The Holy Grail (Part 1)
TL:DR This mini-essay is the first in a three-part series about the bizarre continuity between paganism, Christianity, and the drug culture of the 1960s. This first mini-essay traces the origins of magical cups, which contained psychoactive potions in the centuries before the life of Christ. The second mini-essay follows the evolution of magic cup religions from the arrival of Dionysus at Eleusis to the transformation of Dionysus into Jesus. The final part is about the revival of Greek culture during the Renaissance, and the rediscovery of psychoactive plants during the 20th Century.
Strange stories about magic chalices are far older than the legend of the Holy Grail, which is actually a merger between two legendary cups. There’s the cup used by Joseph of Arimathea to catch the blood of Christ at the crucifixion. And then there’s the chalice used by Jesus at the last supper. These two cups didn’t become the singular Holy Grail until the 12th century, in the famous tales of King Arthur and Camelot. But magical chalices go back much further than the Knights of the Round Table. They even predate the life of Christ; Christianity borrowed its magic cups from older pagan traditions. In the 500 years before Christ and for a few centuries after, initiates drank a secret potion called a Kykeon from a holy chalice during the mystery rites at Eleusis in Greece.
The importance of Eleusis can scarcely be overstated. Everyone who was anyone in Classical civilization fasted and made the 14 mile pilgrimage from Athens to Eleusis to observe the secret ritual. From Plato right on up to Julius Caesar. Echoes of Eleusis still persisted, even after the Christian emperor Theodosius outlawed the mysteries in 392 A.D. and ordered the destruction of the temple there. To this day, a trickle of pilgrims still leave fresh pomegranates at the site to honor Persephone, the old legend around which the rituals were oriented.
For among the many excellent and indeed divine institutions which your Athens has brought forth and contributed to human life, none, in my opinion, is better than those mysteries. For by their means we have been brought out of our barbarous and savage mode of life and educated and refined to a state of civilization; and as the rites are called ‘initiations,’ so in very truth we have learned from them the beginnings of life, and have gained the power not only to live happily, but also to die with a better hope.
— Cicero, Laws II, xiv, 36
Chalices and psychoactive plants have a long, intertwined history. Brian Muraresku wrote a stunning book back in 2020 called The Immortality Key. The biggest bomb he drops comes from an archaeological dig site where Greek colonists were practicing the Eleusinian religion across the Mediterranean from their homeland, in Spain. A chalice (and also a human jawbone) found there tested positive for ergot, which is a fungus that grows on cereal grains. Historians speculate that ergotism could be responsible for some of the craziest episodes in human history, such as the anabaptist revolt in Muenster of 1534 or the Salem witch trials of 1692. It’s the same fungus that Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman first used to synthesize LSD in 1938. And now recent evidence is rolling in that magic mushrooms are what gave Eleusis its phenomenal power.
The Ruins of the Sanctuary at Eleusis