This summary of the pre-history of LSD is being published in anticipation of the international symposium “LSD: Problem Child and Wonder Drug”.

In addition to a great deal of published material in many fields, these notes are largely the compiled accounts of many discussions with scholars, witnesses, psychonauts, initiates, spies and acolytes and given the nature of each individual recollection, may very well contain inconsistencies and contradictions.

While I have dispensed with the customary “probably” and “very likely,” it would be advisable to consider these notes as mere starting points for further, more rigorous, investigations.

Summary of the Notes –

1) Appreciation for the psychotropic effects of ergot is older than the human race.

2) In human pre-history, ergot was extensively used as an aid for mothers in childbirth and less frequently in the death process.

3) The close association between ergot and the fertility rites at Eleusis transformed this ancient birthing application into an enduring cult practice.

4) As the dominant cult for Athens, the Eleusinian Mysteries and ergot begin to became central to critical aspects of 2000 years of Western culture.

5) One of the subjects investigated at Eleusis was the relationship between dosage of a “poison” and one’s fate. What may be medicinal at small doses can become psychotropic and then lethal at higher doses – as shaped by one’s personal relationship to the Gods.

6) Following the end of ceremonies at Eleusis after Goths destroyed the sanctuary around 400, these ergot-based initiatory practices were preserved in the Greek community in Constantinople and elsewhere.

7) Early crusaders carried a version of these ergot-based practices back to southern France along with the relics of St. Anthony the Hermit (desert father of monasticism) in the 11th century. Centered near Arles, on the east side of the Rhone, the hospice escaped the Albigensian Crusade.
Based around this knowledge and these artifacts, a Roman Catholic monastic order known as the Hospital Order of St. Anthony (aka Antonians or Antonites) was established under the rule of Augustine in 1247 and spread its influence from London to Jerusalem and beyond. According to Sandoz’ corporate history, the Antonites eventually had two hospitals in Basel.

9) This Order was assigned the public role of countering the effects of ergot poisoning, otherwise known as St. Anthony’s Fire, through operating what may have been the first worldwide pharmacy as well as the specialized use of amputation. According to The Catholic Encyclopedia, the order was responsible for caring for the sick of the papal household.

10) Privately this Order continued to practice initiations, with the acceptance and participation of Church authorities, based partly on the use of ergot-derived preparations. In addition, there were various related “military” orders related to the Antonites, including the Knights of Saint Anthony.

11) There is widespread artistic evidence of these religious practices, particularly in the work of Antonite-related painters Hieronymus Bosch (see his c.1500 “Temptation of St. Anthony” triptych in Lisbon) and Mathis Neithardt (aka “Grunewald,” see the c.1515 Isenheim Altar polyptich, now in Colmar.) W.A. Stoll later mentions the Isenheim Altar in his 1947 account of the effects of LSD.

12) In the 18th century, the Roman church became increasingly threatened by “secret” initiatory societies — as shown by the 1738 order excommunicating Catholics who belonged to Masonic Lodges — culminating in the anti-clerical role of the “Illuminati” in the French Revolution.

13) In 1777, after having been nearly wiped out during the Reformation, a failed reform of the order in 1630 and confiscation of its properties in the French Revolution, the Antonites were canonically merged into the Knights of Malta, which in turn was broken up (and partially re-Romanized) after Napoleon captured Malta in 1798.

14) There is evidence that these Mysteries-derived and at times ergot-based initiatory practices did not disappear with the Antonites and found their way into 19th century Theosophical and Rosicrucian groups as well as those involved in “Greek” oriented classical studies.

15) In 1847 at Columbia College in New York, the “Greek” fraternity St. Anthony Hall (aka Delta Psi) was formed to continue this “secret tradition” and Col. Henry Steele Olcott — who was later join with Madame Blavatsky to form Theosophy — was one of four 1849 pledges at Columbia.

16) In 1866 at the University of Leipzig, Frederich Nietzsche and Erwin Rohde became ergot-based initiates of a “neo-Eleusinian” group that was devoted to understanding early Greek culture by actually living as the Greeks did.

17) In 1872 in Basel, Nietzsche published his first work, “Birth of Tragedy,” based on his close association with his mentor and prominent Basel citizen Johann Jacob Bachofen — in which he counterpoises Dionysis (i.e. Eleusis) with Apollo.

18) Nietzsche, who was removed from the streets of Turin in 1889 and presumed to have “gone mad,” was known to have been a wide-ranging drug taker, in part for his infirmities. Among the compounds citied is a preparation that is presumed to have included cannabis and opium as well as an ergot-derivative, ostensibly meant for migraines.

19) In 1896 in Wiemar, German Theosophist Rudolf Steiner was invited to become Nietzsche’s archivist by his sister, giving him access to Nietzsche’s private papers. Steiner had previously studied the esoteric aspects of Goethe’s work and had begun publishing his own theosophical writings in 1894.
20) In 1897 in Munich, Ludwig Klages (another Leipzig graduate), Stefan George, Otto Gross and others started a group known as the “Cosmic Circle.” Explicitly based on recreating “Eleusinian” cult activity and implicitly on using drugs to achieve “ecstatic” states, the circle also popularized the works of Bachofen and Nietzsche.

21) In 1918 in Basel, Sandoz scientist Arthur Stoll isolates the ergot alkaloid Ergotamine, which is later offered as Gynergen, intended to be used in birthing to stop post-pardum hemorrhaging as well as for severe migraine headaches.

22) In 1922 in Dornach, Rudolf Steiner’s original wooden Goetheanum “cathedral” is burned to the ground, presumed to be on orders from Steiner’s rival “magician, ” Adolf Hitler. Steiner’s Anthroposophy continues to have its headquarters outside Basel to this day, following Steiner’s death in 1925.

23) In 1927 in Basel, Sandoz hired 21 year-old Albert Hofmann to work as an organic chemist. Hofmann, who was born in 1906 in Baden and studied in Zurich, later describes a series of natural “mystical” experiences he had as a youth, perhaps similar to those described by Capt. Al Hubbard in his youth.