Klaus Schmidt, who was with the German Archaeological Institute, called this a sanctuary and called these T-shaped pillars representations of gods. It draws attention to this material. But with what were they mixed, and to what effect? And I don't know if there's other examples of such things. Amongst all the mystery religions, Eleusis survives. I'm trying to get him to speak in the series about that. 1,672. This two-part discussion between Muraresku and Dr. Plotkin examines the role psychedelics have played in the development of Western civilization. And that's not how it works today, and I don't think that's how it works in antiquity. 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. 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 at some point in my narrative, I do include mention of Gobekli Tepe, for example, which is essentially twice the age of Stonehenge. And if it's one thing Catholicism does very, very well, it's contemplative mysticism. 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. Tim Ferriss is a self-experimenter and bestselling author, best known for The 4-Hour Workweek, which has been translated into 40+ languages. And I wonder whether the former narrative serves the interests of the latter. He co-writes that with Gordon Wasson and Albert Hofmann, who famously-- there it is, the three authors. There's John Marco Allegro claiming that there was no Jesus, and this was just one big amanita muscaria cult. So those are all possibly different questions to ask and answer. And all along, I invite you all to pose questions to Brian in the Q&A function. They were mixed or fortified. These sources suggest a much greater degree of continuity with pre-Christian values and practice than the writings of more . I'm happy to be proven wrong. 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. But I don't hold-- I don't hang my hat on that claim. 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 CHARLES STANG: OK. 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. 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. We have some inscriptions. The most colorful theory of psychedelics in religion portrays the original Santa Claus as a shaman. It's really quite simple, Charlie. I would expect we'd have ample evidence. Frankly, if you ask the world's leading archaeobotanists and archaeochemists, where's the spiked beer and where's the spiked wine, which I've been doing since about 2007, 2008, the resounding answer you'll get back from everybody is a resounding no. But in any case, Ruck had his career, well, savaged, in some sense, by the reaction to his daring to take this hypothesis seriously, this question seriously. Let's move to early Christian. BRIAN MURARESKU: I'm asked this question, I would say, in pretty much every interview I've done since late September. Did the ancient Greeks use drugs to find God? And so that opened a question for me. 55 This is very likely as it seems that the process had already started in the 4th century. The Gnostics did have continuity with paganism. And so how far should this investigation go? And you're right. She had the strange sense that every moment was an eternity of its own. CHARLES STANG: Brian, I wonder if you could end by reflecting on the meaning of dying before you die. If beer was there that long ago, what kind of beer was it? 44:48 Psychedelics and ancient cave art . Even a little bit before Gobekli Tepe, there was another site unearthed relatively recently in Israel, at the Rakefet cave. You become one with Christ by drinking that. CHARLES STANG: OK. And that's a question equally for ancient historians and for contemporary seekers and/or good Catholics. Because they talk about everything else that they take issue with. 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? No one lived there. And the quote you just read from Burkert, it's published by Harvard University Press in 1985 as Greek Religion. Because every time I think about ancient wine, I am now immediately thinking about wine that is spiked. So Pompeii and its environs at the time were called [SPEAKING GREEK], which means great Greece. And so in the epilogue, I say we simply do not know the relationship between this site in Spain and Eleusis, nor do we know what was happening at-- it doesn't automatically mean that Eleusis was a psychedelic rite. 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 Hofmann famously discovers-- or synthesizes LSD from ergot in 1938. Now that doesn't mean, as Brian was saying, that then suggests that that's the norm Eucharist. 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. and he said, Brian, don't you dare. So this is the tradition, I can say with a straight face, that saved my life. . The pagan continuity hypothesis at the heart of this book made sense to me. So we move now into ancient history, but solidly into the historical record, however uneven that historical record is. I took this to Greg [? Are they rolling their eyes, or are you getting sort of secretive knowing nods of agreement? So that's from Burkert, a very sober scholar and the dean of all scholarship on Greek religion. 32:57 Ancient languages and Brian's education . The continuity between pagan and Christian cult nearby the archaeological area of Naquane in Capo di Ponte. And I think there are so many sites and excavations and so many chalices that remain to be tested. This is going to be a question that's back to the ancient world. The mysteries of Dionysus, a bit weirder, a bit more off the grid. 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. 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. Maybe there's a spark of the divine within. The same Rome that circumstantially shows up, and south of Rome, where Constantine would build his basilicas in Naples and Capua later on. And when Houston says something like that, it grabs the attention of a young undergrad a bit to your south in Providence, Rhode Island, who was digging into Latin and Greek and wondering what the heck this was all about. And I want to ask you about specifically the Eleusinian mysteries, centered around the goddesses Demeter and Persephone. Where you find the grain, you may have found ergot. #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 Pagan polemicists reversed the Biblical story of the Israelites' liberation from Egyptian bondage, portraying a negative image of Israelite origins and picturing them as misanthropes and atheists. Material evidence of a very strange potion, a drug, or a [SPEAKING GREEK]. So Gobekli Tepe, for those who don't know, is this site in southern Turkey on the border with Syria. But the next event in this series will happen sooner than that. So if Eleusis is the Fight Club of the ancient world, right, the first rule is you don't talk about it. So again, that's February 22. Well, wonderful. The only reason I went to college was to study classics. I expect we will find it. I did go straight to [INAUDIBLE] Papangelli in Eleusis, and I went to the museum. And so the big hunt for me was trying to find some of those psychedelic bits. So let's start, then, the first act. If you die before you die, you won't die when you die. But what I see are potential and possibilities and things worthy of discussions like this. Love potions, love charms, they're very common in the ancient. So I'll speak in language that you and our good colleague Greg [? The most influential religious historian of the twentieth century, Huston Smith, once referred to it as the "best-kept secret" in history. Like in Israel. It is my great pleasure to welcome Brian Muraresku to the Center. 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. This event is entitled, Psychedelics, The Ancient Religion With No Name? 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? 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. There's all kinds of reasons I haven't done it. 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. What was discovered, as far as I can tell, from your treatment of it, is essentially an ancient pharmacy in this house. They're mixing potions. Interesting. 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. 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. You might find it in a cemetery in Mexico. In fact, he found beer, wine, and mead all mixed together in a couple of different places. Like in a retreat pilgrimage type center, or maybe within palliative care. And in his book [? So it's hard for me to write this and talk about this without acknowledging the Jesuits who put me here. I mean, that's obviously the big question, and what that means for the future of medicine and religion and society at large. These were Greek-- I've seen them referred to as Greek Vikings by Peter Kingsley, Vikings who came from Ionia. Dogs, indicative of the Greek goddess Hecate, who, amongst other things was known as the [GREEK], the dog eater. Is taking all these disciplines, whether it's your discipline or archaeochemistry or hard core botany, biology, even psychopharmacology, putting it all together and taking a look at this mystery, this puzzle, using the lens of psychedelics as a lens, really, to investigate not just the past but the future and the mystery of human consciousness. So, like, they're wonderstruck, or awestruck by their libations and their incense. And inside that beer was all kinds of vegetable matter, like wheat, oats, and sedge and lily and flax and various legumes. CHARLES STANG: Yeah. But you go further still, suggesting that Jesus himself at the Last Supper might have administered psychedelic sacrament, that the original Eucharist was psychedelic. What I see is data that's been largely neglected, and I think what serves this as a discipline is just that. Lots of Greek artifacts, lots of Greek signifiers. CHARLES STANG: Right. 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. What does ergotized beer in Catalonia have anything to do with the Greek mysteries at Eleusis? So Brian, welcome. Here's your Western Eleusis. If you are drawn to psychedelics, in my mind, it means you're probably drawn to contemplative mysticism. And to be quite honest, I'd never studied the ancient Greeks in Spain. 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. But we do know that something was happening. So how does Dionysian revelries get into this picture? Examine the pros and cons of the continuity theory of aging, specifically in terms of how it neglects to consider social institutions or chronically ill adults. If the Dionysian one is psychedelic, does it really make its way into some kind of psychedelic Christianity? BRIAN MURARESKU: That's a good question. Copyright 2023 The President and Fellows of Harvard College, The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name. 13,000 years old. BRIAN MURARESKU: Good one. There are others claiming that there's drugs everywhere. There's a moment in the book where you are excited about some hard evidence. I think psychedelics are just one piece of the puzzle. Well, let's get into it then. Rupert Sheldrake, PhD, is a biologist and author best known for his hypothesis of morphic resonance. So that, actually, is the key to the immortality key. And Brian, once again, thank you so much. BRIAN MURARESKU: I wish I could answer that question. And all we know-- I mean, we can't decipher sequence by sequence what was happening. What's different about the Dionysian mysteries, and what evidence, direct or indirect, do we have about the wine of Dionysus being psychedelic? 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 . So what have you learned about the Eleusinian mysteries in particular since Ruck took this up, and what has convinced you that Ruck's hypothesis holds water? Jerry Brown wrote a good review that should be read to put the book in its proper place. What Brian labels the religion with no name. I mean, this really goes to my deep skepticism. And she happened to find it on psilocybin. All right, so now, let's follow up with Dionysus, but let's see here. 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. It's arguably not the case in the third century. And I don't know if it's a genuine mystical experience or mystical mimetic or some kind of psychological breakthrough. Just imagine, I have to live with me. I just sense a great deal of structure and thoughtfulness going into this experience. 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 the big question for me was what was that something else? A rebirth into what? Did the potion at Eleusis change from generation to generation? 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. Brian launched the instant bestseller on the Joe Rogan Experience, and has now appeared on CNN, NPR, Sirius XM, Goop-- I don't even know what that is-- and The Weekly Dish with Andrew Sullivan. It's not to say that there isn't evidence from Alexandria or Antioch. I'm sure he knows this well, by this point. "@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! Now, I mentioned that Brian and I had become friends. The big question is, did any of these recipes, did any of this wine spiking actually make its way into some paleo-Christian ceremony. 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 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. Psychedelics Today: PTSF 35 (with Brian Muraresku) Griffithsfund.org And if there's historical precedent for it, all the more so. 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 . 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. It was a pilgrimage site. 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. Not in every single case, obviously. Read more 37 people found this helpful Helpful Report abuse Tfsiebs So much research! And it was the Jesuits who encouraged me to always, always ask questions and never take anything at face value. 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: Right. 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. Here's what we don't. Then there's what were the earliest Christians doing with the Eucharist. 40:15 Witches, drugs, and the Catholic Church . Now you're a good sport, Brian. It was the Jesuits who taught me Latin and Greek. 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. Here's the big question. And very famous passages, by the way, that should be familiar to most New Testament readers. It's some kind of wine-based concoction, some kind of something that is throwing these people into ecstasy. 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. And yet I talked to an atheist who has one experience with psilocybin and is immediately bathed in God's love. A rebirth into a new conception of the self, the self's relationship to things that are hard to define, like God. So in my mind, it was the first real hard scientific data to support this hypothesis, which, as you alluded to at the beginning, only raises more questions. What about Jesus as a Jew? For me, that's a question, and it will yield more questions. If you look at Dioscorides, for example, his Materia Medica, that's written in the first century AD around the same time that the Gospels themselves are being written. 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? Find ratings and reviews for the newest movie and TV shows. In the same place in and around Pompeii, this is where Christianity is really finding its roots. And keep in mind that we'll drop down into any one of these points more deeply. And I want to-- just like you have this hard evidence from Catalonia, then the question is how to interpret it. And according to Wasson, Hofmann, and Ruck, that barley was really a code word. The kind of mysticism I've always been attracted to, like the rule of Saint Benedict and the Trappist monks and the Cistercian monks. Then what was the Gospel of John, how did it interpret the Eucharist and market it, and so on. But I don't understand how that provides any significant link to paleo-Christian practice. You know, it's an atheist using theological language to describe what happened to her. But you will be consoled to know that someone else will be-- I will be there, but someone else will be leading that conversation. And I offer psychedelics as one of those archaic techniques of ecstasy that seems to have been relevant and meaningful to our ancestors. Thank you, sir. What about all these early Christians themselves as essentially Jews? CHARLES STANG: Wonderful. Although she's open to testing, there was nothing there. The idea of the truth shall set you free, right, [SPEAKING GREEK], in 8:32. I understand the appeal of that. But Egypt seems to not really be hugely relevant to the research. 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. So psychedelics or not, I think it's the cultivation of that experience, which is the actual key. 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 . . I don't think we have found it. Now, Brian managed to write this book while holding down a full time practice in international law based in Washington DC. #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. But we at least have, again, the indicia of evidence that something was happening there. 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. And what you're referring to is-- and how I begin the book is this beautiful Greek phrase, [SPEAKING GREEK]. So why refrain? 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 difficult to arrive at any conclusive hypothesis. Eusebius, third into the fourth century, is also talking about them-- it's a great Greek word, [SPEAKING GREEK]. 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? [2] 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 there's lots of interesting details here that filter through. I know that's another loaded phrase. And then at some point they go inland. Thank you. . And what about the alleged democratization with which you credit the mysteries of Dionysus, or the role of women in that movement? 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 . 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 besides that, young Brian, let's keep the mysteries mysteries. To be a Catholic is to believe that you are literally consuming the blood of Christ to become Christ. At Cambridge University he worked in developmental biolo. I'll invite him to think about the future of religion in light of all this. And shouldn't we all be asking that question? First act is your evidence for psychedelics among the so-called pagan religions in the ancient Mediterranean and Near East. It's not just Cana. 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. What's significant about these features for our piecing together the ancient religion with no name? I mean, so it was Greek. 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. The continuity theory proposes that older adults maintain the same activities, behaviors, personalities, and relationships of the past. Richard Evans Schultes and the Search for Ayahuasca 17 days ago Plants of the Gods: S3E10. I see it as-- well, OK, I'd see it as within a minority. So we're going down parallel paths here, and I feel we're caught between FDA-approved therapeutics and RFRA-protected sacraments, RFRA, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or what becomes of these kinds of substances in any kind of legal format-- which they're not legal at the moment, some would argue. And even Burkert, I think, calls it the most famous of the mystery rituals. Now, the great scholar of Greek religion, Walter Burkert, you quote him as musing, once-- and I'm going to quote him-- he says, "it may rather be asked, even without the prospect of a certain answer, whether the basis of the mysteries, they were prehistoric drug rituals, some festival imp of immortality which, through the expansion of consciousness, seemed to guarantee some psychedelic beyond." 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 . 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. So I want to propose that we stage this play in two acts. This is true. And so that's what motivated my search here. He comes to this research with a full suite of scholarly skills, including a deep knowledge of Greek and Latin as well as facility in a number of European languages, which became crucial for uncovering some rather obscure research in Catalan, and also for sweet-talking the gatekeepers of archives and archaeological sites. And again, it survives, I think, because of that state support for the better part of 2,000 years. By which I mean that the Gospel of John suggests that at the very least, the evangelist hoped to market Christianity to a pagan audience by suggesting that Jesus was somehow equivalent to Dionysus, and that the Eucharist, his sacrament of wine, was equivalent to Dionysus's wine. Which, if you think about it, is a very elegant idea. What was being thrown into it? I've no doubt that Brian has unearthed and collected a remarkable body of evidence, but evidence of what, exactly? Because at my heart, I still consider myself a good Catholic boy. And that's the mysteries of Dionysus. And maybe in these near-death experiences we begin to actually experience that at a visceral level. 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.