BRIAN MURARESKU: Great question. You obviously think these are powerful substances with profound effects that track with reality. 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. I was not going to put a book out there that was sensationalist. But it's not an ingested psychedelic. CHARLES STANG: Well, Mr, Muraresku, you are hedging your bets here in a way that you do not necessarily hedge your bets in the book. 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. 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. This time around, we have a very special edition featuring Dr. Mark Plotkin and Brian C . 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. Is this only Marcus? That event is already up on our website and open for registration. It's interesting that Saint Ignatius of Antioch, in the beginning of the second century AD, refers to the wine of the Eucharist as the [SPEAKING GREEK], the drug of immortality. McGovern also finds wine from Egypt, for example, in 3150 BC, wine that is mixed with a number of interesting ingredients. This time, tonight I'll say that it's just not my time yet. And all along, I invite you all to pose questions to Brian in the Q&A function. 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. So Gobekli Tepe, for those who don't know, is this site in southern Turkey on the border with Syria. Is there a smoking gun? 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 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. Now, Brian managed to write this book while holding down a full time practice in international law based in Washington DC. Nage ?] And I want to say to those who are still assembled here that I'm terribly sorry that we can't get to all your questions. Let's move to early Christian. At Cambridge University he worked in developmental biolo. 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 when I started to get closer into the historical period-- this is all prehistory. 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. In the afterword, you champion the fact that we stand on the cusp of a new era of psychedelics precisely because they can be synthesized and administered safely in pill form, back to The Economist article "The God Pill". Brian launched the instant bestseller on the Joe Rogan Experience, and has now appeared on CNN, NPR, Sirius XM, Goop-- I don't even know what that is-- and The Weekly Dish with Andrew Sullivan. Tim Ferriss Show #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin: The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Psychedelics, and More. 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." That is, by giving, by even floating the possibility of this kind of-- at times, what seems like a Dan Brown sort of story, like, oh my god, there's a whole history of Christianity that's been suppressed-- draws attention, but the real point is actually that you're not really certain about the story, but you're certain is that we need to be more attentive to this evidence and to assess it soberly. 474, ?] 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. 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. 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? Now, I've had experiences outside the Eucharist that resonate with me. They were relevant to me in going down this rabbit hole. 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? 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? And very famous passages, by the way, that should be familiar to most New Testament readers. All episodes of The Tim Ferriss Show - Chartable 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. So I see-- you're moving back and forth between these two. Two Reviews of The Immortality Key - Graham Hancock So you were unable to test the vessels on site in Eleusis, which is what led you to, if I have this argument right, to Greek colonies around the Mediterranean. I imagine there are many more potion makers around than we typically recognize. The Tim Ferriss Show Podcast | Free Listening on Podbean App Let me start with the view-- the version of it that I think is less persuasive. Now, you could draw the obvious conclusion. I appreciate this. And there you also found mortars that were tested and also tested positive for evidence of brewing. But I want to ask you to reflect on the broader narrative that you're painting, because I've heard you speak in two ways about the significance of this work. The idea of the truth shall set you free, right, [SPEAKING GREEK], in 8:32. So what do we know about those rituals? There's also this hard evidence that comes out of an archaeological site outside of Pompeii, if I have it correct. These sources suggest a much greater degree of continuity with pre-Christian values and practice than the writings of more . I understand the appeal of that. 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]. The phrasing used in the book and by others is "the pagan continuity hypothesis". But by and large, no, we don't really know. Video: Psychedelics: The Ancient Religion with No Name? And not least because if I were to do it, I'd like to do so in a deeply sacred ritual. 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. 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. For me, that's a question, and it will yield more questions. It's arguably not the case in the third century. Because what tends to happen in those experiences is a death and rebirth. I mean, something of symbolic significance, something monumental. Jerry Brown wrote a good review that should be read to put the book in its proper place. Brian is the author of a remarkable new book that has garnered a lot of attention and has sold a great many copies. And I did not dare. So my biggest question is, what kind of wine was it? So in the mountains and forests from Greece to Rome, including the Holy Land and Galilee. 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. And that's where oversight comes in handy. Those of you who don't know his name, he's a professor at the University of Amsterdam, an expert in Western esotericism. Nazanin Boniadi Because ergot is just very common. Not because it's not there, because it hasn't been tested. There aren't any churches or basilicas, right, in the first three centuries, in this era we're calling paleo-Christianity. He has talked about the potential evidence for psychedelics in a Mithras liturgy. And that's what I get into in detail in the book. would certainly appreciate. To become truly immortal, Campbell talks about entering into a sense of eternity, which is the infinite present here and now. So why the silence from the heresiologists on a psychedelic sacrament? A lot of Christianity, as you rightly point out, I mean, it was an Eastern phenomenon, all over the eastern Mediterranean. The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name So first of all, please tell us how it is you came to pursue this research to write this book, and highlight briefly what you think are its principal conclusions and their significance for our present and future. What the Greeks were actually saying there is that it was barley infected with ergot, which is this natural fungus that infects cereal crops. The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name 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". Dogs, indicative of the Greek goddess Hecate, who, amongst other things was known as the [GREEK], the dog eater. I might forward the proposition that I don't think the early church fathers were the best botanists. Again, if you're attracted to psychedelics, it's kind of an extreme thing, right? You're not confident that the pope is suddenly going to issue an encyclical. Where are the drugs? Maybe there's some residual fear that's been built up in me. Brought to you by GiveWell.org charity research and effective giving and 5-Bullet Friday, my very own email newsletter.Welcome to The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is usually my job to deconstruct world-class performers to tease out their routines, habits, et cetera that you can apply to your own life. And what we know about the wine of the time is that it was prized amongst other things not for its alcoholic content, but for its ability to induce madness. But I mentioned that we've become friends because it is the prerogative of friends to ask hard questions. 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. And what the FDA can do is make sure that they're doing it in a way that it's absolutely safe and efficacious. 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 psychedelics or not, I think it's the cultivation of that experience, which is the actual key. When you start testing, you find things. 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. And yet I talked to an atheist who has one experience with psilocybin and is immediately bathed in God's love. Are they rolling their eyes, or are you getting sort of secretive knowing nods of agreement? BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. 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. But even if they're telling the truth about this, even if it is accurate about Marcus that he used a love potion, a love potion isn't a Eucharist. #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin The Eleusinian 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. So this is the tradition, I can say with a straight face, that saved my life. Research inside the Church of Saint Faustina and Liberata Fig 1. BRIAN MURARESKU: I'm asked this question, I would say, in pretty much every interview I've done since late September. . Things like fasting and sleep deprivation and tattooing and scarification and, et cetera, et cetera. The Immortality Key: Book Overview (Brian Muraresku) I've no doubt that Brian has unearthed and collected a remarkable body of evidence, but evidence of what, exactly? What does it mean to die before dying? 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. That was the question for me. #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin The Eleusinian There are others claiming that there's drugs everywhere. I'm going to stop asking my questions, although I have a million more, as you well know, and instead try to ventriloquist the questions that are coming through at quite a clip through the Q&A. We have an hour and a half together and I hope there will be time for Q&A and discussion. And I wonder whether the former narrative serves the interests of the latter. I'd never thought before about how Christianity developed as an organized religion in the centuries after Jesus' murder. 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. I mean, the honest answer is not much. So how does Dionysian revelries get into this picture? "The Jews" are not after Ye. It's not to say that there isn't evidence from Alexandria or Antioch. Klaus Schmidt, who was with the German Archaeological Institute, called this a sanctuary and called these T-shaped pillars representations of gods. OK, Brian, I invite you to join us now. 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. I include that line for a reason. Some number of people have asked about Egypt. I don't think we have found it. The Religion has a Name: "Shamanism" - AKJournals Origin of the Romanians - Wikipedia And shouldn't we all be asking that question? So I'm not convinced that-- I think you're absolutely right that what this establishes is that Christians in southern Italy could have-- could have had access to the kinds of things that have been recovered from that drug farm, let's call it. Continuity Questions - 36 Questions About Continuity - QuestionDB But I don't understand how that provides any significant link to paleo-Christian practice. What Brian labels the religion with no name. 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? It seems to me, though, that the intensity and the potency of the psychedelic experience is of an order of magnitude different than what I may have experienced through the Eucharist. Psychedelics Weekly - Prince Harry and Psychedelics, Proposed Rachel Peterson, who's well known to Brian and who's taken a lead in designing the series. 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. And much of the evidence that you've collected is kind of the northern half of the Mediterranean world. Many people see that as symbolic or allegorical or just a nice thing, which is not the case. And my favorite line of the book is, "The lawyer in me won't sleep until that one chalice, that one container, that one vessel comes to light in an unquestionable Christian context.". All he says is that these women and Marcus are adding drugs seven times in a row into whatever potion this is they're mixing up. I wish that an ancient pharmacy had been preserved by Mount Vesuvius somewhere near Alexandria or even in upper Egypt or in Antioch or parts of Turkey. It's funny to see that some of the first basilicas outside Rome are popping up here, and in and around Pompeii. That's, just absurd. And there were probably other Eleusises like that to the east. And does it line up with the promise from John's gospel that anyone who drinks this becomes instantly immortal? The answer seems to be connected to psychedelic drugs. So there's a whole slew of sites I want to test there. 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. 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. Copyright 2023 President and Fellows of Harvard College. 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? So the Eastern Aegean. And to be quite honest, I'd never studied the ancient Greeks in Spain. 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? So I really follow the scholarship of Enriqueta Pons, who is the archaeologist on site there, at this Greek sanctuary that we're talking about in Catalonia, Mas Castellar des Pontos. Like savory, wormwood, blue tansy, balm, senna, coriander, germander, mint, sage, and thyme. CHARLES STANG: We've really read Jesus through the lens of his Greek inheritors. And we had a great chat, a very spirited chat about the mysteries and the psychedelic hypothesis. And what you're referring to is-- and how I begin the book is this beautiful Greek phrase, [SPEAKING GREEK]. And I offer psychedelics as one of those archaic techniques of ecstasy that seems to have been relevant and meaningful to our ancestors. But what I see are potential and possibilities and things worthy of discussions like this. 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. I'm trying to get him to speak in the series about that. [texts-excerpt] penalty for cutting mangroves in floridaFREE EstimateFREE Estimate I expect we will find it. Now, Carl Ruck from Boston University, much closer to home, however, took that invitation and tried to pursue this hypothesis. But the next event in this series will happen sooner than that. I'm happy to be proven wrong. And the truth is that this is a project that goes well beyond ancient history, because Brian is convinced that what he has uncovered has profound implications for the future of religion, and specifically, the future of his own religion, Roman Catholicism. And she happened to find it on psilocybin. I wish the church fathers were better botanists and would rail against the specific pharmacopeia. We call it ego dissolution, things of that nature. 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. The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark There have been breakthroughs, too, which no doubt kept Brian going despite some skepticism from the academy, to say the least. You may have already noticed one such question-- not too hard. So whatever was happening there was important. What does God mean? And I want to ask you about specifically the Eleusinian mysteries, centered around the goddesses Demeter and Persephone. And I want to-- just like you have this hard evidence from Catalonia, then the question is how to interpret it. Psychedelics Today: Mark Plotkin - Bio-Cultural Conservation of the Amazon. The Immortality Key - Book Review and Discussion - Were early - Reddit And if it's one thing Catholicism does very, very well, it's contemplative mysticism. That's our next event, and will be at least two more events to follow. Biblical Entheogens: a Speculative Hypothesis - ResearchGate I see it as-- well, OK, I'd see it as within a minority. 36:57 Drug-spiked wine . BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. And I just happened to fall into that at the age of 14 thanks to the Jesuits, and just never left it behind. 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. 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 I think psychedelics are just one piece of the puzzle. It was it was barley, water, and something else. The Wanderer | Old English Poetry Project | Rutgers University It's something that goes from Homer all the way until the fall of the Roman Empire, over the course of well more than 1,000 years. So Brian, welcome. We're going to get there very soon. And what we find at this farmhouse is a sanctuary that Enriqueta Pons herself, the archaeologist who's been on site since 1990, she calls it some kind of sanctuary dedicated to the goddesses of the mysteries. 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. So I spent 12 years looking for that data, eventually found it, of all places, in Catalonia in Spain in this 635-page monograph that was published in 2002 and for one reason or another-- probably because it was written in Catalan-- was not widely reported to the academic community and went largely ignored. 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. What's different about the Dionysian mysteries, and what evidence, direct or indirect, do we have about the wine of Dionysus being psychedelic? 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 again, if there were an early psychedelic sacrament that was being suppressed, I'd expect that the suppressors would talk about it. 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 there is no hard archaeobotanical, archaeochemical data for spiked beer, spiked wine. 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. So let's start, then, the first act. PDF Thesis-The Religion of Constantine I - University Of Ottawa And in his book [? A profound knowledge of visionary plants, herbs, and fungi passed from one generation to the next, ever since the Stone Age? 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
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