The Greek god Dionysus carried a magical wand called a “thyrsus.” It was a pole wrapped with vines, decorated with a bow, and topped with a pinecone. Like the Staff of Hermes, it symbolized the human spine wrapped thrice by the kundalini serpent and topped with the third eye. In this way it symbolized how entheogenic wine releases the serpent coiled in the sacrum to spiral upward through the pineal gland. This was the source of true miracles.
After the second century, even Jesus was depicted using such a wand to turn water into wine. As a magic commonly attributed to Dionysus and other Sons of the Sun, it refers to the fact that the Sun does turn water into wine through solar radiation to produce an elixir of enlightenment. As the prime symbol of spiritual resurrection, wands from the sky helped harness the Sun inside the body and mind to make one “born again.”
CHAPTER 9
Unlocking the Garden Door
After the concert ended people gathered to discuss the music and admire the candlelit beauty of the chapel itself. Making my way over to a small group near the altar, I chimed in to say the Sinclair family must have designed the chapel to be a launch pad into the afterlife. Ian Robertson, a friend of Stuart’s and well-known expert on Rosslyn’s carvings, nodded vigorously. With eyes welling up as he looked around the room, he pointed out various religious figures carved into the pillars that he felt confirmed this theme of resurrection.
The last figure he pointed to was an owl perched high in one corner of the choir. This I found particularly intriguing since I recognized it immediately as a reference to the Greek goddess of wisdom Athena and, more anciently, the Sumerian/Akkadian Divine Lady Owl known as Inanna. In Akkadian texts the word for Nin-ninna was Kilili, linking the owl also to the Sumerian goddess of the evening, Lilu or Lilith.45
Standing there gazing upward, I smiled to myself thinking that all of these owl goddesses were considered wise because they personified the mental fertility and wisdom of Venus. They represented the “water spirit” who makes her home in the Tree of Life, symbolizing the sacred wine that brought spiritual rebirth and ascension.46 For me this wise lady owl suggested the chapel was not only a launch pad into the afterlife, but also a baptismal for entheogenic enlightenment.
The Wisdom Tree
Known in the Vedas as the Budha’s Wisdom Tree, the Moon-god Soma was described as living under this sacred tree. To Vedic believers this tree represented a bridge between the inner mind and outer cosmos. It was the Ankh, Axis Mundi, and inner tower of Mount Meru all rolled into one.
The Greeks had a similar tree named the Tree of Hesperides. Located in the Garden of Hesperides, they associated it with a dragon named Ladon who lay coiled around its trunk, guarding its golden apples. In Greek mythology Ladon (meaning “strong flow”) was slain by Heracles when he went to retrieve the golden apples as one of his labors. Throwing Ladon into the sky, the dragon became the constellation Draco. Hence the tree and serpent represented a link to the sky.
Now it is also true that Greek Draco and the Akkadian sea-god Dagon are related. Scholars suggest the Drakon Hesperios and Tree of Hesperides came from the Hellenes and Minoans, who in turn got the idea from the Egyptians, who had their own Tree of Life located in the Garden of Heliopolis or City of the Sun.
Truth is, all dragon legends have their origin in Vedic cosmology and the idea of solar serpents. But the key to understanding these legends is found in the sacred waters contained inside the golden fruit on the “Wisdom Trees” these serpents protected.
This Wisdom Tree was a very special kind of tree—an entheogenic acacia tree, to be precise, that the Old Kingdom Egyptians associated with the first Venusian goddess, Lusaaset. As a plentiful source for the spirit molecule DMT, acacia trees were used by the Egyptians to make an entheogenic wine known as “Yrp” and a conical bread made with honey known as “manna.” Many Egyptian murals show priests being served wine and conical manna cakes during sacred communion rituals. Consuming this sacrament was said to summon Lusaaset, “the great one who comes forth.”
I am the son of Khepri, born in Hetepet under the tresses of the Goddess of Iusâas-town [i.e. Lusaaset], north of Ôn, who ascended from the vertex of Geb.
—EGYPTIAN PRIEST, UTTERANCE 519
In this Egyptian utterance the acacia tree of Lusasset is described as being located at the center of the Garden of Heliopolis. It is further described as having the “tresses of the Goddess” which “ascended from the vertex of Geb.”47 Since Geb was the god of the Earth and husband of the sky-goddess Nut, the acacia Tree of Life bridges the Earth and Sky. It does this through acacia-induced visions, causing the priest to ascend the sacred Tree of Life and be reborn into the sky.
The Venusian goddess Lusaaset is thus an intermediate savior figure in the same way the entheogenic acacia intermediates between man and the gods.
Give me these your two fingers which you gave to the Beautiful, the daughter of the great God, when the sky was separated from earth, when the Gods ascended to the sky.
—EGYPTIAN PRIEST ADDRESSING THE MORNING STAR
(I.E., VENUS), UTTERANCE 519
Here the epithet “the Beautiful” refers to Lusaaset as she ascends from the head of Geb (Earth) just as Venus rises out of the mountain or sea in the eastern sky (Nut). Thus Lusaaset occupies the space between Geb and Nut (Earth and Sky) as the planet Venus, who ascends and is reborn each day as the Morning Star.
Greek historian Plutarch referred to Lusaaset as the “mistress of Annu” (or Atum) and the “Eye of Ra.” As a symbol for the Venus transit, the All-Seeing Eye refers to the planet Venus crossing the face of the Sun to peer down at the Earth for a day before being born again on the other side. This conjunction was believed to be the congress of male Atum and female Lusaaset, representing the fertility and enlightenment of the third eye.
It was after this that the Eye of Ra came to be associated with the goddess Hathor, the daughter of Ra. Like Lusaaset, Hathor was known as the Mistress of Heaven and associated with Venus. And like Lusaaset, she was identified with entheogenic Yrp wine and celebrated throughout Egypt. The city of Denderah was especially fond of Hathor and known widely as the Place of Intoxication.
Thus for the Egyptians, the spiritual enlightenment and rebirth brought about by drinking Yrp wine was linked with the rebirth of Venus at dawn. Hathor’s Tree of Life bridged Earth and Sky, providing a path upward to the realm of the gods, if only for a short time.
For the Hebrews the Tree of Life was associated with Asherah, the Venusian goddess mentioned earlier. In the temple a pole made of acacia wood was used to represent Asherah and her Tree of Life. This pole was sometimes an actual acacia trunk, sometimes a statue, and sometimes just a pillar of smoke. But it always represented the presence of the Holy Spirit of Asherah in the Shekinah. Here we find the deeper meaning behind the Shekinah Pillar in Rosslyn—spiritual rebirth through entheogenic communion and ascendancy to the top of Meru.
In time the acacia pole fell out of favor and was replaced by an evergreen tree. As a substitute symbol for Asherah and the Shekinah, it was commonly placed in Jewish homes during the winter solstice to summon the rebirth of the Sun. But even this disappeared during the reign of the Holy Roman Empire and the Church’s suppression of paganism. Returning in the nineteenth century, it became the modern Christmas tree. The five-point star on top of the tree symbolized not only the Star of Bethlehem but also the Star of Babylon, the pentacle orbit of Venus. In short the Christmas star is the orbital star of Venus at the top of the Tree of Life.
We can find many such Greek, Egyptian, and Hebrew symbols buried inside Christian lore. The names Juesaes, Ausaas, Saosis, Lusas, and Jusas are all nicknames for Lusaaset, with Jusas still the preferred spelling for Jesus in some cultures. To the ancient Hebrews, the Jesus messiah figure would have symbolized the alchemical union of the Sun and Venus, a kind of incarnation of the All-Seeing Eye and fertilizing Venus transit.
The tree described in the biblical Garden of Eden is also a retelling of the Tree o
f Life in both the Garden of Heliopolis and Garden of Hesperides, which in turn are a retelling of the Rig-Veda story of Meru and its golden summit. The forbidden fruit on the tree was the entheogenic Apple of Knowledge, and its wisdom was embodied in the kundalini serpent or “strong flow” of Ladon. As this corresponds with the earlier discussion of Ladon as the Fibonacci series, the entheogenic fruit would have been seen as a manifestation of the golden ratio itself.
In this light we can reasonably assume that the wine and bread communion ascribed to Jesus and his disciples involved the use of entheogenic plants made with the sacred Hebrew acacia plant or similar. Being “born again” was to ascend to the kingdom of God, not by being sprinkled or submerged in ordinary river water but by drinking the spirit water, as explained here by Jesus to Nicodemus:
Jesus: Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.
Nicodemus: How can someone be born when they are old? Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!
Jesus: Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.
Like the lady owls of Athena and Inanna, “water and the Spirit” was a euphemism for the entheogenic wine of the tree. In this Bible verse, Jesus, or rather Jusas, assumes the role of Lusaaset. To be baptized was to ingest psychotropic plants in order to enter the kingdom of heaven.
The name Lusaaset is itself an important clue to all this. When the Egyptians realized the Morning Star and Evening Star were the same, they created a composite name for this feminine duality. Since Lussa or Jusas was the Morning Star and goddess of light and Set was the Evening Star and god of darkness, the composite name Lusaa-Set was used to represent both birth and resurrection. This became the Latin name Lucifer, meaning lusas-feri or “light-bearer.”
Thus Jusas represented not only the virgin birth of enlightenment, but also the promise of rebirth in the afterlife. As a communal celebration of wisdom and eternal life, the Luciferian followers of Jusas drank psychedelic “juices” and ate “manna from heaven” in order to be “born again” through the Wisdom Tree. This was the original Christian communion inherited from Hebrew and Egyptian temple traditions, which Rosslyn seems to be telling us with its plethora of carved vines.48
As an amusing and ironic side note to this discussion, there is a puzzling correlation between the name Lusaaset and the famous Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”
According to John Lennon, the Lucy who inspired his song was Lucy O’Donnell (later Lucy Vodden), a classmate of his son Julian while he was enrolled at the private Heath House School in Weybridge, Surrey. In a 1975 interview, Lennon said,
Julian came in one day with a picture about a school friend of his named Lucy. He had sketched in some stars in the sky and called it Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.
However there is a strange web of interconnections to Lusaaset in all this.
It begins with the Scandinavian goddess of light named Saint Lucia. Celebrated on December 13th, Lucia or Lucy, as she is usually called, is one of the most beloved and celebrated traditions in Sweden. On Lucia morning the eldest daughter dresses in a white flowing robe tied with a red sash who then parades gracefully through the house holding a candle or a wreath of burning candles on her head. It is said that Lucy’s eyes are so bright no one can look into them.
Young boys then dress as Magi in blue robes with a pointed hat decorated with stars. According to legend this character represents the solar sorcerer Mika Sun-Heart who demands that Lucia lay with him.
In this way Lucy is a distant memory of Lusaaset in the sky as the Morning Star and her insemination by the Egyptian sun god Ra during a Venus transit. The celebration of Lucia in Scandinavia is a thinly veiled tribute to the fertility goddess in the Tree of Life and her transcendent entheogenic visions.
Given the period of psychedelic experimentation by the Beatles in 1967 while they were writing their Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album, it seems extraordinarily synchronistic that the song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (initials LSD) would correspond so perfectly to the earliest Egyptian goddess of light and enlightenment.
Did John Lennon learn of Lusaaset while visiting the Beatles’ guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi that year, perhaps unconsciously incorporating it into his music? Or was it just something floating around the collective unconscious, somehow manifesting through Julian and John during the Summer of Love? Whether intended or not, one thing is certain—Lusaaset is most definitely the girl with kaleidoscope eyes.
Green Man of the Garden
There is also a masculine plant god similar to Lusaaset. With 103 carvings of a face wrapped in leaves and serpentine vines growing out the mouth, the Green Man in Rosslyn chapel is easily the most prominent symbol. With so many faces, it seems obvious Sinclair and Hay were trying to tell us something very important.
From an earlier discussion, we know the term “Green Man” is a nickname given to Greek Dionysus, Roman Bacchus, and a host of other gods of the Garden. The Green Man archetype actually represents a long line of masculine entheogenic plant gods similar to Lusaaset.
The difference is Lusaaset, the Venusian goddess archetype, brings enlightenment through the Tree of Life, and the Green Man, an archetypal Son of the Sun, brings enlightenment through the vine and inner solar serpent. Both symbolize a reflection of the Sun’s light and act as intermediaries to carry the worshiper to the summit of Meru. For the most part, the two are interchangeable.
For the Hebrews, the Green Man was Nizziz, and for the Norse he was Eis. The Indians called him Les, and the Turkish Galatians knew him as Nyssus. To the Persians he was Yez, and for Gauls he was Hes. The Germans used the name Hist, and Chinese called him Jos. But no matter which one you choose, you find that all of these names share a common root in dyeus, a very old word meaning “sky father.” It is from this root that we receive the words “deity” and “day.”
Tracing this word back in history, we find a god named Dyeus Pita who was the chief solar deity of the Proto-Indo-Europeans. His son was Indra, who according to the Rig-Veda delights in drinking Soma. In Indra we find the beginning of the Green Man and his association with entheogenic wine.
Oh Haoma of gold, I am asking you for wisdom, force, victory, health, healing, prosperity and grandeur. (Zen Avesta)
Oh, King Soma, prolong our lives
Like the sun who nourishes the days every morning.
The Soma is full of intelligence
It inspires man with enthusiasm
It makes the poets sing.
We have drunk the Soma: we have come to be immortal, we have arrived at the Light, we have reached the Gods.
Half of me is in the skies, and the other extends to the low depths
Have I drunk Soma?
I am tall to the utmost, my elevation reaches the clouds
Have I drunk Soma?
—RIG-VEDA
Throughout the Rig-Veda, Soma is associated with a plant known as the “Creator of the Gods” and praised for its energizing qualities. No one knows for sure what the Soma plant actually was, though researchers such as R. Gordon Wesson propose it was the entheogenic Amanita muscaria mushroom known as the “magic mushroom” or “fly agaric.”
Many other plants are possible candidates. Throughout history each culture has used whatever entheogens grew locally to make their communal brew. It could include any combination of acacia leaves or roots, Amanita muscaria (“magic mushrooms”), ergot rye fungus, Ephedra sinica, Syrian rue seeds (the dye used on “magic carpets”), nightshade or Datura (Solanaceae), and even the human-shaped mandrake root (Mandragora). Specific parts of the plants would be pressed, heated, and blended with grape wine to make the drink, but could also include human, animal, or serpent blood and venom as a sacrament. The god of the plant was then each culture’s own Green Man or Son of the Sun, yet still portrayed in a very specific and consistent fashion.
For instance Gre
ek Dionysus (later Roman Bacchus) was the son of the sun god Zeus believed to have been born from his thigh, which the Arabs called Mount Meros. Because of this it was considered a virgin birth with Dionysus, as the Holy Child, being placed in a manger on December 25th. He was called the “King of Kings,” “God of Gods,” “Only Begotten Son,” “Savior,” “Redeemer,” “Sin Bearer,” “Anointed One,” and the “Alpha and Omega.”
Dionysus was also a traveling teacher who performed miracles. As the “God of the Vine” he turned water into wine. Known as the “Young Man of the Tree” he was slain and eaten in a Eucharistic ritual for fecundity and purification. This was celebrated during the Greek and Roman Bacchanalia in mid-March and involved the use of entheogenic wine to achieve enlightenment and communion with the gods.
It is after this on March 25th that Dionysus was said to have risen from the dead. This was the date the Romans celebrated “Hilaria” in honor of Cybele. It was also the Greeks feast of Ascensus. In both cases it marked the vernal equinox and first day of the year longer than the night. Today it is the Christian feast day celebrating the Annunciation or rising of the Virgin Mary into heaven.
As Barbara Walker explains it in The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, Dionysus was “a prototype of Christ with a cult center at Jerusalem,” where during the first century BCE many Jews worshiped him. The symbol for Dionysus/Bacchus was “IHS” or “IES,” short for “Iesus” or “Jesus.” The IHS symbol, believed by some to refer to Isis, Horus, and Set, is used to this day in Catholic liturgy and iconography.
The same Green Man profile was used for the Persian god Mithra. As a leading competitor to early Christianity, Mithraism included a Eucharist of holy plants and entheogenic Soma. In fact Mithra was worshipped in India as Itu, the vegetation deity. He was believed to be a mediator between God and Man or equivalently between Sky and Earth. For the Vedic and Roman worshippers of Mithra, he was the physical Sun itself.
The Venus Blueprint Page 18