The drink taken by initiates at Eleusis, and the one part of the Mysteries that the sources describe at all. Its warrant is a scene in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter: the grieving goddess, sitting in the house at Eleusis, refuses wine and asks instead for barley meal and water mixed with glechon, and drinking it breaks her fast. Initiates repeated that act. Everything else about the rite was under an oath of silence that held for something like a thousand years, so what the drink was for, and what the initiates saw, are not recorded by anyone who knew. The word itself is ordinary; kykeon is simply a stirred mixture, and Homer has Circe serve one and Nestor's attendant mix another, neither of them sacred. Whether the Eleusinian version carried something psychoactive is argued, and the atlas records the argument rather than settling it.
Facts
Disputed
Contested or Appropriated Modern UseProposed in 1978 by R. Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann and Carl Ruck to have carried ergot, the fungus of cereal grasses from which LSD was first synthesised 3 Sourced to the subject's own accountThe kykeon was the barley-based drink consumed by initiates at the Eleusinian Mysteries before the ritual's central, secret revelation, and R. Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann and Carl Ruck proposed in The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries (1978) that it carried a psychoactive component derived from ergot, the fungus that infects barley and rye, arguing that Eleusis was itself a grain sanctuary where the association would have been directly observable, and that surviving initiate testimony describes the experience in terms consistent with a powerful altered state. Against the identification, ergot as it grows carries alkaloids that are severely toxic in the same preparation that carries any psychoactive fraction, and no technique available in antiquity for reliably separating the two has been demonstrated; the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, the earliest text naming the drink's ingredients, names only barley, water and mint; and a yearly mass initiation of many hundreds would have required reliable dosing an unreliable natural fungal contaminant could not practically supply. The method combines philological reading of the hymn with pharmacological analysis of ergot. Neither side has produced the evidence that would decide it. Sources
Textual NoteHomer uses kykeon for entirely ordinary drinks, one mixed for a wounded man in the Iliad and one served by Circe in the Odyssey, so the word carries no sacred sense of its own 2 Textual NoteThe content of the Mysteries was protected by an oath of silence that held for roughly a thousand years, so no account survives from anyone initiated. The drink is among the very few concrete details on record 3Tradition: Ancient Greek religion Sourced to the subject's own accountThis is why the kykeon carries so much interpretive weight: it is nearly the only thing about the central rite that can be discussed from evidence at all. The Mysteries are named here as a closed rite whose content was never recorded, not reconstructed. Attributions
TraditionAncient Greek religion, the Eleusinian Mysteries 1 Use
Who May Handle It ConsecrationNot consecrated; an instrument, not a consecrated object 1 Ritual ContextDrunk by initiates at Eleusis after a fast, repeating the act by which Demeter broke her own fast in the hymn, having refused wine 1Tradition: Ancient Greek religion Physical Form
Form of the SubstanceBarley meal and water stirred with glechon, a mint, as the Homeric Hymn to Demeter gives it. The word kykeon means only a stirred mixture 1Tradition: Ancient Greek religion Learn More
The Drink That Broke Demeter's Fast
The word kykeon means a stirred mixture and nothing more. Homer uses it for perfectly ordinary drinks: one is mixed for a wounded man in the Iliad, and Circe serves another in the Odyssey, into which she stirs her drug. Nothing about the term is sacred. What makes the Eleusinian kykeon matter is a single scene and the rite that scene explains.
In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter the goddess, searching for her daughter and disguised as an old woman, comes to Eleusis and sits in the house of Keleos refusing food and drink in her grief. She is offered wine and refuses it, saying it is not permitted to her, and asks instead for barley meal and water mixed with glechon, a mint. She is given it and drinks, and that ends her fast. Initiates at Eleusis drank a kykeon in their turn, and the hymn functions as the charter for that act: the initiate does what the goddess did, in the place where she did it.
Beyond this the record closes. The Mysteries were protected by an oath of silence that held for roughly a thousand years and was taken seriously enough that violating it was a capital matter. What the initiates saw, what was said and what was shown are not described by anyone who knew, and the ancient authors who mention the Mysteries at all are either outsiders or are careful to say nothing. The result is that the kykeon is one of the very few concrete details anyone has about the central rite of the Greek world, which is precisely why so much weight has been placed on it.
The drink was preceded by fasting, and the fast and the drinking were the frame of the initiation rather than incidental to it.
The Argument About Ergot
In 1978 R. Gordon Wasson, the chemist Albert Hofmann and the classicist Carl Ruck published a proposal that the Eleusinian kykeon was psychoactive, and that the agent was ergot, the fungus that grows on cereal grasses and from which Hofmann had first synthesised LSD. The case rests on several strands: the drink was made from barley, ergot infects barley and rye, the Mysteries produced an experience that participants described as overwhelming and transformative, and Eleusis was a grain sanctuary where the connection between the fungus and the crop would have been available to observe.
The objections are substantial and have not been met. Ergot as it grows carries alkaloids that are severely toxic, causing the convulsions and gangrene of the medieval outbreaks, and separating a psychoactive fraction from a poisonous one by any technique available in antiquity is the weak point of the argument. Critics also note that the hymn describes a specific recipe that does not mention any additional agent, that a mass initiation of many hundreds of people each year would require reliable dosing of an unreliable natural material, and that ancient descriptions of the experience are compatible with fasting, darkness, exhaustion, staging and expectation without any pharmacology at all.
Neither side can produce the evidence that would decide it, and both know which evidence that would be. No residue analysis of a vessel securely tied to the Eleusinian rite has settled the question, and the silence of the initiates guarantees that no text will.
The atlas records the proposal as debated: it has serious advocates and serious opponents, and no result has closed it.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
The Homeric Hymn to Demeter supplies the charter for the act: the goddess refuses wine and asks for barley, water and mint.
Drunk by initiates at the sanctuary, in the place where the hymn sets Demeter breaking her fast.
Attested In
Kykeon's warrant is a scene in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, in which the grieving goddess breaks her fast on the drink at Eleusis.
Belongs to Tradition
Rite Substance Of
Sources
Open Questions (1 open question)
Did the kykeon drunk by initiates at Eleusis contain a psychoactive agent?
Wasson, Hofmann and Ruck proposed in 1978 that ergot on the barley was the agent. Critics hold that ergot as it grows is severely toxic and that no ancient technique for separating a psychoactive fraction has been demonstrated, and that fasting, darkness and staging account for the reported experience without pharmacology. The oath of silence means no participant account survives to test either reading against.
What would resolve this Residue analysis of drinking vessels securely tied to the Eleusinian sanctuary and to the rite rather than to general sanctuary use, with independent replication.
Archaeochemistry and classical archaeologyR. Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann and Carl A. P. Ruck, The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries
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