pagan continuity hypothesis
What was the wine in the early Eucharist? 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. In this hypothesis, both widely accepted and widely criticized,11 'American' was synonymous with 'North American'. We look forward to hosting Chacruna's founder and executive director, Bia Labate, for a lecture on Monday, March 8. So the big question is, what kind of drug was this, if it was a drug? 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 . CHARLES STANG: OK. Now let's move into the Greek mystery. 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. I would have been happy to find a spiked wine anywhere. And what you're referring to is-- and how I begin the book is this beautiful Greek phrase, [SPEAKING GREEK]. 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. And again, it survives, I think, because of that state support for the better part of 2,000 years. Where does Western civilization come from? And I don't know if it's a genuine mystical experience or mystical mimetic or some kind of psychological breakthrough. 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. Nage ?] 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. I'm sure he knows this well, by this point. CHARLES STANG: OK. He's been featured in Forbes, the Daily Beast, Big Think, and Vice. These mysteries had at their center a sacrament called kykeon, which offered a vision of the mysteries of life and death. It's not just Cana. What was being thrown into it? Joe Campbell puts it best that what we're after is an experience of being alive. 18.3C: Continuity Theory. CHARLES STANG: OK. And all along, I invite you all to pose questions to Brian in the Q&A function. He was greatly influenced by Sigmund Freud (1940) who viewed an infant's first relationship - usually with the mother - as "the prototype of all later love-relations". 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. Now, that is part of your kind of interest in democratizing mysticism, but it also, curiously, cuts out the very people who have been preserving this tradition for centuries, namely, on your own account, this sort of invisible or barely visible lineage of women. You see an altar of Pentelic marble that could only have come from the Mount Pentelicus quarry in mainland Greece. And so I don't know what a really authentic, a really historic-looking ritual that is equal parts sacred, but also, again, medically sound, scientifically rigorous, would look like. Nage ?] Again, if you're attracted to psychedelics, it's kind of an extreme thing, right? Now-- and I think that we can probably concede that. So I think it's really interesting details here worth following up on. And I've listened to the volunteers who've gone through these experiences. It's not the case in the second century. So whatever these [SPEAKING GREEK] libations incense were, the church fathers don't get into great detail about what may have been spiking them. If they've been doing this, as you suggest, for 2,000 years, nearly, what makes you think that a few ancient historians are going to turn that aircraft carrier around? Those religions featured psychedelic beer and ceremonies lead by women . Some number of people have asked about Egypt. But unfortunately, it doesn't connect it to Christianity. Brian is the author of a remarkable new book that has garnered a lot of attention and has sold a great many copies. OK, Brian, I invite you to join us now. And so that's what motivated my search here. It's a big question for me. There was an absence of continuity in the direction of the colony as Newport made his frequent voyages to and . That there is no hard archaeobotanical, archaeochemical data for spiked beer, spiked wine. Or maybe in palliative care. So imagine how many artifacts are just sitting in museums right now, waiting to be tested. I've no doubt that Brian has unearthed and collected a remarkable body of evidence, but evidence of what, exactly? So that's from Burkert, a very sober scholar and the dean of all scholarship on Greek religion. Like in a retreat pilgrimage type center, or maybe within palliative care. 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 don't know if there's other examples of such things. 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. Now, I have no idea where it goes from here, or if I'll take it myself. That's, just absurd. Although she's open to testing, there was nothing there. What does it mean to die before dying? There have been breakthroughs, too, which no doubt kept Brian going despite some skepticism from the academy, to say the least. So in the mountains and forests from Greece to Rome, including the Holy Land and Galilee. 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. Did the ancient Greeks use drugs to find God? 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. 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 I think that that's the real question here. I did go straight to [INAUDIBLE] Papangelli in Eleusis, and I went to the museum. 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. 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. [2] Now, I mentioned that Brian and I had become friends. So I see-- you're moving back and forth between these two. 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. The continuity theory proposes that older adults maintain the same activities, behaviors, personalities, and relationships of the past. You take a board corporate finance attorney, you add in lots of childhood hours watching Indiana Jones, lots of law school hours reading Dan Brown, you put it all together and out pops The Immortality Key. If the Dionysian one is psychedelic, does it really make its way into some kind of psychedelic Christianity? Which is a very weird thing today. You can see that inscribed on a plaque in Saint Paul's monastery at Mount Athos in Greece. Psychedelics Today: PTSF 35 (with Brian Muraresku) Griffithsfund.org That's only after Constantine. Jerry Brown wrote a good review that should be read to put the book in its proper place. Do the drugs, Dr. Stang? And there you also found mortars that were tested and also tested positive for evidence of brewing. 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. I was not going to put a book out there that was sensationalist. I'm skeptical, Dr. Stang. 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. 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. Now are there any other questions you wish to propose or push or-- I don't know, to push back against any of the criticisms or questions I've leveled? So what evidence can you provide for that claim? Now, here's-- let's tack away from hard, scientific, archaeobotanical evidence for a moment. So Pompeii and its environs at the time were called [SPEAKING GREEK], which means great Greece. 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 . 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. So my biggest question is, what kind of wine was it? What does that have to do with Christianity? I'm paraphrasing this one. Do you think that by calling the Eucharist a placebo that you're likely to persuade them? I mean, the honest answer is not much. But Egypt seems to not really be hugely relevant to the research. What is it about that formula that captures for you the wisdom, the insight that is on offer in this ancient ritual, psychedelic or otherwise? Now I want to get to the questions, but one last question before we move to the discussion portion. 55 This is very likely as it seems that the process had already started in the 4th century. 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. And I write, at the very end of the book, I hope that they'd be proud of this investigation. And I want to say to those who are still assembled here that I'm terribly sorry that we can't get to all your questions. 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 not least because if I were to do it, I'd like to do so in a deeply sacred ritual. BRIAN MURARESKU: It just happens to show up. 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. I mean, lots of great questions worthy of further investigation. BRIAN MURARESKU: We can dip from both pies, Dr. Stang. And I'm happy to see we have over 800 people present for this conversation. Because ergot is just very common. Books about pagan continuity hypothesis? Because what tends to happen in those experiences is a death and rebirth. What is its connection to Eleusis? 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. CHARLES STANG: Brian, I want to thank you for your time. And I look forward to talking about this event with you after the fact eventually over a beer. . You won't find it in many places other than that. So it wasn't just a random place to find one of these spiked wines. This is true. Now that the pagan continuity hypothesis is defended, the next task is to show that the pagan and proto-Christian ritual sacraments were, in fact, psychedelicbrews. 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 . 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. CHARLES STANG: OK. So how does Dionysian revelries get into this picture? But it's not an ingested psychedelic. We're going to get there very soon. And according to Wasson, Hofmann, and Ruck, that barley was really a code word. CHARLES STANG: All right. He was wronged by individuals, allegedly. The pagan continuity hypothesis theorizes that when Christianity arrived in Greece around AD 49, it didn't suddenly replace the existing religion. CHARLES STANG: So it may be worth mentioning, for those who are attending who haven't read the book, that you asked, who I can't remember her name, the woman who is in charge of the Eleusis site, whether some of the ritual vessels could be tested, only to discover-- tested for the remains of whatever they held, only to learn that those vessels had been cleaned and that no more vessels were going to be unearthed. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. So I think this was a minority of early Christians. 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 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 want to ask you about specifically the Eleusinian mysteries, centered around the goddesses Demeter and Persephone. And I think we get hung up on the jargon. I don't know why it's happening now, but we're finally taking a look. BRIAN MURARESKU: I'm asked this question, I would say, in pretty much every interview I've done since late September. So the closer we get to the modern period, we're starting to find beer, wine mixed with interesting things. She joins me for most events and meetings. And when I started to get closer into the historical period-- this is all prehistory. I don't think we have found it. 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? So we move now into ancient history, but solidly into the historical record, however uneven that historical record is. 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. There he is. 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. We still have almost 700 with us. This 'pagan continuity hypothesis' with a psychedelic twist is now backed up by biochemistry and agrochemistry and tons of historical research, exposing our forgotten history. At Cambridge University he worked in developmental biolo. Tim Ferriss is a self-experimenter and bestselling author, best known for The 4-Hour Workweek, which has been translated into 40+ languages. 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. Here's another one. And they found this site, along with others around the Mediterranean. [texts-excerpt] penalty for cutting mangroves in floridaFREE EstimateFREE Estimate And so that opened a question for me. Now, what's curious about this is we usually have-- Egypt plays a rather outsized role in our sense of early Christianity because-- and other adjacent or contemporary religious and philosophical movements, because everything in Egypt is preserved better than anywhere else in the Mediterranean. Now, I think you answered that last part. Church of the Saints Faustina and Liberata, view from the outside with the entrance enclosure, at "Sante" place, Capo di Ponte (Italy). And so even within the New Testament you see little hints and clues that there was no such thing as only ordinary table wine. And then was, in some sense, the norm, the original Eucharist, and that it was then suppressed by orthodox, institutional Christianity, who persecuted, especially the women who were the caretakers of this tradition. We have an hour and a half together and I hope there will be time for Q&A and discussion. Certainly these early churchmen used whatever they could against the forms of Christian practice they disapproved of, especially those they categorized as Gnostic. But please do know that we will forward all these questions to Brian so he will know the sorts of questions his work prompts. I think the wine certainly does. When you start testing, you find things. 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. You obviously think these are powerful substances with profound effects that track with reality. I wonder if you're familiar with Wouter Hanegraaff at the University of Amsterdam. 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. Whether there's a psychedelic tradition-- I mean, there are some suggestive paintings. BRIAN MURARESKU: I wish I could answer that question. We see lots of descriptions of this in the mystical literature with which you're very familiar. BRIAN MURARESKU: Now we're cooking with grease, Dr. Stang. Was there any similarity from that potion to what was drunk at Eleusis? #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. 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. I mean, I think the book makes it clear. So your presentation of early Christianity inclines heavily toward the Greek world. I'm not. But it survives. But it was not far from a well-known colony in [INAUDIBLE] that was founded by Phocians. I am so fortunate to have been selected to present my thesis, "Mythology and Psychedelics: Taking the Pagan Continuity Hypothesis a Step Further" at. Hard archaeobotanical, archaeochemical data, I haven't seen it. He decides to get people even more drunk. And so with a revised ancient history, in place Brian tacks back to the title of our series, Psychedelics and the Future of Religion. I was satisfied with I give Brian Muraresku an "A" for enthusiasm, but I gave his book 2 stars. Show Plants of the Gods: Hallucinogens, Healing, Culture and Conservation podcast, Ep Plants of the Gods: S4E2. First, the continuity of the offices must be seen in light of the change of institutional charges; they had lost their religious connotations and had become secular. 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. The answer seems to be connected to psychedelic drugs. 44:48 Psychedelics and ancient cave art . Now, I've never done them myself, but I have talked to many, many people who've had experience with psychedelics. So if Eleusis is the Fight Club of the ancient world, right, the first rule is you don't talk about it. So those are all possibly different questions to ask and answer. 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. And nor do I think that you can characterize southern Italy as ground zero for the spirit of Greek mysticism, or however you put it. And my favorite line of the book is, "The lawyer in me won't sleep until that one chalice, that one container, that one vessel comes to light in an unquestionable Christian context.". It's interesting that Saint Ignatius of Antioch, in the beginning of the second century AD, refers to the wine of the Eucharist as the [SPEAKING GREEK], the drug of immortality. We have other textual evidence. 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. He's talking about kind of psychedelic wine. This notion in John 15:1, the notion of the true vine, for example, only occurs in John. Psychedelics Today: Mark Plotkin - Bio-Cultural Conservation of the Amazon.
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