Two Reviews of The Immortality Key - Graham Hancock Thank you. I mean, that's obviously the big question, and what that means for the future of medicine and religion and society at large. So how to put this? And I look forward to talking about this event with you after the fact eventually over a beer. And when Houston says something like that, it grabs the attention of a young undergrad a bit to your south in Providence, Rhode Island, who was digging into Latin and Greek and wondering what the heck this was all about. To assess this hypothesis and, perhaps, to push it further, has required years of dogged and, at times, discouraging works in archives and archaeology. 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. 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? Now, I think you answered that last part. 8 "The winds, the sea . The Tim Ferriss Show - Transcripts After the first few chapters the author bogs down flogging the Pagan Continuity Hypothesis and exulting over his discovery of small scraps of evidence he found in a decade of research. 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. 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. But unfortunately, it doesn't connect it to Christianity. I would expect we'd have ample evidence. A combination of psychoactive plants, including opium, cannabis, and nightshade, along with the remains of reptiles and amphibians all steeped in wine, like a real witch's brew, uncovered in this house outside of Pompeii. 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. Books about pagan continuity hypothesis? 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. 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. IMDb is the world's most popular and authoritative source for movie, TV and celebrity content. The Continuity Hypothesis was put forward by John Bowlby (1953) as a critical effect of attachments in his development of Attachment Theory. And I think what the pharmaceutical industry can do is help to distribute this medicine. What Brian labels the religion with no name. So there's lots of interesting details here that filter through. So again, if there were an early psychedelic sacrament that was being suppressed, I'd expect that the suppressors would talk about it. You want to field questions in both those categories? Revolutionary Left Radio: Early Christianity: Psychedelics, Ancient Psychedelics Today: PTSF 35 (with Brian Muraresku) Griffithsfund.org There is evidence that has been either overlooked or perhaps intentionally suppressed. Richard Evans Schultes and the Search for Ayahuasca 17 days ago Plants of the Gods: S3E10. That's, just absurd. Now that doesn't mean, as Brian was saying, that then suggests that that's the norm Eucharist. An Exploration of Religion: An Interview with Brian Muraresku The Tim Ferriss Show - #535: General Stanley McChrystal Mast Thank you all for joining us, and I hope to see many of you later this month for our next event. Then I'll ask a series of questions that follow the course of his book, focusing on the different ancient religious traditions, the evidence for their psychedelic sacraments, and most importantly, whether and how the assembled evidence yields a coherent picture of the past. But I think the broader question of what's the reception to this among explicitly religious folk and religious leaders? Plants of the Gods: Hallucinogens, Healing, Culture and - Podchaser But we at least have, again, the indicia of evidence that something was happening there. Like savory, wormwood, blue tansy, balm, senna, coriander, germander, mint, sage, and thyme. I see a huge need and a demand for young religious clergy to begin taking a look at this stuff. So I have my concerns about what's about to happen in Oregon and the regulation of psilocybin for therapeutic purposes. What does God mean? CHARLES STANG: All right. Did the ancient Greeks use drugs to find God? I expect we will find it. And when we know so much about ancient wine and how very different it was from the wine of today, I mean, what can we say about the Eucharist if we're only looking at the texts? So I'll speak in language that you and our good colleague Greg [? Psychedelics Weekly - Prince Harry and Psychedelics, Proposed 40:15 Witches, drugs, and the Catholic Church . So I think this was a minority of early Christians. 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. And I don't know what that looks like. If they've been doing this, as you suggest, for 2,000 years, nearly, what makes you think that a few ancient historians are going to turn that aircraft carrier around? That they were what you call extreme beverages. And I don't know if it's a genuine mystical experience or mystical mimetic or some kind of psychological breakthrough. What's significant about these features for our piecing together the ancient religion with no name? The big question is, did any of these recipes, did any of this wine spiking actually make its way into some paleo-Christian ceremony. They were relevant to me in going down this rabbit hole. The pagan continuity hypothesis at the heart of this book made sense to me. So we move now into ancient history, but solidly into the historical record, however uneven that historical record is. And I think we're getting there. 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. I don't think we have found it. 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. And I wonder whether the former narrative serves the interests of the latter. Now, Carl Ruck from Boston University, much closer to home, however, took that invitation and tried to pursue this hypothesis. And I think we get hung up on the jargon. Tim Ferriss Show #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin: The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Psychedelics, and More. A lot of Christianity, as you rightly point out, I mean, it was an Eastern phenomenon, all over the eastern Mediterranean. But I think there's a decent scientific foothold to begin that work. So. The altar had been sitting in a museum in Israel since the 1960s and just hadn't been tested. 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. In my previous posts on the continuity hypothesis . And even in the New Testament, you'll see wine spiked with myrrh, for example, that's served to Jesus at his crucifixion. And according to Wasson, Hofmann, and Ruck, that barley was really a code word. So this is interesting. What the Greeks were actually saying there is that it was barley infected with ergot, which is this natural fungus that infects cereal crops. And for those of you who have found my line of questioning or just my general presence tedious, first of all, I fully appreciate that reaction. There were formula. "The Tim Ferriss Show" 646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin It was it was barley, water, and something else. Now, I have no idea where it goes from here, or if I'll take it myself. Copyright 2023 The President and Fellows of Harvard College, The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name. CHARLES STANG: OK. Now let's move into the Greek mystery. And maybe therein we do since the intimation of immortality. In fact, he found beer, wine, and mead all mixed together in a couple of different places. 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. So what do we know about those rituals? #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin The Eleusinian That event is already up on our website and open for registration. 44:48 Psychedelics and ancient cave art . These are famous figures to those of us who study early Christianity. he goes out on a limb and says that black nightshade actually causes [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], which is not unpleasant visions, i.e. So, although, I mean, and that actually, I'd like to come back to that, the notion of the, that not just the pagan continuity hypothesis, but the mystery continuity hypothesis through the Vatican. Brian's thesis, that of the Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, was explored by Alexander Hislop in his "The Two Babylons", 1853, as a Protestant treatise in the spirit of Martin Luther as Alexander too interjects the Elusinian Mysteries. 32:57 Ancient languages and Brian's education . You can see that inscribed on a plaque in Saint Paul's monastery at Mount Athos in Greece. No, I think you-- this is why we're friends, Charlie. So that's something else to look into. The only reason I went to college was to study classics. He was greatly influenced by Sigmund Freud (1940) who viewed an infant's first relationship - usually with the mother - as "the prototype of all later love-relations". Biblical Entheogens: a Speculative Hypothesis - ResearchGate So welcome to the fourth event in our yearlong series on psychedelics and the future of religion, co-sponsored by the Esalen Institute, the Riverstyx Foundation, and the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines. But I'm pressing you because that's my job. It's not to say that there isn't evidence from Alexandria or Antioch. So it is already happening. BRIAN MURARESKU: Now we're cooking with grease, Dr. Stang. There's a moment in the book where you are excited about some hard evidence. So that, actually, is the key to the immortality key. And how can you reasonably expect the church to recognize a psychedelic Eucharist? When you start testing, you find things. And the quote you just read from Burkert, it's published by Harvard University Press in 1985 as Greek Religion. And all we know-- I mean, we can't decipher sequence by sequence what was happening. Not much. I was not going to put a book out there that was sensationalist. 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. And does it line up with the promise from John's gospel that anyone who drinks this becomes instantly immortal? But things that sound intensely powerful. 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. So let's start, then, the first act. It still leaves an even bigger if, Dr. Stang, is which one is psychedelic? All episodes of The Tim Ferriss Show - Chartable And we had a great chat, a very spirited chat about the mysteries and the psychedelic hypothesis. He co-writes that with Gordon Wasson and Albert Hofmann, who famously-- there it is, the three authors. I am so fortunate to have been selected to present my thesis, "Mythology and Psychedelics: Taking the Pagan Continuity Hypothesis a Step Further" at. McGovern also finds wine from Egypt, for example, in 3150 BC, wine that is mixed with a number of interesting ingredients. To be a Catholic is to believe that you are literally consuming the blood of Christ to become Christ. CHARLES STANG: OK, great. Origin of the Romanians - Wikipedia CHARLES STANG: OK, that is the big question. The Wanderer | Old English Poetry Project | Rutgers University But by and large, no, we don't really know. 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. 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. I see something that's happening to people. So what I think we have here in this ergtotized beer drink from Catalonia, Spain, and in this weird witch's brew from 79 AD in Pompeii, I describe it, until I see evidence otherwise, as some of the very first heart scientific data for the actual existence of actual spiked wine in classical antiquity, which I think is a really big point. Material evidence of a very strange potion, a drug, or a [SPEAKING GREEK]. These were Greek-- I've seen them referred to as Greek Vikings by Peter Kingsley, Vikings who came from Ionia. So how does Dionysian revelries get into this picture? I'm sure he knows this well, by this point. CHARLES STANG: Brian, I want to thank you for your time. Brendon Benz presents an alternative hypothesis to recent scholarship which has hypothesized that Israel consisted of geographical, economic . Maybe for those facing the end of life. Those of you who don't know his name, he's a professor at the University of Amsterdam, an expert in Western esotericism. Now I want to get to the questions, but one last question before we move to the discussion portion. Where does Western civilization come from? So the Eastern Aegean. Pagan Continuity and Christian Attitudes: When did Paganism End? Copyright 2023 President and Fellows of Harvard College. An actual spiked wine. So in the mountains and forests from Greece to Rome, including the Holy Land and Galilee. I might forward the proposition that I don't think the early church fathers were the best botanists. So Pompeii and its environs at the time were called [SPEAKING GREEK], which means great Greece. And she talks about the visions that transformed the way she thinks about herself. I appreciate this. And so I can see psychedelics being some kind of extra sacramental ministry that potentially could ease people at the end of life. 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. Is this only Marcus? Brought to you by I think the only big question is what the exact relationship was from a place like that over to Eleusis. They did not. And this is what I present to the world. 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. I think the wine certainly does. One attendee has asked, "How have religious leaders reacted so far to your book? So Plato, Pindar, Sophocles, all the way into Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, it's an important thing. That's the big question. And again, it survives, I think, because of that state support for the better part of 2,000 years. I'm skeptical, Dr. Stang. 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 . So what evidence can you provide for that claim? And Dennis, amongst others, calls that a signature Dionysian miracle. And what does this earliest history tell us about the earliest evidence for an ancient psychedelic religion? We have other textual evidence. 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. And part of me really wants to put all these pieces together before I dive in. Now, Mithras is another one of these mystery religions. These sources suggest a much greater degree of continuity with pre-Christian values and practice than the writings of more . So perhaps there's even more evidence. It seems entirely believable to me that we have a potion maker active near Pompeii. But what we do know about the wine of the time is that it was routinely mixed with plants and herbs and potentially fungi. The continuity hypothesis of dreams suggests that the content of dreams are largely continuous with waking concepts and concerns of the dreamer. Now, let's get started, Brian. 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? John H Elliott - Empires Of The Atlantic World.pdf And the second act, the same, but for what you call paleo-Christianity, the evidence for your suspicion that the Eucharist was originally a psychedelic sacrament. And so I don't think that psychedelics are coming to replace the Sunday Eucharist. And we know the mysteries were there. This event is entitled, Psychedelics, The Ancient Religion With No Name? That would require an entirely different kind of evidence. The continuity theory proposes that older adults maintain the same activities, behaviors, personalities, and relationships of the past. This is all secret. 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. But you will be consoled to know that someone else will be-- I will be there, but someone else will be leading that conversation. What's the importance of your abstention from psychedelics, given what is obvious interest. And the big question is, what is this thing doing there in the middle of nowhere? 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. He's been featured in Forbes, the Daily Beast, Big Think, and Vice. Maybe part of me is skeptical, right? What about Jesus as a Jew? You mentioned there were lots of dead ends, and there certainly were. Wonderful, well, thank you. They're mixing potions. . So the mysteries of Dionysus are a bit more of a free-for-all than the mysteries of Eleusis. 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 understand more papers are about to be published on this. 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 don't feel like you have to go into great depth at this point. They were mixed or fortified. And so even within the New Testament you see little hints and clues that there was no such thing as only ordinary table wine. 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. And let's start with our earliest evidence from the Stone Age and the Bronze Age. 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. At Cambridge University he worked in developmental biolo. I see it as-- well, OK, I'd see it as within a minority. And please just call me Charlie. Now-- and I think that we can probably concede that. OK, now, Brian, you've probably dealt with questions like this. But the next event in this series will happen sooner than that. And inside that beer was all kinds of vegetable matter, like wheat, oats, and sedge and lily and flax and various legumes. 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. CHARLES STANG: Thank you, Brian. CHARLES STANG: I do, too. So I spent 12 years looking for that data, eventually found it, of all places, in Catalonia in Spain in this 635-page monograph that was published in 2002 and for one reason or another-- probably because it was written in Catalan-- was not widely reported to the academic community and went largely ignored. 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. Which, if you think about it, is a very elegant idea. There's a good number of questions that are very curious why you are insisting on remaining a psychedelic virgin. CHARLES STANG: OK. David Wakefield - President - Wakefield Enterprises, LLC | LinkedIn What is it about that formula that captures for you the wisdom, the insight that is on offer in this ancient ritual, psychedelic or otherwise? You may have already noticed one such question-- not too hard. And keep in mind that we'll drop down into any one of these points more deeply. 283. And I think there are lots of reasons to believe that. And how do we-- when the pharmaceutical industry and when these retreat centers begin to open and begin to proliferate, how do we make this sacred? Joe Campbell puts it best that what we're after is an experience of being alive. 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? She had the strange sense that every moment was an eternity of its own. Now, the great scholar of Greek religion, Walter Burkert, you quote him as musing, once-- and I'm going to quote him-- he says, "it may rather be asked, even without the prospect of a certain answer, whether the basis of the mysteries, they were prehistoric drug rituals, some festival imp of immortality which, through the expansion of consciousness, seemed to guarantee some psychedelic beyond." Now, you could draw the obvious conclusion. From about 1500 BC to the fourth century AD, it calls to the best and brightest of not just Athens but also Rome. 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. A rebirth into what? And even Burkert, I think, calls it the most famous of the mystery rituals. Let me start with the view-- the version of it that I think is less persuasive. It was one of the early write-ups of the psilocybin studies coming out of Johns Hopkins. And then at some point they go inland. We have some inscriptions. First act is your evidence for psychedelics among the so-called pagan religions in the ancient Mediterranean and Near East. And Ruck, and you following Ruck, make much of this, suggesting maybe the Gnostics are pharmacologists of some kind. Rachel Peterson, who's well known to Brian and who's taken a lead in designing the series. So throughout the book, you make the point that ancient beer and wine are not like our beer and wine. I'd never thought before about how Christianity developed as an organized religion in the centuries after Jesus' murder. And I did not dare. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. Mona Sobhani, PhD (@monasobhaniphd) / Twitter So Dionysus is not the god of alcohol. Thank you. So whatever these [SPEAKING GREEK] libations incense were, the church fathers don't get into great detail about what may have been spiking them. You might find it in a cemetery in Mexico. 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. He draws on the theory of "pagan continuity," which holds that early Christianity adopted . So we're going down parallel paths here, and I feel we're caught between FDA-approved therapeutics and RFRA-protected sacraments, RFRA, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or what becomes of these kinds of substances in any kind of legal format-- which they're not legal at the moment, some would argue. 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? BRIAN MURARESKU: I look forward to it, Charlie. Because at my heart, I still consider myself a good Catholic boy. It's not just Cana. I mean, so Walter Burkert was part of the reason that kept me going on. Research inside the Church of Saint Faustina and Liberata Fig 1. And I wonder and I question how we can keep that and retain that for today. So let's start with one that is more contemporary. PDF The continuity between pagan and Christian cult - Scandinavia Just imagine, I have to live with me. Yeah. This time around, we have a very special edition featuring Dr. Mark Plotkin and Brian C . BRIAN MURARESKU: I'm bringing more illumination. A profound knowledge of visionary plants, herbs, and fungi passed from one generation to the next, ever since the Stone Age? 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 think psychedelics are just one piece of the puzzle. So it's hard for me to write this and talk about this without acknowledging the Jesuits who put me here. 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. I want to thank you for your candor. But what I see are potential and possibilities and things worthy of discussions like this. CHARLES STANG: Brian, I wonder if you could end by reflecting on the meaning of dying before you die.
