Dionysian Tableau at Paris Olympics Shocks Christian Conservatives Who Forget Their Past

Christian conservatives have gone on the attack about protecting their children against a segment during last night's Olympics opening ceremony in Paris depicting what was seen as a Last Supper-like tableau with a Goddess in the center and Dionysus served up on a plate. 

“[The Last Supper] is not my inspiration and that should be pretty obvious," production designer Thomas Jolly said, [in translation]. "There’s Dionysus arriving on a table. Why is he there? First and foremost because he is the god of celebration in Greek mythology and the tableau is called ‘Festivity.’”  

“He is also the god of wine, which is also one of the jewels of France, and the father of Séquana, the goddess of the river Seine. The idea was to depict a big pagan celebration, linked to the gods of Olympus, and thus the Olympics.”

Those who could only see the Last Supper in the tableau are forgetting or were never taught their history (not to mention their herstory): Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and ecstasy, was by some accounts the son of the grain goddess Demeter of the ancient Eleusinian mysteries. Those mysteries saw yearly pilgrimages of the faithful to experience communion with each other via the sacrament kykeon, thought to be a psychedelic potion. 

Marcus Tullius Cicero, the Roman orator who gave us the enduring maxim, “Let the punishment fit the crime” wrote: 

"For it appears to me that among the many exceptional and divine things your Athens has produced and contributed to human life, nothing is better than those [Eleusinian] mysteries. For by means of them we have transformed from a rough and savage way of life to the state of humanity, and have been civilized.” 

The Last Supper and the Catholic Mass are likely re-enactments of the Mysteries, with participants munching mushrooms (per Joseph Allegro) and nowadays partaking of communion hosts in which the rye was not permitted to go moldy and psychoactive. Dionysus took the sacred out of the Mysteries when debauchery took hold, with wine containing only alcohol and not the more interesting and holy potions the ancients drank. 

"The foundations of the Catholic Church are literally built upon Dionysus," writes Brian Murarescu in his book The Immortality Key. Harkening to The Dionysian Gospel by Dennis McDonald, he relates how Jesus's first miracle as recorded by John, turning water into wine at the Wedding of Cana, equated Jesus with Dionysus as the new God of Ecstasy.  

Ancient wines and beers often contained other psychoactive substances. Picking up on scholar Dorothy Irving's interpretation of the Fractio Panis fresco in the Roman Catacomb of Priscilla as depicting female figures breaking bread together ceremonially (shown), Murarescu concludes, "Before Jesus generations of women brewed the graveyard beers and mixed the graveyard wines in the Indo-European ritual that spread east and west of Stone Age Anatolia, the 'ritual act of communion' that was 'by women for women.' After Jesus there were many women who dominated the house churches and catacombs that defined the faith, offering a safe haven for the old Greek sacrament that needed shelter from the wilderness."

Once men got hold of the sacraments, war and hedonism took hold over from spiritualism and communion, and humankind has never recovered. The Eleusinian Mysteries were systematically targeted by the Roman senate starting in 186 BC. "The idea of the God of Ecstasy obliterating all loyalty to family and country was not welcome in a Roman Empire in the thick of nation building. Similarly the idea of making visionary wine available to the poor folks and women of the 99 percent was just as offensive to the 1 percent of the religious establishment," Muraresku writes.

In The Power of Myth, Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell had this exchange:

MOYERS: Do you ever think that it is this absence of the religious experience of ecstasy, of joy, this denial of transcendence in our society, that has turned so many young people to the use of drugs?


CAMPBELL: Absolutely, that is the way in.


MOYERS: The way in?


CAMPBELL: To an experience.


MOYERS: And religion can do that for you, or art can’t do it?


CAMPBELL: It could, but it is not doing it now. Religions are addressing social problems and ethics instead of the mystical experience.

Modern society demonizes what was once a religious experience: the partaking of psychedelic plants. Communion has now denigrated into a hollow ceremony performed by a cult, the Catholic church, that has a problem with pedophilia. And laws against marijuana and other drugs have sent teenagers trying untested and unregulated substances for the experience they naturally seek. No wonder they’re confused.

It’s time we came to grips with the fact that adolescents will forever demand the kind of rite-of-passage experience that entheogens provide. Instead of offering information and guidance to our youth, we instead try to shelter them from their own history, and natural inclinations, to their own detriment and that of society.

Of Usha, Kamala, and the Hindu Kush

J.D. and Usha Vance at their Hindu wedding. 

Both our Vice President (and now likely Presidential candidate) Kamala Harris and Usha Chilukuri Vance, the wife of Republican Vice Presidential Candidate JD Vance, have roots in the Hindu religion, which has sacred connections to cannabis. 

"The academic study of Indic religions, and of yoga, has been intimately tied to questions regarding the role of psychoactive substances from an early stage. This is particularly with respect to soma, a sacred beverage utilized within the Vedic tradition," writes Stuart Ray Sarbacker, Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Philosophy at Oregon State University, in his paper "Psychoactives and Psychedelics in Yoga: Historical Contexts and Contemporary Culture."

Dr. Sarbacker continues, "The role and nature of the beverage referred to as soma in the Vedic tradition of fire sacrifice (yajña) and its purported psychoactivity has been thoroughly investigated within and outside of Indology. ... Soma is revered as a sacred beverage and as a deity, said to confer visionary experience and immortality upon the brāhmaṇa who ritually consumes it. Soma is identified as amṛta, literally the elixir of 'nondeath,' of immortality, a name resonating through the millennia of later Hindu narrative and discourse. There are various hypotheses as to the botanical identity of soma, some of the leading candidates being ephedra, peganum harmala (Syrian rue), cannabis, poppy, mead or wine, ergot, amanita muscaria (Fly Agaric mushroom), psilocybe cubensis (Magic Mushroom), and an ayahuasca analog."

Chris Bennett, Lynn Osburn & Judy Osburn write in their book Green Gold The Tree of Life: Marijuana in Magic & Religion, "Descriptions of haoma, or soma, list it as yellow or gold-like in color, the color of ripe cannabis in the Middle East and India. Source material on the subject also tells us that 'the intoxicating juice of the haoma herb found on their mountain slopes' grew in the Hindu Kush mountains and valleys, a place that is still famed for its powerful ganja."

Harris (top left) wearing a sari. 

"Cannabis use is a part of mainstream Hindu practice, prevalent during Mahāśivarātri, Durgā Pūjā, and other festivals [including Diwali] in the consumption of bhaṅgā, a mixture of cannabis, milk, and spices, which augments the festival spirit," writes Sarbacker. "Routine cannabis use is extensive among renouncer (sādhu and sādhvī) communities in India as a sacramental substance and a social glue. Some Sādhus and Sādhvīs are said to follow, per Bevilacqua, the so-called 'chillumchai' diet—combining the mildly psychedelic effect of Indian cannabis with the stimulation of tea with sugar and spices. One study found that among a subset of Sādhus present at the Paśupatināth temple in Nepal, virtually all used cannabis regularly, with a high percentage reporting its use as a support for meditation."

Sarbacker writes that the terminology of cannabis in Hindu tradition is "exclusively feminine in gender" and includes a scope of conceptualizations, including as “the root of Śiva” (śivamūla), “conquerer” (vijayā), “breaker [of disease]” (bhaṅginī), “intoxicator” (gañjā), “perfected” (siddhā), and “root of perfection” (siddhamūlikā), as well as the soma-like appellation of “sweet nectar” (madhudravā)."

Perhaps one of these Hindu women now prominent in US politics will somehow bring us back to the spiritual teachings of the soma, as well as the bhangini and ganja, and the vijaya. According to the LA Times. Shyamala Gopalan (Kamala's mother) was a Tamil Brahmin, part of priest class. Usha's mother is named for the Hindu goddess Lakshmi, also known as Kamala.

Hindu groups sought an apology from Harris's niece in 2020 for tweeting out an image of her aunt as the Hindu goddess Durga in her destroyer mode defeating Trump. The tweet said, "I am actually speechless, other than to say the first day of Navaratri was LIT." Navaratri, the festival of Durga, will be celebrated this year from October 3 - 12, in time for the election, and a new kind of October Surprise?

California State Fair Allows Cannabis Sales and Consumption For the First Time

California took the historic step of allowing cannabis sales and consumption at its State Fair in Sacramento over the weekend. The historic move drew a large crowd of enthusiasts and curious folks from across California for the opening weekend, with opportunities to sample and enjoy award-winning cannabis strains and products throughout the month. 

Embarc, the fair’s partner on the project, is hosting a dispensary and 30,000-square-foot outdoor consumption lounge space at Cal Expo, allowing fair-goers who are 21 and older to buy and try award-winning cannabis. The company operates several cannabis retailers in California and has hosted cannabis consumption spaces at festivals like Outside Lands in San Francisco. 

This is the third year the Fair has featured a cannabis exhibit and competition, but the first year that sales and consumption are allowed. This year, outside the CBD-only cannabis exhibit hall at the Fair is a "cannabis oasis," where cannabis flower and products can be purchased, and drinks and edibles can be consumed. At one end of the "oasis" fair-goers can purchase cannabis products from Embarc or, at the other end, from a group of cannabis equity companies from across the state (shown). Customers can then walk down a path to the consumption space and enjoy their purchases with others inside a huge tent. Shade, misters, and fans provide relief from the heat in both spaces, and the exhibit space is air-conditioned.