Modern WisdomThe Psychedelic Origins Of Western Civilisation - Brian Muraresku | Modern Wisdom Podcast #276
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
105 min read · 20,853 words- 0:00 – 15:00
... I call it…
- BMBrian Muraresku
... I call it the best kept secret in history, are essentially two questions. Number one, did the ancient Greeks use drugs to find God? And number two, did the earliest Christians inherit part of that tradition? If the answer to both of those questions is yes, then it means that western civilization as we know it was somewhat founded on a visionary experience, and Christianity, the world's biggest religion today with two-and-a-half billion people, might be tapping into those same psychedelic waters.
- CWChris Williamson
You're a qualified lawyer. Why are you talking about the psychedelic origins of western civilization?
- BMBrian Muraresku
That's the great question. I feel like, uh, I'm, I'm still a barrister, still barr- Do you- Is that what you call it, barristering?
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, l- lawyering? Law- Being a, being a barrister-
- BMBrian Muraresku
(laughs) I'm not a lawyer.
- CWChris Williamson
... being a b- barristering, yeah. If anyone can tell us if the verb is to barrister, uh ... (laughs)
- BMBrian Muraresku
(laughs) So I still do that, believe it or not. Um, I'm still in good standing in New York State and Washington D.C. for the moment, and, uh, I don't know, I don't know. I just, I started reading about psychedelics and I couldn't stop.
- CWChris Williamson
But weren't tempted to try them? You actually o- oh, sorry, decided not to try them. You remained as psychedelically un-, uh, initiated throughout the writing of your book.
- BMBrian Muraresku
My virginity was and remains intact.
- CWChris Williamson
Is that going to change at any point soon?
- BMBrian Muraresku
Um, soon, in the coming years. I'm not sure exactly when. But as it becomes legal and as the facilities come online where you can have an experience that is, uh, you know, responsible and scientifically rigorous, and also for me, authentically sacred and historical, I think that'll be my moment.
- CWChris Williamson
It's gonna be so fascinating to see what happens to you having spent over a decade thinking, reflecting, uh, uh, considering, and then also going into wondering what other people's experiences are, like the, the meta-experience. What did they think? What did they feel? Man, whatever it is that you end up going through, is, are you gonna be shot into another universe?
- BMBrian Muraresku
I can't wait. Uh, I'm always, part of me is always thinking the great irony of all of this would be if absolutely nothing happened. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) All this time, all this time.
- BMBrian Muraresku
(laughs) I was wrong.
- CWChris Williamson
Fucking what a waste. It was all a big troll. Uh, is there a movie coming out?
- BMBrian Muraresku
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Is there a movie coming out about the book?
- BMBrian Muraresku
Um, we, we hope so, um, at least a, a documentary series. So w- we're busy pitching that to different networks and streamers, uh, here in the US. But obviously it'll have a, a global audience.
- CWChris Williamson
Dude, that's so cool.
- BMBrian Muraresku
Yeah, man. We have, that, that's, that's been a, you know, a big part of my, my job the past few weeks and months.
- CWChris Williamson
What, negotiating what sort of a series it should be? Who should play you? Can we get Tom Hanks? All that sort of stuff?
- BMBrian Muraresku
Uh, all, all, all of the above, and where do you go and how do you get there and why are you doing it? A- And is this, you know, is this one episode? Is this 1,000 episodes? And how do we pair the mystery and suspense with the rigorous academic scholarship and, you know, make it, make it a feast for the eyes and for the ears? It's gotta be a killer soundtrack, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Nice. Yeah, so it's going to be barristering, writing, producing. The triple threat. That's the, that's the big triple threat.
- BMBrian Muraresku
That's my new business card, Chris.
- CWChris Williamson
I love it. I love it. If you need an agent, speak to me. So right, lead on this.
- BMBrian Muraresku
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
What, what's the story arc of history that you're following here?
- BMBrian Muraresku
Right, so it's, um, you know, I call it the best kept secret in history, which a- which is not my words. These, these are the words of Huston Smith, uh, who if you've never heard of him, he's one of the most influential scholars of the 20th century. Um, and what he was referring to are essentially two questions. Number one, did the ancient Greeks use drugs to find God? And number two, did the earliest Christians inherit part of that tradition? Um, if the answer to both of those questions is yes, then it means that, you know, like western civilization as we know it was somewhat founded on a visionary experience, and Christianity, the world's biggest religion today with two-and-a-half billion people, might be tapping into those same psychedelic waters. So these are big questions, obviously very controversial, and there's lots of great literature out there and artifacts you can go hunt down, but what I tried to do over the past 12 years is, is, is sniff out the hard scientific data to really make, you know, heads or tails of this for the first time.
- CWChris Williamson
Why does it matter, or why is there a distinction between it happening just for the Greeks and it happening for also the foundation of Christianity?
- 15:00 – 30:00
It seems juxtaposed to…
- BMBrian Muraresku
temple, this all night, this panuchia, this all-night affair in this torch lit sanctuary that was dedicated to the Goddess Demeter. And along with you, we think, um, the, the, the temple could accommodate about 3,000 people. Uh, there were kind of like stairs that line the perimeter of this sanctuary. Um, at some point, a gong is struck, a light emits from, uh, the center of the temple. Um, this is after a magic potion has been passed around. And here appears, appears Persephone, the goddess of the underworld. And sometimes she's described as hold, uh, holding a baby, the baby Dionysus or the baby Iapetus. And it's this idea that from death springs life. Um, and, you know, it's, it's interpreted for a long time as just this very visceral initiation into, uh, the cycles of fertility and the seasonal cycles. But there was something very personal happening to these people. Um, so they didn't just like see a stage act. It wasn't just stagecraft. Um, there may have been some of that going on, but again, all the testimony, what little survived tells us that there was something deeply personal about whatever they witnessed there. Hence the theory that part of what they were witnessing was in the mind's eye, you know, behind, behind closed eyes, for example, something perhaps psychedelic.
- CWChris Williamson
It seems juxtaposed to have something that's incredibly sacred where only one layperson got to go, Marcus Aurelius, and yet there's this raucous nature on the way there. What's going on?
- BMBrian Muraresku
It's, it's a great question. I think, you know, um, so there's also a Mardi Gras element, right? Uh, there, there's Mardi Gras and Fight Club and burning. It's, it's a mix of all this. It's definitely a, a public festival at some point, right? Um, and, uh, I, I th- I think it's breaking down boundaries. It's breaking down physical boundaries and mental boundaries, and it's kind of... it's, it's like it's intentional mind benders, you know. Um, you know, making just, just horrible jokes at you to kind of break down your ego before you even get there. And on your first visit, you're not, you're not deemed eligible enough to see that magical vision. So, you have to visit twice, which is why this whole initiation sequence lasts at least a year and a half, if not longer.
- CWChris Williamson
So, you don't drink, you don't drink on the first time?
- BMBrian Muraresku
No. You become a mystes. That, that was the title you got. On your first visit, you become a mystes, which is a mystic. It's only on your second visit that you became an epoptes, which in Greek is kind of like, um, you know, somebody who sees it all. Uh, so it was a long, long process to get there. Um, and, you know, part of it is intellectual instruction, and part of it is a really rigorous, you know, physical exhausting march, um, where you show up, um, thirsty and hungry and just kind of beaten down. And I think those are the conditions after all that priming or maybe just the right medicine would put you into the state of mind to actually experience some kind of death and rebirth.
- CWChris Williamson
Who would be invited?
- BMBrian Muraresku
So, technically anybody could go under two conditions. You had to speak some ancient Greek, and you can't have committed murder.So, if you're not a murderer-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- BMBrian Muraresku
... and you know some Greek, you're in.
- CWChris Williamson
Okay. (laughs) So, I run, I run nightclubs in the UK, and it would be interesting if my door policy was based on that. "Excuse me, mate, do you speak-"
- BMBrian Muraresku
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
"... do you speak ancient Greek, and have you committed a murder?" It's like, "Well, I can, I can whack some Greek out to you, but I'm afraid, on the second count, mate, I'm go- going to have to go somewhere else." Um, yet-
- BMBrian Muraresku
That might be the, the only nightclub where I'd be welcome.
- CWChris Williamson
Perhaps. Perhaps indeed. What are the, what are the mysteries then? You talk about it throughout the book. What are the mysteries?
- BMBrian Muraresku
Right. So, Eleusis is one example of the mysteries that existed in the ancient world. I talk about the mysteries of Dionysus in ancient Greece. There are lots of other mysteries, at Samothrace, the mysteries... the Egyptian mysteries of Isis and Osiris, uh, the mysteries of Magna Mater and different cults from the Near East. I mean, if you had to break it all down and say something very simple, I, I would, I would say that these are ceremonial experiences of death and rebirth. Uh, so something is happening where you're shedding your identity, and you're losing that identity in some kind of ego-dissolving event, and you're being reborn, reawakened into a new identity. And that identity is something that is in accord with the natural world and in accord with the cosmos. Um, so clearly there's an experience happening there. Tha- that's why I always say an experience of death and rebirth. Not, not just like, um, you know, a crazy theory or something you were listening to, uh, but, but a real visceral experience.
- CWChris Williamson
Why was all of this... If it, if it's such a transformative experience, 3,000 people going... Is it annual? Was it every year?
- BMBrian Muraresku
It was, uh, we think around the fall equinox, once a year, every year.
- CWChris Williamson
Got you. And it was lasting for quite a long time, and there's multiple different of these mysteries. If that's the case, why is it seemingly kept hidden then? Like sacred religion is written and repeated everywhere. Why is this sacred ritual not?
- BMBrian Muraresku
Hmm. I've been asking myself the same question for many years. I mean, so I'll tell you, I, I'm not... I've been asked this question before, but I'm going to answer it differently this, this time. Um, I'm, I'm going to say this. I, I, I think that because of the way I describe it, this ceremonial death and rebirth, my personal belief is that I, I, I think there was something to do with the anticipation. And I think that if you know what's about to happen to you, it takes away some of the magic. And, and I think part of the reason this was kept secret is because you're not supposed to know what's happening to you. So imagine, if you will, like initiation into a secret society, right? And, you know, you, you come into this sacred chamber and you see a pool filled with alligators, hungry alligators. And, you know, your mates tell you, "You got to hop into that pool and get out the other side, and then you're one of us." And you say, "Holy shit, why would I, why would I do that?" You know, it's a, it's a, it's a death sentence. And so you hop in, you get through the whole thing, and it's the most terrifying experience of your life, and out you come reborn. Now, if you'd been told beforehand that those alligators were perfectly well-fed and didn't want anything to do with you, it would kind of take away from the experience. And so I think Eleusis is something similar. There was this priming going on, and this anticipation that was being built up, and this mythology that was transmitted from generation to generation. If you know exactly what's going to happen, if you know you're going to drink this potion and it's not going to kill you, but it will, you know, mess with your senses for a while, if you're told, you know, every detail of that, I don't, I don't think it's as, as special.
- CWChris Williamson
Why, in that case... So I, I understand why it might have been kept quiet from the people who were going, but in terms of noting things down in history, if you've got, over a couple of hundred years, several thousand, tens of thousands of people perhaps attending this, you would have thought that it would have been easier to find the most transformative experience of 30,000 people's lives. Why are you scrabbling for little scraps of paper and having to go to the Vatican and, uh, run off to Greece and ask to do testing on the inside of pots and stuff like that? It should be... it would be written everywhere.
- BMBrian Muraresku
Well, I mean, I'd, I'd ask the same question about Jesus. Um, I, I want to know what Jesus w- was, was all about and this religion of two and a half billion people. And the guy never wrote a goddamn word down. And so we're, we're left with these four somewhat contradictory gospels that are written a generation after, after his death. Uh, we're left with the Epistles of Saint Paul, who never met the guy in the flesh. You know, he receives all his information in these visionary experiences, and yet it's the world's biggest religion, man. That's two and a half billion people, and we don't have a word from this guy. I mean, how is that possible?
- CWChris Williamson
Very, very good point. So what happened? Like, you've got this amazing, transformative ceremony. Why is it still not happening today?
- BMBrian Muraresku
So, there's a lot of different answers to that. Um, part of the answer, I talk about this in the book, I mean, part of the answer is the Christianized Roman Empire. The other... the Christian emperors weren't too happy with Eleusis and the other pagan traditions stalking around, messing up the show. And so by the end of the fourth century AD, um, a number of decrees are issued in the second half of that century trying to do away with this stuff. They, they try to do away with nocturnal ceremonies, which would include Eleusis, and then it comes back. Um, and, you know, a lot of the old libraries and statuary, um, kind of disappear. Um, not exclusively at the hands of the Christianized Roman Empire, uh, but there's this generational loss of knowledge. And to your point, if nothing's written down, there's no doctrine, there's no dogma, there's no records for this stuff. If anything, it's going to go up in smoke pretty quickly. It's something like these mysteries.
- CWChris Williamson
Have you got any idea of what the last time it happened would be? You said it went away, came back.
- BMBrian Muraresku
More or less. I mean, so in the last decade of the fourth century AD, 392 more or less is, is the last time I think we see this celebrated in a ritual way.
- CWChris Williamson
And how's the banning of these rituals described? Like what went on? Was it burning down the temple and...
- BMBrian Muraresku
See, at- at some point, this is why I say you can't exclusively blame the Christians. I mean, at some point the barbarians get their hands on Eleusis and the big question is, you know, how did they just march in and take this place down? Well, they did it once in the second century. It happens again at the end of the fourth century. But, you know, part of me thinks that the Christian emperors kind of opened the gates and just, uh, let the rioters stampede.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. So why does this matter? Like, what, what are the implications if it's true, the broader implications, other than Plato and Marcus Aurelius and a bunch of other famous people that we know about had a great time?
- BMBrian Muraresku
Because, what if this is the real religion of the ancient Greeks? And, and what if this identity crisis that we have is a false one? You know, what if the people who created the foundations for our life today were the same people who were very obsessed with finding out a meaning for life? I mean, w- what if it ... in addition to our faith traditions, in addition to the Bible and the New Testament, what if in addition to all that, these ancient philosophers and mystics had ideas that weren't that distinct from Christian mystics and some of these heretical sects like the Gnostics, or some of the very mainstream followers of Jesus? I mean, the big question I ask in the book is, you know, is the ancient Greek of the Pagan world and their rites and practices at all related to the ancient Greek of the New Testament and their rites and practices? And, you know, again, it's this ... Greek is the sacred language of Christianity, and so by looking into these mysteries, um, what I'm really studying i- is what's called the Pagan Continuity Hypothesis. Was there something about Plato and the rest of them and his philosophy and these rites at Eleusis, is there some of that that actually made its way into Christianity, into the earliest Christian communities that we know for 300 years were practicing secret, illegal mystery traditions inside private homes and, and graveyards? I mean, there's a lot of crossover.
- CWChris Williamson
It seems to me, looking back at what I know about Greek philosophy and what I understand about Christianity, that they do seem like two pieces of opposite puzzles, or of the same puzzle perhaps, that you had this incredibly grounded, very, uh, virtuous, not too woo-woo, there was limited, at least in my experience, to do with the Greeks. They had their gods, but it wasn't a, a sort of a personal transcendence, uh, type of philosophy with regards to that. Whereas with Christianity, almost everything was about the theology, it was about the- d- paying tribute to the higher power, and a lot less to do with the personal sovereignty that seems to be based around the Greeks. And it, it does seem odd that you could go from a society that we're now in 2020 that Ryan Holiday is making a living off in 2020, you could go from such a pragmatic society and philosophy into one that I think even to Christians now, it ... they're not superbly proud of a lot of the things that went on around that time. There was ... it was very militant the way that Christianity kind of came aboard with conversions and crusades and things like that. It really does feel-
- 30:00 – 45:00
What research has been…
- BMBrian Muraresku
point that one of these plants will, will cause not unpleasant visions. Uh, ʿfantasīyās ū ʿaēdēs. So he's talking about psychedelics at the same time that Matthew, Mark, and Luke are writing their gospels. Um, and later John. And it makes you wonder, you know, if the Greeks knew about all this stuff, if they knew about pharmacology-... what are the odds that some of that pharmacology would make its way into the same ancient Greek-speaking communities who had inherited all this stuff from their ancestors? Um, one place you would look at is Corinth, for example. You know, Paul's letter to the Corinthians, you hear it at every wedding you go to. Um, Corinth today is 45 minutes to the west of Eleusis, this ancient spiritual capital. Now, what are the odds that an early Corinthian who heard about this, uh, this son of God, born of a virgin with this new magical gift of immortal wine, this magic potion, what are the odds that either they themselves or someone they knew was not initiated at Eleusis, where this magic potion had been splashing around for, for centuries and centuries? And so to me, the gospels are playing off of this pagan continuity.
- CWChris Williamson
What research has been done into the archaeobotany or the archaeochemistry of it?
- BMBrian Muraresku
So that, that's the fun part. That's the fun part. Um, the short answer is, not a hell of a lot. So I had to, I had to try and find out the, the scholars who were working on this stuff, and I eventually came across Andrew Ko, who's at MIT. Uh, I mean, I, I would say the world's leading archaeochemist. Um, he's responsible amongst other things for unearthing the world's oldest wine cellar in Galilee, the same Galilee where Jesus is born, except it dates, it da- it dates well before Jesus, to about 1700 BC from the Canaanite period. And it's wine that, again, through gas chromatography and mass spectrometry, uh, they're finding is spiked with all kinds of funky stuff, like honey, storax, terebinth, cypress, cedar, et cetera, et cetera. Now, you know, you might say, "Oh, it's just interesting, you know, aromatic flavor profile enhancing type stuff." And that's certainly true, but the big question I'm always asking Andrew is, "Were there other psychoactive additives, psychotropic additives?" And theoretically, his answer's always been, "Yes. Uh, why not? Let's go find the data." So, you know, based off some leads from him, I was pouring into these archaeobotany journals and eventually came across, um, a couple different things. So, one hit for ancient beer, one hit for ancient wine. Um, both discovered in the 1990s and largely ignored by the academic community. And as best as I can tell, like, never reported to the public. Uh, just archeologists doing what they do, finding amazing things, and there it sits in a, in a journal. Uh, but in Spain from the second century BC, uh, I came across this study of an ancient Greek sanctuary. There were Greeks in Spain just like there were Greeks in, in Greece and Italy. And from the second century BC, they found this tiny chalice about a couple inches high, and it went under analysis and they found the remains of beer and ergot. So there's your ergotized beer, this crazy idea from 1978. We now have, you know, actual scientific data to corroborate that, um, which is pretty crazy.
- CWChris Williamson
I'm trying to think about what the reason would be... I, I understand that the Christian Church was being pretty forthcoming at trying to convert everybody. They were, you know, they were, they were full on. They were, it was a big relationship with the Christians. Um, but I'm trying to work out what the, the fear that they would have had as opposed to repurposing the existing ritual and just rebranding it, um, why they would get rid of it. And I think I've heard you talk about this before, that it would... Taking a psychoactive substance gives you direct access to God in one form or another. You no longer actually need the medium that is the church or the priest or the, um, the religion at wide. You just... It's you and him, speaking directly to him. Is that your sort of conception of it as well?
- BMBrian Muraresku
I think that's... Again, I think that's part of the answer. Um, it, it, it's hard for me to figure out what was going on in the fourth century, and I, and I think I'm on record saying something like, "I sympathize with the church fathers." And I'm not sure what I mean by that.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- BMBrian Muraresku
But, um, you know... (laughs) But they were, they were in the business of, of church building, which at the time is in the business of nation-building. And how do you do that with this secret illegal cult where people are meeting in private with no standards? Who the hell knows what's going on behind closed doors? They're literally underground in family catacombs. I mean, this is where Christianity took root, in private houses and catacombs for 300 years. There was no brick and mortar churches. There were no physical basilicas until Constantine in the fourth century AD. So once it comes above ground, literally, and once, um, you know, Christians aren't being hunted down by lions, uh, you know, how do you get this faith off the ground? And, and I think that you need standards and you need dogma, which is why all these church councils get together and they figure out which books go in and which don't. And yeah, there was a hack job going on. I mean, there was, you know, the, um, the, the, the Gnostic literature disappears. Um, all these texts from Nag Hammadi, Egypt, for example, that were dug up in the middle of the 20th century, and these beautiful, beautiful testimonies that talk about a different Jesus, like in the Gospel of Thomas or the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, which is now, I think, over 125 years old. Um, you know, there were other versions of the faith out there, and slowly but surely they start to disappear in the fourth and fifth centuries. Now again, part of that is the church trying to do what it does, which is, you know, build a bureaucracy, create something coherent, um, which they've never been able to do successfully, right? This is why we have the schism between the Catholic and Orthodox, and then we have the Protestants, and now we have the Evangelicals and everything else. I mean, it's hard to hold this thing together. What, what I sensed in the early years was, was an attempt to, uh, cohere, um, uh, a religion that was very much, um, uh, in danger of disappearing. Uh, and along with that goes all these secrets and all these mysteries.
- CWChris Williamson
Talk us through your experience researching in the Vatican. Obviously, this sounds pretty heretical. Why, why did they even let you near Rome?
- BMBrian Muraresku
I don't know.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- BMBrian Muraresku
That's a, that's a good question. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- BMBrian Muraresku
I'm still trying to figure that out.
- CWChris Williamson
So what do you do? Do you email the Pope?
- BMBrian Muraresku
Um-
- CWChris Williamson
Do you send him a DM on Twitter? What happens?
- BMBrian Muraresku
Yeah. I was like, um, "You know, Frank, it's Brian."
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- BMBrian Muraresku
"Um, you got some cool stuff. I'd love to see it." Uh, the... (laughs) They're, it's, it's, it's not that... I mean, it is, it's very difficult to, to get your way into the Vatican secret archives and, and the catacombs. Um, you know, I w- I was very honest with, with folks. You know, I talked to the archivist at the secret archives and the archive of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, which holds these inquisition records, and I went underground with this Vatican archeologist to look at the frescoes in these catacombs, and I s- you know, I would tell people, "Here's my crazy idea about this psychedelic Eucharist, and, um, I think it's just as crazy as you do. Uh, and 'cause I don't know. I haven't seen the hard scientific data for it. I'm out there looking for it all over the Mediterranean. Um, I'd like to know if there's any evidence here." Um, you know, so part of it is just asking them if, if we could test different vessels and different chalices, which they're sitting on in the hundreds of thousands. You know, in their own handwriting from the 16th century or the 15th century is there, is there a mention of these magical potions. Uh, and the short answer is there is. They're, you know, they're, they were, they were hunting and targeting witches, um, at least partly because of their knowledge of these traditional healing mechanisms, um, and sometimes visionary medicines. Uh, so it's, it's all there preserved, um, in the literature.
- CWChris Williamson
What does it feel like being underneath the s- the absolute epicenter for the Christian faith, rooting through... I mean, you're in the Necropolis, which is this-
- BMBrian Muraresku
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... so, bit below the Sistine... not below the Sistine Chapel, below, um, the Vatican, right? And there's multiple-
- BMBrian Muraresku
The St. Peter's, St. Peter's. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Is it below St. Peter's Basilica? Just multiple layers-
- BMBrian Muraresku
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... below that. What's it feel like? You must have been... It must... It's proper Dan Brown shit.
- BMBrian Muraresku
It was, uh, that, that's what I said, uh, to the priest who was with me. "This is, this is Dan Brown shit." And I felt like I, I'd never get out. Like there was a, you know, a, a... there would be the clank of a gate, and that'd be the, the last time (laughs) I breathe fresh air. Uh, the... everyone... They're all cool, man. They're... Every, everyone's very cool in the Vatican. I might be one of the few people to say that. But everyone, uh, they're all super cool to me. Um, in the Ufficio Scavi, the excavation office there, um, I was looking at, you know, what, what could be one of the first mosaics, one of the first representations of Christian art directly under St. Peter's Basilica, in one of these tombs, the Tombs of the Julii, and there you see, uh, these vines just curling all around this figure seated on a horse. And I'm not the first person, uh, art historians h- have said th- there's a real mix-up here of, of Jesus and Dionysus, all these Dionysian vines, you know, uh, uh, whirling their way around th- this mosaic. Uh, it's hard to know what to make of that, and it's hard to know what was going on down there, um, because from the records we have, there was some pagan shit going on underneath the Vatican in the early days. This is where they went, like other catacombs, to commune with the dead. They went there to meet Saint Peter before there was a St. Peter's Basilica. They went there to, to camp out amongst these graves and host these parties which the professor emeritus of history at Yale University calls chill-outs. They went to have chill-outs with the dead, uh, to drink their wine and have a feast every day in some cases. So I mean, you know, Rome was a fun place to be.
- CWChris Williamson
How does the mysteries at Eleusis relate to the holy sacrament?
- BMBrian Muraresku
I mean, well, there's the big question. Th- and the... how I try to answer that in the book is by using the mysteries of Dionysus as the translator. So you have all these mysteries at Eleusis, right? And it's these pilgrims making this march, drinking this potion, having this vision. It's all administered by the state. So even though it's technically open to lots of different people, as we mentioned, um, it's a very formal event. At some point, you have the mysteries of Dionysus, and it takes... the concept of a magical potion, takes it out of the sanctuary, away from the temple. So where are the mysteries of Dionysus being celebrated? Outdoors. Open-air churches in the forests and mountains. It's people getting smashed in these drunken orgies in honor of the god of wine, right? And then here comes Jesus not too long after that. In fact, at the same time. I mean, in Galilee, ancient Israel, uh, ancient Palestine, you will find images of Dionysus, um, all around Galilee. I mean, so, you know, his cult was there at the same time that the cult of Jesus was just gathering steam. Um, and what is Jesus doing with this magic potion? He's saying, "Not only can you take it out of the temple, not only can you take it to the open-air church, but take this magic potion that makes you immortal," nothing less than that, "and take it into your dining room." So I, I think by domesticating these mysteries, I think that for some early Christians, I think that's how they would've read the early accounts of Jesus. Here's this guy taking an immortality potion, that's his blood, the same way that the wine of Dionysus was described by the way, the blood of Dionysus, and he's taking it inside the dining room and saying, "You can celebrate this at home. It's okay to do this at home." Because at the time, that was a sacrilege in Eleusis. You were not allowed to celebrate that at home. Um, we have accounts of people trying to do that, and it was this massive scandal in Athens. And so here comes Jesus with a new model to preserve, in some cases, these mysteries.
- CWChris Williamson
Well, you see the imagery of The Last Supper, and you've got... Everyone looks fairly cozy, you know? They look pretty-
- 45:00 – 55:13
Yeah. …
- BMBrian Muraresku
it takes, um, a really heroic emotional, psychological preparation to prepare for this stuff. And, you know, j- just think about what the word psychedelic means in Greek. It means to manifest the contents of the psyche, is how I translate it. (Greek) . And so when that happens, I mean, before you even begin thinking about that, why don't you try dusting off those contents for yourself? I mean, you know, you dream about them every night. Have you addressed some of those traumas from your childhood? Have you addressed some of those pitfalls in your relationships? Um, some of that, that shadow work that plays out in your everyday life? There's lots of work that you can do before psychedelics, and which is part of the reason I haven't done them. I mean, there's lots of stuff that you can do, um, including mindfulness and meditation and a- and all the rest of it. Um, you know, so once you get to that point, when, when all this stuff is being laid bare, and I don't know what would happen to someone who was grown in a lab. Um, uh, that'd be an interesting experiment. (laughs) Uh, it'd be hard to get FDA approval for that. Uh, but, uh, you know, what's, what, what people are pl- I think people are playing on memories and people are playing, you know, on the archetypal things that live inside the subconscious of all humans.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- BMBrian Muraresku
Which is really powerful stuff. There's this thing, this, th- th- these images come out. I mean, you know, a Christian will have an image of a, of an Indian deity, and you know, uh, some guy in the UK will have an image of a Mayan god, and it's really hard to explain why that's the case.
- CWChris Williamson
That's what, that's what fascinated me about it. I wonder obviously, as you say, slightly unethical and, um, perhaps unrealistic experiment to run, but it would be fascinating to see wh- 'cause that would be the ultimate, um, control. You'd be able to control exclusively for cultural inputs, for all of the existing narratives. There's certain things. You get the visual distortion that almost everybody sees in terms of geometric patterns, for instance.
- BMBrian Muraresku
Hmm. Hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
So, you perhaps always going to have that, uh, no matter what you're looking at, no matter who you are, what you've grown up, what your thought patterns are like inside of your mind. But can you imagine if people reported, these people who were grown up without these cultural inputs, cultural narratives and frameworks inside of their mind, and they reported similar manifestations, which would be, this is something universally held within us all? I don't know.
- BMBrian Muraresku
Hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
I just thought that was, I thought that was a really interesting thought experiment.
- BMBrian Muraresku
I like that. I mean, but, you know, some of the researchers do, do write about this. Bill Richardson, uh, who is one of the researchers at Hopkins, does write about this, about the encounter with the archetypes. I mean, there are, are people who haven't been trained in, or to the best of their knowledge, haven't been substantively exposed to some of these traditions that do pop up. I mean, kind of spontaneously. Like, you know, gods and goddesses from different faith traditions that just don't belong in the contents of someone's psyche on the eastern coast of the United States.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- BMBrian Muraresku
And yet in, in, in comes this stuff.
- CWChris Williamson
Did you discuss with anybody about the potential dosage or an equivalent dosage that people may have been consuming?
- BMBrian Muraresku
In the ******. That's what's really hard, man. Uh, so even though, even though we found some of the archaeobotanical, archeochemical evidence, uh, t- to this day, to the best of my knowledge, the, this Koukian potion, or some of this spiked wine, hasn't been...... recreate it to the standards of antiquity. Um, so, I mean, that- that's something I very much wanna do. Even with this find in Spain, we still wanna retest, uh, that chalice and, and, and really figure out, like, what was the formula here? What were the measurements? Uh, because by all accounts, like, an, uh, ergotized beer is not the most pleasant trip. I mean, it's kinda terrifying. I mean, ergotism traditionally leads to all kinds of really unfun things, like gangrene and convulsions and, and stuff like that. But may- what I've, what I've been thinking recently is that maybe it was a very low dose, and other folks have mentioned this to me who are more experienced than me, uh, but maybe it was a low dose that, again, just kind of, um, that rejiggered the brain somehow, that just set it j- I mean, just, just to the left of, of normal after all that fasting, maybe some sleep deprivation, the long march from, from Athens for example. A low dose, a lower dose, uh, of ergotized beer could have been the kind of thing, um, to have a really powerful vision. I don't know.
- CWChris Williamson
It's just there's so many questions, man. Has anything come out since your book was published? Has there been ... Are you continuing to research? Are you still ... Is there a sequel? Like, what, what's your current-
- BMBrian Muraresku
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, there is a sequel? Wow.
- BMBrian Muraresku
It's all, it's all happening, man. Um, as just one, one tiny example, um, National Geographic and others reported in November I think it was about this, uh, you can Google it, the Pinwheel Cave. The Pinwheel Cave in California, uh, from the Chumash tribe. Uh, I think it's only a few hundred years old, so it's, it's not going into deep antiquity. But about 400 or so years ago, uh, they found this cave with-
- CWChris Williamson
Wow.
- BMBrian Muraresku
... uh, a Datura flower, uh, painted on the ceiling of this cave. And inside crevices in the rock, they actually found the organic remains of Datura quids, which is a very hallucinogenic, uh, plant's flower. Um, it has, contains all these tropane alkaloids, the same kind of alkaloids that may have been present in these wine potions I mentioned that Dioscorides was writing about in the first century AD. Uh, so a very interesting find, and it was called the very first archochemical evidence, uh, for the coexistence of rock art and psychedelic drugs. And I mean, that happens in 2020 for no reason whatsoever, um, at the time that all this, you know, we're talking about all this stuff. So, you know, every time I open the, the computer, there, there's another story out there.
- CWChris Williamson
What's next for you?
- BMBrian Muraresku
Uh, so we're, we're still doing, uh, this documentary series and, um, pushing forward on that. I am writing, uh, a second book that is, uh, very much related to but distinct from the first one, without giving too much away. Um, lots more clues, um, lots of more ancient signals. And, you know, the big question: What does this mean for the future of medicine, religion, society, all those kinda questions in the midst of a global pandemic and economic turmoil and civil unrest and political discontent? I mean, I think it's a very interesting moment that we're living in and people are looking for meaning. And isn't it interesting to think about this continuity, right? Not just from the Greeks and the Christians, but maybe to us. And maybe we're living at this moment where some of this technology is, is being resurrected. It's a, it's a big question.
- CWChris Williamson
Well, think about what people have turned to in this time of need. Copies of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations in paperback were sold out at the beginning of 2020. Uh, you think-
- BMBrian Muraresku
Wow.
- CWChris Williamson
... why would someone go 1800 years back to a philosophy that, uh, was it Aristotle or Plato that thought the brain only existed to get rid of heat out of the body?
- BMBrian Muraresku
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
I mean, like, you know, on some stuff, they were so right, and on other stuff, so far off. If germ theory hadn't gone through. When, as, uh, Marcus Aurelius is dying from the plague, as he's caught in the, uh, the Antonine plague, that he's struggling to breathe because of the amount of incense that's burning in the room because they thought the incense would get rid of the plague, it would help to get rid of the air particles in the air. And all that they were doing was forcing Marcus Aurelius to, like, smell like someone's awful auntie's house. Like, the, the, the spiritual, the spiritual auntie who's always burning incense. It was just like forcing him to do that. So on one side, you have these people who are obviously incredibly detached from what we understand now. And yet, the more universal elements, the things that they were able to observe more accurately, human nature, meaning, flourishing, what does it mean to be virtuous, to have temperance, those things are what people in 2021 are going back to. They're relying more on the writings of Marcus Aurelius than they are on anybody for the last 1800 years. And this-
- BMBrian Muraresku
Hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... crescent, this story arc that we're coming back to, psychedelics, precisely the same. If what you say is true, if what you've discovered is correct, and it's taken us around about 2,000 years to start using therapeutically something which could have aided the last two millennia of human civilization, then we have a lot of catching up to do. And it is just fascinating the way that these things are coming in full circle.
- BMBrian Muraresku
I agree. That's beautifully put, man. I, I couldn't say it better than that. You just, you just wrote the back cover. That's perfect.
- CWChris Williamson
Fine. That's, that's ... I'll, I'll give you the rights. We can, we can discuss deals off-air. Man, I've, uh-
Episode duration: 55:14
Install uListen for AI-powered chat & search across the full episode — Get Full Transcript
Transcript of episode JQ13jVtaSX4
Get more out of YouTube videos.
High quality summaries for YouTube videos. Accurate transcripts to search & find moments. Powered by ChatGPT & Claude AI.
Add to Chrome