So there's a whole slew of sites I want to test there. And inside that beer was all kinds of vegetable matter, like wheat, oats, and sedge and lily and flax and various legumes. Maybe I'm afraid I'll take the psychedelic and I won't have what is reported in the literature from Hopkins and NYU. 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. This an absolute masterclass on why you must know your identity and goals before forming a habit, what the best systems are for habit. 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. Now, I mentioned that Brian and I had become friends. Now, that date is obviously very suggestive because that's precisely the time the Christians were establishing a beachhead in Rome. And shouldn't we all be asking that question? 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. In the afterword, you champion the fact that we stand on the cusp of a new era of psychedelics precisely because they can be synthesized and administered safely in pill form, back to The Economist article "The God Pill". Here's another one. Those of you who don't know his name, he's a professor at the University of Amsterdam, an expert in Western esotericism. 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]. 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 . I write it cognizant of the fact that the Eucharist doesn't work for many, many people. And nor did we think that a sanctuary would be one of the first things that we construct. I appreciate this. So whatever these [SPEAKING GREEK] libations incense were, the church fathers don't get into great detail about what may have been spiking them. I want to thank you for putting up with me and my questions. 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. 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 performers from eclectic areas (investing, chess, pro sports, etc . And besides that, young Brian, let's keep the mysteries mysteries. 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. There aren't any churches or basilicas, right, in the first three centuries, in this era we're calling paleo-Christianity. The fact that the Vatican sits in Rome today is not an accident, I think, is the shortest way to answer that. Yeah. 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. . Nage ?] So again, that's February 22. But maybe you could just say something about this community in Catalonia. 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? He's joining us from Uruguay, where he has wisely chosen to spend his pandemic isolation. 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? 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. 32:57 Ancient languages and Brian's education . That's the big question. And part of me really wants to put all these pieces together before I dive in. I'll invite him to think about the future of religion in light of all this. And I'm happy to see we have over 800 people present for this conversation. 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. 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. That would require an entirely different kind of evidence. BRIAN MURARESKU:: It's a simple formula, Charlie. And I write, at the very end of the book, I hope that they'd be proud of this investigation. BRIAN MURARESKU: OK. And so part of what it means to be a priest or a minister or a rabbi is to sit with the dying and the dead. So this whole water to wine thing was out there. BRIAN MURARESKU: I would say I've definitely experienced the power of the Christ and the Holy Spirit. Maybe I have that wrong. So in the mountains and forests from Greece to Rome, including the Holy Land and Galilee. And Brian, once again, thank you so much. 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. And let's start with our earliest evidence from the Stone Age and the Bronze Age. And even Burkert, I think, calls it the most famous of the mystery rituals. And I just happened to fall into that at the age of 14 thanks to the Jesuits, and just never left it behind. 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. 8 "The winds, the sea . You want to field questions in both those categories? At Cambridge University he worked in developmental biolo. We call it ego dissolution, things of that nature. We know from the literature hundreds of years beforehand that in Elis, for example, in the Western Peloponnese, on the same Epiphany-type timeline, January 5, January 6, the priests would walk into the temple of Dionysus, leave three basins of water, the next morning they're miraculously transformed into wine. It seems entirely believable to me that we have a potion maker active near Pompeii. It was one of the early write-ups of the psilocybin studies coming out of Johns Hopkins. 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 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 so even within the New Testament you see little hints and clues that there was no such thing as only ordinary table wine. 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. But even if they're telling the truth about this, even if it is accurate about Marcus that he used a love potion, a love potion isn't a Eucharist. And if it only occurs in John, the big question is why. 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. I was not going to put a book out there that was sensationalist. I expect we will find it. But the next event in this series will happen sooner than that. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. "The Jews" are not after Ye. 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. They're mixing potions. Not much. But I realized that in 1977, when he wrote that in German, this was the height of scholarship, at least going out on a limb to speculate about the prospect of psychedelics at the very heart of the Greek mysteries, which I refer to as something like the real religion of the ancient Greeks, by the way, in speaking about the Eleusinian mysteries. Books about pagan continuity hypothesis? And Brian, it would be helpful for me to know whether you are more interested in questions that take up the ancient world or more that deal with this last issue, the sort of contemporary and the future. I mean, I think the book makes it clear. It still leaves an even bigger if, Dr. Stang, is which one is psychedelic? 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 what does this earliest history tell us about the earliest evidence for an ancient psychedelic religion? 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. 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. We have an hour and a half together and I hope there will be time for Q&A and discussion. Is this only Marcus? If you are drawn to psychedelics, in my mind, it means you're probably drawn to contemplative mysticism. So perhaps there's even more evidence. So there's lots of interesting details here that filter through. The (Mistaken) Conspiracy Theory: In the Late Middle Ages, religious elites created a new, and mistaken, intellectual framework out of Christian heresy and theology concerning demons. She joins me for most events and meetings. 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. Which turns out, it may be they were. 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? CHARLES STANG: OK, that is the big question. I'm happy to be proven wrong. 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. 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 improving Wonderful, well, thank you. 474, ?] Brian is the author of a remarkable new book that has garnered a lot of attention and has sold a great many copies. When there's a clear tonal distinction, and an existing precedent for Christian modification to Pagan works, I don't see why you're resistant to the idea, and I'm curious . 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. 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. But I want to ask you to reflect on the broader narrative that you're painting, because I've heard you speak in two ways about the significance of this work. What is its connection to Eleusis? Tim Ferriss is a self-experimenter and bestselling author, best known for The 4-Hour Workweek, which has been translated into 40+ languages. And this is at a time when we're still hunting and gathering. And he was actually going out and testing some of these ancient chalices. let's take up your invitation and move from Dionysus to early Christianity. And I want to say to those who are still assembled here that I'm terribly sorry that we can't get to all your questions. And what you're referring to is-- and how I begin the book is this beautiful Greek phrase, [SPEAKING GREEK]. What was the real religion of the ancient Greeks? And I'll just list them out quickly. And there were probably other Eleusises like that to the east. These mysteries had at their center a sacrament called kykeon, which offered a vision of the mysteries of life and death. It's not the case in the second century. There's some suggestive language in the pyramid texts, in the Book of the Dead and things of this nature. Where you find the grain, you may have found ergot. CHARLES STANG: Yeah. It's arguably not the case in the third century. The pagan continuity hypothesis theorizes that when Christianity arrived in Greece around AD 49, it didn't suddenly replace the existing religion. It is not psychedelics. First, I will provide definitions for the terms "pagan", "Christian", It draws attention to this material. But what we do know is that their sacrament was wine and we know a bit more about the wine of antiquity, ancient Greek wine, than we can piece together from these nocturnal celebrations. Now, Brian managed to write this book while holding down a full time practice in international law based in Washington DC. It was-- Eleusis was state-administered, a somewhat formal affair. And in his book [? And I describe that as somehow finding that key to immortality. 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? That's our next event, and will be at least two more events to follow. 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 so with a revised ancient history, in place Brian tacks back to the title of our series, Psychedelics and the Future of Religion. Thank you all for joining us, and I hope to see many of you later this month for our next event. These Native American church and the UDV, both some syncretic form of Christianity. But I don't understand how that provides any significant link to paleo-Christian practice. I mean, shouldn't everybody, shouldn't every Christian be wondering what kind of wine was on that table, or the tables of the earliest Christians? You may have already noticed one such question-- not too hard. 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? 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. Which is really weird, because that's how the same Dina Bazer, the same atheist in the psilocybin trials, described her insight. And so I don't think that psychedelics are coming to replace the Sunday Eucharist. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. And so in my afterword, I present this as a blip on the archaeochemical radar. 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. It's this 22-acre site of free-standing limestone, some rising 20 feet in the air, some weighing 50 tons. Others find it in different ways, but the common denominator seems to be one of these really well-curated near-death experiences. BRIAN MURARESKU: I'm asked this question, I would say, in pretty much every interview I've done since late September. But let me say at the outset that it is remarkably learned, full of great historical and philological detail. 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. The book was published by Saint Martin's Press in September 2020 and has generated a whirlwind of attention. They minimized or completely removed the Jewish debates found in the New Testament, and they took on a style that was more palatable to the wider pagan world. I've no doubt that Brian has unearthed and collected a remarkable body of evidence, but evidence of what, exactly? And Dennis, amongst others, calls that a signature Dionysian miracle. And I don't know if it's a genuine mystical experience or mystical mimetic or some kind of psychological breakthrough. I'm paraphrasing this one. 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? So here's a question for you. Because at my heart, I still consider myself a good Catholic boy. The idea of the truth shall set you free, right, [SPEAKING GREEK], in 8:32. 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. So you were unable to test the vessels on site in Eleusis, which is what led you to, if I have this argument right, to Greek colonies around the Mediterranean. Not because it's not there, because it hasn't been tested. 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. There he is. Again, if you're attracted to psychedelics, it's kind of an extreme thing, right? 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. I mean, in the absence of the actual data, that's my biggest question. So how does Dionysian revelries get into this picture? 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. OK, Brian, I invite you to join us now. So if Eleusis is the Fight Club of the ancient world, right, the first rule is you don't talk about it. So I see-- you're moving back and forth between these two. But I don't hold-- I don't hang my hat on that claim. Material evidence of a very strange potion, a drug, or a [SPEAKING GREEK]. 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 that the proof of concept idea is that we need to-- we, meaning historians of the ancient world, need to bring all the kinds of resources to bear on this to get better evidence and an interpretive frame for making sense of it. There's a moment in the book where you are excited about some hard evidence. 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. The divine personage in whom this cult centered was the Magna Mater Deum who was conceived as the source of all life as well as the personification of all the powers of nature.\[Footnote:] Willoughby, Pagan Regeneration, p. 114.\ 7 She was the "Great Mother" not only "of all the gods," but of all men" as well. 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. Read more about The Immortality Key by Brian Muraresku Making Sense by Sam Harris Psychedelics Today: PTSF 35 (with Brian Muraresku) Griffithsfund.org So to find dog sacrifice inside this Greek sanctuary alludes to this proto-witch, Hecate, the mother of Circe, who is mentioned in the same hymn to Demeter from the 8th, 7th century BC, as kind of the third of the goddesses to whom these mysteries were dedicated. 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. I want to thank you for your candor. So Dionysus is not the god of alcohol. What Brian labels the religion with no name. I mean, I asked lots of big questions in the book, and I fully acknowledge that. He's talking about kind of psychedelic wine. I am so fortunate to have been selected to present my thesis, "Mythology and Psychedelics: Taking the Pagan Continuity Hypothesis a Step Further" at. And the big question is, what is this thing doing there in the middle of nowhere? I opened the speculation, Dr. Stang, that the Holy Grail itself could have been some kind of spiked concoction. And so the big hunt for me was trying to find some of those psychedelic bits. 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. This is going to be a question that's back to the ancient world. CHARLES STANG: You know, Valentinus was almost elected bishop of Rome. So we move now into ancient history, but solidly into the historical record, however uneven that historical record is. And what about the alleged democratization with which you credit the mysteries of Dionysus, or the role of women in that movement? How does, in other words, how does religion sit with science? Where are the drugs? If you die before you die, you won't die when you die. To become truly immortal, Campbell talks about entering into a sense of eternity, which is the infinite present here and now. he goes out on a limb and says that black nightshade actually causes [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], which is not unpleasant visions, i.e. Because every time I think about ancient wine, I am now immediately thinking about wine that is spiked. There's no mistake in her mind that it was Greek. I go out of my way, in both parts of the book, which, it's divided into the history of beer and the history of wine, essentially. I mean, the honest answer is not much. Thank you, sir. 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. It's really quite simple, Charlie. But I think there's a decent scientific foothold to begin that work. 1,672. CHARLES STANG: We've really read Jesus through the lens of his Greek inheritors. But I think the broader question of what's the reception to this among explicitly religious folk and religious leaders? From about 1500 BC to the fourth century AD, it calls to the best and brightest of not just Athens but also Rome. CHARLES STANG: My name is Charles Stang, and I'm the director of the Center for the Study of World Religions here at Harvard Divinity School. So whatever was happening there was important. 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. You see an altar of Pentelic marble that could only have come from the Mount Pentelicus quarry in mainland Greece. 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. All he says is that these women and Marcus are adding drugs seven times in a row into whatever potion this is they're mixing up. So let's start, then, the first act. In the same place in and around Pompeii, this is where Christianity is really finding its roots. And I'm not even sure what that piece looks like or how big it is. Maybe there's some residual fear that's been built up in me. The continuity between pagan and Christian cult nearby the archaeological area of Naquane in Capo di Ponte. 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. 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 Hofmann famously discovers-- or synthesizes LSD from ergot in 1938. What was the wine in the early Eucharist? 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. So I think this was a minority of early Christians. BRIAN MURARESKU: But you're spot on. And keep in mind that we'll drop down into any one of these points more deeply. And so that opened a question for me. CHARLES STANG: OK. And that's a question equally for ancient historians and for contemporary seekers and/or good Catholics. 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. What's the wine? And we know from the record that [SPEAKING GREEK] is described as being so crowded with gods that they were easier to find than men. I mean, lots of great questions worthy of further investigation. In my previous posts on the continuity hypothesis . The big question is, did any of these recipes, did any of this wine spiking actually make its way into some paleo-Christian ceremony. It pushes back the archaeology on some of this material a full 12,000 years. would certainly appreciate. That they were what you call extreme beverages. I don't know why it's happening now, but we're finally taking a look. It was a pilgrimage site. We're going to get there very soon. One attendee has asked, "How have religious leaders reacted so far to your book? Because they talk about everything else that they take issue with. Because ergot is just very common. [2] Before I set forth the outline of this thesis, three topics must be discussed in order to establish a basic understanding of the religious terminology, Constantine's reign, and the contemporary sources. And maybe in these near-death experiences we begin to actually experience that at a visceral level. 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. Now, Carl Ruck from Boston University, much closer to home, however, took that invitation and tried to pursue this hypothesis. So psychedelics or not, I think it's the cultivation of that experience, which is the actual key. It is my great pleasure to welcome Brian Muraresku to the Center. But the point being, the religion of brewing seems to pop up at the very beginning of civilization itself, or the very beginning of monumental engineering at this world's first sanctuary. I mean, so it was Greek. For me, that's a question, and it will yield more questions. Is there a smoking gun? And I just happened to fall into that at the age of 14 thanks to the Jesuits, and just never left it behind. And according to Wasson, Hofmann, and Ruck, that barley was really a code word. There have been breakthroughs, too, which no doubt kept Brian going despite some skepticism from the academy, to say the least. Perhaps more generally, you could just talk about other traditions around the Mediterranean, North African, or, let's even say Judaism. 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. CHARLES STANG: All right. So this is interesting. CHARLES STANG: All right. 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.