Well, wonderful. And by the way, I'm not here trying to protect Christianity from the evidence of psychedelic use. 48:01 Brian's psychedelic experiences . Now, it's just an early indication and there's more testing to be done. Maybe there's a spark of the divine within. The continuity between pagan and Christian cult nearby the archaeological area of Naquane in Capo di Ponte. Tim Ferriss is a self-experimenter and bestselling author, best known for The 4-Hour Workweek, which has been translated into 40+ languages. It's this 22-acre site of free-standing limestone, some rising 20 feet in the air, some weighing 50 tons. What's significant about these features for our piecing together the ancient religion with no name? Dogs, indicative of the Greek goddess Hecate, who, amongst other things was known as the [GREEK], the dog eater. So imagine how many artifacts are just sitting in museums right now, waiting to be tested. What was the wine in the early Eucharist? And if there's historical precedent for it, all the more so. The kind of mysticism I've always been attracted to, like the rule of Saint Benedict and the Trappist monks and the Cistercian monks. So this is interesting. Psychedelics Today: Mark Plotkin - Bio-Cultural Conservation of the Amazon. But please do know that we will forward all these questions to Brian so he will know the sorts of questions his work prompts. You obviously think these are powerful substances with profound effects that track with reality. CHARLES STANG: Yeah. No, I think you-- this is why we're friends, Charlie. It still leaves an even bigger if, Dr. Stang, is which one is psychedelic? So how to put this? That there is no hard archaeobotanical, archaeochemical data for spiked beer, spiked wine. For me, that's a question, and it will yield more questions. Now, let's get started, Brian. And nor do I think that you can characterize southern Italy as ground zero for the spirit of Greek mysticism, or however you put it. How does, in other words, how does religion sit with science? 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. They found a tiny chalice this big, dated to the second century BC. So throughout the book, you make the point that ancient beer and wine are not like our beer and wine. 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 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." That's, just absurd. So here's a question for you. Which, if you think about it, is a very elegant idea. He was greatly influenced by Sigmund Freud (1940) who viewed an infant's first relationship - usually with the mother - as "the prototype of all later love-relations". Because again, when I read the clinical literature, I'm reading things that look like mystical experiences, or that at least at least sound like them. 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. The Tim Ferriss Show. I think psychedelics are just one piece of the puzzle. A rebirth into a new conception of the self, the self's relationship to things that are hard to define, like God. And I wonder whether the former narrative serves the interests of the latter. Or maybe in palliative care. CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF WORLD RELIGIONS, Harvard Divinity School42 Francis Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138 617.495.4495, my.hds |Harvard Divinity School |Harvard University |Privacy |Accessibility |Digital Accessibility | Trademark Notice |Reporting Copyright Infringements. That also only occurs in John, another epithet of Dionysus. 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. It pushes back the archaeology on some of this material a full 12,000 years. The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts: 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 (#646) - The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss 3 Annual "Best of" Apple Podcasts 900+ Million episodes downloaded 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 Brian, welcome. All rights reserved. It's not just Cana. I don't know why it's happening now, but we're finally taking a look. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. They were mixed or fortified. BRIAN MURARESKU:: It's a simple formula, Charlie. These Native American church and the UDV, both some syncretic form of Christianity. I've no doubt that Brian has unearthed and collected a remarkable body of evidence, but evidence of what, exactly? And how do we-- when the pharmaceutical industry and when these retreat centers begin to open and begin to proliferate, how do we make this sacred? I mean, this is what I want to do with some of my remaining days on this planet, is take a look at all these different theories. This an absolute masterclass on why you must know your identity and goals before forming a habit, what the best systems are for habit. And so that opened a question for me. And in the ancient world, wine was routinely referred to as a [SPEAKING GREEK], which is the Greek word for drug. 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. I think the only big question is what the exact relationship was from a place like that over to Eleusis. Love potions, love charms, they're very common in the ancient. Rather, Christian beliefs were gradually incorporated into the pagan customs that already existed there. 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. There he is. Let's move to early Christian. Copyright 2023 President and Fellows of Harvard College. And maybe therein we do since the intimation of immortality. I have a deep interest in mysticism, and I've had mystical experiences, which I don't think are very relevant. let's take up your invitation and move from Dionysus to early Christianity. And does it line up with the promise from John's gospel that anyone who drinks this becomes instantly immortal? The continuity hypothesis of dreams suggests that the content of dreams are largely continuous with waking concepts and concerns of the dreamer. I fully expect we will find it. I want to thank you for your candor. You become one with Christ by drinking that. I'm not sure many have. I mean, what-- my big question is, what can we say about the Eucharist-- and maybe it's just my weird lens, but what can we say about it definitively in the absence of the archaeochemstry or the archaeobotany? So I think this was a minority of early Christians. Those of you who don't know his name, he's a professor at the University of Amsterdam, an expert in Western esotericism. I see it as-- well, OK, I'd see it as within a minority. 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. But let me say at the outset that it is remarkably learned, full of great historical and philological detail. 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 . But I'm pressing you because that's my job. We don't have to look very hard to find that. We have an hour and a half together and I hope there will be time for Q&A and discussion. But I mentioned that we've become friends because it is the prerogative of friends to ask hard questions. And that kind of invisible religion with no name, although brutally suppressed, managed to survive in Europe for many centuries and could potentially be revived today. 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. But with what were they mixed, and to what effect? 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. She found the remains of dog sacrifice, which is super interesting. So in my mind, it was the first real hard scientific data to support this hypothesis, which, as you alluded to at the beginning, only raises more questions. Throughout his five books he talks about wine being mixed with all kinds of stuff, like frankincense and myrrh, relatively innocuous stuff, but also less innocuous things like henbane and mandrake, these solanaceous plants which he specifically says is fatal. 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. Then I see the mysteries of Dionysus as kind of the Burning Man or the Woodstock of the ancient world. 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. 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. Is this only Marcus? And the reason I find that a worthy avenue of pursuit is because when you take a step back and look at the Greek of the Gospels, especially the Greek of John, which is super weird, what I see based on Dennis MacDonald's scholarship that you mentioned-- and others-- when you do the exegesis of John's gospel, there's just lots of vocabulary and lots of imagery that doesn't appear elsewhere. I do the same thing in the afterword at the very end of the book, where it's lots of, here's what we know. Show Plants of the Gods: Hallucinogens, Healing, Culture and Conservation podcast, Ep Plants of the Gods: S4E2. And she talks about kind of being born again, another promise from John's gospel. But it was not far from a well-known colony in [INAUDIBLE] that was founded by Phocians. 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. And so how far should this investigation go? And if the latter, do you think there's a good chance that religions will adopt psychedelics back into their rituals?". 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. I mean, that's obviously the big question, and what that means for the future of medicine and religion and society at large. And let's start with our earliest evidence from the Stone Age and the Bronze Age. So it wasn't just a random place to find one of these spiked wines. OK-- maybe one of those ancient beers. But it was just a process of putting these pieces together that I eventually found this data from the site Mas Castellar des Pontos in Spain. And the quote you just read from Burkert, it's published by Harvard University Press in 1985 as Greek Religion. And if it only occurs in John, the big question is why. 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. 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 What does it mean to die before dying? Which is a very weird thing today. 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. CHARLES STANG: OK. And when Houston says something like that, it grabs the attention of a young undergrad a bit to your south in Providence, Rhode Island, who was digging into Latin and Greek and wondering what the heck this was all about. Others find it in different ways, but the common denominator seems to be one of these really well-curated near-death experiences. Thank you. So if Eleusis is the Fight Club of the ancient world, right, the first rule is you don't talk about it. BRIAN MURARESKU: OK. I go out of my way, in both parts of the book, which, it's divided into the history of beer and the history of wine, essentially. 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. The fact that the Vatican sits in Rome today is not an accident, I think, is the shortest way to answer that. And anyone who drinks this, [SPEAKING GREEK], Jesus says in Greek, you remain in me and I in you. 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. So it's hard for me to write this and talk about this without acknowledging the Jesuits who put me here. So again, that's February 22. Things like fasting and sleep deprivation and tattooing and scarification and, et cetera, et cetera. I understand the appeal of that. 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. But I don't understand how that provides any significant link to paleo-Christian practice. What was discovered, as far as I can tell, from your treatment of it, is essentially an ancient pharmacy in this house. 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. When you start testing, you find things. First, I will provide definitions for the terms "pagan", "Christian", Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin: The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Psychedelics, and More | Tim Ferriss Show #646 CHARLES STANG: So that actually helps answer a question that's in the Q&A that was posed to me, which is why did I say I fully expect that we will find evidence for this? I mean, I wish it were easier. And I think there are so many sites and excavations and so many chalices that remain to be tested. That event is already up on our website and open for registration. But you will be consoled to know that someone else will be-- I will be there, but someone else will be leading that conversation. Then there's what were the earliest Christians doing with the Eucharist. What does God mean? And what it has to do with Eleusis or the Greek presence in general, I mean, again, just to say it briefly, is that this was a farmhouse of sorts that was inland, this sanctuary site. 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. But I think the broader question of what's the reception to this among explicitly religious folk and religious leaders? You're not confident that the pope is suddenly going to issue an encyclical. And maybe in these near-death experiences we begin to actually experience that at a visceral level. BRIAN MURARESKU: Great question. 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. CHARLES STANG: You know, Valentinus was almost elected bishop of Rome. Amongst all the mystery religions, Eleusis survives. And I think what the pharmaceutical industry can do is help to distribute this medicine. So Plato, Pindar, Sophocles, all the way into Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, it's an important thing. And again, it survives, I think, because of that state support for the better part of 2,000 years. 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. We're going to get there very soon. What does ergotized beer in Catalonia have anything to do with the Greek mysteries at Eleusis? Which, again, what I see are small groups of people getting together to commune with the dead. I write it cognizant of the fact that the Eucharist doesn't work for many, many people. Psychedelics are a lens to investigate this stuff. And then at some point they go inland. They are guaranteed an afterlife. Now, I think you answered that last part. 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. Please materialize. Psychedelics Today: PTSF 35 (with Brian Muraresku) Griffithsfund.org The Gnostics did have continuity with paganism. But we at least have, again, the indicia of evidence that something was happening there. And what do you believe happens to you when you do that? What's the importance of your abstention from psychedelics, given what is obvious interest. Because for many, many years, you know, Ruck's career takes a bit of a nosedive. 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. Not because it was brand new data. So your presentation of early Christianity inclines heavily toward the Greek world. And so if there is a place for psychedelics, I would think it would be in one of those sacred containers within monastic life, or pilgrims who visit one of these monastic centers, for example. I'm skeptical, Dr. Stang. And to be quite honest, I'd never studied the ancient Greeks in Spain. 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. You won't find it in many places other than that. Up until that point I really had very little knowledge of psychedelics, personal or literary or otherwise. [1] According to this theory, older adults try to maintain this continuity of lifestyle by adapting strategies that are connected to their past experiences. 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. Who were the Saints? She had the strange sense that every moment was an eternity of its own. They did not. The (Mistaken) Conspiracy Theory: In the Late Middle Ages, religious elites created a new, and mistaken, intellectual framework out of Christian heresy and theology concerning demons. CHARLES STANG: OK. Now let's move into the Greek mystery. 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 . So why the silence from the heresiologists on a psychedelic sacrament? And please just call me Charlie. 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 . BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. To some degree, I think you're looking back to southern Italy from the perspective of the supremacy of Rome, which is not the case in the first century. And the big question is, what is this thing doing there in the middle of nowhere? You know, it's an atheist using theological language to describe what happened to her. "@BrianMuraresku with @DocMarkPlotkin The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Lessons from Scholar Karen Armstrong, and Much More" Please enjoy! Rupert Sheldrake, PhD, is a biologist and author best known for his hypothesis of morphic resonance. To become truly immortal, Campbell talks about entering into a sense of eternity, which is the infinite present here and now. 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. And so the big hunt for me was trying to find some of those psychedelic bits. So when Hippolytus is calling out the Marcosians, and specifically women, consecrating this alternative Eucharist in their alternative proto-mass, he uses the Greek word-- and we've talked about this before-- but he uses the Greek word [SPEAKING GREEK] seven times in a row, by the way, without specifying which drugs he's referring to. That's because Brian and I have become friends these past several months, and I'll have more to say about that in a moment. He's been featured in Forbes, the Daily Beast, Big Think, and Vice. Now, I have no idea where it goes from here, or if I'll take it myself. And so I don't think that psychedelics are coming to replace the Sunday Eucharist. So how exactly is this evidence of something relevant to Christianity in Rome or southern Italy more widely? 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. And for some reason, I mean, I'd read that two or three times as an undergrad and just glossed over that line. And besides that, young Brian, let's keep the mysteries mysteries. And all we know-- I mean, we can't decipher sequence by sequence what was happening. Even a little bit before Gobekli Tepe, there was another site unearthed relatively recently in Israel, at the Rakefet cave. So what evidence can you provide for that claim? At Cambridge University he worked in developmental biolo. But the next event in this series will happen sooner than that. Thank you all for joining us, and I hope to see many of you later this month for our next event. So the Eastern Aegean. But we do know that something was happening. But if the original Eucharist were psychedelic, or even if there were significant numbers of early Christians using psychedelics like sacrament, I would expect the representatives of orthodox, institutional Christianity to rail against it. And even Burkert, I think, calls it the most famous of the mystery rituals. BRIAN MURARESKU: That's a good question. CHARLES STANG: Brian, I wonder if you could end by reflecting on the meaning of dying before you die. He draws on the theory of "pagan continuity," which holds that early Christianity adopted . And I think we get hung up on the jargon. Now, what's curious about this is we usually have-- Egypt plays a rather outsized role in our sense of early Christianity because-- and other adjacent or contemporary religious and philosophical movements, because everything in Egypt is preserved better than anywhere else in the Mediterranean. 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 . BRIAN MURARESKU: Great question. Nage ?] And I don't know if there's other examples of such things. He comes to this research with a full suite of scholarly skills, including a deep knowledge of Greek and Latin as well as facility in a number of European languages, which became crucial for uncovering some rather obscure research in Catalan, and also for sweet-talking the gatekeepers of archives and archaeological sites. There's a moment in the book where you are excited about some hard evidence. This event is entitled, Psychedelics, The Ancient Religion With No Name? And so that's what motivated my search here. 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? And I'm happy to see we have over 800 people present for this conversation. Do you think that by calling the Eucharist a placebo that you're likely to persuade them? 474, ?] Hard archaeobotanical, archaeochemical data, I haven't seen it. I mean, lots of great questions worthy of further investigation. Reviewed in the United States on January 29, 2023 Now, you could draw the obvious conclusion. 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. But clearly, when you're thinking about ancient Egypt or elsewhere, there's definitely a funerary tradition. Nazanin Boniadi I include that line for a reason. Lots of Greek artifacts, lots of Greek signifiers. It tested positive for the microscopic remains of beer and also ergot, exactly the hypothesis that had been put forward in 1978 by the disgraced professor across town from you, Carl Ruck, who's now 85 years old, by the way. 8 "The winds, the sea .
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