An actual spiked wine. Now, I have no idea where it goes from here, or if I'll take it myself. So Plato, Pindar, Sophocles, all the way into Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, it's an important thing. Maybe part of me is skeptical, right? 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. And so for me, this was a hunt through the catacombs and archives and libraries, doing my sweet-talking, and trying to figure out what was behind some of those locked doors. So this whole water to wine thing was out there. Now we're getting somewhere. 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. 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? For me, that's a question, and it will yield more questions. It's some kind of wine-based concoction, some kind of something that is throwing these people into ecstasy. So your presentation of early Christianity inclines heavily toward the Greek world. Not much. 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. 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. President and CEO, First Southeast Financial Corp and First Federal Savings and Loan Director, Carolina First Bank and The South Financial Group 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. Now the archaeologist of that site says-- I'm quoting from your book-- "For me, the Villa Vesuvio was a small farm that was specifically designed for the production of drugs." 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. BRIAN MURARESKU: I'm bringing more illumination. 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. We're going to get there very soon. He was wronged by individuals, allegedly. What about all these early Christians themselves as essentially Jews? This two-part discussion between Muraresku and Dr. Plotkin examines the role psychedelics have played in the development of Western civilization. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. And according to Wasson, Hofmann, and Ruck, that barley was really a code word. It's funny to see that some of the first basilicas outside Rome are popping up here, and in and around Pompeii. 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? Because they talk about everything else that they take issue with. 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. Then what was the Gospel of John, how did it interpret the Eucharist and market it, and so on. CHARLES STANG: Thank you, Brian. 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? Here's the proof of concept. It's a big question for me. And that's where oversight comes in handy. There's John Marco Allegro claiming that there was no Jesus, and this was just one big amanita muscaria cult. Please materialize. 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. So I'll speak in language that you and our good colleague Greg [? I know that's another loaded phrase. So why do you think psychedelics are so significant that they might usher in a new Reformation? And so if there is a place for psychedelics, I would think it would be in one of those sacred containers within monastic life, or pilgrims who visit one of these monastic centers, for example. Copyright 2023 The President and Fellows of Harvard College, The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name. And you suspect, therefore, that it might be a placebo, and you want the real thing. It would have parts of Greek mysticism in it, the same Greek mysteries I've spent all these years investigating, and it would have some elements of what I see in paleo-Christianity. And I'm trying to reconcile that. 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. And I think that we would behoove ourselves to incorporate, resuscitate, maybe, some of those techniques that seem to have been employed by the Greeks at Eleusis or by the Dionysians or some of these earliest Christians. 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. Now, I've never done them myself, but I have talked to many, many people who've had experience with psychedelics. I imagine there are many more potion makers around than we typically recognize. 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 so how far should this investigation go? So somewhere between 1% and 49%. It tested positive for the microscopic remains of beer and also ergot, exactly the hypothesis that had been put forward in 1978 by the disgraced professor across town from you, Carl Ruck, who's now 85 years old, by the way. That to live on forever and ever, to live an everlasting life is not immortality. That also only occurs in John, another epithet of Dionysus. That is about the future rather than the ancient history. 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. We look forward to hosting Chacruna's founder and executive director, Bia Labate, for a lecture on Monday, March 8. The continuity hypothesis of dreams suggests that the content of dreams are largely continuous with waking concepts and concerns of the dreamer. How does, in other words, how does religion sit with science? There aren't any churches or basilicas, right, in the first three centuries, in this era we're calling paleo-Christianity. They were relevant to me in going down this rabbit hole. 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. What was discovered, as far as I can tell, from your treatment of it, is essentially an ancient pharmacy in this house. In this hypothesis, both widely accepted and widely criticized,11 'American' was synonymous with 'North American'. 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 I offer psychedelics as one of those archaic techniques of ecstasy that seems to have been relevant and meaningful to our ancestors. So imagine how many artifacts are just sitting in museums right now, waiting to be tested. There's all kinds of reasons I haven't done it. Let's move to early Christian. And I hear-- I sense that narrative in your book. Many people see that as symbolic or allegorical or just a nice thing, which is not the case. In my previous posts on the continuity hypothesis . Well, wonderful. Books about pagan continuity hypothesis? 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. 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, about 25 years ago, actually. 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. Thank you. This is true. Jerry Brown wrote a good review that should be read to put the book in its proper place. And I guess my biggest question, not necessarily for you, but the psychedelic community, for what it's worth, or those who are interested in this stuff is how do we make this experience sacred? 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? There he is. CHARLES STANG: Brian, I want to thank you for your time. Because every time I think about ancient wine, I am now immediately thinking about wine that is spiked. You can see that inscribed on a plaque in Saint Paul's monastery at Mount Athos in Greece. But they charge Marcus specifically, not with a psychedelic Eucharist, but the use of a love potion. Read more about The Immortality Key by Brian Muraresku Making Sense by Sam Harris So I got a copy of it from the Library of Congress, started reading through, and there, in fact, I was reading about this incredible discovery from the '90s. A lot of Christianity, as you rightly point out, I mean, it was an Eastern phenomenon, all over the eastern Mediterranean. [texts-excerpt] penalty for cutting mangroves in floridaFREE EstimateFREE Estimate I don't know why it's happening now, but we're finally taking a look. 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. And I think there are so many sites and excavations and so many chalices that remain to be tested. And to be quite honest, I'd never studied the ancient Greeks in Spain. And I did not dare. In the same place in and around Pompeii, this is where Christianity is really finding its roots. And yet I talked to an atheist who has one experience with psilocybin and is immediately bathed in God's love. He calls it a drug against grief in Greek, [SPEAKING 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. BRIAN MURARESKU: I'm asked this question, I would say, in pretty much every interview I've done since late September. I mean, I think the book makes it clear. This an absolute masterclass on why you must know your identity and goals before forming a habit, what the best systems are for habit. I think it's important you have made a distinction between what was Jesus doing at the Last Supper, as if we could ever find out. . So the Greek god of wine, intoxication. That would require an entirely different kind of evidence. 1,672. 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? It was one of the early write-ups of the psilocybin studies coming out of Johns Hopkins. I don't think we have found it. All rights reserved. So I think this was a minority of early Christians. Reviewed in the United States on January 29, 2023 And maybe in these near-death experiences we begin to actually experience that at a visceral level. And when I started to get closer into the historical period-- this is all prehistory. You also find a Greek hearth inside this sanctuary. In the Classics world, there's a pagan continuity hypothesis with the very origin of Christianity, and many overt references to Greek plays in the Gospel of John. To some degree, I think you're looking back to southern Italy from the perspective of the supremacy of Rome, which is not the case in the first century. The long and short of it is, in 1978 there was no hard scientific data to prove this one way or the other. Where are the drugs? 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. We don't have to look very hard to find that. And then that's the word that Euripides uses, by the way. I'm not sure where it falls. 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. Which is a very weird thing today. So there's lots of interesting details here that filter through. This time around, we have a very special edition featuring Dr. Mark Plotkin and Brian C . 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. And the big question is, what is this thing doing there in the middle of nowhere? CHARLES STANG: All right. Thank you for that. And Ruck, and you following Ruck, make much of this, suggesting maybe the Gnostics are pharmacologists of some kind. And we had a great chat, a very spirited chat about the mysteries and the psychedelic hypothesis. If we're being honest with ourselves, when you've drunk-- and I've drunk that wine-- I didn't necessarily feel that I'd become one with Jesus. I'm sure he knows this well, by this point. 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. The altar had been sitting in a museum in Israel since the 1960s and just hadn't been tested. So, you know, I specifically wanted to avoid heavily relying on the 52 books of the [INAUDIBLE] corpus or heavily relying too much on the Gospel of Mary Magdalene and the evidence that's come from Egypt. They did not. BRIAN MURARESKU: We can dip from both pies, Dr. Stang. CHARLES STANG: OK. OK-- maybe one of those ancient beers. I mean, this really goes to my deep skepticism. 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. And by the way, I'm not here trying to protect Christianity from the evidence of psychedelic use. 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. And I think oversight also comes in handy within organized religion. Was there any similarity from that potion to what was drunk at Eleusis? 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. And for those of you who have found my line of questioning or just my general presence tedious, first of all, I fully appreciate that reaction. And I don't know if there's other examples of such things. Now I want to get to the questions, but one last question before we move to the discussion portion. It's this 22-acre site of free-standing limestone, some rising 20 feet in the air, some weighing 50 tons. There were formula. 40:15 Witches, drugs, and the Catholic Church . 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

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