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.

In this continuation of his research following The Road to Eleusis, classical scholar Carl A.P. Ruck explores the entheogenic origins of the Eleusinian Mysteries and their link to the worship of the Great Goddess.
He decodes ancient iconography and linguistic traces that reveal the sacred mushroom as a vehicle of divine communion, symbol of death and rebirth, and embodiment of the Feminine Mystery.
Through comparative mythology and philological analysis, Ruck argues that the Eleusinian sacrament — the Kykeon — contained psychoactive elements that allowed initiates to directly experience the presence of the Goddess, not as myth but as living reality.