Thomas Hatsis - Psychedelic Mystery Traditions: Spirit Plants, Magical Practices, and Ecstatic States

FOREWORD

By Stephen Gray

What a long, strange trip its been. Cave art of the proto-humans of prehistory; spirits and daemons of the ancients; legendary transformational ceremonies like the Eleusinian Mysteries (1600 BCE392 CE); possibly our oldest existing trip reports from the oracles of Delphi; the potent mixed wines of ancient Greece; the intoxicating grass and the love potions of ancient Rome; the prominent role of mandrake in the experience of the proto-Christians; the psychedelic Eucharists of the gnostics in the early Christian era; the surprising acceptance of some theogens (even cannabis, hallelujah!) by orthodox church fathers of the time; the infused mead of inspiration that brought ecstatic connection with each other and with the gods during medieval Christmas festivities; the ecclesiastical demonization of medicine women in the late Middle Ages as satanic witches and the resultant suppression of the sacred feminine (from which we are still trying to recover); hashish-eating secret magical societies in nineteenth century England and France; and finally, guarding the flame in the early days of a new psychedelic renaissance as though the future of the tribe hangs in the balance.

Lets skip any further preliminaries and get straight to the point. Psychedelic Mystery Traditions is a brilliant book that offers up a cornucopia of fascinating information and stunning insight. Its author, Tom Hatsis, is one of our most important and rigorous historical scholars in the field of psychedelics and their relatives. As just one telling piece of evidence I can offer to support this bold claim, I know that Tom taught himself Latin specifically so that he could investigate primary sources without having to rely on translations or interpretations filtered through the misunderstandings and biases of others. That is the kind of reliable veracity we can count on from him.

I used the word importantto describe Tom in the above paragraph. But the most essential use of that word in this context is for the work itself. The subject of psychedelics, entheogensor whichever one of Toms inventive neologisms you fancyis not an arcane study of interest primarily to academics and intellectually bent psychonauts (or psychenauts, as Tom prefers.) In fact, although the word traditions in the title clearly indicates a look backward, to my mind the greatest importance of Psychedelic Mystery Traditions is in honoring and building on that colorful history to look forward as we guard the ancient flame in the time of the psychedelic renaissance.

Tom Hatsis and other visionaries in this field have grasped a central fact of the human enterprise in the early decades of the twentyfirst century. Humanity has for the most part been asleep at the wheel for too long now. There is a primordial, unconditioned reality underlying and encompassing life that almost all of us have been ignorant of. The great and universal open secret is that we are not born only to die and we are not separatenot separate from the living Earth, from each other, and from the eternal creative intelligence. Hints, clues, and reminders of the open secret are scattered liberally throughout the text, such as this brilliant quote from a Latin inscription. I am ashes, ashes are earth, earth is the goddess, therefore I am not dead. Or this beautiful aphorism in Toms words, Surrender, child. Youre home.

Psychedelic Mystery Traditions confirms the suspicions of many of us who intuit that the life of the spirit, the soul, and the awakened heart has been in various places and times and could again be much richer (and wilder) than that which we see around us now. In realms spiritual and magicalor as mystics, shamans, and some young children might say, in realms more real than this realitythere has been a lot more going on than is allowed to us in our received sanitized stories stripped bare of their original numinous power and possibility. And when you look deeply into what remains of the historical record, as Tom Hatsis has, you also see that pharmaka (Toms more respectful term for drugs) have played a far greater role in the spiritual life of humanity than we have been told.

Theres a core metaphor for those of vision who see through the obscuring veils that hang heavy over a spiritually impoverished human landscape. The vision points its ecstatic finger toward the eternal truths and this largely untappedand now more urgently needed than everspiritual potential of our species. The metaphor is this:

The Temple that was crushed and closed for all this time is being reopened.

Dont be daunted by my description of Tom as a rigorous historian. This is a book for anyone interested in our incredibly rich history of plant-entangled religion and magic and, again, by implication, in where were going and how we might open the gates of ecstasy and wisdom again. The writing is accessible, eloquent, at times poetic, and generously spiced with wit and humour. Take this gem for example. Between the cracks and scraps of lonely ruins we find echoes of the ancient mysteries. Marble and iron, seemingly cold and lifeless, quietly exhale embedded wisdom passed down through time, even as their tears christen the memory of fallen empires.

While Psychedelic Mystery Traditions will appeal to and edify a wide range of readers, its also aimed at researchers in related fields. The rigor that Tom brings to his investigations acts as a necessary corrective to the overzealous claims of less disciplined psychedelic social scientists who would like to see mind-manifesting plants around many a historical cornerToms irrefutable debunking of claims for a psychedelic Santa with his Amanita muscaria reds and whites and his symbolic shamanic-flight reindeer being just one of numerous examples.

So when I said earlier that we can count on Tom, I meant that unlike numerous other authors who have theorized about the long-dead past, he is cautious about conjecture, always making it clear that hes doing so (We can only wonder... or, What we can do, however, is... observe the gems of possibility poking out from the subterranean bedrock...), and only offering such speculative ruminations to inspire and intrigue in the larger context of verifiable evidence. You wont, for example, see Tom claiming that a visionary plant or fungus was the original inspiration for and central sacrament of any particular religion of antiquity without unimpeachable evidence to back him up. Put simply, you can trust what you read in this book.

We need to honor Tom Hatsis for the hard labor he has undertaken on behalf of the rest of us to uncover hidden treasures all but buried in the accumulated dust of many centuries and many historical revisions. The book is loaded to the rafters with wonderful stories unearthed from often obscure sources that only an obsessively committed investigator like Tom would trouble to look for. And there are surprises aplenty to be found in many of these stories. As just one of many examples, you may be surprisedas I wasto find out what was really going on with Jesus and the development of early Christianity. Again, minus the dubious speculation and hypothesizing.

Not only is Psychedelic Mystery Traditions generously sprinkled with great and instructive stories, the whole book is presented in story form as Tom brings us along with him from the mysterious symbolism of the cave art of ancient prehistory, to the beginnings of recorded history and the stories revealed in the archaeological and written record, through the millennia as he uncovers and shares with us secrets and treasures of the past, before finally leading us to the present day as we stand tall against the winds of mystery.