pagan continuity hypothesis

And to be quite honest, I'd never studied the ancient Greeks in Spain. Many people see that as symbolic or allegorical or just a nice thing, which is not the case. They're mixing potions. But we at least have, again, the indicia of evidence that something was happening there. 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. 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 . "@BrianMuraresku with @DocMarkPlotkin The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Lessons from Scholar Karen Armstrong, and Much More" Please enjoy! But you will be consoled to know that someone else will be-- I will be there, but someone else will be leading that conversation. You mentioned, too, early churchmen, experts in heresies by the name of Irenaeus of Lyons and Hippolytus of Rome. The phrasing used in the book and by others is "the pagan continuity hypothesis". 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 . So Dionysus is not the god of alcohol. And she talks about kind of being born again, another promise from John's gospel. So I think this was a minority of early Christians. So don't feel like you have to go into great depth at this point. So how exactly is this evidence of something relevant to Christianity in Rome or southern Italy more widely? And Brian, once again, thank you so much. Here's what we don't. And I describe that as somehow finding that key to immortality. The pagan continuity hypothesis at the heart of this book made sense to me. But let me say at the outset that it is remarkably learned, full of great historical and philological detail. But by and large, no, we don't really know. That was the question for me. 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? So psychedelics or not, I think it's the cultivation of that experience, which is the actual key. But I don't understand how that provides any significant link to paleo-Christian practice. He calls it a drug against grief in Greek, [SPEAKING GREEK]. It was-- Eleusis was state-administered, a somewhat formal affair. There was an absence of continuity in the direction of the colony as Newport made his frequent voyages to and . Now, here's-- let's tack away from hard, scientific, archaeobotanical evidence for a moment. 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. 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? There were formula. I write it cognizant of the fact that the Eucharist doesn't work for many, many people. 25:15 Dionysus and the "pagan continuity hypothesis" 30:54 Gnosticism and Early Christianity . And in his book [? Is this only Marcus? There's a moment in the book where you are excited about some hard evidence. CHARLES STANG: Brian, I wonder if you could end by reflecting on the meaning of dying before you die. And in the ancient world, wine was routinely referred to as a [SPEAKING GREEK], which is the Greek word for drug. Tim Ferriss is a self-experimenter and bestselling author, best known for The 4-Hour Workweek, which has been translated into 40+ languages. 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. 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. 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. let's take up your invitation and move from Dionysus to early Christianity. And anyone who drinks this, [SPEAKING GREEK], Jesus says in Greek, you remain in me and I in you. And there were moments when the sunlight would just break through. You won't find it in many places other than that. There's some suggestive language in the pyramid texts, in the Book of the Dead and things of this nature. And very famous passages, by the way, that should be familiar to most New Testament readers. I mean, this really goes to my deep skepticism. And I think that's an important distinction to make. You want to field questions in both those categories? Brought to you by He decides to get people even more drunk. We look forward to hosting Chacruna's founder and executive director, Bia Labate, for a lecture on Monday, March 8. I appreciate this. He's the god of wine. These Native American church and the UDV, both some syncretic form of Christianity. The only reason I went to college was to study classics. The Continuity Hypothesis was put forward by John Bowlby (1953) as a critical effect of attachments in his development of Attachment Theory. The long and short of it is, in 1978 there was no hard scientific data to prove this one way or the other. If you die before you die, you won't die when you die. It's really quite simple, Charlie. 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 some inscriptions. And it seems to me that if any of this is right, that whatever was happening in ancient Greece was a transformative experience for which a lot of thought and preparation went into. He co-writes that with Gordon Wasson and Albert Hofmann, who famously-- there it is, the three authors. 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. It's a big question for me. Church of the Saints Faustina and Liberata, view from the outside with the entrance enclosure, at "Sante" place, Capo di Ponte (Italy). And I think there are lots of reasons to believe that. And besides that, young Brian, let's keep the mysteries mysteries. At Cambridge University he worked in developmental biolo. 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. Certainly these early churchmen used whatever they could against the forms of Christian practice they disapproved of, especially those they categorized as Gnostic. Like in Israel. And even in the New Testament, you'll see wine spiked with myrrh, for example, that's served to Jesus at his crucifixion. And I-- in my profession, we call this circumstantial, and I get it. Then I see the mysteries of Dionysus as kind of the Burning Man or the Woodstock of the ancient world. 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. And that's not how it works today, and I don't think that's how it works in antiquity. But it survives. In this way, the two traditions coexisted in a syncretic form for some time before . CHARLES STANG: You know, Valentinus was almost elected bishop of Rome. So it's hard for me to write this and talk about this without acknowledging the Jesuits who put me here. I can't imagine that there were no Christians that availed themselves of this biotechnology, and I can't imagine-- it's entirely plausible to me that they would mix this biotechnology with the Eucharist. And there were gaps as well. Because for many, many years, you know, Ruck's career takes a bit of a nosedive. Now, that date is obviously very suggestive because that's precisely the time the Christians were establishing a beachhead in Rome. BRIAN MURARESKU: We can dip from both pies, Dr. Stang. BRIAN MURARESKU: Great question. "The Jews" are not after Ye. OK, now, Brian, you've probably dealt with questions like this. And for those of you who have found my line of questioning or just my general presence tedious, first of all, I fully appreciate that reaction. 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? It tested positive for the microscopic remains of beer and also ergot, exactly the hypothesis that had been put forward in 1978 by the disgraced professor across town from you, Carl Ruck, who's now 85 years old, by the way. These were Greek-- I've seen them referred to as Greek Vikings by Peter Kingsley, Vikings who came from Ionia. You mentioned there were lots of dead ends, and there certainly were. 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 again, that's February 22. But I think there's a decent scientific foothold to begin that work. 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. Brendon Benz presents an alternative hypothesis to recent scholarship which has hypothesized that Israel consisted of geographical, economic . Copyright 2023 President and Fellows of Harvard College. 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. The continuity theory proposes that older adults maintain the same activities, behaviors, personalities, and relationships of the past. But I'm pressing you because that's my job. Yeah. There is evidence that has been either overlooked or perhaps intentionally suppressed. Lots of Greek artifacts, lots of Greek signifiers. And that's the mysteries of Dionysus. Here's another one. Was there any similarity from that potion to what was drunk at Eleusis? I might forward the proposition that I don't think the early church fathers were the best botanists. And I just happened to fall into that at the age of 14 thanks to the Jesuits, and just never left it behind. So throughout the book, you make the point that ancient beer and wine are not like our beer and wine. This an absolute masterclass on why you must know your identity and goals before forming a habit, what the best systems are for habit. Let me just pull up my notes here. Now, I've had experiences outside the Eucharist that resonate with me. CHARLES STANG: Yeah. 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. So if Eleusis is the Fight Club of the ancient world, right, the first rule is you don't talk about it. And if it's one thing Catholicism does very, very well, it's contemplative mysticism. And what does this earliest history tell us about the earliest evidence for an ancient psychedelic religion? 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. #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 And I did not dare. The idea of the truth shall set you free, right, [SPEAKING GREEK], in 8:32. 13,000 years old. To this day I remain a psychedelic virgin quite proudly, and I spent the past 12 years, ever since that moment in 2007, researching what Houston Smith, perhaps one of the most influential religious historians of the 20th century, would call the best kept secret in history. I mean, I asked lots of big questions in the book, and I fully acknowledge that. 40:15 Witches, drugs, and the Catholic Church . BRIAN MURARESKU: Great question. CHARLES STANG: Right. But I do want to push back a little bit on the elevation of this particular real estate in southern Italy. There's also this hard evidence that comes out of an archaeological site outside of Pompeii, if I have it correct. Now is there any evidence for psychedelic use in ancient Egypt, and if not, do you have any theory as to why that's silent? And please just call me Charlie. The pagan continuity hypothesis theorizes that when Christianity arrived in Greece around AD 49, it didn't suddenly replace the existing religion. Because what tends to happen in those experiences is a death and rebirth. 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. President and CEO, First Southeast Financial Corp and First Federal Savings and Loan Director, Carolina First Bank and The South Financial Group And there were probably other Eleusises like that to the east. 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 cite a Pew poll, for example, that says something like 69% of American Catholics do not believe in transubstantiation, which is the defining dogma of the church, the idea that the bread and wine literally becomes the flesh and blood. First, I will provide definitions for the terms "pagan", "Christian", And I started reading the studies from Pat McGovern at the University of Pennsylvania. Maybe part of me is skeptical, right? It's this 22-acre site of free-standing limestone, some rising 20 feet in the air, some weighing 50 tons. 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 I think it's important you have made a distinction between what was Jesus doing at the Last Supper, as if we could ever find out. I'm happy to argue about that. 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. 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. 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. And so the big question is what was happening there? 32:57 Ancient languages and Brian's education . But maybe you could just say something about this community in Catalonia. Which, again, what I see are small groups of people getting together to commune with the dead. BRIAN MURARESKU: OK. That's just everlasting. They followed Platonic (and other Greeks) philosophy. We have other textual evidence. And shouldn't we all be asking that question? Like savory, wormwood, blue tansy, balm, senna, coriander, germander, mint, sage, and thyme. He draws on the theory of "pagan continuity," which holds that early Christianity adopted . 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. I would love to see these licensed, regulated, retreat centers be done in a way that is medically sound and scientifically rigorous. 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. The kind of mysticism I've always been attracted to, like the rule of Saint Benedict and the Trappist monks and the Cistercian monks. And I've listened to the volunteers who've gone through these experiences. They were relevant to me in going down this rabbit hole. 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 We're going to get there very soon. 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. 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. You know, it's an atheist using theological language to describe what happened to her. 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 want to thank you for your candor. What about Jesus as a Jew? 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 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. [2] And I answer it differently every single time. . We call it ego dissolution, things of that nature. 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. One attendee has asked, "How have religious leaders reacted so far to your book? 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 . So let's start, then, the first act. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. So it wasn't just a random place to find one of these spiked wines. 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. McGovern also finds wine from Egypt, for example, in 3150 BC, wine that is mixed with a number of interesting ingredients. That would require an entirely different kind of evidence. And the second act, the same, but for what you call paleo-Christianity, the evidence for your suspicion that the Eucharist was originally a psychedelic sacrament. Let's move to early Christian. Psychedelics Today: PTSF 35 (with Brian Muraresku) Griffithsfund.org You also find a Greek hearth inside this sanctuary. The big question is, did any of these recipes, did any of this wine spiking actually make its way into some paleo-Christian ceremony. And I want to-- just like you have this hard evidence from Catalonia, then the question is how to interpret it. And part of me really wants to put all these pieces together before I dive in. I think psychedelics are just one piece of the puzzle. CHARLES STANG: Wonderful. Where are the drugs? And as a lawyer, I know what is probative and what's circumstantial evidence, and I just-- I don't see it there. But the point being, if the Dionysian wine was psychedelic-- which I know is a big if-- I think the more important thing to show here in this pagan continuity hypothesis is that it's at least plausible that the earliest Christians would have at the very least read the Gospel of John and interpreted that paleo-Christian Eucharistic wine, in some communities, as a kind of Dionysian wine. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. That event is already up on our website and open for registration. Not because it was brand new data. This time around, we have a very special edition featuring Dr. Mark Plotkin and Brian C . And I'm trying to reconcile that. Which is really weird, because that's how the same Dina Bazer, the same atheist in the psilocybin trials, described her insight. So why refrain? I go out of my way, in both parts of the book, which, it's divided into the history of beer and the history of wine, essentially. Just imagine, I have to live with me. I mean, the honest answer is not much. There's evidence of the mysteries of Dionysus before, during, and after the life of Jesus, it's worth pointing out. So there's a whole slew of sites I want to test there. 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." 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 What I see is data that's been largely neglected, and I think what serves this as a discipline is just that. So how to put this? 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 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? Where does Western civilization come from? To sum up the most exciting parts of the book: the bloody wine of Dionysius became the bloody wine of Jesus - the pagan continuity hypothesis - the link between the Ancient Greeks of the final centuries BC and the paleo-Christians of the early centuries AD - in short, the default psychedelic of universal world history - the cult of . In May of last year, researchers published what they believe is the first archaeochemical data for the use of psychoactive drugs in some form of early Judaism. Nazanin Boniadi I understand the appeal of that. And not least because if I were to do it, I'd like to do so in a deeply sacred ritual. Not because they just found that altar. Now, Brian managed to write this book while holding down a full time practice in international law based in Washington DC. The Tim Ferriss Show. Because at my heart, I still consider myself a good Catholic boy. I'm going to come back to that idea of proof of concept. CHARLES STANG: OK. But I don't hold-- I don't hang my hat on that claim. You can see that inscribed on a plaque in Saint Paul's monastery at Mount Athos in Greece. And I think that that's the real question here. Rather, Christian beliefs were gradually incorporated into the pagan customs that already existed there. I understand more papers are about to be published on this. What does it mean to die before dying? I'm skeptical, Dr. Stang. The continuity hypothesis of dreams suggests that the content of dreams are largely continuous with waking concepts and concerns of the dreamer. That's how we get to Catalonia. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. IMDb is the world's most popular and authoritative source for movie, TV and celebrity content. 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 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. 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 . I mean, that's obviously the big question, and what that means for the future of medicine and religion and society at large. What's the wine? 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. Tim Ferriss is a self-experimenter and bestselling author, best known for The 4-Hour Workweek, which has been translated into 40+ languages. Its proponents maintain that the affable, plump old fellow associated with Christmas derives from the character of Arctic medical practitioners. We have plays like the Bacchi from Euripides, where we can piece together some of this. 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. Now-- and I think that we can probably concede that. If the Dionysian one is psychedelic, does it really make its way into some kind of psychedelic Christianity? CHARLES STANG: OK, great. We know that at the time of Jesus, before, during, and after, there were recipes floating around. What does ergotized beer in Catalonia have anything to do with the Greek mysteries at Eleusis? 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. But they charge Marcus specifically, not with a psychedelic Eucharist, but the use of a love potion. I'll invite him to think about the future of religion in light of all this. And I think oversight also comes in handy within organized religion. 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. All that will be announced through our mailing list. Research inside the Church of Saint Faustina and Liberata Fig 1. And her answer was that they'd all been cleaned or treated for conservation purposes. There aren't any churches or basilicas, right, in the first three centuries, in this era we're calling paleo-Christianity. 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 would have been happy to find a spiked wine anywhere. 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.

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