Chapter 8. Soma, Haoma, Entheogens and Sacred Kingship

Chapter 6 described the pressing of haoma/soma as the central Indo-Iranian rite and noted that Zarathushtra seems to have condemned it (see ch. 6). This chapter takes up two questions left open there. The first is what the drink was. The library’s sources propose fly-agaric, ephedra, Syrian rue (Peganum harmala), cannabis or a mixture, and they disagree on whether it produced visions at all. The second is political. In India and Iran the drink belonged to a ritual order that came to serve warriors and kings, while in Mesopotamia and Egypt the ruler stood between gods and people as chief sacrificer and keeper of cosmic order. Together they show control of ritual as an early foundation of religious power.

The problem of the plant

Both names derive from a Proto-Indo-Iranian *sauma. The reference shelf describes the drink as “a concoction of multiple ingredients instead of one plant”, but notes that “the primary botanical plant and active ingredient is debated.” Current theories favour “either Ephedra, fly-agaric mushrooms, or Syrian rue”. Ephedra is “the leading scholarly consensus”, partly because it is “called som/hom/hum in South and Central Asian languages.” Most identifications, the article warns, rest on “either linguistic evidence, comparative pharmacology, or reflected ritual use, but not all three.” The Rigveda calls soma “a God for Gods” and ties it to Indra, who “appears to have [drunk it] before battle”. For that reason both stimulants and visionary plants appear among the candidates [Wikipedia: Botanical identity of soma–haoma]. Living ritual does not settle the matter. South Indian Srauta Brahmins use Cynanchum acidum, and Zoroastrians use ephedra, which Luke A. Myers regards as a later stand-in that replaced “the more controversial and psychoactive plant Peganum Harmala” [Myers, Gnostic Visions, #70923, Part II].

Wasson’s fly-agaric

The modern debate begins with R. Gordon Wasson: “My candidate for the identity of Soma is Amanita muscaria … This is the first time that a mushroom has been proposed in the Soma quest. The fly-agaric is an inebriant but not alcoholic” [Wasson, Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality, #74742, ch. II “The Fly-Agaric of Eurasia”]. His chapter titles lay out the argument: “Soma Was Not Alcoholic”, “The Roots, Leaves, Blossoms, Seed of Soma; Where Are They?”, “Soma Grew in the Mountains”, “The Two Forms of Soma” [Wasson, #74742, contents]. This contradicts Moulton, who described fermented soma as “strongly alcoholic in character” (see ch. 6).

The most distinctive part of Wasson’s case concerns urine. He reads the verse “With those two Forms … O Soma, thou reignest over all things, O Pavamāna” as describing the pressed juice and a “Second Form: Taken in the urine of the person who has ingested the fly-agaric in the First Form”, as Siberian users were reported to do. He argues that the Vedic commentators, “knowing nothing of the fly-agaric”, misread it. He also cites Louis Renou’s rendering of a line in which “lords with full bladders piss [Soma]” [Wasson, #74742, “The Two Forms of Soma”]. He sets out his conclusion as a conditional: if “Soma was the fly-agaric”, then the amrta of the Aryans was “until only yesterday the divine inebriant still currently consumed by the shamans over vast reaches of Siberia” [Wasson, #74742].

The reference shelf records the objections. In 1971 John Brough preferred ephedrine as “a more plausible preparation for warriors about to go into battle than the fly-agaric, which is a depressant”. Ilya Gershevitch replied in 1974 that small doses of fly-agaric are stimulating. J. P. Mallory treated Wasson’s mountains and the missing plant parts as metaphor, and Terence McKenna proposed Psilocybe cubensis instead [Wikipedia: Botanical identity of soma–haoma]. Schultes, Hofmann and Rätsch leave the question open: it “is possible that Fly Agaric is identical to the Vedic wonder-drug Soma”, yet “Today Ephedra (Ephedra gerardiana) is called somalata, ‘soma plant'” [Schultes, Hofmann & Rätsch, Plants of the Gods, #84459, “The Chemistry of Fly Agaric”].

Ephedra versus the visionary hypotheses

The ephedra case rests on Parsi practice and on what the texts emphasise. Harry Falk (1989) argued that both soma and haoma “were said to enhance alertness and awareness”. He found “nothing shamanistic or visionary either in early Vedic or in Old Iranian texts” and saw “no need to look for a plant other than Ephedra, the one plant used to this day by the Parsis.” Jan Houben, summing up a Leiden workshop in 1999, held that ephedra’s “status as a serious candidate … still stands.” Viktor Sarianidi reported ephedra, poppy and cannabis residues at sites of the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC), but independent analyses could not confirm them [Wikipedia: Botanical identity of soma–haoma].

Myers takes the opposite view and follows David Flattery and Martin Schwartz. In his account ephedra “is a stimulant with no psychoactive properties”. It replaced Peganum harmala “during or before the early Islamic era”, and harmal was “the only plant known to grow in the region that contains psychoactive properties.” Myers reports that, according to Pahlavi accounts, the original haoma “brought about a condition outwardly resembling sleep in which visions … were seen” and was “the primary source of revelation in the ancient Iranian religion”. He compares Islamic-era lore about isfand (harmal) with Avestan haoma. Both were instituted by founding figures, endorsed by God, drove demons from the house and gave courage. He also reads the Hom Yasht line “May thy intoxications … not move me about as a cow’s trembling” as describing harmal’s effect on cattle [Myers, #70923, Part II, “Identification of Zoroastrian Haoma”]. The reference shelf adds that harmal, an MAO-inhibitor, makes an “ayahuasca” analogue impossible to exclude “a priori” [Wikipedia: Botanical identity of soma–haoma].

Mark S. Ferrara puts cannabis at the centre. He reports that Christian Rätsch, S. Mahdihassan, and Robert Clarke with Mark Merlin “argue that soma contained a mixture of Cannabis indica and Ephedra gerardiana”. Whether fly-agaric was added or was itself soma, “we may never know.” He is nonetheless certain that its ritual ingestion “was a means of inducing peak-experiences” [Ferrara, Sacred Bliss, #66945, ch. 1]. For Iran, he writes that “the exact constitution of the haoma formula remains murky”. He says the spread of the Iranian word bangha shows that early Iranians knew “intoxication by hemp”, and he states that Zoroaster “undertook visionary journeys, aided by cannabis” [Ferrara, #66945, ch. 2]. Falk, reading the same Iranian corpus, finds nothing visionary in it.

The drink, the warrior and the king

Whatever the plant was, the sources place the drink inside a hierarchy. In the Rigveda “Indra, Agni, Soma, Yama, and Varuṇa are all addressed as ‘King'”. Earthly kings are “established” by Indra and “made victorious” by Soma, but they are “not viewed as divine”. Only later, in the Mānava Dharmaśāstra, does the king become “in reality a god on earth” [Wikipedia: Monarchy in ancient India]. Ferrara describes a parallel social process. The Rigveda’s rites “became the exclusive dispensation of powerful aristocrats (who used them to secure wealth, social prestige …)”. He traces the caste order to this shift and reads the Atharva Veda as “a backlash against the aristocratic elitism of the Rig Veda cult” [Ferrara, #66945, ch. 1].

The Iranian counterpart is khvarenah (farr), “a mystical radiant force emanating from men chosen by God that confers upon them both divine right of kings and the cosmic capacity to do so justly”. A king keeps it while he rules by asha and loses it when druj enters his heart. Yasht 19 names the “fortune of the kavis”, and the tradition identifies khvarenah with Haoma in the legend of Zoroaster’s birth. The reference shelf adds that Khomeini’s supporters “drew upon the concept of Farr” [Wikipedia: Khvarenah]. At Behistun, Darius I credits his nineteen battles against rivals who “falsely proclaimed [themselves] king” to “the grace of Ahura Mazda” [Wikipedia: Behistun inscription]. Part 2 (ch. 9–18) treats Achaemenid royal religion in detail.

The king as sacrificer in the river civilizations

According to the reference shelf, in many societies “kingship carried a sacral meaning and was identical with that of a high priest and judge”. Its examples are Sargon of Akkad, “deputy of Ishtar”, and Sumerian princes styled as shepherds. The same article notes that Frazer’s “myth and ritual” theory “is disputed”. It also cites the view that in India and Iran “it is royalty that is divine, not the king as an individual” [Wikipedia: Sacred king]. Paul Collins gives Mesopotamian cases. Gudea “built the house … high as a great mountain” for his god. Naram-Sin was so successful that “the people of Agade built a temple for him and he was named god of the city”, and warfare “lay at the heart of the authority of the kings of Agade” [Collins, The Sumerians, #64812].

In Egypt, formal religion “centered on the pharaohs”. They were “obligated to sustain the gods through rituals and offerings so that they could maintain Ma’at, the order of the cosmos, and repel Isfet”. After unification “the cult of the divine pharaoh became the central focus of religious activity” [Wikipedia: Ancient Egyptian religion]. Maat parallels asha/rta. Kings “inherited the duty to ensure Maat remained in place”, and “an impious king could bring about famine” [Wikipedia: Maat].

The temple-state and the origins of religious power

Collins traces the “temple-state” idea. In the 1920s Anton Deimel studied about 1,700 tablets from the Baba temple at Tello and “concluded that all of the cultivable land in the state, as well as its workforce, had belonged to the temple”. On this reading the king ran Ningirsu’s temple and the queen ran Baba’s, so that “all the people of Lagash were effectively slaves of the god”. Collins calls this “a rather extreme interpretation.” In the late 1950s Igor Diakonoff showed Deimel’s calculations to be “erroneous”. Temples owned estates “rather like medieval monasteries”, but the palace and private households also held land. The related “hydraulic state” thesis of Karl Wittfogel’s Oriental Despotism (1957) has fared no better: large irrigation works came “long after autocratic forms of government”. Collins also reports Thorkild Jacobsen’s “Primitive Democracy”, in which leaders chosen by assemblies “refused to relinquish power”. He considers it probably wrong to discount the theory entirely, since royal claims “may have been as much an aspiration as a reality” [Collins, The Sumerians, #64812, “Temple-states and hydraulic states”].

Key points

• Soma and haoma derive from *sauma. The reference shelf names ephedra as the leading identification, with fly-agaric and Syrian rue as rivals [Wikipedia].
• Wasson (#74742) argued for Amanita muscaria, denied that soma was alcoholic, and read the “two Forms” as juice and urine. Brough, Mallory and McKenna dissented.
• Falk and Houben defend ephedra and a non-visionary reading. Myers (#70923), following Flattery and Schwartz, argues for Peganum harmala and treats ephedra as a substitute.
• Ferrara (#66945) reports a cannabis–ephedra soma and places hemp at the centre of Iranian ecstatic practice.
• Soma is a “King” in the Rigveda. Ferrara describes the soma cult becoming an aristocratic preserve, and later Indian law made the king “a god on earth”.
• Iranian legitimacy rested on khvarenah, which is bound to asha and linked with Haoma. Darius credited his victories to Ahura Mazda.
• Pharaohs sustained Maat through offerings, and Mesopotamian rulers built temples and could be deified, as Naram-Sin was.
• Collins reports that Diakonoff and later surveys overturned the “temple-state” and “hydraulic state” models of how religious power began.