URL: http://www.psychedelic-library.org/eleusis/mixing%20the%20kykeon%20summary%20text.rtf (http://www.psychedelic-library.org/eleusis/mixing%20the%20kykeon%20summary%20text.rtf)
Statement:
"If, as we hypothesise in our paper, powdered ergot in water suspension were heated for a time with wood ash, a mildly basic substance containing potassium carbonate, the toxic ergopeptine alkaloids such as ergotamine should be hydrolysed to ergine but not further to lysergic acid. We suggest the use of wood ash as it has always been a very common substance, and thus since time immemorial it must often have been used in trail and error processes of a wide variety. Since ergine is the same ingredient found in the Mexican morning glory whose use by Amerindian shamans - and my own self-testing - leaves little doubt of its psychedelic potency, the possibility that ergot could be processed to yield the same substance seemed the final key to understanding the Kykeon."
Full text:
Mixing the Kykeon
Summary Text of a Presentation Delivered to
The Italian Society for the Study of States Of Consciousness
Perinaldo, Italy, August 29, 2003
By Peter Webster
According to the best information available, the annual autumn celebration at Eleusis in ancient Greece was a most important and spiritually enlightening event, as the writings of a great number of famous names of Greek antiquity testify. [1, 2, 3] The 9-day ceremony known as the Greater Mysteries was one of the most important events of the Greek religious calendar, and it was celebrated every year for nearly two thousand years. No doubt the festivities must have changed and evolved over such an enormous time-span, as did the physical characteristics of the sanctuary where it was practised. Yet the constant and essential use of the sacramental beverage consumed during the final day of the Greater Mysteries, the KYKEON, indicates that it was as necessary to Eleusis as the sacramental bread and wine have been for the two millennia of Christian worship.
The nature and composition of this ancient sacramental potion has concerned many scholars for decades, and centuries. Until recently, the most important thing known about the KYKEON, which literally means "mixture," has perhaps been that no firm conclusions concerning its components or method of preparation could be arrived at. In Greek times, its mystery was always well-preserved by strict rules forbidding any disclosure of what transpired during the final night's celebrations when the KYKEON was drunk, and the secret was also closely guarded by the priests' control over the preparation and use of the sacramental potion. And, with the destruction of the Sanctuary of Eleusis in 395 AD, the priests' secret knowledge was apparently lost forever.
Of one thing we can be sure, however: the KYKEON was not a sacrament in the Christian sense of being merely a symbolic substance. The KYKEON was no placebo, but must surely have had genuine and significant consciousness-enhancing properties that lent themselves to, and reinforced the verbal, visual, doctrinal, and philosophical content of the Eleusinian Mysteries. [1]
It was the longstanding ignorance of the nature of the KYKEON that in 1978 induced Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann, and Carl Ruck to publish a new theory concerning Eleusis and its secret sacrament. The principal hypothesis advanced in this work is that the potion of Eleusis, the KYKEON, was a psychoactive preparation made from ergot, a parasitic fungus commonly infesting grains such as rye, wheat, and barley. According to this new and surprising hypothesis, the KYKEON therefore contained lysergic acid alkaloids very similar to LSD. [1]
A recent paper in the journal ELEUSIS by Webster, Perrine and Ruck, also deals with this long-standing question concerning the nature of the KYKEON. The essay was intended to support and extend the ideas first advanced by Albert Hofmann, Gordon Wasson, and Carl Ruck in their book, THE ROAD TO ELEUSIS. Since it was published, criticism of the book's proposals have come from several sources, and our essay MIXING THE KYKEON also served to counter many of these criticisms. [4]
******
Illustrated Guide to Lysergic Acid
In order to better understand our hypothesis concerning the KYKEON, some knowledge of the peculiarities of the lysergic acid molecule is necessary. Indeed, much of the criticism of the ideas of THE ROAD TO ELEUSIS has resulted partly from an inadequate knowledge of the chemistry of the ergot alkaloids, and of principles of chemistry in general.
The presentation delivered on August 29 describes in some detail the following aspects and properties of lysergic acid and its amides with the use of a series of diagrams and models projected on-screen.
Lysergic acid and its amide derivatives undergo epimerisation at the carbon at ring position 8 in protonic solvents or under the influence of acidic or basic catalysts to produce the corresponding isolysergic derivatives. The reaction proceeds via an enol intermediate, and is facilitated by the resulting conjugation of the double bonds of the lysergic acid ring system with the enol's double bond from ring position 8 to the side-chain. An equilibrium condition is attained rapidly, or with a delay of several days according to the given conditions and the lysergic acid compound in question, and a characteristic ratio of epimers is produced.[5, 6] The two epimers of a given lysergic acid compound have slightly different physical and chemical properties, and often radically different pharmacological properties. In general, isolysergic acid amides are far less biologically and psychologically active than their lysergic acid epimers.
In addition, the D-ring of lysergic acid compounds may change its conformation from a quasi-chair form, the more stable, to a quasi-boat conformation. Mono-alkyl substituted lysergic acid amides, and lysergamide (ergine), undergo the formation of hydrogen bonds between an amide hydrogen and the nitrogen at ring position 6. This hydrogen bonding may result in an equilibrium between chair and boat forms of a lysergic acid amide such as ergine, or may reinforce the stability of the chair form of an amide such as isoergine, rendering the equilibrium between the two forms to move strongly or entirely to the chair configuration. [7]
As is well known, lysergic acid amides undergo hydrolysis when treated with base in solution to yield lysergic acid. For the reaction to proceed, ergine and other simple amides require a strong base such as potassium hydroxide, high temperatures above 80°C, and an hour or more to complete the process. Ergotamine and other ergopeptine alkaloids, the main constituents of most ergot species, will also hydrolyse to lysergic acid under these conditions, but under milder conditions these compounds do not hydrolyse completely. With a weaker base such as potassium carbonate, and at lower temperatures, ergotamine is partially hydrolysed to ergine. This reaction, apparently long forgotten by chemists, was first discovered in the early research on ergot alkaloids in the 1930s.[8] And it is this process of partial hydrolysis that we propose as the method by which the kykeon was prepared from ergot, converting the toxic ergopeptine alkaloids to ergine and its epimer isoergine.
******
(for part 2 see the following post in this thread)