I should have posted this on Tuesday as that is the sacred day.
Historically documented uses of cannabis in religious rituals
• archaeological evidence documents use of cannabis in a ritual ceremony as early as 2000 BC, in a sanctuary in east Turkmenistan
• an initiation ceremony known as the Eleusinian Mysteries, which began about 1500BC in ancient Greece, involved the use of psychoactive sacrament. A communal visionary event that was supposed to be a journey to the otherworld, stemmed from consumption of a sacred potion with an agent extracted from a fungus that was likely LSD.
• the use of cannabis by the Scythians as a ritual sacrament for funerals was documented in fifth century BC.
• the cult of Mithras was assimilated in the Greco-Roman world in first century BC. Groups of men met in confined subterranean sanctuaries and celebrated their God with a seven-fold sequence of psychoactive sacraments.
• Philo of Alexandria, who was born in 20BC, detailed a ceremony in the temple of Jerusalem where a Jewish High Priest would burn cannabis-like incense, in an enclosed space, so he could speak to Yahweh (God).
• while there were some psychoactive communion rites in early Christianity, they were condemned as heretical in the Church established by Paul. There is evidence that as late as the Renaissance, some elite in the Church reserved psychoactive Eucharist for themselves.
Source: Ontario Superior Court exhibit. Report of Professor Carl Ruck, Boston University.
The Book Of Exodus and Cannabis:
Marijuana proponents suggest that the recipe for the anointing oil passed from God to Moses included cannabis, or kaneh-bosm in Hebrew. They point to versions calling for fragrant cane, which they say was mistakenly changed to the plant calamus in the King James version of the Bible.
From Exodus 30:22-25:
22, Then the LORD said to Moses, 23 "Take the following fine spices: 500 shekels of liquid myrrh, half as much (that is, 250 shekels) of fragrant cinnamon, 250 shekels of fragrant cane, 24 500 shekels of cassia–all according to the sanctuary shekel–and a hint of olive oil. 25 Make these into a sacred anointing oil, a fragrant blend, the work of a perfumer. It will be the sacred anointing oil.