Maybe part of me is skeptical, right? The most influential religious historian of the twentieth century, Huston Smith, once referred to it as the "best-kept secret" in history. It was a pilgrimage site. And very famous passages, by the way, that should be familiar to most New Testament readers. 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. Little attempt has been made, however, to bridge the gap between \"pagan\" and \"Christian\" or to examine late antique, Christian attitudes toward sexuality and marriage from the viewpoint of the \"average\" Christian. 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. Copyright 2023 The President and Fellows of Harvard College, The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name. Here's what we don't. So, like, they're wonderstruck, or awestruck by their libations and their incense. Wonderful, well, thank you. These Native American church and the UDV, both some syncretic form of Christianity. From about 1500 BC to the fourth century AD, it calls to the best and brightest of not just Athens but also Rome. 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. So even from the very beginning, it wasn't just barley and water. So I'll speak in language that you and our good colleague Greg [? Well, the reason I mention Hippolytus and Marcus and focus on that in my evidence is because there's evidence of the Valentinians, who influenced Marcus, in and around Rome. And I-- in my profession, we call this circumstantial, and I get it. Those religions featured psychedelic beer and ceremonies lead by women . He's been featured in Forbes, the Daily Beast, Big Think, and Vice. We have other textual evidence. 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. Then there's what were the earliest Christians doing with the Eucharist. That they were what you call extreme beverages. Things like fasting and sleep deprivation and tattooing and scarification and, et cetera, et cetera. So Brian, welcome. I'm not. Where you find the grain, you may have found ergot. How does, in other words, how does religion sit with science? CHARLES STANG: OK, that is the big question. 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? 40:15 Witches, drugs, and the Catholic Church . And there were probably other Eleusises like that to the east. But with what were they mixed, and to what effect? I really tried. Now, the great scholar of Greek religion, Walter Burkert, you quote him as musing, once-- and I'm going to quote him-- he says, "it may rather be asked, even without the prospect of a certain answer, whether the basis of the mysteries, they were prehistoric drug rituals, some festival imp of immortality which, through the expansion of consciousness, seemed to guarantee some psychedelic beyond." 32:57 Ancient languages and Brian's education . 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. BRIAN MURARESKU: It just happens to show up. . So my biggest question is, what kind of wine was it? There's no mistake in her mind that it was Greek. I have a deep interest in mysticism, and I've had mystical experiences, which I don't think are very relevant. And Brian, once again, thank you so much. I don't know why it's happening now, but we're finally taking a look. 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. Because at my heart, I still consider myself a good Catholic boy. 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 . Whether there's a psychedelic tradition-- I mean, there are some suggestive paintings. 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. BRIAN MURARESKU: OK. What was discovered, as far as I can tell, from your treatment of it, is essentially an ancient pharmacy in this house. 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? So why refrain? And besides that, young Brian, let's keep the mysteries mysteries. 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. 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 He draws on the theory of "pagan continuity," which holds that early Christianity adopted . So it's hard for me to write this and talk about this without acknowledging the Jesuits who put me here. 283. Now that doesn't mean, as Brian was saying, that then suggests that that's the norm Eucharist. Research inside the Church of Saint Faustina and Liberata Fig 1. And according to Wasson, Hofmann, and Ruck, that barley was really a code word. And I think that's an important distinction to make. He calls it a drug against grief in Greek, [SPEAKING GREEK]. But what we do know about the wine of the time is that it was routinely mixed with plants and herbs and potentially fungi. 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. Let's move to early Christian. That's how we get to Catalonia. 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 in the mountains and forests from Greece to Rome, including the Holy Land and Galilee. difficult to arrive at any conclusive hypothesis. To assess this hypothesis and, perhaps, to push it further, has required years of dogged and, at times, discouraging works in archives and archaeology. All that will be announced through our mailing list. And we know from the record that [SPEAKING GREEK] is described as being so crowded with gods that they were easier to find than men. What about Jesus as a Jew? You mentioned, too, early churchmen, experts in heresies by the name of Irenaeus of Lyons and Hippolytus of Rome. Because they talk about everything else that they take issue with. 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. 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. I would expect we'd have ample evidence. So Dionysus is not the god of alcohol. And there were moments when the sunlight would just break through. There is evidence that has been either overlooked or perhaps intentionally suppressed. It is my great pleasure to welcome Brian Muraresku to the Center. CHARLES STANG: All right. All right, so now, let's follow up with Dionysus, but let's see here. In fact, he found beer, wine, and mead all mixed together in a couple of different places. So Gobekli Tepe, for those who don't know, is this site in southern Turkey on the border with Syria. I mean, something of symbolic significance, something monumental. You see an altar of Pentelic marble that could only have come from the Mount Pentelicus quarry in mainland Greece. 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 so I don't think that psychedelics are coming to replace the Sunday Eucharist. 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 so the big question is what was happening there? 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. CHARLES STANG: OK. 48:01 Brian's psychedelic experiences . In the same place in and around Pompeii, this is where Christianity is really finding its roots. And all we know-- I mean, we can't decipher sequence by sequence what was happening. That would require an entirely different kind of evidence. I mean, so Walter Burkert was part of the reason that kept me going on. So at the very-- after the first half of the book is over, there's an epilogue, and I say, OK, here's the evidence. 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 how to put this? What does ergotized beer in Catalonia have anything to do with the Greek mysteries at Eleusis? That's one narrative that I feel is a little sensational. So whatever was happening there was important. So let's talk about the future of religion, and specifically the future of Roman Catholicism. And I started reading the studies from Pat McGovern at the University of Pennsylvania. But what I see are potential and possibilities and things worthy of discussions like this. I imagine there are many more potion makers around than we typically recognize. I'm going to come back to that idea of proof of concept. 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. I mean, I asked lots of big questions in the book, and I fully acknowledge that. CHARLES STANG: Brian, I wonder if you could end by reflecting on the meaning of dying before you die.