Veiled Goddess Plant

Veiled Goddess Plant

In the raw wilderness, the wildest of all the plants was the seedless mushroom, which defied cultivation. More than a sacred plant it was the living goddess. While the earliest Phrygian reference to Kybele dates from the 7th century BCE, evidence shows previous cultures likely worshiped a maternal goddess figure. 

"Up until c. 1200 BCE, Troy was considered the stronghold of the Bosporus, but when Troy fell so did the Hittite Empire. The Thracian conquerors from the Balkans were ancestors of the Phrygians. (CAA: 19.) The ancient Phrygians settled in central and western Anatolia and Midas was one of their illustrious sovereigns. King Midas advanced a major civilization, which was strongly influenced by Neo-Hittites and Urartians (Vannics/Chaldeans). (ACRT: 14.) The Capital was Gordion and the National Goddess was Phrygian Matar Cybele plus her son – lover Attis." (CAA: 18-20; MG: 398-400.)
https://www.academia.edu/36598140/171._750-650_Cybele_and_King_Midas_Anatolia.pdf?email_work_card=view-paper

Hallucinogenic mushrooms have been found in the remains of the southeast European Vinca culture from the Danube, dated to 5000 BCE. Did the practice move through Thrace to Phyrgia or was it indigenous?

Carl Ruck (2018) makes such a connection in "Thracian Mystery Religions." "Ancient Thrace, the region of the northern Greek lands south of the Rhodope Mountains that border modern Bulgaria, is associated with several religious cults that surface in Classical Greek culture.":
http://www.sexusjournal.com/FileUpload/bs566760/File/ruck-thracian-mystery-religions-sexus-fall-2018-v3-no-10.pdf

"The ancient Mystery mythological tradition links northern mainland Greece and the islands of Samothrace and Lemnos with Troy, Persia, Boeotian Thebes, Egypt, Crete, Etruscan Italy, the Peloponnesus, Athens, and the sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone at the Attic village of Eleusis. Common to this wide geographical matrix is the role of a psychoactive mushroom as a shamanic sacrament affording access to mystical
experience. The Greek Homeric tradition knew of the plant as the Homeric moly, [h]omomi, and the
haoma sacrament of the Zoroastrian Magi priests and the warrior brotherhood of Mithraism. This was expressed as a zoomorphic anthropomorphism in the figure of the Gorgon Queen Medusa, and the bovine and taurine metaphors for the Amanita muscaria mushroom. ... signifying female empowerment though expertise in medicinal and sacred drugs ...This fungal sacrament figured in the various Mystery cults of the Anatolian
Goddess and her male attendant, and in the antithetical relationship of the gods Apollo and Dionysus."

Early Anatolian inscriptions have been found and deciphered from facades, niches, arches, or other rock monuments. Some reliefs display Kybele standing in a mythical doorway, the magical gateway between the divine and regular worlds. 

Phrygian Kybele is powerful and demanding. Her mysterious cult following is centered around her lover Attis who castrated himself. How and why did the Phrygians develop this cult and elevate the fascinating deity, Kybele? 

This is a fierce androgynous goddess with a transgendered son-lover, whose original shamanic cult can be associated through her own artifacts with the use of psychoactive mushrooms, likely used since Paleolithic times. A riveting stare is consistent with a visionary state.

Mushrooms have a significant cultural history of religious use for inducing visionary, mystical or shamanic trance states. Naturally, much of what we can say about cult history is speculative, but we can speak about the effects of certain practices linked to the Anatolian mushroom-goddess with some confidence. (Attrell, 2013)

The challenge of this effort is not only mythical, but also cosmological. The blurring, or even complete disintegration, of the distinction between our subjective sense of self and the external environment under the influence of psychedelics has long been a source of fascination.

Environmental stress causes metamorphoses to accelerate. We are built on modified versions of a template furnished by ancient ancestors. Incomprehensible elements of a cult indicate proto-historical traces of archaic evolutionary stages.

The continuity of shamanic themes is lost in the mists of pre-history. Shamanism melded into the Mediterranean Mystery religions, which followed Mesopotamian and Egyptian use of mushrooms by the elite. There are suggestive artifacts such as a bas relief from Athens of Cybele presenting Attis with a 'mushroom-flower," dated to 300 B.C.E. (Umit Sayin, 2014)

Shamanic power is sexually ambiguous. The body is used as an active component of participation in rituals to engender altered states of consciousness. Psychedelics chemically modulate our sense of self, according to Natasha Mason (2020), of Maastricht University in the Netherlands.  
https://newatlas.com/science/breakthrough-psilocybin-study-neurochemical-glutamate-human-ego/?fbclid=IwAR18y_BCZbkbJk7ml06P5MmUHimxyCqcV7ABOPujYn6Ut2Bcgbxc5LmMVBA

Psilocybin also influences a mysterious brain region called the claustrum. Francis Crick (2014) suggested the claustrum may be key to our experience of consciousness, unifying and co-ordinating disparate brain areas to help generate our singular experience. "It receives input from almost all regions of cortex and projects back to almost all regions of cortex.” 
https://newatlas.com/science/psychedelic-claustrum-consciousness-brain-psilocybin-ego/?utm_source=New+Atlas+Subscribers&utm_campaign=4fb4df55bd-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_06_15_01_48&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_65b67362bd-4fb4df55bd-90498185&fbclid=IwAR2CetBEHS9pKtbSJVIzdd_6ohj6lFVofJrGUvdezCe0bn4AK5MWE8niIvU

Claustrum activity seems to orchestrate a kind of synchronized slowing down of brain activity across a number of different cortical regions. When claustrum activity is suppressed, it affects the subjective effects of psychedelic drugs. Brain networks that don’t normally communicate will suddenly spark up connections under the influence of psilocybin. It seemed to significantly alter how the claustrum communicated with a number of brain regions fundamentally involved in attentional tasks and sensory processing, and and its beneficial therapeutic outcomes. (Hardy, 2020)

Psychoactive mushrooms increase glutamate concentration levels in the medial prefrontal cortex and decrease glutamate concentration levels in the hippocampus. These modulations predict experiences of positive or negative ego dissolution based on such glutamate concentrations.

'Negatively experienced' ego dissolution is the loss of autonomy and self-control of thought processes, intentionality, decision making, and spontaneous movements. 'Positively experienced' ego dissolution is the depersonalization associated with positive emotional states, like heightened mood, sense of oneness, ecstasy, and euphoria. It marks surrender to Kybele's boundless and infinite love.