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The Hidden World: Survival of Pagan Shamanic Themes in European Fairytales 1st Edition

by Blaise Daniel Staples (Author), Carl A.P. Ruck (Author, Editor), Jose Alfredo Gonzalez Celdran (Author, Editor),
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 7 ratings
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It was mainly only the European urban centers that converted to Christianity, and often more for political or commercial interests, than as a matter of faith. The old religions persisted in the villages or pagani, from which the term Paganism arose. The Christians built their sanctuaries upon the pagan sites, expropriating their numinous past, assimilating the symbolism of the former deities, and commonly incorporating the actual architectural remnants. The wisdom of those deposed gods and their rites persisted in less objectionable forms ― disguised to delude the censors ― as country festivals and quaint tales often about the fairy folk, who coexisted with this world and could be accessed by magical procedures that perpetuated half-remembered methods of authentic ancient shamanism.

Such shamanism always involved pharmaceutical expertise. Mircea Eliade was mistaken in concluding that drugs were characteristic only of the late and decadent stages of a religion. Rock paintings of the greatest antiquity and his own abundant citations indicate that, instead, a pharmacological Eucharist was the norm; and Eliade was himself about to reverse his stance shortly before his death.

Encoded in tales seemingly as simple as Snow White with her poisoned red and white apple are themes traceable back to the great epics of Homer and the Mesopotamian Gilgamesh. These patterns of shamanic empowerment lurk also in the histories of the leading families of Europe, who could not completely divest themselves of the former religious basis for their right to rule, but instead they embraced, Christianized, and buried it in sanctified graves, as was the case with the great fairy Melusina, whose eighth abominable son, called Horrible, was murdered. A number of churches involved in the Albigensian heresy claim his body was laid to rest beneath them.

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  1. ISBN-10
    1594601445
  2. ISBN-13
    978-1594601446
  3. Edition
    1st
  4. Publisher
    Carolina Academic Press
  5. Publication date
    May 1, 2007
  6. Language
    English
  7. Dimensions
    6 x 1 x 8.75 inches
  8. Print length
    426 pages
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Carl Ruck is a Professor of Classical Studies at Boston University.

The late Blaise Daniel Staples received a Ph.D. in Classical Studies from Boston University and is the author of four books and numerous articles.

Jose Alfredo Gonzalez Celdran is a Professor of Greek at I.E.S. Valle de Leiva, Alhama de Murcia, Spain.

Mark Alwin Hoffman is Editor of Entheos: Journal of Psychedelic Spirituality.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Carolina Academic Press; 1st edition (May 1, 2007)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 426 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1594601445
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1594601446
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.6 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1 x 8.75 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 7 ratings

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
7 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Juan Camilo Rodriguez Martinez
5.0 out of 5 stars The Mushroom is The Key
Reviewed in the United States on September 25, 2015
For me this is the best Carl Ruck work to the date... (Leaving out his work with Wasson because The Road To Eleusis and Persephones Quest are true classics) I love it... From the first page to the last... Masterpiece...

I think its an outstanding book... All authors are great... Each chapter is full of wisdom and i think its the most complete academic research around mushrooms and fairytales... I respect the other reviews here in Amazon about this book but i disagree... I recommend this book for everyone interested in entheobotany an ethnobotany..

This book is exceptional... I really think there was an Amanita Muscaria cult that lies hidden in the european famous fairytales...
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Arle Lommel
2.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining, but are mushrooms really the key to *everything*?
Reviewed in the United States on July 5, 2008
This book was passed on to me by a friend who knows I have interest in the now largely-ignored issue of survivals in folklore and in religious studies (my doctoral work was in this area). The premise is interesting enough: that folkloric materials contain remnants of shamanic ritual. Given the work done on figures such as the Hungarian táltos, there is ample reason to accept this general premise.

Unfortunately, Ruck's book is not about the survival of shamanic traces in fairytales. Rather (as anyone familiar with Ruck's writing, which I was not before reading this book, would have known), it's all about the 'shrooms dude. No occurrence of a red and white color scheme is too small, no bumpy surface too insignificant, no apparent change in mental state too trivial to be proof that lurking just beneath the surface of these tales is a cult of Amanita muscaria (fly agaric) eaters that seem to transcend time and space to be wherever Ruck needs them.

If Ruck is right, then he has the key to understanding the whole of human history from (I'm not joking) the lotophagi of the Odyssey to Super Mario Brothers. Of course, when a claim is too much to be believed (such as his statement that it is well known that Through The Looking Glass is a text about mushrooms) there are footnotes to other writings by Ruck or his coauthors to back it up. It's self-referential scholarship at its best! Everything is meticulously documented, but nothing seems to escape the gravitational pull of Ruck's Big Idea. And just when you think that there can't be a more outrageous claim about the role of mushrooms in human society, another one comes along that tops the last one.

Ultimately, I'm afraid, the issue isn't one of scholarship, but rather one of religion. Even Ruck's preferred term for psychedelics, "entheogens" (that which brings the god within), is an attempt to invest these things with not even quasi-religious authority. (While one could argue that entheogen is a more respectful and less loaded term than psychedelic with its associations with 60s drug counter-culture, Ruck seems to want the reader to take the theos component of entheogen literally.) Alas, Ruck's hypothesis cannot be falsified by the evidence, so it also cannot be tested or verified (a point he basically concedes at various points when he says that those looking for "proof" will miss the point). If you believe that the shrooms were everywhere, it all makes sense. If you're a bit skeptical, it's one wild ride of conjecture and outrageous speculation. While it is possible that Ruck is right and mushrooms (the consumption of which he basically equates with shamanism) were everywhere from Alice in Wonderland to the Christian Eucharist to Hindu enlightenment, I don't have the eye of faith needed to see it and I certainly don't see it as being so basic and fundamental and pervasive as Ruck and his colleagues do.

I'd give this one star for the scholarship, but for sheer entertainment value it's got two stars. If you like Graham Hancock or Erik von Däniken as spinners of great yarns, Ruck is up there with them (although nothing here is quite so, umm, exciting as Hancock's tales of spending the night among the pyramids and finding out some things he just can't tell the readers yet...)

There is credible scholarship out there about survivals and about shamanism, but this isn't it. I'm sure that Ruck would object that I've just bought into the whole mindset that suppresses the truth, but all this points to the fact that for Ruck et al. the mushrooms are an article of faith, something that is there before and after all proof or lack thereof.
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Top reviews from other countries

Ronald Arthur Dewhirst
4.0 out of 5 stars I was expecting more for £26
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 10, 2010
Verified Purchase
A learned and academic series of essays on the hidden symbolism in the myths, legends and fairytales that we may have grown up with. There's a lot of speculation and linking up of linguistic clues that the reader may just have to take on trust.

Whether the 'stone', 'apple', 'magic shoes' or 'magic herbs' refer to entheogenic fungi is difficult to prove but the subsequent visions and journeys into the otherworld tend to lead one to that conclusion.

One thing the book does highlight is the different ways in which an experience is described and interpreted in different cultures and at different times in history.

Some good leads in this book for further reading and research and the useful DVD enclosed has high quality images related to the text with a good audio commentary.
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