Show Plants of the Gods: Hallucinogens, Healing, Culture and Conservation podcast, Ep Plants of the Gods: S4E2. 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. It seems entirely believable to me that we have a potion maker active near Pompeii. So Brian, welcome. and he said, Brian, don't you dare. #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 So it's hard for me to write this and talk about this without acknowledging the Jesuits who put me here. This discussion on Febrary 1, 2021, between CSWR Director Charles Stang and Brian Muraresku about his new book, The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name,a groundbreaking dive into the role of psychedelics in the ancient Mediterranean world. 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. Rather, Christian beliefs were gradually incorporated into the pagan customs that already existed there. Now, I mentioned that Brian and I had become friends. 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. So we not only didn't have the engineering know-how-- we used to think-- we didn't have even settled life to construct something like this. They followed Platonic (and other Greeks) philosophy. I just sense a great deal of structure and thoughtfulness going into this experience. 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. It is my great pleasure to welcome Brian Muraresku to the Center. Now, I think you answered that last part. Others would argue that they are perfectly legal sacraments, at least in the Native American church with the use of peyote, or in the UDV or Santo Daime, I mean, ayahuasca does work in some syncretic Christian form, right? So here's a question for you. This is true. And anyone who drinks this, [SPEAKING GREEK], Jesus says in Greek, you remain in me and I in you. And I think that's an important distinction to make. [texts-excerpt] penalty for cutting mangroves in floridaFREE EstimateFREE Estimate That's all just fancy wordplay. If you die before you die, you won't die when you die. What's significant about these features for our piecing together the ancient religion with no name? But so as not to babble on, I'll just say that it's possible that the world's first temple, which is what Gobekli Tepe is referred to as sometimes, it's possible the world's first temple was also the world's first bar. OK-- maybe one of those ancient beers. Like savory, wormwood, blue tansy, balm, senna, coriander, germander, mint, sage, and thyme. Like the wedding at Cana, which my synopsis of that event is a drunkard getting a bunch of drunk people even more drunk. But it's not an ingested psychedelic. And so I do see an avenue, like I kind of obliquely mentioned, but I do think there's an avenue within organized religion and for people who dedicate their lives as religious professionals to ministry to perhaps take a look at this in places where it might work. He decides to get people even more drunk. CHARLES STANG: All right. So that's from Burkert, a very sober scholar and the dean of all scholarship on Greek religion. 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. What the Greeks were actually saying there is that it was barley infected with ergot, which is this natural fungus that infects cereal crops. Its proponents maintain that the affable, plump old fellow associated with Christmas derives from the character of Arctic medical practitioners. And so with a revised ancient history, in place Brian tacks back to the title of our series, Psychedelics and the Future of Religion. And I think we get hung up on the jargon. No, I think you-- this is why we're friends, Charlie. They did not. These mysteries had at their center a sacrament called kykeon, which offered a vision of the mysteries of life and death. Is this only Marcus? I'd never thought before about how Christianity developed as an organized religion in the centuries after Jesus' murder. The book proposes a history of religious ritualistic psychedelic use at least as old as the ancient Greek mystery religions, especially those starting in Eleusis and dating to roughly 2,000 BC. 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 nor did we think that a sanctuary would be one of the first things that we construct. So let's start, then, the first act. Even a little bit before Gobekli Tepe, there was another site unearthed relatively recently in Israel, at the Rakefet cave. So when you take a step back, as you well know, there was a Hellenic presence all over the ancient Mediterranean. But I think there's a decent scientific foothold to begin that work. Copyright 2023 The President and Fellows of Harvard College, The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name. So I'm not convinced that-- I think you're absolutely right that what this establishes is that Christians in southern Italy could have-- could have had access to the kinds of things that have been recovered from that drug farm, let's call it. 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. 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." [1] According to this theory, older adults try to maintain this continuity of lifestyle by adapting strategies that are connected to their past experiences. It's something that goes from Homer all the way until the fall of the Roman Empire, over the course of well more than 1,000 years. I mean, I think the book makes it clear. You mentioned there were lots of dead ends, and there certainly were. And then at some point they go inland. She had the strange sense that every moment was an eternity of its own. 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." And at some point in my narrative, I do include mention of Gobekli Tepe, for example, which is essentially twice the age of Stonehenge. Joe Campbell puts it best that what we're after is an experience of being alive. 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. I mean, so it was Greek. All right, so now, let's follow up with Dionysus, but let's see here. What's the wine? So there's a house preserved outside of Pompeii, preserved, like so much else, under the ash of Mount Vesuvius's eruption in the year 79 of the Common Era. Others find it in different ways, but the common denominator seems to be one of these really well-curated near-death experiences. 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 And I want to say that this question that we've been exploring the last half hour about what all this means for the present will be very much the topic of our next event on February 22, which is taking up the question of psychedelic chaplaincy. And then that's the word that Euripides uses, by the way. 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. I've no doubt that Brian has unearthed and collected a remarkable body of evidence, but evidence of what, exactly? 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. And let's start with our earliest evidence from the Stone Age and the Bronze Age. 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. Let's move to early Christian. Who were the Saints? Where does Western civilization come from? I am excited . And when you speak in that way, what I hear you saying is there is something going on. First act is your evidence for psychedelics among the so-called pagan religions in the ancient Mediterranean and Near East. I would love to see these licensed, regulated, retreat centers be done in a way that is medically sound and scientifically rigorous. You want to field questions in both those categories? 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. CHARLES STANG: Thank you, Brian. 101. It's really quite simple, Charlie. 36:57 Drug-spiked wine . Now I want to get to the questions, but one last question before we move to the discussion portion. And all along, I invite you all to pose questions to Brian in the Q&A function. It's not the case in the second century. I mean, in the absence of the actual data, that's my biggest question. Mona Sobhani, PhD Retweeted. You might find it in a cemetery in Mexico. It's arguably not the case in the third century. CHARLES STANG: Yeah. CHARLES STANG: Brian, I want to thank you for your time. And I think we're getting there. It's not to say that there isn't evidence from Alexandria or Antioch. Interesting. 474, ?] And maybe therein we do since the intimation of immortality. I mean, the honest answer is not much. And you find terracotta heads that could or could not be representative of Demeter and Persephone, the two goddesses to whom the mysteries of Eleusis were dedicated. And I think it's very important to be very honest with the reader and the audience about what we know and what we don't. Certainly these early churchmen used whatever they could against the forms of Christian practice they disapproved of, especially those they categorized as Gnostic. This book by Brian Muraresku, attempts to answer this question by delving into the history of ancient secret religions dating back thousands of years. That's the big question. 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. 18.3C: Continuity Theory. Although she's open to testing, there was nothing there. I took this to Greg [? 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. The big question is, did any of these recipes, did any of this wine spiking actually make its way into some paleo-Christian ceremony. 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? On Monday, February 22, we will be hosting a panel discussion taking up the question what is psychedelic chaplaincy. So, like, they're wonderstruck, or awestruck by their libations and their incense. So I think it's really interesting details here worth following up on. The mysteries of Dionysus, a bit weirder, a bit more off the grid. That also only occurs in John, another epithet of Dionysus. 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? Get personalized recommendations, and learn where to watch across hundreds of streaming providers. I expect we will find it. He was wronged by individuals, allegedly. Not because it's not there, because it hasn't been tested. The long and short of it is, in 1978 there was no hard scientific data to prove this one way or the other. 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. And if it only occurs in John, the big question is why. Material evidence of a very strange potion, a drug, or a [SPEAKING GREEK]. And so the big hunt for me was trying to find some of those psychedelic bits. And does it line up with the promise from John's gospel that anyone who drinks this becomes instantly immortal? It seems to me, though, that the intensity and the potency of the psychedelic experience is of an order of magnitude different than what I may have experienced through the Eucharist. 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. Or maybe in palliative care. Well, let's get into it then. The continuity theory proposes that older adults maintain the same activities, behaviors, personalities, and relationships of the past. Psychedelics Today: Mark Plotkin - Bio-Cultural Conservation of the Amazon. CHARLES STANG: OK, that is the big question. 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. A rebirth into what? And it was the Jesuits who encouraged me to always, always ask questions and never take anything at face value. Now, what's curious about this is we usually have-- Egypt plays a rather outsized role in our sense of early Christianity because-- and other adjacent or contemporary religious and philosophical movements, because everything in Egypt is preserved better than anywhere else in the Mediterranean. That is my dog Xena. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. The altar had been sitting in a museum in Israel since the 1960s and just hadn't been tested. In the same place in and around Pompeii, this is where Christianity is really finding its roots. 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. So again, if there were an early psychedelic sacrament that was being suppressed, I'd expect that the suppressors would talk about it. And I've listened to the volunteers who've gone through these experiences. Read more about The Immortality Key by Brian Muraresku Making Sense by Sam Harris He's joining us from Uruguay, where he has wisely chosen to spend his pandemic isolation. 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? 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. 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. 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 whatever was happening there was important. 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. Now, that date is obviously very suggestive because that's precisely the time the Christians were establishing a beachhead in Rome. Here's what we don't. A profound knowledge of visionary plants, herbs, and fungi passed from one generation to the next, ever since the Stone Age? And inside that beer was all kinds of vegetable matter, like wheat, oats, and sedge and lily and flax and various legumes. Now you're a good sport, Brian. So what evidence can you provide for that claim? He dared to ask this very question before the hypothesis that this Eleusinian sacrament was indeed a psychedelic, and am I right that it was Ruck's hypothesis that set you down this path all those many years ago at Brown? And the one thing that unites both of those worlds in this research called the pagan continuity hypothesis, the one thing we can bet on is the sacred language of Greek. I mean, something of symbolic significance, something monumental. If you are drawn to psychedelics, in my mind, it means you're probably drawn to contemplative mysticism. And even Burkert, I think, calls it the most famous of the mystery rituals. So your presentation of early Christianity inclines heavily toward the Greek world. Then there's what were the earliest Christians doing with the Eucharist. 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, I don't put too much weight into that. What was being thrown into it? And I just happened to fall into that at the age of 14 thanks to the Jesuits, and just never left it behind. Please materialize. What was the real religion of the ancient Greeks? But please do know that we will forward all these questions to Brian so he will know the sorts of questions his work prompts. And again, it survives, I think, because of that state support for the better part of 2,000 years. He's the god of wine. 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 . Where are the drugs? These sources suggest a much greater degree of continuity with pre-Christian values and practice than the writings of more . 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. There was an absence of continuity in the direction of the colony as Newport made his frequent voyages to and . I want to thank you for putting up with me and my questions. But what I hear from people, including atheists, like Dina Bazer, who participated in these Hopkins NYU trials is that she felt like on her one and only dose of psilocybin that she was bathed in God's love. In my previous posts on the continuity hypothesis . That's how we get to Catalonia. These were Greek-- I've seen them referred to as Greek Vikings by Peter Kingsley, Vikings who came from Ionia. General Stanley McChrystal Mastering Risk: A User's Guide | Brought to you by Kettle & Fire high quality, tasty, and conveniently packaged bone broths; Eight Sleep. #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 they charge Marcus specifically, not with a psychedelic Eucharist, but the use of a love potion. . When Irenaeus is talking about [SPEAKING GREEK], love potions, again, we have no idea what the hell he's talking about. So there's lots of interesting details here that filter through. So psychedelics or not, I think it's the cultivation of that experience, which is the actual key. So how exactly is this evidence of something relevant to Christianity in Rome or southern Italy more widely? What does God mean? They were relevant to me in going down this rabbit hole. And I, for one, look forward to a time when I can see him in person for a beer, ergotized beer or not, if he ever leaves Uruguay. Not much. These two accuse one Gnostic teacher named Marcus-- who is himself a student of the famous theologian Valentinus-- they accuse him of dabbling in pharmacological devilry. In the first half, we'll cover topics ranging from the Eleusinian Mysteries, early Christianity, and the pagan continuity hypothesis to the work of philosopher and psychologist William James. So the Eastern Aegean. Including, all the way back to Gobekli Tepe, which is why I mentioned that when we first started chatting. And so I cite a Pew poll, for example, that says something like 69% of American Catholics do not believe in transubstantiation, which is the defining dogma of the church, the idea that the bread and wine literally becomes the flesh and blood. I have a deep interest in mysticism, and I've had mystical experiences, which I don't think are very relevant.