It's a big question for me. So whatever was happening there was important. 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. And I just happened to fall into that at the age of 14 thanks to the Jesuits, and just never left it behind. I mean, the honest answer is not much. I wish the church fathers were better botanists and would rail against the specific pharmacopeia. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. BRIAN MURARESKU: OK. And the big question for me was what was that something else? I see a huge need and a demand for young religious clergy to begin taking a look at this stuff. 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 . 283. Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin The Eleusinian Mysteries So again, if there were an early psychedelic sacrament that was being suppressed, I'd expect that the suppressors would talk about it. 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. What was discovered, as far as I can tell, from your treatment of it, is essentially an ancient pharmacy in this house. Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin: The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Psychedelics, and More | Tim Ferriss Show #646 But we at least have, again, the indicia of evidence that something was happening there. Which, again, what I see are small groups of people getting together to commune with the dead. Copyright 2023 The President and Fellows of Harvard College, The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name. And if it's one thing Catholicism does very, very well, it's contemplative mysticism. So there's lots of interesting details here that filter through. 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. This an absolute masterclass on why you must know your identity and goals before forming a habit, what the best systems are for habit. Including, all the way back to Gobekli Tepe, which is why I mentioned that when we first started chatting. Now, Mithras is another one of these mystery religions. 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. 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. Why don't we turn the tables and ask you what questions you think need to be posed? And in his book [? We have plays like the Bacchi from Euripides, where we can piece together some of this. 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? 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. 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. He's talking about kind of psychedelic wine. Now, let's get started, Brian. The Immortality Key: Book Overview (Brian Muraresku) Well, let's get into it then. So perhaps there's even more evidence. #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 from The Tim Ferriss Show on Podchaser, aired Wednesday, 28th December 2022. 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. An actual spiked wine. 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. First I'll give the floor to Brian to walk us into this remarkable book of his and the years of hard work that went into it, what drove him to do this. 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. Not just in Italy, but as kind of the headquarters for the Mediterranean. So, like, they're wonderstruck, or awestruck by their libations and their incense. But please do know that we will forward all these questions to Brian so he will know the sorts of questions his work prompts. So the event happens, when all the wines run out, here comes Jesus, who's referred to in the Gospels as an [SPEAKING GREEK] in Greek, a drunkard. BRIAN MURARESKU: I look forward to it, Charlie. In my previous posts on the continuity hypothesis . The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark PDF The continuity between pagan and Christian cult - Scandinavia So that, actually, is the key to the immortality key. 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? "@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 only big question is what the exact relationship was from a place like that over to Eleusis. #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin The Eleusinian That there is no hard archaeobotanical, archaeochemical data for spiked beer, spiked wine. What's different about the Dionysian mysteries, and what evidence, direct or indirect, do we have about the wine of Dionysus being psychedelic? 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. And this is at a time when we're still hunting and gathering. 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. I fully expect we will find it. And he was actually going out and testing some of these ancient chalices. No one lived there. 474, ?] What about all these early Christians themselves as essentially Jews? Tim Ferriss Show Podcast Notes And he found some beer and wine-- that was a bit surprising. I mean, that's obviously the big question, and what that means for the future of medicine and religion and society at large. The Psychedelic Gospels: The Secret History of Hallucinogens in Now we're getting somewhere. Joe Campbell puts it best that what we're after is an experience of being alive. So I went fully down the rabbit hole. And maybe in these near-death experiences we begin to actually experience that at a visceral level. We're going to get there very soon. I mean, lots of great questions worthy of further investigation. CHARLES STANG: All right. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. Video: Psychedelics: The Ancient Religion with No Name? So what do we know about those rituals? Ep #1 Show Notes | Brian Muraresku: Psychedelics, Civilization 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". BRIAN MURARESKU: Great question. It's really quite simple, Charlie. So now it's true that these heresy hunters show an interest in this love potion. And I think what the pharmaceutical industry can do is help to distribute this medicine. So there's a whole slew of sites I want to test there. I wish that an ancient pharmacy had been preserved by Mount Vesuvius somewhere near Alexandria or even in upper Egypt or in Antioch or parts of Turkey. From about 1500 BC to the fourth century AD, it calls to the best and brightest of not just Athens but also Rome. These are famous figures to those of us who study early Christianity. BRIAN MURARESKU: But you're spot on. 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. 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. And there were probably other Eleusises like that to the east. [2] 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. So after the whole first half of the book-- well, wait a minute, Dr. Stang. To sum up the most exciting parts of the book: the bloody wine of Dionysius became the bloody wine of Jesus - the pagan continuity hypothesis - the link between the Ancient Greeks of the final centuries BC and the paleo-Christians of the early centuries AD - in short, the default psychedelic of universal world history - the cult of . Revolutionary Left Radio: Early Christianity: Psychedelics, Ancient Now, you could draw the obvious conclusion. But we do know that something was happening. CHARLES STANG: OK. And the quote you just read from Burkert, it's published by Harvard University Press in 1985 as Greek Religion. The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts: 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 (#646) - The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss 3 Annual "Best of" Apple Podcasts 900+ Million episodes downloaded Certainly these early churchmen used whatever they could against the forms of Christian practice they disapproved of, especially those they categorized as Gnostic. 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. The Wanderer | Old English Poetry Project | Rutgers University That is about the future rather than the ancient history. And Ruck, and you following Ruck, make much of this, suggesting maybe the Gnostics are pharmacologists of some kind. We see lots of descriptions of this in the mystical literature with which you're very familiar. BRIAN MURARESKU: We can dip from both pies, Dr. Stang. 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. She found the remains of dog sacrifice, which is super interesting. We look forward to hosting Chacruna's founder and executive director, Bia Labate, for a lecture on Monday, March 8. 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? So it wasn't just a random place to find one of these spiked wines. So thank you, all who have hung with us. So can you reflect for us where you really are and how you chose to write this book? I think psychedelics are just one piece of the puzzle. So my biggest question is, what kind of wine was it? I opened the speculation, Dr. Stang, that the Holy Grail itself could have been some kind of spiked concoction. Again, if you're attracted to psychedelics, it's kind of an extreme thing, right? I don't know why it's happening now, but we're finally taking a look. So if you don't think that you are literally consuming divine blood, what is the point of religion? 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. Thank you. And at some point in my narrative, I do include mention of Gobekli Tepe, for example, which is essentially twice the age of Stonehenge. Then what was the Gospel of John, how did it interpret the Eucharist and market it, and so on. 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. I include that line for a reason. There's no mistake in her mind that it was Greek. And all we know-- I mean, we can't decipher sequence by sequence what was happening. And I think there are so many sites and excavations and so many chalices that remain to be tested. 101. #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin The - Chartable Samuel Zuschlag - Durham University - Charlotte, North - LinkedIn Those of you who don't know his name, he's a professor at the University of Amsterdam, an expert in Western esotericism. 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. So this whole water to wine thing was out there. 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. The Immortality Key Book Summary by Brian C. Muraresku Now I want to get to the questions, but one last question before we move to the discussion portion. And I answer it differently every single time. 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. 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. Plants of the Gods: Hallucinogens, Healing, Culture and Conservation That's one narrative that I feel is a little sensational. It seems entirely believable to me that we have a potion maker active near Pompeii. Well, the reason I mention Hippolytus and Marcus and focus on that in my evidence is because there's evidence of the Valentinians, who influenced Marcus, in and around Rome. CHARLES STANG: OK. CHARLES STANG: So it may be worth mentioning, for those who are attending who haven't read the book, that you asked, who I can't remember her name, the woman who is in charge of the Eleusis site, whether some of the ritual vessels could be tested, only to discover-- tested for the remains of whatever they held, only to learn that those vessels had been cleaned and that no more vessels were going to be unearthed. "The Influence of the Mystery Religions on Christianity" CHARLES STANG: Brian, I wonder if you could end by reflecting on the meaning of dying before you die. So Brian, welcome. CHARLES STANG: Brian, I want to thank you for your time. And in the ancient world, wine was routinely referred to as a [SPEAKING GREEK], which is the Greek word for drug. He's the god of wine. 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. There are others claiming that there's drugs everywhere. Israel's Exodus In Transdisciplinary Perspective: Text - Vdoc.pub I'm trying to get him to speak in the series about that. You may have already noticed one such question-- not too hard. What was being thrown into it? Or maybe in palliative care. Klaus Schmidt, who was with the German Archaeological Institute, called this a sanctuary and called these T-shaped pillars representations of gods. Biblical Entheogens: a Speculative Hypothesis - ResearchGate So how exactly is this evidence of something relevant to Christianity in Rome or southern Italy more widely? Where you find the grain, you may have found ergot. Whether there's a psychedelic tradition-- I mean, there are some suggestive paintings. Rather, Christian beliefs were gradually incorporated into the pagan customs that already existed there. let's take up your invitation and move from Dionysus to early Christianity. And now we have a working hypothesis and some data to suggest where we might be looking. The answer seems to be connected to psychedelic drugs. So how to put this? Because ergot is just very common. He decides to get people even more drunk. Love potions, love charms, they're very common in the ancient. 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. And I think we're getting there. So let's start with one that is more contemporary. And there were gaps as well. 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? difficult to arrive at any conclusive hypothesis. I'm going to stop asking my questions, although I have a million more, as you well know, and instead try to ventriloquist the questions that are coming through at quite a clip through the Q&A. [texts-excerpt] penalty for cutting mangroves in floridaFREE EstimateFREE Estimate Just from reading Dioscorides and reading all the different texts, the past 12 years have absolutely transformed the way I think about wine. And if the latter, do you think there's a good chance that religions will adopt psychedelics back into their rituals?". But I don't understand how that provides any significant link to paleo-Christian practice. And I think there are lots of reasons to believe that. 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.