Magical History
The real history of cannabis is often a little difficult for modern minds, indoctrinated in antidrug hysteria, to wrap around. Wherever the magical plant was available, spiritual traditions evolved around it; shamans, priests, and worshipers used cannabis in divination, consecration, prophecy, ritual, and meditation. Some even contend that it was influential in the birth of human spirituality itself. That’s a sweeping and powerful statement—with compelling, if little-known, evidence. Of course, given the prevailing prejudice against the plant, these are controversial ideas, and short of time travel, there’s no way to confirm anything absolutely. At the very least, based on the written and archaeological record, we can say with certitude that human spirituality coevolved with entheogens, psychoactive plants that activate the mystical parts of our brains, and that cannabis was one of the more frequently used ones.
Cannabis was certainly one of the first cultivated plants, and by the time recorded history rolled around, it was being used for fiber, food, medicine, recreation, and ritual.18 Some have even suggested that it was the first cultivated plant.19 Remember that no other plant is as useful as cannabis. It is the only plant that with a little help from humans produces almost everything needed to build a civilization. To the ancient people who really needed to build a civilization, it must have seemed particularly magical.
And so the earliest references that we find are glowing and reverent. A legendary Chinese figure, the Red Emperor, Shennong, is said to have compiled the first pharmacopoeia in 2737 BC, giving an honored place to cannabis. Not only did he recommend it medicinally for a variety of ailments but also as the principle ingredient in an elixir of immortality. The elixir had the power to transform a mortal into a transcendent being. Cannabis, he claimed, enabled seekers to forget their own consciousness and attain the Tao.20
Cannabis remained a medical necessity in China for hundreds if not thousands of years. With the advent of Confucianism, magical and spiritual use waned. However, Confucianism’s alternative, Taoism, continued and even deepened its relationship with the plant. The more mystical and alchemical side of Taoism embraced the use of cannabis in incense and potions of various kinds. The ancient Taoists celebrated eight major deities, or immortals, and one of them was Ma Gu, which is usually translated as “Hemp Maid” or “Auntie Hemp.” She embodied the spirit of the cannabis plant and presided over the slopes of Tai Shan mountain in the hemp-producing region of Shandong. Pilgrims would travel to Tai Shan mountain and toss hemp seed from the heights, a ritual action intended to bring health and longevity. Some of the many legends about Ma Gu may be based on actual women whose exploits were rolled into one syncretic deity.21
Ma Gu is always represented as an eighteen-year-old woman, although her real age is infinite. She is known as Immortal Xu Miao, Infinite Harmony.22 In Vietnam, images of Ma Gu adorn restaurant plates to this day, accompanied by the saying “Ma Gu Xian Shou,” which translates as “Hemp Maid Offers Longevity.” 23
Just over the mountains in Central Asia, a collection of tribes known as the Indo-Europeans had a new invention, the wheeled chariot pulled by horses, and they were in the process of spreading their culture all over the place. Between 4000 and 1000 BC, the Indo-Europeans, sometimes called Aryans, migrated into India, Mesopotamia, and a big part of what would become Europe. The central ritual of their culture, which they carried wherever they went, involved a sacrament known as sauma or soma.24 The soma ritual took root everyplace the highly mobile Indo-Europeans visited.
In the 1960s, an ethnomycologist and banker named R. Gordon Wasson published a beautiful, deeply researched volume that suggested that soma was a mushroom, Amanita muscaria. The book traced the history of soma in the ancient texts of the Rig Veda in early Hindu lore and the related haoma in the Avesta of the Zoroastrian tradition and helped to promulgate the idea that an entheogen may have been at the root of religious traditions. Alas, as later ethnobotanists pointed out, and archaeological evidence confirmed, soma was probably not a mushroom. It may have been a number of plants over time, as the original “moon plant” of the Rig Veda was, much later, banned, lost, confused, etc. But the description of the plant, having leaves and branches and extracted by mixing with milk, just as bhang is still made today, fits cannabis more so than any other herb. This is especially the case when we start to examine the spiritual properties of soma, the “elixir of immortality” and “bringer of laughter,” as well as haoma, which is described as a sweet-scented, golden-hued plant that grows in the mountains, can assume the shape of a cane, tree, or bush, and can produce food, medicine, and rope.25 That seems to be a very specific description of cannabis.
Indeed, a soma/haoma “factory” or temple of sorts was discovered in an archaeological dig in what was once the kingdom of Bactria, in the part of Central Asia (present day Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, north of the Hindu Kush mountains) where cannabis is thought to have originated. Dating from around 2000 BC, containers in the temple yielded the ancient residue of several different plant combinations that included the ephedra herb, a stimulant, and the opium poppy. However, every combination had as its base—you guessed it—cannabis.26
In the Vedas, the language describing soma is beautiful:
Flow soma, in a most sweet and exhilarating stream, effused for Indra to drink. The all-beholding destroyer of Rakshasas has stepped upon his gold-smitten birthplace, united with the wooden cask. Be the lavish giver of wealth, most bounteous, the destroyer of enemies; bestow on us the riches of the affluent. Come with food to the sacrifice of the mighty gods, and bring us strength and sustenance. To thee we come, O dropping (soma); for thee only is this our worship day by day, our prayers are to thee, none other.27
In the Rig Veda, soma was associated with Indra, a mighty warrior who was king of the gods. Indra was a thunder god who took great delight in drinking soma. In addition to his never-ending battle against demons and other opponents of the gods, he is one of the guardians of the directions, ruling the east. Interestingly, he is described as having the yellow hair and Caucasian features of an Indo-European and it seems likely that Indra (and, probably, Shiva) were brought to India by the Aryans.28
Indra also appears in the Avesta, drinking haoma, though he does not have the same importance he has in the Vedas. In the Avesta, a number of deities appear, with more importance given to the haoma-quaffing Mithra. We’ll get back to Mithra in a little bit, but what do you say we check in with the Indo-Europeans?
If we go back to calling the Indo-Europeans “Aryans,” it’s easier to remember that they were tall, blond, Caucasian people. So when we find the remains of shamans in various places, with blond hair and stashes of cannabis buried with them, we might think that the Indo-Europeans spread their cannabis spirituality far and wide. One recent finding of a Caucasian mummy, over twenty-seven thousand years old and found in the Gobi Desert, yielded nearly two pounds of cannabis tops in good enough condition to see that it was once primo herb. And the shaman’s gear buried along with the mummy suggests that the ancient ganja was for healing or spiritual purposes.29
One of the heirs to Aryan traditions was a wide-ranging nomadic people known to us as the Scythians. Also proficient with horses, around 600 BC these warrior-shamans swept out from their Central Asian homelands and conquered a vast swath of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Along with their horsemanship and prowess in battle, the Scythians were known for wearing tall, conical hats, sometimes covered with mystical symbols, and they were frequently covered in tattoos. Their culture was based heavily on the use of cannabis for food, fiber, medicine, and religion. The Scythians had no written language but left behind a variety of intricately created art objects that tell stories through pictograms. Their principal deity was Tabiti, a goddess of fire, cannabis, and horses, not surprisingly. The Scythians were known by a variety of names in the languages of the people they encountered, including the Saka, the Ashkenazi, and the Haomavarga or “haoma-gatherers.” In turn, their word for their favorite herb was kannabis, which comes down to us today almost unchanged.
In 450 BC, the Greek writer Herodotus described a Scythian funeral rite in which mourners gathered in a small tent. A bronze cauldron was filled with cannabis and heated. The tent would fill with cannabis vapor and the participants would cry out in ecstasy. Archaeological finds have confirmed the use of cauldron-vaporizers, some of them weighing up to seventy-five pounds and still containing residue of Scythian ganja.
Among the Scythian warriors were the enaries, shamans and magicians who used cannabis to induce trance and prophesy. The enaries were mostly men who dressed in women’s clothing and uttered their pronouncements in high-pitched voices. The cross-dressing symbolized crossing between the earthly world and the world of spirit.
Also found in the remains of ancient Scythian camps were devices for inhaling smoke on a more personal basis. These did not seem to be connected to a particular ritual and it is theorized that they were for recreational use.30
Throughout the range of the Scythian empire, we find all three types of cannabis and it is suspected that they used the sativas for fiber and food, the indica for medicine, and the Ruderalis for spiritual and recreational purposes. The Scythians spread cannabis and its use throughout the then-known world. When they began to settle down, the Scythians merged with the indigenous populations in the Middle East, India, Europe, and the British Islands.31
Elements of cannabis culture and ritual passed from the Scythians to, among many others, the Thracians. The nomadic Thracians became known for their ability to produce fine hemp cloth. They also continued the Scythian tradition of weed smoke prophecy. Much of the prophetic fun was associated with their deity, Dionysus, who was a Thracian pothead before he became a Greek wino. Among the Thracians, the shamans who danced and used cannabis to enter ecstatic trance were known as kapnobatai, “those who walk in smoke.” 32
The list of cultures influenced by the Scythians is lengthy, representing most of the inhabitants from the Celtic islands to India. For our purposes, an important Scythian connection would be with the ancient Semites. The Scythians rode into Judea around 625 BC and thereafter had a long history fighting beside and trading with the people of Judea and surrounding nations. The Bible records the use of an herb called kaneh-bosem, which, in days gone by, was translated as “sweet cane” and thought to be the calamus plant, a marsh grass that yields a fragrant, but not easily psychoactive, essential oil. Several historians have argued that kaneh-bosem was, instead, an Aramaic adoption of the Scythian word “kannabis,” which does a better job of explaining the apparently entheogenic qualities of the holy anointing oil made from it.33
In the book of Exodus, it is forbidden to anoint anyone other than priests with the oil and priests who had been anointed were forbidden to leave the temple while high. Anything that the oil touched would become sacred and the anointing rite was later used to consecrate the Hebrew kings, who were literally drenched in the stuff. In Exodus, there is an account of Moses burning the oil as incense in an enclosed temple-tent to get some advice from his deity, a practice very similar to the rituals of the Scythians.34 The Torah refers to the pillar of smoke that arose from Moses’s incense as the Shekinah.
Meanwhile, back in Persia, Zoroaster returned from a trip to the haoma temple in Bactria (the same one later excavated by archaeologists) with revelations about a new religion based around the haoma rite.35 The Zoroastrians celebrated their haoma rite in praise of Mithra, and with Zoroaster’s new revelations fresh in hand, things started to change. While some historians maintain that Zoroaster prohibited the use of haoma, the rite persisted and, in fact, is still practiced by Zoroastrians today. Verses in the Avesta show that Zoroaster spoke in praise of haoma but against mada, an intoxicant that some writers have associated with haoma but may have been a very different drug altogether.36 Over time, it seems that the original psychoactive ingredient was removed from the sacrament, perhaps an attempt to reserve direct mystical experience for a priest caste, or to differentiate Zoroastrianism from the surrounding indigenous shamanic traditions. The rite is still practiced today, but the haoma is made from ephedra or Syrian rue, without the cannabis and without the mystical depth described in the ancient texts. The word “magi” was originally the term applied to the caste of priestly Avestans into which Zoroaster was born, and who probably kept the original, psychoactive haoma ritual for themselves long after it was prohibited for lay Zoroastrians.37 In a sense, at least etymologically, cannabis may have been at the very origins of what we now call magick.
Scholars largely agree that Christianity incorporated quite a bit of mythology and practice from Zoroastrianism, with many parallels to be noted between Mithra and Jesus Christ. I’ll leave that for a class on comparative religion, but I can highlight some of the juicy, ganja-related bits. Initiates into the cult of Mithra would be taken through a seven-step process, each step likely being an experience derived from a plant drug, including, of course, the haoma. The seven sacraments of Mithra worshippers remain in their modern form as the seven sacraments of the Roman Catholic church, which still include among them the Eucharist and the anointing oil. Jesus himself is described in the New Testament as using the anointing oil to heal and cast out demons. Indeed, the name “Christ” itself comes from chrism, anointing oil, and means “the anointed one.” 38
At the Last Supper, Jesus lifts the sacraments and offers up soma. While this is usually taken as the Greek word for “body,” it seems odd that J. C., who was speaking Aramaic in the early texts, would insert a Greek word. If the Eucharistic cup contained a psychoactive ingredient, as a number of historians have suggested, then Jesus was making a pun, intentional or not. The modern Catholic Mass may easily be considered as a carryover or a reflection of the original soma/haoma sacrament, with placebos replacing the historically more potent “body of the god.” 39
Back in India, oceans of bhang were still being poured as offerings and consumed in honor of the gods, but the deities were shifting around. Indra, fond of his soma, was falling out of favor and Shiva, another pre-Hindu deity who may have originated with the Indo-Europeans or the Scythians, was gaining favor. Shiva, the lord of yoga, among many other titles, gained a seminal place in every version of the Hindu creation myth. Some scholars have even argued that Shiva is really a continuation or slight alteration of Indra with the names changed to protect the very, very high.
Another change that happened along with the shift in deities is that soma became forbidden except for use by the priests. Oddly, bhang remained in common use. What was the difference? Apparently a ritual was needed to transform the cannabis infused milk into the sacred beverage.40 We likely see the vestiges of the soma transubstantiation in the Roman Catholic mass, in which a ritual transforms wine and crackers into the flesh and blood of the god.
Amrita was the elixir of immortality of the gods, a vast ocean of milk that needed to be pressed and churned, just as a bowl of soma might be prepared, only on a godly scale, creating the world itself. The churning was dangerous. The amrita was poisoned and it fell to Shiva, and a snake, to purify the milky ocean. And it was messy. When the sacred nectar spattered from the heavens, wherever a drop landed, a cannabis plant would grow. Shiva found the plants and gave them to humans so they might experience delight, courage, and heightened sexual pleasure. Shiva is also the master of yoga and with his guidance the yogi might achieve good health, long life, and visions of the gods through the use of ganja. Even today, dreadlocked sadhus consecrate their smoke to Shiva as a meditation practice and bowls of bhang are churned and purified in Shiva’s honor.41
Again, nearly everywhere cannabis traveled on planet Earth, it was adopted for spiritual, meditation, or magical use. When it made its way into Africa, it was immediately welcomed by the local shamans. Medicinal, spiritual, and recreational use is documented throughout the continent. In Zambezi, tribal ceremonies are similar to those of the Scythians with participants inhaling vapors from cannabis heated upon an altar. The Kasai tribes of the Congo treat the cannabis spirit as a deity who protects against physical and spiritual harm. The Kasai also use cannabis ritually, smoking to seal deals and treaties. The use of cannabis both ritually and recreationally goes back centuries among the Hottentots, Bushmen, and Kaffirs.42 Among the Twa in Rwanda, cannabis is said to make a connection to the ancestors—who also used cannabis incense in their rituals.43
In the Arabic world, cannabis has a long association with the mystical Sufi traditions. While Islamic doctrine specifically forbids the use of alcohol, some sects adopted hashish as a tool to enter states of religious ecstasy and meditative wonder. Some Sufi dervishes, much like the Shiva sadhus, would renounce worldly possessions, live by begging, and smoke copious quantities of hashish while praying and meditating.
The moniker “The Green One” was applied by Sufis to both cannabis and a saint who embodied the spirit of the plant, al-Khidr or Khizr. In some traditions, Khidr was an alternative name for the prophet Elijah and in others he seems a version of the dying and resurrected vegetation deities that we find in many mythologies. He is dismembered and then not only restored but made immortal by the water of life. Getting high was referred to as “a visit from Khidr.” It is likely that the Khidr legends predate Islam altogether and may be a carryover from Avestan/Zoroastrian traditions that once flourished in the same part of the world.44
Many of these traditions still survive in a variety of forms. In Morocco, the Joujouka tribes, who lived isolated in a mountainous region for hundreds of years, claim descent from an early Sufi group. Their tradition of smoking kif all night while playing music, dancing, and invoking their deity, Boujeloud, harks back to ecstatic Sufi prayer methods, though it seems to have fused with local Pagan mythology.45
When we examine the historical evidence honestly, it really does seem that a shared fiber in the origins of many world religions was the magick herb cannabis.
18. Schultes et al. Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers. Healing Arts Press, 2001.
19. Sagan, Carl. The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence. Ballantine Books, 2012.
20. Ratsch, 2001.
21. Clarke and Merlin, 2013.
22. “Who is Ma Gu?” Way of Infinite Harmony, 2019. https://www.wayofinfiniteharmony.org/who-is-magu/.
23. Clarke and Merlin, 2013.
24. Bennett, Chris. Cannabis and the Soma Solution. Trine Day, 2010.
25. E.C.D.Q. “Haoma’s Identifying Features,” The Church of Cognizance, 2006. http://danmary.org/tiki/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=2.
26. Bennett, 2010.
27. Rig Veda, 9th mandala.
28. Anthony, David W. The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World. Princeton University Press, 2007.
29. Viegas, Jennifer. “World’s Oldest Marijuana Stash Totally Busted,” Discovery News, December 3, 2008. http://www.nbcnews.com/id/28034925/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/worlds-oldest-marijuana-stash-totally-busted/.
30. Bennett, 2010.
31. Ratsch, 2001.
32. Bennett, 2010.
33. Benet, Sula. “Early Diffusion and Folk Uses of Hemp.” Cannabis and Culture, Rubin, Vera & Comitas, Lambros (eds.). De Gruyter Mouton, 1975.
34. Russo, 2011. Bennett, 2010.
35. Bennett, 2010.
36. Eliade, Mircea. A History of Religious Ideas, Vol. 1. University of Chicago Press, 1978.
37. Oxford English Dictionary. Bennett, 2010.
38. Random House Unabridged Dictionary, Random House, Inc., 2019.
39. Bennett, 2010.
40. Ibid.
41. Schultes, 2001.
42. Ibid.
43. Ratsch, 2001.
44. Bennett, 2010.
45. Woodruff Leary, Rosemary. “The Master Musicians” in Paul Krassner (ed.), Psychedelic Trips for the Mind, reprinted 2000; Leary, Timothy. Jail Notes. New York, 1971.