Haoma-Soma in the World of Ancient Greece

Abstract

Evidence of the worship of (nonalcoholic) Haoma-Soma in Iran and India (identified by Wasson as Amanita muscaria) can be found in Greece and its neighboring lands. While Iranian and India peoples preserved their original worship in their final settlements, Indo-European tribes, including the Thracians, the Phrygians, and the Greeks, after settling in Europe and Asia Minor, abandoned their ancestral worship of Soma (Sabazios) and substituted the Semitic (alcoholic) Dionysos. However, they retained traces of the original Soma worship in Dionysiac rituals. This modified Dionysiac worship spread throughout the Western world. Six formal criteria are used to establish the identify of Soma with Dionysos (Sabazios): (1) both cults had the same aim (to cause ecstatic behavior); (2) both cults required the attainment of the same spiritual state (purity); (3) both cults had an idiosyncratic myth in common; (4) both cults showed the identical word root in the name of the worshipped god; (5) both cults had identical zoological and botanical associations with their god; and (6) the alcoholic god (Dionysos) was depicted as having the same physical effects on human beings as that of the ancient nonalcoholic god (Soma).

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