The alchemical
information about cannabis use was reintroduced
into Europe after the Dark Ages, when the
Knights Templar, founded by Hugh de Payns (“of
the Pagans”) around the beginning of the twelfth
century, became involved in a trade of goods and
knowledge with the hashish ingesting Isma’ilis.
This knowledge was passed on from Eastern adepts
and handed down esoterically through the
medieval alchemists, Rosicrucians
and later on to the most influential occultists
of the late nineteenth and early twentieth
century.
Modern Freemasonry
is also said to have been derived from ancient
Templar knowledge, which in turn came from
earlier Arabic sources. “Sufi ism,” said Sir
Richard Burton, was “the Eastern parent of
Freemasonry.” However, the modern day
Freemasons, the religion of the Businessman and
Banker,
for the most part are practicing empty rituals
the meaning of which has been long forgotten.
But some mystic Masons like Gerard de Nerval,
one of the members of the famous Le Club Des
Haschischins, were well aware of this Arabic
origin for modern Freemasonry. Nerval commented
on it in one of his books, much to the horror of
many Masons of the time. Nerval published a 700
page memoir, Voyage en Orient,
and released information considered sacred by
Masons concerning the Master Builder Hiram,
which is a pivotal part of their secret
rituals. As the authors of The Temple and
the Lodge commented:
Nerval not only
recited the basic narrative. He also divulged —
for the first time, to our knowledge — a skein
of eerie mystical traditions associated in
Freemasonry with Hiram’s background and
pedigree. What is particularly curious is that
Nerval makes no mention of Freemasonry
whatsoever. Pretending that his narrative is a
species of regional folk-tale, never known in
the West before, he claims to have heard it
orally recited by a Persian raconteur, in a
Constantinople coffee-house.
Idries Shaw, the Grand Sheik of the Sufi s and
historian of their faith, commented on the
connection between the Templars and the Sufis:
That the Templars
were thinking in terms of the Sufi , and not the
Solomonic, Temple in Jerusalem, and its
building, is strongly suggested by one important
fact. “Temple” churches which they erected,
such as one in London, were modeled upon the
Temple as found by the Crusaders, not upon any
earlier building. This Temple was none other
than the octagonal Dome of the Rock, built in
the seventh century on a Sufi mathematical
design, and restored in 913. The Sufi legend of
the building of the Temple accords with the
alleged Masonic version. As an example we may
note that the “Solomon” of the Sufi Builders is
not King Solomon but the Sufi “King” Maaruf
Karkhi (died 815), disciple of David (Daud of
Tai, died 781) and hence by extension considered
the son of David, and referenced cryptically as
Solomon — who was the son of David. The Great
murder commemorated by the Sufi Builders is not
that of the person (Hiram) supposed by the
Masonic tradition to have been killed. The
martyr of the Sufi Builders is Mansur el-Hallaj
(858-922), juridically murdered because of the
Sufi secret, which he spoke in a manner which
could not be understood, and thus was
dismembered as a heretic.’ — Idries Shaw, The
Sufis
Mansur el Hallaj, an outspoken advocate of
intoxication as means to spiritual ecstasy, is
stated to have been the founder of the still
existing Order Templar Orientis in their
official documentation, either written by, or
under the supervision of the great hashish
initiate Aleister Crowley, who at one time was a
grand master of the Order. Interestingly
el-Hallaj is also connected with the
pre-European history of alchemy . Not
surprisingly many have credited the Templars
with being a vital link in this chain of
transmission.
The Order of
Knights of the Temple was founded in the Holy
Land in 1118 A.D. Its organization was based on
that of the Saracean fraternity of “Hashish im,”
“hashish-takers,” whom Christians called
Assassins. The Templars first headquarters was
a wing of the royal palace of Jerusalem next to
the al-Aqsa mosque, revered by the Shi’ites as
the central shrine of the Goddess Fatima.
Western Romances, inspired by Moorish Shi’ite
poets, transformed this Mother-Shrine into the
Temple of the Holy Grail , where certain
legendary knights called Templars gathered to
offer their service to the Goddess, to uphold
the female principles of divinity and to defend
women. These knights became more widely known
as Galahad, Perceval, Lohengrin, etc. —Barbara
Walker, The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and
Secrets
The authors of
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail also
comment on the liaison between the Templars and
Isma’ili’s: “Secret connections were also
maintained with the Hashish im or Assassins, the
famous sect of militant and often fanatical
adepts who were Islam’s equivalent of the
Templars .” The authors also comment that “the
Templars ’ need to treat wounds and illness made
them adepts in the use of drugs.” And the
Order; “in advance of their time regarded
epilepsy not as demonic possession but as a
controllable disease.” Interestingly cannabis
is the safest natural or synthetic medication
proven successful in the treatment of some forms
of epilepsy.
Most (scholars)
agree that the Templars “had adopted some of the
mysterious tenets of the Eastern Gnostics.” —
Walker, quoting, R.P. Knight, The Symbolic
Language of Ancient Art and Mythology
The famed New Age
author, and modern day “stoned philosopher”
Robert Anton Wilson, wrote a whole book on the
Templars, putting forth a theory that they were
practicing a form of Arabic Tantrism, and
ingesting hashish , a technique they had picked
up from their contact with the Assassins.
Unfortunately Wilson offers no documentation,
but does comment that; "ambiguous references to
a sacred plant or herb appear in their [the
Templars ] surviving manuscripts.”
The Templars had
acquired a great deal of wealth, a fleet of
ships and a strong army of warriors who fought
by a creed of never retreating unless the odds
were more than three to one. Some began to feel
threatened by the wealth and power the Order had
attained. In a joint effort orchestrated by
King Philip (who had been rejected membership
into the sect) and Pope Clement V, the Templars
were accused of heresy. Among the many
criminal accusations against the Templars were
mocking the cross, sodomy
and worshipping a mysterious idol in the form of
a head. The Templars were also accused of tying
a sacred cord around their waist, which was said
to have been consecrated by pressing it against
the mysterious head.
The spiritual descendants of Zoroastrianism, the
modern Parsi, each day tie a sacred cord around
their waist as part of the ancient Kusti
ritual. The Templar practice of the Zoroastrian
Kusti ritual indicates a tradition of knowledge
going back through the Isma’ilis (witness the
similarities between their seven grade
initiations, with those of the cult of Mithra s)
to earlier Gnostic and Zoroastrian influences.
If the Templars
trampled the crucifix, they may have copied the
example of Arab dervishes who ceremonially
rejected the cross with the words, “You may have
the Cross, but we have the meaning of the
cross.” — Idries Shaw, The Sufis
The crucifixion is a major tenet of Roman
Catholicism that has been denied by a number of
groups dating back to the earliest days of
Christianity. The Gnostic s were killed for
repudiating it. The largest massacre in Roman
Catholic Church history was over this very tenet
when the Albigensian Crusade took place and
30,000 soldiers were sent forth by the Papacy to
slaughter 15,000 men, women and children —
slaughtered not for denying Christ and his
teachings, but for denying his crucifixion.
(See chapters 19 and 20, Goddess and the
Grail and The Resurrection.)
In The Sufis, Idries Shaw states the
Templars ’ worship of a mysterious head could
well be a reference to the great work of
transhumanisation that takes place in the
aspirant’s own head.
The Golden Head (sar-i-tilai)
is a Sufi phrase used to refer to a person whose
inner consciousness has been “transmuted into
gold” by means of Sufi study and activity, the
nature of which it is not permissible to convey
here. — Idries Shah, The Sufis
We propose in this
study that the mysterious head worshipped by the
Templars may have actually been some sort of a
vessel or cauldron, like the head of Bran the
Blessed in Celtic mythology
or
a later day version of the Mahavira Vessel .
In “The Mahavira
Vessel and the Plant Putika, ” Stella Kramrisch
describes a plant which she connects with the
mysterious soma.
The Mahavira Vessel, like the Templars
mysterious idol, is referred to as a head. To
the ancient worshipper the Mahavira vessel
represented the decapitated head of Makha, from
whose wound flowed forth the Elixir of Life.
The Templars were rounded up and arrested on
Friday the thirteenth (the origin of the “bad
luck” associated with this combination),
October, 1307. Although put through the
extreme tortures that the Inquisition was so
famous for, the vast majority of the Templars
denied the charges. Of course the inquisitors
coerce a small number of admissions of guilt.
When subjected to excruciating pain, people will
most often admit to whatever their questioners
want to hear. The court repeatedly refused to
hear depositions from no fewer than 573
witnesses. Some Templars managed to escape, but
the majority were burned at the stake. A
witness to the event stated:
All of them, with
no exception, refused to admit any of their
alleged crimes, and persisted in saying they
were being put to death unjustly which caused
great admiration and immense surprise.— Stephen Howarth, The Knights Templar
For this act
Dante, who was inspired by Sufi authors, in his
Inferno,
places both King Philip and Clement V firmly in
Hell.
Baigent and Leigh speculate in
The
Temple and the Lodge that some of the
Templars may have escaped to Scotland. They
point to medieval graves with Templar insignias,
and Templar style churches (round) as evidence.
Scotland was at war with England at the time of
the Templars ’ persecution, and in the resulting
chaos the Papal Bulls dissolving the Order were
never proclaimed there. Comparatively,
according to Professors Graeme Whittington and
Jack Jarvis of the University of Saint Andrews
in Fife, Scotland, hemp was grown agriculturally
in tenth century Scotland. Sediment from
Kilconquhar Lock, near Fife, contained cannabis
pollen . Cannabis from around the same time has
been found in East Anglia, Wales and in
Finland. The hemp was found to have been grown
in areas occupied by religious groups of the
time. Jarvis commented in an Omni
interview, “the decline of these ecclesiastical
establishments may have coincided with a decline
in the growing of hemp.”
In a letter to Chris Bennett, dated November 6,
1992, Dr. Alexander Sumach, author of Grow
Yer Own Stone and A Treasury of Hashish
stated:
You are on to some interesting views. The
Templars were active in only rare goods —
which were tax free. Silks, drugs,
astronomical equipment. Cannabis as a
confection — not a pipe was their toy. Turkish
delight. They grew fields of hemp for canvas
and rope to equip their vast fleet that traveled
far and wide. Check out the connection between
the Mic Mac Indian myth hero “Glooslap” who may
have been a Templar in Nova Scotia. He taught
the Indians to fish with nets. Cartier,
centuries later saw the natives with neat hemp
clothing made from native hemp. Cartier was
from a hemp district in France, knew all about
ships. If he called it hemp....
Mircea Eliade commented on the potential
connections between the Templars and the Grail
Myth (also known as the Fisher King and The
Perlesvaus). He stated in A History of
Religious Ideas Vol. III that in a twelfth
century text of the legend, the knights were
members of a group referred to as Templeisen.
He adds: “A Hermetic [alchemical] influence on
Parzival seems plausible, for Hermetecism begins
to become known in twelfth-century Europe
following massive translations of Arabic
works.” The scholar further comments on the
secret languages, symbols and passwords that
were in use in Europe at that time.
Wolfram Von Escchenbach wrote his version of the
myth, Parzival, sometime between 1195 and
1220. Interestingly Wolfram is also said to
have paid a “special visit to Outremer,” a
Templar outpost, “to witness the Order in
action.” In Wolfram’s version of the tale the
Templars are the knights who guard the Grail and
the Grail castle. R. Barber contends in
Knight and Chivalry that
Perlesvaus, written by an anonymous
author, may well have been penned by a Templar.
The Templars appear in The Perlesvaus not
just as military men, but also as high mystical
initiate s. This is indicative, for the
Templars were only too eager to reinforce the
popular image of themselves as magi, as wizards
or sorcerers, as necromancers, as alchemist, as
sages privy to lofty arcane secrets. And
indeed, it was precisely this image that
rebounded upon them and provided their enemies
with the means of their destruction. — Baigent
and Leigh, The Temple and the Lodge
.
2. Sufi Alchemists and the Grail
Myth
[top]
Marcel Eliade has commented that there may be a
Zoroastrian (here referred to as Parsi) origin
for the Grail Myth: “In a work published in
1939, the Parsi Scholar Sir Jahangir C. Coyajee
has also remarked upon the analogy between the
Grail and the Iranian Glory, xvarenah
, and the similarities between the legends
of Arthur and those of the fabulous King Kay
Khorsaw.” Interestingly the xvarenah
mentioned, is the same substance the sacred
Haoma was said to be rich in. Eliade goes
on to say that in one of the many forms of the
legend, the Grail is found in India: “Let us add
that in the cycle of compositions posterior to
Wolfram Von Eschenbauch, the Grail is won in
India by Lohengrin, Parzival’s son, accompanied
by all the knights .”
Barbara Walker
tells us that the whole wasteland motif is of an
Arab origin, and that the early crusaders
brought it back to Europe believing that if the
grail were not recovered then the wasteland that
befell the Saudi-Arabian dessert would befall
their more fertile land.
The story about Parzival and his son is closely
paralleled in the following account given by
Idries Shaw in The Sufis:
The first Sufi record of a teaching journey to
England—such is contained in the travels of
Najmuddin (Star of Faith) Gwath-ed-Dahar. He
was born about 1232, or perhaps earlier. His
son ”followed his father’s footsteps” from India
to China in 1338.
The first
Najmuddin was a disciple of the illustrious
Nizamuddin Awlia of Delhi, who sent him to Rum
(Turkey) to study under Khidr Rumi. Khidr
Rumi’s full name was Sayed Khidr Rumi Khapradri
— the Cupbearer of Turkestan. It will be
remembered that the Khidr order (equated with
the Garter) has as its slogan a salutation to
the cupbearer. This cup had miraculous
qualities.
Idries Shaw’s comments on the cupbearer and the
cup’s miraculous qualities parallel the Grail
myth immensely. Further examination of Shaw’s
comments shed even more illumination on the
subject. First, let us look at the name Khidr ,
which is also spelled Khizr. It is a Moslem
name used in reference to the Biblical prophet
Elijah. As J.M. Campbell recorded in his
classic 1894 essay, “On the Religion of Hemp :”
In his devotion to
bhang , with reverence, not with the worship,
which is due to Allah alone, The North Indian
Mussulman joins hymning to the praise of bhang.
To the follower of the later religion of Islam
the holy spirit in bhang is not the spirit of
the Almighty, it is the spirit of the great
prophet Khizr, or Elijiah. That bhang should be
sacred to Khizr is natural, Khizr is the patron
saint of water. Still more Khizr means green,
the revered color of the cooling water of bhang
;. So the
Urdu poet sings “When I quaff fresh bhang I
liken its color to the fresh light down of thy
youthful beard.” The prophet Khizr or the green
prophet cries “May the drink be pleasing to
thee.”
Peter Lamborn Wilson makes the following
comments on the Sufi term, Saki-Khaneh, House of
the Cupbearer:
The saki or wine serving boy is a symbol of the
Beloved or the spiritual master in Sufi poetry,
but in Pakistan saki-khaneh is a slang term for
a tea house that serves charas and bhang .”
—
Scandal: Essays in Islamic Heresy
Shaw comments on the connections between the
Arab Khidr Order and the famous British group,
the Order of the Garter:
The early records
of the Order of the Garter are lost. Its patron
saint was St. George , who is equated in Syria,
where his cult originates, with the mysterious
Khidr -figure of the Sufi s. It was in fact
called the Order of St. George, which would
translate direct into Sufi phraseology as
Tarika-i-Hadrat-i-Khidr (the Order of St. Khidr
). It became known as the Order of the Garter.
The word “garter” in Arabic is the same as the
word for the Sufi mystical tie or bond.
The modern day
Order of the Garter traces its origins to the
Knights of the Round Table and is attributed to
Saint George, who is by tradition considered to
be the patron Saint of England. History
provides little factual records of who Saint
George was and what his actual exploits were.
“Folklore named the pagan savior, Green George,
a spirit of spring. His image was common in old
church carvings, a human head surrounded by
leaves.”
He is probably best remembered as the slayer of
the dragon in a story that is found in twelfth
century literature.
A Muslim writer in about AD 900 compared St.
George with the Mesopotamian God Tammuz.
Moslems also identified St. George with the
mysterious prophet Khidr , known as the Verdant
One and whose footsteps leave a green imprint.
Khidr shares his day, 23 April, with the Saint.
— William Anderson, The Archetype of Our
Oneness with the Earth
Scholar Sula Benet
made the following comments on a tale that
closely resembles that of Saint George : “In the
Ukraine there is a legend of a dragon who lived
in Kiev, oppressing the people and demanding
tribute. The dragon was killed and the city
liberated by a man wearing a hemp shirt.”
In the story of the Grail legend Parzival was
sent on a quest for the Grail, the cup Christ
drank from at the last supper which was thought
to contain the power to heal the ailing King.
In medieval times the people believed the state
of the land coincided with the health of the
king, and since the King was dying, the land in
turn was becoming barren.
Comparatively, in Rabelais ’
Pantagruel , which is a parody of the
Grail myth, and contains occult references to
cannabis, we find the following passage
referring to the herb Pantagruel ion, which is
now known to be hemp :
...in the season
of the great draught, when they were busiest
gathering the said herb; to wit, at that time
when Icarus’s dog, with his fiery balling and
barking at the sun, maketh the whole world
troglodytic and enforceth people everywhere to
hide themselves in the dens and subterranean
caves. It is likewise called Pantagruel ion,
because of the notable and singular qualities,
virtues, and properties thereof; for as
Pantagruel
hath been the idea, pattern prototype and
exemplar of all jovial perfection and
accomplishment; so in this Pantagruelion have I
found so much efficacy and energy, so much
completeness and excellency, so much
exquisiteness and rarity, and so many admirable
effects and operations of a transcendent nature
that if the worth and virtue therof had been
known, when those trees, by the relation of the
prophet, made election of a wooden king, to rule
and govern over them, it without all doubt would
have carried away from all the rest the
plurality of votes and suffrages.
One could make a
modern analogy of the Grail Myth. Mankind
represents the dying king who has forgotten his
divinity. The polluted and stripped earth is
the wasteland caused by this sickness. The
rediscovered knowledge of hemp ’s many uses in
the effort to heal ourselves, those around us
and the earth,
could be said to represent the Grail . And our
mission to end marijuana prohibition is the
Quest.
There is no mystery why so few references to
cannabis can be found in Medieval European
literature; while embracing wine as a sacrament,
the Inquisition outlawed cannabis ingestion in
Spain in the twelfth century and France in the
thirteenth. Anyone using hemp spiritually,
medicinally, or otherwise was labeled “witch.”
Saint Joan of Arc, for example, was accused in
1430-31 of using a variety of herbal “witch”
drugs, including cannabis, to hear voices.
— J. Herer,
The Emperor Wears No Clothes
In keeping with the medieval church’s war on all
things Arabic, including bathing, Pope Innocent
VIII issued a papal fiat in 1484 condemning the
use of cannabis in the “satanic mass.”
— A. De Passquale,
“Farmacognosia della Canape Indiana”
So after cannabis
prohibitions of the fifth, twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, hemp was re-condemned this
time as an unholy sacrament of the second and
third types of satanic mass.
This religious prohibition lasted more than 150
years.
In The Sufis, Idries Shaw tells us there
is an Arab origin for the European witches: “Who
brought the witches to the West? In the
medieval form, from which most of our
information derives, undoubtedly the Aniza
tribe.” Pointing to evidence like the
similarities between the witches circle and the
circular dance of the medieval dervishes, Arab
words used in witches’ spells, and the use of
hallucinogenic plants in both systems, Shaw puts
forth a reasonable argument that modern witches
can find at least a part of their origin in a
group founded by Abu el-Atahiyya (748–828):
His circle of disciples, the Wise Ones,
commemorated him in a number of ways after his
death. To signify his tribe, they adopted the
goat, cognate with his tribal name (Anz, Aniza).
A torch between goat horns (“the devil” in Spain
as it later became) symbolized for them the
light of illumination from the intellect (head)
of the “goat,” the Aniza teacher. His wasm
(tribal brand) was very much like a broad arrow,
also called an eagle’s foot. This sign, known
to the witches as the goosefoot, became the mark
for their places of meeting. After Atahiyya’s
death before the middle of the ninth century,
tradition has it that a group from his school
migrated to Spain, which had been under Arab
rule for over a century at that time.
— I. Shaw, The
Sufis
3. The Alchemist Monk Francois
Rabelais
[top]
One brave philosopher who dared to challenge the
ban on hemp in medieval Europe was the
Benedictine monk and qualified Bachelor of
Medicine, Francois Rabelais (1494-1553).
Rabelais was familiar with the alchemical
writings of the Sufi s, via Avicienna, as well
as the medieval Templars , referring to the
good knights of the Templar a number
of times in his works, indicating he was most
likely sympathetic with their cause.
Like the Templars , Rabelais suffered the harsh
persecution from both the Roman Catholic Church
and the civil authorities. The Papacy and
political rulers were angered over the contents
of his famous books Gargantua and Pantagruel
,
which made a mockery of both church and state
and also contained many hidden references to
things occult. We are here more concerned with
the books of good Pantagruel , which is based
around a parody of the Grail myth. The books of
Pantagruel also contain references to
hemp which were written esoterically.
The
Life of Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois
Rabelais is an esoteric work, a novel in cant.
The good cure of Meudon reveals himself in it as
a great initiate , as well as a first class
cabalist. — Fulcanelli, Master Alchemist, Le
Mystere des Cathederales
The 20th century alchemist, Fulcanelli also
referred to this language of cant, as the
Language of the Birds, echoing the Sufi
author Attar’s Conference of Birds (see
chapter 14, Moslem World), a mystic ode
to hashish . Author Kenneth Rayner Johnson
comments on this language of cant in
The Fulcanelli Phenomena:
All initiate s,
Fulcanelli states, spoke in cant — including the
masons who built the cathedrals and who were the
operative predecessors of today's speculative
Freemasons. Eventually he maintains, the
“language verte” or “green language”
(green...being the color of initiation in the
secret societies referred to earlier) became the
mode of speech of the poor, humble and
oppressed. An indication of this fact can be
discerned in the use of “rythming slang” among
London’s Cockneys, or in the jargon of “hip” or
“jive-talk” originally derived from American
Negro blues artists and other musicians.
Fulcanelli says:
“It remains the
language of a minority of individuals, living
outside accepted laws, conventions, customs and
etiquette. The term voyous (street-arabs),
that is to say voyants (seers), is
applied to them and the even more expressive
term, sons or children of the sun….” —
Quoted by Kenneth Rayner Johnson, The
Fulcanelli Phenomenon
Of particular
interest to us must be the most oblique segments
of Pantagruel , Book III, chapters 49-52
[the chapters concerning hemp ]. For
long periods these chapters were banned by the
church, and in many modern translations of
Pantagruel they are omitted. — Ben Price,
“Where the Pantagruelion Grows”
Some years before he wrote his book, Rabelais
was temporarily imprisoned in his monastery,
when he and another brother started studying
Greek works. At that time the Greek language
was considered heretical because conflicting New
Testament material written by patriarchs of the
Byzantine Christian Church was written in Greek
and opened up the possibility of criticism of
the Roman Catholic Church. Also, Pagan and
Gnostic texts were written in Greek. It is not
clear what the nature of the information in the
original Greek text was, but from what history
has recorded, the church leaders must have felt
threatened by it. Rabelais managed to obtain an
indult (special exemption) from Pope Clement VII
and went on to write his famous Works.
Unfortunately little is known of Rabelais after
his books were published. He virtually
disappeared in the midst of outrage from church
and state over their publication.
In the introduction Rabelais gives readers the
following hint of the hidden information
contained in his book:
Following the
dog’s example, you will have to be wise in
sniffing, smelling and estimating these fine and
meaty books; swiftness in the chase and boldness
in the attack are what is called for; after
which, by careful reading and frequent
meditation, you should break the bone and suck
the substantific marrow in the course of it you
will find things of quite a different taste and
a doctrine more abstruse which shall reveal to
you most high “sacraments” and horrific
mysteries in what concerns our religion, as well
as the state of our political and economic life.
— Rabelais , Pantagruel
As a free thinker
not willing to risk his cherished well-being in
a society hostile to what went on in his head,
Rabelais chose to keep his thoughts private, but
not unshared. He shared them with rare
individuals who, like himself, were undaunted by
their own irreverence, and who were capable
thereby of circumventing the rigid convention of
literary and grammatical tradition. Through an
early form of surrealism, he conveyed his
message to those who were not too rigid in their
perceptions to understand it. — Ben Price,
“Where the Pantagruel ion Grows”
In Pantagruel
, Rabelais gives a distinct description of
hemp , which he calls “The Herb Pantagruelion:”
The leaves sprout
out all round the stalk at equal distances, to
the number of five or seven at each level; and
it is by special favor of Nature that they are
grouped in these two odd numbers, which are both
divine and mysterious. The scent is strong, and
unpleasant to delicate nostrils.
Rabelais goes on to describe the familiar
applications of hemp pulp and fiber:
Without this herb,
kitchens would be detested, the tables of dining
rooms abhorred, although there were great plenty
and variety of most dainty and sumptuous dishes
of meat set down upon them; and the choicest
beds also, how richly so ever adorned with gold,
silver, amber, ivory, prophyry, and the mixture
of most precious metals, would without it yield
no delight or pleasure to the reposer in them.
Without it millers could neither carry wheat,
nor any other kind of corn, to the mill; nor
would they be able to bring back from thence
flour, or any other sort of meal whatsoever.
Without it, how could the papers and writs of
lawyers' clients be brought to the bar? Seldom
is the mortar, lime or plaster brought to the
workhouse without it. Without it how should the
water be got out of the draw well? In what case
would tabellions, notaries, copists, makers of
counterparts, writers, clerks, secretaries,
scriviners, and such like persons be without
it? Were it not for it, what would become of
the toll-rates and rent-rolls? Would not the
noble art of printing perish without it?
Whereof could the chassis or paper windows be
made? How should the bells be rung ? The altars
of Isis are adorned therewith; the pastophorian
priests are therewith clad and accourted; and
whole human nature covered and wrapped therein,
at its first position and production in, and
into this world; all the lanific trees of Seres,
the bumbast and cotton bushes in the territories
near the Persian sea, and gulph of Bengala: the
Arabian swans, together with the plants of
Maltha, do not all of them cloath, attire and
apparel so many persons as this herb alone.
Soldiers are now-a-days much better sheltered
under it, than they were in former times, when
they lived in tents covered with skins. It
overshadows the theatres and amphitheatres from
the heat of the scorching sun; it begirdeth and
encompasseth forests, chases, parks, copses and
groves, for the pleasure of hunters; it
descendeth into the salt and fresh of both sea
and river waters, for the profit of fishers; by
it are boots of all sizes, buskins, gamashes,
brodkins, gambados, shoes, pumps, slippers, and
every cobbled ware wrought and made steadable
for the use of man; by it the butt and
rover-bows are strung, the crossbows bended, and
the slings made fixed; and, as if it were an
herb every whit as holy as the verveine, and
reverenced by ghosts, spirits, hobgoblins,
fiends and phantoms, the bodies of deceased men
are never buried without it.
Rabelais tells us the hero of his tale,
Pantagruel , a giant named after the said herb,
loaded for a voyage and, “amongst other things,
it was observed how he caused to be fraught and
loaded with an herb of his called Pantagruel
ion, not only of the green and raw sort of it,
but of the confected also.” The confection
Rabelais refers to is the edible Turkish delight
— a hashish confection.
Rabelais was so enamored with hemp that in his
estimation it stood at the very pinnacle of
plant life: “in this pantagruel ion have I found
so much efficacy and energy, so much
completeness and excellency, so much
exquisiteness and rarity, and so many admirable
effects and operations of a transcendent
nature....”
It is interesting that Rabelais speaks of hemp
’s transcendent nature. Rabelais was more than
familiar with the alchemical literature that
circulated so covertly at that time, and he
incorporated the secret language of this hidden
art into his writings. Alchemical and occult
literature often refer to connecting an
individual’s feminine and masculine aspects
together in a unified force, as marrying your
Goddess, or the marriage of the sun (masculine,
left-brain, analytical, rational) and the moon
(feminine, right-brain, analogical, creative).
This theme appears again and again in medieval
occult literature, and most likely has its roots
in a much earlier tradition. Francois Rabelais
hinted at a connection between hemp and this
spiritual marriage. He ends one of the chapters
devoted to the herb Pantagruel ion stating that
by means of this herb mankind might discover an
even more powerful herb and ascend to the
heavens:
Who knows but by
his sons may be found out an herb of such
another virtue and prodigious energy, as that by
the aid thereof, in using it aright, according
to their father’s skill, they may contrive a way
for human kind to pierce into the high aërian
clouds, get up into the spring head of the hail,
take an inspection of the snowy sources…; then
it is like they will set forward to invade the
territories of the moon, whence passing thro’
both Mercury and Venus, the Sun will serve them
for a torch, to show the way to Jupiter and
Saturn. We shall not then be able to resist the
impetuosity of their intrusion, nor put a
stoppage to their entering whatever regions,
domiciles, or mansions of the spangled firmament
they shall have mind to see…all the celestial
signs together with the constellations of the
fixed stars, will jointly be at their devotion
then…
Here Rabelais has repeated the planetary ascent
in Mithraic initiation as well as an ascent
through the Cabalistic Sephira, and different
levels of consciousness. As can be see in
Crowley’s Quabalistic Encyclopedia “777,”
and elsewhere. Rabelais has the gods lament
that should mankind succeed in this climb then
they will surely: “drink of our nectar and
ambrosia, and take to their own beds at night,
for wives and concubines, our fairest goddesses,
the only means whereby they can be deified.”
Perhaps the identity of the herb which could be
utilized by Pantagruel’s descendants is alluded
to in the chapter following Rabelais’ last
comments, “How a certain kind of Pantagruelion
is of that Nature, that Fire is not able to
consume it.”
Chapter 52 of
Book III relates the amazing fable
concerning “how a certain kind of Pantagruel ion
is of that nature that the fire is not able to
consume it.” First, it is noteworthy that
Rabelais suggests different varieties of the
plant. Second, the statement that the plant will
not burn is extraordinary enough to tempt
experimentation with the plant in the presence
of fire. Readers smitten by curiosity on this
point were equally likely to be smitten, finally
and pleasantly, by the singular virtues of the
plant Rabelais called “Pantagruel ion.” A happy
discovery that would also, upon re-reading the
author's words, unlock their secret references
and make their meaning plain. — Ben Price,
“Where the Pantagruel ion Grows”
In light of Price’s comments concerning the
Pantagruel ion that is not consumed by fire, it
is interesting to note that Rabelais was
familiar with the writings of Zoroaster , and he
translated into French the Greek works of
Herodotus, who wrote about Scythians inhaling
cannabis smoke to achieve ecstasy.
Rabelais , in his
fifth and last book of the series reveals to us
quite plainly: “the good Pantagruel ion which is
hemp .” Rabelais states that he felt it was
time to reveal more plainly his cryptic message,
and get rid of the cipher that hid it: “Now, my
friends, that you may put in for a share of this
new wisdom , and shake off the antiquated folly
this very moment, scratch me out of your
scrolls, and quite discard the symbol of the old
philosopher with the golden thigh, by which he
has forbidden you to eat beans,
that is, Pantagruel ion books.” (Which of course
contained replete references to the herb
Pantagruelion, hemp )
Perhaps this was some of Rabelais cryptic
humor. Remember Pythagoras was the philosopher
with the golden thigh that taught his students
not to eat beans. Pythagoras was the first sage
to call himself a philosopher. His golden thigh
referred to shaman ic initiation. He was
initiate into all the secret mysteries of the
ancient world and had close friendship ties with
the Hyperborean shaman priest of Apollo, Abaris
the Scythian. Scythian shamans fumigated
[purified ] and incense d themselves to ecstasy
and revelation with cannabis smoke.
Rabelais tells the reader that he had not
revealed the secrets concerning cannabis earlier
because he wanted to have the opportunity to
enjoy it himself for a while, “for you may take
it for a truth, granted among all professors in
the science of good eating, that he enjoined you
not to taste of them for the dunsical-dog leach
was so selfish as to reserve them for his own
dainty chops.”
Rabelais was quite an old man at the time his
books were published, and he knew it was time to
reveal his secret to mankind more plainly, lest
it be lost forever. He tells us that his great
works (books) are finished. “Now though we have
in our mother-tongue, several excellent works in
verse and prose. I have made bold to choose to
chirrup and warble my plain ditty, or as they
say, to whistle like a goose among the swans,
rather than be thought deaf among so many pretty
poets and eloquent orators. And thus I am
prouder of acting like a clown, or any other
under part, among the many ingenious actors in
this noble play, than of herding among the
mutes, who, like so many shadows and cyphers,
only serve to fill up the house and make up a
number.”
Rabelais knew he would suffer the wrath of the
Roman Catholic Church for debunking its
heresies. “To the heathen philosopher succeeded
a pack of capusions monks, who forbid us the use
of beans that none but their nasty selves might
have the stomach to eat it, though their
liquorice chops watered never so much after it.”
He also had an idea of what his fate might be
for exposing these forbidden secrets, as he
states in the following comment, “Oh! they’ll
cost me an estate in hemp en collars. For I
hereby promise to furnish them with twice enough
as much as will do their business, on free cost,
as often as they will take the pains to dance at
ropes end, providently to save charges, to the
small disappointment to the finisher of the
law.” (He had given them enough rope to hang
him.) And so Francois Rabelais disappeared from
history.
Any clergy,
whether secular or myth bound, will feel
threatened by a perceptual tool which allows the
common man to transcend conditioning and
experience unmediated clarity. This is what
Rabelais knew would happen to the Medieval
priests if he openly discussed the remarkable
qualities of the plant, Pantagruel . It is the
same fear-ridden reaction we see gripping
Reaganite conservatives and the beneficiaries of
other perceptual pogroms when it comes to any
frame of mind that they have not included in the
“official” scenario of reality. Any
transcendental short-cuts or non-prescription
vehicles toward “feeling better” undermine the
reality-mediating role of the authorities. — Ben
Price, “Where the Pantagruel ion Grows”
Francois Rabelais , we salute you our Brother,
and dedicate the section on Alchemy to your
great and bold spirit. He had “more strength in
his teeth and scent in his bum” (to borrow a
saying he used), than any man in Europe at that
time.
Arabians, Indians, Sabeans,
Sing not, in hymns and paens,
Your incense,
myrrh, or ebony:
Come here a nobler plant to see;
And carry home at any rate,
Some seed, that you may propagate.
If in your soil it takes, to heaven
A thousand thousand thanks be given
And say, with France, it goodly goes
Where the
Pantagruel
ion grows!
— Francois Rabelais
Some have
suggested that the following quatrain written by
Nostradamus referred to Rabelais :
The
present together with the past
Judges by the great Jovialist
The world tires of him at last
Judged disloyal by the clergy
Nostradamus attributed his power of prophecy to
a substance that could well have been cannabis:
“Seated at night in my secret study, alone,
reposing over the brass tripod.” He referred to
the “secrets that are revealed by the subtle
spirit of fire.” Nostradamus stated
specifically in his will that his papers were to
be left to whichever of his sons, upon reaching
maturity, “..has drunk the smoke of the lamp.”
Besides his prophetic writings, Nostradamus also
wrote on herbal recipes, cosmetics, food and
perfumes.
If people wanted
to survive the Dark Ages and use cannabis they
had better be discreet in referring to it. Both
Rabelais and the medieval European farmers used
the word “bean”
in conjunction with hemp . The Europeans used
the term in a celebration, King and Queen of the
bean, done in the hopes of having a tall hemp
crop.
Consider if you will the tale of "Jack and the
Beanstalk." Jack is “the widow’s son.” This
term is often used to refer to an initiate
starting out on the path. For example, it is
used in reference to Jesus, Parzival in the
famous Grail Romances, and it was a cherished
designation in Freemasonry. The cow that young
Jack trades for the beans is his sacred cow that
he must sacrifice if he wants to discover the
truth of things. A parallel can easily be drawn
between Jack’s reluctant trade of the family cow
and the of the Magi saviour Mithra s, who slew
the sacred bull unwillingly, and obtained the
sacred vine of the mysteries. The beans are
hemp seeds which will enable him to climb to the
place of the Giants. The angry Giant is a
manifestation of Jack’s personal demons that
have been exposed and magnified by his climb up
the beanstalk, or more precisely by his
ingestion of hemp. Although this journey is
fraught with danger, young Jack has the chance
to hear the heavenly music of the Golden Harp,
cast from the fine Gold of the true alchemists.
And if the young hero is able to overcome the
Giant, who represents his own lower nature, he
will be able to return home and share the music
of the Golden harp with his widowed mother and
the rest of humanity.
A similar cryptic
reference to the magnifying potentials of
cannabis as that provided in Jack and the
Beanstalk, can be found in The Conference
of Birds, where Sufi author Attar uses the
parrot as a hidden reference to hashish. Attar
writes of the parrot's arrival: “Welcome, O
Parrot! In your beautiful robe and collar of
fire, this collar is fitting for a dweller in
the underworld but your robe is worthy of
Heaven. Can Abraham save himself from the fire
of Nimrod? Break the head of Nimrod and become
the friend of Abraham, who was the friend of
God. When you have been delivered from the
hands of Nimrod put on your robe of glory and
fear not the collar of fire.”
This information hints at a secret tradition of
cannabis use in medieval Europe, wisdom that
had to be transmitted esoterically to avoid
prohibitions and persecution from the Roman
Catholic Church.
In 1615, an
Italian physician and demonologist, Giovanni De
Ninault, listed hemp as the main ingredient in
the ointments and unguents used by the “Devils
followers.”— Ernest Abel, Marihuana; The First
Twelve Thousand Years
4. Medieval Alchemists and Cannabis
[top]
The Arabs were
responsible for the popular reintroduction of
Alchemy into medieval Europe. Jabir Ibn el-Hayyan,
known as Geber
in the West “has been acknowledged by both the
Arab and European alchemists as the patron of
the art since the eighth century.”
Dr. M. Aldrich has commented that “skilled
alchemists with pretty classy lab equipment
experimented with all kinds of potions; if
Geber and others could distill alcohol, they
could have made hashish (or even hash oil), and,
indeed, Geber included banj among his
powerful prescriptions. An amusing tale of a
hypocritical priest, from Arabian manuscripts
dated about CE 950, shows that use of banj
was secret and spread among religious persons
who professed against it.”
A number of Sufi s can be tied to both hashish
use and the alchemical language, most notably
the Arabian Alchemist Avicenna (known in Arabic
as Ibn Sina), Mansur el-Hallaj, and Farduddin
Attar, the Chemist.
That the
alchemists of the West knew they were pursuing
an internal goal is clear from their admonitions
and innumerable cryptic illustrations in their
works. Alchemical allegory is by no means
difficult to read if one bears in mind Sufi
symbolism. In the seventeenth century, a
thousand years after the time of their original
inspirer, Geber (born circa 721), the European
alchemists were keeping lists of successive
masters, reminiscent of the Sufi “spiritual
degrees.” One of the most interesting things
about this fact is that these chains of
succession refer to people linked in the Sufic
and Saracean traditions, but otherwise have no
common denominator. In the records, we find the
name of Mohammed, Geber, Hermes, Dante and Roger
Bacon. — I. Shaw, The Sufis
Attar and other Sufis are reported to have used
el-Khidr (Khizr), the green man , as a hidden
reference to hashish and bhang. In 1894, J.M.
Campbell commented that to the Moslem worshipper
“the holy spirit in bhang is not the spirit of
the Almighty, it is the spirit of the great
prophet Khizr, or Elijiah.”
In what can be considered more than a mere
coincidence, we find this same figure playing a
highly regarded role in medieval alchemy .
Alchemists like Paracelsus and Eirenaeus
Philalethes mention the name Elias, which in the
authorized version of the Bible is the same as
Elijah, the powerful magician-prophet of Tishpeh,
whom the Sufi s equated with Khidr , the green
man and patron saint of cannabis.
The real
significance of the mysterious Elias is given in
an almost throw away phrase by A.E. Waite in
The Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross. He says:
“I infer that enthusiasts [i.e. those who looked
forward to the coming of Elias] regarded it as a
corporate Elias.” In other words, Elias was the
symbolic figurehead of the new school of alchemy
whose adepts were now proving its reality among
