Thank you. . And I don't know if it's a genuine mystical experience or mystical mimetic or some kind of psychological breakthrough. A profound knowledge of visionary plants, herbs, and fungi passed from one generation to the next, ever since the Stone Age? 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. So imagine how many artifacts are just sitting in museums right now, waiting to be tested. In this way, the two traditions coexisted in a syncretic form for some time before . That also only occurs in John, another epithet of Dionysus. And so even within the New Testament you see little hints and clues that there was no such thing as only ordinary table wine. Is taking all these disciplines, whether it's your discipline or archaeochemistry or hard core botany, biology, even psychopharmacology, putting it all together and taking a look at this mystery, this puzzle, using the lens of psychedelics as a lens, really, to investigate not just the past but the future and the mystery of human consciousness. The long and short of it is, in 1978 there was no hard scientific data to prove this one way or the other. So what have you learned about the Eleusinian mysteries in particular since Ruck took this up, and what has convinced you that Ruck's hypothesis holds water? And so the big question is what was happening there? 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. 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. And so that opened a question for me. It was one of the early write-ups of the psilocybin studies coming out of Johns Hopkins. What about Jesus as a Jew? And I, for one, look forward to a time when I can see him in person for a beer, ergotized beer or not, if he ever leaves Uruguay. I mean, the honest answer is not much. Now that doesn't mean, as Brian was saying, that then suggests that that's the norm Eucharist. So if we can test Eucharistic vessels, I wouldn't be surprised at all that we find one. 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? At Cambridge University he worked in developmental biolo. I'm happy to argue about that. I do the same thing in the afterword at the very end of the book, where it's lots of, here's what we know. You see an altar of Pentelic marble that could only have come from the Mount Pentelicus quarry in mainland Greece. CHARLES STANG: We've really read Jesus through the lens of his Greek inheritors. So that, actually, is the key to the immortality key. That to live on forever and ever, to live an everlasting life is not immortality. Then what was the Gospel of John, how did it interpret the Eucharist and market it, and so on. That's all just fancy wordplay. So there's a house preserved outside of Pompeii, preserved, like so much else, under the ash of Mount Vesuvius's eruption in the year 79 of the Common Era. That would require an entirely different kind of evidence. So why refrain? And in the ancient world, wine was routinely referred to as a [SPEAKING GREEK], which is the Greek word for drug. I know that's another loaded phrase. I mean, in the absence of the actual data, that's my biggest 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. On Monday, February 22, we will be hosting a panel discussion taking up the question what is psychedelic chaplaincy. Now, I've never done them myself, but I have talked to many, many people who've had experience with psychedelics. Now is there any evidence for psychedelic use in ancient Egypt, and if not, do you have any theory as to why that's silent? I'm not sure where it falls. He calls it a drug against grief in Greek, [SPEAKING GREEK]. But I do want to push back a little bit on the elevation of this particular real estate in southern Italy. Because for many, many years, you know, Ruck's career takes a bit of a nosedive. I think the wine certainly does. I'm trying to get him to speak in the series about that. It's this 22-acre site of free-standing limestone, some rising 20 feet in the air, some weighing 50 tons. That's, just absurd. Wonderful, well, thank you. 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. Here's another one. The altar had been sitting in a museum in Israel since the 1960s and just hadn't been tested. And I think there are lots of reasons to believe that. And much of the evidence that you've collected is kind of the northern half of the Mediterranean world. You know, it's an atheist using theological language to describe what happened to her. 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. And I want to-- just like you have this hard evidence from Catalonia, then the question is how to interpret it. And I think there are so many sites and excavations and so many chalices that remain to be tested. The answer seems to be connected to psychedelic drugs. 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. But if the original Eucharist were psychedelic, or even if there were significant numbers of early Christians using psychedelics like sacrament, I would expect the representatives of orthodox, institutional Christianity to rail against it. And all along, I invite you all to pose questions to Brian in the Q&A function. And it was the Jesuits who encouraged me to always, always ask questions and never take anything at face value. BRIAN MURARESKU: I don't-- I don't claim too heavily. So the closer we get to the modern period, we're starting to find beer, wine mixed with interesting things. Now I want to get to the questions, but one last question before we move to the discussion portion. And you suspect, therefore, that it might be a placebo, and you want the real thing. Brian is the author of a remarkable new book that has garnered a lot of attention and has sold a great many copies. A rebirth into what? So what evidence can you provide for that claim? He co-writes that with Gordon Wasson and Albert Hofmann, who famously-- there it is, the three authors. 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. 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? 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. We have plays like the Bacchi from Euripides, where we can piece together some of this. What's different about the Dionysian mysteries, and what evidence, direct or indirect, do we have about the wine of Dionysus being psychedelic? That's just everlasting. I mean, so Walter Burkert was part of the reason that kept me going on. So it's hard for me to write this and talk about this without acknowledging the Jesuits who put me here. All rights reserved. 474, ?] Maybe there's some residual fear that's been built up in me. And now we have a working hypothesis and some data to suggest where we might be looking. Books about pagan continuity hypothesis? So I'm trying to build the case-- and for some reason in my research, it kept coming back to Italy and Rome, which is why I focus on Hippolytus. And I guess my biggest question, not necessarily for you, but the psychedelic community, for what it's worth, or those who are interested in this stuff is how do we make this experience sacred? McGovern also finds wine from Egypt, for example, in 3150 BC, wine that is mixed with a number of interesting ingredients. Now, I don't put too much weight into that. And if it's one thing Catholicism does very, very well, it's contemplative mysticism. Like, what is this all about? But we at least have, again, the indicia of evidence that something was happening there. I wish the church fathers were better botanists and would rail against the specific pharmacopeia. What is its connection to Eleusis? We see lots of descriptions of this in the mystical literature with which you're very familiar. Now we're getting somewhere. So the big question is, what kind of drug was this, if it was a drug? 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. But things that sound intensely powerful. Now, it's just an early indication and there's more testing to be done. 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. Mona Sobhani, PhD Retweeted. 48:01 Brian's psychedelic experiences . And my favorite line of the book is, "The lawyer in me won't sleep until that one chalice, that one container, that one vessel comes to light in an unquestionable Christian context.". 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. What's the wine? It is my great pleasure to welcome Brian Muraresku to the Center. And by the way, I'm not here trying to protect Christianity from the evidence of psychedelic use. But it just happens to show up at the right place at the right time, when the earliest Christians could have availed themselves of this kind of sacrament. So there's a whole slew of sites I want to test there. Things like fasting and sleep deprivation and tattooing and scarification and, et cetera, et cetera. Part 1 Brian C. Muraresku: The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis and the Hallucinogenic Origins of Religion 3 days ago Plants of the Gods: S4E1. Please materialize. That they were what you call extreme beverages. Amongst all the mystery religions, Eleusis survives. It still leaves an even bigger if, Dr. Stang, is which one is psychedelic? And part of me really wants to put all these pieces together before I dive in. 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. 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. Despite its popular appeal as a New York Times Bestseller, TIK fails to make a compelling case for its grand theory of the "pagan continuity hypothesis with a psychedelic twist" due to recurring overreach and historical distortion, failure to consider relevant research on shamanism and Christianity, and presentation of speculation as fact." Now, you could draw the obvious conclusion. CHARLES STANG: My name is Charles Stang, and I'm the director of the Center for the Study of World Religions here at Harvard Divinity School. So it is already happening. I was satisfied with I give Brian Muraresku an "A" for enthusiasm, but I gave his book 2 stars. The Immortality Key, The Secret History of the Religion With No Name. All right, so now, let's follow up with Dionysus, but let's see here. You might find it in a cemetery in Mexico. Nage ?] What Brian labels the religion with no name. As much as we know about the mysteries of Eleusis. CHARLES STANG: Yeah. In this hypothesis, both widely accepted and widely criticized,11 'American' was synonymous with 'North American'. To assess this hypothesis and, perhaps, to push it further, has required years of dogged and, at times, discouraging works in archives and archaeology.