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Comment by dr_dshiv | Hacker News Reader

There is zero literary evidence from Ancient Greek, Latin, Assyrian or Chinese sources. Meaning: it was a long-standing taboo by then.

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The book "The Road to Eleusis" has some proof, obviously it's a biased interpretation but it's still interesting to consider.

Road to Eleusis is convincing. But it is about ergot rot on barley, not psilocybin mushrooms which grow naturally all over Europe.

You should definitely read about Ancient Indian drink Soma. Soma had a cognate Haoma in Persian as well. And psychoactive sources have a long association with gods such as Shiva. This continues till modern day among his most ardent followers. You will find wide variation in what ancient humans would consider taboo.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma_(drink)

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20170307-the-intoxicating...

Literary canons are not everything that was ever written, only what people decided was valuable to keep copying. Until more durable parchment and paper were introduced, everything on Europe was written on papyrus, which quickly decays on more humid weather and has to be continuously maintained by copying. It's possible that it was written about, but wasn't a super popular topic in the intervening time and the texts didn't reach us.

Again, points to taboo over lack of knowledge. Think about it — really, no one knew about psilocybin mushrooms till 1957?

the mexican lady shaman that showed gordon wasson knew it before 1957 (life article :)

Right—to be specific— it wasn’t part of European culture till 1957

Norwegian here. I find that hard to believe considering they [Psilocybe Semilanceata] grow all over the place in much of Northern Europe.

That’s exactly what I’m saying! Find some old timer who can speak about his gramma’s mushroom tea and it would be a breakthrough. There is zero evidence. Ok, one medical report from the 1850s in England from a family that accidentally ate them. But that just proves the silence because it wasn't a known phenomenon to the doctor (or the family).

The only explanation that makes sense to me is a massive multicultural taboo against magic mushrooms.

I would agree with you if we were talking about a different psilocybe, but in this specific case:

You have to eat fairly substantial amounts (assume 90%ish water, you probably want at least a gram of dry mushroom) of a mushroom that tastes awful, is tiny, upsets your stomach with indigestible matter, and you'd need to eat them in a fairly short window of time. I don't see it as particularly unlikely that we only realised here after getting it from elsewhere, the Norwegian forests have a pretty substantial list of better options.

As a counterpoint, most or all of that is also true of the majority of entheogens with deep cultural roots, like Ayahuasca. Amanita Muscaria is another abundant mushroom that is even toxic if prepared incorrectly, and yet has a long history of use in shamanistic cultures(though not in viking culture, as is widely misbelieved). I'm not going to speculate much about the extent of psilocybe semilanceata usage in Germanic/Sami cultural history, other than to say that it would likely have become taboo due to Christianity, and therefore went unrecorded.

I always assumed Oracles took hallucinogens (based on no proof). Does anyone know if there’s evidence for this?

Appears there were toxic gases in the caves. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/greece-de...

Or maybe for them, it's like drinking water, no interest for them to talk about something they consume "naturally"

I’m open to this idea, but they talk about alcohol plenty which would suggest it’s not the case.

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