Divine Mania

Yulia Ustinova is a scholar of ancient Greek religion whose work deserves wider recognition, not only in classics but in religious studies and even parapsychology.

Divine Mania is a follow-up to her equally recommended 2008 book, Caves and the Ancient Greek Mind: Descending Underground in the Search for Ultimate Truth. In both books, Ustinova takes seriously reports of mystical, out-of-body, and near-death experiences in the ancient Greek world.

Such descriptions are usually seen as purely literary, imaginative inventions that have no meaning beyond their own cultural contexts. But Ustinova acknowledges what the evidence itself tells us: that extraordinary experiences impact… show more.

In modern neuroscience there is a resurrection of a line of research on altered states of consciousness. We must not think that this fascination started with Woodstock or Timothy Leary… At all times mind-altering rituals and substances were used. Uptight professors of antiquity hardly spoke of what happened in ancient Greece where mind-altering rituals were part of society for spiritual insight, prophecy, and healing. Yulia Ustinova gives a fascinating account of how in ancient Greece sensory deprivation in caves, often in combination with the practices of fasting or use of psychedelics, induced altered states of consciousness in selected individuals.