RFK’s Soma Revolution Is Coming

In Aldous Huxley’s 1933 dystopic novel Brave New World, human society is portrayed several centuries into the future, schismed into two parallel worlds. On the one hand, Huxley portrays a ‘civilised’ society which he described in stark utopian terms of a hierarchical caste system of Alphas, Betas, Gammas, and Epsilons.

Within this world, each category of human is genetically engineered to be perfectly happy and complacent with the tasks expected of them. Alphas, the top tier of the managerial caste, are themselves subdivided between Alphas and Alpha Pluses, with the latter permitted to interface with ‘The World Controllers’, of which, we are told, are ten in number.

While test tube (see: CRISPR) babies have long been the only legal way of making humans, free love is rampant and is even taught to young children in primary school. In fact, in Huxley’s fantasy, if one is not practicing promiscuous sex and frequent orgies, it is a sign of severe mental disorder.

In the unfortunate case that any of those higher managerial caste members should find themselves ill at ease with this peculiar form of social organisation, or asking questions about what existed before historical records began (in the year of Ford), or wondering why things happen to be as they are, an infusion of soma would solve the problem.

Huxley’s Soma

Huxley’s Soma was a psychedelic drug which transported the drug user into a state of ecstasy and altered consciousness, enhancing the feelings of pleasure, sensual lust, and detachment both quickly and efficiently.

One of the characters in Huxley’s novel describes the drug in the following terms:

Now-such is progress-the old men work, the old men copulate, the old men have no time, no leisure from pleasure, not a moment to sit down and think or if ever by some unlucky chance such a crevice of time shoud yawn in the solid substance of their distractions, there is always soma, delicious soma, half a gramme for a half-holiday, a gramme for a week-end, two grammes for a trip to the gorgeous East, three for a dark eternity on the moon; returning whence they find themselves on the other side of the crevice, safe on the solid ground of daily labour and distraction, scampering from feely to feely, from girl to pneumatic girl, from Electromagnetic Golf course to …

So, what is this Soma, exactly?

In the Sanskrit Rig Veda, published during the middle of the 2nd millennium BCE, Soma is portrayed as both the liquid of an unnamed plant used in initiatory practices and a god. The effect of the consumption of this mysterious concoction is a divine state, and sense of immortality, which is described by its consumers in the following terms (8.48.3, as translated by Stephanie W. Jamison and Joel P. Brereton):

We have drunk the soma; we have become immortal; we have gone to the light; we have found the gods. What can hostility do to us now, and what the malice of a mortal, o immortal one 

Within Zoroastrian literature, a plant akin to Soma is also described in the form of ‘Haoma’ which is described as both a ritual drink, plant and god. When consumed, the Zend Avesta describes the effects to be “speed and strength to warriors, excellent and righteous sons to those giving birth, spiritual power and knowledge to those who apply themselves”.

In the Bhagavad Gita (written in the 1st century BCE), we find Soma again described by name where we read in Chapter 9, verse 20:

Those who drink the juice of the pure Soma plant, are cleansed and purified of their past sins. Those who desire heaven, attain heaven and enjoy its divine pleasures by worshipping me [Soma] through the offering of sacrifices. Thus, by performing good action, one will always undoubtedly receive a place in heaven where they will enjoy all of the divine pleasure that are enjoyed by the Deities.

Experts have speculated that Soma may have been one of several hallucinogenic formulas, and most likely an entheogen such as psilocybin (i.e. magic mushrooms).

Rebranding Psychedelics for the New Age

An ‘entheogen’ is itself a newer word, coined in the early 1970s by J. P. Morgan Vice President J. Gordon Wasson. He is also the CIA-funded father of magic mushrooms, having done the most to popularize the drug in the mid-1950s working closely with drug promoter Henry Luce (head of Time), and leading psychiatrists of MKUltra such as Henry Murray and Sidney Gottlieb. This was accomplished through the 1957 publication of Wasson’s article ‘Seeking the Magic Mushroom’, which documented the bankers’ CIA-sponsored 1955 hallucinogenic pilgrimage to Mexico.

Wasson’s highly publicised report in Life, and his nationwide speaking tour to hundreds of universities, served as a guidebook for millions of young beatniks and hippies who would follow his footsteps into their own drug-induced initiation ceremonies in the coming decades.

These countless young admirers of Wasson would learn to shed their outdated beliefs in nationalism, family traditions, morality, and God in favour of a radically new, sexualised, drug-laced spirituality.

Apparently, the only people over 30 whom the burgeoning new age movement were expected to trust were those old people giving away free drugs. One of those young disciples of Wasson was a man named Terrence McKenna, who throughout the 1980s and 1990s did the most to promote psilocybins through his Green Earth Foundation, which found vast patronage from none other than Laurence Rockefeller (then head of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Esalen Institute research, SRI projects, and the Disclosure Initiative). McKenna distinguished himself by not only promoting psilocybins, but also added his own thesis that benevolent aliens communicate to humanity via these mind drugs.

Why did Wasson felt the new word ‘entheogen’ was needed? It had less to do with science and more to do with branding, since the term ‘hallucinogenic’ was too closely associated with mental illness (often a consequence of too-frequent use of drugs). The word ‘psychedelic’ had also proved unsatisfactory for the post-1968 drug branding due to the close association with the word ‘psychosis’, also a consequence of prolonged drug use.

Coming out of the MKUltra mind control experimentation program of 1953-1974, an array of new drugs were brought into the US which appeared to be novel innovations with names such as LSD-25, DMT, and magic mushrooms, but were, in fact, simply derived from studies into an already known array of ergots (wheat fungus), mushrooms, and other plants used continuously in mystical practices across diverse cultures.

Wasson and Albert Hoffman (the Swiss-based Sandoz Labs chemist who discovered LSD-25 by extracting the active agents from ergots) were both authors of the 1974 bestseller The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries, in which they conveyed their theories (undoubtedly shared by Huxley) that the “sacred brew” called Kakyon used in the mystery school at Eleusis which promised to make its consumers “die to live eternally” was, in fact, the base of their beloved LSD-25.