Open Veils · Answer
What civilizations used cannabis as part of religious ceremonies?
Cannabis sacred use is not a modern invention — it spans at least four millennia and multiple continents. Archaeological, textual, and biochemical evidence places it at the center of Vedic, Scythian, Zoroastrian, Israelite, and Mesoamerican ritual life. Brian Muraresku's work on entheogens in ancient religion and Mauro Biglino's literal readings of Hebrew scripture both point toward psychoactive sacraments being far more central to ancient worship than orthodoxy admits. The record is older, wider, and more chemically specific than any Sunday-school account allows.
Evidence
- Herodotus described Scythian vapor-bath rituals in the 5th–2nd centuries BCE, where warriors threw cannabis onto heated stones inside enclosed felt tents, producing collective intoxication — a practice Randall Carlson and others have cited as evidence for entheogenic shamanism across the Eurasian steppe.
- Perhaps the most striking archaeological find: cannabis residue was chemically confirmed on two altars at Tel Arad, Kingdom of Judah, dated to the 8th century BCE.
- Zoroastrian haoma rituals and Assyrian use by 800 BCE extended the tradition westward, per the MIT Press survey.
- 2000 BCE), where the sacred plant bhanga is listed among five sacred plants given by the gods — referenced extensively in Vedic scholarship and confirmed by the MIT Press Reader's survey of cannabis history (March 2026).
- Itinerant Hindu sadhus continued this lineage unbroken into the present; Shiva's association with cannabis is documented across Sanskrit tantric texts.