Hindu pursuit of immortality originally revolved around the covert ingestion of the Amanita muscaria, and later perhaps the Psilocybe cubensis, ostensibly as the deity Soma. Similarly, Graves (1960) and Ruck et al. (2001) presented a great deal of evidence supporting their theories that ancient Greek religion once revolved around the ingestion of the Amanita muscaria and, perhaps ergot, just as Wilson (2001) presented a great deal of evidence supporting his theory that Celts ingested the Amanita muscaria in their religious practices.

Indeed, Puharich (1959), a U.S. Army psychiatrist working at a chemical and biological warfare center in Maryland, claimed, on seemingly spurious grounds, that the ancient Egyptians used the Amanita muscaria to relieve pain and induce out-of-body experiences, and the U.S. government considered these claims important enough to spend many years investigating them.

It was subsequently learned that the ibotenic acid in the Amanita muscaria is an analogue of glutamic acid, which acts on nerve endings to effect analgesia, and that drying converts the ibotenic acid into muscimol, an analogue of GABA, which can indeed relieve pain. This paper examines the hypothesis that the ancient Egyptian practice of communing with their Gods, particularly in the pursuit of immortality, may have once revolved around the covert ingestion of the Amanita muscaria and Psilocybe cubensis in the hope that the positive results reported will be deemed interesting enough to prompt other studies of the subject.

Section snippets

Materials and methods

A variety of the ancient Egyptian texts and artworks are examined in view of the hypothesis that many Egyptian symbols were originally designed to represent entheogenic mushrooms, and Wasson's theory that a significant portion of the Rg Veda esoterically refers to Amanita muscaria and, perhaps, Psilocybe cubensis ingestion. As Merlin (2003) noted in his study of the ancient use of psychoactive plants, all such evidence is subject to interpretation and reconstruction, and disagreement may arise

Results

Fig. 1 shows the striking resemblance one typical and two anomalous Egyptian White Crowns, or hedjeti (Fig. 1B–D), bear to the pin-stage primordium of the Psilocybe (Stropharia) cubensis (Fig. 1A). This mushroom is considered an entheogen (<Gk. entheos ‘filled with God’ + gen-‘to make’) (Ruck, 1979), because the psychotropic chemicals, psilocybine and psilocin, it contains are known for leading people to believe, among other things, that they are divine and immortal.

Accordingly, there are grounds

The mycological origin of Egyptian crowns as told in Cheops and the Magicians

The theory that the White and Triple Crowns were designed to represent Psilocybe cubensis primordia can be supported by noting that this mushroom is commonly cultivated today in essentially the same way an ancient Egyptian story, known as Cheops and the Magicians, allegorically describes how crowns were bestowed on the newborn rulers of Egypt's Fifth Dynasty in a document known as The Westcar Papyrus. That is, Psilocybes are commonly cultivated today by placing grain in containers, inoculating

Discussion and conclusions

This paper contains textual and graphic evidence strongly suggesting that the Egyptian White and Triple Crowns were originally primordia of the entheogenic Psilocybe (Stropharia) cubensis, which an Egyptian tale known as Cheops and the Magicians allegorically attributed to barley. In addition, the paper contains textual and graphic evidence strongly suggesting that Osiris was the God of spiritual rebirth, because he originally personified Psilocybes, the Amanita muscaria and, probably, the

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