The study of Western mythology was greatly impeded by the myopic Joseph Campbell, who never once wrote (nor spoke) about Scythian, Persian, Bactrian, Chinese, Middle Eastern nor Greek use of cannabis for divination. Although he spent immense time on the most obscure cultures on earth, he ignored the most influential. The foundational myths of Western Culture were born in Scythia, home to Heracles (Hercules in Rome), Prometheus, and the Holy Grail.
According to Campbell, there was no real chalice as the story was intended as a metaphor for spiritual transformation. This is absurd. The golden cup landed in what is now the Ukraine and was too hot for anyone to touch. But one boy could pick it up, and he became the first great king of the Yamnaya, and eventually morphed into Heracles. A band of seafaring Yamnaya moved south to Arcadia in Greece, received the idea of an alphabet from the Purple People (Phoenicians) and created a magnificent culture documented by Homer.
Meanwhile, back in the Ukraine, every Scythian warrior (male and female) received a ceremonial chalice. It might be bronze or silver or gold, and built around a skull cap taken from their first victim. After a battle, the tribe would return to the field and those celebrating their first kill would ceremoniously chop off a skull cap and drink blood from it. But only once, for after it was brought back home and encased and decorated, it was used to drink bhang, which became known as Soma.
This was the Scythian coming-of-age ceremony, and the tribe would have attended with great merriment. The Scythians were also great musicians, so the tribal band was likely jamming, and the priestly Ennare (men dressed as women who sang in falsetto), might have been making up songs calling out the newly minted adults in the tribe.
It was pretty easy for Scythians to run rampant over Greeks and Persians because they rode horses and fired poison arrows with composite recumbent bows that were smaller but more powerful than the Greek and Persian bows. They were trained to fire arrows with deadly accuracy practically from birth and while riding away, so they could dispatch the enemy without ever being in the line-of-fire.
I can’t stomach Campbell’s books or his videos because his analysis is complete garbage. He does backflips away from the origins of our most dominant myths, which traveled around the world quickly after the Bronze Age Collapse, replacing the local hero-gods.
Hermes was central to the Mycenaean Greeks, as he was born in Arcadia, where three temples were consecrated in his honor. He would later be welded to Egyptian mysticism and become a dominant player in the occult societies that emerged during the Middle Ages.