And I wonder whether the former narrative serves the interests of the latter. 1,672. An actual spiked wine. The kind of mysticism I've always been attracted to, like the rule of Saint Benedict and the Trappist monks and the Cistercian monks. There's all kinds of reasons I haven't done it. Things like fasting and sleep deprivation and tattooing and scarification and, et cetera, et cetera. [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 this is what I present to the world. Maybe part of me is skeptical, right? Now that doesn't mean, as Brian was saying, that then suggests that that's the norm Eucharist. Not because it's not there, because it hasn't been tested. And so I can see psychedelics being some kind of extra sacramental ministry that potentially could ease people at the end of life. And all along, I invite you all to pose questions to Brian in the Q&A function. Here's the proof of concept. I'm happy to argue about that. He decides to get people even more drunk. Several theories address the issue of the origin of the Romanians.The Romanian language descends from the Vulgar Latin dialects spoken in the Roman provinces north of the "Jireek Line" (a proposed notional line separating the predominantly Latin-speaking territories from the Greek-speaking lands in Southeastern Europe) in Late Antiquity.The theory of Daco-Roman continuity argues that the . Here is how I propose we are to proceed. Because what tends to happen in those experiences is a death and rebirth. He was wronged by individuals, allegedly. This an absolute masterclass on why you must know your identity and goals before forming a habit, what the best systems are for habit. I mean, I think the book makes it clear. 8th century BC from the Tel Arad shrine. And so that's what motivated my search here. And so in some of these psychedelic trials, under the right conditions, I do see genuine religious experiences. That would require an entirely different kind of evidence. I know that that's a loaded phrase. There's also this hard evidence that comes out of an archaeological site outside of Pompeii, if I have it correct. "@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! Now, I think you answered that last part. Its proponents maintain that the affable, plump old fellow associated with Christmas derives from the character of Arctic medical practitioners. 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 how exactly is this evidence of something relevant to Christianity in Rome or southern Italy more widely? 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. He calls it a drug against grief in Greek, [SPEAKING GREEK]. 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. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. Nage ?] 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." It's not to say that there isn't evidence from Alexandria or Antioch. So the big question is, what kind of drug was this, if it was a drug? And I did not dare. All right, so now, let's follow up with Dionysus, but let's see here. CHARLES STANG: OK. Now let's move into the Greek mystery. 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 Books about pagan continuity hypothesis? We look forward to hosting Chacruna's founder and executive director, Bia Labate, for a lecture on Monday, March 8. She found the remains of dog sacrifice, which is super interesting. I took this to Greg [? Nage ?] So I see-- you're moving back and forth between these two. So I point to that evidence as illustrative of the possibility that the Christians could, in fact, have gotten their hands on an actual wine. 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. The book was published by Saint Martin's Press in September 2020 and has generated a whirlwind of attention. In this hypothesis, both widely accepted and widely criticized,11 'American' was synonymous with 'North American'. 7:30 The three pillars to the work: the Eucharist as a continuation of the pharmako and Dionysian mysteries; the Pagan continuity theory; and the idea that through the mysteries "We can die before we die so that when we die we do not die" 13:00 What does "blood of Christ" actually mean; the implied and literal cannibalism You want to field questions in both those categories? 18.3C: Continuity Theory. Copyright 2023 President and Fellows of Harvard College. I know that's another loaded phrase. 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. 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. But in any case, Ruck had his career, well, savaged, in some sense, by the reaction to his daring to take this hypothesis seriously, this question seriously. 283. It was the Jesuits who taught me Latin and Greek. 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. In this way, the two traditions coexisted in a syncretic form for some time before . And considering the common background of modern religions (the Pagan Continuity hypothesis), any religious group who thinks they are chosen or correct are promoting a simplistic and ignorant view of our past. Now, it's just an early indication and there's more testing to be done. 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. And I feel like I accomplished that in the afterword to my book. And you suspect, therefore, that it might be a placebo, and you want the real thing. So. I mean, about 25 years ago, actually. I mean, in the absence of the actual data, that's my biggest question. And even Burkert, I think, calls it the most famous of the mystery rituals. 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 so fortunate to have been selected to present my thesis, "Mythology and Psychedelics: Taking the Pagan Continuity Hypothesis a Step Further" at. 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. And I think it's proof of concept-- just proof of concept-- for investing serious funding, and attention into the actual search for these kinds of potions. So this is the tradition, I can say with a straight face, that saved my life. So imagine how many artifacts are just sitting in museums right now, waiting to be tested. You might find it in a cemetery in Mexico. CHARLES STANG: Right. So, like, they're wonderstruck, or awestruck by their libations and their incense. I see a huge need and a demand for young religious clergy to begin taking a look at this stuff. 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. 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 . What's the importance of your abstention from psychedelics, given what is obvious interest. Thank you. 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. So there's lots of interesting details here that filter through. I'm sure he knows this well, by this point. I mean, the honest answer is not much. 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. And if it's one thing Catholicism does very, very well, it's contemplative mysticism. 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. Not just in Italy, but as kind of the headquarters for the Mediterranean. Lots of Greek artifacts, lots of Greek signifiers. There were formula. I'm happy to be proven wrong. I mean, I wish it were easier. "The Jews" are not after Ye. BRIAN MURARESKU: I wish I could answer that question. BRIAN MURARESKU:: It's a simple formula, Charlie. CHARLES STANG: We've really read Jesus through the lens of his Greek inheritors. Dogs, indicative of the Greek goddess Hecate, who, amongst other things was known as the [GREEK], the dog eater. That event is already up on our website and open for registration. I would have been happy to find a spiked wine anywhere. In my previous posts on the continuity hypothesis . But it's not an ingested psychedelic. So we not only didn't have the engineering know-how-- we used to think-- we didn't have even settled life to construct something like this. 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. Frankly, if you ask the world's leading archaeobotanists and archaeochemists, where's the spiked beer and where's the spiked wine, which I've been doing since about 2007, 2008, the resounding answer you'll get back from everybody is a resounding no. What about all these early Christians themselves as essentially Jews? 44:48 Psychedelics and ancient cave art . CHARLES STANG: OK, great. I don't know why it's happening now, but we're finally taking a look. Mona Sobhani, PhD Retweeted. So this is interesting. So I have my concerns about what's about to happen in Oregon and the regulation of psilocybin for therapeutic purposes. And I'm not even sure what that piece looks like or how big it is. Now-- and I think that we can probably concede that. If you die before you die, you won't die when you die. So why refrain? There's John Marco Allegro claiming that there was no Jesus, and this was just one big amanita muscaria cult. Then what was the Gospel of John, how did it interpret the Eucharist and market it, and so on. 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. 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. So I think this was a minority of early Christians. He draws on the theory of "pagan continuity," which holds that early Christianity adopted . Thank you for that. And there are legitimate scholars out there who say, because John wanted to paint Jesus in the light of Dionysus, present him as the second coming of this pagan God. In the first half, we'll cover topics ranging from the Eleusinian Mysteries, early Christianity, and the pagan continuity hypothesis to the work of philosopher and psychologist William James. The long and short of it is, in 1978 there was no hard scientific data to prove this one way or the other. 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. 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 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. 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. 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? The mysteries of Dionysus, a bit weirder, a bit more off the grid. So Dionysus is not the god of alcohol. Something else I include at the end of my book is that I don't think that whatever this was, this big if about a psychedelic Eucharist, I don't think this was a majority of the paleo-Christians. What about Jesus as a Jew? Not because it was brand new data. . 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 we know the mysteries were there. Thank you all for joining us, and I hope to see many of you later this month for our next event. BRIAN MURARESKU: I would say I've definitely experienced the power of the Christ and the Holy Spirit. I was not going to put a book out there that was sensationalist. 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. These mysteries had at their center a sacrament called kykeon, which offered a vision of the mysteries of life and death. let's take up your invitation and move from Dionysus to early Christianity. 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. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. First, I will provide definitions for the terms "pagan", "Christian", So why do you think psychedelics are so significant that they might usher in a new Reformation? If your history is even remotely correct, that would have ushered in a very different church, if Valentinus's own student Marcus and the Marcosians were involved in psychedelic rituals, then that was an early road not taken, let's say. And she happened to find it on psilocybin. And when you speak in that way, what I hear you saying is there is something going on. And I think there are so many sites and excavations and so many chalices that remain to be tested. Klaus Schmidt, who was with the German Archaeological Institute, called this a sanctuary and called these T-shaped pillars representations of gods. Read more 37 people found this helpful Helpful Report abuse Tfsiebs So much research! That's staying within the field of time. 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. The altar had been sitting in a museum in Israel since the 1960s and just hadn't been tested. We still have almost 700 with us. Others find it in different ways, but the common denominator seems to be one of these really well-curated near-death experiences. The universality of frontiers, however, made the hypothesis readily extendable to other parts of the globe. You obviously think these are powerful substances with profound effects that track with reality. There have been really dramatic studies from Hopkins and NYU about the ability of psilocybin at the end of life to curb things like depression, anxiety, and end of life distress. So don't feel like you have to go into great depth at this point. 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 the point being, the religion of brewing seems to pop up at the very beginning of civilization itself, or the very beginning of monumental engineering at this world's first sanctuary. Now, Mithras is another one of these mystery religions. The Gnostics did have continuity with paganism. 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? 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. Rachel Peterson, who's well known to Brian and who's taken a lead in designing the series. As much as we know about the mysteries of Eleusis. So I want to propose that we stage this play in two acts. Liked by Samuel Zuschlag. It was a pilgrimage site. 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. When Irenaeus is talking about [SPEAKING GREEK], love potions, again, we have no idea what the hell he's talking about. 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. But what we do know about the wine of the time is that it was routinely mixed with plants and herbs and potentially fungi. That is about the future rather than the ancient history. I think the wine certainly does. 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. And in the ancient world, wine was routinely referred to as a [SPEAKING GREEK], which is the Greek word for drug. 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". Which is a very weird thing today. That's our next event, and will be at least two more events to follow. Are they rolling their eyes, or are you getting sort of secretive knowing nods of agreement? Or maybe in palliative care. And inside that beer was all kinds of vegetable matter, like wheat, oats, and sedge and lily and flax and various legumes. 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. And Brian, it would be helpful for me to know whether you are more interested in questions that take up the ancient world or more that deal with this last issue, the sort of contemporary and the future. 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]. 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 So let's start, then, the first act. 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. To become truly immortal, Campbell talks about entering into a sense of eternity, which is the infinite present here and now. He co-writes that with Gordon Wasson and Albert Hofmann, who famously-- there it is, the three authors. Like in Israel. All rights reserved. I might forward the proposition that I don't think the early church fathers were the best botanists. And for some reason, I mean, I'd read that two or three times as an undergrad and just glossed over that line. Get personalized recommendations, and learn where to watch across hundreds of streaming providers. CHARLES STANG: OK. he goes out on a limb and says that black nightshade actually causes [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], which is not unpleasant visions, i.e. Now, let's get started, Brian. Why don't we turn the tables and ask you what questions you think need to be posed? 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. 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. There aren't any churches or basilicas, right, in the first three centuries, in this era we're calling paleo-Christianity. 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. 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 . Certainly these early churchmen used whatever they could against the forms of Christian practice they disapproved of, especially those they categorized as Gnostic. And shouldn't we all be asking that question? 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. He dared to ask this very question before the hypothesis that this Eleusinian sacrament was indeed a psychedelic, and am I right that it was Ruck's hypothesis that set you down this path all those many years ago at Brown? But the point being, if the Dionysian wine was psychedelic-- which I know is a big if-- I think the more important thing to show here in this pagan continuity hypothesis is that it's at least plausible that the earliest Christians would have at the very least read the Gospel of John and interpreted that paleo-Christian Eucharistic wine, in some communities, as a kind of Dionysian wine. First, the continuity of the offices must be seen in light of the change of institutional charges; they had lost their religious connotations and had become secular. This limestone altar tested positive for cannabis and frankincense that was being burned, they think, in a very ritualistic way. BRIAN MURARESKU: Now we're cooking with grease, Dr. Stang. If you are drawn to psychedelics, in my mind, it means you're probably drawn to contemplative mysticism. You know, it's an atheist using theological language to describe what happened to her. He's the god of wine. Psychedelics are a lens to investigate this stuff. Even a little bit before Gobekli Tepe, there was another site unearthed relatively recently in Israel, at the Rakefet cave. So the event happens, when all the wines run out, here comes Jesus, who's referred to in the Gospels as an [SPEAKING GREEK] in Greek, a drunkard. And I've listened to the volunteers who've gone through these experiences. 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. 55 This is very likely as it seems that the process had already started in the 4th century. I understand more papers are about to be published on this. 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. Richard Evans Schultes and the Search for Ayahuasca 17 days ago Plants of the Gods: S3E10. So when you take a step back, as you well know, there was a Hellenic presence all over the ancient Mediterranean. It's not the case in the second century. #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 I mean, lots of great questions worthy of further investigation. 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? CHARLES STANG: OK. 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." They found a tiny chalice this big, dated to the second century BC. In fact, he found beer, wine, and mead all mixed together in a couple of different places. And that's the mysteries of Dionysus. 13,000 years old. Read more about The Immortality Key by Brian Muraresku Making Sense by Sam Harris Eusebius, third into the fourth century, is also talking about them-- it's a great Greek word, [SPEAKING GREEK]. 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. They were relevant to me in going down this rabbit hole. So thank you, all who have hung with us. And if you're a good Christian or a good Catholic, and you're consuming that wine on any given Sunday, why are you doing that? A profound knowledge of visionary plants, herbs, and fungi passed from one generation to the next, ever since the Stone Age? Which, if you think about it, is a very elegant idea. I can't imagine that there were no Christians that availed themselves of this biotechnology, and I can't imagine-- it's entirely plausible to me that they would mix this biotechnology with the Eucharist. 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.