And did the earliest Christians inherit the same secret tradition? So I present this as proof of concept, and I heavily rely on the Gospel of John and the data from Italy because that's what was there. And I think that's an important distinction to make. It is my great pleasure to welcome Brian Muraresku to the Center. You become one with Christ by drinking that. And so how far should this investigation go? "@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! I think the wine certainly does. But it was not far from a well-known colony in [INAUDIBLE] that was founded by Phocians. But let me say at the outset that it is remarkably learned, full of great historical and philological detail. I was not going to put a book out there that was sensationalist. 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. So the mysteries of Dionysus are a bit more of a free-for-all than the mysteries of Eleusis. This limestone altar tested positive for cannabis and frankincense that was being burned, they think, in a very ritualistic way. An Exploration of Religion: An Interview with Brian Muraresku Now, let's get started, Brian. Did the potion at Eleusis change from generation to generation? Well, let's get into it then. This notion in John 15:1, the notion of the true vine, for example, only occurs in John. That is my dog Xena. Dogs, indicative of the Greek goddess Hecate, who, amongst other things was known as the [GREEK], the dog eater. Who were the Saints? #649: Rick Rubin, Legendary Music Producer The Creative Act And there were gaps as well. 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 . Brian is the author of a remarkable new book that has garnered a lot of attention and has sold a great many copies. let's take up your invitation and move from Dionysus to early Christianity. So let's start, then, the first act. And I just happened to fall into that at the age of 14 thanks to the Jesuits, and just never left it behind. So somewhere between 1% and 49%. Where you find the grain, you may have found ergot. CHARLES STANG: OK, that is the big question. So when you take a step back, as you well know, there was a Hellenic presence all over the ancient Mediterranean. So there's lots of interesting details here that filter through. Biblical Entheogens: a Speculative Hypothesis - ResearchGate 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? 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. BRIAN MURARESKU: Good one. 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 have an hour and a half together and I hope there will be time for Q&A and discussion. 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 to be quite honest, I'd never studied the ancient Greeks in Spain. So those are all possibly different questions to ask and answer. Amongst all the mystery religions, Eleusis survives. 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. The continuity theory proposes that older adults maintain the same activities, behaviors, personalities, and relationships of the past. Do the drugs, Dr. Stang? [2] 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. Because every time I think about ancient wine, I am now immediately thinking about wine that is spiked. She had the strange sense that every moment was an eternity of its own. There have been breakthroughs, too, which no doubt kept Brian going despite some skepticism from the academy, to say the least. This two-part discussion between Muraresku and Dr. Plotkin examines the role psychedelics have played in the development of Western civilization. [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, I think the book makes it clear. Love potions, love charms, they're very common in the ancient. Like the wedding at Cana, which my synopsis of that event is a drunkard getting a bunch of drunk people even more drunk. So perhaps there's even more evidence. 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. Even a little bit before Gobekli Tepe, there was another site unearthed relatively recently in Israel, at the Rakefet cave. And much of the evidence that you've collected is kind of the northern half of the Mediterranean world. 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. I'm paraphrasing this one. So the closer we get to the modern period, we're starting to find beer, wine mixed with interesting things. And nor did we think that a sanctuary would be one of the first things that we construct. 1,672. 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 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? I'll invite him to think about the future of religion in light of all this. 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. To this day I remain a psychedelic virgin quite proudly, and I spent the past 12 years, ever since that moment in 2007, researching what Houston Smith, perhaps one of the most influential religious historians of the 20th century, would call the best kept secret in history. And if there's historical precedent for it, all the more so. Two Reviews of The Immortality Key - Graham Hancock The divine personage in whom this cult centered was the Magna Mater Deum who was conceived as the source of all life as well as the personification of all the powers of nature.\[Footnote:] Willoughby, Pagan Regeneration, p. 114.\ 7 She was the "Great Mother" not only "of all the gods," but of all men" as well. Those of you who don't know his name, he's a professor at the University of Amsterdam, an expert in Western esotericism. 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 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. They did not. What about all these early Christians themselves as essentially Jews? And I think there are so many sites and excavations and so many chalices that remain to be tested. There's a good number of questions that are very curious why you are insisting on remaining a psychedelic virgin. 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. So why the silence from the heresiologists on a psychedelic sacrament? Then I see the mysteries of Dionysus as kind of the Burning Man or the Woodstock of the ancient world. Thank you for that. BRIAN MURARESKU: I'm asked this question, I would say, in pretty much every interview I've done since late September. That's the big question. Do you think that by calling the Eucharist a placebo that you're likely to persuade them? PDF Thesis-The Religion of Constantine I - University Of Ottawa Samuel Zuschlag - Durham University - Charlotte, North - LinkedIn And maybe in these near-death experiences we begin to actually experience that at a visceral level. The question is, what will happen in the future. He was wronged by individuals, allegedly. #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin The - Chartable I understand the appeal of that. So in the mountains and forests from Greece to Rome, including the Holy Land and Galilee. 25:15 Dionysus and the "pagan continuity hypothesis" 30:54 Gnosticism and Early Christianity . That's the promise in John's gospel, in John 6:54-55, that I quote in the book. Tim Ferriss is a self-experimenter and bestselling author, best known for The 4-Hour Workweek, which has been translated into 40+ languages. It was the Jesuits who taught me Latin and Greek. And they found this site, along with others around the Mediterranean. And Dennis, amongst others, calls that a signature Dionysian miracle. And that's what I get into in detail in the book. This time, tonight I'll say that it's just not my time yet. 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. 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 throughout the book, you make the point that ancient beer and wine are not like our beer and wine. And if it's one thing Catholicism does very, very well, it's contemplative mysticism. 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. And I think we get hung up on the jargon. So it is already happening. Reviewed in the United States on January 29, 2023 It's not to say that there isn't evidence from Alexandria or Antioch. Which, again, what I see are small groups of people getting together to commune with the dead. Psychedelics are a lens to investigate this stuff. He's talking about kind of psychedelic wine. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. According to Muraresku, this work, BOOK REVIEW 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? Now, I've never done them myself, but I have talked to many, many people who've had experience with psychedelics. 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. I mean, about 25 years ago, actually. I mean, if Burkert was happy to speculate about psychedelics, I'm not sure why Ruck got the reception that he did in 1978 with their book The Road to Eleusis. So thank you, all who have hung with us. Because what tends to happen in those experiences is a death and rebirth. That there is no hard archaeobotanical, archaeochemical data for spiked beer, spiked wine. 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? Brought to you by GiveWell.org charity research and effective giving and 5-Bullet Friday, my very own email newsletter.Welcome to The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is usually my job to deconstruct world-class performers to tease out their routines, habits, et cetera that you can apply to your own life. They followed Platonic (and other Greeks) philosophy. There's all kinds of reasons I haven't done it. 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]. 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. And you suspect, therefore, that it might be a placebo, and you want the real thing. 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. Before the church banned their use, early Christians used - Substack Because ergot is just very common. 55 This is very likely as it seems that the process had already started in the 4th century. And yet I talked to an atheist who has one experience with psilocybin and is immediately bathed in God's love. I'm not sure where it falls. Which turns out, it may be they were. Not because it was brand new data. You take a board corporate finance attorney, you add in lots of childhood hours watching Indiana Jones, lots of law school hours reading Dan Brown, you put it all together and out pops The Immortality Key.

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