Archaic Revival

"AN ARCHAIC REVIVAL

This book will explore the possibility of a revival of the Archaicor preindustrial and preliterate-attitude toward community, substance use, and nature-an attitude that served our nomadic prehistoric ancestors long and well, before the rise of the current cultural style we call "Western." The Archaic refers to the Upper Paleolithic, a period seven to ten thousand years in the past, immediately preceding the invention and dissemination of agriculture. The Archaic was a time of nomadic pastoralism and partnership, a culture based on cattle-raising, shamanism, and Goddess worship. "

"A NEW VIEW OF HUMAN EVOLUTION

The first encounters between hominids and psilocybin-containing mushrooms may have predated the domestication of cattle in Africa by a million years or more. And during this million-year period, the mushrooms were not only gathered and eaten but probably also achieved the status of a cult. But domestication of wild cattle, a great step in human cultural evolution, by bringing humans into greater proximity to cattle, also entailed increased contact with the mushrooms, because these mushrooms grow only in the dung of cattle. As a result, the human-mushroom interspecies codependency was enhanced and deepened. It was at this time that religious ritual, calendar making, and natural magic came into their own. Shortly after humans encountered the visionary fungi of the African grasslands, and like the leafcutter ants, we too became the dominant species of our area, and we too learned ways of "keeping the bulk of our populations safe in subterranean retreats." In our case these retreats were walled cities. "

"When our remote ancestors moved out of the trees and on to the grasslands, they increasingly encountered hooved beasts who ate vegetation. These beasts became a major source of potential sustenance. Our ancestors also encountered the manure of these same wild cattle and the mushrooms that grow in it.

Several of these grassland mushrooms contain psilocybin: Panaeolus species and Stropharia cubensis, also called Psilocybe cubensis (see Figure 1). This latter is the familiar "magic mushroom," now grown by enthusiasts worldwide.'

Of these mushroom species, only Stropharia cubensis contains psilocybin in concentrated amounts and is free of nausea-producing compounds. It alone is pandemic-it occurs throughout the tropical regions, at least wherever cattle of the zebu (Bos indicus) type graze. This raises a number of questions. Does Stropharia cubensis occur exclusively in the manure of zebu or can it occur in the manure of other cattle? How recently has it reached its various habitats? The first specimen of Psilocybe cubensis was collected by the American botanist Earle in Cuba in 1906, but current botanical thinking places the species' point of origin in Southeast Asia. At an archaeological dig in Thailand at a place called Non Nak Tha, which has been dated to 15,000 B.P., the bones of zebu cattle have been found coincident with human graves. Stropharia cubensis is common in the Non Nak Tha area today. The Non Nak Tha site suggests mushroom use was a human trait that emerged wherever human populations and cattle evolved together.

Ample evidence supports the notion that Stropharia cubensis is the Ur plant, our umbilicus to the feminine mind of the planet, which, when its cult, the Paleolithic cult of the Great Horned Goddess, was intact, conveyed to us such knowledge that we were able to live in a dynamic equilibrium with nature, with each other, and within ourselves. Hallucinogenic mushroom use evolved as a kind of natural habit with behavioral and evolutionary consequences. This relationship between human beings and mushrooms had to have also included cattle, the creators of the only source of the mushrooms.

The relationship is probably altogether no more than a million years old, for the era of the nomadic human hunter dates from that time. The last 100,000 years is probably a more than generous amount of time to allow for the evolution of pastoralism from its first faint glimmerings. Since the entire relationship extends no further than a million years, we are not discussing a biological symbiosis that might take many millions of years to evolve. Rather, we are talking about a deep-rooted custom, an extremely powerful natural habit. "

"THE TASSILI PLATEAU

Archaeological evidence for these speculative ideas can be found in the Sahara Desert of southern Algeria in an area called the Tassili-n-Ajjer Plateau. A curious geological formation, the plateau is like a labyrinth, a vast badlands of stone escarpments that have been cut by the wind into many perpendicular narrow corridors. Aerial photographs give the eerie impression of an abandoned city (Figure 2).

In the Tassili-n-Ajjer, rock paintings date from the late Neolithic to as recently as two thousand years ago. Here are the earliest known depictions of shamans with large numbers of grazing cattle. The shamans are dancing with fists full of mushrooms and also have mushrooms sprouting out of their bodies (Figure 3). In one instance they are shown running joyfully, surrounded by the geometric structures of their hallucinations' (Figure 4). The pictorial evidence seems incontrovertible.

Images similar to those of the Tassili occur in pre-Columbian Peruvian textiles. In these textiles the shamans hold objects that may be mushrooms but may also be chopping tools. With the Tassili frescoes, however, the case is clear. At Matalen-Amazar and Ti-nTazarift on the Tassili, the dancing shamans clearly have mushrooms in their hands and sprouting from their bodies. The pastoral peoples who produced the Tassili paintings gradually moved out of Africa over a long period of time, from twenty thousand to seven thousand years ago. Wherever they went, their pastoral lifestyle went with them.' The Red Sea was landlocked during much of this time. Lowered sea levels meant that the boot of Arabia was backed up against the African continent. Land bridges at both ends of the Red Sea were utilized by some of these African pastoralists to enter the Fertile Crescent and Asia Minor, where they intermingled with hunter-gatherer populations already present. The pastoral mode had been well established across the ancient Near East by twelve thousand years ago. These pastoral people brought with them a cult of cattle and a cult of the Great Goddess. The evidence that they had such cults comes from rock paintings in the Tassili-n-Ajjer that are from what scholars have named the Round Head Period. This period is named for the style of depiction of the human figure in these paintings-a style not known from any other site. "

" The legacy of Qatal Huyuk was suppressed precisely because of the culture's deep association with the Mother Goddess. The or giastic psychedelic religion that worshiped the Mother Goddess made the Qatal culture anathema to the new dominator style of warfare and hierarchy. This was a cultural style that arrived suddenly and without warning; the domestication of the horse and discovery of the wheel allowed the Indo-European tribal populations to move south of the Zagros Mountains for the first time. Horse -mounted plunder brought the dominator style to Anatolia, and trampled beneath its hooves the last great partnership civilization. Plunder replaced pastoralism, mead cults finally completed the already well advanced process of supplanting mushroom use; human god-kings replaced the religion of the Goddess. However, at its height the cult at ('natal Huyuk represented the most advanced and coherent expression of religious feeling in the world. We have very little evidence upon which to reconstruct the nature of the cult acts performed, but the sheer number of shrines in relation to the total number of rooms bespeaks a culture obsessed with religious observances. We know that this was a cult of totemic animals-the vulture, the hunting cat, and always preeminent, the bull or the cow. Later religions in the ancient Middle East were bull worshiping in spirit, but we cannot assume this for Catal Huyuk. The sculpted heads of cattle that protrude into the cattle shrines at Qatal Huyuk. are sexually ambiguous and may represent bulls or cows or simply cattle generally. However, the prevalence of female symbolism in the shrines is overwhelmingfor example, the breasts of sculpted stucco that are apparently randomly placed-makes it seem likely that the religious officials were women. The presence of built-in "recliners" in some shrines suggests that curing or midwifery in a shamanic style may have been part of the rites.

It is impossible not to see in the cult of the Great Goddess and the cattle cult of the Late Neolithic a recognition of the mushroom as the third and hidden member of a kind of shamanic trinity. The mushroom, seen to be as much a product of cattle as are milk, meat, and manure, was recognized very early as the physical connection to the presence of the Goddess. This is the secret that was lost some six thousand years ago at the eclipse of Qatal Huyuk. "

SOMA

"The last best hope for dissolving the steep walls of cultural inflexibility that appear to be channeling us toward true ruin is a renewed shamanism. By reestablishing channels of direct communication with the Other, the mind behind nature, through the use of hallucinogenic plants, we will obtain a new set of lenses to see our way in the world. When the medieval world grew moribund in its world view, secularized European society sought salvation in the revivifying of classical Greek and Roman approaches to law, philosophy, esthetics, city planning, and agriculture. Our dilemma, being deeper, will cast us further back into time in a search for answers. We need to examine the visionary intoxicants of our collective past, which include the strange cult of Soma described in the earliest Indo-European spiritual writings.

No history of plants and peoples could claim completeness without a thorough treatment of the mysterious Soma cult of the ancient Indo-Europeans. As mentioned in Chapter 6, the Indo-Europeans were a nomadic people whose original home has been a matter of scholarly debate and who are associated with patriarchy, wheeled chariots, and the domestication of the horse. Also associated with the Indo-Europeans is a religion based on the magnificently intoxicating Soma. Soma was a juice or sap pressed out of the swollen fibers of a plant that was also called Soma. The texts seem to imply that the juice was purified by being poured through a woolen filter and then in some cases was mixed with milk. Again and again, and in various ways, we find Soma intimately connected with the symbolism and rituals related to cattle and pastoralism. As will be discussed, the identity of Soma is not known. I believe this connection to cattle is central to any attempt to identify Soma. The earliest scriptural writings of these Indo-European people are the Vedas. Of these the best known is the Rig Veda, best de scribed as a collection of nearly 120 hymns to Soma, the plant and the god. Indeed, the Ninth Mandala of the Rig Veda is entirely composed of a paean of praise for the magical plant.

The beginning of the Ninth Mandala' is typical of the

praises of Soma that pervade and typify Indo-European literature of the

period:

Thy juices, purified Soma, all-pervading, swift as thought, go of

themselves like the offspring of swift mares; the celestial well-winged

sweet-flavored juices, great exciters of exhilaration, alight upon the

receptacle.

Thy exhilarating all-pervading juices are let loose separately like

chariot-horses; the sweet-flavored Soma waves go to Indra the wielder of

the thunderbolt as a cow with milk to the calf

Like a horse urged on to do battle, do thou who art allknowing rush from

heaven to the receptacle whose mother is the cloud ....

Purified Soma, thy celestial steed-like streams as quick as thought are

pouring along with the milk into the receptacle; the rishis, the ordainers of

sacrifice, who cleanse thee, rishi-enjoyed Soma, pour thy continuous

streams into the midst of the vessel.'

Soma was prominent in the pre-Zoroastrian religion of Iran as "Haoma." "Soma" and "haoma" are different forms of the same word, derived from a root meaning to squeeze out liquid, which is su in Sanskrit, and hu in Avestan.

No praise seems to have been too excessive to be applied to the magical intoxicant. Soma was thought to have been brought by an eagle from the highest heaven, or from the mountains where it had been placed by Varuna, a member of the early Hindu pantheon. Here is another quote from Rig Veda:

It is drunk by the sick man as medicine at sunrise; partaking of it strengthens the limbs, preserves the legs from breaking, wards off all disease and lengthens life. Then need and trouble vanish away, pinching want is driven off and flees when the inspiring one lays hold of the mortal; the poor man, in the intoxication of the Soma, feels himself rich; the draught impels the singer to lift his voice and inspires him for song; it gives the poet supernatural power, so that he feels himself immortal. On account of this inspiring power of the drink, there arose even in the Indolranian period a personification of the sap as the god Soma, and ascription to him of almost all the deeds of other gods, the strength of the gods even being increased by this draught. Like Agni, Soma causes his radiance to shine cheeringly in the waters; like Vayu, he drives on with his steeds; like the Acvins, he comes in haste with aid when summoned; like Pusan, he excites reverence, watches over the herds, and leads by the shortest roads to success. Like Indra, as the sought-for ally, he overcomes all enemies, near and far, frees from the evil intentions of the envious, from danger and want, brings goodly riches from heaven, from earth and the air. Soma, too, makes the sun rise in the heavens, restores what has been lost, has a thousand ways and means of help, heals all, blind and lame, chases away the black skin [aborigines], and gives everything into the possession of the pious Arya. In his, the world-ruler's, ordinances these lands stand; he, the bearer of heaven and the prop of earth, holds all people in his hand. Bright shining as Mitra, awecompelling as Aryaman, he exults and gleams like Surya; Varuna's commands are his commands; he, too, measures the earth's spaces, and built the vault of the heavens; like him, he, too, full of wisdom, guards the community, watches over men even in hidden places, knows the most secret things .... He will lengthen the life of the devout endlessly, and after death make him immortal in the place of the blessed, in the highest heaven.'"