Witch Hunt and ACID

I was watching this program on tv called mystery hunters abit of a kids show but interesting, they were doing a segment on the witches of salem or something like that if i can recall, and they were going through all the possiblities on why people claimed they have seen witches and stuff like that, one of the reasons was mass hysteria and another was that they were having hallucinations due to a fungus that grew on rye, which i realised last night would have most certainly been Ergot which lsd is made from so the reason why people were seeing witches and saying they were attacked was because they were afraid of being attacked and constantly on the look out so when they had the ergot it caused them to have a bad trip and freak out then when it wore off they would point and yell shes a witch. I rest my case lol let me know what you think theres probably a hole or two in the story but i tried to get most of it

It's been suggested. I highly doubt it; people are trying to downplay the religious hysteria that was sweeping through the Americas, and had taken countless lives in Europe before that. Justifying it. It's entirely possible, yes. But chance are there would be widespread reports at the same time concerning ergotism... People would not have felt very healthy, and it would not have escaped notice. So the chances of this happening and being the root of what happened at Salem is very unlikely.

What is much more likely, however, is that the kykeon (a drink made from fermented grains) drank during the Eleusinian Mysteries in Greece throughout most of the ancient world prior to Christianity was fueled by psychadelics. It was a festival that was ancient in their time, and participants were sworn to absolute secrecy about what happened during it. People came back with a renewed hope and understanding of life... It effected people deeply enough that even when most of the Roman Empire had converted to Christianity, those people who participated before their conversion would still not talk about it- saying it was too sacred. So we know very little about it to this day, even though it was probably the most spiritually relevant event in the world for millenia.

It's been suggested by several scholars (including the "father of LSD", Albert Hofmann), and surprisingly, accepted by many others, the the kykeon was deliberately brewed from ergot-infected rye, which was then purified into an LSA for the celebrants to drink (a naturally occuring psychadelic; LSD is a synthesized LSA). Take a little kykeon, throw in some ancient ritual, and well... You have a life-changing spiritual experience. It's just a shame that EVERYONE took the truth of what happened during it to their grave.

~Ethno