This groundbreaking work bridges modern chemistry and ancient spirituality. The authors, an ethnomycologist, a chemist, and a classicist, propose that the sacred drink used for over two millennia in the Eleusinian Mysteries, the “Kykeon,” contained a psychoactive compound derived from ergot, the same fungus from which Albert Hofmann later synthesized LSD-25. By aligning historical research, chemical analysis, and mythological interpretation, they suggest that the Mysteries of Eleusis were not symbolic rituals, but direct initiations into divine consciousness.

In this continuation of his lifelong research on Eleusis, Carl A.P. Ruck traces the roots of Dionysus — god of wine, madness, and resurrection — back to Thrace, a region bridging Greece and Asia Minor. He reveals that Dionysian ecstasy was not symbolic intoxication but the actual experience of divine union through psychoactive sacraments. By linking Dionysian worship to earlier shamanic traditions, Ruck shows how the god of theater, intoxication, and rebirth encoded the initiatory technology of direct communion with the living cosmos. The book challenges the sanitized, academic view of Greek religion, restoring its original entheogenic and ecstatic core.

Written by Philo of Alexandria, a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher, this treatise offers the first historical description of the Therapeutæ, a contemplative community established near Lake Mariotis in Egypt.

Philo describes them as men and women living in celibacy, prayer, study, and silence, devoting their lives to healing and the pursuit of divine wisdom.

They lived apart from society, practicing rituals of purification, sacred meals, and mystical interpretation of scripture — all elements later found among the Essenes and early Christian monastics.
Philo presents them as living embodiments of Sophia and the Logos — the merging of divine wisdom (Feminine) and divine word (Masculine). Their lifestyle reflects the Egyptian initiatory model of Ma’at (balance, truth, cosmic order), translated into the language of Judaism and, later, Christianity.

This compilation gathers original source texts and historical commentary on the major ancient mystery traditions—particularly Eleusis, Dionysian rites, Orphic fragments, Hermetic teachings, and early Gnostic initiations. The volume offers a direct window into the sacred rituals of death and rebirth that shaped the spiritual worldview of antiquity and left an imprint on Renaissance esotericism.