Mt Olympus Greece
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Ambrosia (from Greek ambrotos = immortal).
This is the otherworldly food or drink of the Ancient Greek Olympians, sometimes given to mortal heroes and mankind as a salve.
Mortals were punished if they took it uninvited.
Some scholars argue that ambrosia prefigures the Christian Eucharist.
It remains unclear as to whether ambrosia has an earthly parallel, as does the Soma of the Hindu Vedic pantheon. Some say it’s based on the alleged healing powers of honey, others suggest it may be traced to the hallucinogenic mushroom.
Mythographer Joseph Campbell puts forward an interesting view:
…the drink of the gods, and the distillate of love are the same, in various strengths, to wit, ambrosia (Sanskrit amrta, “immortality”), the potion of deathless life experienced here and now. It is milk, it is wine, it is tea, it is coffee, it is anything you like, when drunk with a certain insight-life itself, when experienced from a certain depth and height.”
Source: Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Creative Mythology (New York: Penguin Books, 1962: The Masks of God: Creative Mythology, 1976, p. 80.)
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