or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
or
Amazon Prime free trial required. Sign up when you check out. Learn more
More Buying Choices
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
or
Get a £1.15 Amazon.co.uk Gift Card
The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries
 
 
Share your own customer images
Search inside this book
Tell the Publisher!
I’d like to read this book on Kindle

Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.

The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries [Paperback]

Albert Hoffman (Author), R. Gordon Wasson (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
RRP: £17.99
Price: £13.67 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
You Save: £4.32 (24%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
In stock.
Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk. Gift-wrap available.
Only 3 left in stock--order soon (more on the way).
Want guaranteed delivery by Wednesday, June 6? Choose Express delivery at checkout. See Details

Formats

 Amazon Price New from Used from
Hardcover --   -- --
Paperback £13.67   -- --
Trade In this Item for up to £1.15
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £1.15, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.

Frequently Bought Together

Customers buy this book with Eleusis: Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter (Bollingen Series (General)) by Carl Kerényi Paperback £18.95

The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries + Eleusis: Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter (Bollingen Series (General))
Price For Both: £32.62

Show availability and delivery details

Product details

  • Paperback: 176 pages
  • Publisher: North Atlantic Books,U.S.; 30th edition (28 Feb 2009)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1556437528
  • ISBN-13: 978-1556437526
  • Product Dimensions: 15.3 x 1.4 x 22.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 247,997 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

    •  Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

More About the Authors

Discover books, learn about writers, and more.
R. Gordon Wasson
R. Gordon Wasson
Albert Hofmann
Albert Hofmann
Carl A. P. Ruck
Carl A. P. Ruck

Product Description

Product Description

The secretive Mysteries conducted at Eleusis in Greece for nearly two millennia have long puzzled scholars with strange accounts of initiates experiencing otherworldly journeys. In this groundbreaking work, three experts—a mycologist, a chemist, and a historian—argue persuasively that the sacred potion given to participants in the course of the ritual contained a psychoactive entheogen. The authors then expand the discussion to show that natural psychedelic agents have been used in spiritual rituals across history and cultures. Although controversial when first published in 1978, the book’s hypothesis has become more widely accepted in recent years, as knowledge of ethnobotany has deepened. The authors have played critical roles in the modern rediscovery of entheogens, and The Road to Eleusis presents an authoritative exposition of their views. The book’s themes of the universality of experiential religion, the suppression of that knowledge by exploitative forces, and the use of psychedelics to reconcile the human and natural worlds make it a fascinating and timely read. This 30th anniversary edition includes an appreciative preface by religious scholar Huston Smith and an updated exploration of the chemical evidence by Peter Webster.
Inside This Book (Learn More)
Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Search inside this book:

Tags Customers Associate with This Product

 (What's this?)
Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
 
(1)

Your tags: Add your first tag
 
See most popular tags

Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store

If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store. Learn more

What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?

› Explore similar items

Customer Reviews

4 star
0
3 star
0
2 star
0
1 star
0
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A very readable series of academic essays on the role of entheogenic fungi in the ancient world. This work is now over thirty years old and still relevant today to those pondering the history and meaning of the entheogenic experience. Some useful footnotes from the authors bring things up to date.

The hymn to Demeter is perhaps hard to follow but would have been widely known in its day.

It seems she might not have been the goddess of wheat but of the fungus that grew on it and the experience it engendered.
Comment | 
Was this review helpful to you?
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:  11 reviews
45 of 48 people found the following review helpful
Important argument, beautifully produced book 6 Nov 2000
By "adam_della_mirandola" - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover
The authors of `Road to Eleusis' - they include Albert Hofmann, the discoverer of LSD, and Gordon Wasson, the white man who in 1957 revealed the continued existence of the pre-Columbian sacred-mushroom rite to the non-Mexican Indian world - argue that a water-soluble alkaloid contained in ergot, a tiny fungus which attacks grains and grasses, was the principal psychoactive ingredient of the `kykeon', the sacred potion drunk before the celebration of the Mysteries of Eleusis by those awaiting initiation. The philological and psycho-pharmacological argument of `Road to Eleusis' is compelling but to get the most from the book, read it in combination with `Eleusis: Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter' by Karl Kerenyi, a disciple of Carl Jung, which provides an introduction to the history of Eleusis and contains a psychological study of the Mysteries.

In pre-Classical times, it is likely that almost the entire population of Athens walked the fifteen-mile distance to Eleusis at harvest time every year in order to drink the `kykeon' and experience the sense of the mythic reunion of Persephone, the Daughter, with Demeter, the Mother who taught men how to plant seeds and reap the fruit. The Christ, the draw in the psychological game of chess between the Hellenised Middle East and Israel, speaks distantly but clearly of Eleusis in John 12: 20-24 and Cicero, the Roman philosopher, author and statesman who coined the phrase `bread and circuses' to damn the spectacular politics of his time, was an initiate.

Iktinos, architect of the Parthenon, also designed the Telesterion, the classical-period temple of the Mysteries of which only broken columns survive. However, scattered throughout `Eleusis' by Kerenyi are bits and pieces of the psychological vocabulary of the Mysteries which with the help of ancient Greek and Indo-European comparative etymological dictionaries allow a reconstruction of the mind of the initiate. For example, `tele', from `telos', the full circle, the crown - today, we hear it many times every day in connection with technology; however, at Eleusis `tele' had a sacral meaning.

Eleusis was to religion in Athens what democracy was to Athenian politics: essential.

`Road to Eleusis' and `Eleusis: Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter' - read both; and when in Greece, don't miss Eleusis, 20 miles south of Athens on the mainland across the water from the island of Salamis, open every day from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. except Monday when the site is closed.

39 of 42 people found the following review helpful
A powerful document on attaining Greek wisdom 23 Mar 1999
By A Customer - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover
If other books are dynamite, this is nuclear. It documents how the Mystai at Eleusis became Epoptes, a standard rite of passage for all the famous Greek minds we seek to understand. Full understanding is not possible without initiation such as is outlined in this volume. Eleusis is at the end of a line of mystical experience that goes back to 5000 BCE. Is is not so much that the Mystery of Eleusis is revealed, as that it points the sacred way how to unravel the mystery of our own existence. The Greeks knew, and if you do as they did, you can. Wasson tells us what the Greeks did.
19 of 21 people found the following review helpful
Important argument, beautifully produced book 6 Nov 2000
By "adam_della_mirandola" - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover
The authors of `Road to Eleusis' - they include Albert Hofmann, the discoverer of LSD, and Gordon Wasson, the white man who in 1957 revealed the continued existence of the pre-Columbian sacred-mushroom rite to the non-Mexican Indian world - argue that a water-soluble alkaloid contained in ergot, a tiny fungus which attacks grains and grasses, was the principal psychoactive ingredient of the `kykeon', the sacred potion drunk before the celebration of the Mysteries of Eleusis by those awaiting initiation. The philological and psycho-pharmacological argument of `Road to Eleusis' is compelling but to get the most from the book, read it in combination with `Eleusis: Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter' by Karl Kerenyi, a disciple of Carl Jung, which provides an introduction to the history of Eleusis and contains a psychological study of the Mysteries.

In pre-Classical times, it is likely that almost the entire population of Athens walked the fifteen-mile distance to Eleusis at harvest time every year in order to drink the `kykeon' and experience the sense of the mythic reunion of Persephone, the Daughter, with Demeter, the Mother who taught men how to plant seeds and reap the fruit. The Christ, the draw in the psychological game of chess between the Hellenised Middle East and Israel, speaks distantly but clearly of Eleusis in John 12: 20-24 and Cicero, the Roman philosopher, author and statesman who coined the phrase `bread and circuses' to damn the spectacular politics of his time, was an initiate.

Iktinos, architect of the Parthenon, also designed the Telesterion, the classical-period temple of the Mysteries of which only broken columns survive. However, scattered throughout `Eleusis' by Kerenyi are bits and pieces of the psychological vocabulary of the Mysteries which with the help of ancient Greek and Indo-European comparative etymological dictionaries allow a reconstruction of the mind of the initiate. For example, `tele', from `telos', the full circle, the crown - today, we hear it many times every day in connection with technology; however, at Eleusis `tele' had a sacral meaning.

Eleusis was to religion in Athens what democracy was to Athenian politics: essential.

`Road to Eleusis' and `Eleusis: Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter' - read both; and when in Greece, don't miss Eleusis, 20 miles south of Athens on the mainland across the water from the island of Salamis, open every day from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. except Monday when the site is closed.

Search Customer Reviews
Only search this product's reviews

Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 


Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
Search all Amazon discussions
   
Related forums

Listmania!

Create a Listmania! list

Look for similar items by category

Look for similar items by subject





















i.e., each product must be in subject 1 AND subject 2 AND ...

Feedback


Amazon.co.uk Privacy Statement Amazon.co.uk Delivery Information Amazon.co.uk Returns & Exchanges