The Sacred Plant of Ancient Egypt

Charles Musès Editor: Crow Honeycroft

The Sacred Plant of Ancient Egypt

My personal recollection of Albert Hofmann is an after-dinner conver-
sation with him at his comfortable Basel home in the late 1960s, during
which I asked whether higher (butyl) or lower (methyl) groups in lyser-
gic acid diethyl amide (LSD) would change its psychopharmacological
properties. It was then I learned to my keen interest that the two ethyl
groups were optimal, and that an aliphatic alteration in either direction
would lessen potency. Later, it became apparent (Shulgin et al. 1978)
that such structural optima characterized other important psychoactive
molecules, for instance an extraordinary substance (Fig. 2, item 6) dis-
covered by a Mack team in Germany in 1914, but never seriously noticed
until after 1950.¹
Albert Hofmann is one of the pioneers of ethnobotany in our times,
having first discovered LSD or lysergic diethyl amide as well as its re-
lation to the sacred morning glory seed (ololiuqui) of the Nahuatl peo-
ples; and was also the first to synthesize psilocybin, the active princi-
ple of mushrooms revered in the cultures of various Central American
and other peoples, specifically the species P. psilocybe and P. cuben-
sis among others. He also contributed importantly to study going well
toward demonstrating the presence of LSD-like alkaloids in the ergot-
bearing grasses or grains used in the Eleusinian Mysteries of old Greece
(Wasson et al. 1978, 1984)

The Legacy of Egypt

In this paper, we shall take the search back to the oldest sophisticated
culture known in recorded history: Imperial Egypt, which was already
ancient when Chinese shamans were just beginning to scratch the I-
Ching oracles on burnt bones, and whose high art and theology (already
so old that the language of the Fifth Dynasty Pyramid texts is archaic)
antedate Sumer. Despite abortive attempts to denigrate Egypt’s magnif-
icent heritage, one need only compare texts and art of contemporaneous
Sumer and Egypt to see the profound difference in sensitivity and artis-
tic achievement.

¹Its dextrorotatory form (+17.2° in ethanol) is much more psychoactive than

the levorotatory isomer, showing that helical formations play essential roles in psy-
chopharmacology.

1
 Since the Orphic and Eleusinian doctrines are traced even by clas-
sical Greek writers to Egypt — home of the teaching that the soul’s
immortality is assured through appropriate and (literally) mysterious
transformation of the psyche — it is logical to enquire whether ancient
Egypt had a sacred plant deployed in that process. We know from the
Sumer-Babylonian cuneiform tablets that the hero Gilgamesh sought
such a plant, found it, and was then defeated at the last moment in
his quest — reminding us of the stories of Isis and the baby son of the
King and Queen of ancient Phoenicia, who also lost the immortality
Isis could have conferred when the rites were interrupted through the
queen-mother’s fears (Demarest 1972), and that Dante in referring to
that memorable legend used for the first time in modern language the
remarkable word trasumanar, to “transhumanize.”
Degenerate religions are based on a “God” (or gods) of terror, in-
spiring fear. The highest world religions without exception have taught
that the more divine a being is, the greater the love we receive from
that being — and that the highest divine state of consciousness would
appear to us as ineffable and infinite love — an ocean of Love-Flame so
to speak. In the light of this principle, the most profound theology of
Ancient Egypt stands very high on the scale. Humans have the poten-
tiality of becoming god-like, and are ultimately welcomed into the divine
community with the tenderest love by Divine Mother and Father images.
Ancient Egyptian doctrine was never absurdly and one-sidedly sexual
(as is the tendency in the narrower, over-masculinized Judeo-Christian
context) but always included the feminine aspect of divinity, Goddess
with a capital G.
Indeed, the Roman Catholic prominence of the Virgin as a Goddess
figure, Regina Coeli, Queen of Heaven springs directly from Isis-Sôthis
via the Apocalyptic vision of Her standing on a moon, crowned with the
sun, and a rainbow-like arc of twelve stars over he head. The very title
Regina Coeli was taken over word for word from the large community in
Rome who venerated Isis into Christian times — a title that in turn was
simply the Latin translation of the Ancient Egyptian nwb-t pt, Queen
of Heaven, one of the Great Goddess’s titles. There were also two sets of
second archetypes, that later in Christianized form became the fourteen
stations of the Cross, as seen today on Roman Catholic votive lamps
showing the above-described figure of the cosmic Virgin-Goddess with
the two sets of seven Stations circling the lamp above and below her in
two zones.
Since Isis-Sôthis was par excellence the agent of immortalization
of the soul — of that metamorphic transformation that changed the
larvalpupal (cocoon or mummy-swathe) form of Osiris into the winged
(deification) Horus-imago — it is natural to seek some connection of this

2
process with the twelve stellar archetypes which in Ancient Egypt are
called the “Twelve Star Gods”. For it was She who was their Queen, as
Horus was their Director.
The idea of a metamorphic destiny for humanity existed not only
in Ancient Egypt and China (by a remarkable diffusion to the theurgic
Taoism —imported from “The Jade Kingdom of the Western Moon”
— that climaxed in T’ang times) but even manifests itself in modern
Western culture. As early as 1922, the keen social critic Lewis Mumford
wrote in a remarkable visionary passage which we abridge here:

In the midst of the tepid and half-hearted discussions that con-

tinue to arise out of peace conferences, let us break in with the
injunction to talk abc fundamentals — consider Utopia!
The world within men’s heads has undergone transforma-
tions which have disintegrated material things with the power
and rapidity of radium. I shall take the liberty of calling this
inner world our idol. I use it to stand for what the theologians
would perhaps call the spiritual word in terms of which people
pattern their behaviour.
But if the physical environment is the earth, this world of
ideas corresponds to the heavens. It is by means of the idle
that the facts of the everyday world are brought together and
assorted and sifted, and a new sort of reality is projected back
again upon the external world to provide a condition for our
release in the future, to change it so that one may have inter-
course with on one’s own terms.
This utopia of reconstruction is what its name implies: a
vision of a reconstituted environment which is better adapted
to the nature and aims of the human beings who dwell within
it than the actual one; and not merely better adapted to their
actual nature, but better fitted to their possible developments.
By a reconstructed environment I do not mean merely a
physical thing. I mean, in addition, a new set of habits, a fresh
scale of values, a different set os relationships and institutions,
and possibly an alteration of the physical and mental charac-
teristics of the people chosen.
— Mumford 1922

Bold as this passage still seems, it pales in comparison with the clarity
of the Ancient Egyptian prototype —- nothing less than the quest and
prescription for the release of humanity’s nascent divinity, in turn en-
abling the rejoining of a world and an already functional community of
highly advanced being who welcome the newcomers in joyous puissance.

3
 The principal agent of their transformation was “the divine food”,
which like what some super royal jelly could do for bees, would simu-
late metamorphic neurosecretory organs in the human central nervous
system and enable a superbiological process to take place to mature a
higher model body than our present molecular one, a body that can
transcend the dissolution of the molecular body at death and is capable
of furnishing a sensorium to perceive and function in a world freer than
the transient three-dimensional one in which we are currently confined.
This was the ageless promise that Ancient Egypt held for most explicitly.
And this is the essence of any religion worthy of the name that is to be
more than a mere excuse for the seizure of societal power and control.

Theurgic Use of Divine Plants

Still closer to the truth of what may be possible for humankind comes
the summer statement of Albert Hofmann (emphasis ours):

Meditation begins at the limits of objective reality, at the far-

thest point yet reached by rational knowledge and perception.
Meditation thus does not mean rejection of objective reality:
on the contrary, it consists of a penetration to deeper dimen-
sions of reality. It is not escape into an imaginary dream world;
rather it seeks after the comprehensive truth of objective real-
ity… As a result of the meditative penetration and broadening
of the natural-scientific world view, a new, deepened reality
consciousness would have to evolve, which would increasingly
become the property of all humankind. This could become the
basis of a new religiosity, which would not be based on belief
in dogmas… but rather on perception.
The characteristic property of (higher psychoactive sub-
stances) to suspend the boundaries between the experiencing
self and the outer world in an ecstatic, emotional experience,
makes it possible with their help, and after suitable internal
and external preparation … to evoke a mystical experience ac-
cording to plan, so to speak … Accordingly it seems feasible
that in the future, with the help of (such substances), the mys-
tical vision crowning meditation could be made accessible to
an increasing number of practitioners… I see their (i.e. such
substances) importance in the possibility of providing material
aid to meditation aimed at the mystical experience of a deeper,
comprehensive reality. Such a use accords entirely with their
essence and working character… as sacred.
— Albert Hoffmann, 1979:207-209

4
All this brings us to a key point in Ancient Egyptian ethnobotany: in-
gestion of the sacred material was designed not merely to give “a high”
but to trigger and impel the metamorphic process leading to a theurgic
transmutation of human nature into apotheosis, in which the previously
merely mortal is to be, using Meister Eckhart’s graphic word, vergottet,
i.e. “begodded”. But that process, overseen by cosmic regents, the living
archetypes of stellar powers, had to be resonantly timed with those pow-
ers. (For other details, the reader is referred to the recently published
Lion Path (Musaios 1985) in which are deciphered the meanings of the
Egyptian hieroglyphs and recondite theological passages in this regard.)
Suffice to to quote some key passages from the Book of Coming Forth
Into Day (miscalled the Totenbuch or Book of the Dead), from utterances
64 and 140, [Link]. Papyrus No. 9900, sheets 23, 24, and Papyrus No.
10,477, sheet 30:

I am Yesterday and Tomorrow, and have power to regenerate

myself… the hitherto closed door is thrust open… and the radi-
ance in my heart hath made it enduring. I can walk in my new
immortal body… and go to the domain of the starry gods… now
I can speak in accents to which they listen, and my language
is that of the star Sirius.

But to attain the awareness of these star powers and benefit from them
rewired a sedulous and rhythmic preparation of consciousness (cf. Cof-
fin Texts 468: I embrace Sôthis in her hours) by means of resonantly
timed ingestion of a sacred plant substance (cf. Fig. 1). It is a valuable
principle in investigating Egyptian theology that later or even corrupted
magical texts often enshrined bits and pieces of much older and more
sacred texts, long venerated and held to be of great power even after
their original meaning was partly or wholly forgotten. The Harris Magi-
cal Papyrus, written down in hieratic characters in 211 B.C.E., provides
an excellent illustration of this principle; for in a spell to protect against
evil beings’ attacks, we find the amazing line shown in Figure 1 and
translated and discussed in the caption.

5
Figure 1: An important hieratic text (reads from right to left as in Ara-
bic), line 11, column VII of the Harris Papyrus 501, dated 311 B.C.E.
by its colophon (British Museum Papyrus No. 10.042), together with
its hieroglyphic transcription emended from Budge (1910) by the au-
thor, printed to read: from left to right as in English. The translation
of the key portion, the first two complete phrases (between the first and
second, and second and third bullets), which preserves much older doc-
trine, reads: A full measure of holy abdu fish (which pilot the sacred
boat carrying the divine egg-embryo) to lead the speech of the ape-guides
(baboons, passing messages by mimicry, symbolized the reverberations
of divine guidance); and a like measure of the divine shrubs (khat) to
prompt the speech of the star gods. This passage is multum in parvo. The
holy fish express the power of water; the apes’ voices, of air; the shrubs,
of earth; and the star gods, of fire — the four “elements” representing
functional states of substance rather than objects. The holy plant and
the star powers were one half of the process; the attention to one’s higher
self and the consequent “hearing” of the transmitted inner guidance were
the other and just as essential half of the regenerative process. See The
Lion Path (Musaios 1985:passim, and especially 117-120). Note that the
glyph for khat is clearly shown in the second line of both the hieratic
and hieroglyphic texts in the figure.

6
Thus, the sacred plants of Ancient Egypt, as in other later cultures, were
regarded as food for the gods. Let us pursue the hint. We wind in the
hieroglyphic texts explicit phrases (cs. Musaios 1985:84-86) pertaining
to this matter: terms like “the sacred laboratory of Osiris”, where plant
principles were ground with mortar and pestle, weighed, and extracted;
or “cuttings from the shrub from the lands of the gods”, the nome or
district of Sopdu, a name related to the resurrecting power of Horus in
the world after death, or in this body before its death. Geographically,
this district covered Western Arabia and the East African coastlands
between the Nile and the Red Sea, i.e., Abyssinia (Ethiopia) or ancient
Nubira. We read too o the “substance from the land of the gods”, also
called celestial food and essence of being (cf. Musaios 1985:84-85).
All that remains in living language is the Egyptian word kht, as in
the hieratic papyrus already quoted, and in other places with tree or
shrub and twig determinative, the two sometimes found combined. Un-
doubtedly, there was a specific name, now lost to us, but the plant was
so essential to theurgic practice that it came to be called “the shrub” or
“the tree”, i.e. khat. The word was preserved in Nubia as the stele used
Amharic khat (čat) (Leslau 1976) and in Kenya as the khat tree, the ac-
tive principle extracted from which is called mira’a in Swahili (corrupted
from the m’iraj, the mystical night journey, angel-guided, of Muhammad
through the celestial regions to the very Throne of Allah). Among the
Kikuyu, the principal people of Kenya, the plant principle is known as
murungu, and the chewing of leaves and the brewing of them or of the
flowers in tea, is still widely done in Arabia, Kenya, and by Galla tribes-
men and muslims in Ethiopia.² Indeed, the fame of khat passes straight
across Africa to Angola where, in the Lunyaneka language, it is known
as otyibota.
Khat (ht) is an old word even in ancient Egyptian, going back to
the Pyramid texts (e.g. Unas, line 555). It is hieroglyphically written
as [ed: the author’s original hieroglyphs, resembling twigs, cannot be
typeset] or even as only the determinative and means twig, tree, shrub,
branch, and by attribution, pole, staff and wood. With added determi-
native, the same word can also mean a heap or mound, and in particular
the sacred staircase on the top of which Osiris sat enthroned (Musaios
1985:57) as each departed soul passed before him to have its posthumous
fate decided (see, for example, the Pr-mhrw, miscalled “the Book of the
Dead’’, since its title means (the Book of) the Coming forth Into Day,
utterance 22).

²Or what is left of it, since the locust-plague of totalitarianism seized it rapaciously,
and expectedly rendered it the land of famine it is today.

7
Some Alkaloid Chemistry
The tree/shrub, which attains a height of 6-10 feet, is known in Western
botany as Catha edulis, first identified and named to occidental science
by the eighteenth century botanist-explorer Pehr Forskal (1732-1763),
who was born in Helsingfors (Helsinki), he having named it after its
ancient name of Khat (latinized to Catha) when he visited Arabia and
Egypt, leaving behind his manuscript Flora aegyptiaco-arabuca sive de-
scriptiones plantarum quas per Aegyptum inferiorem et Arabiam felicem
detexit, which was posthumously edited after his untimely death by
Carsten Niebuhr and published at Copenhagen by Méller in 1775. In
this now rare work, Forskal identified and named for European botany
not only the evergreen Catha edulis, but also the related species Catha
spinosa, the “Catha” being simply a latinization of the ancient Egyptian
word ht for a tree or woody substance that had been taken over into
Arabic and still survives in Arabian and East Africa as khat, kat, or qat
in various spellings. The first and most ancient form is reflected in the
Amharic word for the plant at, the first letter being a palatalized and
glottalized ejective (in which the flow of air is shut off by the glottis and
then forcibly expelled through the constricted palate) (Leslau 1976:xiii).
In 1930, its perhaps most abundant alkaloid — cathine — was iden-
tified by O. Wolfes as d-norisoephedrine, which is a sympathomimetic
and can produce states of euphoric and nonordinary consciousness. It is
a substituted phenylmethylamine with a molecular: weight of 151.1 and,
as the name-prefix indicates, it rotates a beam of light clockwise as seen
by the viewer at the far end when the beam traverses the substance in
solution. For a solution in ethyl alcohol, the specific rotation is +32.5°.
Since fresh khat leaves are known to be more psychophysiologically
effective than the separate known alkaloids of the plant, there must be as
yet unidentified principles. Besides d-noriso-ephedrine (cathine), Catha
edulis contains l-ephedrine, d-isoephedrine, an as yet unidentified alka-
loid cathinine, as well as cathidine A, B, C, and D, the last having been
isolated as a tetra-ester of the hexa-alcohol cathol (C15H26O7) (Cais et
al. 1964). This plant and its principles have attracted little attention in
Western ethnobotanical literature³, yet it is on pharmacological record
that even ordinary ephedrine in high doses can produce unusual visual,
auditory, and tactile perceptions; and d-norisoephedrine (also less per-
spicuously called “pseudo” instead of iso) is a more powerful central ner-

³Although after the author’s invited lecture on June 18, 1985 at the Esalen Insti-
tute, where the ancient lineage and ethnobotanical importance of Catha edulis were
first announced, interest has augmented considerably; indeed, the well-known psy-
chopharmacological chemist Alexander Shulgin, following the author’s suggestion to
him at Esalen, was at last report working on three plant specimens.

8
vous system stimulant than ephedrine. There is also the related detone
cathone.
In Figure 2, one of the chief alkaloid components of the khat leaf
is shown in relation to affiliated molecules and neurotransmitters, all
rooted in amino acid structures fundamental in the genetic coding (cf.
Figure 3) of both plant and animal life.

9
Figure 2: The structure of the essential amino acids (lines 1 and 2) from
which lion-type molecules can be biosynthesized: lines 3-11 are thereby
biosynthetically derivable psychoactive alkaloids and amines; 12-14 are
structurally affiliated neurotransmitters, and 15 is an alkaloid almost
identical with adrenalin. The naturally occurring amino acid phenylala-
nine has the genetic codes 111 or 112, where 1 here denotes uracil (or
thymine in animals); 2, cytosine; 3, guanine; and 4, adenine, these digits
being the numbers of CC and/or CN double bonds in the nucleotide (see
Figure 3). Its most closely related amino acid is tyramine (line 2). These
two principal amino acids serve as the biosynthetic precursors of phe-
nolic plant alkaloids and related substituted phenylethylamines, many
of which are powerfully psychoactive molecules. The figure, which com-
prises fifteen molecular structures, portrays graphically the close affilia-
tions between some important amino acids, neurotransmitters, and plant
alkaloids like ephedrine and phenylpropanolamine or noriso- ephedrine
(also called norpseudoephedrine), one of the principal alkaloids of the
khat tree, Catha edulis.

10
Figure 3: The four nucleotide bases for the genetic code in plants
arranged in order of their numbers of high energy (i.e. CC or CN) dou-
ble bonds (the oxygen double bond is weaker, not in a ring, and not
nearly so structurally important). Note that complementary base pairs
in the double helix (Uracil + Adenine = 1+4 and Cytosine + Guanine
= 2+3) sum to the same energy total, 5, and that is why they are com-
plementary. This succinct method of classifying these genetically primal
molecules by their potential energy levels was first announced by the
author in a publication of the national Research Council of Italy (Musès
1965). It enables a mathematically concise and richly informative nota-
tion for the genetic code. Thus, two essential amino acids which furnish
biosynthetic substrates for many plant alkaloids (including the lion-type
psychoactive molecules) are phenylalanine (coded 111 or 112) and ly-
sine (444 or 443). It is at once apparent, since 111 + 444 = 112 + 443
= 555) that these two biosynthetically primal amino acids form a com-
plementary pair. Similarly, another such biosyntheticalfy important set,
phenylalanine and tyrosine (141 or 142) are complementary in the cen-
tral members of their codon triplets and identical in their first and third
codon members.

11
The Three Paths
Far beyond technology, the real wonders of the world will continue
to elude those who in ignorance disregard realities beyond the narrow
bounds of their unaware preconditioning — and in particular, the real-
ity of human metamorphosis. Ancient Egypt did not ignore that reality,
however, and left a teaching based on three paths, each with its own fate
and pharmacopoeia.
First, and most common, are the medicines of ordinary bodily ther-
apy and their related path of birth, growth, dissolution, and eventual
re-cycling of the molecular body we all know so well that many of us
make the mistaken assumption that it is all there is to know of what
being a human being means. That viewpoint constitutes what Egypt
called the hippopotamus path and its related “hippo medicines” of or-
dinary therapy, which are admittedly very useful. Then there is the path
between molecular-body re-cyclings that leads through the interincar-
national realm called the Duat in Egyptian doctrine, the Barzakh or
inter-state in Islam, and the Bardo in Tibetan Buddhism — roughly
equivalent to the Dantesque Purgatorio, the place of cleansing. In Egypt,
this path was called that of the divine cow, who ruled the heavens that
nourished all things on earth; and it too had its own pharmacopoeia of
“cow medicines” that could lead one, even during this life, into Bardo-
type experiences — which could grant therapeutic visions or, in those
not ready for positive therapy, destructive nightmares. It is interesting
that the important “cow molecules”, which involve richly visionary ex-
perience, contain an indole ring: DMT (Dimethyltryptamine) harmaline,
ibogaine, LSD (Lysergic acid diethylamide), and psilocybin.
Finally, there was the lion path and its pharmacopoeia, those spe-
cial elixirs that accelerated the metamorphic process towards an other
than merely molecular type of body, a body able to function in a higher
kind of objectivity, comprehending more than the quinto-sensory world
and the “real-dream world of the Duat/Barzakh/Bardo. The lion path
could prepare one to pass through the Duat after molecular dissolution,
into a more enduring and more lastingly happier sphere. Then the Duat
becomes what its ancient etymology prefigures: a place of dawning, that
leads beyond itself as the dawn leads out of the night and into the day.

12
Catha Edulis (Khat)
The sequence of these three paths and their distinct character4 were sym-
bolized by the tradition of a threefold choice of Osirian couch in Ancient
Egypt, almost miraculously preserved for us in Tut-ankh-amun’s rela-
tively undisturbed tomb (Fox 1951). Incidentally, the word “tomb” was
not known in our nihilistic sense, being called in Egyptian the “cham-
ber of transformations”. The unique lion-path pharmacopoeia, providing
functions to stimulate the human metamorphic process, and some of its
bio-chemical roots and fruits, are exhibited in Figure 2. The old Egypt-
ian usage devolved around item 4, along with related and as yet little
investigated alkaloids found in the young leaves and branch shoots of
Catha edulis as well as in its flowers (called “flowers of paradise”’ in
Yemen), from which a restorative tea is still made in Arabia. Details
on the contemporaneous khat tradition are available, for example, in
H. Hofmann et al. (1955), S. Prarirokh and E. Shellard (1962), and O.
Sierung (1957).
The tradition of khat passed from the Ancient Egyptian into the
Islamic pharmacopoeia. Extract of khat was, for example, prescribed by
an able thirteenth century Islamic physician, Naguib ed-Din, to combat
depressed states. And the well-known pseudonymous author, Isak Dine-
sen (the Baroness Tania von Blixen) herself used the leaves of the khat
tree to gain creative vision and insight.
We have now resurrected what was well one of the most sacred plants
in Ancient Egyptian culture and religious practice. The ancient Egyp-
tians perhaps also knew of ergotized grass (tellingly called in French
l‘ivraie) which, as a friend and correspondent, the Egyptologist Jean-
Claude Goyon, writes, appears to have been connected with li’vresse
d’Hathor, the intoxication of Hathor, a ceremonial trance-state con-
ducted by priests and priestesses of Isis-Hathor (Goyon 1985).
However, it is not a grass (much less a mushroom) to which the
ancient hieroglyphic and hieratic texts refer (see Figure 1) when they
speak of the divine plant that can manifest the gods and, in particular,
the star gods. In these connections, the glyphs refer unmistakably to the
leaved branches of a shrub or tree. The single candidate is the Khat tree,
Catha edulis Forsk., now identified as the sacred plant of Ancient Egypt.
At the end of his invited foreword to the 1980 printing of the au-
thoritative reference work by R. Schultes and A. Hofmann, Botany and
Chemistry of Hallucinogens, Heinrich Klüver, the prominent psycholo-
gist and expert on mescaline, notes (p. xv) that “The well-nigh frenetic
research activities in the field of psychoactive drugs have frequently

4 First suspected by Alexandre Piankoff, whom the author met in 1957 in Cairo,

although Piankoff did not surmise their full significance.

13
been pursued without considering recent advances along ethnopharma-
cological and ethnobotanical lines.” By the same token, Schultes himself,
specializing actually in Amazonian plants in Columbia (where he lived
twelve years), does not have kat, khat, or Catha edulis in his index. And
even Albert Hofmann mentions it only once in another book (Hofmann
1979), and then merely in a passing citation from the work of a researcher
far ahead of his time, Ernst von Bibra, who briefly noted kat in 1855
under the casual rubric of “pleasurable” substances in the train of coffee
and tobacco. Hofmann would have relied on Schultes to point it up eth-
nobotanically, but the latter remained unaware of it and hence Hofmann
left it uninvestigated. It is time the hiatus is filled.
Another prominent writer, however, this time in the field of litera-
ture, was not at all unaware of khat. We refer again to the Baroness
Tania von Blixen, better known by her nom de plume of Isak Dinesen. It
is clear from Errol Trzebinski’s fascinating biography5 of the Baroness’
high-born British lover, Denys Finch Hatton, that she used khat regu-
larly to attain the creative states in which she wrote many of her stories;
and one of them, “The Dreamers’, specifically refers to it as miraa.
One looks in vain through all the plethora of standard (and non-
standard) works on hallucinogens and ethnobotany since the 1950s for
any mention, much less discussion, of the plant-shrub Catha edulis. That
this plant has ancient cultural roots is attested by the extant prescrip-
tions of it for emotional depression dating back to thirteenth century Is-
lam — prescriptions that attest a far more ancient heritage. Khat-flower
tea finds also old lineage in Saudi Arabia, which overlies the Ancient
Egyptian nome or district called Sopdu, sacred to the deity of the same
name, who is identical with Horus-in-the-Duat, Horus-Sokar, or Horus-
of-Sôthis — the dark6 counterpart and companion’ of Isis-Sôthis, whose
stellar form was the brightest of all our stars, Sirius.

The Guiding Vision

These linkages more than hint at an ancient astronomical awareness (p-
reserved in the Egyptian-influenced Dogon tribe, as the work of ethnol-
ogists Germaine Dieterlen and Marcel Griaule has shown) of the “dark
companion” star of Sirius discovered in modern times by Alvan G. Clark
in Massachusetts on January 31, 1862, following the calculations of his
colleague, Truman Safford. It was later (1960) established by van den
Bos, working in South Africa, that the very dense Dark Companion of

5 A book (Silence Will Speak) used as a source for the splendid 1985 film “Out of
Africa’, based on the life of the Baroness von Blixen.
6 Black-and-gold-painted falcon-mummy cases were his icons.

14
Sothis circles her once in almost exactly fifty (50.09) years, their next
nearest approach or periastron occurring in April, 1994.7
But for the essential human fact in all this, one must return to the
earliest vision of Albert Hofmann, to what may be called the epitome of
his spiritual autobiography:

While still a child, I experienced … deeply euphoric moments

on my rambles through forest and meadow. It was these ex-
periences that shaped the main outlines of my worldview and
convinced me of the existence of a miraculous, powerful, un-
fathomable reality that was hidden from everyday sight.
Intrigued by the plant world since early childhood, I chose
to specialize in research on the constituents of medicinal plants
… In studying the literature connected with my work, I became
aware of the great universal significance of visionary experience.
It plays a dominant role, not only in mysticism and the history
of religion, but also in the creative process in art, literature,
and science.
— Hofmann 1979, 1983

Here are the roots of a perennial value system, for without a sense of the
sacred there is no valid approach to any psychoactive substances and
their point is inevitably missed. Ancient Egypt knew that well, and can
still point the way to nothing less than human metamorphosis.

7For more information on the interesting resonances between that periastron and
the perihelion and rare crossing of Neptunes’s orbit by Pluto, together with connec-
tions to Ancient Egyptian doctrine, see The Lion Path (Musaios) 1985: 21,77-82.

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