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Brought to you by CHARLES STANG: So it may be worth mentioning, for those who are attending who haven't read the book, that you asked, who I can't remember her name, the woman who is in charge of the Eleusis site, whether some of the ritual vessels could be tested, only to discover-- tested for the remains of whatever they held, only to learn that those vessels had been cleaned and that no more vessels were going to be unearthed. Not in every single case, obviously. Things like fasting and sleep deprivation and tattooing and scarification and, et cetera, et cetera. So why the silence from the heresiologists on a psychedelic sacrament? CHARLES STANG: I do, too. And I think it's very important to be very honest with the reader and the audience about what we know and what we don't. I think the only big question is what the exact relationship was from a place like that over to Eleusis. It's arguably not the case in the third century. I see it as-- well, OK, I'd see it as within a minority. Now, I think you answered that last part. What does that have to do with Christianity? We call it ego dissolution, things of that nature. 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. What, if any, was the relationship between this Greek sanctuary-- a very Greek sanctuary, by the way-- in Catalonia, to the mysteries of Eleusis? The most colorful theory of psychedelics in religion portrays the original Santa Claus as a shaman. Now you're a good sport, Brian. He has talked about the potential evidence for psychedelics in a Mithras liturgy. You know, it's an atheist using theological language to describe what happened to her. The question is, what will happen in the future. Show Plants of the Gods: Hallucinogens, Healing, Culture and Conservation podcast, Ep Plants of the Gods: S4E2. The pagan continuity hypothesis theorizes that when Christianity arrived in Greece around AD 49, it didn't suddenly replace the existing religion. #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin The Eleusinian And the big question for me was what was that something else? And I think that we would behoove ourselves to incorporate, resuscitate, maybe, some of those techniques that seem to have been employed by the Greeks at Eleusis or by the Dionysians or some of these earliest Christians. So this is interesting. Samuel Zuschlag - Durham University - Charlotte, North - LinkedIn So I was obsessed with this stuff from the moment I picked up an article in The Economist called the God Pill back in 2007. So the Greek god of wine, intoxication. What's the wine? And it was their claim that when the hymn to Demeter, one of these ancient records that records, in some form, the proto-recipe for this kykeon potion, which I call like a primitive beer, in the hymn to Demeter, they talk about ingredients like barley, water, and mint. And I, for one, look forward to a time when I can see him in person for a beer, ergotized beer or not, if he ever leaves Uruguay. And I offer psychedelics as one of those archaic techniques of ecstasy that seems to have been relevant and meaningful to our ancestors. 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. We know that at the time of Jesus, before, during, and after, there were recipes floating around. Even a little bit before Gobekli Tepe, there was another site unearthed relatively recently in Israel, at the Rakefet cave. So this whole water to wine thing was out there. I mean, if Burkert was happy to speculate about psychedelics, I'm not sure why Ruck got the reception that he did in 1978 with their book The Road to Eleusis. Because for many, many years, you know, Ruck's career takes a bit of a nosedive. I would have been happy to find a spiked wine anywhere. I did go straight to [INAUDIBLE] Papangelli in Eleusis, and I went to the museum. Others would argue that they are perfectly legal sacraments, at least in the Native American church with the use of peyote, or in the UDV or Santo Daime, I mean, ayahuasca does work in some syncretic Christian form, right? If your history is even remotely correct, that would have ushered in a very different church, if Valentinus's own student Marcus and the Marcosians were involved in psychedelic rituals, then that was an early road not taken, let's say. Like the wedding at Cana, which my synopsis of that event is a drunkard getting a bunch of drunk people even more drunk. Thank you. First, the continuity of the offices must be seen in light of the change of institutional charges; they had lost their religious connotations and had become secular. The Continuity Hypothesis of Dreams: A More Balanced Account 1,672. And maybe therein we do since the intimation of immortality. 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. Just imagine, I have to live with me. Continuity Hypothesis - Keith E Rice's Integrated SocioPsychology Blog 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. Revolutionary Left Radio: Early Christianity: Psychedelics, Ancient 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. So I want to propose that we stage this play in two acts. The Tim Ferriss Show | iHeart And what does this earliest history tell us about the earliest evidence for an ancient psychedelic religion? BRIAN MURARESKU: I would say I've definitely experienced the power of the Christ and the Holy Spirit. Correcting Key Points in Muraresku, The Immortality Key No one lived there. These Native American church and the UDV, both some syncretic form of Christianity. That is my dog Xena. 13,000 years old. We have an hour and a half together and I hope there will be time for Q&A and discussion. 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. . BRIAN MURARESKU: We can dip from both pies, Dr. Stang. 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. And what the FDA can do is make sure that they're doing it in a way that it's absolutely safe and efficacious. He's the god of wine. 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. CHARLES STANG: Thank you, Brian. BRIAN MURARESKU:: It's a simple formula, Charlie. 25:15 Dionysus and the "pagan continuity hypothesis" 30:54 Gnosticism and Early Christianity . 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. I might forward the proposition that I don't think the early church fathers were the best botanists. I'm paraphrasing this one. I really tried. So what evidence can you provide for that claim? And in the ancient world, wine was routinely referred to as a [SPEAKING GREEK], which is the Greek word for drug. We're going to get there very soon. I mean, I think the book makes it clear. And this is at a time when we're still hunting and gathering. And considering the common background of modern religions (the Pagan Continuity hypothesis), any religious group who thinks they are chosen or correct are promoting a simplistic and ignorant view of our past. 7:30 The three pillars to the work: the Eucharist as a continuation of the pharmako and Dionysian mysteries; the Pagan continuity theory; and the idea that through the mysteries "We can die before we die so that when we die we do not die" 13:00 What does "blood of Christ" actually mean; the implied and literal cannibalism Klaus Schmidt, who was with the German Archaeological Institute, called this a sanctuary and called these T-shaped pillars representations of gods. Now, Brian managed to write this book while holding down a full time practice in international law based in Washington DC. Brian's thesis, that of the Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, was explored by Alexander Hislop in his "The Two Babylons", 1853, as a Protestant treatise in the spirit of Martin Luther as Alexander too interjects the Elusinian Mysteries. CHARLES STANG: OK, that is the big question. And the quote you just read from Burkert, it's published by Harvard University Press in 1985 as Greek Religion. 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. In this episode, Brian C. Muraresku, who holds a degree from Brown University in Latin, Greek and Sanskrit,  joins Breht to discuss his fascinating book "The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name", a groundbreaking dive into the use of hallucinogens in ancient Greece, the Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, the role of the Eucharist in early Christianity, the . And even Burkert, I think, calls it the most famous of the mystery rituals. But we do know that something was happening. CHARLES STANG: Yeah. They're mixing potions. There's a moment in the book where you are excited about some hard evidence. He was wronged by individuals, allegedly. These mysteries had at their center a sacrament called kykeon, which offered a vision of the mysteries of life and death. I've no doubt that Brian has unearthed and collected a remarkable body of evidence, but evidence of what, exactly? In this hypothesis, both widely accepted and widely criticized,11 'American' was synonymous with 'North American'. IMDb is the world's most popular and authoritative source for movie, TV and celebrity content. Which, if you think about it, is a very elegant idea. And at some point in my narrative, I do include mention of Gobekli Tepe, for example, which is essentially twice the age of Stonehenge. It's funny to see that some of the first basilicas outside Rome are popping up here, and in and around Pompeii. First act is your evidence for psychedelics among the so-called pagan religions in the ancient Mediterranean and Near East. Nage ?] I wish the church fathers were better botanists and would rail against the specific pharmacopeia. Here is how I propose we are to proceed. What was the wine in the early Eucharist? An actual spiked wine. But Egypt seems to not really be hugely relevant to the research. 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? I mean, shouldn't everybody, shouldn't every Christian be wondering what kind of wine was on that table, or the tables of the earliest Christians? Maybe I have that wrong. And maybe in these near-death experiences we begin to actually experience that at a visceral level. Oh, I hope I haven't offended you, Brian. So imagine how many artifacts are just sitting in museums right now, waiting to be tested. It's only in John that Jesus is described as being born in the lap of the Father, the [SPEAKING GREEK] in 1:18, very similar to the way that Dionysus sprung miraculously from the thigh of Zeus, and on and on and on-- which I'm not going to bore you and the audience. And I think that's an important distinction to make. They were mixed or fortified. Because they talk about everything else that they take issue with. 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. But by and large, no, we don't really know. All that will be announced through our mailing list. And I don't know what that looks like. So can you reflect for us where you really are and how you chose to write this book? I just sense a great deal of structure and thoughtfulness going into this experience. Because what tends to happen in those experiences is a death and rebirth. 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. I mean, about 25 years ago, actually. So that's from Burkert, a very sober scholar and the dean of all scholarship on Greek religion. The continuity hypothesis of dreams suggests that the content of dreams are largely continuous with waking concepts and concerns of the dreamer. Wonderful, well, thank you. And this is what I present to the world. Phil's Picks | Phoenix Books 44:48 Psychedelics and ancient cave art . I don't know why it's happening now, but we're finally taking a look. Do you think that by calling the Eucharist a placebo that you're likely to persuade them? 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. 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. In the same place in and around Pompeii, this is where Christianity is really finding its roots. In my previous posts on the continuity hypothesis . But I'm pressing you because that's my job. The Gnostics did have continuity with paganism. Tim Ferriss is a self-experimenter and bestselling author, best known for The 4-Hour Workweek, which has been translated into 40+ languages. Perhaps more generally, you could just talk about other traditions around the Mediterranean, North African, or, let's even say Judaism. 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. 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? So, although, I mean, and that actually, I'd like to come back to that, the notion of the, that not just the pagan continuity hypothesis, but the mystery continuity hypothesis through the Vatican. 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. Including, all the way back to Gobekli Tepe, which is why I mentioned that when we first started chatting. Here's your Western Eleusis. This limestone altar tested positive for cannabis and frankincense that was being burned, they think, in a very ritualistic way. First, I will provide definitions for the terms "pagan", "Christian", 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. 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. What I see is data that's been largely neglected, and I think what serves this as a discipline is just that. Ep #1 Show Notes | Brian Muraresku: Psychedelics, Civilization 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. "The Influence of the Mystery Religions on Christianity" 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. CHARLES STANG: All right. With more than 35 years of experience in the field of Education dedicated to help students, teachers and administrators in both public and private institutions at school, undergraduate and graduate level. 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. Pagan Continuity and Christian Attitudes: When did Paganism End? Now, Mithras is another one of these mystery religions. There have been really dramatic studies from Hopkins and NYU about the ability of psilocybin at the end of life to curb things like depression, anxiety, and end of life distress. He decides to get people even more drunk. But we do know that the initiates made this pilgrimage from Athens to Eleusis, drunk the potion, the kykeon, had this very visionary event-- they all talk about seeing something-- and after which they become immortal. And her best guess is that it was like this open access sanctuary. It was the Jesuits who taught me Latin and Greek. let's take up your invitation and move from Dionysus to early Christianity. Maybe for those facing the end of life. We know from the literature hundreds of years beforehand that in Elis, for example, in the Western Peloponnese, on the same Epiphany-type timeline, January 5, January 6, the priests would walk into the temple of Dionysus, leave three basins of water, the next morning they're miraculously transformed into wine. Continuity Questions - 36 Questions About Continuity - QuestionDB BRIAN MURARESKU: Great question. So Pompeii and its environs at the time were called [SPEAKING GREEK], which means great Greece. It is my great pleasure to welcome Brian Muraresku to the Center. I don't think we have found it. 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 performers from eclectic areas (investing, chess, pro sports, etc . Which, again, what I see are small groups of people getting together to commune with the dead. And so I can see psychedelics being some kind of extra sacramental ministry that potentially could ease people at the end of life. Let's move to early Christian. But things that sound intensely powerful. Now, you could draw the obvious conclusion. And another: in defending the pagan continuity hypothesis, Muraresku presumes a somewhat non-Jewish, pagan-like Jesus, while ignoring the growing body of psychedelic literature, including works by . The big question is, did any of these recipes, did any of this wine spiking actually make its way into some paleo-Christian ceremony. 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. I'm going to come back to that idea of proof of concept. BRIAN MURARESKU: OK. And inside that beer was all kinds of vegetable matter, like wheat, oats, and sedge and lily and flax and various legumes. 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. But the point being, if the Dionysian wine was psychedelic-- which I know is a big if-- I think the more important thing to show here in this pagan continuity hypothesis is that it's at least plausible that the earliest Christians would have at the very least read the Gospel of John and interpreted that paleo-Christian Eucharistic wine, in some communities, as a kind of Dionysian wine. And what do you believe happens to you when you do that? Here's the proof of concept. #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin The Eleusinian There's some suggestive language in the pyramid texts, in the Book of the Dead and things of this nature. "The Tim Ferriss Show" 646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin Is taking all these disciplines, whether it's your discipline or archaeochemistry or hard core botany, biology, even psychopharmacology, putting it all together and taking a look at this mystery, this puzzle, using the lens of psychedelics as a lens, really, to investigate not just the past but the future and the mystery of human consciousness. I'd never thought before about how Christianity developed as an organized religion in the centuries after Jesus' murder. That there is no hard archaeobotanical, archaeochemical data for spiked beer, spiked wine. Brian C. Muraresku - Priory Of Sion Psychedelics are a lens to investigate this stuff. #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin The Eleusinian CHARLES STANG: OK, great. I see a huge need and a demand for young religious clergy to begin taking a look at this stuff. It is not psychedelics. 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. The Immortality Key - David Bookstaber So let's talk about the future of religion, and specifically the future of Roman Catholicism. 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. And I just happened to fall into that at the age of 14 thanks to the Jesuits, and just never left it behind. And when you speak in that way, what I hear you saying is there is something going on. Now, I've never done them myself, but I have talked to many, many people who've had experience with psychedelics. Not because they just found that altar. Then I see the mysteries of Dionysus as kind of the Burning Man or the Woodstock of the ancient world. Copyright 2023 President and Fellows of Harvard College. I'm trying to get him to speak in the series about that. In fact, he found beer, wine, and mead all mixed together in a couple of different places. There he is. I mean, I asked lots of big questions in the book, and I fully acknowledge that. 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. So it's hard for me to write this and talk about this without acknowledging the Jesuits who put me here. And again, it survives, I think, because of that state support for the better part of 2,000 years. Now, I don't put too much weight into that. The Wanderer | Old English Poetry Project | Rutgers University