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Amanita Muscaria as the God/ Plant Soma of the Rigveda |
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Written by Michael S. Smith
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Tuesday, 12 August 1997 |
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Page 1 of 3 For nearly 150 years Vedic Scholars have been in search of the mysterious plant of the Rigveda known as Soma.  Soma was the plant around which the Vedic sacrifices took place and that was said to cause an ecstatic altered state of consciousness. But Soma was more than a plant, it and its expressed juice were also considered a god which was commonly used interchangeably with the god Agni, the god of fire. I hope to be able to show that Soma is in fact not a common plant, but a fungus with inebriating and potentially hallucinatory effect. I plan to first present textual evidence from the Rigveda itself and then secondly to point out the use of this specific fungus by other cultures, thereby supporting this general thesis.
The idea that Soma was a fungus, specifically the red capped Amanita muscaria mushroom, was first presented by the ethno-mycologists R. Gordon Wasson and his wife Valentina Wasson in the 1960's and published in their 1968 volume Soma: The Divine Mushroom of Immortality. A number of theories as to the identification of Soma had been circulating for years, but all were found to lack similarities to the poetic descriptions of plant described in the Rigveda. Some plants offered up as being Soma were Bhang (Cannabis), Rhubarb, Periploca aphylla, Sarcostemma brevistigma, and Ephedra vulgaris, to mention just a few, with Peganum harmala being the most recent suspect. Some of the strongest evidence suggesting these could not be Soma is that the Rigveda makes no mention of the divine plant having any roots, leaves, blossoms, or seeds. What we do find in the Rigveda though is poetic references to attributes that could be applied to a mushroom. To see these attributes we must first have an understanding of where the Amanita muscaria mushroom grows and what it looks like.
The Amanita grows in a mycorrhizal relationship with a number of different trees, specifically the pines, firs, and above all, the birches, from which the mushroom must feed from. Being temperate climate trees that grow in cooler climates we can assume that the Amanita grows in higher elevations surrounding the northern portions of the Indian peninsula, specifically the Hindu Kush range and the Himalayan mountains. The Rigveda repeatedly states that Soma grows high in the mountains and nowhere else. For example, Mandala V 43 states that Soma is a plant from the mountain..., and Mandala IX 46 says that Soma is seated on the mountain top... With the placement of Soma in the high mountains it would be naive to assume that Soma could be the previously mentioned plants that all grow in the lush valleys or the arid flatlands.
Understanding the great importance of Soma in Vedic culture why is it that in modern India there is agreement that what are being used in the sacrifices are Soma substitutes? Could it be that the Ar-yan, in their migration from the northern highlands into the low lying valleys and flatlands, had no way of bringing the plant with them because of its inability to be cultivated due to its need for a mycorrhizal relationship with trees that only grow in the highland?
The Amanita muscaria itself is a bright red mushroom that has woolly white spots on its top that are fragments of the veil from which the mushroom emerges as it explodes out of the ground. These wool like spots, which resemble warts, lent to this mushrooms designation as a toadstool. The Amanita can grow up to 8 inches tall and nearly 10 inches in diameter once it has fully opened its parasol.
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