CHARLES STANG: You know, Valentinus was almost elected bishop of Rome. In fact, something I'm following up on now is the prospect of similar sites in the Crimea around the Black Sea, because there was also a Greek presence there. So when Hippolytus is calling out the Marcosians, and specifically women, consecrating this alternative Eucharist in their alternative proto-mass, he uses the Greek word-- and we've talked about this before-- but he uses the Greek word [SPEAKING GREEK] seven times in a row, by the way, without specifying which drugs he's referring to. And I guess my biggest question, not necessarily for you, but the psychedelic community, for what it's worth, or those who are interested in this stuff is how do we make this experience sacred? 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? 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. 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. The fact that the Vatican sits in Rome today is not an accident, I think, is the shortest way to answer that. And that's not how it works today, and I don't think that's how it works in antiquity. #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Lessons from Scholar Karen Armstrong, and Much More from The Tim Ferriss Show on Podchaser, aired Wednesday, 28th December 2022. 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. I think the only big question is what the exact relationship was from a place like that over to Eleusis. This is true. So this is interesting. Now, here's-- let's tack away from hard, scientific, archaeobotanical evidence for a moment. 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. But clearly, when you're thinking about ancient Egypt or elsewhere, there's definitely a funerary tradition. Read more 37 people found this helpful Helpful Report abuse Tfsiebs So much research! And then was, in some sense, the norm, the original Eucharist, and that it was then suppressed by orthodox, institutional Christianity, who persecuted, especially the women who were the caretakers of this tradition. 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. So why refrain? 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 And I feel like I accomplished that in the afterword to my book. Perhaps more generally, you could just talk about other traditions around the Mediterranean, North African, or, let's even say Judaism. But unfortunately, it doesn't connect it to Christianity. And now we have a working hypothesis and some data to suggest where we might be looking. These mysteries had at their center a sacrament called kykeon, which offered a vision of the mysteries of life and death. Well, the reason I mention Hippolytus and Marcus and focus on that in my evidence is because there's evidence of the Valentinians, who influenced Marcus, in and around Rome. Now I want to get to the questions, but one last question before we move to the discussion portion. 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. Nage ?] What does it mean to die before dying? 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. There's no mistake in her mind that it was Greek. It was-- Eleusis was state-administered, a somewhat formal affair. They were mixed or fortified. Now I understand and I appreciate the pharmaceutical industry's ability to distribute this as medicine for those who are looking for alternatives, alternative treatments for depression and anxiety and PTSD and addiction and end of life distress. That's our next event, and will be at least two more events to follow. And there were probably other Eleusises like that to the east. There's John Marco Allegro claiming that there was no Jesus, and this was just one big amanita muscaria cult. If the Dionysian one is psychedelic, does it really make its way into some kind of psychedelic Christianity? He draws on the theory of "pagan continuity," which holds that early Christianity adopted . I mean, what-- my big question is, what can we say about the Eucharist-- and maybe it's just my weird lens, but what can we say about it definitively in the absence of the archaeochemstry or the archaeobotany? Here's another one. Now, it's just an early indication and there's more testing to be done. 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 . It is my great pleasure to welcome Brian Muraresku to the Center. I write it cognizant of the fact that the Eucharist doesn't work for many, many people. She found the remains of dog sacrifice, which is super interesting. I might forward the proposition that I don't think the early church fathers were the best botanists. And when I started to get closer into the historical period-- this is all prehistory. Like savory, wormwood, blue tansy, balm, senna, coriander, germander, mint, sage, and thyme. Joe Campbell puts it best that what we're after is an experience of being alive. And I describe that as somehow finding that key to immortality. [1] According to this theory, older adults try to maintain this continuity of lifestyle by adapting strategies that are connected to their past experiences. I mean, something of symbolic significance, something monumental. And inside that beer was all kinds of vegetable matter, like wheat, oats, and sedge and lily and flax and various legumes. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. CHARLES STANG: OK. 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. 48:01 Brian's psychedelic experiences . I know that that's a loaded phrase. Now, you could draw the obvious conclusion. He decides to get people even more drunk. You can see that inscribed on a plaque in Saint Paul's monastery at Mount Athos in Greece. 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, like, they're wonderstruck, or awestruck by their libations and their incense. So we move now into ancient history, but solidly into the historical record, however uneven that historical record is. And not least because if I were to do it, I'd like to do so in a deeply sacred ritual. 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. Now, let's get started, Brian. 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. Copyright 2023 President and Fellows of Harvard College. I imagine there are many more potion makers around than we typically recognize. And all we know-- I mean, we can't decipher sequence by sequence what was happening. To be a Catholic is to believe that you are literally consuming the blood of Christ to become Christ. BRIAN MURARESKU: We can dip from both pies, Dr. Stang. I appreciate this. 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. That's the big question. You know, it's an atheist using theological language to describe what happened to her. One, on mainland Greece from the Mycenaean period, 16th century BC, and the other about 800 years later in modern day Turkey, another ritual potion that seemed to have suggested some kind of concoction of beer, wine, and mead that was used to usher the king into the afterlife. You may have already noticed one such question-- not too hard. We look forward to hosting Chacruna's founder and executive director, Bia Labate, for a lecture on Monday, March 8. A rebirth into what? 101. That's how we get to Catalonia. Well, wonderful. Lots of Greek artifacts, lots of Greek signifiers. 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. That there is no hard archaeobotanical, archaeochemical data for spiked beer, spiked wine. That's just everlasting. There's all kinds of reasons I haven't done it. 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." That is about the future rather than the ancient history. You see an altar of Pentelic marble that could only have come from the Mount Pentelicus quarry in mainland Greece. There are others claiming that there's drugs everywhere. I'm skeptical, Dr. Stang. They are guaranteed an afterlife. I understand the appeal of that. 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. And her best guess is that it was like this open access sanctuary. I mean, lots of great questions worthy of further investigation. Yeah. I have a deep interest in mysticism, and I've had mystical experiences, which I don't think are very relevant. 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. Is there a smoking gun? CHARLES STANG: I have one more question about the pre-Christian story, and that has to do with that the other mystery religion you give such attention to. And I don't know if it's a genuine mystical experience or mystical mimetic or some kind of psychological breakthrough. Klaus Schmidt, who was with the German Archaeological Institute, called this a sanctuary and called these T-shaped pillars representations of gods. I see a huge need and a demand for young religious clergy to begin taking a look at this stuff. These were Greek-- I've seen them referred to as Greek Vikings by Peter Kingsley, Vikings who came from Ionia. So Gobekli Tepe, for those who don't know, is this site in southern Turkey on the border with Syria. That also only occurs in John, another epithet of Dionysus. I mean, in the absence of the actual data, that's my biggest question. And I'm not even sure what that piece looks like or how big it is. And we had a great chat, a very spirited chat about the mysteries and the psychedelic hypothesis. What Brian labels the religion with no name. So perhaps there's even more evidence. Now, I mentioned that Brian and I had become friends. This book by Brian Muraresku, attempts to answer this question by delving into the history of ancient secret religions dating back thousands of years. I'm happy to be proven wrong. To assess this hypothesis and, perhaps, to push it further, has required years of dogged and, at times, discouraging works in archives and archaeology. If you are drawn to psychedelics, in my mind, it means you're probably drawn to contemplative mysticism. Not because they just found that altar. And I'm happy to see we have over 800 people present for this conversation. Here's what we don't. What was the real religion of the ancient Greeks? . There aren't any churches or basilicas, right, in the first three centuries, in this era we're calling paleo-Christianity. There have been breakthroughs, too, which no doubt kept Brian going despite some skepticism from the academy, to say the least. 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. I mean, that's obviously the big question, and what that means for the future of medicine and religion and society at large. I would have been happy to find a spiked wine anywhere. 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 . So those are all possibly different questions to ask and answer. And you're right. Let's move to early Christian. OK, now, Brian, you've probably dealt with questions like this. Listen to #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, an episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, easily on Podbay - the best podcast player on the web. BRIAN MURARESKU: I would say I've definitely experienced the power of the Christ and the Holy Spirit. 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. 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 . An actual spiked wine. We have plays like the Bacchi from Euripides, where we can piece together some of this. Now we're getting somewhere. So this whole water to wine thing was out there. OK, Brian, I invite you to join us now. So it wasn't just a random place to find one of these spiked wines. So let's start, then, the first act. I mean, this really goes to my deep skepticism. Now that doesn't mean, as Brian was saying, that then suggests that that's the norm Eucharist. And in the ancient world, wine was routinely referred to as a [SPEAKING GREEK], which is the Greek word for drug. And she happened to find it on psilocybin. 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. 474, ?] Psychedelics Today: Mark Plotkin - Bio-Cultural Conservation of the Amazon. Now, I've had experiences outside the Eucharist that resonate with me. We know that at the time of Jesus, before, during, and after, there were recipes floating around. 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." The continuity between pagan and Christian cult nearby the archaeological area of Naquane in Capo di Ponte. You become one with Christ by drinking that. So I see-- you're moving back and forth between these two. I mean, the honest answer is not much. And as a lawyer, I know what is probative and what's circumstantial evidence, and I just-- I don't see it there. And she talks about kind of being born again, another promise from John's gospel. 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. And what does this earliest history tell us about the earliest evidence for an ancient psychedelic religion? The Continuity Hypothesis was put forward by John Bowlby (1953) as a critical effect of attachments in his development of Attachment Theory. I want to thank you for your candor. Interesting. Thank you all for joining us, and I hope to see many of you later this month for our next event. Brendon Benz presents an alternative hypothesis to recent scholarship which has hypothesized that Israel consisted of geographical, economic . So Brian, welcome. 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". 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 by the way, I'm not here trying to protect Christianity from the evidence of psychedelic use. 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. Certainly these early churchmen used whatever they could against the forms of Christian practice they disapproved of, especially those they categorized as Gnostic. OK-- maybe one of those ancient beers. Which is a very weird thing today. But please do know that we will forward all these questions to Brian so he will know the sorts of questions his work prompts. What about Jesus as a Jew? When Irenaeus is talking about [SPEAKING GREEK], love potions, again, we have no idea what the hell he's talking about. 55 This is very likely as it seems that the process had already started in the 4th century. And I think we're getting there. What does ergotized beer in Catalonia have anything to do with the Greek mysteries at Eleusis? 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? And I want to-- just like you have this hard evidence from Catalonia, then the question is how to interpret it. All right, so now, let's follow up with Dionysus, but let's see here. Like the wedding at Cana, which my synopsis of that event is a drunkard getting a bunch of drunk people even more drunk. I would love to see these licensed, regulated, retreat centers be done in a way that is medically sound and scientifically rigorous. These are famous figures to those of us who study early Christianity. 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 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? And that's what I get into in detail in the book. Little attempt has been made, however, to bridge the gap between \"pagan\" and \"Christian\" or to examine late antique, Christian attitudes toward sexuality and marriage from the viewpoint of the \"average\" Christian. 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 every time I think about ancient wine, I am now immediately thinking about wine that is spiked. 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. And there were gaps as well. 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.". It's funny to see that some of the first basilicas outside Rome are popping up here, and in and around Pompeii. For me, that's a question, and it will yield more questions. IMDb is the world's most popular and authoritative source for movie, TV and celebrity content. But we do know that something was happening. And what we know about the wine of the time is that it was prized amongst other things not for its alcoholic content, but for its ability to induce madness. Research inside the Church of Saint Faustina and Liberata Fig 1. So in the mountains and forests from Greece to Rome, including the Holy Land and Galilee. This event is entitled, Psychedelics, The Ancient Religion With No Name? We have an hour and a half together and I hope there will be time for Q&A and discussion. To become truly immortal, Campbell talks about entering into a sense of eternity, which is the infinite present here and 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. President and CEO, First Southeast Financial Corp and First Federal Savings and Loan Director, Carolina First Bank and The South Financial Group Where you find the grain, you may have found ergot. CHARLES STANG: OK. So thank you, all who have hung with us. And Dennis, amongst others, calls that a signature Dionysian miracle. CHARLES STANG: Thank you, Brian. 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. 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 what the FDA can do is make sure that they're doing it in a way that it's absolutely safe and efficacious. I think it's important you have made a distinction between what was Jesus doing at the Last Supper, as if we could ever find out. 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. So the Eastern Aegean. And you suspect, therefore, that it might be a placebo, and you want the real thing. Like in a retreat pilgrimage type center, or maybe within palliative care. Do you think that the Christians as a nascent cult adapted a highly effective psycho technology that was rattling . Church of the Saints Faustina and Liberata, view from the outside with the entrance enclosure, at "Sante" place, Capo di Ponte (Italy). Those of you who don't know his name, he's a professor at the University of Amsterdam, an expert in Western esotericism. 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. You're not confident that the pope is suddenly going to issue an encyclical. What the Greeks were actually saying there is that it was barley infected with ergot, which is this natural fungus that infects cereal crops. 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. If you die before you die, you won't die when you die. Books about pagan continuity hypothesis? On Monday, February 22, we will be hosting a panel discussion taking up the question what is psychedelic chaplaincy. What was the wine in the early Eucharist? I was satisfied with I give Brian Muraresku an "A" for enthusiasm, but I gave his book 2 stars. So let's talk about the future of religion, and specifically the future of Roman Catholicism. Then there's what were the earliest Christians doing with the Eucharist. Now, Brian managed to write this book while holding down a full time practice in international law based in Washington DC. BRIAN MURARESKU: OK. 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 . And according to Wasson, Hofmann, and Ruck, that barley was really a code word. So, I mean, my biggest question behind all of this is, as a good Catholic boy, is the Eucharist. Not because it's not there, because it hasn't been tested. 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? BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. CHARLES STANG: All right. We have other textual evidence. He comes to this research with a full suite of scholarly skills, including a deep knowledge of Greek and Latin as well as facility in a number of European languages, which became crucial for uncovering some rather obscure research in Catalan, and also for sweet-talking the gatekeepers of archives and archaeological sites. And Hofmann famously discovers-- or synthesizes LSD from ergot in 1938. 1,672. [2] As much as we know about the mysteries of Eleusis. 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.
Athenahealth Patient Portal Login,
Wilson Foundation Scholarship,
Who Is Brian Murphy Married To Collegehumor?,
Gampanin Ng Mga Babae At Lalaki Sa Tchambuli,
Manzano Mountains Turkey Hunting,
Articles P