pagan continuity hypothesis

Are they rolling their eyes, or are you getting sort of secretive knowing nods of agreement? 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. No one lived there. So I was obsessed with this stuff from the moment I picked up an article in The Economist called the God Pill back in 2007. 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. I mean, the honest answer is not much. So there's lots of interesting details here that filter through. 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. 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. It's this 22-acre site of free-standing limestone, some rising 20 feet in the air, some weighing 50 tons. Now I understand and I appreciate the pharmaceutical industry's ability to distribute this as medicine for those who are looking for alternatives, alternative treatments for depression and anxiety and PTSD and addiction and end of life distress. BRIAN MURARESKU: I'm bringing more illumination. And he was actually going out and testing some of these ancient chalices. And when I started to get closer into the historical period-- this is all prehistory. 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? CHARLES STANG: We're often in this situation where we're trying to extrapolate from evidence from Egypt, to see is Egypt the norm or is it the exception? What does that have to do with Christianity? 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. 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. And besides that, young Brian, let's keep the mysteries mysteries. 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? BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. 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. I'm going to come back to that idea of proof of concept. And I did not dare. That's just everlasting. So why the silence from the heresiologists on a psychedelic sacrament? So what evidence can you provide for that claim? Do you think that by calling the Eucharist a placebo that you're likely to persuade them? We still have almost 700 with us. Now, Carl Ruck from Boston University, much closer to home, however, took that invitation and tried to pursue this hypothesis. But I don't understand how that provides any significant link to paleo-Christian practice. CHARLES STANG: OK. 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. Well, let's get into it then. If beer was there that long ago, what kind of beer was it? BRIAN MURARESKU: Right. And to be quite honest, I'd never studied the ancient Greeks in Spain. Now, Brian managed to write this book while holding down a full time practice in international law based in Washington DC. So, you know, I specifically wanted to avoid heavily relying on the 52 books of the [INAUDIBLE] corpus or heavily relying too much on the Gospel of Mary Magdalene and the evidence that's come from Egypt. 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. The question is, what will happen in the future. It's arguably not the case in the third century. Maybe there's some residual fear that's been built up in me. Just from reading Dioscorides and reading all the different texts, the past 12 years have absolutely transformed the way I think about wine. 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 again, it survives, I think, because of that state support for the better part of 2,000 years. 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. Lots of Greek artifacts, lots of Greek signifiers. So I have my concerns about what's about to happen in Oregon and the regulation of psilocybin for therapeutic purposes. So after the whole first half of the book-- well, wait a minute, Dr. Stang. We know that at the time of Jesus, before, during, and after, there were recipes floating around. I'm not. Now, I don't put too much weight into that. I think the wine certainly does. 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. Again, how did Christianity take hold in a world with such a rich mystical tradition? Oh, I hope I haven't offended you, Brian. 13,000 years old. Because every time I think about ancient wine, I am now immediately thinking about wine that is spiked. Hard archaeobotanical, archaeochemical data, I haven't seen it. But what we do know is that their sacrament was wine and we know a bit more about the wine of antiquity, ancient Greek wine, than we can piece together from these nocturnal celebrations. 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 somewhere between 1% and 49%. Richard Evans Schultes and the Search for Ayahuasca 17 days ago Plants of the Gods: S3E10. The continuity theory of normal aging states that older adults will usually maintain the same activities, behaviors, relationships as they did in their earlier years of life. And if the latter, do you think there's a good chance that religions will adopt psychedelics back into their rituals?". But I'm pressing you because that's my job. Brendon Benz presents an alternative hypothesis to recent scholarship which has hypothesized that Israel consisted of geographical, economic . and he said, Brian, don't you dare. Now you're a good sport, Brian. Mona Sobhani, PhD Retweeted. And maybe in these near-death experiences we begin to actually experience that at a visceral level. Now-- and I think that we can probably concede that. The continuity hypothesis of dreams suggests that the content of dreams are largely continuous with waking concepts and concerns of the dreamer. And what about the alleged democratization with which you credit the mysteries of Dionysus, or the role of women in that movement? I'm happy to be proven wrong. Now I want to get to the questions, but one last question before we move to the discussion portion. And this is what I present to the world. [2] And nor did we think that a sanctuary would be one of the first things that we construct. 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. So in my mind, it was the first real hard scientific data to support this hypothesis, which, as you alluded to at the beginning, only raises more questions. And it was the Jesuits who encouraged me to always, always ask questions and never take anything at face value. Here's your Western Eleusis. Read more 37 people found this helpful Helpful Report abuse Tfsiebs So much research! 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. You know, it's an atheist using theological language to describe what happened to her. Some number of people have asked about Egypt. 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. The only reason I went to college was to study classics. On Monday, February 22, we will be hosting a panel discussion taking up the question what is psychedelic chaplaincy. And in the ancient world, wine was routinely referred to as a [SPEAKING GREEK], which is the Greek word for drug. Nage ?] So Plato, Pindar, Sophocles, all the way into Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, it's an important thing. You obviously think these are powerful substances with profound effects that track with reality. I understand more papers are about to be published on this. So I think it's really interesting details here worth following up on. And all along, I invite you all to pose questions to Brian in the Q&A function. So the closer we get to the modern period, we're starting to find beer, wine mixed with interesting things. But what I hear from people, including atheists, like Dina Bazer, who participated in these Hopkins NYU trials is that she felt like on her one and only dose of psilocybin that she was bathed in God's love. Brought to you by BRIAN MURARESKU: That's a good question. 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. Get personalized recommendations, and learn where to watch across hundreds of streaming providers. And so that opened a question for me. There aren't any churches or basilicas, right, in the first three centuries, in this era we're calling paleo-Christianity. So when you take a step back, as you well know, there was a Hellenic presence all over the ancient Mediterranean. Show Plants of the Gods: Hallucinogens, Healing, Culture and Conservation podcast, Ep Plants of the Gods: S4E2. Up until that point I really had very little knowledge of psychedelics, personal or literary or otherwise. That is about the future rather than the ancient history. But I do want to push back a little bit on the elevation of this particular real estate in southern Italy. And if there's historical precedent for it, all the more so. 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". I want to thank you for your candor. And much of the evidence that you've collected is kind of the northern half of the Mediterranean world. Here's another one. But unfortunately, it doesn't connect it to Christianity. That also only occurs in John, another epithet of Dionysus. It's not to say that there isn't evidence from Alexandria or Antioch. Amongst all the mystery religions, Eleusis survives. With more than 35 years of experience in the field of Education dedicated to help students, teachers and administrators in both public and private institutions at school, undergraduate and graduate level. 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. In fact, he found beer, wine, and mead all mixed together in a couple of different places. Again, it's proof of concept for going back to Eleusis and going back to other sites around the Mediterranean and continuing to test, whether for ergotized beer or other things. The Immortality Key, The Secret History of the Religion With No Name. But I mentioned that we've become friends because it is the prerogative of friends to ask hard questions. And all we know-- I mean, we can't decipher sequence by sequence what was happening. 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 in his book [? So what I think we have here in this ergtotized beer drink from Catalonia, Spain, and in this weird witch's brew from 79 AD in Pompeii, I describe it, until I see evidence otherwise, as some of the very first heart scientific data for the actual existence of actual spiked wine in classical antiquity, which I think is a really big point. So we move now into ancient history, but solidly into the historical record, however uneven that historical record is. And so in the epilogue, I say we simply do not know the relationship between this site in Spain and Eleusis, nor do we know what was happening at-- it doesn't automatically mean that Eleusis was a psychedelic rite. 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. I understand the appeal of that. Copyright 2023 The President and Fellows of Harvard College, The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name. 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. I don't know why it's happening now, but we're finally taking a look. So, although, I mean, and that actually, I'd like to come back to that, the notion of the, that not just the pagan continuity hypothesis, but the mystery continuity hypothesis through the Vatican. And I just happened to fall into that at the age of 14 thanks to the Jesuits, and just never left it behind. 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? I was not going to put a book out there that was sensationalist. And so in some of these psychedelic trials, under the right conditions, I do see genuine religious experiences. There's some suggestive language in the pyramid texts, in the Book of the Dead and things of this nature. And even in the New Testament, you'll see wine spiked with myrrh, for example, that's served to Jesus at his crucifixion. So psychedelics or not, I think it's the cultivation of that experience, which is the actual key. You won't find it in many places other than that. It's really quite simple, Charlie. And if it's one thing Catholicism does very, very well, it's contemplative mysticism. That's, just absurd. And even Burkert, I think, calls it the most famous of the mystery rituals. And what does this earliest history tell us about the earliest evidence for an ancient psychedelic religion? And the reason I find that a worthy avenue of pursuit is because when you take a step back and look at the Greek of the Gospels, especially the Greek of John, which is super weird, what I see based on Dennis MacDonald's scholarship that you mentioned-- and others-- when you do the exegesis of John's gospel, there's just lots of vocabulary and lots of imagery that doesn't appear elsewhere. The kind of mysticism I've always been attracted to, like the rule of Saint Benedict and the Trappist monks and the Cistercian monks. First, the continuity of the offices must be seen in light of the change of institutional charges; they had lost their religious connotations and had become secular. All rights reserved. Maybe for those facing the end of life. And the quote you just read from Burkert, it's published by Harvard University Press in 1985 as Greek Religion. . I'm sure he knows this well, by this point. 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 . I really tried. Copyright 2023 President and Fellows of Harvard College. So can you reflect for us where you really are and how you chose to write this book? I would have been happy to find a spiked wine anywhere. 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.

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