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 I think what the pharmaceutical industry can do is help to distribute this medicine. 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]. OK, now, Brian, you've probably dealt with questions like this. And so that's what motivated my search here. This two-part discussion between Muraresku and Dr. Plotkin examines the role psychedelics have played in the development of Western civilization. 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. 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. BRIAN MURARESKU: I look forward to it, Charlie. Just imagine, I have to live with me. There were formula. CHARLES STANG: All right. 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. And for some reason, I mean, I'd read that two or three times as an undergrad and just glossed over that line. It's a big question for me. BRIAN MURARESKU: But you're spot on. 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? Not in every single case, obviously. Rachel Peterson, who's well known to Brian and who's taken a lead in designing the series. McGovern also finds wine from Egypt, for example, in 3150 BC, wine that is mixed with a number of interesting ingredients. Even a little bit before Gobekli Tepe, there was another site unearthed relatively recently in Israel, at the Rakefet cave. And you're right. Interesting. 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. 18.3C: Continuity Theory. And there were moments when the sunlight would just break through. He's joining us from Uruguay, where he has wisely chosen to spend his pandemic isolation. That's only after Constantine. These sources suggest a much greater degree of continuity with pre-Christian values and practice than the writings of more . I know that's another loaded phrase. BRIAN MURARESKU: Great question. We call it ego dissolution, things of that nature. 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 . And I don't know if it's a genuine mystical experience or mystical mimetic or some kind of psychological breakthrough. What, if any, was the relationship between this Greek sanctuary-- a very Greek sanctuary, by the way-- in Catalonia, to the mysteries of Eleusis? Now, Carl Ruck from Boston University, much closer to home, however, took that invitation and tried to pursue this hypothesis. Maybe part of me is skeptical, right? So again, that's February 22. You mentioned, too, early churchmen, experts in heresies by the name of Irenaeus of Lyons and Hippolytus of Rome. And now we have a working hypothesis and some data to suggest where we might be looking. So it is already happening. Now, I mentioned that Brian and I had become friends. 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 . And I hear-- I sense that narrative in your book. You also find a Greek hearth inside this sanctuary. 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. CHARLES STANG: OK, great. 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? Not because it was brand new data. 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? 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. 1,672. The continuity hypothesis of dreams suggests that the content of dreams are largely continuous with waking concepts and concerns of the dreamer. You obviously think these are powerful substances with profound effects that track with reality. I will ask Brian to describe how he came to write this remarkable book, and the years of sleuthing and studying that went into it. So we move now into ancient history, but solidly into the historical record, however uneven that historical record is. CHARLES STANG: We've really read Jesus through the lens of his Greek inheritors. Now you're a good sport, Brian. But I mentioned that we've become friends because it is the prerogative of friends to ask hard questions. And this is at a time when we're still hunting and gathering. Like in Israel. 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. And what it has to do with Eleusis or the Greek presence in general, I mean, again, just to say it briefly, is that this was a farmhouse of sorts that was inland, this sanctuary site. No one lived there. We know that at the time of Jesus, before, during, and after, there were recipes floating around. 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. Listen to #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, an episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, easily on Podbay - the best podcast player on the web. But I do want to push back a little bit on the elevation of this particular real estate in southern Italy. Material evidence of a very strange potion, a drug, or a [SPEAKING GREEK]. 48:01 Brian's psychedelic experiences . And we had a great chat, a very spirited chat about the mysteries and the psychedelic hypothesis. Get personalized recommendations, and learn where to watch across hundreds of streaming providers. 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. You mentioned there were lots of dead ends, and there certainly were. Church of the Saints Faustina and Liberata, view from the outside with the entrance enclosure, at "Sante" place, Capo di Ponte (Italy). I wish the church fathers were better botanists and would rail against the specific pharmacopeia. And I just happened to fall into that at the age of 14 thanks to the Jesuits, and just never left it behind. A rebirth into a new conception of the self, the self's relationship to things that are hard to define, like God. 13,000 years old. 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. Now, I've had experiences outside the Eucharist that resonate with me. Some number of people have asked about Egypt. 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. In this way, the two traditions coexisted in a syncretic form for some time before . The long and short of it is, in 1978 there was no hard scientific data to prove this one way or the other. Is there a smoking gun? And this is what I present to the world. That would require an entirely different kind of evidence. And how can you reasonably expect the church to recognize a psychedelic Eucharist? 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. He decides to get people even more drunk. Others find it in different ways, but the common denominator seems to be one of these really well-curated near-death experiences. 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". And maybe therein we do since the intimation of immortality. 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. Not just in Italy, but as kind of the headquarters for the Mediterranean. OK, Brian, I invite you to join us now. So thank you, all who have hung with us. And what does this earliest history tell us about the earliest evidence for an ancient psychedelic religion? In this hypothesis, both widely accepted and widely criticized,11 'American' was synonymous with 'North American'. What's different about the Dionysian mysteries, and what evidence, direct or indirect, do we have about the wine of Dionysus being psychedelic? 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. After the first few chapters the author bogs down flogging the Pagan Continuity Hypothesis and exulting over his discovery of small scraps of evidence he found in a decade of research. And all we know-- I mean, we can't decipher sequence by sequence what was happening. And it was the Jesuits who encouraged me to always, always ask questions and never take anything at face value. What does God mean? 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. Why don't we turn the tables and ask you what questions you think need to be posed? She had the strange sense that every moment was an eternity of its own. And so if there is a place for psychedelics, I would think it would be in one of those sacred containers within monastic life, or pilgrims who visit one of these monastic centers, for example. Examine the pros and cons of the continuity theory of aging, specifically in terms of how it neglects to consider social institutions or chronically ill adults. And then at some point they go inland. 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. No, I think you-- this is why we're friends, Charlie. 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. The most colorful theory of psychedelics in religion portrays the original Santa Claus as a shaman. BRIAN MURARESKU:: It's a simple formula, Charlie. 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. 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. I don't think we have found it. I want to thank you for your candor. It seems entirely believable to me that we have a potion maker active near Pompeii. And inside that beer was all kinds of vegetable matter, like wheat, oats, and sedge and lily and flax and various legumes. 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 fact that the Vatican sits in Rome today is not an accident, I think, is the shortest way to answer that. You become one with Christ by drinking that. 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 we're going down parallel paths here, and I feel we're caught between FDA-approved therapeutics and RFRA-protected sacraments, RFRA, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or what becomes of these kinds of substances in any kind of legal format-- which they're not legal at the moment, some would argue. It's only in John that Jesus is described as being born in the lap of the Father, the [SPEAKING GREEK] in 1:18, very similar to the way that Dionysus sprung miraculously from the thigh of Zeus, and on and on and on-- which I'm not going to bore you and the audience. And in his book [? 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 . I think the only big question is what the exact relationship was from a place like that over to Eleusis. What the Greeks were actually saying there is that it was barley infected with ergot, which is this natural fungus that infects cereal crops. CHARLES STANG: Brian, I wonder if you could end by reflecting on the meaning of dying before you die. And Ruck, and you following Ruck, make much of this, suggesting maybe the Gnostics are pharmacologists of some kind. So when you take a step back, as you well know, there was a Hellenic presence all over the ancient Mediterranean. But clearly, when you're thinking about ancient Egypt or elsewhere, there's definitely a funerary tradition. So I want to propose that we stage this play in two acts. And I started reading the studies from Pat McGovern at the University of Pennsylvania. So if we can test Eucharistic vessels, I wouldn't be surprised at all that we find one. And I wonder whether the former narrative serves the interests of the latter. So what do we know about those rituals? And so the big hunt for me was trying to find some of those psychedelic bits. CHARLES STANG: OK. These mysteries had at their center a sacrament called kykeon, which offered a vision of the mysteries of life and death. Which turns out, it may be they were. The Continuity Hypothesis was put forward by John Bowlby (1953) as a critical effect of attachments in his development of Attachment Theory. It's not just Cana. What does that have to do with Christianity? BRIAN MURARESKU: We can dip from both pies, Dr. Stang. Jerry Brown wrote a good review that should be read to put the book in its proper place. In fact, he found beer, wine, and mead all mixed together in a couple of different places. I am so fortunate to have been selected to present my thesis, "Mythology and Psychedelics: Taking the Pagan Continuity Hypothesis a Step Further" at. So I point to that evidence as illustrative of the possibility that the Christians could, in fact, have gotten their hands on an actual wine. 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? 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 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. He's talking about kind of psychedelic wine. Do the drugs, Dr. Stang? 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. And yet I talked to an atheist who has one experience with psilocybin and is immediately bathed in God's love. And not least because if I were to do it, I'd like to do so in a deeply sacred ritual. 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. And the big question for me was what was that something else? Here's what we don't. And the big question is, what is this thing doing there in the middle of nowhere? He's been featured in Forbes, the Daily Beast, Big Think, and Vice. . and he said, Brian, don't you dare. I'm trying to get him to speak in the series about that. There aren't any churches or basilicas, right, in the first three centuries, in this era we're calling paleo-Christianity. Liked by Samuel Zuschlag. And I'll just list them out quickly. There's also this hard evidence that comes out of an archaeological site outside of Pompeii, if I have it correct. I just sense a great deal of structure and thoughtfulness going into this experience. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. For me, that's a question, and it will yield more questions. What was the wine in the early Eucharist? It was one of the early write-ups of the psilocybin studies coming out of Johns Hopkins. And then that's the word that Euripides uses, by the way. #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 They did not. I'm paraphrasing this one. And there you also found mortars that were tested and also tested positive for evidence of brewing. So the Eastern Aegean. Now that doesn't mean, as Brian was saying, that then suggests that that's the norm Eucharist. . The answer seems to be connected to psychedelic drugs. They were relevant to me in going down this rabbit hole. I would have been happy to find a spiked wine anywhere. Books about pagan continuity hypothesis? And her answer was that they'd all been cleaned or treated for conservation purposes. And that's what I get into in detail in the book. Rather, Christian beliefs were gradually incorporated into the pagan customs that already existed there. This time, tonight I'll say that it's just not my time yet. So whatever these [SPEAKING GREEK] libations incense were, the church fathers don't get into great detail about what may have been spiking them. 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. 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. 55 This is very likely as it seems that the process had already started in the 4th century. 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 even within the New Testament you see little hints and clues that there was no such thing as only ordinary table wine. Are they rolling their eyes, or are you getting sort of secretive knowing nods of agreement? It's not the case in the second century. And when you speak in that way, what I hear you saying is there is something going on. And I wonder and I question how we can keep that and retain that for today. Well, wonderful. 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 Brian, once again, thank you so much. I include that line for a reason. But with what were they mixed, and to what effect? . 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. You can see that inscribed on a plaque in Saint Paul's monastery at Mount Athos in Greece. BRIAN MURARESKU: Good one. I wonder if you're familiar with Wouter Hanegraaff at the University of Amsterdam. And I want to ask you about specifically the Eleusinian mysteries, centered around the goddesses Demeter and Persephone. A combination of psychoactive plants, including opium, cannabis, and nightshade, along with the remains of reptiles and amphibians all steeped in wine, like a real witch's brew, uncovered in this house outside of Pompeii. Where you find the grain, you may have found ergot. Do you think that the Christians as a nascent cult adapted a highly effective psycho technology that was rattling . What's the importance of your abstention from psychedelics, given what is obvious interest. #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. I'm skeptical, Dr. Stang. So how exactly is this evidence of something relevant to Christianity in Rome or southern Italy more widely?