So somewhere between 1% and 49%. CHARLES STANG: All right. And there you also found mortars that were tested and also tested positive for evidence of brewing. So if we can test Eucharistic vessels, I wouldn't be surprised at all that we find one. I think psychedelics are just one piece of the puzzle. So to find dog sacrifice inside this Greek sanctuary alludes to this proto-witch, Hecate, the mother of Circe, who is mentioned in the same hymn to Demeter from the 8th, 7th century BC, as kind of the third of the goddesses to whom these mysteries were dedicated. Because they talk about everything else that they take issue with. So the closer we get to the modern period, we're starting to find beer, wine mixed with interesting things. 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. But what I hear from people, including atheists, like Dina Bazer, who participated in these Hopkins NYU trials is that she felt like on her one and only dose of psilocybin that she was bathed in God's love. 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 And I think oversight also comes in handy within organized religion. That event is already up on our website and open for registration. 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. Is this only Marcus? So it wasn't just a random place to find one of these spiked wines. All that will be announced through our mailing list. That there is no hard archaeobotanical, archaeochemical data for spiked beer, spiked wine. And by the way, I'm not here trying to protect Christianity from the evidence of psychedelic use. IMDb is the world's most popular and authoritative source for movie, TV and celebrity content. And so the big question is what was happening there? BRIAN MURARESKU: Now we're cooking with grease, Dr. Stang. So, although, I mean, and that actually, I'd like to come back to that, the notion of the, that not just the pagan continuity hypothesis, but the mystery continuity hypothesis through the Vatican. And she happened to find it on psilocybin. Just imagine, I have to live with me. 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. It was one of the early write-ups of the psilocybin studies coming out of Johns Hopkins. And did the earliest Christians inherit the same secret tradition? Because at my heart, I still consider myself a good Catholic boy. 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. And when you speak in that way, what I hear you saying is there is something going on. It was-- Eleusis was state-administered, a somewhat formal affair. As much as we know about the mysteries of Eleusis. Then I see the mysteries of Dionysus as kind of the Burning Man or the Woodstock of the ancient world. I'll invite him to think about the future of religion in light of all this. Because ergot is just very common. So I want to propose that we stage this play in two acts. Which turns out, it may be they were. They are guaranteed an afterlife. Now, it's just an early indication and there's more testing to be done. His aim when he set out on this journey 12 years ago was to assess the validity of a rather old, but largely discredited hypothesis, namely, that some of the religions of the ancient Mediterranean, perhaps including Christianity, used a psychedelic sacrament to induce mystical experiences at the border of life and death, and that these psychedelic rituals were just the tip of the iceberg, signs of an even more ancient and pervasive religious practice going back many thousands of years. 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. And her answer was that they'd all been cleaned or treated for conservation purposes. And that's the mysteries of Dionysus. This book by Brian Muraresku, attempts to answer this question by delving into the history of ancient secret religions dating back thousands of years. Then what was the Gospel of John, how did it interpret the Eucharist and market it, and so on. They did not. Why don't we turn the tables and ask you what questions you think need to be posed? So psychedelics or not, I think it's the cultivation of that experience, which is the actual key. 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. It's arguably not the case in the third century. But please do know that we will forward all these questions to Brian so he will know the sorts of questions his work prompts. And I write, at the very end of the book, I hope that they'd be proud of this investigation. Although she's open to testing, there was nothing there. Read more about The Immortality Key by Brian Muraresku Making Sense by Sam Harris To be a Catholic is to believe that you are literally consuming the blood of Christ to become Christ. And part of me really wants to put all these pieces together before I dive in. But Egypt seems to not really be hugely relevant to the research. But I want to ask you to reflect on the broader narrative that you're painting, because I've heard you speak in two ways about the significance of this work. So it's hard for me to write this and talk about this without acknowledging the Jesuits who put me here. 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. Material evidence of a very strange potion, a drug, or a [SPEAKING GREEK]. The answer seems to be connected to psychedelic drugs. And so the big hunt for me was trying to find some of those psychedelic bits. I mean, the honest answer is not much. 44:48 Psychedelics and ancient cave art . The most influential religious historian of the twentieth century, Huston Smith, once referred to it as the "best-kept secret" in history. The continuity theory proposes that older adults maintain the same activities, behaviors, personalities, and relationships of the past. So let's start with one that is more contemporary. And so I don't think that psychedelics are coming to replace the Sunday Eucharist. I really tried. 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. Well, wonderful. In this hypothesis, both widely accepted and widely criticized,11 'American' was synonymous with 'North American'. 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. I expect there will be. And I think it does hearken back to a genuinely ancient Greek principle, which is that only by fully experiencing some kind of death, a death that feels real, where you, or at least the you you used to identify with, actually slips away, dissolves. But you will be consoled to know that someone else will be-- I will be there, but someone else will be leading that conversation. 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. 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. The Immortality Key, The Secret History of the Religion With No Name. What's significant about these features for our piecing together the ancient religion with no name? The question is, what will happen in the future. What, if any, was the relationship between this Greek sanctuary-- a very Greek sanctuary, by the way-- in Catalonia, to the mysteries of Eleusis? BRIAN MURARESKU: But you're spot on. The book was published by Saint Martin's Press in September 2020 and has generated a whirlwind of attention. So if Eleusis is the Fight Club of the ancient world, right, the first rule is you don't talk about it. So the Greek god of wine, intoxication. Now, I've never done them myself, but I have talked to many, many people who've had experience with psychedelics. I mean, this really goes to my deep skepticism. What was being thrown into it? In this episode, Brian C. Muraresku, who holds a degree from Brown University in Latin, Greek and Sanskrit,  joins Breht to discuss his fascinating book "The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name", a groundbreaking dive into the use of hallucinogens in ancient Greece, the Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, the role of the Eucharist in early Christianity, the . 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. 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. The Gnostics did have continuity with paganism. 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. Lots of Greek artifacts, lots of Greek signifiers. The phrasing used in the book and by others is "the pagan continuity hypothesis". Yeah. It's a big question for me. I mean, I asked lots of big questions in the book, and I fully acknowledge that. And to be quite honest, I'd never studied the ancient Greeks in Spain. That also only occurs in John, another epithet of Dionysus. 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. I think the only big question is what the exact relationship was from a place like that over to Eleusis. . In this way, the two traditions coexisted in a syncretic form for some time before . Psychedelics Today: PTSF 35 (with Brian Muraresku) Griffithsfund.org That's the big question. And they found this site, along with others around the Mediterranean. And I feel like I accomplished that in the afterword to my book. If beer was there that long ago, what kind of beer was it? 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. He's the god of wine. #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 Brought to you by GiveWell.org charity research and effective giving and 5-Bullet Friday, my very own email newsletter. The only reason I went to college was to study classics. CHARLES STANG: Right. BRIAN MURARESKU: Great question. I opened the speculation, Dr. Stang, that the Holy Grail itself could have been some kind of spiked concoction. But I don't hold-- I don't hang my hat on that claim. 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. I'm paraphrasing this one. #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 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." And we know the mysteries were there. 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. Jerry Brown wrote a good review that should be read to put the book in its proper place. What's the importance of your abstention from psychedelics, given what is obvious interest. Rupert Sheldrake, PhD, is a biologist and author best known for his hypothesis of morphic resonance. And I don't know what that looks like. That they were what you call extreme beverages. And I offer psychedelics as one of those archaic techniques of ecstasy that seems to have been relevant and meaningful to our ancestors. You know, it's an atheist using theological language to describe what happened to her. These were Greek-- I've seen them referred to as Greek Vikings by Peter Kingsley, Vikings who came from Ionia. . And in his book [? Now, Mithras is another one of these mystery religions. So welcome to the fourth event in our yearlong series on psychedelics and the future of religion, co-sponsored by the Esalen Institute, the Riverstyx Foundation, and the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines. So thank you, all who have hung with us. And what we know about the wine of the time is that it was prized amongst other things not for its alcoholic content, but for its ability to induce madness. I have a deep interest in mysticism, and I've had mystical experiences, which I don't think are very relevant. What does that have to do with Christianity? CHARLES STANG: OK. In 1950, Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote " The Influence of the Mystery Religions on Christianity " which describes the continuity from the Pagan, pre-Christian world to what would become early Christianity in the decades and centuries before Jesus Religion & Mystical Experiences, Wine

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