An actual spiked wine. And the one thing that unites both of those worlds in this research called the pagan continuity hypothesis, the one thing we can bet on is the sacred language of Greek. And I want to say to those who are still assembled here that I'm terribly sorry that we can't get to all your questions. We still have almost 700 with us. I mean, so it was Greek. So there's lots of interesting details here that filter through. That event is already up on our website and open for registration. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. I'm happy to be proven wrong. If the Dionysian one is psychedelic, does it really make its way into some kind of psychedelic Christianity? 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. 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. 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. But even if they're telling the truth about this, even if it is accurate about Marcus that he used a love potion, a love potion isn't a Eucharist. 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. Wise not least because it is summer there, as he reminds me every time we have a Zoom meeting, which has been quite often in these past several months. So it wasn't just a random place to find one of these spiked wines. Here's the big question. 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 why, if you're right that the church has succeeded in suppressing a psychedelic sacrament and has been peddling instead, what you call a placebo, and that it has exercised a monstrous campaign of persecution against plant medicine and the women who have kept its knowledge alive, why are you still attached to this tradition? 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. Let's move to early Christian. But the next event in this series will happen sooner than that. 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. In the same place in and around Pompeii, this is where Christianity is really finding its roots. And that is that there was a pervasive religion, ancient religion, that involved psychedelic sacraments, and that that pervasive religious culture filtered into the Greek mysteries and eventually into early Christianity. So somewhere between 1% and 49%. The continuity between pagan and Christian cult nearby the archaeological area of Naquane in Capo di Ponte. And, as always the best way to keep abreast of this series and everything else we do here at the Center is to join our mailing list. But it was not far from a well-known colony in [INAUDIBLE] that was founded by Phocians. 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? I mean, I think the book makes it clear. And I'll just list them out quickly. Rupert Sheldrake, PhD, is a biologist and author best known for his hypothesis of morphic resonance. And Brian, once again, thank you so much. 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 I think that that's the real question here. So Dionysus is not the god of alcohol. So this is the tradition, I can say with a straight face, that saved my life. But it survives. A rebirth into a new conception of the self, the self's relationship to things that are hard to define, like God. Read more about The Immortality Key by Brian Muraresku Making Sense by Sam Harris 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. 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 what do we know about those rituals? That they were what you call extreme beverages. It's funny to see that some of the first basilicas outside Rome are popping up here, and in and around Pompeii. The long and short of it is, in 1978 there was no hard scientific data to prove this one way or the other. What's different about the Dionysian mysteries, and what evidence, direct or indirect, do we have about the wine of Dionysus being psychedelic? 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. 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." Find ratings and reviews for the newest movie and TV shows. CHARLES STANG: OK, great. 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 that's what I get into in detail in the book. CHARLES STANG: OK. 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. Even a little bit before Gobekli Tepe, there was another site unearthed relatively recently in Israel, at the Rakefet cave. And so that opened a question for me. Tim Ferriss is a self-experimenter and bestselling author, best known for The 4-Hour Workweek, which has been translated into 40+ languages. The universality of frontiers, however, made the hypothesis readily extendable to other parts of the globe. She found the remains of dog sacrifice, which is super interesting. But I don't hold-- I don't hang my hat on that claim. I also sense another narrative in your book, and one you've flagged for us, maybe about 10 minutes ago, when you said that the book is a proof of concept. So this whole water to wine thing was out there. And maybe therein we do since the intimation of immortality. BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. You obviously think these are powerful substances with profound effects that track with reality. And if there's historical precedent for it, all the more so. But I do want to push back a little bit on the elevation of this particular real estate in southern Italy. 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. And she talks about the visions that transformed the way she thinks about herself. In this episode, Brian C. Muraresku, who holds a degree from Brown University in Latin, Greek and Sanskrit,  joins Breht to discuss his fascinating book "The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name", a groundbreaking dive into the use of hallucinogens in ancient Greece, the Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, the role of the Eucharist in early Christianity, the . If your history is even remotely correct, that would have ushered in a very different church, if Valentinus's own student Marcus and the Marcosians were involved in psychedelic rituals, then that was an early road not taken, let's say. They're mixing potions. And he found some beer and wine-- that was a bit surprising. 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. Now, here's-- let's tack away from hard, scientific, archaeobotanical evidence for a moment. Let me just pull up my notes here. There's John Marco Allegro claiming that there was no Jesus, and this was just one big amanita muscaria cult. And what does this earliest history tell us about the earliest evidence for an ancient psychedelic religion? That's the promise in John's gospel, in John 6:54-55, that I quote in the book. 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 I think we get hung up on the jargon. [2] Here is how I propose we are to proceed. So this is interesting. 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. 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, shouldn't everybody, shouldn't every Christian be wondering what kind of wine was on that table, or the tables of the earliest Christians? Now, you could draw the obvious conclusion. The continuity theory proposes that older adults maintain the same activities, behaviors, personalities, and relationships of the past. 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 .

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