Which is a very weird thing today. It was one of the early write-ups of the psilocybin studies coming out of Johns Hopkins. But Egypt seems to not really be hugely relevant to the research. Books about pagan continuity hypothesis? It's a big question for me. Certainly these early churchmen used whatever they could against the forms of Christian practice they disapproved of, especially those they categorized as Gnostic. 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. 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. And does it line up with the promise from John's gospel that anyone who drinks this becomes instantly immortal? And I'll just list them out quickly. 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 To assess this hypothesis and, perhaps, to push it further, has required years of dogged and, at times, discouraging works in archives and archaeology. 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. Jerry Brown wrote a good review that should be read to put the book in its proper place. 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 let's start with our earliest evidence from the Stone Age and the Bronze Age. Lots of Greek artifacts, lots of Greek signifiers. So how exactly is this evidence of something relevant to Christianity in Rome or southern Italy more widely? 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. 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. So I want to propose that we stage this play in two acts. You mentioned there were lots of dead ends, and there certainly were. CHARLES STANG: You know, Valentinus was almost elected bishop of Rome. So again, that's February 22. 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. 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. Because again, when I read the clinical literature, I'm reading things that look like mystical experiences, or that at least at least sound like them. BRIAN MURARESKU: I'm bringing more illumination. I don't know why it's happening now, but we're finally taking a look. 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. And keep in mind that we'll drop down into any one of these points more deeply. So how to put this? There's no mistake in her mind that it was Greek. 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. What's different about the Dionysian mysteries, and what evidence, direct or indirect, do we have about the wine of Dionysus being psychedelic? What's significant about these features for our piecing together the ancient religion with no name? So Pompeii and its environs at the time were called [SPEAKING GREEK], which means great Greece. 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. And I think that's an important distinction to make. I am excited . Including, all the way back to Gobekli Tepe, which is why I mentioned that when we first started chatting. 44:48 Psychedelics and ancient cave art . I'm not. They were mixed or fortified. You may have already noticed one such question-- not too hard. would certainly appreciate. The question is, what will happen in the future. And if it only occurs in John, the big question is why. There's a moment in the book where you are excited about some hard evidence. BRIAN MURARESKU: Dr. Stang, an erudite introduction as ever. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. This 'pagan continuity hypothesis' with a psychedelic twist is now backed up by biochemistry and agrochemistry and tons of historical research, exposing our forgotten history. It still leaves an even bigger if, Dr. Stang, is which one is psychedelic? But it was just a process of putting these pieces together that I eventually found this data from the site Mas Castellar des Pontos in Spain. So it's hard for me to write this and talk about this without acknowledging the Jesuits who put me here. Which, again, what I see are small groups of people getting together to commune with the dead. 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. So the Eastern Aegean. 40:15 Witches, drugs, and the Catholic Church . Then there's what were the earliest Christians doing with the Eucharist. But we do know that something was happening. I mean, I wish it were easier. And I think we get hung up on the jargon. Love potions, love charms, they're very common in the ancient. And anyone who drinks this, [SPEAKING GREEK], Jesus says in Greek, you remain in me and I in you. And she talks about kind of being born again, another promise from John's gospel. If beer was there that long ago, what kind of beer was it? What does it mean to die before dying? And not least because if I were to do it, I'd like to do so in a deeply sacred ritual. You take a board corporate finance attorney, you add in lots of childhood hours watching Indiana Jones, lots of law school hours reading Dan Brown, you put it all together and out pops The Immortality Key. This time, tonight I'll say that it's just not my time yet. I mean, something of symbolic significance, something monumental. I expect there will be. So you were unable to test the vessels on site in Eleusis, which is what led you to, if I have this argument right, to Greek colonies around the Mediterranean. Reviewed in the United States on January 29, 2023 Maybe part of me is skeptical, right? Maybe there's some residual fear that's been built up in me. What, if any, was the relationship between this Greek sanctuary-- a very Greek sanctuary, by the way-- in Catalonia, to the mysteries of Eleusis? They minimized or completely removed the Jewish debates found in the New Testament, and they took on a style that was more palatable to the wider pagan world. This time around, we have a very special edition featuring Dr. Mark Plotkin and Brian C . Perhaps more generally, you could just talk about other traditions around the Mediterranean, North African, or, let's even say Judaism. And shouldn't we all be asking that question? BRIAN MURARESKU: It just happens to show up. But I want to ask you to reflect on the broader narrative that you're painting, because I've heard you speak in two ways about the significance of this work. That is about the future rather than the ancient history. 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. A profound knowledge of visionary plants, herbs, and fungi passed from one generation to the next, ever since the Stone Age? But I think there's a decent scientific foothold to begin that work. So if Eleusis is the Fight Club of the ancient world, right, the first rule is you don't talk about it. But I mentioned that we've become friends because it is the prerogative of friends to ask hard questions. What about all these early Christians themselves as essentially Jews? A rebirth into a new conception of the self, the self's relationship to things that are hard to define, like God. You obviously think these are powerful substances with profound effects that track with reality. They followed Platonic (and other Greeks) philosophy. So this whole water to wine thing was out there. CHARLES STANG: OK. I think psychedelics are just one piece of the puzzle. So, I mean, my biggest question behind all of this is, as a good Catholic boy, is the Eucharist. And as a lawyer, I know what is probative and what's circumstantial evidence, and I just-- I don't see it there. Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin: The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Psychedelics, and More | Tim Ferriss Show #646 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. 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. If you die before you die, you won't die when you die. So Plato, Pindar, Sophocles, all the way into Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, it's an important thing. And then that's the word that Euripides uses, by the way. 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. It's funny to see that some of the first basilicas outside Rome are popping up here, and in and around Pompeii. BRIAN MURARESKU: Great question. I'm happy to argue about that. Now I want to get to the questions, but one last question before we move to the discussion portion. But it's not an ingested psychedelic. This is all secret. So the Greek god of wine, intoxication. 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. So this is interesting. The pagan continuity hypothesis theorizes that when Christianity arrived in Greece around AD 49, it didn't suddenly replace the existing religion. Although she's open to testing, there was nothing there. So let's start with one that is more contemporary. I'll invite him to think about the future of religion in light of all this. There's John Marco Allegro claiming that there was no Jesus, and this was just one big amanita muscaria cult. The answer seems to be connected to psychedelic drugs. But we at least have, again, the indicia of evidence that something was happening there. In the afterword, you champion the fact that we stand on the cusp of a new era of psychedelics precisely because they can be synthesized and administered safely in pill form, back to The Economist article "The God Pill". So here's a question for you. #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 Ruck, and you following Ruck, make much of this, suggesting maybe the Gnostics are pharmacologists of some kind. So those are all possibly different questions to ask and answer. 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. Now, it doesn't have to be the Holy Grail that was there at the Last Supper, but when you think about the sacrament of wine that is at the center of the world's biggest religion of 2.5 billion people, the thing that Pope Francis says is essential for salvation, I mean, how can we orient our lives around something for which there is little to no physical data? And how can you reasonably expect the church to recognize a psychedelic Eucharist? Like the wedding at Cana, which my synopsis of that event is a drunkard getting a bunch of drunk people even more drunk. Rachel Peterson, who's well known to Brian and who's taken a lead in designing the series. So I went fully down the rabbit hole. CHARLES STANG: OK. Now let's move into the Greek mystery. Things like fasting and sleep deprivation and tattooing and scarification and, et cetera, et cetera. And so part of what it means to be a priest or a minister or a rabbi is to sit with the dying and the dead. 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. From about 1500 BC to the fourth century AD, it calls to the best and brightest of not just Athens but also Rome. Even a little bit before Gobekli Tepe, there was another site unearthed relatively recently in Israel, at the Rakefet cave. 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. The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts: 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 (#646) - The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss 3 Annual "Best of" Apple Podcasts 900+ Million episodes downloaded So your presentation of early Christianity inclines heavily toward the Greek world. Nage ?] If the Dionysian one is psychedelic, does it really make its way into some kind of psychedelic Christianity? You're not confident that the pope is suddenly going to issue an encyclical. And so I can see psychedelics being some kind of extra sacramental ministry that potentially could ease people at the end of life. Here is how I propose we are to proceed. 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. 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? 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 . And maybe therein we do since the intimation of immortality.
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