The wolves of war: evidence of an ancient cult of warrior lycanthropy
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Date
2016
Authors
Ruck, Carl Anton Paul
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Carl Anton Paul Ruck. "The Wolves of War: Evidence of an Ancient Cult of Warrior Lycanthropy." NeuroQuantology, Volume 14, Issue 3, https://doi.org/10.14704/nq.2016.14.3.898
Abstract
Archaeological evidence indicates that naturally occurring megalithic structures that resemble mushrooms
throughout the region identified as Thrace in antiquity were the foci of religious observances, sometime with the
fungal likeness of the stone structures intensified by human intervention. Thrace was considered the probable
origin of Dionysian rites. Wine was recognized in antiquity as the product of fungal growth and the drink was a
cultivated version of wild intoxicants, among which was the mushroom. The rituals in celebration of the deity
commemorated his primordial identity as resident in these wild plants and mediated his evolution into the
intoxicant grown upon the cultivated grapevine, and the wine itself was fortified beyond its alcoholic content by
the addition of these wild antecedents of viticulture. The legendary wine of Thrace was particularly potent
through the addition of a psychoactive mushroom. The rituals of the women known as bacchants enacted the
fantasies of root-cutters in commemoration of the deity in his persona that predated viticulture. This fungal
persona represents the same intoxicant that was known to the Persians as haoma and represents the spread of an
Indo-European sacrament into the Classical world, with its association of lycanthropy and the bonding of warriors
into brotherhoods as packs of wolves, better known in its manifestation in late antiquity among the Nordic
peoples as berserkers. In Greece, Apollo originally presided over such wolf packs, but as he evolved into Classical
theology as a member of the Olympian family, Dionysus assimilated that association, inasmuch as he better
represented the mediation with the past through his magical drink that combined both the wild and the cultivated
intoxicants. This freed Apollo from the burden of the past, allowing him to become transmuted from wolf to light,
the basis of pseudo-etymological derivations of his identity in antiquity.
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