Albert Hofmann

Albert Hofmann (1906–2008) was a Swiss chemist who, in 1943, accidentally ingested a minute quantity of a compound he had synthesized five years earlier: lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD-25. What followed became one of the most important scientific and mystical revelations of the 20th century — the discovery that a molecule could open human perception to a direct experience of the numinous.

Hofmann never considered LSD a recreational substance. For him, it was a “medicine for the soul,” a doorway back to the sacred dimension modernity had lost. He proposed that the ancient Greeks at Eleusis might have already known and used an ergot-derived entheogen in their sacred

Kykeon

, and that the reemergence of LSD in our era could represent the return of that initiatic thread — the

Pharmakon

that dissolves separation between science and spirit.

1906 – 2008 CE

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Era / Dates

1906 – 2008 CE

ROLE / ARCHETYPE

Swiss chemist, explorer of consciousness, discoverer of LSD-25, bridge between science and mysticism.

LINEAGE

Albert Hofmann represents the fusion of rational precision and mystical revelation. He stands as the scientist who, by accident and by grace, reopened the ancient gateway between chemistry and the sacred. Hofmann himself believed that the Kykeon, the sacramental brew consumed in the Eleusinian Mysteries of ancient Greece, may have contained an ergot-based psychoactive compound, making LSD a modern echo of that ancient rite.
In my own field, Hofmann embodies the reactivation of the same current that Eleusis once carried: the direct experience of the divine within the body, not as dogma but as revelation through consciousness itself.

ROLE / ARCHETYPE

Swiss chemist, explorer of consciousness, discoverer of LSD-25, bridge between science and mysticism.

VIBRATIONAL MEANING

Related Books

LSD: My Problem Child

Reflections on Sacred Drugs, Mysticism and Science

In this autobiographical reflection, Albert Hofmann recounts the accidental discovery of LSD-25, the famous “Bicycle Day” experience, and his lifelong conviction that this molecule could reawaken humanity’s spiritual connection to nature. Hofmann explores LSD not as a drug, but as a doorway to the same sacred experience once cultivated in the Eleusinian Mysteries.

Insight / Outlook

The Road to Eleusis

Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries

This groundbreaking work bridges modern chemistry and ancient spirituality. The authors, an ethnomycologist, a chemist, and a classicist, propose that the sacred drink used for over two millennia in the Eleusinian Mysteries, the “Kykeon,” contained a psychoactive compound derived from ergot, the same fungus from which Albert Hofmann later synthesized LSD-25. By aligning historical research, chemical analysis, and mythological interpretation, they suggest that the Mysteries of Eleusis were not symbolic rituals, but direct initiations into divine consciousness.