pagan continuity hypothesis

Because for many, many years, you know, Ruck's career takes a bit of a nosedive. What does God mean? What was being thrown into it? What's the importance of your abstention from psychedelics, given what is obvious interest. It was it was barley, water, and something else. I see a huge need and a demand for young religious clergy to begin taking a look at this stuff. What about all these early Christians themselves as essentially Jews? In fact, he found beer, wine, and mead all mixed together in a couple of different places. 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 . First act is your evidence for psychedelics among the so-called pagan religions in the ancient Mediterranean and Near East. You want to field questions in both those categories? For me, that's a question, and it will yield more questions. First, I will provide definitions for the terms "pagan", "Christian", So how exactly is this evidence of something relevant to Christianity in Rome or southern Italy more widely? There's John Marco Allegro claiming that there was no Jesus, and this was just one big amanita muscaria cult. I'm skeptical, Dr. Stang. And yet I talked to an atheist who has one experience with psilocybin and is immediately bathed in God's love. And so even within the New Testament you see little hints and clues that there was no such thing as only ordinary table wine. The continuity hypothesis of dreams suggests that the content of dreams are largely continuous with waking concepts and concerns of the dreamer. 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. 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. It's some kind of wine-based concoction, some kind of something that is throwing these people into ecstasy. What was the real religion of the ancient Greeks? And I think there are lots of reasons to believe that. So what have you learned about the Eleusinian mysteries in particular since Ruck took this up, and what has convinced you that Ruck's hypothesis holds water? She had the strange sense that every moment was an eternity of its own. We have some inscriptions. And he found some beer and wine-- that was a bit surprising. She joins me for most events and meetings. So that's from Burkert, a very sober scholar and the dean of all scholarship on Greek religion. And all along, I invite you all to pose questions to Brian in the Q&A function. I would expect we'd have ample evidence. Tim Ferriss is a self-experimenter and bestselling author, best known for The 4-Hour Workweek, which has been translated into 40+ languages. I do the same thing in the afterword at the very end of the book, where it's lots of, here's what we know. Eusebius, third into the fourth century, is also talking about them-- it's a great Greek word, [SPEAKING GREEK]. Well, let's get into it then. There's all kinds of reasons I haven't done it. 48:01 Brian's psychedelic experiences . And I think that we would behoove ourselves to incorporate, resuscitate, maybe, some of those techniques that seem to have been employed by the Greeks at Eleusis or by the Dionysians or some of these earliest Christians. It's not just Cana. 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. And we had a great chat, a very spirited chat about the mysteries and the psychedelic hypothesis. So the big question is, what kind of drug was this, if it was a drug? The idea of the truth shall set you free, right, [SPEAKING GREEK], in 8:32. So the Eastern Aegean. What, if any, was the relationship between this Greek sanctuary-- a very Greek sanctuary, by the way-- in Catalonia, to the mysteries of Eleusis? Part 1 Brian C. Muraresku: The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis and the Hallucinogenic Origins of Religion 3 days ago Plants of the Gods: S4E1. He has talked about the potential evidence for psychedelics in a Mithras liturgy. 55 This is very likely as it seems that the process had already started in the 4th century. I opened the speculation, Dr. Stang, that the Holy Grail itself could have been some kind of spiked concoction. And her best guess is that it was like this open access sanctuary. And besides that, young Brian, let's keep the mysteries mysteries. 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. President and CEO, First Southeast Financial Corp and First Federal Savings and Loan Director, Carolina First Bank and The South Financial Group I would have been happy to find a spiked wine anywhere. But please do know that we will forward all these questions to Brian so he will know the sorts of questions his work prompts. So if you don't think that you are literally consuming divine blood, what is the point of religion? You're not confident that the pope is suddenly going to issue an encyclical. 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. I fully expect we will find it. They're mixing potions. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. Books about pagan continuity hypothesis? And so if there is a place for psychedelics, I would think it would be in one of those sacred containers within monastic life, or pilgrims who visit one of these monastic centers, for example. CHARLES STANG: Yeah. And does it line up with the promise from John's gospel that anyone who drinks this becomes instantly immortal? 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. 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. And even in the New Testament, you'll see wine spiked with myrrh, for example, that's served to Jesus at his crucifixion. 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. 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. 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. So. The Immortality Key has its shortcomings. Now, you could draw the obvious conclusion. No one lived there. There's a good number of questions that are very curious why you are insisting on remaining a psychedelic virgin. 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. It's a big question for me. This limestone altar tested positive for cannabis and frankincense that was being burned, they think, in a very ritualistic way. BRIAN MURARESKU: Dr. Stang, an erudite introduction as ever. Because they talk about everything else that they take issue with. Just imagine, I have to live with me. In my previous posts on the continuity hypothesis . Rather, Christian beliefs were gradually incorporated into the pagan customs that already existed there. We don't have to look very hard to find that. So frankly, what happens during the Neolithic, we don't know, at least from a scientific vantage. 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. 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. 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". Read more about The Immortality Key by Brian Muraresku Making Sense by Sam Harris And I want to-- just like you have this hard evidence from Catalonia, then the question is how to interpret it. Hard archaeobotanical, archaeochemical data, I haven't seen it. 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. Here is how I propose we are to proceed. And she talks about kind of being born again, another promise from John's gospel. And Brian, once again, thank you so much. I know that that's a loaded phrase. Reviewed in the United States on January 29, 2023 And I'll just list them out quickly. 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 CHARLES STANG: Right. And there were moments when the sunlight would just break through. And I think there are so many sites and excavations and so many chalices that remain to be tested. BRIAN MURARESKU: I'm bringing more illumination. But I don't hold-- I don't hang my hat on that claim. 36:57 Drug-spiked wine . 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. BRIAN MURARESKU: I would say I've definitely experienced the power of the Christ and the Holy Spirit. I'm paraphrasing this one. 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. It's not the case in the second century. BRIAN MURARESKU: Now we're cooking with grease, Dr. Stang. Now, Carl Ruck from Boston University, much closer to home, however, took that invitation and tried to pursue this hypothesis. BRIAN MURARESKU: OK. 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. So, like, they're wonderstruck, or awestruck by their libations and their incense. Now is there any evidence for psychedelic use in ancient Egypt, and if not, do you have any theory as to why that's silent? So how to put this? 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. What's different about the Dionysian mysteries, and what evidence, direct or indirect, do we have about the wine of Dionysus being psychedelic? I would love to see these licensed, regulated, retreat centers be done in a way that is medically sound and scientifically rigorous. 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. Yeah. It seems entirely believable to me that we have a potion maker active near Pompeii. I mean, something of symbolic significance, something monumental. So imagine how many artifacts are just sitting in museums right now, waiting to be tested. And this is at a time when we're still hunting and gathering. And I don't know if it's a genuine mystical experience or mystical mimetic or some kind of psychological breakthrough. 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? So that's something else to look into. 18.3C: Continuity Theory. But we at least have, again, the indicia of evidence that something was happening there. 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. 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. I try to be careful to always land on a lawyer's feet and be very honest with you and everybody else about where this goes from here. And there were probably other Eleusises like that to the east. That's the promise in John's gospel, in John 6:54-55, that I quote in the book. But let me say at the outset that it is remarkably learned, full of great historical and philological detail. And nor did we think that a sanctuary would be one of the first things that we construct. 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? Those religions featured psychedelic beer and ceremonies lead by women . So Gobekli Tepe, for those who don't know, is this site in southern Turkey on the border with Syria. Many people see that as symbolic or allegorical or just a nice thing, which is not the case. When there's a clear tonal distinction, and an existing precedent for Christian modification to Pagan works, I don't see why you're resistant to the idea, and I'm curious . I know that's another loaded phrase. Those of you who don't know his name, he's a professor at the University of Amsterdam, an expert in Western esotericism. "@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! 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. And we know from the record that [SPEAKING GREEK] is described as being so crowded with gods that they were easier to find than men. 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? Wonderful, well, thank you. And I asked her openly if we could test some of the many, many containers that they have, some on display, and many more in repository there. Where you find the grain, you may have found ergot. But I mentioned that we've become friends because it is the prerogative of friends to ask hard questions. 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. But when it comes to that Sunday ritual, it just, whatever is happening today, it seems different from what may have motivated the earliest Christians, which leads me to very big questions. Not just in Italy, but as kind of the headquarters for the Mediterranean. . Interesting. And why, if you're right that the church has succeeded in suppressing a psychedelic sacrament and has been peddling instead, what you call a placebo, and that it has exercised a monstrous campaign of persecution against plant medicine and the women who have kept its knowledge alive, why are you still attached to this tradition? So it wasn't just a random place to find one of these spiked wines. Like savory, wormwood, blue tansy, balm, senna, coriander, germander, mint, sage, and thyme. And I'm trying to reconcile that. So let's start, then, the first act. So in the mountains and forests from Greece to Rome, including the Holy Land and Galilee. 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. I understand the appeal of that. And when I started to get closer into the historical period-- this is all prehistory. The Tim Ferriss Show. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. 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. 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. There were formula. It pushes back the archaeology on some of this material a full 12,000 years. There is evidence that has been either overlooked or perhaps intentionally suppressed. 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 apparently, the book is on order, so I can't speak to this directly, but the ancient Greek text that preserves this liturgy also preserves the formula, the ingredients of the eye ointment. 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. 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. It's not to say that there isn't evidence from Alexandria or Antioch. The most influential religious historian of the twentieth century, Huston Smith, once referred to it as the "best-kept secret" in history. And keep in mind that we'll drop down into any one of these points more deeply. 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. 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. Jerry Brown wrote a good review that should be read to put the book in its proper place. would certainly appreciate. 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. The most colorful theory of psychedelics in religion portrays the original Santa Claus as a shaman. A rebirth into what? So we move now into ancient history, but solidly into the historical record, however uneven that historical record is. Certainly these early churchmen used whatever they could against the forms of Christian practice they disapproved of, especially those they categorized as Gnostic. I was satisfied with I give Brian Muraresku an "A" for enthusiasm, but I gave his book 2 stars. BRIAN MURARESKU: We can dip from both pies, Dr. Stang. That's our next event, and will be at least two more events to follow. But in Pompeii, for example, there's the villa of the mysteries, one of these really breathtaking finds that also survived the ravage of Mount Vesuvius. And what, if any, was the relationship between those ancient Greeks and the real religion of the earliest Christians, who might call the paleo-Christians. So don't feel like you have to go into great depth at this point. And much of the evidence that you've collected is kind of the northern half of the Mediterranean world. Because every time I think about ancient wine, I am now immediately thinking about wine that is spiked. CHARLES STANG: So that actually helps answer a question that's in the Q&A that was posed to me, which is why did I say I fully expect that we will find evidence for this? What about Jesus as a Jew? 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. We call it ego dissolution, things of that nature. So there's lots of interesting details here that filter through. I appreciate this. The question is, what will happen in the future. These sources suggest a much greater degree of continuity with pre-Christian values and practice than the writings of more . So thank you, all who have hung with us. 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. 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. And so the big hunt for me was trying to find some of those psychedelic bits. 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?

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