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When the apostle Paul proclaimed the new Christian Mystery to the factious congregation at Corinth, it was clear that this Eucharist was meant to replace the pagan Mystery that had been celebrated for over a millennium just a short distance away at the sanctuary of Eleusis. Christianity evolved within the context of Judaic and Hellenistic healing cults, magic, shamanism, and Mystery initiations. All four of these inevitably imply a sacred ethnopharmacology, with traditions going back to earlier ages of the ancient world. The essays in The Apples of Apollo edited by Ruck, Staples and Heinrich attempt to uncover the original food of the sacramental communion. After a preliminary review of the rites and etiquette of the sacramental wine of the god Dionysos, whom Christ would replace as sacrificial offering, the myth of Ixion (who is named for the semi-parasitic plant called mistletoe) is linked to Apollo's role in demanding human victims and the persistence of such rites in the Druidic solstice sacrifice of the "wicker man." Behind the symbolism of the mistletoe and other psychoactive plants lurks the Soma of the Vedic tradition and its botanical original, the fly-agaric mushroom. Rather than being marginal to Classical culture, the fly-agaric, and the array of metaphors its amazing transmutations suggest, is central to the myths of the Greek heroes, and in particular to the first of them all, the hero Perseus, who reformed the religion practiced at the ancient city of Mycenae.
This illustrated book traces the history of an unlikely force in the shaping of Western civilization: the use of psychedelic mushrooms, namely by a secret society called the cult of Mithras. Nero was the first emperor to be initiated by the group’s “magical dinners,” and most of his successors embraced the ritual as a source of spiritual transcendence. The cult was officially banned after the Conversion, but aspects of their rituals were assimilated or co-opted by Christianity, and the brotherhoods persist today as secret societies such as the Freemasons. This is a fascinating exploration of a powerful force kept behind the scenes for thousands of years.
An illustrated foray into the hidden truth about the use of psychoactive mushrooms to connect with the divine. • Draws parallels between Vedic beliefs and Judeo-Christian sects, showing the existence of a mushroom cult that crossed cultural boundaries. • Contends that the famed philosophers' stone of the alchemist was a metaphor for the mushroom. • Confirms and extends Robert Gordon Wasson's hypothesis of the role of the fly agaric mushroom in generating religious visions. Rejecting arguments that the elusive philosophers' stone of alchemy and the Hindu elixir of life were mere legend, Clark Heinrich provides a strong case that Amanita muscaria, the fly agaric mushroom, played this role in world religious history. Working under the assumption that this "magic mushroom" was the mysterious food and drink of the gods, Heinrich traces its use in Vedic and Puranic religion, illustrating how ancient cultures used the powerful psychedelic in esoteric rituals meant to bring them into direct contact with the divine. He then shows how the same mushroom symbols found in Hindu scriptures correspond perfectly to the symbols of ancient Judaism, Christianity, the Grail myths, and alchemy, arguing that miraculous stories as disparate as the burning bush of Moses and the raising of Lazarus from the dead can be easily explained by the use of this strange and powerful mushroom. While acknowledging the speculative nature of his work, Heinrich concludes that in many religious cultures and traditions the fly agaric mushroom--and in some cases ergot or psilocybin mushrooms--had a fundamental influence in teaching humans about the nature of God. His insightful book truly brings new light to the religious history of humanity.
This new edition of Carl Ruck's text keeps its experimental approach and felicitous style, while including substantial changes that make the material easier to teach and learn. The book has been consolidated into a more concise and direct format so that the material can be covered in less time, and the somewhat intimidating aural-oral emphasis that characterized the first edition has been reduced. These improvements, together with the accessibility inherent in the structural approach to grammar, make Ancient Greek: A New Approachuseful not only as an innovative text in the text in the classroom but for general self-instruction as well.
After angering his father Zeus, the god Apollo is cast down from Olympus. Weak and disoriented, he lands in New York City as a regular teenage boy. Now, without his godly powers, the four-thousand-year-old deity must learn to survive in the modern wo
It was mainly only the European urban centers that converted to Christianity, and often more for political or commercial interests, than as a matter of faith. The old religions persisted in the villages or pagani, from which the term Paganism arose. The Christians built their sanctuaries upon the pagan sites, expropriating their numinous past, assimilating the symbolism of the former deities, and commonly incorporating the actual architectural remnants. The wisdom of those deposed gods and their rites persisted in less objectionable forms -- disguised to delude the censors -- as country festivals and quaint tales often about the fairy folk, who coexisted with this world and could be accessed by magical procedures that perpetuated half-remembered methods of authentic ancient shamanism. Such shamanism always involved pharmaceutical expertise. Mircea Eliade was mistaken in concluding that drugs were characteristic only of the late and decadent stages of a religion. Rock paintings of the greatest antiquity and his own abundant citations indicate that, instead, a pharmacological Eucharist was the norm; and Eliade was himself about to reverse his stance shortly before his death. Encoded in tales seemingly as simple as Snow White with her poisoned red and white apple are themes traceable back to the great epics of Homer and the Mesopotamian Gilgamesh. These patterns of shamanic empowerment lurk also in the histories of the leading families of Europe, who could not completely divest themselves of the former religious basis for their right to rule, but instead they embraced, Christianized, and buried it in sanctified graves, as was the case with the great fairy Melusina, whose eighth abominable son, called Horrible, was murdered. A number of churches involved in the Albigensian heresy claim his body was laid to rest beneath them.
Throughout Western memory the apple has been the fruit of trouble, immortality, and temptation: Paris and the Trojan War, Nordic Loki and the apples of eternal life, and, of course, that infamous couple in the Garden.
A fascinating tour of the mushroom-centered mystery religions which have profoundly influenced Western civilization
This text rethinks American literary history by focusing on the non-human, environmental agents that have shaped its development.