The Road to Eleusis
R. Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann, and Carl A. P. Ruck
Foreword by R. Gordon Wasson
SO MUCH HAS BEEN WRITTEN about the Eleusinian Mysteries and for
so long a time that a word is needed to justify this presentation
of three papers dealing with them. For close to 2,000 years the
Mystery was performed every year (except one) for carefully screened
initiates in our month of September. Everyone speaking the Greek
language was free to present himself, except only those who had
the unexpiated blood of a murdered man on their hands. The initiates
lived through the night in the telesterion of Eleusis, under the
leadership of the two hierophantic families, the Eumolpids and
the Kerykes, and they would come away all wonder-struck by what
they had lived through: according to some, they were never the
same as before. The testimony about that night of awe-inspiring
experience is unanimous and Sophocles speaks for the initiates
when he says:
Thrice happy are those of mortals, who having seen those rites
depart for Hades; for to them alone is granted to have a true
life there. For the rest, all there is evil.
Yet up to now no one has known what justifies utterances such
as this, and there are many like it. Here lies for us the mystery
of the Eleusinian Mysteries. To this mystery we three have applied
ourselves and believe we have found the solution, close to 2,000
years after the last performance of the rite and some 4,000 years
since the first.
The first three chapters of this book were read by the respective
authors as papers before the Second International Conference on
Hallucinogenic Mushrooms held on the Olympic Peninsula, Washington,
on Friday, 28 October 1977.