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. CHARLES STANG: OK, that is the big question. So I'm not convinced that-- I think you're absolutely right that what this establishes is that Christians in southern Italy could have-- could have had access to the kinds of things that have been recovered from that drug farm, let's call it. Rather, Christian beliefs were gradually incorporated into the pagan customs that already existed there. 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. 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. And I'm trying to reconcile that. What does ergotized beer in Catalonia have anything to do with the Greek mysteries at Eleusis? Mona Sobhani, PhD Retweeted. That's just everlasting. BRIAN MURARESKU: I'm asked this question, I would say, in pretty much every interview I've done since late September. All that will be announced through our mailing list. Now, I've never done them myself, but I have talked to many, many people who've had experience with psychedelics. 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. So why do you think psychedelics are so significant that they might usher in a new Reformation? Newsweek calls him 'the world's best human guinea pig,' and The New York Times calls him 'a cross between Jack Welch and a Buddhist monk.' In this show, he deconstructs world-class performers from eclectic areas (investing, chess, pro sports, etc . 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. He comes to this research with a full suite of scholarly skills, including a deep knowledge of Greek and Latin as well as facility in a number of European languages, which became crucial for uncovering some rather obscure research in Catalan, and also for sweet-talking the gatekeepers of archives and archaeological sites. But this clearly involved some kind of technical know-how and the ability to concoct these things that, in order to keep them safe and efficacious, would not have been very widespread, I don't think. And it was their claim that when the hymn to Demeter, one of these ancient records that records, in some form, the proto-recipe for this kykeon potion, which I call like a primitive beer, in the hymn to Demeter, they talk about ingredients like barley, water, and mint. 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. What, if any, was the relationship between this Greek sanctuary-- a very Greek sanctuary, by the way-- in Catalonia, to the mysteries of Eleusis? Do the drugs, Dr. Stang? 40:15 Witches, drugs, and the Catholic Church . Now we're getting somewhere. 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. 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. That would require an entirely different kind of evidence. BRIAN MURARESKU: That's a good question. In the first half, we'll cover topics ranging from the Eleusinian Mysteries, early Christianity, and the pagan continuity hypothesis to the work of philosopher and psychologist William James. So I went fully down the rabbit hole. But it was not far from a well-known colony in [INAUDIBLE] that was founded by Phocians. So why refrain? Rupert Sheldrake, PhD, is a biologist and author best known for his hypothesis of morphic resonance. 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. So why the silence from the heresiologists on a psychedelic sacrament? So that's from Burkert, a very sober scholar and the dean of all scholarship on Greek religion. And besides that, young Brian, let's keep the mysteries mysteries. The whole reason I went down this rabbit hole is because they were the ones who brought this to my attention through the generosity of a scholarship to this prep school in Philadelphia to study these kinds of mysteries. But things that sound intensely powerful. Something else I include at the end of my book is that I don't think that whatever this was, this big if about a psychedelic Eucharist, I don't think this was a majority of the paleo-Christians. So this is the tradition, I can say with a straight face, that saved my life. And so for me, this was a hunt through the catacombs and archives and libraries, doing my sweet-talking, and trying to figure out what was behind some of those locked doors. And so that's what motivated my search here. Which is a very weird thing today. 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. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. And the big question is, what is this thing doing there in the middle of nowhere? CHARLES STANG: You know, Valentinus was almost elected bishop of Rome. 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. Psychedelics are a lens to investigate this stuff. A rebirth into what? It was the Jesuits who taught me Latin and Greek. He's talking about kind of psychedelic wine. 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. 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. 8 "The winds, the sea . It's funny to see that some of the first basilicas outside Rome are popping up here, and in and around Pompeii. But what we do know is that their sacrament was wine and we know a bit more about the wine of antiquity, ancient Greek wine, than we can piece together from these nocturnal celebrations. So if Eleusis is the Fight Club of the ancient world, right, the first rule is you don't talk about it. I have a deep interest in mysticism, and I've had mystical experiences, which I don't think are very relevant. President and CEO, First Southeast Financial Corp and First Federal Savings and Loan Director, Carolina First Bank and The South Financial Group Let me just pull up my notes here. You want to field questions in both those categories? I'm going to come back to that idea of proof of concept. If you are drawn to psychedelics, in my mind, it means you're probably drawn to contemplative mysticism. And there are legitimate scholars out there who say, because John wanted to paint Jesus in the light of Dionysus, present him as the second coming of this pagan God. And does it line up with the promise from John's gospel that anyone who drinks this becomes instantly immortal? Thank you. And if there's historical precedent for it, all the more so. And so the big question is what was happening there? Tim Ferriss Show #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin: The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Psychedelics, and More. Where are the drugs? BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. 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]. Like in a retreat pilgrimage type center, or maybe within palliative care. Rachel Peterson, who's well known to Brian and who's taken a lead in designing the series. And I-- in my profession, we call this circumstantial, and I get it. This time around, we have a very special edition featuring Dr. Mark Plotkin and Brian C . CHARLES STANG: OK. But I mentioned that we've become friends because it is the prerogative of friends to ask hard questions. It was it was barley, water, and something else. Well, let's get into it then. CHARLES STANG: OK, great. To some degree, I think you're looking back to southern Italy from the perspective of the supremacy of Rome, which is not the case in the first century. Here's your Western Eleusis. These Native American church and the UDV, both some syncretic form of Christianity. Not because it was brand new data. BRIAN MURARESKU: We can dip from both pies, Dr. Stang. I've no doubt that Brian has unearthed and collected a remarkable body of evidence, but evidence of what, exactly? 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 somewhere between 1% and 49%. I mean, lots of great questions worthy of further investigation. 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. Here's the big question. Why don't we turn the tables and ask you what questions you think need to be posed? let's take up your invitation and move from Dionysus to early Christianity. We're going to get there very soon. I mean, that's obviously the big question, and what that means for the future of medicine and religion and society at large. 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 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. The fact that the Vatican sits in Rome today is not an accident, I think, is the shortest way to answer that. We have some inscriptions. 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 . They were mixed or fortified. 1,672. Although she's open to testing, there was nothing there. 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. And how can you reasonably expect the church to recognize a psychedelic Eucharist? So the basic point being, as far as we can tell, beer and wine are routinely mixed with things that we don't do today. And why, if you're right that the church has succeeded in suppressing a psychedelic sacrament and has been peddling instead, what you call a placebo, and that it has exercised a monstrous campaign of persecution against plant medicine and the women who have kept its knowledge alive, why are you still attached to this tradition? And to be quite honest, I'd never studied the ancient Greeks in Spain. 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? But Egypt seems to not really be hugely relevant to the research. And I'm not even sure what that piece looks like or how big it is. Let's move to early Christian. Now I want to get to the questions, but one last question before we move to the discussion portion. And I don't know if it's a genuine mystical experience or mystical mimetic or some kind of psychological breakthrough. This an absolute masterclass on why you must know your identity and goals before forming a habit, what the best systems are for habit. BRIAN MURARESKU: OK. I'm skeptical, Dr. Stang. And I'll just list them out quickly. Like savory, wormwood, blue tansy, balm, senna, coriander, germander, mint, sage, and thyme. If your history is even remotely correct, that would have ushered in a very different church, if Valentinus's own student Marcus and the Marcosians were involved in psychedelic rituals, then that was an early road not taken, let's say. Research inside the Church of Saint Faustina and Liberata Fig 1. 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. This is going to be a question that's back to the ancient world. 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 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. On Monday, February 22, we will be hosting a panel discussion taking up the question what is psychedelic chaplaincy. 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. The most influential religious historian of the twentieth century, Huston Smith, once referred to it as the "best-kept secret" in history. 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. Brian launched the instant bestseller on the Joe Rogan Experience, and has now appeared on CNN, NPR, Sirius XM, Goop-- I don't even know what that is-- and The Weekly Dish with Andrew Sullivan. Interesting. He draws on the theory of "pagan continuity," which holds that early Christianity adopted . All he says is that these women and Marcus are adding drugs seven times in a row into whatever potion this is they're mixing up. Now, I mentioned that Brian and I had become friends. I mean, about 25 years ago, actually. I don't think we have found it. So that, actually, is the key to the immortality key. CHARLES STANG: Right. 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. 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 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? And inside that beer was all kinds of vegetable matter, like wheat, oats, and sedge and lily and flax and various legumes. 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 there were gaps as well. And her best guess is that it was like this open access sanctuary. He co-writes that with Gordon Wasson and Albert Hofmann, who famously-- there it is, the three authors. All right, so now, let's follow up with Dionysus, but let's see here. That's, just absurd. CHARLES STANG: I do, too. Brought to you by GiveWell.org charity research and effective giving and 5-Bullet Friday, my very own email newsletter.Welcome to The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is usually my job to deconstruct world-class performers to tease out their routines, habits, et cetera that you can apply to your own life. So what evidence can you provide for that claim? Read more 37 people found this helpful Helpful Report abuse Tfsiebs So much research! As much as we know about the mysteries of Eleusis. So now it's true that these heresy hunters show an interest in this love potion. CHARLES STANG: All right. I include that line for a reason. It's some kind of wine-based concoction, some kind of something that is throwing these people into ecstasy. So whatever these [SPEAKING GREEK] libations incense were, the church fathers don't get into great detail about what may have been spiking them. Thank you, sir. 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 Ruck, and you following Ruck, make much of this, suggesting maybe the Gnostics are pharmacologists of some kind. I'm going to stop asking my questions, although I have a million more, as you well know, and instead try to ventriloquist the questions that are coming through at quite a clip through the Q&A. 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. But it's not an ingested psychedelic. And all we know-- I mean, we can't decipher sequence by sequence what was happening. BRIAN MURARESKU: I would say I've definitely experienced the power of the Christ and the Holy Spirit. 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. 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. 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. Psychedelics Today: PTSF 35 (with Brian Muraresku) Griffithsfund.org Did the potion at Eleusis change from generation to generation? They found a tiny chalice this big, dated to the second century BC. But clearly, when you're thinking about ancient Egypt or elsewhere, there's definitely a funerary tradition. Joe Campbell puts it best that what we're after is an experience of being alive. But I think there's a decent scientific foothold to begin that work. 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 keep in mind that we'll drop down into any one of these points more deeply. CHARLES STANG: All right. We call it ego dissolution, things of that nature. So the big question is, what kind of drug was this, if it was a drug? And I've listened to the volunteers who've gone through these experiences. And what about the alleged democratization with which you credit the mysteries of Dionysus, or the role of women in that movement? 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. And so even within the New Testament you see little hints and clues that there was no such thing as only ordinary table wine. CHARLES STANG: So that actually helps answer a question that's in the Q&A that was posed to me, which is why did I say I fully expect that we will find evidence for this? CHARLES STANG: Brian, I want to thank you for your time. BRIAN MURARESKU: Now we're cooking with grease, Dr. Stang. That there is no hard archaeobotanical, archaeochemical data for spiked beer, spiked wine. And I just happened to fall into that at the age of 14 thanks to the Jesuits, and just never left it behind. So perhaps there's even more evidence. So let's start, then, the first act. But let me say at the outset that it is remarkably learned, full of great historical and philological detail. And so I don't think that psychedelics are coming to replace the Sunday Eucharist. 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. So again, that's February 22. Those of you who don't know his name, he's a professor at the University of Amsterdam, an expert in Western esotericism. 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. So when Hippolytus is calling out the Marcosians, and specifically women, consecrating this alternative Eucharist in their alternative proto-mass, he uses the Greek word-- and we've talked about this before-- but he uses the Greek word [SPEAKING GREEK] seven times in a row, by the way, without specifying which drugs he's referring to.