The Drink that Broke Religion

Soma, Hoama, The Mead of Poetry, it has many names, but there was a drink within Indo-European culture that allowed you to understand magic, to talk to the gods, to feel immortal. Welcome to the story of the drink that changed religion.

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► References
Immortality Key
Allegro, John. The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross

► Chapters
0:00 Introduction
2:24 The Mead of Poetry
6:05 The Influences within the Story
9:46 The Mead of Poetry continued
14:48 Further influences in the Story
17:37 Libations within Indo-European texts
23:03 Why a Magical Mead
26:48 Psychedelics within the Mead
34:20 The Influence of Soma, Hoama, and Magical Mead

[jaredjordan]

Fun fact. Osiris was the Egyptian God of magic mushrooms. They were said to sprout where his seed dribbled on the ground. Egyptian columns were representations of both his phallus and shrooms. Greeks copied the Egyptians, Romans copied the Greeks, and we copied The Romans. Because of Osiris' role as judge of the dead, columns were also put on courthouses. Whenever you see columns outside a courthouse, that's Osiris' phallus.

[oldakela]

In modern times, it’s not uncommon for people to use honey to preserve mushrooms, or to put honey in mushroom tea to make it taste better. Also a properly made mushroom tea will not contain any pieces of mushroom, the active ingredients steep into the water and removing the flesh reduces stomach symptoms, which I’m sure a shaman would figure out. But since the mushrooms absorb a lot of the water, a smart person squeezes the filtered mushroom bits out to make sure all the potency is in the liquid. All of this could be easily done with stone age knowledge and technology. So then calling it a mead makes sense if that means a honey brew, a mushroom tea with honey is still a type of honey brew, and the reference to squeezing also makes sense. (The above is not intended for instructional purposes, no one should ever drink THAT kind of tea, of course…)

[blakewinter]

I think it's important to realize, with regard to how the psychotropic stuff would give them subjective experiences, that the reason they held such personal and social power was precisely because they were thought to be objective experiences. These experiences were interpreted to give the same kind of information about reality as any day to day experience.

I mention this because it's easy, I think, for modern people to make the mistake about religion that people in the past believed it to be subjective. Whereas in fact, they believed it to be just as objectively real as anything else they encountered, and that was why it held such power for them.

[Terroid]

14:06 This reminds me of a story from hinduism

Garuda(the main eagle deity) was carrying a pot of amrutha(nectar, basically the drink which made gods live forever).. and while flying he spilt some onto the dried grass land below. There were a bunch of demons on the ground(in the form of snakes), and when they saw the nectar fall to the ground, the tried to lick it up from the land but instead the dried grass being sharp cut their tounges in half. This is also the reason why dried grass(again dried grass, not fresh grass, as the nectar fell on dried grass) is a very holy item used in rituals even to this day!

i really love ur vids! thanks a lot for making them!

[kariechamberlain]

I have always wondered why all magical related stories or movies give so much power to just writting out things. I finally have a primordial context for the power in words and writting. Thank you.

[MushroomFarmersGuild]

Mushrooms were kept in honey historically. There are even cave paintings of bee faced shamans with mushrooms growing everywhere out of their body.

[marksadventures]

"For I have dined on honeydew and drank the milk of paradise" Xanadu - Samuel Taylor Coleridge & later Rush.

[BobHenderson-drwy]

Also you might want to consider that chewing a mushroom up and spitting it would be a way to spread the spores, but of course they didn't know about the spores but they probably did notice that mushrooms would grow where they spit the chewed mushrooms.... Just a thought... Accidental early mycology attributed to an action maybe?
(To the extremely toxic reply person) Mushroom farming is documented at earliest to be 1800 (1200AD) years ago. They didn't have microscopes until 1600's. No one knew about spores until post 1600's. They had serious trouble with spawn until the 20th century when it became a full blown science. In the 1800's it was recorded as being 1 out of 6 spawn flushing and all the others didn't or was contaminated. Even the 1000 year old Chinese records on mushroom farming assumed it was the mycelium in the soil, also the Japanese Shitake farms in the 1200's made and no mention of spores at all in the spawn process. So no. Ancient hunter gatherers did not know about spores at all, and it wasn't even mentioned in any ancient texts in any languages until post 1600's.
The other clue is in the mythology, they spit into a vat and a "MAN" was created, and mushrooms are phallic in nature. They could have easily used a non-gendered word but they didn't in the mythology. So just another clue...

[mukhumor]

Thanks that was really interesting. I read an article that said that Ireland grows a lot of Liberty Cap mushrooms. Taking Liberty Caps was a folk ritual at wedding celebrations.

[tomteacher]

My friend is a lecturer on philosophy of mind and metaphysics at Exeter University. This is right up his alley...

[araleana]

I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for choosing to create a friendly and inviting atmosphere in your videos while being an incredible storyteller. I'm currently on a healing journey due to religious abuse/trauma, and I've recently found your channel. You have helped me regain my love for mythology and ancient peoples, and your voice is incredibly soothing to listen to— similar to how Morgan Freeman could be speaking of watching paint dry, and most would buy an audiobook of it!

Again, thank you for doing what you do— it helps people in ways you can't imagine ❤!

[senduirsellaid]

Henbane has been used in beer brewing. The gardens where henbane was grown were dedicated to Wotan/Odin. The german name for Henbane is Bilsenkraut, which is why we still have the beer Pilsner... Mead made with Henbane, or perhaps even with its much more potent sister Belladonna Atropa, is in my mind a much more likely candidate for the Mead of Poetry than mushrooms.

Thank you for a wonderful Youtube channel!

[markedfanatic]

Hey Jon, I found your channel recently and have been binging your videos non-stop. I've learned so much and just cannot get enough! The topics you cover are wonderfully fascinating. I feel incredibly privileged to live in a time when information sharing is this easy and even more so to find people such as yourself and the content you make.
I'm an academic myself, though in an entirely unrelated field (molecular genetics of disease), and I hugely appreciate the openness and integrity with which you approach teaching. Please, please, please keep the content coming!

p.s. please also keep reminding us to like your videos. I always forget to do so until you mention it!

[argentandroid]

Spit can be used to jumpstart fermentation of alcoholic drinks as well. There are a few beverages still made in this way. I wonder if the very earliest meads were made in this way.

[hildeschaf]

I‘m glad you named the elephant in the room. Since I found your channel with every single video I thought there where surely some psychedelic experiences included but you never hit this topic.
I thought this was a pity but on the other side I understood because it is a hard topic if you want to be a reliable scholar. All the more I’m happy you did it and I think you did a great job.
As I mentioned in one of my earlier comments I could imagine that there’s a connection between the use of psychedelics and the earliest snake and serpent myths. I have no personal experience with ayahuasca but it’s said that there are often visions including a snake-like being. Perhaps other psychedelics do this too.

[shanegooding]

There is a story from Croatia about Woden being pursued across the sky on horseback by demons and froth falling from his horse's mouth from which the fly agaric mushroom grew.

[demoncore]

Great lecture.
The runes having no power without mead makes me think of chaos magic...

[strophariusmusic]

34:10 Psilocybe cubensis (formerly Stropharia cubensis;) does love dung, sometimes grows directly on it. It can be found in warm countries around the world. Shown in the picture is Psilocybe semilanceata, often called "liberty caps". These generally don't grow directly on dung, but in the grass of pastures. I think they are the most likely candidate in european cultures north of the alps.

[kariannecrysler]

I have always wondered why milk & honey is referenced so often in the biblical texts. It is used for baby food, to reference a special land & I think as a drink given. It makes more sense if a tradition existed prior to the Abrahamic writing and possibly contemporary to.
Very nice work here. I truly enjoy discovering here ✌️💗🤘

[duckpotat]

Amazing video as always. I'm a Biology grad student in India and I am almost certain that the drink did not contain Ergot as a significant active ingredient.

While Ergot produces compounds that can be used to make El Es Dee (:(YouTube censorship) it itself is not psychoactive in a similar fashion, much like potatoes don't get you drunk like V0dka.

Although some ergot would have definitely ended up in it if they used grains in the fermentation, it wasn't a major ingredient IMO

Amanatia Muscaria, Psil0cybin mushrooms and cannab!$ or some combination sounds more like likely.