Pilgrimages are a sort of ritual return to Paradise. Phony heroes seek to return to phony, purely spiritual Paradises, whereas true Heroes like Alexander, Ulysses, Osiris, Dionysos and Gilgamaseh seek for the true site of the Terrestrial Paradise. And this they invariably do, just as their New World counterparts, by crossing into the Indies, as we can read in the ancient sagas.

The first Europeans in America emphasized the differences and the "savagery" of the Amerinds as an excuse to force them into submission and slavery, and in order to be granted royal and papal permission to steal their land and property and to disorganize their nations and their religion. Thus deprived of their values, the acculturated Indians became an easy prey of the far more bestial Conquistadores and Bandeirantes who inevitably follow the missionaries everywhere they show up among the primitives.

You know how it is: send the missionaries first. If they fail in the task of destroying the social structures of the natives and in "converting" them a sure sign of their pact with the Devil send in the soldiers to butt in, and to punish the savages, and to force them into complying. Once their culture and their religion and social structure are disrupted, send in the colonists to take away their land, their property and even their very humanity, through enslavement and sheer genocide. Look into History, and you will see that this sad reality is the rule rather than the exception everywhere in this world of ours.

The Meaning of Drug Cults

Like the Luiseños and the Mescalero Apaches, the Pueblos and the Navajos often adhere to Drug Cults. These are based on hallucinogens such as the sacred mushroom, the peyote and the mescal. Indeed, most Indians use one type or another of drug-induced ecstasy, in order to enhance their mystical union with God.

Such was also the original purpose of the Holy Communion of the Christians, where wine (a hallucinogen) substitutes for other drugs. All such rituals ultimately derive from the Soma rituals of the Hindus, as many specialists have recognized. Soma was prepared from many plants such as hemp, mushrooms, asclepias, etc., as well as from animal poisons obtained from toads and snakes.

Drug cults were generalized in the whole ancient world as well, as archaeological research is unequivocally uncovering. Even the Egyptians were apparently addicted to such rituals. A recent study of several Egyptian mummies by the meticulous Germans unmistakenly revealed that the Egyptian pharaohs routinely used drugs such as hemp, opium, tobacco and coca.

Now, hemp is an Indian plant, whereas tobacco and coca are of South American origin, and opium was usually produced in the Near East. So, what this remarkable research unequivocally discloses is the existence of an ancient international naval trade in drugs (and other goods as well) throughout the world, and encompassing principally the Indies and the Americas in its routes.

Another often-used hallucinogenic drug is datura or jimson. This is also called loco-weed or thorn-apple (Datura stramonium). The datura is common to both the Old and the New World, and is also widely used in India for the same ritual purposes as in the Americas. Jimsonweed is particularly popular among the Chungichmich of Southern California, and is much used in initiatic rituals involving nagualism and shamanism.

Peyotism is based on the peyote (or mescal) cactus (Lophophora Williamsii), native to Mexico. In the US, Peyote is eaten in a communal meal that closely resembles the Holy Communion of the Christians, which it apparently parallels. Indeed, modern Peyote religion actually claims that Christ instituted the "White Communion" to Whites and the Peyote (or "Red") Communion to the Reds. Interestingly enough, the ancient Hindus also spoke of two similar types of Soma Communion, one "red" (or "golden" or "Solar"), and the other "white" (or "silvery" or "Lunar").

Peyotism has been forbidden or, at least, persecuted, since early times in the Americas. In 1620, the Inquisidor General of New Spain forbid the use of peyote by all Christians, a fact that meant that those caught in the practice were not Christians and, hence, liable to prosecution and burning-at-stake for heresy or witchcraft or both.