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. I'm not sure many have. That's the promise in John's gospel, in John 6:54-55, that I quote in the book. Is this only Marcus? And I feel like I accomplished that in the afterword to my book. It was it was barley, water, and something else. 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. CHARLES STANG: OK. And that's a question equally for ancient historians and for contemporary seekers and/or good Catholics. So. But the next event in this series will happen sooner than that. 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. Mona Sobhani, PhD Retweeted. 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. But maybe you could just say something about this community in Catalonia. And much of the evidence that you've collected is kind of the northern half of the Mediterranean world. So how exactly is this evidence of something relevant to Christianity in Rome or southern Italy more widely? So I have my concerns about what's about to happen in Oregon and the regulation of psilocybin for therapeutic purposes. And I write, at the very end of the book, I hope that they'd be proud of this investigation. McGovern also finds wine from Egypt, for example, in 3150 BC, wine that is mixed with a number of interesting ingredients. The Tim Ferriss Show. And I don't know if it's a genuine mystical experience or mystical mimetic or some kind of psychological breakthrough. 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. CHARLES STANG: OK, great. And I'll just list them out quickly. And I describe that as somehow finding that key to immortality.
Continuity theory - Wikipedia I mean, I asked lots of big questions in the book, and I fully acknowledge that. 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 I think what the pharmaceutical industry can do is help to distribute this medicine. 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.
PDF The continuity between pagan and Christian cult - Scandinavia From about 1500 BC to the fourth century AD, it calls to the best and brightest of not just Athens but also Rome. So if we can test Eucharistic vessels, I wouldn't be surprised at all that we find one.
#646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin The Eleusinian So I think it's really interesting details here worth following up on. BRIAN MURARESKU: I'm bringing more illumination. And you suspect, therefore, that it might be a placebo, and you want the real thing. I mean, that's obviously the big question, and what that means for the future of medicine and religion and society at large. 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. 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? 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.
The Tim Ferriss Show - Transcripts Wonderful, well, thank you. Now, Mithras is another one of these mystery religions.
Two Reviews of The Immortality Key - Graham Hancock So I think this was a minority of early Christians. And did the earliest Christians inherit the same secret tradition? . In my previous posts on the continuity hypothesis . Now, it's just an early indication and there's more testing to be done. So I'll speak in language that you and our good colleague Greg [? And even Burkert, I think, calls it the most famous of the mystery rituals. And so that's what motivated my search here. BRIAN MURARESKU: I'm asked this question, I would say, in pretty much every interview I've done since late September. The continuity theory proposes that older adults maintain the same activities, behaviors, personalities, and relationships of the past. I will ask Brian to describe how he came to write this remarkable book, and the years of sleuthing and studying that went into it. Again, if you're attracted to psychedelics, it's kind of an extreme thing, right? 7:30 The three pillars to the work: the Eucharist as a continuation of the pharmako and Dionysian mysteries; the Pagan continuity theory; and the idea that through the mysteries "We can die before we die so that when we die we do not die" 13:00 What does "blood of Christ" actually mean; the implied and literal cannibalism Interesting. On Monday, February 22, we will be hosting a panel discussion taking up the question what is psychedelic chaplaincy. But I don't understand how that provides any significant link to paleo-Christian practice. But clearly, when you're thinking about ancient Egypt or elsewhere, there's definitely a funerary tradition. And I'm happy to see we have over 800 people present for this conversation. 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. So if you were a mystic and you were into Demeter and Persephone and Dionysus and you were into these strange Greek mystery cults, you'd be hard-pressed to find a better place to spend your time than [SPEAKING GREEK], southern Italy, which in some cases was more Greek than Greek. 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? I appreciate this. And we know the mysteries were there. Was there any similarity from that potion to what was drunk at Eleusis? It seems entirely believable to me that we have a potion maker active near Pompeii. CHARLES STANG: All right. I think psychedelics are just one piece of the puzzle.
#646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin The Eleusinian 8 "The winds, the sea . 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. I'd never thought before about how Christianity developed as an organized religion in the centuries after Jesus' murder. We have some inscriptions. I understand the appeal of that. There's a moment in the book where you are excited about some hard evidence.
Origin of the Romanians - Wikipedia CHARLES STANG: OK. I just sense a great deal of structure and thoughtfulness going into this experience. I really tried. So why do you think psychedelics are so significant that they might usher in a new Reformation? 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 . Wise not least because it is summer there, as he reminds me every time we have a Zoom meeting, which has been quite often in these past several months. 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]. All rights reserved. In this way, the two traditions coexisted in a syncretic form for some time before .
#646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin The Eleusinian Books about pagan continuity hypothesis? She had the strange sense that every moment was an eternity of its own. That is my dog Xena. Thank you. First act is your evidence for psychedelics among the so-called pagan religions in the ancient Mediterranean and Near East. [texts-excerpt] penalty for cutting mangroves in floridaFREE EstimateFREE Estimate It was the Jesuits who taught me Latin and Greek. . So this is interesting. 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. I was satisfied with I give Brian Muraresku an "A" for enthusiasm, but I gave his book 2 stars. Because ergot is just very common. Who were the Saints?
Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin The Eleusinian Mysteries But I do want to push back a little bit on the elevation of this particular real estate in southern Italy. Reviewed in the United States on January 29, 2023 But let me say at the outset that it is remarkably learned, full of great historical and philological detail. So that's something else to look into. That also only occurs in John, another epithet of Dionysus. I would expect we'd have ample evidence. And not least because if I were to do it, I'd like to do so in a deeply sacred ritual. 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." I'm skeptical, Dr. Stang. BRIAN MURARESKU: But you're spot on. What about Jesus as a Jew? It's arguably not the case in the third century. And I want to-- just like you have this hard evidence from Catalonia, then the question is how to interpret it. One attendee has asked, "How have religious leaders reacted so far to your book? No, I think you-- this is why we're friends, Charlie. 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.
The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name What about all these early Christians themselves as essentially Jews? 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 that's not how it works today, and I don't think that's how it works in antiquity. Psychedelics are a lens to investigate this stuff. 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. The Continuity Hypothesis was put forward by John Bowlby (1953) as a critical effect of attachments in his development of Attachment Theory. 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 . Like in Israel. Which, if you think about it, is a very elegant idea. CHARLES STANG: OK. And so the big question is what was happening there? What was discovered, as far as I can tell, from your treatment of it, is essentially an ancient pharmacy in this house. So again, that's February 22. 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? This an absolute masterclass on why you must know your identity and goals before forming a habit, what the best systems are for habit. But this clearly involved some kind of technical know-how and the ability to concoct these things that, in order to keep them safe and efficacious, would not have been very widespread, I don't think. Now, I think you answered that last part. What was being thrown into it? He was wronged by individuals, allegedly. I understand more papers are about to be published on this. 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 Brian, once again, thank you so much. BRIAN MURARESKU:: It's a simple formula, Charlie. So why refrain?
All episodes of The Tim Ferriss Show - Chartable 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? There are others claiming that there's drugs everywhere. . You take a board corporate finance attorney, you add in lots of childhood hours watching Indiana Jones, lots of law school hours reading Dan Brown, you put it all together and out pops The Immortality Key. CHARLES STANG: Thank you, Brian. 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. And so I can see psychedelics being some kind of extra sacramental ministry that potentially could ease people at the end of life. I know that that's a loaded phrase. He's talking about kind of psychedelic wine. CHARLES STANG: Yeah. There's all kinds of reasons I haven't done it. He co-writes that with Gordon Wasson and Albert Hofmann, who famously-- there it is, the three authors.