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would certainly appreciate. BRIAN MURARESKU: Dr. Stang, an erudite introduction as ever. #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 The continuity hypothesis of dreams suggests that the content of dreams are largely continuous with waking concepts and concerns of the dreamer. Let me start with the view-- the version of it that I think is less persuasive. So this is interesting. Here's another one. They are guaranteed an afterlife. Which, again, what I see are small groups of people getting together to commune with the dead. The only reason I went to college was to study classics. Not just in Italy, but as kind of the headquarters for the Mediterranean. 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 maybe in these near-death experiences we begin to actually experience that at a visceral level. Love potions, love charms, they're very common in the ancient. So if we can test Eucharistic vessels, I wouldn't be surprised at all that we find one. I mean, so it was Greek. What's significant about these features for our piecing together the ancient religion with no name? 283. It's not just Cana. Now, I've had experiences outside the Eucharist that resonate with me. But I think the broader question of what's the reception to this among explicitly religious folk and religious leaders? Because for many, many years, you know, Ruck's career takes a bit of a nosedive. And what does this earliest history tell us about the earliest evidence for an ancient psychedelic religion? And I'm trying to reconcile that. 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. 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. 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 . What Brian labels the religion with no name. And as a lawyer, I know what is probative and what's circumstantial evidence, and I just-- I don't see it there. The actual key that I found time and again in looking at this literature and the data is what seems to be happening here is the cultivation of a near-death experience. Maybe I have that wrong. I don't think we have found it. We don't have to look very hard to find that. And we know the mysteries were there. What's the importance of your abstention from psychedelics, given what is obvious interest. Those religions featured psychedelic beer and ceremonies lead by women . 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. 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. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. 101. I'm skeptical, Dr. Stang. I really tried. It was a pilgrimage site. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. Did the potion at Eleusis change from generation to generation? #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 And I want to ask you about specifically the Eleusinian mysteries, centered around the goddesses Demeter and Persephone. This is going to be a question that's back to the ancient world. Nage ?] And when we know so much about ancient wine and how very different it was from the wine of today, I mean, what can we say about the Eucharist if we're only looking at the texts? So that's from Burkert, a very sober scholar and the dean of all scholarship on Greek religion. That's, just absurd. 55 This is very likely as it seems that the process had already started in the 4th century. And what do you believe happens to you when you do that? 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. 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? 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. And they found this site, along with others around the Mediterranean. And the quote you just read from Burkert, it's published by Harvard University Press in 1985 as Greek Religion. 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 . But curiously, it's evidence for a eye ointment which is supposed to induce visions and was used as part of a liturgy in the cult of Mithras. So thank you, all who have hung with us. It is my great pleasure to welcome Brian Muraresku to the Center. Interesting. Did the ancient Greeks use drugs to find God? 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. 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. I mean, I asked lots of big questions in the book, and I fully acknowledge that. 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. That event is already up on our website and open for registration. 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. I try to be careful to always land on a lawyer's feet and be very honest with you and everybody else about where this goes from here. 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? He co-writes that with Gordon Wasson and Albert Hofmann, who famously-- there it is, the three authors. So frankly, what happens during the Neolithic, we don't know, at least from a scientific vantage. So again, that's February 22. What the Greeks were actually saying there is that it was barley infected with ergot, which is this natural fungus that infects cereal crops. And shouldn't we all be asking that question? Then there's what were the earliest Christians doing with the Eucharist. I'll invite him to think about the future of religion in light of all this. 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. It's not to say that there isn't evidence from Alexandria or Antioch. CHARLES STANG: OK. Now let's move into the Greek mystery. So we move now into ancient history, but solidly into the historical record, however uneven that historical record is. 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. 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. She joins me for most events and meetings. Do you think that the Christians as a nascent cult adapted a highly effective psycho technology that was rattling . CHARLES STANG: I do, too. And if it's one thing Catholicism does very, very well, it's contemplative mysticism. But things that sound intensely powerful. 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. #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. The universality of frontiers, however, made the hypothesis readily extendable to other parts of the globe. And again, it survives, I think, because of that state support for the better part of 2,000 years. 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." These two accuse one Gnostic teacher named Marcus-- who is himself a student of the famous theologian Valentinus-- they accuse him of dabbling in pharmacological devilry. There's John Marco Allegro claiming that there was no Jesus, and this was just one big amanita muscaria cult. I opened the speculation, Dr. Stang, that the Holy Grail itself could have been some kind of spiked concoction. After the first few chapters the author bogs down flogging the Pagan Continuity Hypothesis and exulting over his discovery of small scraps of evidence he found in a decade of research. And what the FDA can do is make sure that they're doing it in a way that it's absolutely safe and efficacious. And the big question for me was what was that something else? So I see-- you're moving back and forth between these two. BRIAN MURARESKU: I'm bringing more illumination. What does that have to do with Christianity? We know that at the time of Jesus, before, during, and after, there were recipes floating around. 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. 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. CHARLES STANG: Brian, I wonder if you could end by reflecting on the meaning of dying before you die. I wish the church fathers were better botanists and would rail against the specific pharmacopeia. 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.