McGovern also finds wine from Egypt, for example, in 3150 BC, wine that is mixed with a number of interesting ingredients. 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. OK-- maybe one of those ancient beers. CHARLES STANG: Right. That's our next event, and will be at least two more events to follow. And that's where oversight comes in handy. But I mentioned that we've become friends because it is the prerogative of friends to ask hard questions. Where does Western civilization come from? I see something that's happening to people. Material evidence of a very strange potion, a drug, or a [SPEAKING GREEK]. 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. This limestone altar tested positive for cannabis and frankincense that was being burned, they think, in a very ritualistic way. So frankly, what happens during the Neolithic, we don't know, at least from a scientific vantage. Is this only Marcus? 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. And so even within the New Testament you see little hints and clues that there was no such thing as only ordinary table wine. Then what was the Gospel of John, how did it interpret the Eucharist and market it, and so on. You want to field questions in both those categories? Read more about The Immortality Key by Brian Muraresku Making Sense by Sam Harris You also find a Greek hearth inside this sanctuary. Now, Brian managed to write this book while holding down a full time practice in international law based in Washington DC. 13,000 years old. Now, here's-- let's tack away from hard, scientific, archaeobotanical evidence for a moment. 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. 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 So let's talk about the future of religion, and specifically the future of Roman Catholicism. So can you reflect on the-- standing on the threshold of pharmaceutical companies taking control of this, how is that to be commended when the very people who have kept this alive would be pushed to the side in that move? Where you find the grain, you may have found ergot. The divine personage in whom this cult centered was the Magna Mater Deum who was conceived as the source of all life as well as the personification of all the powers of nature.\[Footnote:] Willoughby, Pagan Regeneration, p. 114.\ 7 She was the "Great Mother" not only "of all the gods," but of all men" as well. And I think oversight also comes in handy within organized religion. 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. CHARLES STANG: OK. I'll invite him to think about the future of religion in light of all this. And I think there are lots of reasons to believe that. 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. 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. BRIAN MURARESKU: Great question. Here's what we don't. And I look forward to talking about this event with you after the fact eventually over a beer. But I do want to push back a little bit on the elevation of this particular real estate in southern Italy. So, like, they're wonderstruck, or awestruck by their libations and their incense. 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. But with what were they mixed, and to what effect? I'm currently reading The Immortality Key by Brian Muraresku and find this 2nd/3rd/4th century AD time period very interesting, particularly with regards to the adoptions of pagan rituals and practices by early Christianity. And if you're a good Christian or a good Catholic, and you're consuming that wine on any given Sunday, why are you doing that? We're going to get there very soon. And it was the Jesuits who encouraged me to always, always ask questions and never take anything at face value. 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. Although she's open to testing, there was nothing there. Research inside the Church of Saint Faustina and Liberata Fig 1. So even from the very beginning, it wasn't just barley and water. Because my biggest question is, and the obvious question of the book is, if this was happening in antiquity, what does that mean for today? Now, Carl Ruck from Boston University, much closer to home, however, took that invitation and tried to pursue this hypothesis. Now, I think you answered that last part. These-- that-- Christians are spread out throughout the eastern Mediterranean, and there are many, many pockets of people practicing what we might call, let's just call it Christian mysticism of some kind. 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. 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. A lot of Christianity, as you rightly point out, I mean, it was an Eastern phenomenon, all over the eastern Mediterranean. 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. If you die before you die, you won't die when you die. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. When you start testing, you find things. Nage ?] 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. So to find dog sacrifice inside this Greek sanctuary alludes to this proto-witch, Hecate, the mother of Circe, who is mentioned in the same hymn to Demeter from the 8th, 7th century BC, as kind of the third of the goddesses to whom these mysteries were dedicated. I expect we will find it. I write it cognizant of the fact that the Eucharist doesn't work for many, many people. She found the remains of dog sacrifice, which is super interesting. Just imagine, I have to live with me. "@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! I don't think we have found it. And yet I talked to an atheist who has one experience with psilocybin and is immediately bathed in God's love. Including, all the way back to Gobekli Tepe, which is why I mentioned that when we first started chatting. I was satisfied with I give Brian Muraresku an "A" for enthusiasm, but I gave his book 2 stars. If beer was there that long ago, what kind of beer was it? And Ruck, and you following Ruck, make much of this, suggesting maybe the Gnostics are pharmacologists of some kind. If the Dionysian one is psychedelic, does it really make its way into some kind of psychedelic Christianity? 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. It is my great pleasure to welcome Brian Muraresku to the Center. Brought to you by So throughout the book, you make the point that ancient beer and wine are not like our beer and wine. Richard Evans Schultes and the Search for Ayahuasca 17 days ago Plants of the Gods: S3E10. 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? And when we know so much about ancient wine and how very different it was from the wine of today, I mean, what can we say about the Eucharist if we're only looking at the texts? It was-- Eleusis was state-administered, a somewhat formal affair. But you go further still, suggesting that Jesus himself at the Last Supper might have administered psychedelic sacrament, that the original Eucharist was psychedelic. BRIAN MURARESKU: I don't-- I don't claim too heavily. Now, you could draw the obvious conclusion. BRIAN MURARESKU: Great question. So this whole water to wine thing was out there. And so how far should this investigation go? 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? President and CEO, First Southeast Financial Corp and First Federal Savings and Loan Director, Carolina First Bank and The South Financial Group That was the question for me. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. Now, Mithras is another one of these mystery religions. Klaus Schmidt, who was with the German Archaeological Institute, called this a sanctuary and called these T-shaped pillars representations of gods. And I started reading the studies from Pat McGovern at the University of Pennsylvania. 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. I'm happy to be proven wrong. And I just happened to fall into that at the age of 14 thanks to the Jesuits, and just never left it behind. I mean, this is what I want to do with some of my remaining days on this planet, is take a look at all these different theories. Interesting. He's joining us from Uruguay, where he has wisely chosen to spend his pandemic isolation. 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. 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. 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. We call it ego dissolution, things of that nature. Because they talk about everything else that they take issue with. I'm not sure many have. And I want to ask you about specifically the Eleusinian mysteries, centered around the goddesses Demeter and Persephone. 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 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. 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. 8th century BC from the Tel Arad shrine. And so the big question is what was happening there? Which, again, what I see are small groups of people getting together to commune with the dead. That's because Brian and I have become friends these past several months, and I'll have more to say about that in a moment. And Dennis, amongst others, calls that a signature Dionysian miracle. . I understand more papers are about to be published on this. It draws attention to this material. Just from reading Dioscorides and reading all the different texts, the past 12 years have absolutely transformed the way I think about wine. That is, by giving, by even floating the possibility of this kind of-- at times, what seems like a Dan Brown sort of story, like, oh my god, there's a whole history of Christianity that's been suppressed-- draws attention, but the real point is actually that you're not really certain about the story, but you're certain is that we need to be more attentive to this evidence and to assess it soberly. 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. 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 did the earliest Christians inherit the same secret tradition? 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? There's no mistake in her mind that it was Greek. CHARLES STANG: OK, great. 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. And I'm happy to see we have over 800 people present for this conversation. But what we do know about the wine of the time is that it was routinely mixed with plants and herbs and potentially fungi. And her answer was that they'd all been cleaned or treated for conservation purposes. And if it's one thing Catholicism does very, very well, it's contemplative mysticism. The Gnostics did have continuity with paganism. 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. And nor did we think that a sanctuary would be one of the first things that we construct. And I think what the pharmaceutical industry can do is help to distribute this medicine. So let's start with one that is more contemporary. Please materialize. There's a moment in the book where you are excited about some hard evidence. BRIAN MURARESKU: I'm asked this question, I would say, in pretty much every interview I've done since late September. BRIAN MURARESKU: I look forward to it, Charlie. So Brian, I wonder, maybe we should give the floor to you and ask you to speak about, what are the questions you think both ancient historians such as myself should be asking that we're not, and maybe what are the sorts of questions that people who aren't ancient historians but who are drawn to this evidence, to your narrative, and to the present and the future of religion, what sort of questions should they be asking regarding psychedelics? CHARLES STANG: OK. Mona Sobhani, PhD Retweeted. And she talks about kind of being born again, another promise from John's gospel. He decides to get people even more drunk. Find ratings and reviews for the newest movie and TV shows. he goes out on a limb and says that black nightshade actually causes [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], which is not unpleasant visions, i.e. The continuity theory proposes that older adults maintain the same activities, behaviors, personalities, and relationships of the past. So don't feel like you have to go into great depth at this point. And I write, at the very end of the book, I hope that they'd be proud of this investigation. And what we find at this farmhouse is a sanctuary that Enriqueta Pons herself, the archaeologist who's been on site since 1990, she calls it some kind of sanctuary dedicated to the goddesses of the mysteries. But unfortunately, it doesn't connect it to Christianity. Tim Ferriss is a self-experimenter and bestselling author, best known for The 4-Hour Workweek, which has been translated into 40+ languages. These were Greek-- I've seen them referred to as Greek Vikings by Peter Kingsley, Vikings who came from Ionia. Why don't we turn the tables and ask you what questions you think need to be posed? And that's what I get into in detail in the book. So the Greek god of wine, intoxication. That they were what you call extreme beverages. This an absolute masterclass on why you must know your identity and goals before forming a habit, what the best systems are for habit. And another: in defending the pagan continuity hypothesis, Muraresku presumes a somewhat non-Jewish, pagan-like Jesus, while ignoring the growing body of psychedelic literature, including works by . The book was published by Saint Martin's Press in September 2020 and has generated a whirlwind of attention. So the closer we get to the modern period, we're starting to find beer, wine mixed with interesting things.