pagan continuity hypothesis

So in the mountains and forests from Greece to Rome, including the Holy Land and Galilee. That they were what you call extreme beverages. CHARLES STANG: I do, too. In May of last year, researchers published what they believe is the first archaeochemical data for the use of psychoactive drugs in some form of early Judaism. "@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! Get personalized recommendations, and learn where to watch across hundreds of streaming providers. 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. 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. And does it line up with the promise from John's gospel that anyone who drinks this becomes instantly immortal? 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. 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. I think psychedelics are just one piece of the puzzle. That's the promise in John's gospel, in John 6:54-55, that I quote in the book. CHARLES STANG: Brian, I wonder if you could end by reflecting on the meaning of dying before you die. You also find a Greek hearth inside this sanctuary. 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. The continuity hypothesis of dreams suggests that the content of dreams are largely continuous with waking concepts and concerns of the dreamer. And her best guess is that it was like this open access sanctuary. But let me say at the outset that it is remarkably learned, full of great historical and philological detail. Books about pagan continuity hypothesis? Now, I mentioned that Brian and I had become friends. And I'll just list them out quickly. Nage ?] But clearly, when you're thinking about ancient Egypt or elsewhere, there's definitely a funerary tradition. There were formula. Leonardo Torres Pagan, PhD - Subject Matter Expert & Editor - LinkedIn We still have almost 700 with us. Now, let's get started, Brian. 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. 474, ?] Books about pagan continuity hypothesis? 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]. 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. And I don't know what that looks like. That is, by giving, by even floating the possibility of this kind of-- at times, what seems like a Dan Brown sort of story, like, oh my god, there's a whole history of Christianity that's been suppressed-- draws attention, but the real point is actually that you're not really certain about the story, but you're certain is that we need to be more attentive to this evidence and to assess it soberly. The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark 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. And if it only occurs in John, the big question is why. 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. So whatever was happening there was important. But if the original Eucharist were psychedelic, or even if there were significant numbers of early Christians using psychedelics like sacrament, I would expect the representatives of orthodox, institutional Christianity to rail against it. Who were the Saints? "Pagan" and "Christian" Marriage: The State of the Question 36:57 Drug-spiked wine . 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 besides that, young Brian, let's keep the mysteries mysteries. Maybe there's some residual fear that's been built up in me. Did the Early Church Use Psychedelics? - Substack He calls it a drug against grief in Greek, [SPEAKING GREEK]. There's a moment in the book where you are excited about some hard evidence. 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. I know that's another loaded phrase. 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 it was the Jesuits who encouraged me to always, always ask questions and never take anything at face value. 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. 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. I imagine there are many more potion makers around than we typically recognize. Eusebius, third into the fourth century, is also talking about them-- it's a great Greek word, [SPEAKING GREEK]. 55 This is very likely as it seems that the process had already started in the 4th century. 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. pagan continuity hypothesis - diamondamotel.com I appreciate this. . Its proponents maintain that the affable, plump old fellow associated with Christmas derives from the character of Arctic medical practitioners. So I think this was a minority of early Christians. To become truly immortal, Campbell talks about entering into a sense of eternity, which is the infinite present here and now. Thank you. 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. That would require an entirely different kind of evidence. Liked by Samuel Zuschlag. To be a Catholic is to believe that you are literally consuming the blood of Christ to become Christ. I'm going to come back to that idea of proof of concept. Now, I have no idea where it goes from here, or if I'll take it myself. The Continuity Hypothesis of Dreams: A More Balanced Account Continuity Questions - 36 Questions About Continuity - QuestionDB And that's the mysteries of Dionysus. #649: Rick Rubin, Legendary Music Producer The Creative Act I understand the appeal of that. #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin The - Chartable Maybe part of me is skeptical, right? Ep #1 Show Notes | Brian Muraresku: Psychedelics, Civilization And what it has to do with Eleusis or the Greek presence in general, I mean, again, just to say it briefly, is that this was a farmhouse of sorts that was inland, this sanctuary site. And I think what the pharmaceutical industry can do is help to distribute this medicine. And I write, at the very end of the book, I hope that they'd be proud of this investigation. Here's the big question. 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. So it wasn't just a random place to find one of these spiked wines. The Tim Ferriss Show Podcast | Free Listening on Podbean App I just sense a great deal of structure and thoughtfulness going into this experience. 48:01 Brian's psychedelic experiences . So, I mean, my biggest question behind all of this is, as a good Catholic boy, is the Eucharist. 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. 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. Many people see that as symbolic or allegorical or just a nice thing, which is not the case. "The Tim Ferriss Show" 646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin These are famous figures to those of us who study early Christianity. Yeah. He decides to get people even more drunk. And what does this earliest history tell us about the earliest evidence for an ancient psychedelic religion? It's interesting that Saint Ignatius of Antioch, in the beginning of the second century AD, refers to the wine of the Eucharist as the [SPEAKING GREEK], the drug of immortality. 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? The Tim Ferriss Show - Transcripts This limestone altar tested positive for cannabis and frankincense that was being burned, they think, in a very ritualistic way. And maybe therein we do since the intimation of immortality. As much as we know about the mysteries of Eleusis. He's talking about kind of psychedelic wine. There's all kinds of reasons I haven't done it. Video: Psychedelics: The Ancient Religion with No Name? 40:15 Witches, drugs, and the Catholic Church . So you lean on the good work of Harvard's own Arthur Darby Nock, and more recently, the work of Dennis McDonald at Claremont School of Theology, to suggest that the author of the Gospel of John deliberately paints Jesus and his Eucharist in the colors of Dionysus. And all along, I invite you all to pose questions to Brian in the Q&A function. This 'pagan continuity hypothesis' with a psychedelic twist is now backed up by biochemistry and agrochemistry and tons of historical research, exposing our forgotten history. Maybe for those facing the end of life. And so the big question is what was happening there? You want to field questions in both those categories? But we at least have, again, the indicia of evidence that something was happening there. I think the only big question is what the exact relationship was from a place like that over to Eleusis. And by the way, I'm not here trying to protect Christianity from the evidence of psychedelic 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 So even from the very beginning, it wasn't just barley and water. That is my dog Xena. 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 so for me, this was a hunt through the catacombs and archives and libraries, doing my sweet-talking, and trying to figure out what was behind some of those locked doors. Now, you could draw the obvious conclusion. The Gnostics did have continuity with paganism. BRIAN MURARESKU: Now we're cooking with grease, Dr. Stang. And there you also found mortars that were tested and also tested positive for evidence of brewing. He draws on the theory of "pagan continuity," which holds that early Christianity adopted . Show Plants of the Gods: Hallucinogens, Healing, Culture and Conservation podcast, Ep Plants of the Gods: S4E2. Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin: The Eleusinian Mysteries Perhaps more generally, you could just talk about other traditions around the Mediterranean, North African, or, let's even say Judaism. The Religion has a Name: "Shamanism" - AKJournals 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. CHARLES STANG: All right. Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin The Eleusinian Mysteries 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. CHARLES STANG: Well, Mr, Muraresku, you are hedging your bets here in a way that you do not necessarily hedge your bets in the book. Did the ancient Greeks use drugs to find God? 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. Like savory, wormwood, blue tansy, balm, senna, coriander, germander, mint, sage, and thyme. He co-writes that with Gordon Wasson and Albert Hofmann, who famously-- there it is, the three authors. Here's the proof of concept. So the Eastern Aegean. So if you don't think that you are literally consuming divine blood, what is the point of religion? And she talks about kind of being born again, another promise from John's gospel. Things like fasting and sleep deprivation and tattooing and scarification and, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm trying to reconcile that. And anyone who drinks this, [SPEAKING GREEK], Jesus says in Greek, you remain in me and I in you. We see lots of descriptions of this in the mystical literature with which you're very familiar. 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. 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? 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. Before the church banned their use, early Christians used - Substack That to live on forever and ever, to live an everlasting life is not immortality. Those of you who don't know his name, he's a professor at the University of Amsterdam, an expert in Western esotericism. Is this only Marcus? The Tim Ferriss Show. Material evidence of a very strange potion, a drug, or a [SPEAKING GREEK]. The kind of mysticism I've always been attracted to, like the rule of Saint Benedict and the Trappist monks and the Cistercian monks. So throughout the book, you make the point that ancient beer and wine are not like our beer and wine. So imagine how many artifacts are just sitting in museums right now, waiting to be tested. So this is the tradition, I can say with a straight face, that saved my life. Because my biggest question is, and the obvious question of the book is, if this was happening in antiquity, what does that mean for today? And I did not dare. 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 We have other textual evidence. 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. Do you think that the Christians as a nascent cult adapted a highly effective psycho technology that was rattling . 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. CHARLES STANG: All right. Joe Campbell puts it best that what we're after is an experience of being alive. The Immortality Key Book Summary by Brian C. Muraresku It's not the case in the second century. In this episode, Brian C. Muraresku, who holds a degree from Brown University in Latin, Greek and Sanskrit,  joins Breht to discuss his fascinating book "The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name", a groundbreaking dive into the use of hallucinogens in ancient Greece, the Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, the role of the Eucharist in early Christianity, the . 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? 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. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. Mona Sobhani, PhD (@monasobhaniphd) / Twitter [2] A rebirth into what? Here is how I propose we are to proceed. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. That's the big question. But we do know that the initiates made this pilgrimage from Athens to Eleusis, drunk the potion, the kykeon, had this very visionary event-- they all talk about seeing something-- and after which they become immortal. And I hear-- I sense that narrative in your book. I wonder if you're familiar with Wouter Hanegraaff at the University of Amsterdam. I don't think we have found it. We don't have to look very hard to find that. I've no doubt that Brian has unearthed and collected a remarkable body of evidence, but evidence of what, exactly? CHARLES STANG: OK, that is the big question. Here's your Western Eleusis. 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. And considering the common background of modern religions (the Pagan Continuity hypothesis), any religious group who thinks they are chosen or correct are promoting a simplistic and ignorant view of our past. They were mixed or fortified. 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. So Plato, Pindar, Sophocles, all the way into Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, it's an important thing. 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.

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