So the big question is, what kind of drug was this, if it was a drug? And then at some point they go inland. 8th century BC from the Tel Arad shrine. BRIAN MURARESKU: It just happens to show up. So can you reflect on the-- standing on the threshold of pharmaceutical companies taking control of this, how is that to be commended when the very people who have kept this alive would be pushed to the side in that move? And all we know-- I mean, we can't decipher sequence by sequence what was happening. So there's a house preserved outside of Pompeii, preserved, like so much else, under the ash of Mount Vesuvius's eruption in the year 79 of the Common Era. And this is at a time when we're still hunting and gathering. BRIAN MURARESKU:: It's a simple formula, Charlie. Including, all the way back to Gobekli Tepe, which is why I mentioned that when we first started chatting. So at the very-- after the first half of the book is over, there's an epilogue, and I say, OK, here's the evidence. 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. To become truly immortal, Campbell talks about entering into a sense of eternity, which is the infinite present here and now. And so in some of these psychedelic trials, under the right conditions, I do see genuine religious experiences. let's take up your invitation and move from Dionysus to early Christianity. 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. BRIAN MURARESKU: We can dip from both pies, Dr. Stang. And if there's historical precedent for it, all the more so. And I just happened to fall into that at the age of 14 thanks to the Jesuits, and just never left it behind. I took this to Greg [? And let's start with our earliest evidence from the Stone Age and the Bronze Age. Amongst all the mystery religions, Eleusis survives. All that will be announced through our mailing list. We have an hour and a half together and I hope there will be time for Q&A and discussion. President and CEO, First Southeast Financial Corp and First Federal Savings and Loan Director, Carolina First Bank and The South Financial Group So I got a copy of it from the Library of Congress, started reading through, and there, in fact, I was reading about this incredible discovery from the '90s. What does God mean? Not much. 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 have some inscriptions. But I don't hold-- I don't hang my hat on that claim. Those religions featured psychedelic beer and ceremonies lead by women . Copyright 2023 President and Fellows of Harvard College. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. Did the potion at Eleusis change from generation to generation? CHARLES STANG: All right. Mona Sobhani, PhD Retweeted. Psychedelics Today: PTSF 35 (with Brian Muraresku) Griffithsfund.org It's funny to see that some of the first basilicas outside Rome are popping up here, and in and around Pompeii. And by the way, I'm not here trying to protect Christianity from the evidence of psychedelic use. And when you speak in that way, what I hear you saying is there is something going on. So we move now into ancient history, but solidly into the historical record, however uneven that historical record is. 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 to find dog sacrifice inside this Greek sanctuary alludes to this proto-witch, Hecate, the mother of Circe, who is mentioned in the same hymn to Demeter from the 8th, 7th century BC, as kind of the third of the goddesses to whom these mysteries were dedicated. I am excited . But with what were they mixed, and to what effect? Let me start with the view-- the version of it that I think is less persuasive. Please materialize. No, I think you-- this is why we're friends, Charlie. 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. I really tried. Again, how did Christianity take hold in a world with such a rich mystical tradition? I'm not sure many have. 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. And how can you reasonably expect the church to recognize a psychedelic Eucharist? 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. Reviewed in the United States on January 29, 2023 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. Research inside the Church of Saint Faustina and Liberata Fig 1. Get personalized recommendations, and learn where to watch across hundreds of streaming providers. 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: So in some sense, you're feeling almost envy for the experiences on psychedelics, which is to say you've never experienced the indwelling of Christ or the immediate knowledge of your immortality in the sacrament. 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. 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.". Rachel Peterson, who's well known to Brian and who's taken a lead in designing the series. There were formula. 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? 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. Again, if you're attracted to psychedelics, it's kind of an extreme thing, right? We see lots of descriptions of this in the mystical literature with which you're very familiar. I see something that's happening to people. 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 . Material evidence of a very strange potion, a drug, or a [SPEAKING GREEK]. And the big question for me was what was that something else? It was-- Eleusis was state-administered, a somewhat formal affair. And not least because if I were to do it, I'd like to do so in a deeply sacred ritual. Just imagine, I have to live with me. There's a moment in the book where you are excited about some hard evidence. The kind of mysticism I've always been attracted to, like the rule of Saint Benedict and the Trappist monks and the Cistercian monks. . I imagine there are many more potion makers around than we typically recognize. And at some point in my narrative, I do include mention of Gobekli Tepe, for example, which is essentially twice the age of Stonehenge. If the Dionysian one is psychedelic, does it really make its way into some kind of psychedelic Christianity? But I think the broader question of what's the reception to this among explicitly religious folk and religious leaders? Here's the proof of concept. 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. He was wronged by individuals, allegedly. CHARLES STANG: OK. These mysteries had at their center a sacrament called kykeon, which offered a vision of the mysteries of life and death. 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 . Things like fasting and sleep deprivation and tattooing and scarification and, et cetera, et cetera. Joe Campbell puts it best that what we're after is an experience of being alive. And Ruck, and you following Ruck, make much of this, suggesting maybe the Gnostics are pharmacologists of some kind. 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 . 101. 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. These Native American church and the UDV, both some syncretic form of Christianity. Here's the big question. And shouldn't we all be asking that question? And I think that that's the real question here. IMDb is the world's most popular and authoritative source for movie, TV and celebrity content. 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 . A rebirth into a new conception of the self, the self's relationship to things that are hard to define, like God. Brian's thesis, that of the Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, was explored by Alexander Hislop in his "The Two Babylons", 1853, as a Protestant treatise in the spirit of Martin Luther as Alexander too interjects the Elusinian Mysteries. "The Jews" are not after Ye. So I see-- you're moving back and forth between these two. So, like, they're wonderstruck, or awestruck by their libations and their incense. 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. I mean, so Walter Burkert was part of the reason that kept me going on. Nazanin Boniadi And in his book [? But things that sound intensely powerful. 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. Hard archaeobotanical, archaeochemical data, I haven't seen it. CHARLES STANG: All right. And that's what I get into in detail in the book. CHARLES STANG: Right. So the basic point being, as far as we can tell, beer and wine are routinely mixed with things that we don't do today. As much as we know about the mysteries of Eleusis. I appreciate this. That's, just absurd. 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." So. 25:15 Dionysus and the "pagan continuity hypothesis" 30:54 Gnosticism and Early Christianity . She had the strange sense that every moment was an eternity of its own. 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. BRIAN MURARESKU: Dr. Stang, an erudite introduction as ever. They're mixing potions. So Dionysus is not the god of alcohol. And if it's one thing Catholicism does very, very well, it's contemplative mysticism. And I don't know what that looks like. It seems entirely believable to me that we have a potion maker active near Pompeii. So whatever these [SPEAKING GREEK] libations incense were, the church fathers don't get into great detail about what may have been spiking them. 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. Now you're a good sport, Brian. It draws attention to this material. What the Greeks were actually saying there is that it was barley infected with ergot, which is this natural fungus that infects cereal crops. This limestone altar tested positive for cannabis and frankincense that was being burned, they think, in a very ritualistic way. #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 from The Tim Ferriss Show on Podchaser, aired Wednesday, 28th December 2022. Did the ancient Greeks use drugs to find God? That's staying within the field of time. According to Muraresku, this work, BOOK REVIEW 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?
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