There's evidence of the mysteries of Dionysus before, during, and after the life of Jesus, it's worth pointing out. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. I mean, so it was Greek. So that's from Burkert, a very sober scholar and the dean of all scholarship on Greek religion. I'm going to stop asking my questions, although I have a million more, as you well know, and instead try to ventriloquist the questions that are coming through at quite a clip through the Q&A. 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. And when I started to get closer into the historical period-- this is all prehistory. You want to field questions in both those categories? 18.3C: Continuity Theory. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. And I look forward to talking about this event with you after the fact eventually over a beer. I'm not sure many have. Which turns out, it may be they were. Video: Psychedelics: The Ancient Religion with No Name? 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 fully expect we will find it. Now you're a good sport, Brian. But I do want to push back a little bit on the elevation of this particular real estate in southern Italy. I wonder if you're familiar with Wouter Hanegraaff at the University of Amsterdam. The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name 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. #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 by The Tim Ferriss Show 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. So can you reflect on the-- standing on the threshold of pharmaceutical companies taking control of this, how is that to be commended when the very people who have kept this alive would be pushed to the side in that move? And it was the Jesuits who encouraged me to always, always ask questions and never take anything at face value. CHARLES STANG: Brian, I wonder if you could end by reflecting on the meaning of dying before you die. Not just in Italy, but as kind of the headquarters for the Mediterranean. Read more about The Immortality Key by Brian Muraresku Making Sense by Sam Harris So what evidence can you provide for that claim? This is going to be a question that's back to the ancient world. Perhaps more generally, you could just talk about other traditions around the Mediterranean, North African, or, let's even say Judaism. 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. And at some point in my narrative, I do include mention of Gobekli Tepe, for example, which is essentially twice the age of Stonehenge. And I'm not even sure what that piece looks like or how big it is. John H Elliott - Empires Of The Atlantic World.pdf And so I don't know what a really authentic, a really historic-looking ritual that is equal parts sacred, but also, again, medically sound, scientifically rigorous, would look like. PDF Thesis-The Religion of Constantine I - University Of Ottawa 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. 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. 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 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. A rebirth into what? That there is no hard archaeobotanical, archaeochemical data for spiked beer, spiked wine. 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. And inside that beer was all kinds of vegetable matter, like wheat, oats, and sedge and lily and flax and various legumes. What's different about the Dionysian mysteries, and what evidence, direct or indirect, do we have about the wine of Dionysus being psychedelic? 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. We have an hour and a half together and I hope there will be time for Q&A and discussion. He decides to get people even more drunk. And now we have a working hypothesis and some data to suggest where we might be looking. And for some reason, I mean, I'd read that two or three times as an undergrad and just glossed over that line. Rupert Sheldrake, PhD, is a biologist and author best known for his hypothesis of morphic resonance. It was a pilgrimage site. So, I mean, my biggest question behind all of this is, as a good Catholic boy, is the Eucharist. And you're right. 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 I wonder and I question how we can keep that and retain that for today. And that that's how I-- and by not speculating more than we can about the mystical supper, if we follow the hypothesis that this is a big if for some early communities of Greek speakers, this is how I'm finding common ground with priests both Catholic and Orthodox and Protestants. 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. 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. Is this only Marcus? It draws attention to this material. So here's a question for you. These Native American church and the UDV, both some syncretic form of Christianity. 8 "The winds, the sea . Some number of people have asked about Egypt. 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. PDF The continuity between pagan and Christian cult - Scandinavia When you start testing, you find things. #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 We still have almost 700 with us. David Wakefield - President - Wakefield Enterprises, LLC | LinkedIn There aren't any churches or basilicas, right, in the first three centuries, in this era we're calling paleo-Christianity. 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. It's arguably not the case in the third century. 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. Reviewed in the United States on January 29, 2023 BRIAN MURARESKU: I'm asked this question, I would say, in pretty much every interview I've done since late September. And part of me really wants to put all these pieces together before I dive in. 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 . Now, Brian managed to write this book while holding down a full time practice in international law based in Washington DC. But maybe you could just say something about this community in Catalonia. This an absolute masterclass on why you must know your identity and goals before forming a habit, what the best systems are for habit. Research inside the Church of Saint Faustina and Liberata Fig 1. 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. Please materialize. 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 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. This limestone altar tested positive for cannabis and frankincense that was being burned, they think, in a very ritualistic way. I was not going to put a book out there that was sensationalist. That's how we get to Catalonia. And I wonder whether the former narrative serves the interests of the latter. 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 I don't know if it's a genuine mystical experience or mystical mimetic or some kind of psychological breakthrough. And we know the mysteries were there. 36:57 Drug-spiked wine . 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 the basic point being, as far as we can tell, beer and wine are routinely mixed with things that we don't do today. So I really follow the scholarship of Enriqueta Pons, who is the archaeologist on site there, at this Greek sanctuary that we're talking about in Catalonia, Mas Castellar des Pontos. So Pompeii and its environs at the time were called [SPEAKING GREEK], which means great Greece. Here's the big question. And the big question is, what is this thing doing there in the middle of nowhere? It's not just Cana. We know that at the time of Jesus, before, during, and after, there were recipes floating around. And her best guess is that it was like this open access sanctuary. 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. Let's move to early Christian. 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. Tim Ferriss is a self-experimenter and bestselling author, best known for The 4-Hour Workweek, which has been translated into 40+ languages. Now I want to get to the questions, but one last question before we move to the discussion portion. Did the Early Church Use Psychedelics? - Substack 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? You might find it in a cemetery in Mexico. In fact, he found beer, wine, and mead all mixed together in a couple of different places. This time around, we have a very special edition featuring Dr. Mark Plotkin and Brian C . So the Eastern Aegean. So I was obsessed with this stuff from the moment I picked up an article in The Economist called the God Pill back in 2007. I know that that's a loaded phrase. That's the big question. It is my great pleasure to welcome Brian Muraresku to the Center. What was the real religion of the ancient Greeks? The fact that the Vatican sits in Rome today is not an accident, I think, is the shortest way to answer that. I see something that's happening to people. 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 was the question for me. On Monday, February 22, we will be hosting a panel discussion taking up the question what is psychedelic chaplaincy. I've no doubt that Brian has unearthed and collected a remarkable body of evidence, but evidence of what, exactly? First act is your evidence for psychedelics among the so-called pagan religions in the ancient Mediterranean and Near East. So let's talk about the future of religion, and specifically the future of Roman Catholicism. So in the mountains and forests from Greece to Rome, including the Holy Land and Galilee. BRIAN MURARESKU:: It's a simple formula, Charlie. CHARLES STANG: OK, great. And I started reading the studies from Pat McGovern at the University of Pennsylvania. 40:15 Witches, drugs, and the Catholic Church . Did the ancient Greeks use drugs to find God? So I think this was a minority of early Christians. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. So it's hard for me to write this and talk about this without acknowledging the Jesuits who put me here. 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 altar had been sitting in a museum in Israel since the 1960s and just hadn't been tested. What, if any, was the relationship between this Greek sanctuary-- a very Greek sanctuary, by the way-- in Catalonia, to the mysteries of Eleusis?