Wine is considered sacred, not only in the Christian faith, but also in many other religions. In the ancient religion of the Zoroastrians, Yima Jamshyd, the bowl of wine "from which Jamshyd drank deep," is a historical event. Among Hindus, Shiva considered wine sacred.

And in Islam, though wine is prohibited when on earth, yet in heaven it is allowed. Hauz ul-Kausar, the sacred Fountain of Heaven, about which there is so much spoken in Islam, is a fountain of wine. Although the bowl that was given to the Prophet in the Miraj, the authorities of Islam say, was filled with milk, yet I doubt it. I should not be surprised if it were not the invention of the authorities, to keep the faithful followers away from wine. For it is natural that the followers should like to begin drinking the wine on earth, which the Prophet drank in heaven.

Wine is symbolical of the soul's evolution. Wine comes from the annihilation of grapes, immortality comes from the annihilation of self. The bowl of poison which is known in many mystical cults suggests also the idea of wine, but not a sweet wine, a bitter wine. When the self turns into something different from what it was before, it is like the soul being born again. This is seen in the grape turning into wine. The grape, by turning into wine, lives; as a grape it would have vanished in time.

Only, by turning into wine, the grape loses its individuality, and yet not its life. The self-same grape lives as wine, and the longer it lives the better the wine becomes. For a Sufi, therefore, the true sacrament is the turning of one's own grape-like personality, which has a limited time to live, into wine, that nothing of one's self may be lost but, on the contrary, amplified, even perfected. This is the essence of all philosophy and the secret of mysticism.