The Routledge
Companion to Ecstatic Experience in the Ancient World – Diana Stein, Sarah
Kielt Costello, Karen Polinger Foster, Editors (2022)
While I treasure and
adore all books, it is books such as this one that thrill me the most because
of the amazing amount of information included within. Having read books on shamanism, ancient
humans, and myth creation recently, I was thrilled when this book appeared in
my hands while browsing the stacks.
The editors of this work, Diana Stein, Sarah
Kielt Costello, and Karen Polinger Foster have provided the world with a
magnificent resource exploring a seldom-analyzed part of our collective human
past, that being the use and exploitation of what the writers term “Altered
States of Consciousness,” ASC for short.
For far too long archeologists and anthropologists saw ancient man
through our own modern “enlightenment” principles, ignoring all “subjective”
experience such as trance, spirit possession, hallucinations, etc., in favor of
empirically verifiable data. This
created a vast chasm of ignorance regarding the spiritual and mental lives of
our ancestors. It is the aim of this
work to rectify that and to help guide the exploration of our distant human
past towards a better understanding of the role ecstatic experiences had in the
shaping of our species. It is an
impressive achievement.
Formatted much like a
textbook, each section presents a case for the omnipresence and importance of
ecstatic experience in understanding the cultures of our ancient past. The first section of three chapters, titled
“Setting the Stage,” explores the history of ASC dismissal by biased
researchers and explorers of our past, providing a firm foundation upon which
to expand the explorations each writer takes in turn, and showing how universal
these ecstatic experiences were. These
chapters also expand on what used to be the definition of “ecstasy” to include
all types of societal, spiritual, and shamanic altered states of
consciousness. The third chapter of the
first section aims to provide empirical models to define ritual practices and
ecstatic experiences, from ancient man to today’s modern world. It helps place these studies, and ASC’s
themselves, within the greater study of humanity and its development, something
which mainstream archeology and anthropology has dismissed for centuries.
The second section seeks
to elucidate the evidence we have for the various types of psychoactive
compounds, plants, and substances used by our ancestors to achieve ASC
states. Evidence from archeological
digs, mass-spectrometry, and other modern tools is given to show the wide
variety of ingestible, smokable, or otherwise applied natural materials used in
ecstatic rituals. The full gamut of
intoxicants is analyzed, from botanical specimens and residue found within
sealed jars, to the early use of fermentation to create drinkable alcohol, to
the various mind-altering plants used by the Babylonians, Hittites and early
Egyptians, all recorded in their language and art. To emphasize the communal use of these
substances, the final chapter of section 2 discusses a type of ceramic
container found throughout ancient sites.
The Ring-Kernoi is a device consisting of a ceramic tube, shaped into a
donut, with four to five adorned containers attached to the ring. Looking at these artifacts through the lens
of ASC experience, the author describes their use in ritual communion. Each adorned section contained wither a
different psychoactive compound, whether opium, cannabis, mandrake, etc., meant
to be smoked in sequence and passed around, or they contained different liquid
substances which, when mixed up in the Ring-Kernoi, created an intoxicating
brew capable of easing the passage into ecstasy. For our ancestors, the divine, experienced
through ecstatic states, was a communal activity, a very important way to
define their culture and self-identity as individual groups.
The third section of
this awesome book goes into detail exploring the numinous world of ecstatic
experiences, as described by ancient humans in their own words. Starting with a dive into the most ancient
archeological sites we have found, such as Çatalhöyük, and the discovery of a communal
imbibing of alcohol, whether plain or adulterated with other psychotropic
substances, which took place in massive megalithic spaces, many of them
underground or only accessible through narrow openings. These are the first evidence for the types of
communal, spiritual experiences out of which the human need for religious
communion arose. Delving into ancient
rituals for the goddess Ishtar, the writings concerning the dead from Egypt,
and the ASC’s described by the ancient residents of Crete and the Minoan
civilization that followed, helps us grasp the constant flow of ideas and
wisdom that propelled our humanity forward.
From these ancient civilizations we then move onto ritual experience in
ancient Greece, and the various cults and oracles which took advantage of ASC’s
to promote their ideology. Ecstatic
experiences were a critical part of many cults, including those of the healer
Asclepius, and the gods Apollo and Dionysius. As with all roads, the section
ends with an analysis of the ecstatic funeral processions recorded from ancient
Rome. These chapters help bridge the gap
between our assumed knowledge of the ancients towards a more factual and
historical basis, drawing from the many written records we have of Greece, Rome
and their neighbors at the time.
The final section of
this great work focuses on the evidence we have from our collective past
pointing to, or describing, the experiences of the “Ecstatic” mind. This section builds on all the previous ones
and shares great insights into such topics as spirit possession and prophetic
ecstasy as described in Mesopotamian texts, the psychedelic art from the
Aegean, and the progression from personal or communal ecstatic experience to
that of rigorous, sacerdotally-dictated ASC’s utilized by the very powerful in
all societies to control the masses (think of a modern Catholic service, with
its rituals, chants, music, incense, and repetition, intended to draw the congregation
together into a shared experience). The
insights found in these final chapters help us understand the evolution and
propagation of personal ecstatic experiences into the collective religions we
see all around us in our “modern” world.
This book is a
masterpiece of research and science. I
hope to see it used as a foundational text, allowing younger researchers to
continue down the same path of exploration, and guiding the elders in these
fields towards new ideas and possibilities for scholarship. When we as a culture disdain “unsavory”
aspects of our past, dismissing wholesale anything to do with mysticism, or our
long-standing use of chemicals, fauna, trance, song, or rhythms to achieve
altered states of consciousness, we negate aspects of ourselves that help us
understand each other. It creates
divisiveness where these old rituals and experiences sought to create
inclusivity. It is such a shame that our
modern world sees everything we do as the pinnacle of human achievement, all
the while forgetting that for most of our human existence we have all had the
capability of communing with the divine, of understanding ourselves and our
place in the world around us, and of accepting that reality is far greater than
the basic facts we all choose to agree upon.
This book is a great step in the right direction, and worthwhile reading
for anyone interested in humanity’s psychological and spiritual development.
(This great resource can be purchased here: https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Companion-to-Ecstatic-Experience-in-the-Ancient-World/Stein-KieltCostello-PolingerFoster/p/book/9781032108483 )
