Is there any reason to believe psychedelics were involved in the Eleusinian Mysteries?
LOL! that depends [partly] on one's theology.
i laughed just now, but i actually meant what i said there. an ancient who really believed in the existence and divine power of demeter and persephone would answer you, 'well, there's no need for 'extra help' from psychedelics: the goddess can accomplish whatever she wants, no matter how overwhelming or supernatural, on her own.'
a rationalist/naturalist, looking for non-numinous explanations of what was happening at eleusis [and clearly something important and memorable was happening there -- for hundreds and hundreds of years] would of course posit that there had to be some natural explanation of the phenomena. absent the modern ability to create really trompe-l'oeil virtual-reality special effects, the likeliest non-supernatural explanation is some sort of hallucinogen.
the best exposition [that i'm aware of] that could be adduced in support of a rationalist/naturalist explanation is carl ruck et al., THE ROAD TO ELEUSIS. [if you're interested in eleusis you should also read karl kerenyi, ELEUSIS: ARCHETYPAL IMAGE OF MOTHER AND DAUGHTER, and then perhaps also ESSAYS ON A SCIENCE OF MYTHOLOGY: THE MYTH OF THE DIVINE CHILD AND THE MYSTERIES OF ELEUSIS, a collaboration between kerenyi and his pal carl jung.]
we know that the initiates at the eleusinian mysteries were given a kukeion or 'mixture' of something to ingest as part of the initiation ritual; that's as close to a 'smoking gun' as we are liable to get here. what makes this plausible is that [a] demeter is a grain goddess above all, and [b] ergot grows on grains -- so if the kukeion was made from ergotic grains, as seems very likely for such a ritual, it would be a convenient way to deliver the stuff to the initiate. the greatest single obstacle in our way is the amazing reluctance of anyone, even initiates who later converted to christianity [thus putatively repudiating any allegiance to the old pagan gods], to discuss the details of what went on in that initiation ceremony.
incidentally, you may not know that a similar biochemical explanation has been given for the 'mania' of the maenads: the theory was published in ARCHAEOLOGY magazine, no less, in the nov/dec 1995 issue. it was by adrienne mayor, and was called called 'Mad Honey! Bees and the Baneful Rhododendron.' briefly, mayor's theory posits that the mead drunk by the maenads [or 'bacchae,' to use a less deprecatory term] was made from rhododendron honey that contained grayanotoxin. this stuff sounds much less body-friendly than, say, psilocybin. but i suppose it's possible that such a honey was indeed used in making their mead. what you don't see in the descriptions of the bacchae [say, in their eponymous play by euripides] is any mention of the somatotoxic effects associated with grayanotoxin. to hear them tell it, they've seen god. [if you haven't read that amazing play, btw, you should. i recommend especially the hair-raising translation by paul woodruff and published by hackett.]
plenty of stuff online about this, at e.g.
http://tinyurl.com/qomnu
http://www.sonomapicnic.com/06/ravhoney.htm
http://www.paghat.com/toxichoney.html
http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~ag151/addendum.html
and apparently mayor has included something about this in her 2005 book:
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/09/12/224943.php
here's an old [1996] post to sci.agriculture.beekeeping and citing a
presumably older USDA report on grayanotoxin:
http://tinyurl.com/ezjy9 [also at
http://www.hbd.org/brewery/library/HonD.html ]
i don't know how one would go about preserving the euphoric effects of such a substance while also minimizing its dysphoric. it sounds pretty potent.
anyway. thus far, two theories seeking to explain the eleusinian mysteries: a theological one and a biochemical one [the latter designed to debunk the former]. of course, there is also a third possibility: that both explanations are true. to accept this third way, one has to allow for the scope of the divine in biochemistry; or [conversely] for a theology that is not inimical to the discoveries of science.
someday you should go to greece and see eleusis itself. even in the searing sunlight of a greek summer, it is hauntingly evocative. it's only about 13 miles from athens, but it feels like another world away -- much quieter than the tourist sites in athens proper. last summer i took a group of students there as part of my course, 'greek mythology in greece.' we read the ancient texts [in english translation of course] and then went to see the actual places where they were set.
until you can get over to greece, here are some graphics to whet your appetite. start by having a look at an archaeological architect's model of the reconstructed precinct, just to jump-start your imagination.
as soon as you arrive at the site, you come to the greater and lesser propylaia, through which for a thousand years it was death to enter if you weren't [or weren't about to become] initiated. the gates were so heavy, they made grooves in the stone.
even before you get to the telesterion there are 'sites' associated with the story of the abduction of persephone -- for instance, the cave of hades. hard by the cave is a hole which, they say, leads directly to the underworld. this is just a guess on my part -- maybe someone has published research to corroborate this by now -- but i'm guessing there were dramatic reenactments of the whole story in this area -- outside the telesterion but within the precinct.
the telesterion itself was huge -- particularly for an ancient venue of this sort. you can see what's left of it by clicking here. [just think, those were the very seats [carved out of the living rock] on which the initiates sat as they were inducted into the mysteries!]
as i mentioned, it's all so quiet now. whenever i go there, it's completely deserted. but one would love to know what were the 'things seen' that the ancient participants described in such veiled language ...
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