Time and Mind: The Journal of Leo Perutz and the Archaeology, Mystery of St Peter’s Consciousness and Culture Snow Volume 6—Issue 2 July 2013 Alan Piper pp. 175–198 DOI: 10.2752/175169713X13589680082172 Alan Piper graduated in 1986 in the History of Ideas at Reprints available directly Kingston University (Surrey). His research interests include from the publishers the history of esoteric thought and the role of mind-altering Photocopying permitted by plant drugs in the history of human culture. His work has license only been published in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, Entheos: © Bloomsbury Publishing Plc The Journal of Psychedelic Spirituality, and in the Sino-Platonic 2013 Papers series. [email protected] Abstract A novel published in 1933, describes the isolation of a hallucinogenic drug from an ergot-type fungus. It remarkably predates the discovery the hallucinogenic properties of the ergot-derived alkaloid lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) by ten years. It also identifies ergot as the secret psychoactive sacrament of the ancient mysteries forty years before this hypothesis became a matter of academic and scientific investigation. In the novel, a central character plans to use an ergot derived drug as an agent of popular religious renewal, prefiguring the New Age religious revival initiated by the popular use of LSD. The story involves the mass testing of a hallucinogenic drug on the unsuspecting inhabitants of an isolated village almost twenty years before the Pont St Esprit incident of 1951, which has been ascribed to the CIA’s plans for experimental dosing of unsuspecting civilians with psychoactive drugs. This article investigates how the author could have managed to foresee these future events in such prophetic detail and reveals the sources that were available. In this article the history of psychoactive drugs is set in the context of the political, scientific, literary, and philosophical culture of the interwar period and shows that the cultural history of psychoactive drugs is enhanced by such context.

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Keywords: Leo Perutz, St Peter’s Snow, Competing versions of incidents play on the history of ergot and ergotism, discovery central question of which is the real version. of LSD, psychoactive sacraments, drugs in St Peter’s Snow, like his other drug novel, The science fiction Master of the Day of Judgement (1994), is really a psychological detective story. Rather than embracing the supernatural, both novels The Mystery actually feature rational explanations for In 1933, the year in which Hitler proclaimed mysterious or apparently supernatural events. the Nazi party the only political party in Regardless, Leo Perutz’s novel has to be seen Germany and all others were others were as extraordinarily prescient, if not prophetic, banned, the Austrian author Leo Perutz of some extraordinary subsequent historical published a novel called St Petri-Schnee events and perhaps has yet more mysterious (Perutz 1933). It was soon published in resonances. English as The Virgin’s Brand (Perutz 1935), Here is a book that appears to be at but was not published in English again until least ten, if not twenty or even forty, years there was a later translation in 1990 as ahead of its time. It describes the isolation St Peter’s Snow (Perutz 1990). The novel of a hallucinogenic drug from an ergot-type describes how, in 1932, a gentleman scientist fungus ten years before the discovery of seeks to discover a drug that will inspire lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), the testing religious fervor and how an experimental of that drug on the unsuspecting population administration of the drug to the local of a small isolated village twenty years before population has a disastrous result. The the mysterious “Pont St Esprit” incident, novel is sometimes categorized as science which has been attributed to secret testing fiction (Rouiller 2002), or categorized of a psychoactive drug (Albarelli 2011),1 and with the fantasy and occult fiction of it identifies ergot as the secret psychoactive other contemporary Austrian writers sacrament of the ancient mysteries forty such Gustav Meyrink, whose occult novels years before the this was proposed in the feature transcendental drug experiences. multidisciplinary study The Road to Eleusis: In addition to his novels Perutz’s shorter The Unveiling of the Mysteries (Wasson et al. work was published in what has been 1978). described the world’s first fantasy magazine, Der Orchideengarten (The Orchid Garden), Who Was Leo Perutz? which featured short works of the fantastic Leo Perutz was an Austrian writer born in and macabre by contemporary and earlier . In his professional life he was an authors and whose illustrations often actuary but also a highly successful novelist. displayed a taste for the kind of erotic His family was of Jewish-Spanish ancestry, decadence associated with the Germany but largely secularized and not particularly of the Weimar years. Perutz’s novels religious. His family moved to where often contain an element of the fantastic, Perutz attended a number of schools and with dramatic plots featuring confusing colleges and eventually studied probability and conflicting interpretations of events. theory, statistics, actuarial science, and

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economics. He then worked for various and which formed a major part of the insurance companies including that of his popular resistance movement against father and the Assicurazioni Generali in following the Anschlus, the Nazi occupation Trieste for whom also worked. of Austria, in 1938. As an actuary, he calculated mortality tables In 1933 Perutz’s novel St Petri-Schnee and fact-based insurance rates and published appeared in Germany, but after the takeover on this subject in professional journals. by the Nazis could hardly be sold there. In Vienna, Perutz frequented the literary Perutz himself was not on the list of banned cafes, such as the Museum Café and the Café authors, but his publisher Zsolnay was Central. Among his literary acquaintances considered Jewish and could not deliver were Peter Altenberg, Hermann Bahr, Oskar his books to Germany and Perutz thus Kokoschka, and Alfred Polgar. In the period disappeared from its main market. before the First World War Perutz took an In 1934 Perutz met his second wife, intensive part in the literary and musical life whom he married in 1935. After the of Vienna and made several trips to France, Anschluss, in 1938 Perutz fled with his family Italy, Spain, North Africa, Turkey, Lebanon, first to Venice, from there to Haifa and Palestine, and Egypt. eventually settled in Tel Aviv. Perutz and his Perutz published his first novel in 1915, wife still managed to travel to Austria and in The Third Bullet (Perutz, 1915), and in 1916, 1952 Perutz resumed Austrian citizenship. a second novel, The Mango Tree Miracle, In the following years, he always spent the co-written with Paul Frank (Perutz and Frank summer months in Vienna. In 1957 Perutz 1916). Both books were quite successful and fell ill during a visit to , died, and was the film rights to the The Mango Tree Miracle buried in the cemetery there. were sold. The film version was premiered While he was a bestselling author in in 1921 under the title The Adventures of Dr. Germany in the 1920s and 1930s Perutz Kircheisen. Perutz enlisted during the First lapsed into relative obscurity after the war World War and was sent the Russian front and was little known outside Austria and where he suffered a lung shot that meant a Germany. liked Perutz’s long stay in hospital. work and supported the publication of Shortly after the birth of his son Felix in translations into Spanish in Argentina. 1928 Perutz’s wife, Ida, died which plunged Publication of a number of his novels in him into a deep crisis. After the death of English by Harvill Press in the 1980s and his wife Perutz met occultists with whom 1990s promoted renewed interest and he tried to contact his dead wife, while at reflected Perutz’s growing acceptance as the same time he remained skeptical. The an important twentieth-century European economic crisis beginning in the late 1920s author. Perutz’s novels often follow the fate detracted from Perutz’s income and, formerly of individuals, contain an element of the politically a Social Democrat, in the 1930s fantastic, and are usually located in the past Perutz turned to legitimism, represented or refer to the past. The plot is exciting by a variety of groups that looked to a and is told by numerous allusions, irony, and Hapsburg or other monarchical restoration confusing, conflicting interpretations of the

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events. A central theme is the question anticipated that a chemical isolated from an “What is real?”2 ergot-type fungus would provide an agent for religious renewal? This was indeed the Leo Perutz—Prophet or Initiate? case when in the 1960s and 1970s the So exactly what are we to make of the transcendental experience bestowed by multiple mysteries of Leo Perutz’s novel St LSD led many to seek meaning in the new Peter’s Snow? Well, at the heart of its story is religious movements of that era, as people the isolation of a hallucinogenic drug from sought a framework within which make sense a fungal parasite of wheat, which has been of their drug experiences (Stevens 1987). artificially cultivated in a Petri dish, and which Perutz’s narrative provides something is capable of reliably inducing a religious of an answer to some of the questions experience. However, St Peter’s Snow was that I have already raised inasmuch as first published in 1933 and, according to the Baron reveals that his attempts to conventional accounts, Albert Hofmann first isolate the hallucinogenic properties of synthesized the powerful hallucinogenic drug the ergot-type fungus were initiated by his LSD, a derivative of ergot, a fungal infestation historical researches. These revealed that of grain, on 16 November 1938, but he flour from ergotized grain was the secret did not become aware of its hallucinogenic psychoactive sacrament of the ancient properties until he experienced an accidental mysteries, but this only provokes further laboratory intoxication on 16 April 1943. questions. Before reading St Peter’s Snow The accidental intoxication was dreamlike, I had only come across the idea that the in which with his eyes closed he perceived ancient mystery religions may have induced “an uninterrupted stream of fantastic transformative religious experiences using pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense naturally occurring psychoactive drugs, kaleidoscopic play of colours” (Hofmann specifically drugs derived from ergot in 1980). the case of the Eleusinian mysteries, in The But this is not the whole story, because Road to Eleusis co-authored by Professor the potential of LSD to reliably invoke Carl Ruck, R. Gordon Wasson, and Albert a religious-type experience even in the Hofmann, the aforementioned discoverer most rationally minded, was only gradually of LSD (Wasson et al. 1978). Following discovered as medical and popular the speculative inquiry of Wasson et al., a experimentation with the drug revealed second equally sophisticated argument that this aspect in the 1960s and 1970s. It was ergot was the secret psychoactive sacrament a drug that would provide a renewal of of esoteric gnosis in a variety of religious religious enthusiasm which, in Perutz’s novel, traditions was raised by Dan Merkur in two the gentleman scientist, Baron Malchin, is later books (Merkur 2000, 2001). How had seeking, when he employs a biochemist Perutz anticipated both the isolation of a to isolate a drug with this effect from an drug capable of inspiring a religious type of ergot-type infestation of grain, commonly experience and also the revelation that ergot called “St Peter’s Snow.” How could Perutz was the secret psychoactive sacrament of or his gentlemen scientist character have the ancient Eleusian mysteries (Figure 1), a

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and empty” and “to lead the hearts of mankind back to the glamour of the throne and the idea of empire by the grace of God.” This idea is rejected in a discussion with the local priest, who believes that “faith is a blessing (that) can only be kindled by patient work, by loving service, and by prayer,” but the Baron’s scientific assistant Kallisto says “No. It can also be kindled by chemistry.” The Baron describes his exhaustive search, following a clue provided by a historian friend, from whom he learned that “What we call the fervour and ecstasy of faith whether as an individual phenomenon or as a group, nearly always presents the clinical picture of a state of excitation produced by a hallucinogenic drug,” but that no such drug is known to science. The Baron’s search was inspired by that hint, delivered by the central character’s father. “My life’s work,” says the Baron, “developed out of an idea he casually mentioned.” And that search was indeed to discover just such a drug and he believes that he has done Fig 1 A Caryatid depicted carrying the kiste, the so, partly through searching through the enigmatic sacred chest of the Eleusian Mysteries, ancient Greek and Roman classics of natural and a Caryatid was keeper of the vessel history and partly from texts of ancient containing the kykeon, the possibly ergotized gnostic and heretical cults. A further ritual drink used in the ancient Greek Eleusian clue was derived by the Baron from his Mysteries, Eleusis Museum. Photo: Paul Devereux. observation that the patterns of outbreaks of religious enthusiasm followed the climatic full ten years before the discovery of LSD’s conditions favorable to ergot infestation of hallucinogenic properties and over forty grain. years before Wasson, Ruck, and Hofmann, followed by Merkur, published their The Story of St Peter’s Snow conclusions that the ancient mysteries of Before addressing the question of what two millennia ago and subsequent esoteric sources Perutz may have had that could traditions involved the use of a psychoactive explain his apparently extraordinary foresight, drug derived from an ergot-type fungus? a proper summary of the novel’s narrative, The Baron’s plan was “to rekindle the including some further mysteriously prescient glow of faith in an age that has grown tepid elements, is in order.

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The story starts in March 1932 with may only have been a dream or psychotic the central character, Dr George Friedrich fantasy, have been constructed from innocent Amberg, awakening from a coma in hospital, characters of real life, in this case the nurse where he is told that his coma is due to an and orderly caring for the protagonist in his automobile accident that took place five coma. weeks before. However, as he recovers Following his arrival in Morwede, Amberg gradually pieces together an Amberg is introduced to the adoptive son of altogether different recollection of events. Baron Malchin named Frederico, who bears Amberg is a doctor, whose father made his a startling resemblance to the medieval bust name as a specialist on the reign of Emperor in the bookshop. The Baron had known Frederick II (1194–1250). Amberg had taken Amberg’s father, the historian specializing a job as a doctor in a small village named in Frederick II Emperor of the Holy Roman Morwede, via a classified advertisement, to Empire and the Baron’s friendship with his look after the health of the local peasantry father had supported Amberg’s appointment on behalf of the landowner, one Baron as local physician by the Baron. As explained von Malchin. On his way to Morwede, at earlier, an insight granted to the Baron by a temporary stop in the nearest town, Amberg’s historian father had led the Baron Amberg notices a medieval stone relief down a specific avenue of historical research of a face in the window of a bric-a-brac of his own. Amberg discovers that the Baron shop, which he half recognizes but cannot has also hired a Greek female microbiologist place, and a book named Why is Faith in named Kallisto, whom Amberg had met God Disappearing? Both items are omens of before as a laboratory co-worker and who future events that unfold during Amberg’s is now engaged in research work on behalf stay in the village. The shop is closed but of the Baron. The Baron soon attempts to Amberg feels a powerful impulse to return persuade Amberg to secretly administer an to the shop another time and buy the book. experimental potion to one of the doctor’s Not only the tone of St Peter’s Snow peasant patients. Amberg is uncomfortable but also components of its narrative are with the idea and accidentally breaks the startlingly modern, even cinematic, which is vial containing the potion before he can perhaps not surprising as Perutz also wrote administer it and reports back that it had no for the stage and several of Perutz’s novels effect. have been filmed, including St Petri-Schnee The Baron soon reveals to Amberg that (Patzak 1991). he has a secret plan to restore the German Strikingly modern elements in the book Holy Roman Empire through a pretender include a protagonist awaking from a coma, drawn from a hidden bloodline of Emperor whose carers seek to convince him that his Frederick II. This secret heir is his adoptive recollection of a series of sinister events is son Frederico of the Stauffen family. The a self-constructed fantasy, but are they his Baron later reveals the link between his benign carers or agents of a cover-up? There scientific investigations and his planned revival is also the now familiar filmic conceit that of the Holy Roman Empire. His researches the players, in his confused recollection that had revealed that the secret psychoactive

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sacrament of the ages was derived from an Jewish intellectuals such as Ernst Bloch, ergot-type fungus of wheat known locally Gershom Scholem, and Franz Kafka. This as “St Peter’s Snow” or “Our Lady’s Brand,” places the publication of Perutz’s novel which was known to the Gnostics and other during a period of interest in both Gnostic secret sects of the ages and will serve him as and Hermetic ideas, Kabbalah, and of drug an agent of religious renewal. experimentation in the interwar years. The Baron has also determined that the The parallel that Boureau traces is that fungus was responsible for the waves of Kantorowicz’s study of Frederick II was religious fervour of the Middle Ages. Kallisto written in a spirit of widespread aspirations has successfully isolated the active principal for spiritual and political renewal of Germany, of the fungus and the Baron plans to test the following defeat in the First World War potion’s potential to create a religious revival and subsequent economic depression. by spiking the drinks of the villagers, whom Nationalism in Germany of the 1920s and he has invited to a fete. However, instead of 1930s had more faces than just Nazism; inspiring a religious revival the psychoactive as well as right-wing conservatives and compound results in a Communist uprising in reactionaries the political left espoused its which to Baron is killed. The authorities hush own forms of nationalism. Kantorowicz’s up the event to avoid the spread of social nationalism was part of a romantic poetic unrest and they try to persuade Amberg that vision of national renewal depicted in the recollections are a delusion. poem Secret Germany by Stefan George (1868–1933). The Role of Ernst Kantorowicz Kantorowicz was a contemporary of The summary of Perutz’s novel above owes Perutz and also Jewish, who hoped for a much to a plot summary by Alain Boureau renewal of Germany in the spirit of the (2001) in his study of the German Jewish subject of his study, Frederick II. Kantorowicz historian of medieval political and intellectual depicted Frederick as an idealized spiritual, history, Ernst Kantorowicz (1895–1963). as much as political, leader of the German Why should an elaborate summary of nation, when it formed part of the Holy Perutz’s largely forgotten novel appear in Roman Empire. Though he was an opponent a study of a now largely obscure German of Nazism and a wartime Jewish émigré historian? The reason is that Boureau escapee from the Nazis, Kantorowicz’s hope considers Perutz’s novel, the circulation of for national renewal was not entirely remote which was banned by the Nazi’s almost from Nazi ideals. immediately following publication, to parallel Kantorowicz notes Frederick’s interest an aspect of Kantorowicz’s life. in esoteric matters and that his interests Kantorowicz was the author of a spanned matters that today would be bestselling biography of Emperor Frederick considered the subjects of both experimental II (1194–1250) of the Holy Roman Empire science and the occult. According to of which Germany then formed a part Kantorowicz’s account “no spirit among all (Kantorowicz 1931). Boureau places the thousand demons of the world was Kantorowicz in the same world of 1930s a stranger to (Frederick’s) cosmopolitan

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mind. All the supernatural magic of the handing down knowledge of the role of east was at his command and the elusive mind-altering plants in a religious context. jinns, and all the satanic poisons of Italy and The parallel that Boureau sees between the immeasurable daring of the German the career of Kantorowicz with Perutz’s novel Mephistopheles.” Frederick’s mind “embraced is that Kantorowicz’s intention of fueling a every line of culture in the contemporary romantic and spiritual renewal of Germany world: Spanish, Provencal, French, Roman, actually helped to fuel a Nazi revolution that Italian, Arab, Greek and Jew.” Add to this deprived him of his university position and his knowledge of tongues, of jurisprudence, attempted to exterminate his entire race, of ancient literature, of Roman educational in the same way that the Baron’s plan for literature, and the literature of the ancient spiritual renewal led instead to a communist world and the literature of Scholasticism. uprising and his death. It should be clear On this basis he was known as “stupor from this account that Amberg’s historian mundi” meaning “the wonder of the father, who made a special study of Frederick world” and he corresponded with learned II, must be modeled on Kantorowicz and individuals from many countries. Frederick Amberg’s given middle name is Friedrich, II attracted the medieval scholar Michael no doubt chosen by his father in honor of Scot, along with many other savants, to his Emperor Friedrich II. Thus we have three court. At Frederick’s request Scot oversaw Fredericks in the story, Frederico of the a fresh translation of Aristotle and the Hohenstaufen family bloodline, the adoptive Arabian commentaries from Arabic into son of the Baron, the story’s protagonist Latin. There exist translations by Scot George Friedrich Amberg, and the central himself of Aristotle’s works along with the figure of Frederick II, a likeness of which commentaries of Averroes upon them. Amberg sees by chance in a shop window Scot’s manuscripts dealt with astrology, en route to take up his post as a general alchemy, and the occult sciences generally practitioner with the Baron. and account for his popular reputation as a magician. According to Kantorowicz, The Role of Stefan George and Frederick had Michael Scot teach him the the Stauffenbergs properties of herbs and drugs and such At the time of writing his study of Frederick was the extent of Frederick’s inquiring mind II, Kantorowicz was part of the circle of that it seems unlikely that the psychoactive scholars, students, and poets surrounding a properties of certain plants would have poet and literary editor called Stefan George, escaped his attention. He was familiar known as the Georgekreis (George Circle). In with Pliny (1956), who in Book XXIV of fact Stefan George effectively commissioned Chapter 102 in his Natural History describes Kantorowicz’s study, edited it for publication a number of mind-altering plants including as part of a series of books published for the aglaophotis by means of which the Magi him, and may even have written parts of the “can summon deities into their presence manuscript. when they please.” So Frederick and thence Stefan George was considered by his Kantorowicz are certainly candidates for disciples to be a prophet and a priest

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and he thought of himself as a messiah identified both Claus and Berthold von of a new kingdom that would be led by Stauffenberg with the Hohenstaufen dynasty an intellectual or artistic elite. Because his and there was a tradition in the Stauffenberg poetry emphasized self-sacrifice and heroism, family of an association with Staufen dynasty and celebrated the spiritual soul of Germany, (Hoffmann 2008). In the 1920s, Claus’s Stefan George was popular in National friends were almost all also friends of Stefan Socialist circles. Stefan George however George and they were engaged with the rejected the use of his vision for political romantic youth movement taken with his purposes by the Nazis. Although his work vision of a Neue Reich. George confirmed could be seen as proto-fascist, many of the the Stauffenberg brothers in their sense of leading members of the German Resistance identity with the Staufen dynasty and Claus to the Nazis were drawn from among his declared himself the heir of the Staufen followers, notably the von Stauffenberg kings in poems dedicated to George. Thus brothers, Claus and Berthold. George’s vision Frederico, the Baron’s protégé and secret of cultural renewal, Das neue Reich (The heir to his plans for a restored Holy Roman New Empire), which outlines a new form Empire, can be identified with Claus or of society ruled by a spiritual aristocracy, Berthold von Stauffenberg, as heirs to the was published in 1928. George dedicated Hohenstaufen dynasty, and the Baron with the work, including the poem Geheimes Stefan George. Deutschland (Secret Germany) written in Berthold von Stauffenberg assisted Stefan 1922, to Berthold von Stauffenberg, who in George in editing Kantorowicz’s biography of 1944 took part in a plot to assassinate Adolf Frederick II for publication in a series edited Hitler and initiate a military coup against the by George that featured a swastika on the Nazi elite and who was executed by the cover. A publisher’s advertisement insisted Nazis following its failure. that the swastika was an ancient Indian sign During Kantorowicz’s student years in and should not be confused with the Nazi Heidelberg, Berthold’s brother Claus von use of the swastika. There was surge of Stauffenberg moved in the George Circle interest and use of the swastika following the and was deeply influenced by its cultural archaeological work in the late nineteenth ideals and idols, above all by the figure century of Heinrich Schliemann and his of Frederick II, one of the most powerful discovery of the symbol in his excavations Holy Roman Emperors of the Middle Ages of the site of ancient Troy. Schliemann and head of the House of Hohenstaufen, associated the swastika with the migrations also known as the Staufers. The House of of the ancient Indo-Europeans or “Aryans.” In Hohenstaufen was a dynasty of German the early twentieth century, the swastika was monarchs in the Middle Ages, reigning from used as a symbol of good luck and success, 1138 to 1254, three members of which were for example on greetings cards. The work of crowned as Holy Roman Emperors. Schliemann soon became intertwined with Already in 1923, Claus von Stauffenberg the völkisch movements, which combined alluded to himself and his brothers as heirs sentimental patriotic interest in German of the Staufers (Mali 2003). Stefan George folklore, local history, and a “back-to-the-land”

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movement. In this way the swastika became rushed to embrace him. Not knowing that associated with theories concerning the the bear was his mother, Arkas was about “Aryan” origins of a Nordic master race and to kill her with an arrow. However, Zeus, was thus adopted by the National Socialists. taking pity upon the two, decided to avert Claus and Berthold were both major the tragedy and put them both up in the figures in the July 1940 bomb plot, the heavens, and their constellations are now attempt by members of the conservative referred to as Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, military and their civilian allies to assassinate the big and little bears. The constellations of Hitler and seize power from the Nazi party. the big and little bears revolve around the The plotters were convinced that if Hitler pole star Polaris; according to the historian was assassinated a government acceptable of esoteric culture, Jocelyn Godwin, in Arktos, to the Allies could be formed and peace his study of polar mythology, the swastika, negotiated in time to prevent a Soviet as used on the cover of Kantorowicz’s study invasion of Germany. of Frederick II, may be derived from the movement of Ursa Minor (Kallisto) around St Peter’s Snow and the Search the pole star (Godwin 1996). for Arcadia Arcadia refers to a vision of pastoralism The summary by Boureau of St Peter’s Snow and harmony with nature. The Greek omits any reference to two important province of the same name dates to antiquity characters in Perutz’s novel. First Prince and the province’s mountainous topography Arkady Praxatin, the manager of the Baron’s and sparse population of pastoralists later estate, an aristocratic émigré escapee from caused the word “Arcadia” to develop revolutionary Russia, and second Kallisto into a poetic byword for an idyllic vision of Tsanaris, the female Greek research chemist unspoiled wilderness. Arcadia was associated employed by the Baron. Praxatin’s character with bountiful natural splendor, harmony, dwells on his lost wealth and the possibility and is often inhabited by shepherds and has of recovering debts from other noble Russian remained a popular artistic subject since exiles, who are probably now in reality antiquity, both in visual arts and literature. waiting tables in Berlin. The importance of The concept of Arcadia figures prominently these characters is that they are linked by in Renaissance mythology where it is seen as their names, because in Greek mythology the a lost, Edenic form of life. Of particular note nymph Kallisto was the mother of Arkas. in this respect is Et in Arcadia ego, a painting In the Greek myth, the nymph Kallisto by Nicholas Poussin, which has become was turned into bear by a jealous Hera in famous both in its own right and because of revenge for Kallisto becoming pregnant by its incorporation into the modern mythology Zeus. To protect Arkas, Kallisto’s son, Zeus, of Rennes-le-Chateau (see, for example, hid him in an area of Greece that would Lincoln 2011). Arcadia is sometimes referred come to be called Arcadia, in his honor. In to in English poetry as Arcady, whose the myth, when Arkas went hunting one day inhabitants were regarded as living close in the woods of Arcadia, he came across his to nature, uncorrupted by civilization, and mother. Seeing her son after so long, Kallisto virtuous. They were regarded as having

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continued to live after the manner of the of thought flowing through his cafe society Golden Age. contacts, had been a party to a secret In St Peter’s Snow, Kallisto appears fond tradition with knowledge of a psychoactive of Arkady and when a jealous Bamberg sacrament derived from ergot. The idea accuses Kallisto of being Arkady’s mistress that just such a secret tradition has persisted she describes him as “that lout that bear.” through the ages is a central proposition of The Russian Bear has long been the national the work of Dan Merkur and Carl Ruck. Dan personification of Russia and has been used Merkur has demonstrated its persistence in cartoons, articles, and dramatic plays at in the Jewish mystical tradition and Perutz least since the seventeenth century. But shows his familiarity with the Jewish mystical why should Perutz have included such clear tradition in his final work, By Night under the references to the myth of Arcadia in his Stone Bridge (1991). novel? For Arkady Praxatin with his dreams For over ten years Mark Stahlman of reclaiming debts from his fellow exiles it has been making occasional web postings is plainly pre-revolutionary Russia that is his concerning his take on the secret history lost Arcadia. For Baron Malchin, Kantorowicz, of psychedelics. Mark’s secret history is and Stefan George’s circle it is the Holy summarized on a tribe.net posting and its Roman Empire of Emperor Frederick II. For core contention is that knowledge of ergot’s many contemporaries of Perutz, especially medicinal and psychoactive powers have as the Nazi annexation of Austria loomed, been known from prehistory and its use as it was the Habsburg Empire, nostalgia for an initiatory agent in mystery religions was which was an abiding theme of fellow Jewish passed down by some of the usual suspects Austrian writer Joseph Roth. in the heretical and hermetic traditions, the Illuminati, the Freemasons, and also certain Leo Perutz and the Secret orders within the Roman Catholic church. History of LSD Later, the thread is picked up by groups The literary and intellectual world of Vienna, associated with fin de siècle neo-romantic of which Perutz was a part, was influenced paganism and neo-Gnosticism. (Those by various currents of occult philosophy, interested should check out Stahlman’s full which emerge in the work of writers, artists, account of his hidden history, which can and composers of the time. easily be found on the internet: http://tribes. tribe.net/ethnobotany/thread/5a0356c2- It was a world in which Theosophy, b179-45b4-a6a1-a5ea44e0f36f.) Anthroposophy, Pythagoreanism, astrology, More recently Stahlman has quoted Willis clairvoyance, numerology, and other forms Harman, from an interview in 1977 (Fry and of occult belief played roles—and at times Long 1977), concerning the hidden history of important roles—in the lives of some of the LSD. According to Harman: same figures who appear so often in writing about fin-de-siècle Vienna. (Covach 1998) The story really starts way back in 1935 When I first read St Peter’s Snow I with a group of followers of the German wondered if Perutz, through occult currents mystic Rudolf Steiner who lived in a village

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in Southern Germany. In 1935 a dark story is unlikely, which is that “by 1938 cloud was over Europe so the members they had synthesized psilocybin” because of this group set out deliberately to although twentieth-century awareness of synthesize chemicals which were like the the contemporary use of psychoactive natural vegetable substances which they mushrooms in Mexico surfaced by the were well aware had been used in all the 1920s, the mushrooms were only identified world’s major religious traditions down as Psilocybe species in 1957 and psilocybin through the centuries. By 1938 they had identified as the main active component in synthesized psilocybin, LSD and about 1958—unless this is another cover story. thirty other drugs. Then they stopped to Where could Willis Harman have got think about the consequences of letting such information? Willis Harman (1918–97) all of this loose, and decided against it. was a mover and shaker in the highest circles They decided that they were not sure of sophisticated psychedelic and New Age what the negative effects of the drugs circles of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s and would be and that it just wasn’t a very might have had many sources. However, in wise thing to do. Five years later, in 1943, an interview with Martin Lee, co-author when Europe was really in bad shape, they of a social history of LSD, Acid Dreams, decided apparently that possible negative this information is attributed to one Al consequences were nothing compared to Hubbard, a mysterious figure who moved the consequences of not doing this. in the same high society of psychedelic Now, two members of this group, which culture as Harman and who had intelligence lived in a very tight religious community, connections going back to the Second World were in the Sandoz chemical company— War (Lee 1988/9). Compared to Hubbard, that’s partly how this project came to be. Willis Harman was a “Johnny Come Lately” One of them was the chemist Dr Albert to the world of psychoactive drug research. Hofmann. He cooked up the newspaper If someone was likely to have knowledge story that everyone has heard now, about of any secret history of LSD it was Willis the accidental ingestion of LSD and the Harman’s friend and associate Alfred M. realization of what its properties were Hubbard. Hubbard graduated in the 1920s after an amazing bicycle ride home and from bootlegger to government agent, to the visions and so on. This group quietly secret agent as a member of the Office of gave supplies of the chemical to a number Strategic Services (OSS). of doctors around the world—in Europe The OSS was a US intelligence agency and the United States and Canada—and created in 1940 at the beginning of the tried to explain to them what it was they Second World War. The OSS investigated were on about. (Fry and Long 1977) the potential of various “truth drugs” for interrogation purposes from as early as These are extraordinary claims and as Carl 1941 and these included sodium amytal, Sagan said “extraordinary claims require cannabis, and peyote. It appears likely that extraordinary evidence.” Unfortunately Hubbard graduated from government agent it seems that at least one element of this to the OSS early in the Second World

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War. Government investigative agencies facilitated by anthropologist Mark Raymond were a fertile recruiting ground for the Harrington (1882–1971) who went on to OSS. After the Second World War, those spend a lifetime in researching Amerindian involved in this research recruited former traditions. Kurt Beringer’s monograph Nazi doctors who were involved in the same on mescaline, Der Meskalinrausch (1927), kind of experimentation in Nazi Germany. remains the most exhaustive research work It is unlikely that much of the history of on the mescaline experience ever written psychoactive drug research would have (Beringer 1927). In 1936, Antonin Artaud escaped the attention of the Nazis. (1896–1948) the French playwright, poet, Stahlman’s claims have a broad credibility and theater director, traveled to Mexico to in that the European neo-pagan and neo- investigate the indigenous use of peyote gnostic movements of the late nineteenth (Artaud 1945). A number of other writers and early twentieth centuries and esoterically active in the 1920s and 1930s recorded their inclined freemasonry, which looked to explorations of the drug experience and ancient mystery traditions for inspiration, throw light on the cultural context in which may well have explored drug-induced states. Perutz was writing. Experimentation with mind-altering drugs As Boreau identified in his study of was common in fin-de-siècle and early- Kantorowicz, the interest of writers such as twentieth-century literary and artistic circles, Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) and Ernst as evinced in H.H. Ewers essay on “Art and Bloch (1885–1977) in altered mind states Intoxication” published in a German literary existed in the same cultural framework and political journal in 1909 (Ewers 1906). It as Kantorowicz’s idealized portrayal of is also significant that, in the late nineteenth Frederick II. Walter Benjamin’s experiments century and early decades of the twentieth with cannabis and mescaline included a century, Germany led the field in mescaline hashish session with the philosopher Ernst research and ethnological researches in Bloch. Walter Benjamin’s and Bloch’s careful South America including amongst those records, which they called “protocols,” are indigenous groups using peyote (Sá 2002). highly articulate records of the alterations of perception and imaginative flights of Drugs and Gnosis in Perutz’s fancy caused by eating hashish. The drug Intellectual Milieu experience also fed into Bloch’s grand From the fin de siècle to the outbreak philosophical project, finding expression in of the Second World War, interest in his discussion of the comparative properties psychoactive drugs found expression in both of hashish and opium in enhancing the ethnographic investigations into indigenous imaginative faculty in his three-volume work use of psychoactive plants, individual The Principle of Hope, written in 1938–47 in experimentation and medical investigations, the USA (Bloch 1986). As well as discussing and these fields of investigation overlapped. the potential of psychoactive drugs to The famous Greenwich Village peyote enhance the powers of the imagination for party of 1912, enjoyed by members of the purposes of supporting an optimistic and Mabel Dodge Luhan’s bohemian salon, was utopian vision of human and social potential,

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Bloch also had an associated fascination experiences in an organized manner similar with the mystery cults and doctrines of the to Benjamin and Bloch’s “protocols.” He ancient schools of gnosis, discoursing on published the record of his experiences “Elixirs of the Soul and the Gnostic Journey in his book Narkotyki (1932), of which to Heaven.” Bloch shared his interest in there is a partial translation into English as gnostic visions of redemption with Walter Narcotics (Witkiewicz and Gerould, 1992). Benjamin’s friend Gershom Scholem who With reference to the Baron’s plan in St traced the roots of Kabbalah to the Gnostic Peter’s Snow for engineering a religious cults of antiquity (Scholem 1987). So we renewal through a psychoactive drug, the find here, in Perutz’s intellectual milieu, a prospect of a society universally medicated confluence of contemporary interest in drug for the purpose of social engineering was experimentation, gnosis, and ancient mystery envisaged by Aldous Huxley in his novel cults, from which Perutz could have easily Brave New World of 1931. Prior to the absorbed the material relating to this aspect publication of Huxley’s later and better of St Peter’s Snow. known novel Witkiewicz had a similar vision Though drug experimentation might in his novel Nienasycenie first published in have been common in fin de siècle and early 1930, a dystopian story that takes place in twentieth-century European bohemian and the future, in which Poland is overrun by a artistic culture, it was not something that Mongol army. In the second half of the novel individuals necessarily wanted to advertise. the enigmatic figure of a Malayan appears, Walter Benjamin recorded his own spreading his mystical religion of universal experiments with hashish and mescaline and contentment by means of the “Murti-Bing published one account. However, in a letter pill,” sold by street vendors, which relieves to his friend Gershom Scholem (1897– the anguish of individual personality. Quickly 1982), in referring to his drug experiments, lulled into ecstatic happiness, the pill-takers Benjamin requests that this information be no longer fear the coming extermination “locked within the bosom of the Scholem of their egos through social regimentation. family.” Benjamin indicated to Gershom Writers and philosophers contemporary Scholem that his philosophical observations to Perutz were contemplating the potential are intimately related to his hashish of mind-altering drugs for the purpose of experiences and in 1928 wrote to Scholem social engineering in a similar manner to the concerning his plans for “a truly exceptional plan of Baron Malchin. Already in “Daedalus book about hashish,” a project that he never or Science and the Future,” a paper read to realized (Boon 2006). Scholem later became the Cambridge-based Heretics Society, on the premier twentieth-century historian of 4 February 1923, J.B.S. Haldane reported Kabbalah and the Jewish mystical tradition. that “Should it ever be generally realised The Polish playwright, novelist, painter, that temperance is a mean we may expect photographer, and philosopher, Stanisław that mankind will ultimately have at its Ignacy Witkiewicz (1885–1939), was a disposal a vast array of substances like wine, pioneer in serious experimentation with coffee and tobacco, whose intelligent use psychoactive drugs, who recorded his drug can add to the amenity of life and promote

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the expression of man’s higher faculties” as a libertarian individualist or even an (Haldane 1926). aristocratic anarchist. Jünger’s 1977 novel The German writer Ernst Jünger (1895– Eumeswil features the figure of the “anarch,” 1998) was, like Perutz and Kantorowicz, a the inwardly-free individual who lives veteran of the First World War. Jünger is a quietly and dispassionately within but not tremendously controversial figure for similar of society. According to Jünger, the “anarch” reasons to Kantorowicz and Stefan George is the positive counterpart of the anarchist in that their philosophy appealed broadly and the “anarch” may be considered as to the National Socialist movement that autobiographical of the author himself. In they personally rejected. A major figure of his seventies Jünger recorded his lifetime of German twentieth-century literature, Jünger’s drug experiments in Annäherungen: Drogen personal philosophy of life was based on und Rausch (Approximations: Drugs and his experiences in the First World War as a Intoxicants) (Jünger 1970). storm trooper. He glorified the experience Though he resisted literary recognition by of combat, in works such as Storm of Steel, the Nazi regime, Jünger served as an officer his unflinching account of his experiences in in the German army in the Second World the First World War. Jünger’s work appealed War. He spent some of that time in occupied to the Nazi weltanschauung and in common Paris, where he took the opportunity to mix with Kantorowicz he was adopted as a with writers and artists such as Jean Cocteau culture hero by the Nazi party against his will. and Pablo Picasso, whose use of opium was Jünger experimented with a variety of drugs typical of the avant-garde world of writers and between 1918 and 1922, including ether, and artists of that era. Jünger was on the cocaine, opium, and hashish (Loose 1974). fringes of the Stauffenberg plot against Hitler Jünger’s powerfully reactionary values are sharing Stauffenberg’s aristocratic distaste for not what many would associate with what Nazism and his relations with those involved is generally conceived of as the enlightening in the planned coup were close enough potential of psychoactive drugs. However, for him to have been pulled into the net of Jünger’s exploration of consciousness several hundred who were investigated and through his drug experiences reflects his subsequently executed by the Nazis. Jünger’s commitment to personal liberation through warrior’s way, like that of Stauffenberg, did extreme experiences, in the same way as not resonate with the immoral atrocities of his glorification of his combat experiences. the Nazi regime and he was only protected Jünger’s early work espoused a right-wing by his reputation as a German war hero nationalism and Walter Benjamin identified (Mitchell 2011). the dangerous nature of Jünger’s philosophy: Later in life Jünger developed a friendship in 1930, Benjamin reviewed a collection of with Albert Hofmann, the discoverer of LSD. essays entitled War and the Warrior edited According to Hofmann: by Jünger, and warned that it was “nothing other than an uninhibited translation of l’art Radiance is the perfect term to express pour l’art to war itself” (Jay 1992). Latterly the influence that Ernst Jünger’s literary Jünger is perhaps more accurately described work and personality have had on me.

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In the light of his perspective, which and the conservative opposition to Hitler stereoscopically comprises the surfaces that he shared with Stauffenberg, complete and depths of things, the world I knew a picture in which different varieties of took on a new, translucent splendour. That mystical nationalism mingled with an interest happened a long time before the discovery in mind-altering drugs, Kabbalah, and ancient of LSD and before I came into personal mystery religions. However, according to contact with this author in connection with Steve Wasserstrom, even Jünger’s later hallucinogenic drugs. (Hofmann 1980) work contains its own gnostic conception in which he constructs an Anti-Kabbalah which The friendship was initiated by Hofmann characterizes Jewish mysticism as sinister who wrote a letter to Jünger in 1947 (Wasserstrom 2010). in appreciation of his writings. At the In a letter to Hofmann, Jünger describes time of devoting an entire chapter of his a character in the novel he was working on autobiographical work on LSD to appreciation at that time, published as Heliopolis (Jünger of Jünger, Hofmann must have been well aware 1949). The character is a drug researcher of the controversial nature of Jünger’s past. who “went on voyages of discovery in the Hofmann describes a session with universe of his brain” and “locked himself up psilocybin conducted with Jünger, the in his studio for trips into the dreamy regions. Islamic scholar Dr Rudolf Gelpke and He said that all countries and unknown pharmacologist Professor Heribert Konzett, islands were woven into the tapestry. The at the home of the Jüngers, in the former drugs served him as keys to entry into head forester’s house near the Stauffenberg the chambers and caves of this world.” family’s castle in Wilfingen, where they had The drug researcher Antonio Peri has a moved to soon after the war (Hofmann small library “consisting partly of herbals 1980). The session did not go well for and medicinal reports, partly of works by Hofmann or Jünger, who had very difficult poets and magicians.” The library included experiences. One cannot help wondering works by “De Quincey, E.T.A. Hoffmann, whether it was wise to choose the shadow Poe, and Baudelaire as well as books from of Wilfingen castle for this event. The the ancient past, herbals, necromancy texts, Stauffenberg’s Castle at Wilfingen was and demonology of the middle-aged world confiscated by the Nazis following the arrest (sic). They included the names Albertus of Berthold Stauffenberg for his part in the Magnus, Raimundus Lullus, and Agrippa of plot to assassinate Hitler and served as the Nettesheym … Moreover, there was the headquarters of the fugitive Marshall Petain great folio De Praestigiis Daemonum by and for housing aristocrat prisoners of the Wierus. Peri’s collection included “ancient Nazis. Following his trial, Berthold had been pharmacology books, formularies and hung in a particularly cruel manner for his pharmacopoeias … Among others was part in the plot. found a heavy old volume by the Heidelberg No matter how Jünger’s political or psychologists on the extract of mescal mystical proclivities are typified, his interest buttons, and a paper on the phantastica in psychoactive drugs, gnostic tendencies, of ergot by Hofmann-Bottmingen” (“Ein

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Arbeit von Hofmann-Bottmingen unber die Sandoz in 1918 and marketed as Gynergen Phantastica des Mutterkorns”). This last is in 1921. Despite the gynecological resonance a pun on Albert Hoffman, whose Sandoz of its name it is marketed for the prevention patents of ergot derivatives including LSD and cure of migraine headaches, which it were signed by his name followed by his accomplishes through its vasoconstrictive Swiss place of residence as Hofmann, properties. Ergotamine is a chemical Bottmingen. Antonio Peri’s library is precursor of LSD and in common with resonant with the lines of historical research many psychoactive compounds possesses that led Baron Malchin in Perutz’s novel to his structural similarity to neurotransmitters, the knowledge of ergot as the secret sacrament endogenous chemicals that are responsible of the ages. Two of the psychoactive plants for brain function, and which affect mood referred to by Pliny in his Natural History, the and perception. gelotophyllis and theangelis, are referred to in It was initially surprising to see a De Praestigiis Daemonum (Kohl et al. 1998). reference to the laboratory cultivation of While Ernst Bloch, like Kantorowicz, ergot in Perutz’s novel of 1933. However fled from the Nazis to the USA and Bove’s exhaustive study of the history of they both continued their academic lives ergot research reveals that attempts at there through and beyond the war, both laboratory cultivation of ergot, with limited Witkiewicz and Benjamin committed suicide success, actually commenced in the mid- at the outset of the war rather than fall eighteenth century (Bove 1970). In 1929, into hands respectively of the Russians and in Germany, Heinrich Kirchhoff achieved Nazis. Jünger survived the war and despite partial success and in 1930 the American his controversial status accumulated a large Adelia McCrea completed a major study. number of literary and other awards and In the 1930s, McCrea and others including honors from various institutions including Stoll succeeded in cultivation of ergot those of both Germany and France. in an artificial medium that produced alkaloids, though not suitable for commercial Ergot, Revolution, and Religious production. Thus the successful artificial Revival cultivation and experimental production of How might Perutz have had some ergot alkaloids was achieved around the time knowledge of ergot and in particular its that Perutz published his novel, following a psychoactivity and as a candidate for a secret period of intense scientific investigation into sacrament? Modern medicinal usage of ergot the subject. Perutz, as a highly cultivated man fungus began in the sixteenth century to of scientific interests, may well have been induce childbirth and to prevent bleeding aware of such developments through the after childbirth, but uncertainties of dosage Viennese intellectual cultural scene of which discouraged the use. Arthur Stoll at Sandoz he was a part. His cousin was had been researching ergot long before just about to enter the University of Vienna Albert Hofmann came on board. Ergotamine, to study chemistry and Max Perutz went on one of the ergot-derived alkaloids, was first to become a molecular biologist working isolated from the ergot fungus by Stoll at under Francis Crick at Cambridge.3

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Evidence for Ergot as a the blight that affects corn was also evident Psychoactive Sacrament in his sketches for The Good Farmer. The Starting in the early 1970s, a number Italian historian Piero Camporesi has argued or papers were published interpreting that the peasantry of the Middle Ages were historical cases of mass hysteria as being in a perpetual stupor due to starvation due to ergotism (Caporael 1976; Matossian and ingestion of bread contaminated with 1989; Packer 1998). The most complete ergot, as depicted in the painting The Land of investigation was that published by Mary Cockaigne (1567) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Matossian in 1989. Other than the complex Camporesi evidences from primary sources arguments presented in The Road to that the intoxicating power of the bread of Eleusis and Dan Merkur’s two studies, the the poor was well known (Camporesi 1996). evidence for the historical use of ergot as During the Middle Ages the hallucinatory a psychoactive drug is fairly thin on the symptoms of ergot poisoning were ground. The toxic properties of ergot and associated with the sufferings of St Anthony uncertainties of dosage might appear to and the order of St Anthony was founded argue against likelihood of sacramental in 1093 to care for sufferers, and well into use. However, the toxicity of a number of the eighteenth century the symptoms psychoactive drugs such the mescal bean of ergotism were attributed to demonic (Sophora secundiflora) and Hyoscyamus possession or divine revelation (Bove 1970). species such as henbane and datura, does It appears that most members of the not appear to have discouraged their medical profession managed to remain shamanic use and toxic side effects of unaware of ergot as the source of the psychoactive drugs are often conceived of symptoms of ergotism until as late as the as an integral ordeal aspect of an initiatory middle of the nineteenth century, though experience.4 Thomas Beddoes had correctly identified Torbjørn Alm in a study of the Witch ergot as the source of nervous disorders in Trials of Finnmark, northern Norway, during 1793 (Burwick 1992). However, as Burwick the seventeenth century has discovered and Camporesi both observe, the lower evidence for initiation into witchcraft by orders were well aware of the source of means of ergot (Alm 2003). Frederick their disorders, but were forced into eating Burwick in his study of poetic rapture in bread made from infected grain through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries necessity or the greed of unscrupulous or proposes an awareness of both the equally desperate millers (Burwick 1992; deleterious and inspirational potential of Camporesi 1996). In Burwick’s schema, ergot on the part of the poet William Blake Blake evinces knowledge of the capacity (Burwick 1992). In the chapter “Blake and the of ergotized bread both to inspire and to Blighted Corn,” Burwick suggests that within delude, though he professes ignorance of his The Four Zoas Blake demonstrates an whether Blake would have had experience of awareness of the potential of ergotized grain ergot intoxication himself. to induce both misery and ecstatic rapture. As to possible sources of Perutz’s According to Burwick, Blake’s concern with assertion via Baron Malchin that ergot was

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the secret psychoactive sacrament of the in those afflicted with ergot poisoning. In ages, as early as 1829 Eusèbe de Salverte 1991, Matossian published Poisons of the dedicated twenty-nine pages of his History of Past: Molds, Epidemics and History (Matossian the Occult Sciences to the use of drugs in the 1989), which proposed that epidemics, occult and mystical traditions, including the sporadic outbursts of bizarre behavior ancient mysteries (Salverte 1829). Salverte together with low fertility and high death was the source of Manly P. Hall’s assertion, rates from the fourteenth to the eighteenth in his encyclopedia of esoteric wisdom The centuries may have been caused by Secret Teachings of All Ages, that drugs were poisoning from ergot in bread. Matossian also used in the ancient Greco-Roman mystery speculates that the “Great Fear,” the outbreak religions to converse with the immortals of paranoia and social unrest amongst and behold the gods. Manly P. Hall quoted French peasantry that preceded the French Salverte to the effect that: Revolution, was due to ergotism, an intriguing parallel to the communist uprising inspired The aspirants to initiation, and those who by Baron Malchin’s experiment. came to request prophetic dreams of the Matossian’s work proceeds on the gods, were prepared by a fast, more or basis of the same kind of climatic and less prolonged, after which they partook demographic analysis as that claimed by of meals expressly prepared; and also of Baron Malchin in St Peter’s Snow. However, mysterious drinks, such as the water of Matossian does not clearly credit earlier Lethe, and the water of Mnemosyne in the researchers with concluding, as she grotto of Trophonius; or of the Kykeon in does from a combination of climate and the mysteries of Eleusinia. Different drugs demography, that that ergot was responsible were easily mixed up with the meats or for outbreaks of religious or other hysteria. introduced into the drinks, according to Rather she emphasizes that the connection the state of mind or into which it was between ergot and the symptoms of necessary to throw the recipient, and the ergotism were poorly understood until the nature of the vision he was desirous of mid-eighteenth century. Yet it is evident procuring. (Hall 1928) that ergot had been earlier identified as The neurological symptoms that can be a a possible cause of outbreaks of religious result of consuming ergot-tainted rye have enthusiasm. Hanbury Smith (1850) in his been said to be the cause of accusations Sketch of the Epidemic Religious Monomania, of bewitchment that spurred the Salem Which Occurred in Sweden, in the Year 1841 witch trials. This medical explanation for and 1842, which opens with a reference to accusations of “bewitchment” was first the dancing mania of the fourteenth century, propounded by Linnda R. Caporael in 1976 reports that many physicians: in an article in the journal Science. In 1982, historian Mary Matossian revisited Caporael’s persisted in attributing the epidemic to the theory in an article in American Scientist poisonous influence of foreign ingredients in which she argued that symptoms of in the rye, which almost exclusively “bewitchment” resemble the ones exhibited constitutes the bread corn of that part

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of Sweden, mainly to ergot, which was twenty years before the Pont St Esprit particularly common in the years in incident? The potential of ergot to induce question. But independent of the fact that, mass hysteria of a religious order had already minute examination detected no foreign been proposed. The history of biological ingredient of a poisonous character in the warfare reveals that during the First World corn, except ergot, there is no substance War, “the Germans developed anthrax, we are acquainted with possessed of the glanders, cholera, and a wheat fungus property of occasioning religious mania. specifically for use as biological weapons.” The purpose of the wheat fungus though Working as an insurance actuary Perutz being to contaminate packhorse feed to will have studied mortality demographics disable transportation (Hunsicker 2006). going back over many years and may well How could Perutz be able to reveal have drawn the conclusion ascribed in ergot as the secret sacrament of the ancient his novel to Baron Malchin. It was Baron mysteries over forty years before this Malchin’s observation that demographic possibility became a matter of academic patterns of religious hysteria in the Middle and scientific investigation in the 1970s? The Ages followed the climatic conditions that use of psychoactive plants to communicate favored infestation of grain by the ergot with the gods in the ancient world had been fungus which, along with the information he extensively documented by Eusebe Salverte gleaned from classical and other sources, led in the nineteenth century and had reached to his identification of ergot as the secret popular consciousness in the 1920s. psychoactive sacrament of the mystery All these elements appeal as knowledge traditions. that an individual in Perutz’s intellectual milieu could well have acquired by keeping Conclusion up with scientific and medical developments Returning to the questions posed at the or through café conversation. However, the outset concerning the apparently mysterious historical circumstances behind Perutz’s sources of Perutz’s knowledge, many can novel are as curious, fascinating, and as full be answered relatively straightforwardly. of ambiguity as his assemblage of these How did an Austrian author, writing in 1933, parts into a dramatic story. Perutz conjured predict the isolation of a hallucinogenic them together into a gripping psychological drug from an ergot-type fungus ten years mystery story, drawing on contemporary before the discovery the hallucinogenic cultural events. properties of LSD? At the time of Perutz’s To read the unintended consequence writing St Peter’s Snow, alkaloids had already of the Baron’s experiment of a Communist been isolated from ergot and ergot had uprising rather than a religious revival as been cultured in artificial media exactly as a warning concerning Nazism, as some described in Perutz’s novel. contemporary reviews concluded, appears How did Perutz predict a mass testing of as a misreading due to the Baron’s espousal a hallucinogenic drug on the unsuspecting of a legitimist pretender of a revived Holy inhabitants of an isolated village almost Roman Empire. As the annexation of

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Austria by the Nazis became imminent, humorous depiction of Rabbinic magic in legitimism became a hope for staving off the linked stories of By Night under the Stone Nazis. Legitimists were executed by the Bridge reflect his memories growing up in the Nazis following the Anschluss and legitimists Prague ghetto before its destruction and the formed a core element of the Austrian stories as told to him by his tutor reflect the resistance movement (Luza 1984). Perutz popular persistence of the Jewish mystical himself moved from being Social Democrat tradition. to supporting legitimism. While it may seem Much no doubt remains to be revealed odd for a Jewish man to support a Catholic concerning the secret history of the use of dynasty allied to the Holy Roman Empire, psychoactive drugs in the esoteric tradition. Kantorowicz and other members of the George Circle were Jewish and Joseph Roth (1894–1939), another Austrian Jewish author Notes and one whose novels express a nostalgia 1 See also the Wikipedia entry on this incident: for life under the Habsburgs, also adopted http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pont-Saint-Esprit. legitimism (Rosenfeld 2001). 2 For his account of Leo Perutz’s life and works The historical investigations in this article the author relied heavily on the Wikipedia entry have provided prosaic explanations for on Leo Perutz, http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_ Perutz’s apparently mysterious prescience Perutz, for which service he is grateful. concerning the isolation of an LSD type 3 Coincidentally Crick has been regularly cited as hallucinogen from an ergot-type fungus and having experimented with LSD, though rumors the surreptitious experimental intoxication of that LSD experiences actually facilitated his a rural village with just such a drug. Although conception of the double helix of DNA appear ill-founded. However, according to Crick’s these investigations have significantly biographer Matt Ridley “In 1967 he joined the demystified the apparently mysterious council of an informal organisation called Soma sources of Perutz’s arcane knowledge to campaign for the legalisation of drugs, and … concerning psychoactive sacraments, at the Crick was certainly an occasional user of both pot same time they have revealed the complex and LSD” (Ridley 2006). It appears that any use cultural background in which Perutz’s novel of psychoactive drugs by Crick was subsequent to his development, together with Watson, of a was conceived. However, the explanations helical model for the structure DNA, which they provided do not write off the possibility of published in 1953, and for which together with Perutz having insider knowledge of esoteric subsequent work they were awarded the Nobel secrets, including Jewish mystical traditions, Prize in 1962. in an era when philosophers such as Walter 4 Some of the so-called “bog bodies,” the naturally Benjamin and Ernst Bloch combined an preserved human corpses, largely dating from interest in psychoactive drugs and the Jewish the Iron Age, found in the sphagnum bogs of mystical tradition. Fin-de-siècle Vienna was a Northern Europe have had ergot infected grain hotbed of esoteric activity and as attested by products in their gut. As many were apparently ritually slaughtered, it has been suggested either Perutz’s stories the occult and supernatural that they were deliberately drugged before being were, then as now, a major part of popular killed or that their bizarre intoxicated behavior led culture. Perutz’s tender and sometimes to their slaughter.

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