DeConick A.D

251
SPIRITUAL AVATARS
The person became visibly enthused. As the person’s soul reached the pinnacle
of ecstasy, he or she prophesied with intense urgency and boldness
before the congregation.
What was going on with Marcus’s Eucharist? Was there something in
the wine? Hippolytus of Rome is certain that drugs are involved in Marcus’s
ecstatic Eucharist. Given the testimony about the physical alteration
of the color of the wine, the effervescence of the wine in the chalice, and
the physiological and mental changes of the chosen one, Hippolytus must
be right.
A special plant compound must have been mixed into the wine of one
of the Eucharistic cups, though not in the others. The chemical reaction
would have altered its color, so that it became the color of blood when it
was held in the hand of the hopeful congregant. How thrilled the person
must have been when the wine changed color right before her eyes and
she was selected by Grace to be the congregational leader and prophet
for the day.
Likewise, the effervescence of the wine in the chalice must have been
produced by a compound smeared on the inside of the chalice, so that
a bubbling reaction resulted when the “blood wine” was poured in and
mixed with it. Whatever the nature of the compound, it stimulated the
prophet’s body almost instantly when ingested. It put the prophet’s autonomic
nervous system into immediate overdrive and sent the person
straight into psychedelic ecstasy. Although the festivals of Dionysus relied
on the sacramental inebriation of wine for their religious enthusiasm, and
the mysteries of Demeter used a special barley brew called kykeon , Marcus
mixed a drug in a wine beverage. With this remodeled Eucharist, Marcus
made sure that all of his congregants left the church service on an emotional,
if not a psychedelic high.
The Spiritual Gnostic Church
Marcus had taken the conventional Apostolic Catholic service and turned
it on its head. His Eucharist was still about communing with God, but the
communion was on a level of enthusiasm unparalleled in other Apostolic
Catholic or even Valentinian churches. Although he and his congregation
still prayed to God the Father, they included in their prayers therapeutic