The Apples of Apollo: Pagan and Christian Mysteries of the Eucharist

by Carl A.P. Ruck, Blaise Daniel Staples, Clark Heinrich

When the apostle Paul proclaimed the new Christian Mystery to the factious congregation at Corinth, it was clear that this Eucharist was meant to replace the pagan Mystery that had been celebrated for over a millennium just a short distance away at the sanctuary of Eleusis. Christianity evolved within the context of Judaic and Hellenistic healing cults, magic, shamanism, and Mystery initiations. All four of these inevitably imply a sacred ethnopharmacology, with traditions going back to earlier ages of the ancient world. The essays in The Apples of Apollo edited by Ruck, Staples and Heinrich attempt to uncover the original food of the sacramental communion. After a preliminary review of the rites and etiquette of the sacramental wine of the god Dionysos, whom Christ would replace as sacrificial offering, the myth of Ixion (who is named for the semi-parasitic plant called mistletoe) is linked to Apollo's role in demanding human victims and the persistence of such rites in the Druidic solstice sacrifice of the "wicker man." Behind the symbolism of the mistletoe and other psychoactive plants lurks the Soma of the Vedic tradition and its botanical original, the fly-agaric mushroom. Rather than being marginal to Classical culture, the fly-agaric, and the array of metaphors its amazing transmutations suggest, is central to the myths of the Greek heroes, and in particular to the first of them all, the hero Perseus, who reformed the religion practiced at the ancient city of Mycenae.

Genres: History, Religion, Mythology, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Christianity, Spirituality

288 pages, Paperback

First published December 8, 2000

Reviews

[Federico · Rating 2 out of 5]

First disappointment of the year. Most books that are a remix of academic papers are repetitive and have consistency issues, but what the hell. This is Carl Freaking Ruck, and the thesis is a beauty: there's a current of Indian lore in Classical Greek mythology, and most of it relates to Amanita Muscaria and shamanism. Book should be amazing!

Jason as shaman, Medusa as mushroom, Apollo as the ruling deity of it all (in his older, chthonic disguise). Gardens with apples, protected by snakes—a familiar story! But the book is consistent only in Ruck's incapacity to remain focused. He jumps from myth to myth, constantly goes on side tangents, and makes it impossible to remember what he’s even talking about. I love this type of content, but it needed an editor (or a better one).

There’s a phrase I like in the tech industry: "If everything is a priority, none is." Well, if everything is a metaphor for Amanita Muscaria... nothing is.

Because there’s a point in the book by which absolutely everything in Greek mythology is a symbol for the mushroom. Mirrors? Amanita Muscaria. Flowers? Amanita Muscaria. Moses' burning bush? Amanita, of course. Sometimes a mirror is just a mirror, and sometimes it's a symbol for something else—not necessarily a psychedelic mushroom.

Then, he starts talking about alchemy, cleverly dismissing practitioners as "over-imaginative." That’s called projection, bro.