pagan continuity hypothesis

I did go straight to [INAUDIBLE] Papangelli in Eleusis, and I went to the museum. President and CEO, First Southeast Financial Corp and First Federal Savings and Loan Director, Carolina First Bank and The South Financial Group 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. I'd never thought before about how Christianity developed as an organized religion in the centuries after Jesus' murder. That there is no hard archaeobotanical, archaeochemical data for spiked beer, spiked wine. What, if any, was the relationship between this Greek sanctuary-- a very Greek sanctuary, by the way-- in Catalonia, to the mysteries of Eleusis? 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. A rebirth into what? What about Jesus as a Jew? So if Eleusis is the Fight Club of the ancient world, right, the first rule is you don't talk about it. Up until that point I really had very little knowledge of psychedelics, personal or literary or otherwise. And her answer was that they'd all been cleaned or treated for conservation purposes. But what I see are potential and possibilities and things worthy of discussions like this. 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. And what, if any, was the relationship between those ancient Greeks and the real religion of the earliest Christians, who might call the paleo-Christians. And inside that beer was all kinds of vegetable matter, like wheat, oats, and sedge and lily and flax and various legumes. Tim Ferriss is a self-experimenter and bestselling author, best known for The 4-Hour Workweek, which has been translated into 40+ languages. And I'm happy to see we have over 800 people present for this conversation. 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. But by and large, no, we don't really know. I know that's another loaded phrase. Interesting. 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. And when you speak in that way, what I hear you saying is there is something going on. Again, if you're attracted to psychedelics, it's kind of an extreme thing, right? It's not to say that there isn't evidence from Alexandria or Antioch. But unfortunately, it doesn't connect it to Christianity. 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. Part 1 Brian C. Muraresku: The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis and the Hallucinogenic Origins of Religion 3 days ago Plants of the Gods: S4E1. Not in every single case, obviously. Hard archaeobotanical, archaeochemical data, I haven't seen it. 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. The mysteries of Dionysus, a bit weirder, a bit more off the grid. Are they rolling their eyes, or are you getting sort of secretive knowing nods of agreement? So we're going down parallel paths here, and I feel we're caught between FDA-approved therapeutics and RFRA-protected sacraments, RFRA, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or what becomes of these kinds of substances in any kind of legal format-- which they're not legal at the moment, some would argue. But I think the broader question of what's the reception to this among explicitly religious folk and religious leaders? This is true. And for some reason, I mean, I'd read that two or three times as an undergrad and just glossed over that line. 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 I think oversight also comes in handy within organized religion. And shouldn't we all be asking that question? But I don't hold-- I don't hang my hat on that claim. This notion in John 15:1, the notion of the true vine, for example, only occurs in John. 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 was the Jesuits who taught me Latin and Greek. I include that line for a reason. 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. 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 . Is there a smoking gun? 101. 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. All that will be announced through our mailing list. Brought to you by Like the wedding at Cana, which my synopsis of that event is a drunkard getting a bunch of drunk people even more drunk. I have a deep interest in mysticism, and I've had mystical experiences, which I don't think are very relevant. That's because Brian and I have become friends these past several months, and I'll have more to say about that in a moment. But I do want to push back a little bit on the elevation of this particular real estate in southern Italy. And the reason I find that a worthy avenue of pursuit is because when you take a step back and look at the Greek of the Gospels, especially the Greek of John, which is super weird, what I see based on Dennis MacDonald's scholarship that you mentioned-- and others-- when you do the exegesis of John's gospel, there's just lots of vocabulary and lots of imagery that doesn't appear elsewhere. What does that have to do with Christianity? There is evidence that has been either overlooked or perhaps intentionally suppressed. I would have been happy to find a spiked wine anywhere. You're not confident that the pope is suddenly going to issue an encyclical. Some number of people have asked about Egypt. CHARLES STANG: I have one more question about the pre-Christian story, and that has to do with that the other mystery religion you give such attention to. I'm not sure many have. 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. OK. Now let's pan back because, we have-- I want to wrap up my interrogation of you, which I've been pressing you, but I feel as if perhaps people joining me think I'm hostile to this hypothesis. And in his book [? There have been breakthroughs, too, which no doubt kept Brian going despite some skepticism from the academy, to say the least. He dared to ask this very question before the hypothesis that this Eleusinian sacrament was indeed a psychedelic, and am I right that it was Ruck's hypothesis that set you down this path all those many years ago at Brown? And what you're referring to is-- and how I begin the book is this beautiful Greek phrase, [SPEAKING GREEK]. But things that sound intensely powerful. I think psychedelics are just one piece of the puzzle. 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 But in Pompeii, for example, there's the villa of the mysteries, one of these really breathtaking finds that also survived the ravage of Mount Vesuvius. Listen to #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, an episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, easily on Podbay - the best podcast player on the web. And I want to say that this question that we've been exploring the last half hour about what all this means for the present will be very much the topic of our next event on February 22, which is taking up the question of psychedelic chaplaincy. And by the way, I'm not here trying to protect Christianity from the evidence of psychedelic use. 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. 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 the big question is, what is this thing doing there in the middle of nowhere? So let's start, then, the first act. He was wronged by individuals, allegedly. Nazanin Boniadi I don't know why it's happening now, but we're finally taking a look. I'm going to come back to that idea of proof of concept. 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. And so part of what it means to be a priest or a minister or a rabbi is to sit with the dying and the dead. So there's lots of interesting details here that filter through. He's talking about kind of psychedelic wine. Maybe part of me is skeptical, right? Now, Brian managed to write this book while holding down a full time practice in international law based in Washington DC. BRIAN MURARESKU: I'm bringing more illumination. 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. So. It's funny to see that some of the first basilicas outside Rome are popping up here, and in and around Pompeii. So what I think we have here in this ergtotized beer drink from Catalonia, Spain, and in this weird witch's brew from 79 AD in Pompeii, I describe it, until I see evidence otherwise, as some of the very first heart scientific data for the actual existence of actual spiked wine in classical antiquity, which I think is a really big point. Although she's open to testing, there was nothing there. That would require an entirely different kind of evidence. That to live on forever and ever, to live an everlasting life is not immortality. And maybe in these near-death experiences we begin to actually experience that at a visceral level. These were Greek-- I've seen them referred to as Greek Vikings by Peter Kingsley, Vikings who came from Ionia. No one lived there. 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. What was discovered, as far as I can tell, from your treatment of it, is essentially an ancient pharmacy in this house. Psychedelics Today: PTSF 35 (with Brian Muraresku) Griffithsfund.org So you lean on the good work of Harvard's own Arthur Darby Nock, and more recently, the work of Dennis McDonald at Claremont School of Theology, to suggest that the author of the Gospel of John deliberately paints Jesus and his Eucharist in the colors of Dionysus. So whatever these [SPEAKING GREEK] libations incense were, the church fathers don't get into great detail about what may have been spiking them. So how to put this? An actual spiked wine. 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 think it's really interesting details here worth following up on. These mysteries had at their center a sacrament called kykeon, which offered a vision of the mysteries of life and death. If you are drawn to psychedelics, in my mind, it means you're probably drawn to contemplative mysticism.



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