CORE FUNCTION
• Lesser Mysteries: preparation, purification, readiness
• Greater Mysteries: the full descent-and-return sequence
• Telesterion: the final reveal — an embodied confrontation with mortality and renewal
• Kykeon: possible entheogenic catalyst
• Vow of secrecy: protects the potency of the initiatory field
Symbolic Axis
Descent – Search – Return
The complete arc of:
• fragmentation
• loss
• initiation into the underworld
• reunion at a higher octave
This is the first codified process of psychic dismemberment followed by reintegration, the core of all later mystery traditions.
Audience
Number of people affected or witnessing the event.
Axis of Union
Union between:
• mortality and immortality
• human and divine
• darkness and illumination
• loss and renewal
• mother archetype and daughter archetype
• the cycles of nature and the cycles of consciousness
Description / Insight
Eleusis marks humanity’s first collective ritual solution to duality.
Instead of killing the “other” (Cain/Abel), or repairing the relational split (Isis/Osiris), Eleusis teaches:
Duality is cyclical.
Transformation is initiated by descent.
Return is the fruit of surrender.
This becomes the template for all future initiations.
Consciousness Note
From mythic storytelling to embodied myth-activation.
From belief to experience.
From external gods to internal transformation.
This is the pivot where myth stops being narrative and becomes technology.
Key People
• Demeter: the grieving Mother
• Persephone: the Descender and Returner
• Hades: the dark initiator
• Triptolemos: transmitter of the Mysteries
• Priests & Hierophants: guardians of the rite
LIBRARY
The Road to Eleusis
Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries
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.
The Sacred Mushrooms of the Goddess: The Secrets of Eleusis
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.
The Immortality Key
The Secret History of the Religion with No Name
Drawing from fifteen years of research, classicist and lawyer Brian Muraresku reopens the investigation into whether the earliest Christians and ancient Greeks shared a secret sacramental technology — an entheogenic Eucharist capable of producing direct experiences of immortality. Building on the work of R. Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann, and Carl A.P. Ruck in The Road to Eleusis, Muraresku travels from the ruins of Eleusis to the catacombs of the Vatican, uncovering traces of a pre-Christian mystery religion centered on the Divine Feminine and ecstatic communion through psychoactive wine. The book bridges science, theology, and ancient spirituality, suggesting that the “lost sacrament” of the West may have been hiding in plain sight.