Professor Carl A.P. Ruck. is Professor of Classics at Boston University, an authority on the
ecstatic rituals of the god Dionysus.

With the ethno-mycologist R. Gordon Wasson and Albert Hofmann, he identified the secret
psychoactive ingredient in the visionary potion that was drunk by the initiates at the Eleusinian
Mystery. In Persephone’s Quest: Entheogens and the Origins of Religion (translated into
Spanish), he proclaimed the centrality of psychoactive sacraments at the very beginnings of
religion, employing the neologism “entheogen” to free the topic from the pejorative
connotations for words like drug or hallucinogen.

His publications include: The World of Classical Myth: Gods and Goddesses: Heroines and
Heroes; The Apples of Apollo: Pagan and Christian Mysteries of the Eucharist; The Road to
Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries (translated into Spanish, Modern Greek, German,
and Italian); Sacred Mushrooms of the Goddess: Secrets of Eleusis (translated into Modern
Greek); The Hidden World: Survival of Pagan Shamanic Themes in European Fairytales;
Mushrooms, Myth, and Mithras: The Drug Cult that Civilized Europe; The Effluents of Deity:
Alchemy and Psychoactive Sacraments in Medieval and Renaissance Art; Entheogens, Myth and
Human Consciousness; Intensive Latin: First Year and Review; Ancient Greek: Intensive Review
and Reference; IG II2 2323 The List of Victors in Comedy at the Dionysia; Pindar: Selected Odes:
Dionysus in Thrace: Ancient Entheogenic Themes in the Mythology and Archaeology of Northern
Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey; The Son Conceived in Drunkenness: Magical Plants in the World of
the Greek Hero; The Great Gods of Samothrace and the Cult of the Little People; also over fifty
essays in anthologies and journals.