They were mixed or fortified. Brian C. Muraresku (@BrianMuraresku) / Twitter No one lived there. And again, it survives, I think, because of that state support for the better part of 2,000 years. And so the big hunt for me was trying to find some of those psychedelic bits. Where are the drugs? Like savory, wormwood, blue tansy, balm, senna, coriander, germander, mint, sage, and thyme. Before the church banned their use, early Christians used - Substack I mean, in the absence of the actual data, that's my biggest question. All right, so now, let's follow up with Dionysus, but let's see here. And she talks about the visions that transformed the way she thinks about herself. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. 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. 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? So if you don't think that you are literally consuming divine blood, what is the point of religion? And I'm not even sure what that piece looks like or how big it is. And even Burkert, I think, calls it the most famous of the mystery rituals. That also only occurs in John, another epithet of Dionysus. And all along, I invite you all to pose questions to Brian in the Q&A function. And does it line up with the promise from John's gospel that anyone who drinks this becomes instantly immortal? And they found this site, along with others around the Mediterranean. CHARLES STANG: OK. The answer seems to be connected to psychedelic drugs. These Native American church and the UDV, both some syncretic form of Christianity. 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. 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. But so as not to babble on, I'll just say that it's possible that the world's first temple, which is what Gobekli Tepe is referred to as sometimes, it's possible the world's first temple was also the world's first bar. So we're going down parallel paths here, and I feel we're caught between FDA-approved therapeutics and RFRA-protected sacraments, RFRA, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or what becomes of these kinds of substances in any kind of legal format-- which they're not legal at the moment, some would argue. Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin The Eleusinian Mysteries For those who didn't have the time or the money or the temerity to travel all the way to Eleusis from Spain, here's your off-site campus, right? Please materialize. OK-- maybe one of those ancient beers. So the Eastern Aegean. Klaus Schmidt, who was with the German Archaeological Institute, called this a sanctuary and called these T-shaped pillars representations of gods. And I-- in my profession, we call this circumstantial, and I get it. But I do want to push back a little bit on the elevation of this particular real estate in southern Italy. The pagan continuity hypothesis theorizes that when Christianity arrived in Greece around AD 49, it didn't suddenly replace the existing religion. [1] According to this theory, older adults try to maintain this continuity of lifestyle by adapting strategies that are connected to their past experiences. The divine personage in whom this cult centered was the Magna Mater Deum who was conceived as the source of all life as well as the personification of all the powers of nature.\[Footnote:] Willoughby, Pagan Regeneration, p. 114.\ 7 She was the "Great Mother" not only "of all the gods," but of all men" as well. #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin The Eleusinian And what you're referring to is-- and how I begin the book is this beautiful Greek phrase, [SPEAKING GREEK]. Some number of people have asked about Egypt. Continuity theory - Wikipedia 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 . 8th century BC from the Tel Arad shrine. You mentioned there were lots of dead ends, and there certainly were. He's the god of wine. Reviewed in the United States on January 29, 2023 So that, actually, is the key to the immortality key. The Immortality Key, The Secret History of the Religion With No Name. 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. But what I see are potential and possibilities and things worthy of discussions like this. 18.3C: Continuity Theory. Now, the great scholar of Greek religion, Walter Burkert, you quote him as musing, once-- and I'm going to quote him-- he says, "it may rather be asked, even without the prospect of a certain answer, whether the basis of the mysteries, they were prehistoric drug rituals, some festival imp of immortality which, through the expansion of consciousness, seemed to guarantee some psychedelic beyond." I've no doubt that Brian has unearthed and collected a remarkable body of evidence, but evidence of what, exactly? And he was actually going out and testing some of these ancient chalices. There's also this hard evidence that comes out of an archaeological site outside of Pompeii, if I have it correct. 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. And that the proof of concept idea is that we need to-- we, meaning historians of the ancient world, need to bring all the kinds of resources to bear on this to get better evidence and an interpretive frame for making sense of it. And she talks about kind of being born again, another promise from John's gospel. First act is your evidence for psychedelics among the so-called pagan religions in the ancient Mediterranean and Near East. So I'm trying to build the case-- and for some reason in my research, it kept coming back to Italy and Rome, which is why I focus on Hippolytus. So those are all possibly different questions to ask and answer. 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. But I realized that in 1977, when he wrote that in German, this was the height of scholarship, at least going out on a limb to speculate about the prospect of psychedelics at the very heart of the Greek mysteries, which I refer to as something like the real religion of the ancient Greeks, by the way, in speaking about the Eleusinian mysteries. There's a moment in the book where you are excited about some hard evidence. 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. And I did not dare. Copyright 2023 President and Fellows of Harvard College. IMDb is the world's most popular and authoritative source for movie, TV and celebrity content. I'm paraphrasing this one. 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. CHARLES STANG: I have one more question about the pre-Christian story, and that has to do with that the other mystery religion you give such attention to. Now you're a good sport, Brian. And part of me really wants to put all these pieces together before I dive in. The Tim Ferriss Show - #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark It still leaves an even bigger if, Dr. Stang, is which one is psychedelic? That to live on forever and ever, to live an everlasting life is not immortality. Which, if you think about it, is a very elegant idea. You see an altar of Pentelic marble that could only have come from the Mount Pentelicus quarry in mainland Greece. 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. 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? 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 . 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. BRIAN MURARESKU: OK. Now, I don't put too much weight into that. 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? The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name In 1950, Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote " The Influence of the Mystery Religions on Christianity " which describes the continuity from the Pagan, pre-Christian world to what would become early Christianity in the decades and centuries before Jesus Religion & Mystical Experiences, Wine And to be quite honest, I'd never studied the ancient Greeks in Spain. 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. Now, I have no idea where it goes from here, or if I'll take it myself. So let's talk about the future of religion, and specifically the future of Roman Catholicism. Psychedelics Weekly - Prince Harry and Psychedelics, Proposed Here's your Western Eleusis. Do you think that by calling the Eucharist a placebo that you're likely to persuade them? Nazanin Boniadi 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. And there were moments when the sunlight would just break through. 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. 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. Certainly these early churchmen used whatever they could against the forms of Christian practice they disapproved of, especially those they categorized as Gnostic. And I don't know if it's a genuine mystical experience or mystical mimetic or some kind of psychological breakthrough. 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. And let's start with our earliest evidence from the Stone Age and the Bronze Age. And I just happened to fall into that at the age of 14 thanks to the Jesuits, and just never left it behind. Interesting. And at some point in my narrative, I do include mention of Gobekli Tepe, for example, which is essentially twice the age of Stonehenge. And her answer was that they'd all been cleaned or treated for conservation purposes. Its proponents maintain that the affable, plump old fellow associated with Christmas derives from the character of Arctic medical practitioners. So can you reflect for us where you really are and how you chose to write this book? 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. 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. Now, Brian managed to write this book while holding down a full time practice in international law based in Washington DC. All episodes of The Tim Ferriss Show - Chartable But it was not far from a well-known colony in [INAUDIBLE] that was founded by Phocians. The Tim Ferriss Show Podcast | Free Listening on Podbean App So my biggest question is, what kind of wine was it? BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. You know, it's an atheist using theological language to describe what happened to her. That they were what you call extreme beverages. It's arguably not the case in the third century. 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. OK, Brian, I invite you to join us now. And it was the Jesuits who encouraged me to always, always ask questions and never take anything at face value. 13,000 years old. I wonder if you're familiar with Wouter Hanegraaff at the University of Amsterdam. Biblical Entheogens: a Speculative Hypothesis - ResearchGate The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name Psychedelics Today: PTSF 35 (with Brian Muraresku) Griffithsfund.org For me, that's a question, and it will yield more questions. BRIAN MURARESKU: I look forward to it, Charlie. All that will be announced through our mailing list. So psychedelics or not, I think it's the cultivation of that experience, which is the actual key. So Plato, Pindar, Sophocles, all the way into Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, it's an important thing. It's funny to see that some of the first basilicas outside Rome are popping up here, and in and around Pompeii. What I see is data that's been largely neglected, and I think what serves this as a discipline is just that. And what the FDA can do is make sure that they're doing it in a way that it's absolutely safe and efficacious. John H Elliott - Empires Of The Atlantic World.pdf But I mentioned that we've become friends because it is the prerogative of friends to ask hard questions. The book was published by Saint Martin's Press in September 2020 and has generated a whirlwind of attention. Because even though it's a very long time ago, Gobekli Tepe, interestingly, has some things in common with Eleusis, like the worship of the grain, the possibility of brewing, the notion of a pilgrimage, and interaction with the dead. The universality of frontiers, however, made the hypothesis readily extendable to other parts of the globe. 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. Despite its popular appeal as a New York Times Bestseller, TIK fails to make a compelling case for its grand theory of the "pagan continuity hypothesis with a psychedelic twist" due to recurring overreach and historical distortion, failure to consider relevant research on shamanism and Christianity, and presentation of speculation as fact I want to thank you for putting up with me and my questions. The Tim Ferriss Show. What does God mean? She found the remains of dog sacrifice, which is super interesting. Part 1 Brian C. Muraresku: The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis and the Hallucinogenic Origins of Religion - Feb 22, 2023 OK, now, Brian, you've probably dealt with questions like this. Then there's what were the earliest Christians doing with the Eucharist. They followed Platonic (and other Greeks) philosophy. 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. So again, if there were an early psychedelic sacrament that was being suppressed, I'd expect that the suppressors would talk about it. So Brian, welcome. So again, that's February 22. There's evidence of the mysteries of Dionysus before, during, and after the life of Jesus, it's worth pointing out. And Brian, once again, thank you so much. It's not just Cana. The fact that the Vatican sits in Rome today is not an accident, I think, is the shortest way to answer 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. 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 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. It draws attention to this material. I did go straight to [INAUDIBLE] Papangelli in Eleusis, and I went to the museum. BRIAN MURARESKU: We can dip from both pies, Dr. Stang. What was the real religion of the ancient Greeks? And in his book [? General Stanley McChrystal Mastering Risk: A User's Guide | Brought to you by Kettle & Fire high quality, tasty, and conveniently packaged bone broths; Eight Sleep. 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. I was satisfied with I give Brian Muraresku an "A" for enthusiasm, but I gave his book 2 stars. And if the latter, do you think there's a good chance that religions will adopt psychedelics back into their rituals?". But things that sound intensely powerful. Now I understand and I appreciate the pharmaceutical industry's ability to distribute this as medicine for those who are looking for alternatives, alternative treatments for depression and anxiety and PTSD and addiction and end of life distress. Just from reading Dioscorides and reading all the different texts, the past 12 years have absolutely transformed the way I think about wine. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. And when we know so much about ancient wine and how very different it was from the wine of today, I mean, what can we say about the Eucharist if we're only looking at the texts? The Psychedelic Gospels: The Secret History of Hallucinogens in Like in Israel. CHARLES STANG: I do, too. 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. This discussion on Febrary 1, 2021, between CSWR Director Charles Stang and Brian Muraresku about his new book, The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name,a groundbreaking dive into the role of psychedelics in the ancient Mediterranean world. Continuity Hypothesis - Keith E Rice's Integrated SocioPsychology Blog We're going to get there very soon. 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. Thank you for that. 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, 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. "@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! So this is interesting. But with what were they mixed, and to what effect? But let me say at the outset that it is remarkably learned, full of great historical and philological detail. And her best guess is that it was like this open access sanctuary. Now is there any evidence for psychedelic use in ancient Egypt, and if not, do you have any theory as to why that's silent? When Irenaeus is talking about [SPEAKING GREEK], love potions, again, we have no idea what the hell he's talking about. To become truly immortal, Campbell talks about entering into a sense of eternity, which is the infinite present here and now. And she happened to find it on psilocybin. As a matter of fact, I think it's much more promising and much more fertile for scholarship to suggest that some of the earliest Christians may have availed themselves of a psychedelic sacrament and may have interpreted the Last Supper as some kind of invitation to open psychedelia, that mystical supper as the orthodox call it, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. That's just everlasting. 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. That's the promise in John's gospel, in John 6:54-55, that I quote in the book. 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. That's only after Constantine. Video: Psychedelics: The Ancient Religion with No Name? And I'll just list them out quickly. 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. Material evidence of a very strange potion, a drug, or a [SPEAKING GREEK]. So don't feel like you have to go into great depth at this point. 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. The continuity hypothesis of dreams suggests that the content of dreams are largely continuous with waking concepts and concerns of the dreamer. So I want to propose that we stage this play in two acts. BRIAN MURARESKU: Good one. Not much. Nage ?] You might find it in a cemetery in Mexico. But Egypt seems to not really be hugely relevant to the research. CHARLES STANG: Yeah. It's not to say that there isn't evidence from Alexandria or Antioch. The pagan continuity hypothesis at the heart of this book made sense to me. Maybe I'm afraid I'll take the psychedelic and I won't have what is reported in the literature from Hopkins and NYU. I know that's another loaded phrase. What the Greeks were actually saying there is that it was barley infected with ergot, which is this natural fungus that infects cereal crops. And I think that's an important distinction to make. By which I mean that the Gospel of John suggests that at the very least, the evangelist hoped to market Christianity to a pagan audience by suggesting that Jesus was somehow equivalent to Dionysus, and that the Eucharist, his sacrament of wine, was equivalent to Dionysus's wine. A lot of Christianity, as you rightly point out, I mean, it was an Eastern phenomenon, all over the eastern Mediterranean.