by Jesse Potter aka Elkin Vanaeon
On this ninth
day of August in the year of our Lord and
Lady 2005 CE
1900 CE - A Taoist monk at Dunhuang, China discovered Wang Yuanlu "Cave for Preserving Scriptures". The cave contains more than 50,000 sutras, documents and paintings covering a period from the 4th to the 11th centuries. It was one of China's most significant archaeological finds.
1900 CE - Carl Correns (German biologist), Hugo de Vries (Dutch botanist), and Erich Tachermak (Austrian botanist) independently rediscover the 1866 work of Gregor Mendel.
1900 CE - With the revolt of the London temple against Mathers' leadership "The Order of the Golden Dawn" begins to break up, various splinter and daughter organizations split from the London temple, flourishing over the next couple of decades.
1901 CE - Neo-Pentecostalism begins with Charles Parham and Agnes Ozman who recorded, according to Pentecostal lore, a woman who spoke in tongues in the church of Charles Fox Parham in 1901(Topeka, Kansas).
Reverend Parham spread the teachings until the famous Azusa Street, Los Angeles Revival of 1906 from which it began to spread to other countries. Parham, who had begun working with British Israelism met disciples of Frank Sandford, who ran the Empire's mystery cult in Shiloh near Durham Maine. They convinced him into making a pilgrimage and studying under Sandford at Shiloh. He traveled constantly to England in his attempt to teach Americans the British Empire gospel of British Israelism bringing with him:
1904 CE - "The Book of the Goetia of Solomon the King" is published by Mathers and Aleister Crowley. The Goetia, which is part of the Lemegeton or Lesser Key of Solomon, was edited by S.L. "MacGregor."
1904 to 1905 CE - Germany - Dr. Alfred Ploetz founded the "Archives of Race-Theory" and "Social Biology" in 1904 and the "German Society of Racial Hygiene" in 1905.
1904 CE - England - Eugenics, the study of the hereditary improvement of the human race by controlled selective breeding, is established as a course at University College in London.
1904 CE - U.S. - Eugenics laboratory is established at Cold Springs Harbor on Long Island, constructed by Charles B. Davenport. The Cold Springs facility is funded in excess of $11 million by the Harrimans and the Rockefellers.
1904-5 CE - Welsh Revivalism began according to the records of Jesse-Penn Lewis. Among the 150,000 estimated converts of the [Welsh] Revival are George and Stephens Jeffery's who later founded the Elim Movement, and David Powell Williams who founded the Apostolic Pentecostal church. These movements had profound effects on:
1905 and 1908 CE - Gardner takes up Freemasonry by joining the Sphinx Lodge, 113, I.C. in Colombo, Ceylon. He reached at least third degree (Master Mason) and possibly as far as the Royal Arch. From these early beginnings he begins compiling the later elements in Wicca, the phrases "So mote it be", "Merry meet, merry part, and merry meet again", "The Craft", the word "charge" for a expository speech, and motifs and techniques used in initiation rites, particularly the first degree rites.
1905, November CE - Inter-church Conference on Federation.
1905 CE - US Native American - The Atoka agreement and treaty with the United States expired on April 23, 1905, according to the terms of the treaty all "Tribal Relations" will cease and Indians of both tribes (Chickasaws and Choctaws) become United States citizens.
1906 CE - Azusa Revival launches American Pentecostalism; includes ecstatic manifestations. "The rise of American Pentecostalism usually dated from a revival in Los Angeles in 1906 further stimulated pre-millennial beliefs, since Pentecostalists, like Edwqard Irving earlier, viewed their distinctive practices, especially glossalalia and divine healing, as signs of the last days
1907 CE - Societas Rosicruciana in America (S.R.I.A.) The Societas Rosicruciana in America originated with members of the Societas Rosicruciana in Civitatibus Foederatis who wished to open the Rosicrucian teaching to the general public (i.e. non-Masons). Sylvester C. Gould, a member of the Boston College of the S.R.I.C.F., in collaboration with other Rosicrucian, began the S.R.I.A. and a periodical, The Rosicrucian Brotherhood. Gould died in 1909 and the periodical died with him. The leadership of the infant Society was continued by George Winslow Plummer (1877-1944), who had assisted Gould in its formation, and under his leadership the Society began to grow.
1907 CE - Pope Pius X issues 'Ne Temere' decree: marriage between Catholics and Protestants are null and void unless performed in a Catholic chapel; children of such marriage must be reared as Catholics.
1908 CE - Federal Council of Churches founded by Rockefeller. "By 1908, the national assemblies of the constituent bodies [of the Inter-Church Conference on Federation had adopted the Constitution, and the Federal Council [of Churches] came into being."
1908 CE - Dr. E. Fischer, a Dozent in anatomy at the University of Freiburg, begins to investigate the 'bastards' (persons of mixed blood, born mainly of unions between Dutch (Boer) men and Hottentot women) of Rehoboth in German South-West Africa (now Namibia). All existing mixed marriages are annulled and such marriages are forbidden in the future. Germans involved are deprived of their civil rights.
1909 CE - "The Key of Solomon The King" translated (and edited) by S.L. "MacGregor." Mathers is republished (re-typeset but with the same illustrations).
1910 CE - The Ecumenical Movement begins with the Edinburgh Missionary Conference in which John Raleigh Mott was involved in convening the 1910 Edinburgh Missionary Conference. It out of this gathering that an interdenominational committee was formed, now regarded as the beginning of the ecumenical movement."
1910 CE - The U.S. government forbids the Sun Dance (Warrior Rite) of the Plains Indians.
1911 CE - Gregory Tillett writes in "The Australian Wiccan" that the "Order of Twelve" is founded, which is later disbanded during World War I (1914-1918).
1911 - 1913 CE - Parts one and two of "Book Four" are published by Soror Virakam (Mary d'Este Sturges) and Frater Perdurabo (Aleister Crowley).
1912 CE - The American Consultative Committee was appointed at the First International Congress of Eugenics in 1912. It was responsible for organizing the Second International Congress, which was scheduled for 1915 but not held till 1921 due to the war. The committee members were: C.B. Davenport, Alexander Graham Bell, William Castle, C.R. Henderson, A. Meyer, F.A. Woods, Ales Hrdlicka, and Vernon Lyman Kellogg. Henry Fairfield Osborn was President of the Congress, which appointed the "Ad Interim Committee".
1913 CE - The American Keswick Conference Center was formed in New Jersey.
1913 CE - Africa - Natives' Land Act," introduced a uniform system of land segregation between the races resulting in the immediate expulsion of blacks, as "squatters", from their ancestral lands in the Orange Free State of South Africa which is declared 'white' only.
1914 CE - May 14, - Under the orders of Talaat Pasha, the Turks begin destroying Greek towns and villages from the Dardanele Straits to the area of Tsesme. The villages of Erythrea, Kato Panagia, Serekioi, Alatasta, Pyrgi, Aghia Paraskeve, Pergamos, Adramyttio, the area of Ephessus, Egglezonesi and Phokea are all left in ruins. The systematic campaigns to persecute Anatolian Greeks was instigated by German general Liman von Sanders whose goal was to cleanse the Greek population from the Asian Minor coast and substitute Turks and German settlers from the Anatolian heartland.
Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Greek males, from eighteen to forty eight years old, were recruited in the infamous "Amele Taburu" and sent to force labor camps. Over 773,859 Greeks of Asia Minor, Thrace and the Black Sea were expelled to the Heartland of Anatolia, of which thousands never returned...
Metropolitan Chrysostomos, who opposed the anti-Christian rage of the Turkish Supreme Commander of Smyrna, Rachmi Bey, organizes a campaign to feed, house and comfort 40,000 refugees who arrived in the city, and another 80,000 who reached the nearby coast.
1914 to 1918 CE - John D. Rockefeller became involved in what was called the Interchurch World Movement after World War I. He felt 'another crusade' was needed to bring the warring factions of Christianity together.
1914 CE - "The Pentacostal Assemblies of God Church was founded.
1914 CE - "In February of 1914...Andrew Carnegie offered a gift of two million dollars for the peace work of the Churches, to be administered by a foundation, the Church Peace Union, especially created for the purpose and comprising representatives of the Protestant, Roman Catholic and Jewish bodies.
1915 CE - British-Israel Elim Foursquare Gospel Alliance is founded by Welsh Revival convert George Jeffrys in Ireland in 1915.
1915 CE - US -The Ancient and Mystical Order Rosae Crucis (A.M.O.R.C.), the largest known of the several Rosicrucian groups in America was built on the teachings of "The Ancient and Mystical Order Rosae Crucis" founded by Harvey Spencer Lewis in 1883-1939. He was a writer, artist, and occultist living in New York City. He formed The New York Institute for Psychical Research in 1904 and four years later met Mrs. May Banks-Stacey, a Rosicrucian, who introduced him to members of the Order in Europe. He went to France in 1909, where he was initiated and given authority to begin an organization in America. He gathered a group of interested occultists who in 1915 formally organized the A.M.O.R.C. and began publishing the American Rosae Crucis magazine.
1916 CE - Margaret Sanger is famous for having taken on the rights of women to decide whether to have children and the need for birth control in the United States. She crusaded to legalize birth control and female emancipation. She took on conformists, the courts and churches that chastised her for her work and consistently searched for simpler, effective and affordable contraceptives and alternative birth control methods. With the establishing of foundations, like the 'American Birth Control League', under her leadership the movement for birth control spread in the US and later Internationally.
She claimed that sympathy and charity, milk stations and maternity centers were not enough for babies and that child labor laws needed to be legislated. She insisted on both "Rights of the Child" and the Rights of the Mother" was to be wanted and desired. The birth of a child was to be planned by both parents, and they should both want the child. She argued that parenting was a skill, just as important as a medical or legal profession.
1916 to 18 CE - the liberal Catholic Church was established and controlled by Theosophist Charles Leadbeater who accepted a Bishopric in the Liberal Catholic Church...in 1713 the majority of the Dutch clergy refused to acknowledge a papal bull condemning Jansenism and consequently left the Catholic Church.
1917 CE - The Russian Revolution, Bolsheviks overthrow the Russian Czar, depose the Patriarch of Moscow and disestablish the Russian Orthodox Church.
1917 CE - U.S. - Fifteen states have eugenics laws registered on the books which authorized the sterilization of criminals, epileptics, the retarded and insane.
1917 CE - England/Zionist Activities - England lobbied the League of Nations for a mandate to govern the new colony of Palestine, England appointed a Jew to oversee the mandate helping the Zionists in the face of American indifference.
1917 CE - The Balfour Declaration was drafted by Lord Milner of the Rhodes' Round Table - "After four centuries of Ottoman rule...the land [of Palestine] was taken in 1917 by Britain, which in the Balfour Declaration of that year pledged to support a Jewish national homeland there, as foreseen by the Zionists. 'His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people...' Thus wrote the head of the British Foreign Office, Arthur James Balfour, a former Prime Minister and native Scot, on November 2, 1917.
1917to 1920 CE - U.S. guardianship of Indian lands ends, allowing many Indians to lose their land.
1918 CE - Germany loses WWI and its African colonies to France and Great Britain, which are expected by the League of Nations to prepare the colonies for independence.
1918 to 1919 CE - The Influenza Pandemic, known as "Spanish Flu" or "La Grippe" the influenza of 1918-1919 spread across the globe. What started from a small farm in Kansas killed more people than the Great War, known today as World War I (WWI). Due to technological advances in travel and a war that affected most of the world the disease spread world wide in a short period of time, between 20 and 40 million people died during this devastating epidemic. More people died in the first year than in four-years of the Black Death Bubonic Plague from 1347 to 1351. In November 11th of 1918 the end of the war brought Influenza back home with soldiers from across the world. In the US as people celebrated Armistice Day with parades and large parties, a rebirth of the epidemic occurred in most cities. The flu of that winter was beyond imagination as millions became infected and thousands died. The war had effected the course of influenza, but influenza affected the war as entire fleets were ill with the disease and men on the front were too sick to fight. The flu was devastating to both sides, killing more men than their own weapons could.
Christian doctrines of punishment by God and lack of submissiveness by humanity are preached as the cause of the Pandemic Epidemic as well as the reason of the war. It was only natural in the face of death that took one person out of five and depopulated a fifth of the human race from the planet, that religion was turned to for hope as medical science failed to stop or control the epidemic.
1918 CE - The "End of Times" of 1914 had not occurred as prophesied by the Charles T Russel, who formed the "Millennial Dawners" or later known as "Jehovah Witnesses." Charles Russel died in 1916 and Joseph Russel is nominated leader of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. The International Bible Students are formed after a split of leadership, which began many more "Armageddon Movements" of Christian denominations across the United States.
1919 CE - The British Royal Institute of International Affairs [RIIA] is founded at the Paris Peace Conference by the Milner Round Table Group. The British Round Table group served at the conference as advisers to Prime Minister David Loyd George. The Paris conference included M. (Georges) Mandel, known as Jereboam Rothschild of France, Phillip Sassoon of England and Bernard Baruch of the U.S.
1919 to 1920 CE - John D. Rockefeller Jr. used his influence and money to consolidate the missionary endeavor and other aspects of Christian outreach by initiating a global society of the "Inter-Church World Movement of 1919 through 1920" and the "Layman's Foreign Missions Inquiry of 1930-32."
1919 to 1921 - The Irish War of Independence broke out between Britain and Ireland establishing the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland created under the Government of Ireland Act.
1920, August 12-20 CE - Geneva Preparatory Conference on Faith and Order. "The Commission of the Protestant Episcopal Church...decided to invite all cooperating Committees and Commissions to send three delegates each to Geneva 'to decide what subjects should be prepared for the World Conference [on Faith and Order]'. In response there assembled...in Geneva, from 12-20 August, 1920, Church leaders from 'about fourteen nations representing seventy autonomous Churches, including all the great families or groups of Trinitarian Churches, except for the Church of Rome, which had declined to participate'
1921 CE - John Raleigh Mott became chairman of the new International Missionary Council, which was formed in 1921, later to become an integral part of the World Council of Churches.
1921 CE - The Second International Congress of Eugenics was hosted by the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The sponsoring committee included Herbert Hoover and the presidents of Clark University, Smith College and the Carnegie Institute of Washington (owned by Rockefeller Foundation). The Congress included representatives from France, England, Italy, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Japan, Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, India, Australia, New Zealand, San Salvador, Siam, and Uruguay. The conference began the science of genetics, eugenics and the eventual justification of racism, which is seen in World War II.
1921 CE - US - "Department of Interior" is made responsible for all Indian education, medical and social services.
1921 CE - Dr. Margaret Murray writes "The Witch-Cult in Western Europe" (and later her book 'The God of the Witches' in 1930)
1921 CE - U.S. - "International Commission on Eugenics Ad Interim Committee" of the United States of America or "American Ad Interim Committee" is formed. The Eugenics Committee of the United States of America was distinct from the Eugenics Society of the United States because the Second International Congress appointed the Committee. The Committee then organized the Eugenics Society of the United States, which became the American Eugenics Society. The Committee was dissolved when the American Eugenics Society was incorporated; and the Committee funds were then transferred to the Society.
1922 to 1925 CE - Eugenics Society of the United States of America is formed.
1922 CE - John D. Rockefeller, Jr., endows the Union Theological Seminary with a gift of $1,083,333 for having been initiated into the Order of Skull & Bones in 1897. Henry Sloane later became Professor of Practical Theology at Union Theological Seminary from 1904 to 1926 and President of Union Theological Seminary from 1926 to 1945. During the initiation the Order's "William Sloane Coffin" stated, 'You change this country by changing the climate so those decent politicians have room to maneuver. I see my role as trying to change the climate.'
1922, July 24 CE - British Mandate over Palestine established by League of Nations - "The British mandate was finally approved on July 24, 1922, officially endorsed by.ten nations [Serbia, France, Italy, Greece, Holland, Siam, China, Japan, United States and England]." The Treaty of Versailles established the system of mandates after World War I for the administration of the former overseas possessions of Germany and parts of the Turkish Empire. Its purpose was to implement the principles of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations
1923 to 1924 CE - US - The American Legion and the Daughters of the American Revolution decided to change the words 'my Flag' to 'the Flag of the United States of America'.
1922 to 1923 CE - International Church of the Foursquare Gospel is founded by Aimee Semple McPherson based on British-Israel doctrine.
1924 CE - U.S. Congress passed the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924, which favored immigration from northern Europe and greatly restricted the entry of persons from other areas referred to as "biologically inferior".
1925 CE - Universal Christian Conference on Life and Work (Stockholm), at Stockholm Dr. G. K. A. Bell (then Dean of Canterbury) spoke of the formation of an 'International Christian Council' as desirable but not yet feasible."
1925 to 1926 CE - American Eugenics Society - Madison Grant, co-founder of the American Eugenics Society writes, "[Sterilization could] be applied to an ever widening circle of social discards. Beginning always with the criminal, the diseased and the insane, and extending gradually to types which may be called weaklings rather than defectives, and perhaps ultimately to worthless race types."
1926 to 1927 CE - Ergotism outbreak occurred in Russia, with 10,000 reported cases. F. sporotrichioides, the major producer of T-2 toxin, occurs mainly in temperate to cold areas and is associated with cereals which have been allowed to over-winter in the field (Anon, 1993(b)). T-2 toxin has been implicated in two outbreaks of acute human mycotoxicoses. The first occurred in Siberia (in the former USSR), during the Second World War, producing a disease known as 'alimentary toxic aleukia' (ATA). People who had been forced to eat grain, which had over-wintered, in the field, were affected and entire villages were eliminated. The symptoms of ATA include fever, vomiting, acute inflammation of the alimentary tract, anemia, circulatory failure and convulsions.
1927 CE - Germany - The Kaiser Wilhelm "Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics" was founded.
1927 CE - First World Conference on Faith and Order - " Edinburgh 1910 gave the impulse which issued in the World Conference on Faith and Order [at Lausanne in 1927]."
1928 CE - A family of Hungarian peasants is acquitted of beating an old woman to death whom they thought was a witch. The court uses as an excuse the argument that the family acted out of "irresistible compulsion."
1929 CE - U.S Legal Decision - Gonzalez v. Roman Catholic Archbishop of Manila, 280 U.S. 1, 16-17 (1929). The procedures regulating the standards for formation, selection, and supervision of clergy and the relationship between parishioners, clergy, religious leaders, and their church are set forth by the ecclesiastical tenets of that individual church. Indeed, the formation, selection, and supervision of clergy are central to the mission of every religious body. The United States and Florida Constitutions Prohibit Secular Courts From Exercising Jurisdiction Over The Claims Asserted by Petitioner claims that implicate and involve core religious issues:
1929 CE - Alexander Sanders, born in 1929, founded the Alexandrian tradition. Sanders later met Maxine Morris during the 1960s, a Roman Catholic, and 20 years his junior, whom he initiated into the Craft and handfasted. She became his high priestess. In 1967 they married in a civil ceremony and moved into a basement flat near Notting Hill Gate in London, where they ran their coven and taught classes on Witchcraft, their daughter Maya was born in the same year. He passed away in 1988.
1930 CE - Universal Christian Council for Life and Work - "In 1930 at its meeting in Chexbres the continuation committee of the Stockholm conference [of 1925] became the Universal Christian Council for Life and Work.
1930 CE - Alfred Rosenberg publishes The Myth of the Twentieth Century. In which he calls for:
1932 CE - U.S. The US Public Health Service initiates a study in Tuskegee, Alabama where black men are given syphilis. Four hundred men were unwittingly given the disease. No medical care was offered. The study ended when it was discovered in 1972, after 40 years. The office supervising this study was the predecessor of the Center for Disease Control unit now in charge of the AIDS program.
1932 CE - U.S. - Third International Congress of Eugenics held in New York. Dr. Theodore Russell Robie of the Essex County Mental Hygiene Clinic in New Jersey presents "Selective Sterilization for Race Culture", in which he called for the sterilization of at least 14 million Americans who had received low IQ scores since World War I.
1933 to 1939 CE - Jewish Immigration to Palestine - 'At their 18th Congress in 1933, the Zionists established within the Jewish agency for Palestine a Central Bureau for the Settlement of German Jews, which excluded anti-Zionists as applicants for certificates.'
1933 CE - Declaration of Pope Pius XI, in which he states that "Universally is known the fact that the Catholic Church is never bound to one form of government more than to another, provided the divine rights of God and of Christian conscience are safe. She does not find any difficulty in adapting herself to various civil institutions, be they monarchic or republican, aristocratic or democratic."
1933 CE - The German government passes a law for the protection of animals. This law explicitly states that it is designed to prevent cruelty and indifference of man towards animals and to awaken and develop sympathy and understanding for animals as one of the highest moral values of a people. The soul of the German people should abhor the principle of mere utility without consideration of the moral aspects.
1935 CE - Tibet - The Lhamo Dhondrub, His Holiness, was born on July 6, 1935 in Takster, Amdo, and Northeast Tibet to a peasant family. He was recognized at the age of two, in accordance with Tibetan tradition, as the reincarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama and received his enthronement as the 14th the Dalai Lama on February 22, 1940 in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. The Dalai Lamas are believed to be manifestations of Avalokitesvara, the Bodhisattva (Buddha) of Compassion, who chose to reincarnate to serve the people. Lhamo Dhondrub was, as Dalai Lama, renamed Tenzin Gyatso - or - Holy Lord, Gentle Glory, Compassionate, Defender of the Faith, Ocean of Wisdom. Tibetans also refer to His Holiness as Yeshe Norbu, the Wish-fulfilling Gem or simply "Kundun - The Presence."
1935 CE - U.S. - Lobotomy introduced to American institutions, over 100,000 people over the next 30 years receive lobotomies. At the University of Mississippi Medical Center, Dr. Orlando J. Andy applied a lobotomy to six-year-old children.
1936 CE - Germany - "The Thousand-Year Reich" began under the Nazi doctrine that the blood of the German "master race" was to remain "pure" of any contamination by people with undesirable features. The passing of "The Nuremberg Law for the Protection of Blood and Honor", established in July 14, 1933, began the Nazi phrase of "Life unworthy of life". It was used to describe people who were not "productive" in work or who would otherwise not advance the goals and objectives of the State, as well as criminals, the insane, and the physically handicapped. This was extended to include Jews, Gypsies, and homosexuals resulting in the systematic program of mass extermination of six million Jews and untold hundreds of thousands of other in Concentration Camps.
Nazi policies were initiated as early as 1933 to take steps to assure that persons who were "undesirables" were unable to dilute the Aryan race by reproduction. Intermarriage or sexual intercourse between Aryan and non-Aryan peoples was prohibited. The identification and listing of the Jewish people and the Romani (Gypsies) began, being characterized as non-Aryan, "asocial", "subhuman beings", and members of a "lower race." The Hereditary Health Courts enforced the policy of eliminating the possibility that persons considered mentally deficient or possessing certain hereditary diseases, were to be forcibly sterilized to prevent these people and their potential offspring to be a burden to society.
1937 CE - The alliance between the Roman Catholic Church and Germany ended when the "Mit brennender Sorge" was read from the pulpits of all Catholic Churches in Germany on Palm Sunday. It was smuggled into Germany, secretly printed and distributed by messengers. Pope Pius XI stated, "the Concordat of 1933 is now being openly violated and the conscience of the faithful are oppressed as never before." "True belief in God is irreconcilable with the deification of earthly values such as race, people or the state." "Important as these are in the natural order, they can never be the ultimate norm of all things." "Belief in a national God or a national religion, similarly is a grave error." "The God of Christianity cannot be imprisoned within the frontiers of a single people, within the pedigree of one single race."
1937, August 3-18 CE - The Second World Conference on Faith and Order
1938 CE - The International Conference with 32 Nations participating was held at the resort town of Evian, France in July 1938. The focus of the conference was to discuss the plight of refugees, many of whom were Jews escaping Nazi Germany. At a time when thousands of lives were endangered, the countries agreed only to uphold their existing immigration quotas. No additional spaces were to be made available in response to the crisis.
1938 CE - The Munich Agreement was signed September 29, 1938. At this conference in Munich, Britain and France agreed to the German annexation of the Sudetenland (a part of Czechoslovakia) in exchange for Hitler's assurance that he would not attack the remainder of Czechoslovakia. No representative of Czechoslovakia was present at the meeting. Over 120,000 additional Jews came under Nazi control as a result of the annexation.
1938 CE - Discovery of LSD-25 from Ergot of Rye, which produces gangrenous ergotism and convulsive ergotism, is thought to have been the cause of incidents related to witchcraft. It is now known that consumption of ergot was responsible for depression, madness, massive illness and death of massive populations at various times. Ergot is known as the source from which Lysergic Acid Diethyamide (LSD) was first derived, discovered by Dr. Albert Hofmann, a chemist working for Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, Switzerland. Hofmann was searching for an analeptic compound (a circulatory stimulant) and was testing extracts from ergot. One of the extracts tested was the twenty-fifth extract from ergot that was designated LSD-25. Ergot and Ergotism is a disease of cereals, especially rye (Secale sp.) and occasionally other grasses, caused by the fungus Claviceps purpurea. When ingested by humans or animals in sufficient quantity, ergot produces a disease called "ergotism" which has in serious cases, two variants:
The symptoms are caused by a number of potent alkaloids in the fungus, which was known as Saint Anthony's Fire" and documented during the Middle Ages. It caused burning sensations at the extremities, blindness, convulsions, and seizures from gangrenous ergotism. Hospitals were set up dedicated to Saint Anthony, to take care of patients with the disease.
It is very small, a tiny speck of fungus which infects only the grain of rye plants, and does so more often in cold, wet weather. Once the grain is infested, it becomes highly toxic. Those unfortunates whom consume that grain suffer intense burning pains in the limbs from restriction of blood flow, quickly becoming gangrenous and falling off. It also caused spontaneous abortion. Many died of the disease, but others survived horribly mutilated for the rest of their lives. In the year 994 alone, over 40,000 people died of the disease.
Rye ergot is Claviceps purpurea and can infect rye grass, rye grain, wheat, barley, and triticale, while sorghum ergot is C. africana. The contamination, which occurs sporadically in the present and the past, is due to rye grass seed infected with rye ergot, that contaminated wheat or barley crops. The alkaloids produced by rye ergot include ergotamine, ergocristine, ergocryptine, ergometrine (ergonovine) and ergocornine, which are generally regarded as being more potent than the alkaloids of sorghum ergot, which is mainly dihydroergosine.
As with sorghum ergot, milk production of sows is severely affected by rye ergot due to reductions in blood prolactin. Effects of rye ergot include abortion in late pregnancy possibly due to ergometrine (used to induce birth in women), reduced birth weight of piglets, and gangrene of ears and tails possibly due to ergotamine, ergocristine and ergocornine. These signs have not been observed with sorghum ergot.