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? #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 so I can see psychedelics being some kind of extra sacramental ministry that potentially could ease people at the end of life. General Stanley McChrystal Mastering Risk: A User's Guide | Brought to you by Kettle & Fire high quality, tasty, and conveniently packaged bone broths; Eight Sleep. Now you're a good sport, Brian. He has talked about the potential evidence for psychedelics in a Mithras liturgy. And I asked her openly if we could test some of the many, many containers that they have, some on display, and many more in repository there. So I don't write this to antagonize them or the church, the people who, again, ushered me into this discipline and into these questions. He's been featured in Forbes, the Daily Beast, Big Think, and Vice. So Plato, Pindar, Sophocles, all the way into Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, it's an important thing. These were Greek-- I've seen them referred to as Greek Vikings by Peter Kingsley, Vikings who came from Ionia. So I have my concerns about what's about to happen in Oregon and the regulation of psilocybin for therapeutic purposes. 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. I know that that's a loaded phrase. And they found this site, along with others around the Mediterranean. An actual spiked wine. 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 does it line up with the promise from John's gospel that anyone who drinks this becomes instantly immortal? She had the strange sense that every moment was an eternity of its own. 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. And so even within the New Testament you see little hints and clues that there was no such thing as only ordinary table wine. Just imagine, I have to live with me. 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. They were mixed or fortified. . And that's the mysteries of Dionysus. The Immortality Key, The Secret History of the Religion With No Name. She joins me for most events and meetings. So there's a whole slew of sites I want to test there. And I offer psychedelics as one of those archaic techniques of ecstasy that seems to have been relevant and meaningful to our ancestors. Books about pagan continuity hypothesis? What's the importance of your abstention from psychedelics, given what is obvious interest. 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. I was not going to put a book out there that was sensationalist. Nage ?] Those religions featured psychedelic beer and ceremonies lead by women . Here is how I propose we are to proceed. It was-- Eleusis was state-administered, a somewhat formal affair. 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. CHARLES STANG: OK. Now let's move into the Greek mystery. 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. This notion in John 15:1, the notion of the true vine, for example, only occurs in John. And so in the epilogue, I say we simply do not know the relationship between this site in Spain and Eleusis, nor do we know what was happening at-- it doesn't automatically mean that Eleusis was a psychedelic rite. And considering the common background of modern religions (the Pagan Continuity hypothesis), any religious group who thinks they are chosen or correct are promoting a simplistic and ignorant view of our past. The question is, what will happen in the future. Find ratings and reviews for the newest movie and TV shows. I mean, lots of great questions worthy of further investigation. So it's hard for me to write this and talk about this without acknowledging the Jesuits who put me here. So this is interesting. 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. Before I set forth the outline of this thesis, three topics must be discussed in order to establish a basic understanding of the religious terminology, Constantine's reign, and the contemporary sources. It is my great pleasure to welcome Brian Muraresku to the Center. BRIAN MURARESKU: Good one. And I don't know if it's a genuine mystical experience or mystical mimetic or some kind of psychological breakthrough. McGovern also finds wine from Egypt, for example, in 3150 BC, wine that is mixed with a number of interesting ingredients. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. BRIAN MURARESKU: Great question. As much as we know about the mysteries of Eleusis. So the mysteries of Dionysus are a bit more of a free-for-all than the mysteries of Eleusis. Research inside the Church of Saint Faustina and Liberata Fig 1. So the Eastern Aegean. So why refrain? Psychedelics Today: Mark Plotkin - Bio-Cultural Conservation of the Amazon. So back in 2012, archaeologists and chemists were scraping some of these giant limestone troughs, and out pops calcium oxalate, which is one of these biomarkers for the fermentation of brewing. Read more about The Immortality Key by Brian Muraresku Making Sense by Sam Harris But I'm pressing you because that's my job. CHARLES STANG: All right. The pagan continuity hypothesis theorizes that when Christianity arrived in Greece around AD 49, it didn't suddenly replace the existing religion. There's evidence of the mysteries of Dionysus before, during, and after the life of Jesus, it's worth pointing out. And the quote you just read from Burkert, it's published by Harvard University Press in 1985 as Greek Religion. 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. We're going to get there very soon. I mean, what-- my big question is, what can we say about the Eucharist-- and maybe it's just my weird lens, but what can we say about it definitively in the absence of the archaeochemstry or the archaeobotany? Richard Evans Schultes and the Search for Ayahuasca 17 days ago Plants of the Gods: S3E10. 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. But you go further still, suggesting that Jesus himself at the Last Supper might have administered psychedelic sacrament, that the original Eucharist was psychedelic. I see a huge need and a demand for young religious clergy to begin taking a look at this stuff. The continuity theory of normal aging states that older adults will usually maintain the same activities, behaviors, relationships as they did in their earlier years of life. 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. And if there's historical precedent for it, all the more so. #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 all we know-- I mean, we can't decipher sequence by sequence what was happening. And then that's the word that Euripides uses, by the way. And I think sites like this have tended to be neglected in scholarship, or published in languages like Catalan, maybe Ukrainian, where it just doesn't filter through the academic community. And I want to ask you about specifically the Eleusinian mysteries, centered around the goddesses Demeter and Persephone. It was the Jesuits who taught me Latin and Greek. 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. 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 . We still have almost 700 with us. 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. The big question is, did any of these recipes, did any of this wine spiking actually make its way into some paleo-Christian ceremony. 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 Now I want to get to the questions, but one last question before we move to the discussion portion. 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. 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. That's one narrative that I feel is a little sensational. You see an altar of Pentelic marble that could only have come from the Mount Pentelicus quarry in mainland Greece. CHARLES STANG: My name is Charles Stang, and I'm the director of the Center for the Study of World Religions here at Harvard Divinity School. CHARLES STANG: I do, too. And then at some point they go inland. BRIAN MURARESKU: We can dip from both pies, Dr. Stang. Up until that point I really had very little knowledge of psychedelics, personal or literary or otherwise. 18.3C: Continuity Theory. 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? 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, it's just an early indication and there's more testing to be done. That's staying within the field of time. I mean, shouldn't everybody, shouldn't every Christian be wondering what kind of wine was on that table, or the tables of the earliest Christians? 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. OK, now, Brian, you've probably dealt with questions like this. CHARLES STANG: OK. CHARLES STANG: All right. 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. I mean, I asked lots of big questions in the book, and I fully acknowledge that. 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. Maybe part of me is skeptical, right? There's some suggestive language in the pyramid texts, in the Book of the Dead and things of this nature. So thank you, all who have hung with us. So how to put this? I mean, I wish it were easier. It was it was barley, water, and something else. 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. And keep in mind that we'll drop down into any one of these points more deeply. 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. I really tried. I'm not sure many have. The phrasing used in the book and by others is "the pagan continuity hypothesis". I wish the church fathers were better botanists and would rail against the specific pharmacopeia. BRIAN MURARESKU: That's a good question. And to be quite honest, I'd never studied the ancient Greeks in Spain. Liked by Samuel Zuschlag. That there is no hard archaeobotanical, archaeochemical data for spiked beer, spiked wine. 8th century BC from the Tel Arad shrine. You're not confident that the pope is suddenly going to issue an encyclical. So how does Dionysian revelries get into this picture? In this hypothesis, both widely accepted and widely criticized,11 'American' was synonymous with 'North American'. That's, just absurd. The book proposes a history of religious ritualistic psychedelic use at least as old as the ancient Greek mystery religions, especially those starting in Eleusis and dating to roughly 2,000 BC. How does, in other words, how does religion sit with science? And if it only occurs in John, the big question is why. Those of you who don't know his name, he's a professor at the University of Amsterdam, an expert in Western esotericism. It's something that goes from Homer all the way until the fall of the Roman Empire, over the course of well more than 1,000 years. And there were probably other Eleusises like that to the east. Maybe there's some residual fear that's been built up in me. [2] This discussion on Febrary 1, 2021, between CSWR Director Charles Stang and Brian Muraresku about his new book, The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name,a groundbreaking dive into the role of psychedelics in the ancient Mediterranean world. And what about the alleged democratization with which you credit the mysteries of Dionysus, or the role of women in that movement? So let's talk about the future of religion, and specifically the future of Roman Catholicism. 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. I am excited . I understand the appeal of that. What does ergotized beer in Catalonia have anything to do with the Greek mysteries at Eleusis? But I mentioned that we've become friends because it is the prerogative of friends to ask hard questions. 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. Thank you, sir. So those are all possibly different questions to ask and answer. The altar had been sitting in a museum in Israel since the 1960s and just hadn't been tested. And the big question for me was what was that something else? 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. What does that have to do with Christianity? So don't feel like you have to go into great depth at this point. But what I see are potential and possibilities and things worthy of discussions like this. 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. 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. It's really quite simple, Charlie. What about all these early Christians themselves as essentially Jews? 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? #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. So my biggest question is, what kind of wine was it? 25:15 Dionysus and the "pagan continuity hypothesis" 30:54 Gnosticism and Early Christianity . But let me say at the outset that it is remarkably learned, full of great historical and philological detail. 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. 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, Mithras is another one of these mystery religions. We look forward to hosting Chacruna's founder and executive director, Bia Labate, for a lecture on Monday, March 8. 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. That's only after Constantine. Now that doesn't mean, as Brian was saying, that then suggests that that's the norm Eucharist. CHARLES STANG: OK. Maybe there's a spark of the divine within. Although she's open to testing, there was nothing there. Now, Brian managed to write this book while holding down a full time practice in international law based in Washington DC. 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? And he found some beer and wine-- that was a bit surprising. If you die before you die, you won't die when you die. To be a Catholic is to believe that you are literally consuming the blood of Christ to become Christ. 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. So if you were a mystic and you were into Demeter and Persephone and Dionysus and you were into these strange Greek mystery cults, you'd be hard-pressed to find a better place to spend your time than [SPEAKING GREEK], southern Italy, which in some cases was more Greek than Greek. And let's start with our earliest evidence from the Stone Age and the Bronze Age. And apparently, the book is on order, so I can't speak to this directly, but the ancient Greek text that preserves this liturgy also preserves the formula, the ingredients of the eye ointment. So again, if there were an early psychedelic sacrament that was being suppressed, I'd expect that the suppressors would talk about it. But what we do know about the wine of the time is that it was routinely mixed with plants and herbs and potentially fungi. He draws on the theory of "pagan continuity," which holds that early Christianity adopted . If you are drawn to psychedelics, in my mind, it means you're probably drawn to contemplative mysticism. And Dennis, amongst others, calls that a signature Dionysian miracle. And maybe therein we do since the intimation of immortality. Including, all the way back to Gobekli Tepe, which is why I mentioned that when we first started chatting. The most influential religious historian of the twentieth century, Huston Smith, once referred to it as the "best-kept secret" in history. If you look at Dioscorides, for example, his Materia Medica, that's written in the first century AD around the same time that the Gospels themselves are being written. 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. Like savory, wormwood, blue tansy, balm, senna, coriander, germander, mint, sage, and thyme. I've no doubt that Brian has unearthed and collected a remarkable body of evidence, but evidence of what, exactly? You mentioned, too, early churchmen, experts in heresies by the name of Irenaeus of Lyons and Hippolytus of Rome. He co-writes that with Gordon Wasson and Albert Hofmann, who famously-- there it is, the three authors. What is its connection to Eleusis? Which, if you think about it, is a very elegant idea. I took this to Greg [? And besides that, young Brian, let's keep the mysteries mysteries. I did go straight to [INAUDIBLE] Papangelli in Eleusis, and I went to the museum. Let me start with the view-- the version of it that I think is less persuasive. 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. We have plays like the Bacchi from Euripides, where we can piece together some of this. So that, actually, is the key to the immortality key. 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. I'm happy to argue about that. And I just happened to fall into that at the age of 14 thanks to the Jesuits, and just never left it behind. The Immortality Key has its shortcomings. And part of me really wants to put all these pieces together before I dive in. Again, it's proof of concept for going back to Eleusis and going back to other sites around the Mediterranean and continuing to test, whether for ergotized beer or other things. But the point being, the religion of brewing seems to pop up at the very beginning of civilization itself, or the very beginning of monumental engineering at this world's first sanctuary. And I think that that's the real question here. Love potions, love charms, they're very common in the ancient. She found the remains of dog sacrifice, which is super interesting. But with what were they mixed, and to what effect? And anyone who drinks this, [SPEAKING GREEK], Jesus says in Greek, you remain in me and I in you. And please just call me Charlie. Well, let's get into it then. CHARLES STANG: Well, Mr, Muraresku, you are hedging your bets here in a way that you do not necessarily hedge your bets in the book. And I think there are lots of reasons to believe that. 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. So even from the very beginning, it wasn't just barley and water. 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. You want to field questions in both those categories? What's the wine? So I'll speak in language that you and our good colleague Greg [? If we're being honest with ourselves, when you've drunk-- and I've drunk that wine-- I didn't necessarily feel that I'd become one with Jesus. So it wasn't just a random place to find one of these spiked wines. So what evidence can you provide for that claim? 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? The continuity between pagan and Christian cult nearby the archaeological area of Naquane in Capo di Ponte. Here's the proof of concept. To become truly immortal, Campbell talks about entering into a sense of eternity, which is the infinite present here and now. That event is already up on our website and open for registration. As a matter of fact, I think it's much more promising and much more fertile for scholarship to suggest that some of the earliest Christians may have availed themselves of a psychedelic sacrament and may have interpreted the Last Supper as some kind of invitation to open psychedelia, that mystical supper as the orthodox call it, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. And I feel like I accomplished that in the afterword to my book. Now, the great scholar of Greek religion, Walter Burkert, you quote him as musing, once-- and I'm going to quote him-- he says, "it may rather be asked, even without the prospect of a certain answer, whether the basis of the mysteries, they were prehistoric drug rituals, some festival imp of immortality which, through the expansion of consciousness, seemed to guarantee some psychedelic beyond." What's significant about these features for our piecing together the ancient religion with no name? 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. 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. 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 I also sense another narrative in your book, and one you've flagged for us, maybe about 10 minutes ago, when you said that the book is a proof of concept. But I don't understand how that provides any significant link to paleo-Christian practice.

St Mary's Catholic Church New Orleans Wedding, Is The California Relief Grant Taxable Income, Articles P