So in the mountains and forests from Greece to Rome, including the Holy Land and Galilee. 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. And you find terracotta heads that could or could not be representative of Demeter and Persephone, the two goddesses to whom the mysteries of Eleusis were dedicated. Not because it was brand new data. 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. Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin: The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Psychedelics, and More | Tim Ferriss Show #646 So psychedelics or not, I think it's the cultivation of that experience, which is the actual key. And you're right. Let's move to early Christian. It's a big question for me. I know that that's a loaded phrase. Which, if you think about it, is a very elegant idea. And I'll just list them out quickly. So Brian, I wonder, maybe we should give the floor to you and ask you to speak about, what are the questions you think both ancient historians such as myself should be asking that we're not, and maybe what are the sorts of questions that people who aren't ancient historians but who are drawn to this evidence, to your narrative, and to the present and the future of religion, what sort of questions should they be asking regarding psychedelics? So why the silence from the heresiologists on a psychedelic sacrament? So I went fully down the rabbit hole. I mean, shouldn't everybody, shouldn't every Christian be wondering what kind of wine was on that table, or the tables of the earliest Christians? Now, I don't put too much weight into that. These sources suggest a much greater degree of continuity with pre-Christian values and practice than the writings of more . Just from reading Dioscorides and reading all the different texts, the past 12 years have absolutely transformed the way I think about wine. That's the big question. And I don't know what that looks like. 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. There he is. Those of you who don't know his name, he's a professor at the University of Amsterdam, an expert in Western esotericism. Yeah. 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. Now you're a good sport, Brian. Find ratings and reviews for the newest movie and TV shows. What the Greeks were actually saying there is that it was barley infected with ergot, which is this natural fungus that infects cereal crops. Rupert Sheldrake, PhD, is a biologist and author best known for his hypothesis of morphic resonance. Not just in Italy, but as kind of the headquarters for the Mediterranean. And I think oversight also comes in handy within organized religion. What Brian labels the religion with no name. And I'm not even sure what that piece looks like or how big it is. "@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! 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 what do we know about those rituals? That is about the future rather than the ancient history. Joe Campbell puts it best that what we're after is an experience of being alive. And what do you believe happens to you when you do that? But you go further still, suggesting that Jesus himself at the Last Supper might have administered psychedelic sacrament, that the original Eucharist was psychedelic. But I do want to push back a little bit on the elevation of this particular real estate in southern Italy. And even Burkert, I think, calls it the most famous of the mystery rituals. 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. Although she's open to testing, there was nothing there. I was satisfied with I give Brian Muraresku an "A" for enthusiasm, but I gave his book 2 stars. And so in the epilogue, I say we simply do not know the relationship between this site in Spain and Eleusis, nor do we know what was happening at-- it doesn't automatically mean that Eleusis was a psychedelic rite. What about all these early Christians themselves as essentially Jews? I'm trying to get him to speak in the series about that. And if the latter, do you think there's a good chance that religions will adopt psychedelics back into their rituals?". Because they talk about everything else that they take issue with. He decides to get people even more drunk. 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 I see-- you're moving back and forth between these two. But Egypt seems to not really be hugely relevant to the research. I mean, I asked lots of big questions in the book, and I fully acknowledge that. What I see is data that's been largely neglected, and I think what serves this as a discipline is just that. 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 . 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. 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. They were mixed or fortified. And it seems to me that if any of this is right, that whatever was happening in ancient Greece was a transformative experience for which a lot of thought and preparation went into. They linked the idea of witches to an imagined organized sect which was a danger to the Christian commonwealth. Its proponents maintain that the affable, plump old fellow associated with Christmas derives from the character of Arctic medical practitioners. 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. And the big question is, what is this thing doing there in the middle of nowhere? 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. But they charge Marcus specifically, not with a psychedelic Eucharist, but the use of a love potion. So let's talk about the future of religion, and specifically the future of Roman Catholicism. 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. Where you find the grain, you may have found ergot. I took this to Greg [? Rather, Christian beliefs were gradually incorporated into the pagan customs that already existed there. You know, it's an atheist using theological language to describe what happened to her. 8 "The winds, the sea . 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. 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? I understand more papers are about to be published on this. 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. 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 I imagine there are many more potion makers around than we typically recognize. The most influential religious historian of the twentieth century, Huston Smith, once referred to it as the "best-kept secret" in history. And please just call me Charlie. 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. So after the whole first half of the book-- well, wait a minute, Dr. Stang. And so the big question is what was happening there? Material evidence of a very strange potion, a drug, or a [SPEAKING GREEK]. The Immortality Key has its shortcomings. So I think it's really interesting details here worth following up on. And I think what the pharmaceutical industry can do is help to distribute this medicine. And so in some of these psychedelic trials, under the right conditions, I do see genuine religious experiences. And let's start with our earliest evidence from the Stone Age and the Bronze Age. 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. In May of last year, researchers published what they believe is the first archaeochemical data for the use of psychoactive drugs in some form of early Judaism. And what you're referring to is-- and how I begin the book is this beautiful Greek phrase, [SPEAKING GREEK]. And we know the mysteries were there. 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. 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 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. All that will be announced through our mailing list. And this is at a time when we're still hunting and gathering. What, if any, was the relationship between this Greek sanctuary-- a very Greek sanctuary, by the way-- in Catalonia, to the mysteries of Eleusis? Not in every single case, obviously. #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Lessons from Scholar Karen Armstrong, and Much More And yet I talked to an atheist who has one experience with psilocybin and is immediately bathed in God's love. [2] I mean, so Walter Burkert was part of the reason that kept me going on. And the reason I find that a worthy avenue of pursuit is because when you take a step back and look at the Greek of the Gospels, especially the Greek of John, which is super weird, what I see based on Dennis MacDonald's scholarship that you mentioned-- and others-- when you do the exegesis of John's gospel, there's just lots of vocabulary and lots of imagery that doesn't appear elsewhere. 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. We see lots of descriptions of this in the mystical literature with which you're very familiar. We have some inscriptions. And I got to say, there's not a heck of a lot of eye rolling, assuming people read my afterword and try to see how careful I am about delineating what is knowable and what is not and what this means for the future of religion. 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. These-- that-- Christians are spread out throughout the eastern Mediterranean, and there are many, many pockets of people practicing what we might call, let's just call it Christian mysticism of some kind. 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. BRIAN MURARESKU: Dr. Stang, an erudite introduction as ever. Now, I've never done them myself, but I have talked to many, many people who've had experience with psychedelics. Again, how did Christianity take hold in a world with such a rich mystical tradition? 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? We still have almost 700 with us. He's been featured in Forbes, the Daily Beast, Big Think, and Vice. But it's not an ingested psychedelic. Now I want to get to the questions, but one last question before we move to the discussion portion. And I describe that as somehow finding that key to immortality. That's one narrative that I feel is a little sensational. And so that opened a question for me. . would certainly appreciate. It was-- Eleusis was state-administered, a somewhat formal affair. At Cambridge University he worked in developmental biolo. And shouldn't we all be asking that question? Get personalized recommendations, and learn where to watch across hundreds of streaming providers. I don't know why it's happening now, but we're finally taking a look. 13,000 years old. And there were probably other Eleusises like that to the east. To be a Catholic is to believe that you are literally consuming the blood of Christ to become Christ. So it is already happening. That's the promise in John's gospel, in John 6:54-55, that I quote in the book. What was being thrown into it? 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. But it was not far from a well-known colony in [INAUDIBLE] that was founded by Phocians. Here's another one. His aim when he set out on this journey 12 years ago was to assess the validity of a rather old, but largely discredited hypothesis, namely, that some of the religions of the ancient Mediterranean, perhaps including Christianity, used a psychedelic sacrament to induce mystical experiences at the border of life and death, and that these psychedelic rituals were just the tip of the iceberg, signs of an even more ancient and pervasive religious practice going back many thousands of years. 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. 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. When Irenaeus is talking about [SPEAKING GREEK], love potions, again, we have no idea what the hell he's talking about. 18.3C: Continuity Theory. Now, what's curious about this is we usually have-- Egypt plays a rather outsized role in our sense of early Christianity because-- and other adjacent or contemporary religious and philosophical movements, because everything in Egypt is preserved better than anywhere else in the Mediterranean. They're mixing potions. And I want to-- just like you have this hard evidence from Catalonia, then the question is how to interpret it. BRIAN MURARESKU: I'm bringing more illumination. I really tried. Is this only Marcus? Do the drugs, Dr. Stang? I did go straight to [INAUDIBLE] Papangelli in Eleusis, and I went to the museum. And Hofmann famously discovers-- or synthesizes LSD from ergot in 1938. Who were the Saints? And I-- in my profession, we call this circumstantial, and I get it. Nage ?] OK-- maybe one of those ancient beers. Brought to you by Wealthfront high-yield savings account, Peloton Row premium rower for an efficient workout, and You Need A Budget cult-favorite money management app.. Rick Rubin is a nine-time GRAMMY-winning producer, one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world, and the most successful producer in any genre, according to Rolling Stone. And when you speak in that way, what I hear you saying is there is something going on. It draws attention to this material. And keep in mind that we'll drop down into any one of these points more deeply. Now we're getting somewhere. So throughout the book, you make the point that ancient beer and wine are not like our beer and wine. BRIAN MURARESKU: OK. But please do know that we will forward all these questions to Brian so he will know the sorts of questions his work prompts. Which is a very weird thing today. You obviously think these are powerful substances with profound effects that track with reality. I'm happy to be proven wrong. 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 how does Dionysian revelries get into this picture? But this clearly involved some kind of technical know-how and the ability to concoct these things that, in order to keep them safe and efficacious, would not have been very widespread, I don't think. CHARLES STANG: You know, Valentinus was almost elected bishop of Rome. So we move now into ancient history, but solidly into the historical record, however uneven that historical record is. The question is, what will happen in the future. The same Rome that circumstantially shows up, and south of Rome, where Constantine would build his basilicas in Naples and Capua later on. She found the remains of dog sacrifice, which is super interesting. What's different about the Dionysian mysteries, and what evidence, direct or indirect, do we have about the wine of Dionysus being 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. This is true. Now, that is part of your kind of interest in democratizing mysticism, but it also, curiously, cuts out the very people who have been preserving this tradition for centuries, namely, on your own account, this sort of invisible or barely visible lineage of women. The most colorful theory of psychedelics in religion portrays the original Santa Claus as a shaman. And how can you reasonably expect the church to recognize a psychedelic Eucharist? 44:48 Psychedelics and ancient cave art . 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. Maybe there's a spark of the divine within. And I don't know if it's a genuine mystical experience or mystical mimetic or some kind of psychological breakthrough. But with what were they mixed, and to what effect? You also find a Greek hearth inside this sanctuary. This limestone altar tested positive for cannabis and frankincense that was being burned, they think, in a very ritualistic way. She had the strange sense that every moment was an eternity of its own. I go out of my way, in both parts of the book, which, it's divided into the history of beer and the history of wine, essentially. 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. OK. Now let's pan back because, we have-- I want to wrap up my interrogation of you, which I've been pressing you, but I feel as if perhaps people joining me think I'm hostile to this hypothesis. 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. What's significant about these features for our piecing together the ancient religion with no name? So what evidence can you provide for that claim? I just sense a great deal of structure and thoughtfulness going into this experience. 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. So again, if there were an early psychedelic sacrament that was being suppressed, I'd expect that the suppressors would talk about it. So whatever was happening there was important. These are famous figures to those of us who study early Christianity.

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