In the world’s oldest living religion, Indra is the red Lord of the Heavens who rides a white elephant—which is considerably more imposing than the pale horse from Revelations. Indra’s primary weapon is the lightning bolt and he was once a great warrior, but has become prone to drinking Soma and is often quite intoxicated as a result. The goddess Sarama makes a brief appearance in the Rig Veda when she helps Indra recover some cows stolen by Panis, a reference to a nearby Scythian tribe located in ancient Afghanistan.
Indra is the equivalent of Zeus in Greek mythology, which means the fleet-foot Sarama is Hermes, yet there’s no early image of Sarama anywhere, which seems strange for Vedic tradition. She later morphs into the “bitch of the gods” and becomes associated with dogs and hunting, but I believe she was originally a version of Sophia, the first thought of the One, who played a big role in the Gnostic tradition. In my personal cosmology Sophia represents telepathic energy, something we know exists through a phenomenon called “contact high.”
Hermes is the fastest moving god as well as the interpreter and communicator between realms. He was also a notorious prankster who could trick the other gods for the benefit of humans. He was symbolized as Venus with two wings sprouting from the sides of his helmet. I wonder how he morphed from a woman into a man, and instead of helping round up stolen cattle, suddenly Hermes is stealing Apollo’s cows in the Greek version. But then many Hindu gods seem a bit gender-confused, and Krishna looks female in many representations. The origins of Hermes can be found in Scythia, where man and goat were merged to create Pan.
Hermes is particularly important because the myths of Homer were built upon the legend of Hermes, as Odysseus was a direct descendent.
In his voyages, Odysseus learns the magic of many different psychoactive plants and substances, and even though the most obvious magic plants are probably the ones still most popular today (cannabis, poppies), one wonders why confusion still reigns over their identities. (They didn’t have coca leaf in ancient Judea, but used ephedra as the speed fix.)
I have to wonder if poor Hermes wasn’t part of the devil project manufactured by Rome. The devil became a dialectical magic show. Hermes was the god sent down to the underworld to report on that scene, and it’s interesting the devil ended up holding a trident, which was Shiva’s symbol, and later Neptune’s.
This is how sorcerers work: stealing and twisting symbols that resonate in the subconscious.
Homer describes many magic plants in the Odyssey, as well as the ingredients for the sacrament of the Eleusinian Mysteries known as Kykeon: wine, barley and goat-cheese. Later descriptions add penny-royal and honey to the caldron.
Now the secret ingredients of the Kykeon was the most closely-guarded secret in Greece, and some say Socrates was forced to commit suicide because he refused induction into the secret society while using the sacraments himself. All the inductees had to swear an oath to keep the secrets.
Since Homer was recited at every major public event, if you believe the story told today, the secret of the Kykeon was never any secret at all!
Unless, of course, Homer’s description was a diversion, which of course it was. Pennyroyal is an herb that induces abortion, and the Kykeon was shared by all.
According to Gordon Wasson, the Kykeon was made from mushrooms. So we know that must be a rabbit hole, because just about everything Wasson said about soma turned out to be a blatant lie. I find it hilarious many people are mixing wine, barley, and cheese and drinking that concoction believing they are partaking some magic brew. I fear this is a delusion on their part, not to mention the combination sounds disgusting.
I’m fairly convinced the Kykeon was non-alcoholic simply because the inductees into the society were considered among the best behaved people in Athens, known for the elegance in speech, awareness of current affairs, artistic talents and sober public behavior. But I also realize all the best musicians and performers would have been VIPs of the society, and many of them are positively Dionysian in their worship of fire water.
The real origins of Hermes lie in the Scythian *Péh2usōn, a pastoral deity, based on the Greek god Pan and the Vedic god Pūshān. Both deities are closely affiliated with goats and were worshipped as pastoral deities.[67] The minor discrepancies between the two deities can be easily explained by the possibility that many attributes originally associated with Pan may have been transferred over to his father Hermes.[67] The association between Pan and Pūshān was first identified in 1924 by the German scholar Hermann Collitz.[68][69]