This is one of the most controversial podcasts in the history of The Sacred Speaks; though controversy is familiar territory for the participant, Dr. DAC Hillman. Dr. Hillman began his doctoral research in the middle of a controversy that threatened him with a conflict between the choice of censuring his research to graduate with his doctorate or not pass. So, he did what any self-respecting doctoral student would do - remove the controversial work from his dissertation, and the write a book about it. The Chemical Muse is the book whose central thesis circulates within and through the heart of the “offensive” content – the recreational and sacred use of drugs in classical antiquity. Though his advisors denied that people in classical antiquity used drugs both recreationally and within religious rites, the evidence currently underway confirms his censured thesis. But he did not stop there. Dr. Hillman’s research investigates practices by religious Mystery cults in the classic age who participated in the unimaginable, by modern standards. Have you ever imagined that the human body could or would be used as a pharmacy to produce antidotes to drugs and venoms administered to initiates of sacred Mysteries traditions; and that without those human produced antidotes, the initiate’s body would begin to fail? What if the bodies of both adults and children were used in such ways? Dr. Hillman and Dr. Price discuss ancient religion, translating ancient texts, hidden language, image, magic, witches, sexual abuse of children, Jesus and St. John, obscured practices within ancient Mystery cults, Magi, the body as pharmacy, Gnostics, heresy, censorship by those in power, homosexuality, the patriarchy, priestesses, myth, & Magic.