So that's from Burkert, a very sober scholar and the dean of all scholarship on Greek religion. Others find it in different ways, but the common denominator seems to be one of these really well-curated near-death experiences. 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. Joe Campbell puts it best that what we're after is an experience of being alive. So, like, they're wonderstruck, or awestruck by their libations and their incense. First I'll give the floor to Brian to walk us into this remarkable book of his and the years of hard work that went into it, what drove him to do this. Mona Sobhani, PhD Retweeted. It pushes back the archaeology on some of this material a full 12,000 years. And her answer was that they'd all been cleaned or treated for conservation purposes. So how to put this? Let's move to early Christian. The Tim Ferriss Show. Please materialize. So when you take a step back, as you well know, there was a Hellenic presence all over the ancient Mediterranean. I'm happy to argue about that. This time around, we have a very special edition featuring Dr. Mark Plotkin and Brian C . We call it ego dissolution, things of that nature. He was wronged by individuals, allegedly. A combination of psychoactive plants, including opium, cannabis, and nightshade, along with the remains of reptiles and amphibians all steeped in wine, like a real witch's brew, uncovered in this house outside of Pompeii. So the mysteries of Dionysus are a bit more of a free-for-all than the mysteries of Eleusis. Now, I don't put too much weight into that. It's not just Cana. When you start testing, you find things. 8th century BC from the Tel Arad shrine. So Dionysus is not the god of alcohol. That's, just absurd. Where are the drugs? I don't think we have found it. Then what was the Gospel of John, how did it interpret the Eucharist and market it, and so on. So I really follow the scholarship of Enriqueta Pons, who is the archaeologist on site there, at this Greek sanctuary that we're talking about in Catalonia, Mas Castellar des Pontos. So in the mountains and forests from Greece to Rome, including the Holy Land and Galilee. In the Classics world, there's a pagan continuity hypothesis with the very origin of Christianity, and many overt references to Greek plays in the Gospel of John. What is it about that formula that captures for you the wisdom, the insight that is on offer in this ancient ritual, psychedelic or otherwise? 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. So to find dog sacrifice inside this Greek sanctuary alludes to this proto-witch, Hecate, the mother of Circe, who is mentioned in the same hymn to Demeter from the 8th, 7th century BC, as kind of the third of the goddesses to whom these mysteries were dedicated. But when it comes to that Sunday ritual, it just, whatever is happening today, it seems different from what may have motivated the earliest Christians, which leads me to very big questions. 32:57 Ancient languages and Brian's education . I want to thank you for your candor. #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. Books about pagan continuity hypothesis? For me, that's a question, and it will yield more questions. I can't imagine that there were no Christians that availed themselves of this biotechnology, and I can't imagine-- it's entirely plausible to me that they would mix this biotechnology with the Eucharist. So the Greek god of wine, intoxication. So I have my concerns about what's about to happen in Oregon and the regulation of psilocybin for therapeutic purposes. Like in Israel. I expect we will find it. No, I think you-- this is why we're friends, Charlie. So the closer we get to the modern period, we're starting to find beer, wine mixed with interesting things. difficult to arrive at any conclusive hypothesis. What's significant about these features for our piecing together the ancient religion with no name? That's all just fancy wordplay. It is not psychedelics. Pagan polemicists reversed the Biblical story of the Israelites' liberation from Egyptian bondage, portraying a negative image of Israelite origins and picturing them as misanthropes and atheists. So if you were a mystic and you were into Demeter and Persephone and Dionysus and you were into these strange Greek mystery cults, you'd be hard-pressed to find a better place to spend your time than [SPEAKING GREEK], southern Italy, which in some cases was more Greek than Greek. I'm not sure where it falls. But it's not an ingested psychedelic. So, I mean, my biggest question behind all of this is, as a good Catholic boy, is the Eucharist. And Brian, it would be helpful for me to know whether you are more interested in questions that take up the ancient world or more that deal with this last issue, the sort of contemporary and the future. And that that's how I-- and by not speculating more than we can about the mystical supper, if we follow the hypothesis that this is a big if for some early communities of Greek speakers, this is how I'm finding common ground with priests both Catholic and Orthodox and Protestants. And I want to-- just like you have this hard evidence from Catalonia, then the question is how to interpret it. So that's something else to look into. After the first few chapters the author bogs down flogging the Pagan Continuity Hypothesis and exulting over his discovery of small scraps of evidence he found in a decade of research. I'll invite him to think about the future of religion in light of all this. 48:01 Brian's psychedelic experiences . A rebirth into what? I might forward the proposition that I don't think the early church fathers were the best botanists. I opened the speculation, Dr. Stang, that the Holy Grail itself could have been some kind of spiked concoction. 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. And I just happened to fall into that at the age of 14 thanks to the Jesuits, and just never left it behind. And I don't know if it's a genuine mystical experience or mystical mimetic or some kind of psychological breakthrough. Again, how did Christianity take hold in a world with such a rich mystical tradition? 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. Nage ?] And so that's what motivated my search here. And for those of you who have found my line of questioning or just my general presence tedious, first of all, I fully appreciate that reaction. And I answer it differently every single time. But in Pompeii, for example, there's the villa of the mysteries, one of these really breathtaking finds that also survived the ravage of Mount Vesuvius. According to Muraresku, this work, 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? What was the wine in the early Eucharist? I am excited . The pagan continuity hypothesis theorizes that when Christianity arrived in Greece around AD 49, it didn't suddenly replace the existing religion. In May of last year, researchers published what they believe is the first archaeochemical data for the use of psychoactive drugs in some form of early Judaism. But what we do know is that their sacrament was wine and we know a bit more about the wine of antiquity, ancient Greek wine, than we can piece together from these nocturnal celebrations. But they charge Marcus specifically, not with a psychedelic Eucharist, but the use of a love potion. The continuity theory of normal aging states that older adults will usually maintain the same activities, behaviors, relationships as they did in their earlier years of life. The pagan continuity hypothesis at the heart of this book made sense to me. The universality of frontiers, however, made the hypothesis readily extendable to other parts of the globe. CHARLES STANG: OK. Now let's move into the Greek mystery. And you're right. And even Burkert, I think, calls it the most famous of the mystery rituals. An actual spiked wine. She had the strange sense that every moment was an eternity of its own. It's some kind of wine-based concoction, some kind of something that is throwing these people into ecstasy. If beer was there that long ago, what kind of beer was it? Psychedelics Today: PTSF 35 (with Brian Muraresku) Griffithsfund.org It's not to say that there isn't evidence from Alexandria or Antioch. 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? 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? and he said, Brian, don't you dare. And you suspect, therefore, that it might be a placebo, and you want the real thing. But curiously, it's evidence for a eye ointment which is supposed to induce visions and was used as part of a liturgy in the cult of Mithras. BRIAN MURARESKU: It just happens to show up. But it just happens to show up at the right place at the right time, when the earliest Christians could have availed themselves of this kind of sacrament. 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. So can you reflect on the-- standing on the threshold of pharmaceutical companies taking control of this, how is that to be commended when the very people who have kept this alive would be pushed to the side in that move? Which is a very weird thing today. Do the drugs, Dr. Stang? The continuity hypothesis of dreams suggests that the content of dreams are largely continuous with waking concepts and concerns of the dreamer. And very famous passages, by the way, that should be familiar to most New Testament readers. So I spent 12 years looking for that data, eventually found it, of all places, in Catalonia in Spain in this 635-page monograph that was published in 2002 and for one reason or another-- probably because it was written in Catalan-- was not widely reported to the academic community and went largely ignored. There have been breakthroughs, too, which no doubt kept Brian going despite some skepticism from the academy, to say the least. So listening right now, there's at least one orthodox priest, there's at least one Catholic priest, an Episcopalian, an Anglican, and several others with whom I've been talking in recent months. Like savory, wormwood, blue tansy, balm, senna, coriander, germander, mint, sage, and thyme. And the one thing that unites both of those worlds in this research called the pagan continuity hypothesis, the one thing we can bet on is the sacred language of Greek. Some number of people have asked about Egypt. And I wonder whether the former narrative serves the interests of the latter. But what I see are potential and possibilities and things worthy of discussions like this. Maybe I have that wrong. It is my great pleasure to welcome Brian Muraresku to the Center. And there are legitimate scholars out there who say, because John wanted to paint Jesus in the light of Dionysus, present him as the second coming of this pagan God. Even a little bit before Gobekli Tepe, there was another site unearthed relatively recently in Israel, at the Rakefet cave. First, I will provide definitions for the terms "pagan", "Christian", Brought to you by Wealthfront high-yield savings account, Peloton Row premium rower for an efficient workout, and You Need A Budget cult-favorite money management app.. Rick Rubin is a nine-time GRAMMY-winning producer, one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world, and the most successful producer in any genre, according to Rolling Stone. It was-- Eleusis was state-administered, a somewhat formal affair. You mentioned, too, early churchmen, experts in heresies by the name of Irenaeus of Lyons and Hippolytus of Rome. So the big question is, what kind of drug was this, if it was a drug? So even from the very beginning, it wasn't just barley and water. That also only occurs in John, another epithet of Dionysus. And in the ancient world, wine was routinely referred to as a [SPEAKING GREEK], which is the Greek word for drug. A lot of Christianity, as you rightly point out, I mean, it was an Eastern phenomenon, all over the eastern Mediterranean. It was it was barley, water, and something else. would certainly appreciate. So I see-- you're moving back and forth between these two. And maybe in these near-death experiences we begin to actually experience that at a visceral level. They were relevant to me in going down this rabbit hole. CHARLES STANG: We've really read Jesus through the lens of his Greek inheritors. I think it's important you have made a distinction between what was Jesus doing at the Last Supper, as if we could ever find out. So why refrain? There's evidence of the mysteries of Dionysus before, during, and after the life of Jesus, it's worth pointing out. Let me start with the view-- the version of it that I think is less persuasive. OK. Now let's pan back because, we have-- I want to wrap up my interrogation of you, which I've been pressing you, but I feel as if perhaps people joining me think I'm hostile to this hypothesis. What about Jesus as a Jew? 8 "The winds, the sea . So Gobekli Tepe, for those who don't know, is this site in southern Turkey on the border with Syria. Nage ?] I know that's another loaded phrase. It seems to me, though, that the intensity and the potency of the psychedelic experience is of an order of magnitude different than what I may have experienced through the Eucharist. You may have already noticed one such question-- not too hard. Newsweek calls him "the world's best human guinea pig," and The New York Times calls him "a cross between Jack Welch and a Buddhist monk." In this show, he deconstructs world-class . 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 so that opened a question for me. 44:48 Psychedelics and ancient cave art . So somewhere between 1% and 49%. 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 . I am so fortunate to have been selected to present my thesis, "Mythology and Psychedelics: Taking the Pagan Continuity Hypothesis a Step Further" at. In the same place in and around Pompeii, this is where Christianity is really finding its roots. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. You mentioned there were lots of dead ends, and there certainly were. I mean, I wish it were easier. So again, if there were an early psychedelic sacrament that was being suppressed, I'd expect that the suppressors would talk about it. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. We still have almost 700 with us. The book proposes a history of religious ritualistic psychedelic use at least as old as the ancient Greek mystery religions, especially those starting in Eleusis and dating to roughly 2,000 BC. And now we have a working hypothesis and some data to suggest where we might be looking. And I did not dare. A profound knowledge of visionary plants, herbs, and fungi passed from one generation to the next, ever since the Stone Age? 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 . 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. And so in my afterword, I present this as a blip on the archaeochemical radar. What does God mean? Now, that is part of your kind of interest in democratizing mysticism, but it also, curiously, cuts out the very people who have been preserving this tradition for centuries, namely, on your own account, this sort of invisible or barely visible lineage of women. The Gnostics did have continuity with paganism. And I write, at the very end of the book, I hope that they'd be proud of this investigation. I mean, so Walter Burkert was part of the reason that kept me going on. So welcome to the fourth event in our yearlong series on psychedelics and the future of religion, co-sponsored by the Esalen Institute, the Riverstyx Foundation, and the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines. 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. Tim Ferriss is a self-experimenter and bestselling author, best known for The 4-Hour Workweek, which has been translated into 40+ languages. I mean, I asked lots of big questions in the book, and I fully acknowledge that. Now, I mentioned that Brian and I had become friends. I will ask Brian to describe how he came to write this remarkable book, and the years of sleuthing and studying that went into it. So what do we know about those rituals? There aren't any churches or basilicas, right, in the first three centuries, in this era we're calling paleo-Christianity. 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 I want to thank you for putting up with me and my questions. CHARLES STANG: OK, great. 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. Because very briefly, I think Brian and others have made a very strong case that these things-- this was a biotechnology that was available in the ancient world. And apparently, the book is on order, so I can't speak to this directly, but the ancient Greek text that preserves this liturgy also preserves the formula, the ingredients of the eye ointment. I'm paraphrasing this one. Show Plants of the Gods: Hallucinogens, Healing, Culture and Conservation podcast, Ep Plants of the Gods: S4E2. The kind of mysticism I've always been attracted to, like the rule of Saint Benedict and the Trappist monks and the Cistercian monks. Here's the proof of concept. 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? That to live on forever and ever, to live an everlasting life is not immortality. Maybe part of me is skeptical, right? But you will be consoled to know that someone else will be-- I will be there, but someone else will be leading that conversation. And when I read psychedelic literature or I read the literature on near-death experiences, I see experiences similar to what I experienced as a young boy. But maybe you could just say something about this community in Catalonia. And the one thing that unites both of those worlds in this research called the pagan continuity hypothesis, the one thing we can bet on is the sacred language of Greek. We have plays like the Bacchi from Euripides, where we can piece together some of this. And I describe that as somehow finding that key to immortality. Although she's open to testing, there was nothing there. He co-writes that with Gordon Wasson and Albert Hofmann, who famously-- there it is, the three authors. I imagine there are many more potion makers around than we typically recognize. Did the potion at Eleusis change from generation to generation? CHARLES STANG: My name is Charles Stang, and I'm the director of the Center for the Study of World Religions here at Harvard Divinity School. But it survives. And I've listened to the volunteers who've gone through these experiences. It's something that goes from Homer all the way until the fall of the Roman Empire, over the course of well more than 1,000 years. Research inside the Church of Saint Faustina and Liberata Fig 1. Amongst all the mystery religions, Eleusis survives. And at some point in my narrative, I do include mention of Gobekli Tepe, for example, which is essentially twice the age of Stonehenge. BRIAN MURARESKU: We can dip from both pies, Dr. Stang. So this whole water to wine thing was out there. And she happened to find it on psilocybin. This is going to be a question that's back to the ancient world. In this way, the two traditions coexisted in a syncretic form for some time before . 101. Well, the reason I mention Hippolytus and Marcus and focus on that in my evidence is because there's evidence of the Valentinians, who influenced Marcus, in and around Rome. There's John Marco Allegro claiming that there was no Jesus, and this was just one big amanita muscaria cult. 474, ?] I write it cognizant of the fact that the Eucharist doesn't work for many, many people.
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