What about Jesus as a Jew? And did the earliest Christians inherit the same secret tradition? So what I think we have here in this ergtotized beer drink from Catalonia, Spain, and in this weird witch's brew from 79 AD in Pompeii, I describe it, until I see evidence otherwise, as some of the very first heart scientific data for the actual existence of actual spiked wine in classical antiquity, which I think is a really big point. And I just happened to fall into that at the age of 14 thanks to the Jesuits, and just never left it behind. Part 1 Brian C. Muraresku: The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis and the Hallucinogenic Origins of Religion 3 days ago Plants of the Gods: S4E1. I really tried. And he was actually going out and testing some of these ancient chalices. And I think oversight also comes in handy within organized religion. So what do we know about those rituals? And as a lawyer, I know what is probative and what's circumstantial evidence, and I just-- I don't see it there. #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Lessons from Scholar Karen Armstrong, and Much More Brought to you by GiveWell.org charity research and effective giving and 5-Bullet Friday, my very own email newsletter. And I think it's proof of concept-- just proof of concept-- for investing serious funding, and attention into the actual search for these kinds of potions. difficult to arrive at any conclusive hypothesis. You may have already noticed one such question-- not too hard. And I hear-- I sense that narrative in your book. The continuity hypothesis of dreams suggests that the content of dreams are largely continuous with waking concepts and concerns of the dreamer. But unfortunately, it doesn't connect it to Christianity. We have some inscriptions. And I offer psychedelics as one of those archaic techniques of ecstasy that seems to have been relevant and meaningful to our ancestors. And it was the Jesuits who encouraged me to always, always ask questions and never take anything at face value. Then I'll ask a series of questions that follow the course of his book, focusing on the different ancient religious traditions, the evidence for their psychedelic sacraments, and most importantly, whether and how the assembled evidence yields a coherent picture of the past. So Dionysus is not the god of alcohol. They found a tiny chalice this big, dated to the second century BC. Thank you. Maybe part of me is skeptical, right? Reviewed in the United States on January 29, 2023 So when you take a step back, as you well know, there was a Hellenic presence all over the ancient Mediterranean. And you're right. But please do know that we will forward all these questions to Brian so he will know the sorts of questions his work prompts. They minimized or completely removed the Jewish debates found in the New Testament, and they took on a style that was more palatable to the wider pagan world. That would require an entirely different kind of evidence. President and CEO, First Southeast Financial Corp and First Federal Savings and Loan Director, Carolina First Bank and The South Financial Group That's how we get to Catalonia. I was satisfied with I give Brian Muraresku an "A" for enthusiasm, but I gave his book 2 stars. BRIAN MURARESKU: I'm bringing more illumination. And I got to say, there's not a heck of a lot of eye rolling, assuming people read my afterword and try to see how careful I am about delineating what is knowable and what is not and what this means for the future of religion. And I asked her openly if we could test some of the many, many containers that they have, some on display, and many more in repository there. What Brian labels the religion with no name. But they charge Marcus specifically, not with a psychedelic Eucharist, but the use of a love potion. The mysteries of Dionysus, a bit weirder, a bit more off the grid. They linked the idea of witches to an imagined organized sect which was a danger to the Christian commonwealth. You also find a Greek hearth inside this sanctuary. CHARLES STANG: So in some sense, you're feeling almost envy for the experiences on psychedelics, which is to say you've never experienced the indwelling of Christ or the immediate knowledge of your immortality in the sacrament. What does ergotized beer in Catalonia have anything to do with the Greek mysteries at Eleusis? Joe Campbell puts it best that what we're after is an experience of being alive. Now are there any other questions you wish to propose or push or-- I don't know, to push back against any of the criticisms or questions I've leveled? There aren't any churches or basilicas, right, in the first three centuries, in this era we're calling paleo-Christianity. We still have almost 700 with us. You might find it in a cemetery in Mexico. The most colorful theory of psychedelics in religion portrays the original Santa Claus as a shaman. Where are the drugs? There's a good number of questions that are very curious why you are insisting on remaining a psychedelic virgin. But it survives. It was-- Eleusis was state-administered, a somewhat formal affair. This is all secret. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. And I guess my biggest question, not necessarily for you, but the psychedelic community, for what it's worth, or those who are interested in this stuff is how do we make this experience sacred? BRIAN MURARESKU: Now we're cooking with grease, Dr. Stang. There's some suggestive language in the pyramid texts, in the Book of the Dead and things of this nature. So if Eleusis is the Fight Club of the ancient world, right, the first rule is you don't talk about it. So what have you learned about the Eleusinian mysteries in particular since Ruck took this up, and what has convinced you that Ruck's hypothesis holds water? CHARLES STANG: Right. So Pompeii and its environs at the time were called [SPEAKING GREEK], which means great Greece. But maybe you could just say something about this community in Catalonia. So let's start, then, the first act. There were formula. And this is what I present to the world. It seems entirely believable to me that we have a potion maker active near Pompeii. I try to be careful to always land on a lawyer's feet and be very honest with you and everybody else about where this goes from here. CHARLES STANG: OK. I see a huge need and a demand for young religious clergy to begin taking a look at this stuff. Is this only Marcus? There's John Marco Allegro claiming that there was no Jesus, and this was just one big amanita muscaria cult. So how to put this? And I want to say that this question that we've been exploring the last half hour about what all this means for the present will be very much the topic of our next event on February 22, which is taking up the question of psychedelic chaplaincy. OK, Brian, I invite you to join us now. Show Plants of the Gods: Hallucinogens, Healing, Culture and Conservation podcast, Ep Plants of the Gods: S4E2. So I don't write this to antagonize them or the church, the people who, again, ushered me into this discipline and into these questions. To this day I remain a psychedelic virgin quite proudly, and I spent the past 12 years, ever since that moment in 2007, researching what Houston Smith, perhaps one of the most influential religious historians of the 20th century, would call the best kept secret in history. CHARLES STANG: OK. But what I hear from people, including atheists, like Dina Bazer, who participated in these Hopkins NYU trials is that she felt like on her one and only dose of psilocybin that she was bathed in God's love. It's a big question for me. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. If beer was there that long ago, what kind of beer was it? This 'pagan continuity hypothesis' with a psychedelic twist is now backed up by biochemistry and agrochemistry and tons of historical research, exposing our forgotten history. Now that the pagan continuity hypothesis is defended, the next task is to show that the pagan and proto-Christian ritual sacraments were, in fact, psychedelicbrews. This time, tonight I'll say that it's just not my time yet. That's our next event, and will be at least two more events to follow. It was the Jesuits who taught me Latin and Greek. Now, you could draw the obvious conclusion. Tim Ferriss is a self-experimenter and bestselling author, best known for The 4-Hour Workweek, which has been translated into 40+ languages. I'll invite him to think about the future of religion in light of all this. There is evidence that has been either overlooked or perhaps intentionally suppressed. That event is already up on our website and open for registration. Certainly these early churchmen used whatever they could against the forms of Christian practice they disapproved of, especially those they categorized as Gnostic. But what I see are potential and possibilities and things worthy of discussions like this. These-- that-- Christians are spread out throughout the eastern Mediterranean, and there are many, many pockets of people practicing what we might call, let's just call it Christian mysticism of some kind. The long and short of it is, in 1978 there was no hard scientific data to prove this one way or the other. There's all kinds of reasons I haven't done it. One, on mainland Greece from the Mycenaean period, 16th century BC, and the other about 800 years later in modern day Turkey, another ritual potion that seemed to have suggested some kind of concoction of beer, wine, and mead that was used to usher the king into the afterlife. And that's not how it works today, and I don't think that's how it works in antiquity. CHARLES STANG: Wonderful. 18.3C: Continuity Theory. 48:01 Brian's psychedelic experiences . And I'm happy to see we have over 800 people present for this conversation. BRIAN MURARESKU: But you're spot on. Like, what is this all about? CHARLES STANG: We're often in this situation where we're trying to extrapolate from evidence from Egypt, to see is Egypt the norm or is it the exception? So I have my concerns about what's about to happen in Oregon and the regulation of psilocybin for therapeutic purposes. And I think sites like this have tended to be neglected in scholarship, or published in languages like Catalan, maybe Ukrainian, where it just doesn't filter through the academic community. I understand more papers are about to be published on this. And that is that there was a pervasive religion, ancient religion, that involved psychedelic sacraments, and that that pervasive religious culture filtered into the Greek mysteries and eventually into early Christianity. You mentioned there were lots of dead ends, and there certainly were. Again, it's proof of concept for going back to Eleusis and going back to other sites around the Mediterranean and continuing to test, whether for ergotized beer or other things. What's significant about these features for our piecing together the ancient religion with no name? And, as always the best way to keep abreast of this series and everything else we do here at the Center is to join our mailing list. But in any case, Ruck had his career, well, savaged, in some sense, by the reaction to his daring to take this hypothesis seriously, this question seriously. You see an altar of Pentelic marble that could only have come from the Mount Pentelicus quarry in mainland Greece. We see lots of descriptions of this in the mystical literature with which you're very familiar. So I think this was a minority of early Christians. So back in 2012, archaeologists and chemists were scraping some of these giant limestone troughs, and out pops calcium oxalate, which is one of these biomarkers for the fermentation of brewing. And to be quite honest, I'd never studied the ancient Greeks in Spain. And so I do see an avenue, like I kind of obliquely mentioned, but I do think there's an avenue within organized religion and for people who dedicate their lives as religious professionals to ministry to perhaps take a look at this in places where it might work. He co-writes that with Gordon Wasson and Albert Hofmann, who famously-- there it is, the three authors. What does it mean to die before dying? I'm sure he knows this well, by this point. Because for many, many years, you know, Ruck's career takes a bit of a nosedive. Here's what we don't. So psychedelics or not, I think it's the cultivation of that experience, which is the actual key. Because ergot is just very common. Nazanin Boniadi #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Lessons from Scholar Karen Armstrong, and Much More So what evidence can you provide for that claim? And I think that that's the real question here. So I point to that evidence as illustrative of the possibility that the Christians could, in fact, have gotten their hands on an actual wine. And there were moments when the sunlight would just break through. But the next event in this series will happen sooner than that. And the second act, the same, but for what you call paleo-Christianity, the evidence for your suspicion that the Eucharist was originally a psychedelic sacrament. And besides that, young Brian, let's keep the mysteries mysteries. And it seems to me that if any of this is right, that whatever was happening in ancient Greece was a transformative experience for which a lot of thought and preparation went into. To sum up the most exciting parts of the book: the bloody wine of Dionysius became the bloody wine of Jesus - the pagan continuity hypothesis - the link between the Ancient Greeks of the final centuries BC and the paleo-Christians of the early centuries AD - in short, the default psychedelic of universal world history - the cult of . Here is how I propose we are to proceed. Now that doesn't mean, as Brian was saying, that then suggests that that's the norm Eucharist. And so in some of these psychedelic trials, under the right conditions, I do see genuine religious experiences. And then was, in some sense, the norm, the original Eucharist, and that it was then suppressed by orthodox, institutional Christianity, who persecuted, especially the women who were the caretakers of this tradition. 283. And part of me really wants to put all these pieces together before I dive in. And I don't know what that looks like. Books about pagan continuity hypothesis? That also only occurs in John, another epithet of Dionysus. And keep in mind that we'll drop down into any one of these points more deeply. Did the ancient Greeks use drugs to find God? If we're being honest with ourselves, when you've drunk-- and I've drunk that wine-- I didn't necessarily feel that I'd become one with Jesus. All right, so now, let's follow up with Dionysus, but let's see here. And that's all I present it as, is wonderfully attractive and maybe even sexy circumstantial evidence for the potential use of a psychedelic sacrament amongst the earliest Christians. Then there's what were the earliest Christians doing with the Eucharist. . These Native American church and the UDV, both some syncretic form of Christianity. Please materialize. There's evidence of the mysteries of Dionysus before, during, and after the life of Jesus, it's worth pointing out. All rights reserved. When there's a clear tonal distinction, and an existing precedent for Christian modification to Pagan works, I don't see why you're resistant to the idea, and I'm curious . He dared to ask this very question before the hypothesis that this Eleusinian sacrament was indeed a psychedelic, and am I right that it was Ruck's hypothesis that set you down this path all those many years ago at Brown? The book was published by Saint Martin's Press in September 2020 and has generated a whirlwind of attention. And maybe therein we do since the intimation of immortality. It's arguably not the case in the third century. All that will be announced through our mailing list. And now we have a working hypothesis and some data to suggest where we might be looking. That is my dog Xena. Klaus Schmidt, who was with the German Archaeological Institute, called this a sanctuary and called these T-shaped pillars representations of gods. And we know from the record that [SPEAKING GREEK] is described as being so crowded with gods that they were easier to find than men. Books about pagan continuity hypothesis? It's not the case in the second century. We know that at the time of Jesus, before, during, and after, there were recipes floating around. Although she's open to testing, there was nothing there. Copyright 2023 The President and Fellows of Harvard College, The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name. Now, Carl Ruck from Boston University, much closer to home, however, took that invitation and tried to pursue this hypothesis. BRIAN MURARESKU: I don't-- I don't claim too heavily. So in the mountains and forests from Greece to Rome, including the Holy Land and Galilee. Lots of Greek artifacts, lots of Greek signifiers. So Plato, Pindar, Sophocles, all the way into Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, it's an important thing. Examine the pros and cons of the continuity theory of aging, specifically in terms of how it neglects to consider social institutions or chronically ill adults. So thank you, all who have hung with us. Administration and supervision endeavors and with strong knowledge in: Online teaching and learning methods, Methods for Teaching Mathematics and Technology Integration for K-12 and College . Love potions, love charms, they're very common in the ancient. I'm not sure where it falls. But things that sound intensely powerful. Research inside the Church of Saint Faustina and Liberata Fig 1. This notion in John 15:1, the notion of the true vine, for example, only occurs in John. If you die before you die, you won't die when you die. So after the whole first half of the book-- well, wait a minute, Dr. Stang. He decides to get people even more drunk. Eusebius, third into the fourth century, is also talking about them-- it's a great Greek word, [SPEAKING GREEK]. And my favorite line of the book is, "The lawyer in me won't sleep until that one chalice, that one container, that one vessel comes to light in an unquestionable Christian context.". But it was not far from a well-known colony in [INAUDIBLE] that was founded by Phocians. And let's start with our earliest evidence from the Stone Age and the Bronze Age. I also sense another narrative in your book, and one you've flagged for us, maybe about 10 minutes ago, when you said that the book is a proof of concept. It is not psychedelics. Wise not least because it is summer there, as he reminds me every time we have a Zoom meeting, which has been quite often in these past several months. That's all just fancy wordplay. 25:15 Dionysus and the "pagan continuity hypothesis" 30:54 Gnosticism and Early Christianity . So if you don't think that you are literally consuming divine blood, what is the point of religion? Things like fasting and sleep deprivation and tattooing and scarification and, et cetera, et cetera. Nage ?] OK, now, Brian, you've probably dealt with questions like this. So I got a copy of it from the Library of Congress, started reading through, and there, in fact, I was reading about this incredible discovery from the '90s. The most influential religious historian of the twentieth century, Huston Smith, once referred to it as the "best-kept secret" in history. The Tim Ferriss Show. And again, it survives, I think, because of that state support for the better part of 2,000 years. I am excited . That's just everlasting. Not just in Italy, but as kind of the headquarters for the Mediterranean. So the event happens, when all the wines run out, here comes Jesus, who's referred to in the Gospels as an [SPEAKING GREEK] in Greek, a drunkard. So imagine how many artifacts are just sitting in museums right now, waiting to be tested. CHARLES STANG: You know, Valentinus was almost elected bishop of Rome. That there is no hard archaeobotanical, archaeochemical data for spiked beer, spiked wine. Here's the big question. And I'm trying to reconcile that. So my biggest question is, what kind of wine was it? CHARLES STANG: Well, Mr, Muraresku, you are hedging your bets here in a way that you do not necessarily hedge your bets in the book. Mark and Brian cover the Eleusinian Mysteries, the pagan continuity hypothesis, early Christianity, lessons from famed religious scholar Karen Armstrong, overlooked aspects of influential philosopher William James's career, ancient wine and ancient beer, experiencing the divine within us, the importance of "tikkun olam"repairing and improving And she happened to find it on psilocybin. #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Lessons from Scholar Karen Armstrong, and Much More from The Tim Ferriss Show on Podchaser, aired Wednesday, 28th December 2022. 8th century BC from the Tel Arad shrine. Because they talk about everything else that they take issue with. I would love to see these licensed, regulated, retreat centers be done in a way that is medically sound and scientifically rigorous. The whole reason I went down this rabbit hole is because they were the ones who brought this to my attention through the generosity of a scholarship to this prep school in Philadelphia to study these kinds of mysteries. BRIAN MURARESKU: I would say I've definitely experienced the power of the Christ and the Holy Spirit. BRIAN MURARESKU: Great question. And for some reason, I mean, I'd read that two or three times as an undergrad and just glossed over that line. There's no mistake in her mind that it was Greek. And not least because if I were to do it, I'd like to do so in a deeply sacred ritual. Brian launched the instant bestseller on the Joe Rogan Experience, and has now appeared on CNN, NPR, Sirius XM, Goop-- I don't even know what that is-- and The Weekly Dish with Andrew Sullivan. Like in a retreat pilgrimage type center, or maybe within palliative care. He has talked about the potential evidence for psychedelics in a Mithras liturgy. And I think it does hearken back to a genuinely ancient Greek principle, which is that only by fully experiencing some kind of death, a death that feels real, where you, or at least the you you used to identify with, actually slips away, dissolves. And I think there are so many sites and excavations and so many chalices that remain to be tested. BRIAN MURARESKU: OK. And I feel like I accomplished that in the afterword to my book. So those are all possibly different questions to ask and answer. So this is the tradition, I can say with a straight face, that saved my life. Before I set forth the outline of this thesis, three topics must be discussed in order to establish a basic understanding of the religious terminology, Constantine's reign, and the contemporary sources. According to Muraresku, this work, BOOK REVIEW which "presents the pagan continuity hypothesis with a psychedelic twist," addresses two fundamental questions: "Before the rise of Christianity, did the Ancient Greeks consume a secret psychedelic sacrament during their most famous and well-attended religious rituals? This limestone altar tested positive for cannabis and frankincense that was being burned, they think, in a very ritualistic way. You take a board corporate finance attorney, you add in lots of childhood hours watching Indiana Jones, lots of law school hours reading Dan Brown, you put it all together and out pops The Immortality Key. Thank you for that. In my previous posts on the continuity hypothesis . And the big question for me was what was that something else? But we do know that something was happening. And I write, at the very end of the book, I hope that they'd be proud of this investigation. All he says is that these women and Marcus are adding drugs seven times in a row into whatever potion this is they're mixing up. We look forward to hosting Chacruna's founder and executive director, Bia Labate, for a lecture on Monday, March 8. Oh, I hope I haven't offended you, Brian. His aim when he set out on this journey 12 years ago was to assess the validity of a rather old, but largely discredited hypothesis, namely, that some of the religions of the ancient Mediterranean, perhaps including Christianity, used a psychedelic sacrament to induce mystical experiences at the border of life and death, and that these psychedelic rituals were just the tip of the iceberg, signs of an even more ancient and pervasive religious practice going back many thousands of years. And I wonder and I question how we can keep that and retain that for today. Perhaps more generally, you could just talk about other traditions around the Mediterranean, North African, or, let's even say Judaism. BRIAN MURARESKU: It just happens to show up. We have other textual evidence. Psychedelics are a lens to investigate this stuff. I imagine there are many more potion makers around than we typically recognize. I'm currently reading The Immortality Key by Brian Muraresku and find this 2nd/3rd/4th century AD time period very interesting, particularly with regards to the adoptions of pagan rituals and practices by early Christianity. At Cambridge University he worked in developmental biolo. But I think the broader question of what's the reception to this among explicitly religious folk and religious leaders? So whatever was happening there was important. And the truth is that this is a project that goes well beyond ancient history, because Brian is convinced that what he has uncovered has profound implications for the future of religion, and specifically, the future of his own religion, Roman Catholicism. That they were what you call extreme beverages. The Immortality Key, The Secret History of the Religion With No Name. #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Lessons from Scholar Karen Armstrong, and Much More by The Tim Ferriss Show And you find terracotta heads that could or could not be representative of Demeter and Persephone, the two goddesses to whom the mysteries of Eleusis were dedicated. First, I will provide definitions for the terms "pagan", "Christian", What I see is data that's been largely neglected, and I think what serves this as a discipline is just that. Which, again, what I see are small groups of people getting together to commune with the dead. Now the archaeologist of that site says-- I'm quoting from your book-- "For me, the Villa Vesuvio was a small farm that was specifically designed for the production of drugs." But we at least have, again, the indicia of evidence that something was happening there. No one lived there. If you are drawn to psychedelics, in my mind, it means you're probably drawn to contemplative mysticism. Now, it doesn't have to be the Holy Grail that was there at the Last Supper, but when you think about the sacrament of wine that is at the center of the world's biggest religion of 2.5 billion people, the thing that Pope Francis says is essential for salvation, I mean, how can we orient our lives around something for which there is little to no physical data? This time around, we have a very special edition featuring Dr. Mark Plotkin and Brian C . And we know the mysteries were there. Here's the proof of concept. Little attempt has been made, however, to bridge the gap between \"pagan\" and \"Christian\" or to examine late antique, Christian attitudes toward sexuality and marriage from the viewpoint of the \"average\" Christian. Do you think that by calling the Eucharist a placebo that you're likely to persuade them? So, you know, I specifically wanted to avoid heavily relying on the 52 books of the [INAUDIBLE] corpus or heavily relying too much on the Gospel of Mary Magdalene and the evidence that's come from Egypt. Was there any similarity from that potion to what was drunk at Eleusis? We have an hour and a half together and I hope there will be time for Q&A and discussion. Where you find the grain, you may have found ergot. And so for me, this was a hunt through the catacombs and archives and libraries, doing my sweet-talking, and trying to figure out what was behind some of those locked doors. So I present this as proof of concept, and I heavily rely on the Gospel of John and the data from Italy because that's what was there. So you lean on the good work of Harvard's own Arthur Darby Nock, and more recently, the work of Dennis McDonald at Claremont School of Theology, to suggest that the author of the Gospel of John deliberately paints Jesus and his Eucharist in the colors of Dionysus. You're not confident that the pope is suddenly going to issue an encyclical. The universality of frontiers, however, made the hypothesis readily extendable to other parts of the globe. And I want to-- just like you have this hard evidence from Catalonia, then the question is how to interpret it. I think the only big question is what the exact relationship was from a place like that over to Eleusis. Now, I've never done them myself, but I have talked to many, many people who've had experience with psychedelics. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. So how does Dionysian revelries get into this picture? And so I cite a Pew poll, for example, that says something like 69% of American Catholics do not believe in transubstantiation, which is the defining dogma of the church, the idea that the bread and wine literally becomes the flesh and blood. It would have parts of Greek mysticism in it, the same Greek mysteries I've spent all these years investigating, and it would have some elements of what I see in paleo-Christianity. And I started reading the studies from Pat McGovern at the University of Pennsylvania.
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