An actual spiked wine. 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? If you die before you die, you won't die when you die. 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? And what does this earliest history tell us about the earliest evidence for an ancient psychedelic religion? And maybe in these near-death experiences we begin to actually experience that at a visceral level. This discussion on Febrary 1, 2021, between CSWR Director Charles Stang and Brian Muraresku about his new book, The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name,a groundbreaking dive into the role of psychedelics in the ancient Mediterranean world. Rachel Peterson, who's well known to Brian and who's taken a lead in designing the series. And I just happened to fall into that at the age of 14 thanks to the Jesuits, and just never left it behind. Now you're a good sport, Brian. But I don't understand how that provides any significant link to paleo-Christian practice.
Plants of the Gods: Hallucinogens, Healing, Culture and Conservation 474, ?] Lots of Greek artifacts, lots of Greek signifiers. 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? Certainly these early churchmen used whatever they could against the forms of Christian practice they disapproved of, especially those they categorized as Gnostic. BRIAN MURARESKU: I wish I could answer that question. 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. So imagine how many artifacts are just sitting in museums right now, waiting to be tested. And I'm happy to see we have over 800 people present for this conversation. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. Is there a smoking gun? So thank you, all who have hung with us. BRIAN MURARESKU: I'm asked this question, I would say, in pretty much every interview I've done since late September. I mean, I wish it were easier. Maybe for those facing the end of life.
Books about pagan continuity hypothesis? : r/AskHistorians - reddit The same Rome that circumstantially shows up, and south of Rome, where Constantine would build his basilicas in Naples and Capua later on.
Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin: The Eleusinian Mysteries So if you don't think that you are literally consuming divine blood, what is the point of religion? He's joining us from Uruguay, where he has wisely chosen to spend his pandemic isolation. Books about pagan continuity hypothesis? So how does Dionysian revelries get into this picture? I imagine there are many more potion makers around than we typically recognize. 25:15 Dionysus and the "pagan continuity hypothesis" 30:54 Gnosticism and Early Christianity . Thank you, sir. So that, actually, is the key to the immortality key. So I was obsessed with this stuff from the moment I picked up an article in The Economist called the God Pill back in 2007. What does that have to do with Christianity? But you go further still, suggesting that Jesus himself at the Last Supper might have administered psychedelic sacrament, that the original Eucharist was psychedelic. And for some reason, I mean, I'd read that two or three times as an undergrad and just glossed over that line. What about all these early Christians themselves as essentially Jews? 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. There are others claiming that there's drugs everywhere. But it was not far from a well-known colony in [INAUDIBLE] that was founded by Phocians. 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 . 13,000 years old. 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. I also sense another narrative in your book, and one you've flagged for us, maybe about 10 minutes ago, when you said that the book is a proof of concept. Nage ?] And how do we-- when the pharmaceutical industry and when these retreat centers begin to open and begin to proliferate, how do we make this sacred? We call it ego dissolution, things of that nature. I opened the speculation, Dr. Stang, that the Holy Grail itself could have been some kind of spiked concoction. There have been breakthroughs, too, which no doubt kept Brian going despite some skepticism from the academy, to say the least. So don't feel like you have to go into great depth at this point. 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". And I think that that's the real question here. I think the only big question is what the exact relationship was from a place like that over to Eleusis. 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. Here is how I propose we are to proceed. Now is there any evidence for psychedelic use in ancient Egypt, and if not, do you have any theory as to why that's silent? So the big question is, what kind of drug was this, if it was a drug? And I don't know if there's other examples of such things. So can you reflect on the-- standing on the threshold of pharmaceutical companies taking control of this, how is that to be commended when the very people who have kept this alive would be pushed to the side in that move? Not because it's not there, because it hasn't been tested. 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. It's not to say that there isn't evidence from Alexandria or Antioch. 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. And I write, at the very end of the book, I hope that they'd be proud of this investigation. She had the strange sense that every moment was an eternity of its own. No one lived there. 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". 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. Get personalized recommendations, and learn where to watch across hundreds of streaming providers. 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 again, that's February 22. It is my great pleasure to welcome Brian Muraresku to the Center. The only reason I went to college was to study classics. It's not the case in the second century. I'll invite him to think about the future of religion in light of all this. And Dennis, amongst others, calls that a signature Dionysian miracle. And very famous passages, by the way, that should be familiar to most New Testament readers. 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 got to say, there's not a heck of a lot of eye rolling, assuming people read my afterword and try to see how careful I am about delineating what is knowable and what is not and what this means for the future of religion. 8 "The winds, the sea . So again, if there were an early psychedelic sacrament that was being suppressed, I'd expect that the suppressors would talk about it.
The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark So let's start with one that is more contemporary. And you find terracotta heads that could or could not be representative of Demeter and Persephone, the two goddesses to whom the mysteries of Eleusis were dedicated. Those religions featured psychedelic beer and ceremonies lead by women . That is, by giving, by even floating the possibility of this kind of-- at times, what seems like a Dan Brown sort of story, like, oh my god, there's a whole history of Christianity that's been suppressed-- draws attention, but the real point is actually that you're not really certain about the story, but you're certain is that we need to be more attentive to this evidence and to assess it soberly. This two-part discussion between Muraresku and Dr. Plotkin examines the role psychedelics have played in the development of Western civilization. And her best guess is that it was like this open access sanctuary. What does ergotized beer in Catalonia have anything to do with the Greek mysteries at Eleusis?
Tim Ferriss Show Podcast Notes There's some suggestive language in the pyramid texts, in the Book of the Dead and things of this nature. I mean, so Walter Burkert was part of the reason that kept me going on. You want to field questions in both those categories? That event is already up on our website and open for registration. And her answer was that they'd all been cleaned or treated for conservation purposes. So after the whole first half of the book-- well, wait a minute, Dr. Stang. I don't think we have found it. And so I don't think that psychedelics are coming to replace the Sunday Eucharist.
The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name To assess this hypothesis and, perhaps, to push it further, has required years of dogged and, at times, discouraging works in archives and archaeology. So first of all, please tell us how it is you came to pursue this research to write this book, and highlight briefly what you think are its principal conclusions and their significance for our present and future. So the basic point being, as far as we can tell, beer and wine are routinely mixed with things that we don't do today.