Not because it's not there, because it hasn't been tested. The book was published by Saint Martin's Press in September 2020 and has generated a whirlwind of attention. So Pompeii and its environs at the time were called [SPEAKING GREEK], which means great Greece. Now, Brian managed to write this book while holding down a full time practice in international law based in Washington DC. 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 . And I think there are lots of reasons to believe that. 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. Here's the big question. A rebirth into a new conception of the self, the self's relationship to things that are hard to define, like God. There's no mistake in her mind that it was Greek. And maybe in these near-death experiences we begin to actually experience that at a visceral level. That's staying within the field of time. And so with a revised ancient history, in place Brian tacks back to the title of our series, Psychedelics and the Future of Religion. 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 . CHARLES STANG: Thank you, Brian. 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. It was it was barley, water, and something else. And it was the Jesuits who encouraged me to always, always ask questions and never take anything at face value. I know that that's a loaded phrase. He calls it a drug against grief in Greek, [SPEAKING GREEK]. And I think it does hearken back to a genuinely ancient Greek principle, which is that only by fully experiencing some kind of death, a death that feels real, where you, or at least the you you used to identify with, actually slips away, dissolves. This limestone altar tested positive for cannabis and frankincense that was being burned, they think, in a very ritualistic way. Things like fasting and sleep deprivation and tattooing and scarification and, et cetera, et cetera. And so part of what it means to be a priest or a minister or a rabbi is to sit with the dying and the dead. She had the strange sense that every moment was an eternity of its own. Now, I mentioned that Brian and I had become friends. Up until that point I really had very little knowledge of psychedelics, personal or literary or otherwise. 1,672. And in his book [? That to live on forever and ever, to live an everlasting life is not immortality. He's the god of wine. BRIAN MURARESKU: I'm asked this question, I would say, in pretty much every interview I've done since late September. And we know the mysteries were there. Not just in Italy, but as kind of the headquarters for the Mediterranean. And Brian, once again, thank you so much. Do the drugs, Dr. Stang? And I want to ask you about specifically the Eleusinian mysteries, centered around the goddesses Demeter and Persephone. Church of the Saints Faustina and Liberata, view from the outside with the entrance enclosure, at "Sante" place, Capo di Ponte (Italy). What's the importance of your abstention from psychedelics, given what is obvious interest. Which is a very weird thing today. 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. And so I don't think that psychedelics are coming to replace the Sunday Eucharist. Books about pagan continuity hypothesis? Now you're a good sport, Brian. That's all just fancy wordplay. 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. 474, ?] But with what were they mixed, and to what effect? Brian has been very busy taking his new book on the road, of course, all online, and we're very grateful to him for taking the time to join us this evening. A rebirth into what? So if you don't think that you are literally consuming divine blood, what is the point of religion? This is going to be a question that's back to the ancient world. 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 . And besides that, young Brian, let's keep the mysteries mysteries. Maybe I have that wrong. CHARLES STANG: All right. Not much. All rights reserved. It was the Jesuits who taught me Latin and Greek. And I think that's an important distinction to make. Those religions featured psychedelic beer and ceremonies lead by women . BRIAN MURARESKU: I would say I've definitely experienced the power of the Christ and the Holy Spirit. What, if any, was the relationship between this Greek sanctuary-- a very Greek sanctuary, by the way-- in Catalonia, to the mysteries of Eleusis? In fact, he found beer, wine, and mead all mixed together in a couple of different places. 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. 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. I don't think we have found it. What does God mean? 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. And there were moments when the sunlight would just break through. That would require an entirely different kind of evidence. Well, let's get into it then. Examine the pros and cons of the continuity theory of aging, specifically in terms of how it neglects to consider social institutions or chronically ill adults. 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. There were formula. Research inside the Church of Saint Faustina and Liberata Fig 1. Are they rolling their eyes, or are you getting sort of secretive knowing nods of agreement? And I hear-- I sense that narrative in your book. Brendon Benz presents an alternative hypothesis to recent scholarship which has hypothesized that Israel consisted of geographical, economic . So how does Dionysian revelries get into this picture? So how exactly is this evidence of something relevant to Christianity in Rome or southern Italy more widely? And the quote you just read from Burkert, it's published by Harvard University Press in 1985 as Greek Religion. I'm happy to be proven wrong. Now, here's-- let's tack away from hard, scientific, archaeobotanical evidence for a moment. 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? BRIAN MURARESKU: It just happens to show up. CHARLES STANG: We've really read Jesus through the lens of his Greek inheritors. 48:01 Brian's psychedelic experiences . And so even within the New Testament you see little hints and clues that there was no such thing as only ordinary table wine. Why don't we turn the tables and ask you what questions you think need to be posed? I mean, I asked lots of big questions in the book, and I fully acknowledge that. So in the mountains and forests from Greece to Rome, including the Holy Land and Galilee. But you go further still, suggesting that Jesus himself at the Last Supper might have administered psychedelic sacrament, that the original Eucharist was psychedelic. Books about pagan continuity hypothesis? And I'm trying to reconcile that. Thank you all for joining us, and I hope to see many of you later this month for our next event. 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. We call it ego dissolution, things of that nature. You also find a Greek hearth inside this sanctuary. This two-part discussion between Muraresku and Dr. Plotkin examines the role psychedelics have played in the development of Western civilization. 44:48 Psychedelics and ancient cave art . Like in a retreat pilgrimage type center, or maybe within palliative care. Because they talk about everything else that they take issue with. What was the wine in the early Eucharist? You become one with Christ by drinking that. So whatever these [SPEAKING GREEK] libations incense were, the church fathers don't get into great detail about what may have been spiking them. Dogs, indicative of the Greek goddess Hecate, who, amongst other things was known as the [GREEK], the dog eater. BRIAN MURARESKU: Great question. 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? 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 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. Read more about The Immortality Key by Brian Muraresku Making Sense by Sam Harris If beer was there that long ago, what kind of beer was it? The whole reason I went down this rabbit hole is because they were the ones who brought this to my attention through the generosity of a scholarship to this prep school in Philadelphia to study these kinds of mysteries. BRIAN MURARESKU: I look forward to it, Charlie. And for some reason, I mean, I'd read that two or three times as an undergrad and just glossed over that line. 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. He was wronged by individuals, allegedly. #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 And when you speak in that way, what I hear you saying is there is something going on. I would love to see these licensed, regulated, retreat centers be done in a way that is medically sound and scientifically rigorous. 55 This is very likely as it seems that the process had already started in the 4th century. And I think we get hung up on the jargon. He's joining us from Uruguay, where he has wisely chosen to spend his pandemic isolation. 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. 25:15 Dionysus and the "pagan continuity hypothesis" 30:54 Gnosticism and Early Christianity . 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. And so how far should this investigation go? 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. And what the FDA can do is make sure that they're doing it in a way that it's absolutely safe and efficacious. I am so fortunate to have been selected to present my thesis, "Mythology and Psychedelics: Taking the Pagan Continuity Hypothesis a Step Further" at. Now, Mithras is another one of these mystery religions. Now, I've had experiences outside the Eucharist that resonate with me. 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. let's take up your invitation and move from Dionysus to early Christianity. Is there a smoking gun? These two accuse one Gnostic teacher named Marcus-- who is himself a student of the famous theologian Valentinus-- they accuse him of dabbling in pharmacological devilry. Psychedelics Today: PTSF 35 (with Brian Muraresku) Griffithsfund.org The continuity between pagan and Christian cult nearby the archaeological area of Naquane in Capo di Ponte. I understand the appeal of that. There's a good number of questions that are very curious why you are insisting on remaining a psychedelic virgin. But clearly, when you're thinking about ancient Egypt or elsewhere, there's definitely a funerary tradition. 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 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. 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. would certainly appreciate. I would expect we'd have ample evidence. He draws on the theory of "pagan continuity," which holds that early Christianity adopted . Thank you for that. And yet I talked to an atheist who has one experience with psilocybin and is immediately bathed in God's love. And why, if you're right that the church has succeeded in suppressing a psychedelic sacrament and has been peddling instead, what you call a placebo, and that it has exercised a monstrous campaign of persecution against plant medicine and the women who have kept its knowledge alive, why are you still attached to this tradition? But unfortunately, it doesn't connect it to Christianity. On Monday, February 22, we will be hosting a panel discussion taking up the question what is psychedelic chaplaincy. You won't find it in many places other than that. And what does this earliest history tell us about the earliest evidence for an ancient psychedelic religion? But it survives. So now it's true that these heresy hunters show an interest in this love potion. And what about the alleged democratization with which you credit the mysteries of Dionysus, or the role of women in that movement? And this is at a time when we're still hunting and gathering. It is not psychedelics. 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? OK, Brian, I invite you to join us now. It's a big question for me. And he found some beer and wine-- that was a bit surprising. And that's what I get into in detail in the book. 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. If they've been doing this, as you suggest, for 2,000 years, nearly, what makes you think that a few ancient historians are going to turn that aircraft carrier around? Richard Evans Schultes and the Search for Ayahuasca 17 days ago Plants of the Gods: S3E10. I fully expect we will find it. But things that sound intensely powerful. And I've listened to the volunteers who've gone through these experiences. And again, it survives, I think, because of that state support for the better part of 2,000 years. If you are drawn to psychedelics, in my mind, it means you're probably drawn to contemplative mysticism. And then that's the word that Euripides uses, by the way. Those of you who don't know his name, he's a professor at the University of Amsterdam, an expert in Western esotericism. 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? But what I hear from people, including atheists, like Dina Bazer, who participated in these Hopkins NYU trials is that she felt like on her one and only dose of psilocybin that she was bathed in God's love. It 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. The actual key that I found time and again in looking at this literature and the data is what seems to be happening here is the cultivation of a near-death experience. Like, what is this all about? 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 Did the ancient Greeks use drugs to find God? 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. I'm going to come back to that idea of proof of concept. And please just call me Charlie. This event is entitled, Psychedelics, The Ancient Religion With No Name? CHARLES STANG: OK. 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 Brian, I wonder, maybe we should give the floor to you and ask you to speak about, what are the questions you think both ancient historians such as myself should be asking that we're not, and maybe what are the sorts of questions that people who aren't ancient historians but who are drawn to this evidence, to your narrative, and to the present and the future of religion, what sort of questions should they be asking regarding psychedelics? And I want to-- just like you have this hard evidence from Catalonia, then the question is how to interpret it. Nage ?] These mysteries had at their center a sacrament called kykeon, which offered a vision of the mysteries of life and death. . He's talking about kind of psychedelic wine. 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. The kind of mysticism I've always been attracted to, like the rule of Saint Benedict and the Trappist monks and the Cistercian monks. BRIAN MURARESKU: That's a good question. Now, that date is obviously very suggestive because that's precisely the time the Christians were establishing a beachhead in Rome. When Irenaeus is talking about [SPEAKING GREEK], love potions, again, we have no idea what the hell he's talking about. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. In fact, something I'm following up on now is the prospect of similar sites in the Crimea around the Black Sea, because there was also a Greek presence there. There's John Marco Allegro claiming that there was no Jesus, and this was just one big amanita muscaria cult. I would have been happy to find a spiked wine anywhere. 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. 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. 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. 283. 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. So I have my concerns about what's about to happen in Oregon and the regulation of psilocybin for therapeutic purposes. The most colorful theory of psychedelics in religion portrays the original Santa Claus as a shaman. CHARLES STANG: All right. So your presentation of early Christianity inclines heavily toward the Greek world. Just from reading Dioscorides and reading all the different texts, the past 12 years have absolutely transformed the way I think about wine. 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? So there's a whole slew of sites I want to test there. 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 I'm not. Wise not least because it is summer there, as he reminds me every time we have a Zoom meeting, which has been quite often in these past several months. So the mysteries of Dionysus are a bit more of a free-for-all than the mysteries of Eleusis. Maybe I'm afraid I'll take the psychedelic and I won't have what is reported in the literature from Hopkins and NYU. CHARLES STANG: Yeah. And keep in mind that we'll drop down into any one of these points more deeply. This is true. Like the wedding at Cana, which my synopsis of that event is a drunkard getting a bunch of drunk people even more drunk. Now, it's just an early indication and there's more testing to be done. [1] According to this theory, older adults try to maintain this continuity of lifestyle by adapting strategies that are connected to their past experiences. And nor did we think that a sanctuary would be one of the first things that we construct. What does that have to do with Christianity? This time around, we have a very special edition featuring Dr. Mark Plotkin and Brian C . A lot of Christianity, as you rightly point out, I mean, it was an Eastern phenomenon, all over the eastern Mediterranean. Wonderful, well, thank you. And so the big hunt for me was trying to find some of those psychedelic bits. 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. So I present this as proof of concept, and I heavily rely on the Gospel of John and the data from Italy because that's what was there. So it wasn't just a random place to find one of these spiked wines. I am excited . It's some kind of wine-based concoction, some kind of something that is throwing these people into ecstasy. Love potions, love charms, they're very common in the ancient. From about 1500 BC to the fourth century AD, it calls to the best and brightest of not just Athens but also Rome. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. I mean, so it was Greek. 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.
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