pagan continuity hypothesis

Do the drugs, Dr. Stang? Interesting. 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 There's John Marco Allegro claiming that there was no Jesus, and this was just one big amanita muscaria cult. It's really quite simple, Charlie. Up until that point I really had very little knowledge of psychedelics, personal or literary or otherwise. So your presentation of early Christianity inclines heavily toward the Greek world. But what I see are potential and possibilities and things worthy of discussions like this. We're going to get there very soon. 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 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. I mean, I wish it were easier. And not least because if I were to do it, I'd like to do so in a deeply sacred ritual. Well, the reason I mention Hippolytus and Marcus and focus on that in my evidence is because there's evidence of the Valentinians, who influenced Marcus, in and around Rome. Please materialize. But I'm pressing you because that's my job. And the big question is, what is this thing doing there in the middle of nowhere? #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin The Eleusinian An Exploration of Religion: An Interview with Brian Muraresku They did not. And shouldn't we all be asking that question? Now, Brian managed to write this book while holding down a full time practice in international law based in Washington DC. 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. What was the real religion of the ancient Greeks? This is all secret. Again, if you're attracted to psychedelics, it's kind of an extreme thing, right? To assess this hypothesis and, perhaps, to push it further, has required years of dogged and, at times, discouraging works in archives and archaeology. Many people see that as symbolic or allegorical or just a nice thing, which is not the case. Books about pagan continuity hypothesis? 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? So that, actually, is the key to the immortality key. #283: Managing Procrastination, Predicting the Future, and - Scribd And he was actually going out and testing some of these ancient chalices. And that the proof of concept idea is that we need to-- we, meaning historians of the ancient world, need to bring all the kinds of resources to bear on this to get better evidence and an interpretive frame for making sense of it. Those religions featured psychedelic beer and ceremonies lead by women . That's, just absurd. I think psychedelics are just one piece of the puzzle. There's all kinds of reasons I haven't done it. There have been really dramatic studies from Hopkins and NYU about the ability of psilocybin at the end of life to curb things like depression, anxiety, and end of life distress. And did the earliest Christians inherit the same secret tradition? 48:01 Brian's psychedelic experiences . 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. And in the ancient world, wine was routinely referred to as a [SPEAKING GREEK], which is the Greek word for drug. The Gnostics did have continuity with paganism. So the big question is, what kind of drug was this, if it was a drug? And now we have a working hypothesis and some data to suggest where we might be looking. But Egypt seems to not really be hugely relevant to the research. So in the mountains and forests from Greece to Rome, including the Holy Land and Galilee. President and CEO, First Southeast Financial Corp and First Federal Savings and Loan Director, Carolina First Bank and The South Financial Group There aren't any churches or basilicas, right, in the first three centuries, in this era we're calling paleo-Christianity. 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. 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. I fully expect we will find it. The Tim Ferriss Show - #535: General Stanley McChrystal Mast I've no doubt that Brian has unearthed and collected a remarkable body of evidence, but evidence of what, exactly? That seems very believable, but there's nothing to suggest that the pharmacy or drug farm was serving Christians, or even that the potions produced were for ritual use. Like in a retreat pilgrimage type center, or maybe within palliative care. The pagan continuity hypothesis at the heart of this book made sense to me. What's different about the Dionysian mysteries, and what evidence, direct or indirect, do we have about the wine of Dionysus being psychedelic? And if the latter, do you think there's a good chance that religions will adopt psychedelics back into their rituals?". He's talking about kind of psychedelic wine. All rights reserved. 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? And the big question for me was what was that something else? Because again, when I read the clinical literature, I'm reading things that look like mystical experiences, or that at least at least sound like them. And I think there are so many sites and excavations and so many chalices that remain to be tested. Now that doesn't mean, as Brian was saying, that then suggests that that's the norm Eucharist. And as a lawyer, I know what is probative and what's circumstantial evidence, and I just-- I don't see it there. Nage ?] BRIAN MURARESKU: I don't-- I don't claim too heavily. I mean, if Burkert was happy to speculate about psychedelics, I'm not sure why Ruck got the reception that he did in 1978 with their book The Road to Eleusis. So whatever was happening there was important. CHARLES STANG: OK. And that's a question equally for ancient historians and for contemporary seekers and/or good Catholics. And so the big question is what was happening there? That to live on forever and ever, to live an everlasting life is not immortality. But I don't understand how that provides any significant link to paleo-Christian practice. So I'm trying to build the case-- and for some reason in my research, it kept coming back to Italy and Rome, which is why I focus on Hippolytus. And even Burkert, I think, calls it the most famous of the mystery rituals. 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. And I don't know what that looks like. Material evidence of a very strange potion, a drug, or a [SPEAKING GREEK]. I mean, in the absence of the actual data, that's my biggest question. It's not the case in the second century. Correcting Key Points in Muraresku, The Immortality Key and he said, Brian, don't you dare. We have an hour and a half together and I hope there will be time for Q&A and discussion. And if it only occurs in John, the big question is why. All episodes of The Tim Ferriss Show - Chartable 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. Why don't we turn the tables and ask you what questions you think need to be posed? And I think there are lots of reasons to believe that. Not because they just found that altar. And we had a great chat, a very spirited chat about the mysteries and the psychedelic hypothesis. It draws attention to this material. Rupert Sheldrake, PhD, is a biologist and author best known for his hypothesis of morphic resonance. To be a Catholic is to believe that you are literally consuming the blood of Christ to become Christ. Well, wonderful. Continuity theory - Wikipedia As much as we know about the mysteries of Eleusis. 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. Which, again, what I see are small groups of people getting together to commune with the dead. "The Influence of the Mystery Religions on Christianity" And it was the Jesuits who encouraged me to always, always ask questions and never take anything at face value. Brian is the author of a remarkable new book that has garnered a lot of attention and has sold a great many copies. BRIAN MURARESKU: OK. Let me start with the view-- the version of it that I think is less persuasive. And her best guess is that it was like this open access sanctuary. 474, ?] So let's talk about the future of religion, and specifically the future of Roman Catholicism. What was discovered, as far as I can tell, from your treatment of it, is essentially an ancient pharmacy in this house. Israel's Exodus In Transdisciplinary Perspective: Text - Vdoc.pub So can you reflect for us where you really are and how you chose to write this book? 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. I just sense a great deal of structure and thoughtfulness going into this experience. I expect there will be. I would have been happy to find a spiked wine anywhere. And I hear-- I sense that narrative in your book. So why do you think psychedelics are so significant that they might usher in a new Reformation? So frankly, what happens during the Neolithic, we don't know, at least from a scientific vantage. Where you find the grain, you may have found ergot. So perhaps there's even more evidence. So again, if there were an early psychedelic sacrament that was being suppressed, I'd expect that the suppressors would talk about it. Is this only Marcus? There's a good number of questions that are very curious why you are insisting on remaining a psychedelic virgin. Again, how did Christianity take hold in a world with such a rich mystical tradition? In fact, he found beer, wine, and mead all mixed together in a couple of different places. 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. Thank you for that. And that's all I present it as, is wonderfully attractive and maybe even sexy circumstantial evidence for the potential use of a psychedelic sacrament amongst the earliest Christians. You may have already noticed one such question-- not too hard. BRIAN MURARESKU: That's a good question. And very famous passages, by the way, that should be familiar to most New Testament readers. And I think that that's the real question here. And the truth is that this is a project that goes well beyond ancient history, because Brian is convinced that what he has uncovered has profound implications for the future of religion, and specifically, the future of his own religion, Roman Catholicism. So I point to that evidence as illustrative of the possibility that the Christians could, in fact, have gotten their hands on an actual wine. Part 1 Brian C. Muraresku: The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis and the Hallucinogenic Origins of Religion - Feb 22, 2023 But maybe you could just say something about this community in Catalonia. What about all these early Christians themselves as essentially Jews? BRIAN MURARESKU: It just happens to show up. Revolutionary Left Radio: Early Christianity: Psychedelics, Ancient And I feel like I accomplished that in the afterword to my book. I'm not. Now I understand and I appreciate the pharmaceutical industry's ability to distribute this as medicine for those who are looking for alternatives, alternative treatments for depression and anxiety and PTSD and addiction and end of life distress. She had the strange sense that every moment was an eternity of its own. This notion in John 15:1, the notion of the true vine, for example, only occurs in John. I would expect we'd have ample evidence. And when you speak in that way, what I hear you saying is there is something going on. It was it was barley, water, and something else. 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. That's staying within the field of time. I think the only big question is what the exact relationship was from a place like that over to Eleusis. So I present this as proof of concept, and I heavily rely on the Gospel of John and the data from Italy because that's what was there. So even from the very beginning, it wasn't just barley and water. 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. Now, I think you answered that last part. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. Now, you could draw the obvious conclusion. It seems entirely believable to me that we have a potion maker active near Pompeii. So the Greek god of wine, intoxication. 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. And that is that there was a pervasive religion, ancient religion, that involved psychedelic sacraments, and that that pervasive religious culture filtered into the Greek mysteries and eventually into early Christianity. Now, I have no idea where it goes from here, or if I'll take it myself. Not in every single case, obviously. This event is entitled, Psychedelics, The Ancient Religion With No Name? 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. He's the god of wine. So Dionysus is not the god of alcohol. Lots of Greek artifacts, lots of Greek signifiers. CHARLES STANG: Right. Now, let's get started, Brian. The altar had been sitting in a museum in Israel since the 1960s and just hadn't been tested. You obviously think these are powerful substances with profound effects that track with reality. Hard archaeobotanical, archaeochemical data, I haven't seen it. The most influential religious historian of the twentieth century, Huston Smith, once referred to it as the "best-kept secret" in history. CHARLES STANG: OK. The (Mistaken) Conspiracy Theory: In the Late Middle Ages, religious elites created a new, and mistaken, intellectual framework out of Christian heresy and theology concerning demons. But clearly, when you're thinking about ancient Egypt or elsewhere, there's definitely a funerary tradition. 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 . And according to Wasson, Hofmann, and Ruck, that barley was really a code word. All that will be announced through our mailing list. And what the FDA can do is make sure that they're doing it in a way that it's absolutely safe and efficacious. From about 1500 BC to the fourth century AD, it calls to the best and brightest of not just Athens but also Rome. So this is interesting. And they found this site, along with others around the Mediterranean. That's one narrative that I feel is a little sensational. And nor did we think that a sanctuary would be one of the first things that we construct. 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. So the mysteries of Dionysus are a bit more of a free-for-all than the mysteries of Eleusis. And there you also found mortars that were tested and also tested positive for evidence of brewing. And that kind of invisible religion with no name, although brutally suppressed, managed to survive in Europe for many centuries and could potentially be revived today. OK-- maybe one of those ancient beers. 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. And so I do see an avenue, like I kind of obliquely mentioned, but I do think there's an avenue within organized religion and for people who dedicate their lives as religious professionals to ministry to perhaps take a look at this in places where it might work. So I spent 12 years looking for that data, eventually found it, of all places, in Catalonia in Spain in this 635-page monograph that was published in 2002 and for one reason or another-- probably because it was written in Catalan-- was not widely reported to the academic community and went largely ignored. You might find it in a cemetery in Mexico. "The Jews" are not after Ye. Not much. The big question is, did any of these recipes, did any of this wine spiking actually make its way into some paleo-Christian ceremony. Now, Carl Ruck from Boston University, much closer to home, however, took that invitation and tried to pursue this hypothesis. So I have my concerns about what's about to happen in Oregon and the regulation of psilocybin for therapeutic purposes. 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. One, on mainland Greece from the Mycenaean period, 16th century BC, and the other about 800 years later in modern day Turkey, another ritual potion that seemed to have suggested some kind of concoction of beer, wine, and mead that was used to usher the king into the afterlife.

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