And I describe that as somehow finding that key to immortality. And if the latter, do you think there's a good chance that religions will adopt psychedelics back into their rituals?". Its proponents maintain that the affable, plump old fellow associated with Christmas derives from the character of Arctic medical practitioners. And I feel like I accomplished that in the afterword to my book. 8th century BC from the Tel Arad shrine. 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? How does, in other words, how does religion sit with science? You might find it in a cemetery in Mexico. So back in 2012, archaeologists and chemists were scraping some of these giant limestone troughs, and out pops calcium oxalate, which is one of these biomarkers for the fermentation of brewing. So Gobekli Tepe, for those who don't know, is this site in southern Turkey on the border with Syria. It draws attention to this material. So psychedelics or not, I think it's the cultivation of that experience, which is the actual key. 13,000 years old. And that kind of invisible religion with no name, although brutally suppressed, managed to survive in Europe for many centuries and could potentially be revived today. CHARLES STANG: So that actually helps answer a question that's in the Q&A that was posed to me, which is why did I say I fully expect that we will find evidence for this? BRIAN MURARESKU: That's a good question. Love potions, love charms, they're very common in the ancient. She had the strange sense that every moment was an eternity of its own. 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. That to live on forever and ever, to live an everlasting life is not immortality. 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. 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. What Brian labels the religion with no name. The continuity theory proposes that older adults maintain the same activities, behaviors, personalities, and relationships of the past. 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. 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. 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. And I don't know if it's a genuine mystical experience or mystical mimetic or some kind of psychological breakthrough. If your history is even remotely correct, that would have ushered in a very different church, if Valentinus's own student Marcus and the Marcosians were involved in psychedelic rituals, then that was an early road not taken, let's say. Psychedelics are a lens to investigate this stuff. That was the question for me. The idea of the truth shall set you free, right, [SPEAKING GREEK], in 8:32. 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. If you are drawn to psychedelics, in my mind, it means you're probably drawn to contemplative mysticism. "The Jews" are not after Ye. The Immortality Key, The Secret History of the Religion With No Name. And I think it does hearken back to a genuinely ancient Greek principle, which is that only by fully experiencing some kind of death, a death that feels real, where you, or at least the you you used to identify with, actually slips away, dissolves. That's all just fancy wordplay. To some degree, I think you're looking back to southern Italy from the perspective of the supremacy of Rome, which is not the case in the first century. So I went fully down the rabbit hole. A rebirth into a new conception of the self, the self's relationship to things that are hard to define, like God. But we at least have, again, the indicia of evidence that something was happening there. And inside that beer was all kinds of vegetable matter, like wheat, oats, and sedge and lily and flax and various legumes. He co-writes that with Gordon Wasson and Albert Hofmann, who famously-- there it is, the three authors. 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. This limestone altar tested positive for cannabis and frankincense that was being burned, they think, in a very ritualistic way. And so I can see psychedelics being some kind of extra sacramental ministry that potentially could ease people at the end of life. 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? It was-- Eleusis was state-administered, a somewhat formal affair. 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? 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 . 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? A rebirth into what? You want to field questions in both those categories? Now that the pagan continuity hypothesis is defended, the next task is to show that the pagan and proto-Christian ritual sacraments were, in fact, psychedelicbrews. 25:15 Dionysus and the "pagan continuity hypothesis" 30:54 Gnosticism and Early Christianity . Those of you who don't know his name, he's a professor at the University of Amsterdam, an expert in Western esotericism. I do the same thing in the afterword at the very end of the book, where it's lots of, here's what we know. What, if any, was the relationship between this Greek sanctuary-- a very Greek sanctuary, by the way-- in Catalonia, to the mysteries of Eleusis? 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.". So how exactly is this evidence of something relevant to Christianity in Rome or southern Italy more widely? So frankly, what happens during the Neolithic, we don't know, at least from a scientific vantage. 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. Show Plants of the Gods: Hallucinogens, Healing, Culture and Conservation podcast, Ep Plants of the Gods: S4E2. Read more 37 people found this helpful Helpful Report abuse Tfsiebs So much research! 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? This two-part discussion between Muraresku and Dr. Plotkin examines the role psychedelics have played in the development of Western civilization. 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 so the big question is what was happening there? Brendon Benz presents an alternative hypothesis to recent scholarship which has hypothesized that Israel consisted of geographical, economic . And I think it's proof of concept-- just proof of concept-- for investing serious funding, and attention into the actual search for these kinds of potions. And that's the mysteries of Dionysus. So I want to propose that we stage this play in two acts. 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? I'm trying to get him to speak in the series about that. 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. BRIAN MURARESKU: Good one. Not because they just found that altar. 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? It's not just Cana. 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? 101. I include that line for a reason. It was the Jesuits who taught me Latin and Greek. And you suspect, therefore, that it might be a placebo, and you want the real thing. 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. 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. So why do you think psychedelics are so significant that they might usher in a new Reformation? So I point to that evidence as illustrative of the possibility that the Christians could, in fact, have gotten their hands on an actual wine. 40:15 Witches, drugs, and the Catholic Church . Brian has been very busy taking his new book on the road, of course, all online, and we're very grateful to him for taking the time to join us this evening. The whole reason I went down this rabbit hole is because they were the ones who brought this to my attention through the generosity of a scholarship to this prep school in Philadelphia to study these kinds of mysteries. For me, that's a question, and it will yield more questions. Administration and supervision endeavors and with strong knowledge in: Online teaching and learning methods, Methods for Teaching Mathematics and Technology Integration for K-12 and College . Just from reading Dioscorides and reading all the different texts, the past 12 years have absolutely transformed the way I think about wine. Thank you all for joining us, and I hope to see many of you later this month for our next event. You can see that inscribed on a plaque in Saint Paul's monastery at Mount Athos in Greece. He has talked about the potential evidence for psychedelics in a Mithras liturgy. If the Dionysian one is psychedelic, does it really make its way into some kind of psychedelic Christianity? 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? 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 again, it survives, I think, because of that state support for the better part of 2,000 years. Read more about The Immortality Key by Brian Muraresku Making Sense by Sam Harris And another: in defending the pagan continuity hypothesis, Muraresku presumes a somewhat non-Jewish, pagan-like Jesus, while ignoring the growing body of psychedelic literature, including works by . Maybe I'm afraid I'll take the psychedelic and I won't have what is reported in the literature from Hopkins and NYU. And I want to-- just like you have this hard evidence from Catalonia, then the question is how to interpret it. I mean, I asked lots of big questions in the book, and I fully acknowledge that. Which turns out, it may be they were. And maybe in these near-death experiences we begin to actually experience that at a visceral level. I'm happy to be proven wrong. And besides that, young Brian, let's keep the mysteries mysteries. So somewhere between 1% and 49%. That's, just absurd. 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. CHARLES STANG: Wonderful. Nage ?] 283. A profound knowledge of visionary plants, herbs, and fungi passed from one generation to the next, ever since the Stone Age? So I think this was a minority of early Christians. 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. Do the drugs, Dr. Stang? 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. Get personalized recommendations, and learn where to watch across hundreds of streaming providers. And, as always the best way to keep abreast of this series and everything else we do here at the Center is to join our mailing list. 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 I hear-- I sense that narrative in your book. Do you think that the Christians as a nascent cult adapted a highly effective psycho technology that was rattling . It tested positive for the microscopic remains of beer and also ergot, exactly the hypothesis that had been put forward in 1978 by the disgraced professor across town from you, Carl Ruck, who's now 85 years old, by the way. Find ratings and reviews for the newest movie and TV shows. Here's the big question. Then I see the mysteries of Dionysus as kind of the Burning Man or the Woodstock of the ancient world. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. And if there's historical precedent for it, all the more so. #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 Because very briefly, I think Brian and others have made a very strong case that these things-- this was a biotechnology that was available in the ancient world. 8 "The winds, the sea . Which is a very weird thing today. The Immortality Key has its shortcomings. Interesting. These mysteries had at their center a sacrament called kykeon, which offered a vision of the mysteries of life and death. CHARLES STANG: You know, Valentinus was almost elected bishop of Rome. 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. These-- that-- Christians are spread out throughout the eastern Mediterranean, and there are many, many pockets of people practicing what we might call, let's just call it Christian mysticism of some kind. The most colorful theory of psychedelics in religion portrays the original Santa Claus as a shaman. And anyone who drinks this, [SPEAKING GREEK], Jesus says in Greek, you remain in me and I in you.
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