A Visit With Anubis....

Alice visited her uncle again several weeks later. She was greeted with a scene of absolute pandemonium. Dogs were chasing each other around the room, bouncing off walls and furniture.

Oh No! Uncle Wyrdd had gotten another dog --- a sleek jet black Siberian Husky with startling, piercing, ice-blue eyes, white paws, and salt and pepper facial markings. The beautiful puppy was having a great time pulling the tail of the old Golden Retriever.

Uncle in a loud voice said, “OUT OF THE KITCHEN!” And the dogs took their game into the living room.

“Alice, how do you like my new puppy,” Uncle asked?

“He’s beautiful, and those eyes are so uncanny. But, he’s a handful!”

“Ah, that he is,” Uncle said. “It goes with being a pup.”

“Where did you get him”, Alice asked”

“The House of the Dead”, Uncle replied with a grin.

Alice said “Huh?”

Uncle explained, "I got him at the dog pound. He would have been killed soon, if no one adopted him, so you could say I found him "in the House of the Dead”.

“What's his name”, Alice asked? “Anubis,” Uncle Wyrdd answered.

“Not a Nordic name, for such a Nordic breed,” Alice observed.

“No, it’s not.” “Alice, do you know who Anubis was?” Uncle asked

“Wasn’t he the jackal God of Egypt?”

“Sometimes he’s depicted as a jackal, and sometimes as a dog. The two species are very similar.”

“So what did Anubis do? I seem to remember reading he howled at the dog star Sirrius.”

“In later times that was his role but earlier, before Osiris became so important, it was Anubis, not Osiris, who was the Lord of the Underworld, ruling over all the dead.”

Alice said, “I guess ‘Anubis’ does fit. And with those pointy ears he really looks like a wolf or a jackal.”

“Uncle, talking of ancient Egypt reminds me, I read somewhere that King Tut's mummy was buried with lots of lotus flowers. Anything to that? Homer wrote of Lotus Eaters”

“Tut was buried with not a true lotus but with the flowers of the Sacred Blue water Lily of the Nile" Uncle answered.

Alice asked, “Is lotus or water lily really narcotic?”

Uncle answered, “Both are, but their effect may differ. The ancient
Egyptians used the Blue Water Lily as both a religious symbol (and perhaps as a sacred drug) and they used it as a party drug too.”

“Water-lilies?” Alice asked. “They smell wonderful, they look beautiful but I never realized they are a drug plant.” “What sort of effect do they have?”

Uncle said, “They produce a narcotic-euphoric high.”

Alice asked, "What part of the plant is used?”
Uncle responded, “Any part can be but the usual thing is to use the flower petals".

Alice asked, “Do you smoke it?”

“It can be smoked, or made into a tea, but the best way to use it is to extract it with an alcoholic beverage. For some reason, the combination of alcohol and blue-Egyptian Water Lily (a plant known to botanists as Nymphaea cereulea) produces a much more euphoric experience than either alcohol alone, or Blue Egyptian Water lily alone does.”

"The ancient Egyptians used wine. They did not have distillation, but we can use something stronger. I’ve made a delicious and quite potent liqueur from it, and I can give you the recipe. It is a bit complicated. But, if you want a real simple recipe just steep the dried flower petals in a sealed jar with Sherry wine for a week."

“What is in the Sacred Water Lily," Alice asked.

Uncle answered “It was believed that it contains aporphine, which was reported in a New World water lily, and in books and on the web people write about it as if that were an established fact, but it’s not. Everyone is just quoting everyone else. Some chemists claim it apparently not to be true. No one knows for sure what substance in the blue water lily has the psychoactive effect. It may be an alkaloid, or it may be something else.

Alice said “I’d like to try the Pharaohs wine”

Uncle said, “Well I am out of the wine, but we can put the ingredients together for it and I’ll give it to you to take home and you can sample it at home when it is ready, but for tonight have some of the liqueur I made, which I call Pharaohs Undoing”. I think you’ll like it a lot. He went to his liquor cabinet and rummaged through several bottles and
then pulled out one.

He poured Alice a drink, and one for himself. Alice raises her glass, clinked his glass, and said ‘To Anubis’

Alice found the taste delicious, but somewhat bitter. She tasted the perfume of water lilies, the tastes of chocolate, of coffee, of vanilla and then she lost track. More and more tastes!

As they talked the liqueur began to exert its magic. A pleasant floating feeling developed, different from the effect of any liqueur Alice had ever tasted.

Pretty soon she felt that time was moving differently, and that her head was floating away. She was not drunk, but was in a definitely altered state. She felt the alcohol, but felt something else too - a bit like cannabis, a bit like poppies, but different too. She had to remind herself - all this was completely legal. And she wondered how something this good could be forgotten for over 2000 years!
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Recipe for Anubis Sherry
Ingredients:
500 ml of Cream Sherry
18 grams of crushed dried Nymphaea cereulea (Blue Egyptian Water Lily) petals

Ingredients:
15 G of Nymphaea cereulea (Blue Egyptian Water Lily) loosely crushed.
3 G of Egyptian Chamomile powder
1.5 tsp. pure vanilla extract
3 tablespoons of honey (any good honey should do)
300 ml 151 proof Bacardi rum
150 ml Kahlua (Mexican coffee liqueur)
a piece of ginger root about 2/3 inch by 1 inch was peeled and cut into thin slivers.
3 tablespoons cocoa powder
150 ml Taylor Golden sherry (this is a decent but inexpensive medium dry California sherry)

Preparation:
Place all ingredients into screw top Mason jar. Seal. Shake well.
Allow to macerate (soak) for a week shaking occasionally during this time.
Strain through wire mesh strainer.
Filter through a coffee filter (which takes a couple of hours as the cocoa powder clogs the filter pores), prevent evaporation during the filtration by covering the apparatus with a plastic bag.
Bottle in a sealed bottle. Store at room temperature away from light.