Iridescence

Absinthe, a spirit of legend, has in recent years been revived under the banner of being neither a psychedelic nor a deliriant.  True as those statements may be on the surface, I was pleased to discover an errata that may tie the fabled drink with more righteous roots.  With all due respect to the reasons for concealment and the initiatory threshold, I offer in context this paragraph from Wikipedia

Absinthe is derived from the Latin absinthium, which in turn is a stylization of the Greek αψίνθιον (apsínthion), for wormwood. ….. Some claim that the word means “undrinkable” in Greek, but it may instead be linked to the Persian root spand or aspand, or the variant esfand, which meant Peganum harmala, also called Syrian Rue-although it is not actually a variety of rue, another famously bitter herb. That Artemisia absinthium was commonly burned as a protective offering may suggest that its origins lie in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European root *spend, meaning “to perform a ritual” or “make an offering.” Whether the word was a borrowing from Persian into Greek, or from a common ancestor of both, is unclear. Variant spellings of absinthe are absinth, absynthe, and absenta. In English it is pronounced /ˈæbsɪnθ/ ; in French, [absɛ̃t]. Absinth (without the final e) is a spelling variant used by central European distillers. It is the usual name for absinthe produced in the Czech Republic and in Germany, and has become associated with Bohemian style absinthes.

Contemporary entheogenic studies have created a great fondness for Asphand – if not a secluded one.  The MAOI has become the foundation for ‘shroom-huasca’, another melange that has produced so notable effects as to be compared with the jungle-beverage, Ayahuasca.

The Greek affection of the name, even erroneously should we assume a Persian root, is interesting because of the mysterious ‘XueXion’ beverage also present at the in Eleusinian Mysteries.  It is no scholarly assertion that the Mystery beverage was MAOI-based, even by prevalent sources.  The etymological root between Absinthe and Asphand, however, does bear some consideration in this matter, with classical reinforcement by the Mediterranean prevalence of Rue.

Plainly, and personally, I am not convinced that Greek and Egyptian mysteries, even to the degree in which they may have had a psycho-chemical component, were composed upon DMT.