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. So there's a whole slew of sites I want to test there. And what does this earliest history tell us about the earliest evidence for an ancient psychedelic religion? Read more about The Immortality Key by Brian Muraresku Making Sense by Sam Harris 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. 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. 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. Others find it in different ways, but the common denominator seems to be one of these really well-curated near-death experiences. And I think there are so many sites and excavations and so many chalices that remain to be tested. It was the Jesuits who taught me Latin and 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. A profound knowledge of visionary plants, herbs, and fungi passed from one generation to the next, ever since the Stone Age? What's the importance of your abstention from psychedelics, given what is obvious interest. 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. I expect there will be. IMDb is the world's most popular and authoritative source for movie, TV and celebrity content. I imagine there are many more potion makers around than we typically recognize. This is all secret. So even from the very beginning, it wasn't just barley and water. 48:01 Brian's psychedelic experiences . But I don't understand how that provides any significant link to paleo-Christian practice. You mentioned, too, early churchmen, experts in heresies by the name of Irenaeus of Lyons and Hippolytus of Rome. And so I can see psychedelics being some kind of extra sacramental ministry that potentially could ease people at the end of life. And if it's one thing Catholicism does very, very well, it's contemplative mysticism. You may have already noticed one such question-- not too hard. CHARLES STANG: Yeah. 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. That to live on forever and ever, to live an everlasting life is not immortality. But by and large, no, we don't really know. I will ask Brian to describe how he came to write this remarkable book, and the years of sleuthing and studying that went into it. 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. 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. Now, I have no idea where it goes from here, or if I'll take it myself. The only reason I went to college was to study classics. Do the drugs, Dr. Stang? That's only after Constantine. And so that's what motivated my search here. Now, it doesn't have to be the Holy Grail that was there at the Last Supper, but when you think about the sacrament of wine that is at the center of the world's biggest religion of 2.5 billion people, the thing that Pope Francis says is essential for salvation, I mean, how can we orient our lives around something for which there is little to no physical data? First I'll give the floor to Brian to walk us into this remarkable book of his and the years of hard work that went into it, what drove him to do this. 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. 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. And I've listened to the volunteers who've gone through these experiences. 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. 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. A lot of Christianity, as you rightly point out, I mean, it was an Eastern phenomenon, all over the eastern Mediterranean. The pagan continuity hypothesis theorizes that when Christianity arrived in Greece around AD 49, it didn't suddenly replace the existing religion. 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. What's significant about these features for our piecing together the ancient religion with no name? You won't find it in many places other than that. But Egypt seems to not really be hugely relevant to the research. And I'm trying to reconcile that. And that's all I present it as, is wonderfully attractive and maybe even sexy circumstantial evidence for the potential use of a psychedelic sacrament amongst the earliest Christians. CHARLES STANG: All right. Its proponents maintain that the affable, plump old fellow associated with Christmas derives from the character of Arctic medical practitioners. The Immortality Key - David Bookstaber 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 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. I mean, this is what I want to do with some of my remaining days on this planet, is take a look at all these different theories. But curiously, it's evidence for a eye ointment which is supposed to induce visions and was used as part of a liturgy in the cult of Mithras. 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. And I think that's an important distinction to make. And to be quite honest, I'd never studied the ancient Greeks in Spain. It was a pilgrimage site. Continuity Questions - 36 Questions About Continuity - QuestionDB 1,672. But we at least have, again, the indicia of evidence that something was happening there. I understand the appeal of that. 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. So why do you think psychedelics are so significant that they might usher in a new Reformation? 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. 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. 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. So I think it's really interesting details here worth following up on. And the quote you just read from Burkert, it's published by Harvard University Press in 1985 as Greek Religion. If beer was there that long ago, what kind of beer was it? The Immortality Key: Book Overview (Brian Muraresku) 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. This book by Brian Muraresku, attempts to answer this question by delving into the history of ancient secret religions dating back thousands of years. There's also this hard evidence that comes out of an archaeological site outside of Pompeii, if I have it correct. 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. And so the big hunt for me was trying to find some of those psychedelic bits. We're going to get there very soon. 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. 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. He draws on the theory of "pagan continuity," which holds that early Christianity adopted . At Cambridge University he worked in developmental biolo. I know that's another loaded phrase. McGovern also finds wine from Egypt, for example, in 3150 BC, wine that is mixed with a number of interesting ingredients. 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. And the big question is, what is this thing doing there in the middle of nowhere? But it's not an ingested psychedelic. And I think sites like this have tended to be neglected in scholarship, or published in languages like Catalan, maybe Ukrainian, where it just doesn't filter through the academic community. General Stanley McChrystal Mastering Risk: A User's Guide | Brought to you by Kettle & Fire high quality, tasty, and conveniently packaged bone broths; Eight Sleep. But please do know that we will forward all these questions to Brian so he will know the sorts of questions his work prompts. And I feel like I accomplished that in the afterword to my book. She had the strange sense that every moment was an eternity of its own. The altar had been sitting in a museum in Israel since the 1960s and just hadn't been tested. Now that doesn't mean, as Brian was saying, that then suggests that that's the norm Eucharist. 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. 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 they were what you call extreme beverages. Find ratings and reviews for the newest movie and TV shows. That's all just fancy wordplay. CHARLES STANG: Thank you, Brian. 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. An actual spiked wine. BRIAN MURARESKU: We can dip from both pies, Dr. Stang. This is true. He's been featured in Forbes, the Daily Beast, Big Think, and Vice. He's talking about kind of psychedelic wine. 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. That also only occurs in John, another epithet of Dionysus. And this is at a time when we're still hunting and gathering. . CHARLES STANG: You know, Valentinus was almost elected bishop of Rome. That's the promise in John's gospel, in John 6:54-55, that I quote in the book. [texts-excerpt] penalty for cutting mangroves in floridaFREE EstimateFREE Estimate Research inside the Church of Saint Faustina and Liberata Fig 1. BRIAN MURARESKU: I'm bringing more illumination. 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. #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin The Eleusinian Maybe there's some residual fear that's been built up in me. That's just everlasting. 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. 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. That's how we get to Catalonia. Hard archaeobotanical, archaeochemical data, I haven't seen it. CHARLES STANG: OK. And that's a question equally for ancient historians and for contemporary seekers and/or good Catholics. I mean, I asked lots of big questions in the book, and I fully acknowledge that. And there were probably other Eleusises like that to the east. CHARLES STANG: Brian, I wonder if you could end by reflecting on the meaning of dying before you die. 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. OK, Brian, I invite you to join us now. Is taking all these disciplines, whether it's your discipline or archaeochemistry or hard core botany, biology, even psychopharmacology, putting it all together and taking a look at this mystery, this puzzle, using the lens of psychedelics as a lens, really, to investigate not just the past but the future and the mystery of human consciousness. But with what were they mixed, and to what effect? So whatever was happening there was important. The big question is, did any of these recipes, did any of this wine spiking actually make its way into some paleo-Christian ceremony. You become one with Christ by drinking that. BRIAN MURARESKU: Now we're cooking with grease, Dr. Stang. Including, all the way back to Gobekli Tepe, which is why I mentioned that when we first started chatting. From about 1500 BC to the fourth century AD, it calls to the best and brightest of not just Athens but also Rome. That's one narrative that I feel is a little sensational. 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 I don't know what that looks like. And I hear-- I sense that narrative in your book. 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? Pagan polemicists reversed the Biblical story of the Israelites' liberation from Egyptian bondage, portraying a negative image of Israelite origins and picturing them as misanthropes and atheists. So Brian, welcome. This event is entitled, Psychedelics, The Ancient Religion With No Name? No one lived there. 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? What I see is data that's been largely neglected, and I think what serves this as a discipline is just that. 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. I see it as-- well, OK, I'd see it as within a minority. And so even within the New Testament you see little hints and clues that there was no such thing as only ordinary table wine. That's our next event, and will be at least two more events to follow. So I'm trying to build the case-- and for some reason in my research, it kept coming back to Italy and Rome, which is why I focus on Hippolytus. Maybe there's a spark of the divine within. 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 he was actually going out and testing some of these ancient chalices. Where are the drugs? Because they talk about everything else that they take issue with. 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 . You obviously think these are powerful substances with profound effects that track with reality. Like, what is this all about? There was an absence of continuity in the direction of the colony as Newport made his frequent voyages to and . I see a huge need and a demand for young religious clergy to begin taking a look at this stuff. First, I will provide definitions for the terms "pagan", "Christian", Material evidence of a very strange potion, a drug, or a [SPEAKING GREEK]. Because for many, many years, you know, Ruck's career takes a bit of a nosedive. CHARLES STANG: OK. That's staying within the field of time. And all we know-- I mean, we can't decipher sequence by sequence what was happening. And so I don't think that psychedelics are coming to replace the Sunday Eucharist. I am so fortunate to have been selected to present my thesis, "Mythology and Psychedelics: Taking the Pagan Continuity Hypothesis a Step Further" at. So if you don't think that you are literally consuming divine blood, what is the point of religion? I appreciate this. 55 This is very likely as it seems that the process had already started in the 4th century. And I don't know if it's a genuine mystical experience or mystical mimetic or some kind of psychological breakthrough. David Wakefield - President - Wakefield Enterprises, LLC | LinkedIn It's funny to see that some of the first basilicas outside Rome are popping up here, and in and around Pompeii. 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. So now it's true that these heresy hunters show an interest in this love potion. He calls it a drug against grief in Greek, [SPEAKING GREEK]. And shouldn't we all be asking that question? Like savory, wormwood, blue tansy, balm, senna, coriander, germander, mint, sage, and thyme. That seems very believable, but there's nothing to suggest that the pharmacy or drug farm was serving Christians, or even that the potions produced were for ritual use. And you're right. 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. PDF The continuity between pagan and Christian cult - Scandinavia 283. And anyone who drinks this, [SPEAKING GREEK], Jesus says in Greek, you remain in me and I in you. And Dennis, amongst others, calls that a signature Dionysian miracle. President and CEO, First Southeast Financial Corp and First Federal Savings and Loan Director, Carolina First Bank and The South Financial Group On Monday, February 22, we will be hosting a panel discussion taking up the question what is psychedelic chaplaincy. 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. He has talked about the potential evidence for psychedelics in a Mithras liturgy. I fully expect we will find it. Plants of the Gods: Hallucinogens, Healing, Culture and - TopPodcast All that will be announced through our mailing list. And if there's historical precedent for it, all the more so. Plants of the Gods: Hallucinogens, Healing, Culture and - Podchaser He was wronged by individuals, allegedly. BRIAN MURARESKU: I'm asked this question, I would say, in pretty much every interview I've done since late September. Now, Brian managed to write this book while holding down a full time practice in international law based in Washington DC. Not in every single case, obviously. And there were moments when the sunlight would just break through. So again, that's February 22. There's all kinds of reasons I haven't done it. 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. Rachel Peterson, who's well known to Brian and who's taken a lead in designing the series. "The Tim Ferriss Show" 646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin So we move now into ancient history, but solidly into the historical record, however uneven that historical record is. To assess this hypothesis and, perhaps, to push it further, has required years of dogged and, at times, discouraging works in archives and archaeology. 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 . Just imagine, I have to live with me. 44:48 Psychedelics and ancient cave art . In this hypothesis, both widely accepted and widely criticized,11 'American' was synonymous with 'North American'. And I started reading the studies from Pat McGovern at the University of Pennsylvania. So it wasn't just a random place to find one of these spiked wines. Thank you. So what I think we have here in this ergtotized beer drink from Catalonia, Spain, and in this weird witch's brew from 79 AD in Pompeii, I describe it, until I see evidence otherwise, as some of the very first heart scientific data for the actual existence of actual spiked wine in classical antiquity, which I think is a really big point. I want to thank you for your candor. They were relevant to me in going down this rabbit hole. So the Eastern Aegean. So there's lots of interesting details here that filter through. Now, I've never done them myself, but I have talked to many, many people who've had experience with psychedelics. I'm trying to get him to speak in the series about that. The question is, what will happen in the future. 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. Others would argue that they are perfectly legal sacraments, at least in the Native American church with the use of peyote, or in the UDV or Santo Daime, I mean, ayahuasca does work in some syncretic Christian form, right? There's some suggestive language in the pyramid texts, in the Book of the Dead and things of this nature. 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". But I do want to push back a little bit on the elevation of this particular real estate in southern Italy. If you look at Dioscorides, for example, his Materia Medica, that's written in the first century AD around the same time that the Gospels themselves are being written. For me, that's a question, and it will yield more questions. But clearly, when you're thinking about ancient Egypt or elsewhere, there's definitely a funerary tradition. 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 Immortality Key - Book Review and Discussion - Were early - Reddit Brian is the author of a remarkable new book that has garnered a lot of attention and has sold a great many copies. 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. That's, just absurd. Oh, I hope I haven't offended you, Brian. I think the only big question is what the exact relationship was from a place like that over to Eleusis. And that's what I get into in detail in the book. Books about pagan continuity hypothesis? I'm paraphrasing this one. Because at my heart, I still consider myself a good Catholic boy. Are they rolling their eyes, or are you getting sort of secretive knowing nods of agreement? Maybe for those facing the end of life. The Gnostics did have continuity with paganism. Thank you, sir. 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. CHARLES STANG: OK, great. Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin The Eleusinian Mysteries 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.". But they charge Marcus specifically, not with a psychedelic Eucharist, but the use of a love potion. Here's the proof of concept. And besides that, young Brian, let's keep the mysteries mysteries. Here is how I propose we are to proceed. CHARLES STANG: All right. CHARLES STANG: OK. Now let's move into the Greek mystery. I was satisfied with I give Brian Muraresku an "A" for enthusiasm, but I gave his book 2 stars.