The

AnoinTed

onesSecretSof the

MeSSiah Medicine

Box 2552Vincentown, NJ 08088

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ISBN: 978-0-615-32553-8

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Copyright 2008, 2009

The MessiAh MediCine

The Egyptians invented it. The Bible records its formulation and use.It was an ointment made from precious herbal medicines that caused “visions and dreams.”

For 1000 years every Hebrew high priest and king was sanctified by it. The ancient Jews called the ones so-consecrated “Messiahs,” meaning “Anointed Ones.”

One day the Messiah Medicine was ground to ashes beneath the rubble of war, persisting only as a dim memory decaying into myth.

More than 500 years later, a man named Jesus resurrected it. He was anointed and called “christ,” meaning “Anointed One.” He used it to consecrate his Disciples, the “christians” or “Anointed Ones.”

It was lost again..

Yet only by learning its secrets can the true origins of Judaism and christianity be known.

MYTHOBOTANICAL PRESSBox 2552 • Vincentown, NJ 08088

Copyright 2008, 2009Publication Date: 2011

www.mythobotanicalpress.com

“it will be found that all great religious reformations have their roots in the past. the true reformers do not claim to be heard on the ground of the new things they proclaim, but rather because they alone give due weight to old truths which the mass of their contemporaries cannot formally deny, but practically ignore.”

William Robertson Smith, 19th century classical and biblical scholar.

One old truth, never denied but long ignored, has to do with the Messiah Medicine, an herbal ointment that stood at the very center of early Christian worship and the sanctification of Hebrew priests and kings. It was looked upon as the key to the kingdom of God, and was used to consecrate men such as David, Solomon, Jesus and his Disciples.

A relic is preserved in the sacrament of Confirmation, wherein the initiate is anointed with blessed oil and thereby conceived as being “made a partaker of Christ.” In the beginning, this was not looked upon as a symbolic act, but, as the Bible and primitive Christian literature records, was expected to produce a “sober intoxication” that would “ “teach all things.”

Modern pharmacological studies suggest that the original Messiah Medicine was similar to psychedelic drugs such as mescaline, psilocybin and LSD.

This idea may seem blasphemous to some and merely implausible to others.

Be that as it may, the reader will herein discover an exhaustively researched scholarly investigation into the formulation and lore of this ancient and sacred herbal medicine.

In the beginning, the Messiah Medicine was no mere idea, no figure of speech, no emblem for something else. It was the holiest of holies, the central sacrament, the magical God-given oil from the Tree of Life that infused the consecrant with the Holy Spirit of God.

To Dr. Albert Hoffmann

A New Anointed One

The

AnoinTed

onesSecretSof the

MeSSiah Medicine

MICHAEL ALBERT-PULEO, M.D.

MYTHOBOTANICAL PRESSVincentown, NJ

www.mythobotanicalpress.com

Acknowledgements

Nicole Miller, Editor

Burlington Press, Format

one of the principal solemnities connected with the coronation was

the anointing of the king, and his receiving the emblems of majesty

from the Gods. the sculptures represent the deities themselves

officiating... however, we may conclude that it was the priests who

performed the ceremony and bestowed upon the prince the title of

“the anointed of the Gods.”

J. Gardner Wilkinson. Manners and Customers of the Ancient Egyptians. (2nd series). 1841. Vol. V, p. 279.

Truth begins in heresy and ends in superstition.

Friedrich Nietzsche

TABLe oF ConTenTs

Introduction : The Methods of Mythobotany

I The Anointed Ones

II The Royal Unguent of Kings

III Hebrew Messiahs

IV Pharmacology of the Messiah Medicine

V Notes on Compounding and Administering the Unguent of Moses

VI The Role of Herbal Drugs in Magic and Religion

VII Blood Anointing

VIII Greek Messiahs

IX Jesus & the Key to the Kingdom

X The Anointing Oil and the Holy Ghost

XI The Messiah Medicine in Apostolic Times

XII Extreme Unction, the Tree of Life, and Christian Healing

XIII Anointing in the Primitive Christian Church

XIV God, Man, and Anointed

Postscript : Everyman a Messiah

Michael Albert-Puleo, MD

1

inTroduCTion : The MeThods oF MyThoBoTAny

Not the truth in whose possession any man is, or thinks he is, but the honest effort he has made to find out the truth, is what

constitutes the worth of a man. 1

Gotthold Lessing

This book is an investigation into the most important religious sacrament of both the ancient Jews and early Christians—the Messiah Medicine—an ointment that allowed the Anointed One to “see visions” and “commune with God.” The approach I have taken relies upon the obscure discipline of mythobotany, wherein modern scientific research on herbs and their pharmacological effects is called upon to illuminate the hidden meanings in man’s primal stories. Pioneers in this course of study include T.F. Thistleton-Dyer, James Frazer, Robert Graves, Carl Ruck, Richard Evans Schultes and Gordon Wasson.

Various impediments have stood in the way of discovering a complete picture. Of the multitude of original sources it can only be said that the bulk of the remaining documents represents a mélange of myth, legend, ethno-centric history, hagiography and truth. All were recorded by different people at different times and under various circumstances and with manifold motives, often decades or centuries after the purported events. Over the years they were translated, transcribed, edited, and expurgated by countless copyists and censors, who often brought to the task no particular knowledge of the time or circumstances in which the records originated. This work was often colored by a tendency to preserve those documents that supported the ascendant political and religious view and to eliminate those that did not.

I have used a wide variety of resources, from the Bible, early Christian writings, ancient histories, myth, and religious commentaries, to archaic herbals, old pharmacopeias and modern scientific studies. By necessity I have relied on translations of all the ancient texts, hoping to follow the 2nd century Christian, Theophilus : “The man who loves truth pays no attention to defiled language but examines the fact behind the word to see what it means.” 2 These words have been as the north star guiding my own voyage of discovery.

To compound the difficulties in grasping the full story, many things were never entrusted to paper, but instead furtively transmitted by word-of-mouth. When those who knew these secrets died, often violently and without warning, the secrets died with them. Pertinent texts were purposely destroyed, at first by fellow Jews opposed to the new Messiahs, then by Greek and Roman pagans, and finally by rival Christian factions.

I have only made note of the most prominent features of this terra incognito, and fully expect that further analysis will unveil other insights. I have focused mainly on the developments in the West and Near East, though more detailed investigations into the traditions and beliefs of the Coptic Christians, Nestorians, and the Eastern Orthodox churches could unearth additional information.

1 Eine Duplik, (1778) in Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy. Walter Kaufmann, translator. Random House, Inc. 1967. p. 95, footnote. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781) has been called the Father of German literature.2 Theophilus. Ad Autolycum. Bk. 1:1. Robert M. Grant, trans. Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1970, p. 3.

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When I began this investigation 37 years ago, I was more than a little dismayed by the path before me. The way seemed impenetrable and foreign, strewn with the smoking ruins of grand monuments, venerable superstition, habit, hoary dogmas and the unintelligible words of vanished sects. Yet, as I persevered, a picture, if only a preliminary outline of the Anointed Ones, came into view. It is this view that I hope to convey.

Michael Albert-Puleo, MD

3

The AnoinTed ones

And it shall come to pass… that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men

shall see visions: and also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my Spirit.

Joel, 2:28-29.

Nothing is secret which shall not be made known.

Jesus the Anointed One Luke 8 : 17.

I

Why were the early followers of Jesus called christians? This term was never used by Jesus of Nazareth, nor at first, by any of the twelve original Apostles. About a decade after the crucifixion, circa A.D. 42, they were so dubbed by the inhabitants of the Hellenized city of Antioch, in present-day Syria. These pagans noticed one distinguishing physical characteristic marking this holy people : each was anointed over the entire body with a special medicated ointment. The Greek term for ointment is enchrista, and so they were called christians, meaning, simply, “those who have been anointed.”3 The Greek word christos, which gives us “Christ,” means precisely the same thing—the anointed one..

When the Greek Bible was translated into English, the word christ was essentially left untranslated. It would be far more accurate to refer to “Jesus the Anointed One,” instead of “Jesus the Christ.” This would get to the heart of who and what Jesus really was—an Anointed One in the Jewish tradition of the old testament—wherein every single Anointed One was actually anointed with a holy salve first introduced by Moses.

The uninformed might believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the first and only Messiah, though the Bible itself proves this false and predated by a far more remote history. The old testament records the 1000-year reign of many Christs, starting with Aaron, brother of Moses, followed by Saul, David, Solomon and Elijah. All were looked upon as sacrosanct beings, in Hebrew, the “hakohen hamashia,” the “Anointed One,” which evolved into the English word “Messiah.” The Hebrew word mashah means “to wipe or stroke with the hand,”4 a description of the manner in which the unguent was massaged into the skin, and preserved into the Christian era in the concept of “the laying on of hands.”

In the 4th century A.D., Church Father Eusebius of Caesarea observes:

3 For the origin of the name “Christian,” see Acts of the Apostles, 11:26; Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch, c. 180 AD, ad. Autolycum., 1:12, and 2:16; and Hastings, James. Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, Charles Scribner’s Son’s, New York. 1928. Vol. 4, p. 2.4 Smith, W. Robertson. The Religion of the Semites. D. Appleton and Co, New York, 1889. p. 215.

The Anointed Ones

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…it was not only those that were honoured with the High Priesthood, and anointed for the sake of the symbol with prepared oil, that were decorated with the name ‘Christ’; but also the kings, for they also, at the bidding of God, were made Christs.5

In the early years all Christians were also looked upon as true Anointed Ones, and referred to one another as “Messiahs” or “Christs,” for all were consecrated through the same sacred ritual. old and new testaments passages record that the one anointed would be possessed by the Holy Spirit of God. The Hebrew word, eckcheo, meaning “to pour out,” was used interchangeably to describe both the “pouring out of the Spirit” and the actual “pouring out of the ointment,” a connection still maintained in the liturgy of many modern Christian faiths. 6

The formula for this chrism, Greek for ointment, was revealed to Moses in Egypt and contained four medicinal herbs, generally identified as myrrh, calamus, cinnamon, and cassia. The Book of exodus directs that it be compounded “by the art of the druggist,” resulting in an ointment laden with pharmacologically-active plant essential oils. This thick liquid would be applied to the consecrant’s naked body as the culmination of a secret rite of religious initiation, and would cause astonishing phenomena, including visions, prophecies, and waking dreams.

The oil is cited throughout the Bible, the apocrypha and Pseudo apocrypha, the works of Josephus, the talmud, Gnostic and post-Apostolic Christian texts, and many other ancient Middle Eastern writings.7 From beginning to end, all commentators have looked to it as a type of spiritual medicine that imparted mystical revelation to the consecrant. Though its importance cannot be denied, the manner in which it performed this feat has rarely been considered.

From the days of Moses, who introduced it sometime after 1500 B.C., to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 587 B.C., anointing with the unguent stood as the culminating initiatory sacrament. High priests, kings, and prophets were consecrated by ritually cleansing with water followed by having the ointment rubbed into their skin by a high priest. Then would the Spirit of the Lord come upon them, and it was expected that they would be greatly changed men of knowledge and strength. For almost ten centuries these Messiahs acted as the spiritual and temporal leaders of ancient Israel, until misfortune, folly and total war ended the old ways forever.

It was held that the anointing prepared a man for kingship. Yet many Messiahs ruled without wisdom, and in a world of ruthless and powerful enemies, the affairs of the Jews inexorably declined. One day Babylonian armies came like a whirlwind into their lands, leading to captivity “beyond Damascus,” and the first age of the Anointed Ones was over. Under the priesthood of the Jewish Remnant that returned to Jerusalem in the mid-4th century B.C., the sacred unguent of Moses was not revived. They came back to a destroyed land. Those who returned could do little more than cobble together a threadbare fabric of the lost teachings and rites that would eventually become the dominant form of Judaism.

That the story did not completely end with the Remnant’s return to Jerusalem after the Babylonian captivity, but again bubbled forth almost 600 years later, was mainly due to the Messianic prophets and to Jesus himself, a man who sought to make prophecy come true. A belief in the Second Coming of the Anointed One was first voiced by the prophets

5 Eusebius. Ecclesiastical History, Vol. I, 3:9. Kirsopp Lake, trans. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1926. pp. 31-33.6 “there is ‘ekcheo’ and ‘ekchumo,’ which means “to pour out”, frequently found in association with the Spirit, and is rendered “pour out,” (isaiah 34:3, Joel 2: 28, 29, and Zachariah 12:10).”Marsh, F. E. Emblems of the Holy Spirit. Kregel Publications, Grand Rapids, Michigan.1957. pp108-109. 7 For an inclusive list of ancient citations, see Kutsch, Ernst. Salbung als Rechtsakt. Verlag Alfred Topelmann, Berlin 1963. pp. 73-78.

Michael Albert-Puleo, MD

5

Joel, Isaiah, Micah and Jeremiah, whose words encouraged the rise of Messianism that came to influence Jesus in his own quest. Hebrew scholar Isaac Landman reviews the traditions and teachings that define the Messiah during this period of Jewish history:

During the exilic and post-exilic periods the confidently awaited king of Davidic stock...was also pictured as being inducted into his divinely appointed kingship by the act of anointing. By virtue of the anointing, the spirit of the Lord would rest upon him…and in consequence, as isaiah 2:2-5 pictures him, he would be possessed of perfect knowledge and wisdom, would rule rightly and dispense justice unerringly. He would be of irresistible might and of supernatural powers, not an ordinary mortal, but truly a supernatural semi-divine being.8

The Catholic Church has long looked to Jesus as the originator of the Christian rite of anointing. Pope Fabian, martyred in the year 250 A.D., writes in the 54th chapter of his Second epistle to the Bishops of the east : “Our predecessors received from the holy Apostles and delivered to us, that the Lord Jesus Christ on that day, after He had celebrated the Last Supper with His Apostles and washed their feet, taught them how to prepare the Holy Chrism.”9

Before the Babylonian wars, the Hebrews jealously reserved ceremonial anointing for selected male members of the House of Levy. Yet this was not the way under the tutelage of Jesus, for the most revolutionary aspect of his creed was that anyone could be consecrated Messiah. Unlike his predecessors, Jesus and his Apostles anointed ordinary people with the Messiah Medicine, not just kings and high priests. As foretold by the prophet Joel, the oil was to be “freely poured out” upon all considered worthy. This democratization of the original Hebraic rites was the key innovation that changed the hierarchical and patriarchical Judaism of laws and priests into early Christianity, the religion of revelation for the common woman and man. None were considered to be above or below his or her fellows, for all were equal by virtue of their possession of the Holy Spirit engendered by the oil, that “taught all things.” This was the pinnacle rite of consecration, reached only after each penitent had passed through manifold teachings, preparations, and preliminary ceremonies. Though the details of this primordial ritual have long remained obscure, almost all scholars regard anointing as the most important sacrament among the first Christians.

The primacy of the unguent can be discerned throughout the new testament, most notably, on the Day of Pentecost, wherein Peter attests that the new Anointed Ones appeared to be intoxicated, not because they were “drunk with wine,” but because “the Holy Spirit has been poured out upon them”; at Corinth, where excessive use of the ointment prompted Paul to warn the Corinthian Christians to use caution, lest people “think them mad”; and in the conversion of Saul, oppressor of the Christians, to Paul, the proselyte, through anointing at the hands of the disciple Ananias. Second and 3rd century Christian writers Tertullian, Cyril, Eusebius, and Clement give detailed descriptions of the use of the holy oil in the consecration rituals of the early church. The unguent’s medicinal properties were also used to heal the sick and to reduce the agonies of dying. A vestige of this last practice persists in the rite of Extreme Unction.

8 Landman, Isaac, ed. The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia. Vol. I. KTAV Pub. House Inc., New York, 1969. p. 332.9 in Emmerick, Anna Catharina. The Life of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Vol. IV. Academy Library Guild, Fresno, California. 1954. p.73. Emmerick records a “vision” of Jesus teaching his disciples of the Anointing Oil, and then reports how years later she came across this citation of Pope Fabian. I will relate a curious story, improbable but true, about how I came across this reference. In 1976 I was studying at Villanova University and went into the religious section of the library to see what I might find. I randomly pulled Sister Emmerick’s little book from the stacks and found this citation, as if “by magic.” On the way out I saw a little plastic donation box for Anna Katherine Emmerick’s Sisters of the Poor into which I deposited a few coins. I have never before nor since seen a similar donation box, but it seemed that on that day I was destined to encounter Ms. Emmerick.

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In the Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and other Christian creeds, the rite of anointing persists as Confirmation, a name familiar to Christians throughout the world and one that first gained parlance in the 5th century A.D.10 While the original purpose of the Mosaic unguent has been abstracted into an essentially symbolic rite, the very fact that indistinct echoes of this archaic ritual persist almost 2000 years after it was re-introduced by Jesus testifies to the importance it once possessed. In the beginning, in both the Hebrew and Christian religions, it was no mere idea, no figure of speech, or emblem for something else. It was the holiest of holies, the central sacrament, the magical God-given oil from the Tree of Life that infused the consecrant with the Holy Spirit of God.

While it has long been assumed that the unguent was inert—indeed, it is difficult to find those who even asked the question as to its pharmacological activity—this belief has never been thoroughly evaluated. Many plant essential oils possess marked pharmacological properties that can be readily absorbed through the skin,11 and so it is not surprising that scientific studies have demonstrated that the components of the oil of Moses produce significant effects.

Since ancient times the skin has been used as a mode through which medicinal substances can be introduced into the body. Along with eating, drinking, or smoking, this form of ingestion can be traced back beyond the pale of recorded history. Even today medications applied to the skin are used by physicians in the form of various dermal patches, ointments, or gels, prescribed for pain-relief, contraception, hormonal insufficiency, Parkinson’s disease, motion sickness, dementia, and smoking cessation.

A scientific examination of the actual ingredients of the unguent of Moses clearly shows that its efficacy was not merely superstitious, but had a verifiably medicinal component. Myrrh was widely used in ancient times as a pain relieving, tranquilizing, and sleep-inducing drug, and modern studies demonstrate activity similar to that of opium. Calamus root or sweet flag was imported from India into the Near East as early as the time of the Pharaohs and produces stimulant and psychedelic effects. Cinnamon and cassia, dried barks of cousin trees from China and Southeast Asia, imparted a pleasing odor to the concoction, but perhaps more importantly, improved the absorption of the active ingredients by increasing capillary blood flow in the skin. They may have added something else, as modern anecdotal reports refer to their use as psychoactive substances.

This sacred ointment was, and is, as my own informal trials have shown, fully capable of triggering experiences referred to by scientists as “psychedelic,” a word meaning literally, “mind- manifesting”;12 and applied to medicines such as mescaline, psilocybin and LSD. Under favorable circumstances these may catalyze what many interpret as ineffable spiritual consciousness, even Oneness with God. That a mere medicine might facilitate a life-altering religious experience of celestial felicity may seem strange and incomprehensible to some, yet scientific investigations over the last century have demonstrated this to be common enough.

Recently, researchers led by Roland Griffiths at Johns Hopkins University, published the results of experiments into the effects on human beings of psilocybin, derived from a mushroom still used by Native Americans in religious ceremonies. More than 60% of the participants reported that they had undergone a “mystical experience,” and one-third considered it to be the single most spiritually significant experience of their lifetimes. Two months after the experience, 10 Mason, Arthur James. The Relation of Confirmation to Baptism. 2nd ed. Longmans, Green, & Co., London and New York, 1893. p.xii.11 Experimental research demonstrates that “resorption through the skin is very high because of the high liposoloubility” they possess. Standen, Anthony. Ed. Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology, Vol. I. Kirk-Othmer Interscience Publishers, NY, 1964. pp.179 and 187.12 Coined by scientist Humphrey Osmond in 1957.

Michael Albert-Puleo, MD

7

79 percent of the subjects said their lives had improved at least moderately compared with placebo.13 If the Messiah Medicine produced similar effects, then clearly the Anointed Ones would also view the experience as a peak spiritual event. Not surprisingly, the use of an unguent to produce psychoactive, magico-religious effects, can be found elsewhere. Mayan Indians once used an ointment made from LSD-like morning glory seeds in shamanistic ceremonies, and for thousands of years European Wicca employed an herbal “flying” ointment with powerful hallucinogenic and anesthetic properties

While innumerable treatises have been devoted to other items critical to the religious practices of the Mosaic Jews, such as the Ark, the sacred scriptures and the Ten Commandments, far less attention has been paid to the unguent itself. Possibly the most comprehensive treatise to date is Cullmann’s das Salbem im Morgen und abendlande; an obscure and somewhat inaccessible work published in 1876. One notable and fairly early attempt to piece together the history and meaning of Christian sacramental anointing is John Frere’s 1845 work, the doctrine of imposition of hands or confirmation. Dom Gregory Dix, in the theology of confirmation in relation to Baptism and the Shape of the Liturgy, evinces immense scholarship to illuminate the pivotal role of anointing among the early Christians. According to him, baptism with water was but a preliminary to baptism with the ointment, or “fire baptism,” the paramount ritual of initiation into the church. Another analysis of the importance of anointing in the early church can be found in Arthur Mason’s the relation of confirmation to Baptism. Ernst Kutsch’s Salbung als rechtsakt provides, among other benefits, an exhaustive inventory of the scriptures, texts, and histories in which the anointing oil is mentioned. Hugh Riley’s christian initiation, L.S. Thornton’s confirmation, H.G. Marsh’s the origin and Significance of the new testament Baptism have also provided useful insights.

The primary limitation of these works is that they lack the perspective of science and medicine. None considers the potential pharmacological effects of the original Mosaic unguent. One notable exception can be found in the musings of the innovative scholar, John Allegro. In the Sacred Mushroom and the cross, his best-selling, highly controversial, and wholly original translation/interpretation of the Qumran documents or dead Sea Scrolls, he makes the following suggestion:

So the Christian, the “smeared or anointed one,” “received knowledge of all things” by his anointing from the Holy One.’ (i John 2:20). Thereafter he had need of no other teacher and remained evermore endowed with all knowledge. Whatever the full ingredients of the Christian unction may have been, they would certainly have included the aromatic gums and spices of the traditional Hebrew anointing oil: myrrh, aromatic cane, cinnamon, and cassia. Under certain enclosed conditions, a mixture of these substances rubbed on the skin could produce a kind of intoxicating belief in self-omniscience referred to in the New Testament.14 This trenchant observation, however, is but an aside from Allegro’s main theme, that the use of the psychedelic mushroom, amanita muscaria was at the center of the early Sumerian religion and its offspring, including Judaism and Christianity. Though he neither pursues nor explores the pharmacology of the ointment, certainly the questions he raises bear examination.

13 Griffiths, Roland R., Richards, W.A. McCann, U. and Jesse, R. “Psilocybin can occasion mystical-type experiences having substantial personal meaning and spiritual significance”, Psychopharmacology, 2006, 187 :268-283.

14 Allegro, John. The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross. Bantam Books, New York, 1971. pp. 56-57.

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My own interest began in 1973 while reading the Last Whole earth catalog, and happened upon a reference to calamus, a plant used by Native Americans as a stimulant and psychedelic.15 At the time, I was at Syracuse University studying Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, and I read a series of his poems entitled calamus.Wondering if the effects of the calamus root might have triggered the poet’s exuberant mystical vision displayed in Leaves, I wrote Walt Whitman and calamus,16 and later, Walt Whitman : Psychedelic Pioneer?17 In the course of these studies I discovered that calamus root was also thought to be one of the ingredients in the ancient Hebrew anointing oil, and it was this realization that led to the work at hand.

15 The Last Whole Earth Catalog. Portola Institute, Inc. 1971. p. 414. 16 Albert-Puleo, Anthony Michael. Walt Whitman and Calamus. English 593, American Literature Survey, John W. Crowley, Professor. Syracuse University, 1973. 17 unpublished manuscript.

Michael Albert-Puleo, MD

9

II

Students of the history of religion have long recognized, as W.H.C. Frend observes in his monumental work the rise of christianity, that Christianity “began as a renewal movement within Palestinian Judaism, and its first members regarded their faith in the risen Jesus not as a new religion but as a confirmation of God’s promise to Israel.”18 Hence, it is not surprising that the initiation ceremony of the first Anointed Ones adhered closely to that of the original Hebrew consecration of high priests and kings. By torchlight in the dark of night, the candidate would strip off the costume of daily life, be cleansed with pure water, and then anointed. Clothed in simple white robes, these nascent Anointed Ones would, at least in their own minds, enter the kingdom of heaven.

Christian salvation is conventionally defined as “the saving of the soul; the deliverance from sin and its consequences, and admission to eternal bliss, wrought for man by the atonement of Christ.” Yet at first, salvation meant, quite literally, “the spreading of the ointment over the skin.” In fact, the English word “salvation” is not derived from a word-root meaning “to save,” but rather from one meaning “to anoint.”19 One was, so to speak, “saved by the salve.” “Eternal salvation”, the Christian idea of Paradise, harks back to the earliest view of immortality that, as the name implies, was originally conceived of as a perpetual experience of earthly anointing.20 A similar idea was held by the ancient Greeks who partook of an LSD-like potion as part of the Eleusinian Mysteries, and believed that immortality after death would be tantamount to celebrating the Mysteries for eternity.

Early Christian documents clearly show that at first the use of the Messiah Medicine was completely egalitarian. All were considered equal, and any given Anointed One could perform the rite of anointing and so create another Messiah to join the fold. While the earliest phase of Christianity emphasized personal ecstatic revelation, in time, visions and prophecy would be smothered by a new regime that preferred enforced conformity to centralized rule. As the 2nd century after the birth of Jesus waned, the use of the true anointing oil was increasingly abandoned in the West, although it may have persisted in isolated pockets in the Christian hinterlands. With time, the ointment-inspired visions—the very bedrock of the religion of the Anointed Ones—came to be looked upon as dangerous, and this marked the end of the first phase of Christianity. At one time the Church of Rome was but one church among many, all with widely varying and idiosyncratic differences in belief, practice, and literature, but with time and calculation she achieved hegemony throughout much of the West, and it was she who would tirelessly suppress those who clung to the original beliefs and practices of the first Christians.

Today, purely symbolic anointing still remains in the rite of Confirmation. The chrism used in the Catholic rite consists of olive oil mixed with a little balsam. On the other hand, “in the East…its composition is more complex; Constantinople uses over fifty ingredients, including olive oil, balsam, ginger, pepper, rose water, and wine.”21 Anointing has also remained as the ceremony

18 Frend, W.H.C. The Rise of Christianity. Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1984. p. 12.19 Palmer, A. Smythe. Folk Etymology. George Bell and Sons, London, 1882. p. 338. “Salve, to anoint, bears a deceptive resemblance to Latin salvus, sound, well, salvare, to save, salvere, to be well, but is really akin to Goth. salbon, German, salben…to anoint.”20 E.W. Culmann in his das Salben im Morgen- und abendlande, (1876) discusses in extreme detail the etymology of anointing in Indo-European and Semitic languages, and it would be useful, at least to me, if someone were to locate and translate this text from German into English. 21 Atwater, David. A Catholic Encyclopedia. MacMillan Co., New York, 1962. p.93.

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used to crown the few European monarchs who remain, the remnant of a custom begun more than six thousand years ago by the Egyptians. Adopted by the Hebrews, and through them, Christianity, anointing with something has functioned to consecrate almost every (so-called) legitimate Christian monarch from beyond the Dark Ages to modern times. Belief in its power persisted for a long, long time. Declaring himself emperor, Napoleon and Josephine were both anointed with oil on the head and hands.

Miraculous legends grew up around the chrism of kings. According to Eusebe Salverte, in his classical work, the Philosophy of Magic :

When Clovis, the first Christian King of France was baptized, the vial containing the sacred unguent was stated to have been dropped from heaven into the hands of St. Remigius, then Bishop of Rheims, about the end of the fifth century; where it has ever since been preserved for the purpose of anointing all succeeding kings. To confirm its divine descent, as soon as the coronation was over, the oil in the vial begins to waste and vanish, but is again renewed of itself for the service of every succeeding coronation.22

The first putatively Christian emperor, Constantine, was said to have been anointed with “the original oil of Christ,”23 though not even a single drop of the true Messiah Medicine remained for his coronation, almost twenty centuries after Moses first gave it to the Hebrews, and three centuries after Jesus reintroduced it to the world.

22 Salverte, Eusebe. The Philosophy of Magic. Anthony Todd Thomson, ed. 1847.pp. 217-218.23 Baptism of Constantine (c. 500).