Note: “Hamilton Morris” in this piece is a fictional alias. It is not the real journalist and chemist of that name. It’s a playful stand-in for an anonymous psychonaut who did the work described below. Everything attributed to him here is invented dialogue built around real experimental details shared with me anonymously. Matthew Stahl is a real person, and the recipe discussed is his, adapted from his book LSI.
For roughly two millennia, once a year, thousands of initiates walked from Athens to the sanctuary at Eleusis to drink a beverage called kykeon. Plato likely went. Cicero later wrote that Eleusis gave people “a reason not merely to live in joy, but to die with a better hope.” The Homeric Hymn to Demeter describes the rite in reverent language, but also evasively because the rites were considered sacred and initiates were sworn to secrecy. For nearly two thousand years, the secret remained remarkably well guarded. Finally, outside pressure shut the practice down. Roman Emperor Theodosius I effectively banned pagan worship in 392 CE. A few years later the sanctuary at Eleusis was looted and devastated by invading Goths led by Alaric. The last initiates who knew it firsthand eventually died, and the secret was lost.
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