The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name
The Immortality Key · La llave de la inmortalidad
Investigación de Brian C. Muraresku sobre lo que llama la hipótesis de la continuidad pagana con un giro psicodélico: la propuesta de que el sacramento original de la civilización occidental fue una poción psicoactiva y de que esa poción pasó de los misterios griegos a la primera eucaristía. El libro plantea su asunto como pregunta doble: «What was the original sacrament of Western civilization? And did it somehow sneak its way into the primitive rites of Christianity?» «Muraresku — The Immortality Key (2020), ed. inglés 2020 · p. 31».
La tesis se enuncia partida en dos, y el libro se divide igual: «Like this book, the pagan continuity hypothesis with a psychedelic twist is divided into two very simple questions:» «Muraresku — The Immortality Key (2020), ed. inglés 2020 · p. 31». La primera: «1. Before the rise of Christianity, did the Ancient Greeks consume a secret psychedelic sacrament during their most famous and well-attended religious rituals?» «Muraresku — The Immortality Key (2020), ed. inglés 2020 · p. 31». La segunda: «2. Did the Ancient Greeks pass a version of their sacrament along to the earliest, Greek-speaking Christians, for whom the original Holy Communion or Eucharist was, in fact, a psychedelic Eucharist?» «Muraresku — The Immortality Key (2020), ed. inglés 2020 · p. 31».
El método declarado es el reportaje de archivo y de campo, no la búsqueda bibliográfica: «Over the past year I journeyed to Greece, Germany, Spain, France, and Italy to get to the bottom of history’s best-kept secret once and for all. If a psychedelic sacrament is essential for the birth of Western civilization and Christianity, where’s the proof?» «Muraresku — The Immortality Key (2020), ed. inglés 2020 · p. 36».
El nombre del subtítulo es una abstención deliberada sobre el objeto mismo: la tradición que el libro persigue no tiene nombre porque, dice, probablemente nunca lo tuvo. «It doesn’t have a name, and probably never had one.» «Muraresku — The Immortality Key (2020), ed. inglés 2020 · p. 37».
El volumen lleva un Foreword firmado por Graham Hancock, que presenta al autor y al libro desde su propia trayectoria: «Like Brian C. Muraresku, author of the excellent Immortality Key that it is my pleasure to introduce to you here, I was raised in a Christian household.» «Muraresku — The Immortality Key (2020), ed. inglés 2020 · p. 8».
1338 afirmaciones · 1 fuente · 1 atribución
Atribución
se consigna, jamás se afirma«Muraresku — The Immortality Key (2020) · p. 460»
Cadena de la obra
el testimonio procesado, en esmeraldaAfirmaciones
1338 entradas — la voz de la obra, con su pasaje«“I’m an atheist, I don’t believe there is a God,” she affirms. “But then I began to feel this love. Just overwhelming, all-encompassing love.”» — la primera voz del libro no es la de Muraresku sino la de Dinah Bazer, la voluntaria del ensayo de psilocibina de la Universidad de Nueva York a quien entrevista; su declaración abre la Introducción
«And the way I describe it is being bathed in God’s love,” she goes on, her voice cracking, “because I find no other way to describe it. I felt that I belonged, that I was part of everything and had the right to be here. How else do I describe it? Maybe what your mother’s love felt like when you were a baby. This feeling of love was suffusing the entire experience.”» — Bazer, en la entrevista, explica por qué recurre al vocabulario religioso pese a declararse atea: no encuentra otra manera de describir lo que sintió
«Like Dinah, a full 70 percent rated their one and only dose of psilocybin as either the most meaningful experience of their entire lives, or among the top five.» — la cifra con que Muraresku mide el peso biográfico de una sola dosis: siete de cada diez voluntarios la colocaron entre las cinco experiencias más significativas de su vida
«The outcome is characterized as “unprecedented within the field of psychiatry.”» — la fórmula con que Muraresku cita la caracterización del resultado en la literatura psiquiátrica
«The real question wasn’t whether psychedelics might work for those confronting death, but why? And the initial answers had already led the scientists down a rather unscientific path, trespassing into corridors of the mind that once interested students of religion alone.» — Muraresku desplaza la pregunta del terreno terapéutico al religioso, y sostiene que fueron los propios investigadores quienes entraron en ese terreno
«In his 2016 TED Talk, Griffiths said the drug-induced ecstasy he routinely witnesses in the laboratory is “virtually identical” to that reported by natural-born prophets and visionaries throughout human history.» — según Muraresku, Roland Griffiths declaró en 2016 que el éxtasis inducido por la droga en el laboratorio es virtualmente idéntico al de los profetas y visionarios de la historia
«If we are essentially wired for mystical experience, it raises the intriguing prospect that, under the right mind-set and environment, any curious soul can be instantly converted into a religious savant.» — Muraresku enuncia en condicional la consecuencia que le interesa, y la marca como prospecto y no como hecho
«Griffiths’s colleague, Dr. William Richards, has been testing that hypothesis since the 1960s, when he codeveloped the very scale to measure these peak states of consciousness, the Mystical Experience Questionnaire.» — Muraresku presenta a William Richards como codesarrollador del Mystical Experience Questionnaire, la escala con que se miden esos estados
«In his 2015 book, Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences, Richards maps out the essential features of the perfect psilocybin journey: transcending time and space, intuitively sensing the unity and sacredness of all things, accessing knowledge that is normally not available.» — según Muraresku, Richards describe en Sacred Knowledge los rasgos del viaje de psilocibina: trascender tiempo y espacio, percibir la unidad y la sacralidad de todo, acceder a un saber no disponible
«Oftentimes there is a merging of the everyday personality with a larger, more fundamental whole. Words fail to capture the unsinkable conviction that the experiencer has somehow glimpsed the ultimate nature of reality, an insight that seems “blatantly obvious” at the time, and is usually accompanied by intense feelings of joy, tranquility, exaltation, and awe.» — el resto del cuadro que Muraresku toma de Richards, con la fusión de la personalidad cotidiana en un todo más amplio y la convicción de haber entrevisto la naturaleza última de lo real
«“Because ‘God’ is as good as the ‘universe’ and the ‘cosmos’ and ‘nature.’ These are all things we really don’t know. I’ve always thought heaven and hell were absurd ideas. I am not interested in mysticism at all. I tend to think of it as a bunch of baloney. And I don’t think there’s any meaning to life. But it doesn’t matter to me, because my own experience is all I have. I’ve had very religious people ask me, ‘You don’t believe in God?’ And I say: ‘No, I believe in Love.’» — Bazer, interrogada por Muraresku sobre por qué dice dios y no universo o naturaleza, responde que los tres nombran lo mismo que no se sabe, y sustituye la creencia en dios por la creencia en el amor
«So she describes a process in which there was a “dissolution of the self” and a “melting away of barriers.”» — Bazer pide expresamente a Muraresku que no le atribuya la fórmula sentimental de ser uno con el universo, y ofrece en su lugar disolución del yo y desvanecimiento de las barreras
«Dinah arrived at the realization that “birth and death actually don’t have any meaning.” When forced to clarify, she adds, “It’s more of a state of always being.” “Always being?” “Always being. So being now and always. There’s no beginning or end. Every moment is an eternity of its own.”» — la formulación de Bazer sobre el tiempo, que el libro retomará como lo que llama el estado de siempre ser
«According to the findings of the randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial released in the respected Journal of Psychopharmacology in November 2016, the vast majority found clinical relief» — Muraresku resume los resultados del ensayo aleatorizado, doble ciego y con placebo publicado en el Journal of Psychopharmacology en noviembre de 2016; el tramo se corta en el cambio de plana y sigue con la cifra del 87 por ciento de los veintinueve voluntarios de la Universidad de Nueva York
«The underlying experience itself, whether activated by psilocybin or some spontaneous internal flood of neurotransmitters» — según Muraresku, la consecuencia que Griffiths saca es que la experiencia de fondo, venga de la psilocibina o de una crecida espontánea de neurotransmisores, es biológicamente normal; el tramo se corta en el cambio de plana y la continuación está en la p. 21
«Instead of “a bad death marked by needless suffering,” he sees psilocybin as a “meaning-making medicine” with enormous potential.» — según Muraresku, el psicólogo clínico Anthony Bossis, director de la investigación en cuidados paliativos del ensayo de la Universidad de Nueva York, llama a la psilocibina medicina que hace sentido; el verbatim se corta antes de la llamada de nota pegada
«Participants in our study often described this experience with the newfound knowledge that consciousness survives bodily death—that we are not only our bodies—which is a profound gift to a person with a body that is failing, and will soon stop functioning due to advanced disease. It has been described as a transcendence of past, present, future. Timelessness in the moment. I’ve heard participants speak about feeling “outside of time.” The insight that we are not bound by the material world is a powerful one. It is psychologically, existentially and spiritually liberating.» — Muraresku transcribe un correo de Bossis en el que este reporta lo que dicen sus participantes: que la consciencia sobrevive a la muerte del cuerpo y que no se está atado al mundo material; la voz es la de Bossis reportando a sus voluntarios
«When I visited William Richards at his oasis of a home outside Baltimore in the early summer of 2018, he distilled his decades’ worth of research like a Zen master: “Once you’ve plunged into the ocean, does it really matter whether or not you believe in water?”» — la réplica con que Richards, según Muraresku, responde a la cuestión de la creencia: lo que importa es la inmersión, no la fe en el medio
«Over a billion people across the planet are now religiously unaffiliated, including one in five Americans and Europeans, and almost half the British public.» — el dato demográfico con que Muraresku sitúa el público de su libro: mil millones de personas sin afiliación religiosa
«The God now rejected by America’s largest generation, 73 million people, is not the God of Dinah Bazer.» — Muraresku separa el dios institucional que la generación más numerosa de su país rechaza del dios experimentado por Bazer
«If there’s a spiritual crisis in the West, it’s because the defenders of the three great monotheistic faiths have forgotten their roots.» — el diagnóstico con que Muraresku abre su capítulo introductorio: la crisis espiritual de Occidente viene de que los defensores de los tres monoteísmos olvidaron su raíz experiencial
«When Yahweh appeared to Moses in a burning bush, it was a terrifying ordeal. The emancipator of the Israelites feared for his life and shielded his eyes from the God who would later warn, in Exodus 33:20, “You cannot see My face; for no man can see Me and live!”» — Muraresku recorre los relatos fundacionales como experiencias sobrecogedoras y no como doctrina, empezando por la zarza de Moisés y el pasaje de Éxodo 33:20 en la traducción que él usa
«Christianity’s greatest missionary, Saint Paul, was struck blind for three days on the road to Damascus by a flash of heaven-sent light, followed by an auditory hallucination of Jesus. Thereafter Paul would claim continued supernatural communication with the Son of God.» — el segundo caso de la serie: Pablo cegado en el camino de Damasco, que Muraresku describe como luz y alucinación auditiva
«The entire Qur’an was dictated to Muhammad word for word by the Angel Gabriel, who revealed Islam’s scripture in a series of trances. One of Muhammad’s earliest biographers, Ibn Ishaq, records the belief of family friends that the young prophet suffered a stroke. Modern scholars say he was prone to “ecstatic seizures.”» — el tercero: la dictación del Corán por el ángel Gabriel en trance, con la mención de Ibn Ishaq y de los estudiosos modernos que hablan de crisis extáticas; la atribución de esas lecturas es de Muraresku
«According to Brother David, “time has an influence on the system: the pipes tend to get rusty and start to leak, or they get clogged up. The flow from the source slows down to a trickle.”» — la imagen de las cañerías con que Steindl-Rast, citado por Muraresku, describe el desgaste institucional de la experiencia
«God does not reside in a holy book.» — la frase con que Muraresku enuncia lo que atribuye a la unanimidad de los místicos, aislada como párrafo propio en el libro
«For the mystics, the only way to know God is to experience God. And the only way to experience God is to unlearn everything the ego has been trying so vigorously to manufacture since our infancy. In order to stop wetting the bed and become productive members of society, that “deep, inner-peace circuitry of the right hemisphere” has been sidelined along the way. To bring it back online, say the mystics, the simplest and most effective method is to die before you die.» — la tesis operativa del libro, atribuida a los místicos: conocer a dios es experimentarlo, y el método es morir antes de morir
«It’s why the Sufis, the mystics of Islam, have been called “the impatient ones.” Rather than wait until their actual death, the spiritual experts of the world’s second largest religion rank one task more urgent than any other: recovering an “awareness of one’s full identity” in this lifetime.» — Muraresku trae el sufismo como caso de la misma urgencia, y traduce su tarea como recuperar en vida la consciencia de la identidad plena
«The twelfth-century Persian pharmacist Attar once said, “So long as we do not die to ourselves, and so long as we are identified with someone or something, we shall never be free.”» — la cita de Attar que Muraresku usa como formulación sufí de la muerte del yo; la traducción y el recorte son suyos
«“If you could get rid of yourself just once, the secret of secrets would open to you. The face of the unknown, hidden beyond the universe, would appear on the mirror of your perception.”» — la cita de Rumi con que Muraresku cierra el ejemplo sufí
«It’s why a fundamental concept for the Kabbalists, the mystics of Judaism, is Ayin (Nothingness). “When a man attains to the stage of self-annihilation he can thus be said to have reached the world of the divine Nothingness. Emptied of selfhood his soul has now become attached to the true reality.”» — según Muraresku, el Ayin o Nada de los cabalistas nombra el mismo estado de aniquilación del yo; la cita va sin nombrar a su autor en el cuerpo
«And it’s why the German theologian Meister Eckhart, the mystic par excellence of medieval Christianity, put so much emphasis on the “self-effacement” that is the one condition precedent to finding God: “If you could naught yourself for an instant, indeed I say less than an instant, you would possess all.”» — Muraresku trae a Meister Eckhart como caso cristiano medieval, con la fórmula del anonadarse por un instante
«Eckhart describes the nullification of the ego as a process of unlearning, in which “the soul must lose her being and her life” in something like Bolte Taylor’s “sea of silent euphoria.” “We cannot serve this Word better than in stillness and silence: there we can hear it and there too we will understand it aright —in the unknowing. To him who knows nothing, it appears and reveals itself.”» — la segunda cita de Eckhart que Muraresku encadena, sobre el desaprender y sobre el silencio como lugar de la comprensión
«To this day all visitors to Saint Paul’s Monastery on Mt. Athos in Greece, one of the most important sites of Orthodox spirituality, will come face-to-face with a beautiful Greek saying mounted on the wall of the reception area: “If you die before you die, you won’t die when you die.”» — el dicho griego del monasterio de San Pablo en el Monte Athos que Muraresku toma como emblema de su tesis
«Notice the complete absence of the word “God” in the preceding quotations. Something tells me that if the mystics were in charge of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the world would be a very different place.» — Muraresku hace notar que en esas citas no aparece la palabra dios, y enuncia en condicional lo que pasaría si los místicos gobernaran los tres monoteísmos
«The written word that tries to capture the original encounter inevitably replaces the personal» — Muraresku formula con Steindl-Rast la secuencia que le interesa: la palabra escrita reemplaza la experiencia personal del asombro; el tramo se corta en el cambio de plana y sigue en la p. 27 con la doctrina viva fosilizada en dogmatismo
«Rabbi Lawrence Kushner has written extensively about the process that he calls a “rehearsal” for our moment of transition: “Just as the death of each creature is in turn a rehearsal for the death of a species and a galaxy and a cosmos. The great rhythm of going out and returning.» — Muraresku cita al rabino Lawrence Kushner, que llama ensayo a ese morir y lo encadena con la muerte de las especies, de una galaxia y de un cosmos
«That’s what British philosopher Aldous Huxley predicted back in the 1950s, in the wake of his sublime experience with mescaline, peyote’s visionary compound. In The Doors of Perception from 1954, Huxley recorded his own taste of “egolessness” resulting in the epiphany that “All is in all—that All is actually each.”» — según Muraresku, Aldous Huxley anticipó esta reforma en 1954 desde su experiencia con mescalina, y la fórmula del todo en todo es la que Huxley registra en The Doors of Perception
«Decades ahead of the unchurching of America and most of Europe, Huxley spotted an antidote to the “ninety minutes of boredom” that was already plaguing the “average Sunday churchgoer.”» — Muraresku toma de Huxley la fórmula de los noventa minutos de aburrimiento del feligrés dominical, que le servirá de contraste con el rito psicodélico
«“Nothing could be more alarming to the ecclesiastical hierarchy,” the philosopher Alan Watts once observed, “than a popular outbreak of mysticism, for this might well amount to setting up a democracy in the kingdom of heaven.”» — la observación de Alan Watts que Muraresku usa para explicar la persecución de los místicos: un brote popular de mística equivaldría a instaurar la democracia en el reino de los cielos
«In the United States these compounds are still classified as Schedule I drugs under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, which means they have “no currently accepted medical use” and demonstrate a “high potential for abuse.”» — el estatuto legal que Muraresku consigna: sustancias de la lista I bajo la Controlled Substances Act de 1970, sin uso médico aceptado y con alto potencial de abuso
«In May 2019 Denver became the very first city in the country to decriminalize the use and possession of magic mushrooms.» — el dato con que Muraresku data el inicio de la despenalización local en su país
«Is this an artificial, get-God-quick scheme? Or, as Huxley predicted, are we witnessing the birth of a genuine Reformation, with the practical mystics of the twenty-first century leading the charge? For this movement to have any substance or merit, Huxley’s vision must be based on rock-solid historical precedent.» — Muraresku plantea como pregunta abierta si esto es un atajo artificial o una reforma, y fija la condición que su libro se impone: que la visión de Huxley tenga precedente histórico firme
«was described as the closest a “finite mind can ever come to ‘perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe.’”» — el grado con que Muraresku cita a Huxley: la experiencia como lo más cerca que una mente finita puede llegar de percibirlo todo en todas partes; el tramo arranca después de la palabra que el troceo parte a fin de renglón
«My own belief is that, though they may start by being something of an embarrassment, these new mind changers will tend in the long run to deepen the spiritual life of the communities in which they are available. That famous “revival of religion,” about which so many people have been talking for so long, will not come about as the» — Muraresku transcribe la previsión que Huxley publicó en el Saturday Evening Post en 1958: las nuevas sustancias que cambian la mente terminarán por ahondar la vida espiritual de las comunidades donde estén disponibles; el tramo se corta en el cambio de plana y sigue en la p. 29
«result of evangelistic mass meetings or the television appearances of photogenic clergymen. It will come about as the result of biochemical discoveries that will make it possible for large numbers of men and women to achieve a radical self-transcendence and a deeper understanding of the nature of things. And this revival of religion will be at the same time a revolution. From being an activity mainly concerned with symbols, religion will be transformed into an activity concerned mainly with experience and intuition—an everyday mysticism underlying and giving significance to everyday rationality, everyday tasks and duties, everyday human relationships.» — la continuación de la previsión de Huxley en la p. 29: el renacer religioso vendrá de descubrimientos bioquímicos y convertirá la religión de actividad de símbolos en actividad de experiencia e intuición
«Sixty years later, however, the religious establishment still generally shares the opinion of the federal government that mescaline, psilocybin, and their psychedelic sisters should remain entirely off-limits.» — Muraresku registra que sesenta años después la jerarquía religiosa sigue coincidiendo con el gobierno federal en mantener prohibidas esas sustancias
«Luther based his German translation of the Bible on the Greek edition published in 1516 by the Dutch humanist Erasmus, who had meticulously compared the original New Testament with as many Latin manuscripts as he could find, in order to root out any discrepancies with the Greek source material.» — Muraresku traza el precedente que le importa: la Reforma del siglo XVI se apoyó en la vuelta a las fuentes griegas, con la edición de Erasmo de 1516 como base de la traducción alemana de Lutero
«It has been said that “Erasmus laid the egg that Luther hatched”—the rediscovery of Christianity’s true origins, and its real meaning, being the primary motivation of the entire Reformation.» — la fórmula con que Muraresku resume ese precedente y su motivación: el redescubrimiento de los orígenes verdaderos del cristianismo
«He was looking beyond the book, back to the original practices of the paleo-Christians that surrounded the New Testament.» — la diferencia que Muraresku marca entre la reforma de Lutero y la que Huxley imaginaba: esta última no mira al Nuevo Testamento sino a las prácticas paleocristianas que lo rodeaban
«In The Doors of Perception, he entered sacrilegious waters: “In the early centuries of Christianity many pagan rites and festivals were baptized, so to say, and made to serve the purposes of the Church.”» — la cita de Huxley sobre el bautizo de ritos y fiestas paganas en los primeros siglos cristianos, que Muraresku toma como antecedente de su propia hipótesis
«Without getting into the specifics of a contentious debate, Huxley characterized the pre-Christian ceremonies as “soul-satisfying expressions of fundamental urges” that were incorporated “into the fabric of the new religion.”» — el grado con que Muraresku cita a Huxley: este caracterizó las ceremonias precristianas sin entrar en el detalle del debate
«Strangely he didn’t further pursue the so-called pagan continuity hypothesis: the theory that Christianity didn’t magically appear from one day to the next, but inherited pagan elements from the Greco-Roman cults of the ancient Mediterranean world.» — la definición que Muraresku da de la hipótesis de la continuidad pagana: el cristianismo heredó elementos paganos de los cultos grecorromanos del Mediterráneo antiguo
«It wasn’t a new theory by any means. The debate between secular and ecclesiastical scholars over the Church’s origins stretches back to the nineteenth century.» — Muraresku sitúa la antigüedad del debate entre estudiosos laicos y eclesiásticos sobre los orígenes de la Iglesia
«In 1950 another Martin Luther—the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.—would weigh in with an essay titled “The Influence of the Mystery Religions on Christianity.”» — Muraresku consigna que Martin Luther King Jr. escribió en 1950 un ensayo sobre la influencia de las religiones mistéricas en el cristianismo
«In 1954 the only thing Huxley added was a psychedelic twist.» — la frase con que Muraresku cifra la aportación de Huxley a una hipótesis que ya existía, y de la que sale el giro que da nombre a su propia tesis
«By calling the foundations of Christianity into question, Huxley was prophesying not only the death of organized religion, but a return to its mystical roots. And a “revival” of something that, if the pieces could just be fit together, would not only rewrite the origins of Christianity but Western civilization at large.» — el alcance que Muraresku atribuye a la operación de Huxley, formulado en condicional: si las piezas encajaran, reescribiría no solo los orígenes del cristianismo sino los de la civilización occidental
«Only they had the ad fontes training to decipher what Huston Smith, author of The World’s Religions and perhaps the preeminent religious scholar of the twentieth century, would later refer to as the “best-kept secret”» — Muraresku adjudica la tarea a los clasicistas y trae la fórmula de Huston Smith sobre el secreto mejor guardado; el tramo se corta en el cambio de plana
«The Classics are dying, and dying fast. Or maybe they’re already dead.» — la afirmación con que Muraresku abre el capítulo sobre el estado de los estudios clásicos, y que sostiene su argumento sobre por qué el asunto no llega al público
«Such was the judgment rendered in 2001 in Who Killed Homer?: The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom. In their bitter indictment of academia, Victor David Hanson and John Robert Heath eulogize the imminent death of our Greek intellectual heritage.» — según Muraresku, Victor David Hanson y John Robert Heath dan por inminente en 2001 la muerte de la herencia intelectual griega
«They lay the blame squarely on spineless administrators and egg-headed, inbred Classics departments.» — la adjudicación de culpas que Muraresku atribuye a Hanson y Heath: administradores sin agallas y departamentos endogámicos
«John Adams’s opinion that Athens and Rome had “done more honor to our species (humanity) than all the rest” was far from unique in the late eighteenth century.» — el dato con que Muraresku mide el llamado culto a la antigüedad de la primera generación estadounidense, con la opinión de John Adams
«Historian Carl Richard explains that the “grammar” in grammar school actually refers to Greek and Latin grammar.» — según Muraresku, el historiador Carl Richard sostiene que la gramática de la grammar school nombraba la griega y la latina
«“Father of American Scholarship and Education” and the guy behind the famous dictionary, wanted to get down to brass tacks: “What advantage does a merchant, a mechanic, a farmer, derive from an acquaintance with the Greek and Roman tongues?”» — Muraresku cita la objeción utilitaria de Noah Webster contra el griego y el latín, como primer eslabón de su relato del declive
«After World War II many universities dropped Greek from the core curriculum altogether, making it possible to graduate with zero knowledge of Western civilization’s mother tongue.» — el dato con que Muraresku fecha la salida del griego del plan de estudios básico estadounidense
«As long as literacy, polished written and oral expression, familiarity with politics and social systems, and a common set of unchanging ethical presumptions were the chief goals of a liberal arts education, as long as education itself demanded some memorization and structure from the student, Classics would not vanish—even if enrollments in the Classical languages took their customarily cyclical decline.… The study of Classics had always been at the center of Western education, had always risen to the challenge, answering the charges of irrelevancy, impracticality and paganinspired iniquity. The university itself, remember, was a Greek idea, its entire structure, nomenclature and operation Graeco-Roman to the core.… Twentieth-century minds as diverse as T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Picasso and Winston Churchill proved the value of Classics for knowledge, expression and eloquence, for radicals and reactionaries alike.» — Muraresku transcribe largo a Hanson y Heath sobre por qué los estudios clásicos habían resistido hasta entonces, incluida su observación de que la universidad misma es una idea griega; tramo largo releído entero en el crudo, donde el troceo parte *pagan-inspired* a fin de renglón y span lo devuelve fundido
«Then, according to the Stanford duo, came the “self-righteous” 1960s. The same countercultural movement that gave rise to antiwar protests, classic rock, and psychedelics, also put enormous pressure on an antiquated model of education—one well beyond its expiration date.» — según Muraresku, Hanson y Heath sitúan en los años sesenta la presión que rompió el modelo; el mismo movimiento contracultural que trajo los psicodélicos
«I was one of the lucky ones, I guess. I got to see the rare species, up close and personal, before it took a final, well-deserved bow. Founded in 1851, St. Joe’s Prep was no place for a wiseass from the blue-collar enclave of Northeast Philadelphia whose only familiarity with such institutions came from watching Dead Poets Society and School Ties. I sometimes cursed the chance scholarship that ushered me into the fanciest all-boys high school in the city. But there were two things in the Jesuit playbook that quickly turned me into a bona fide member of the inner circle: Latin and Greek. It was love at first sight.» — Muraresku entra en primera persona y da su propia formación: la beca al colegio jesuita de San José en Filadelfia, el latín y el griego
«Four years later, absolutely convinced that I was destined to be a Classics professor or a priest, I was recruited by Brown University to continue my useless study of the ancient world. As the first person in my family to attend college, I decided to blow the opportunity on dead languages, picking up Sanskrit along the way.» — Muraresku declara su recorrido académico en Brown y el sánscrito añadido, que es la credencial con la que se presenta ante sus entrevistados
«Chock full of useless knowledge and no marketable skills, I did the only other thing I was qualified for at that point. I joined the legal profession.» — Muraresku consigna su paso al derecho, que enmarca el libro como trabajo de aficionado con formación clásica y no de académico en activo
«In the summer of 2007 I randomly plucked an issue from the growing pile of unread magazines in the corner of my office. The title of the article that would forever change my life smacked me in the face: “The God Pill.”» — Muraresku fecha en el verano de 2007 y en un artículo de The Economist el origen de su investigación
«An ethnomycologist by the name of R. Gordon Wasson was mentioned in the first line of the article—the inspiration behind the opening salvo of the psychedelic renaissance that would culminate in the fifty peer-reviewed papers from the Johns Hopkins Psychedelic Research Unit.» — Muraresku nombra al etnomicólogo R. Gordon Wasson como el eslabón entre aquel artículo y el renacimiento psicodélico de laboratorio
«I instantly remembered a book titled The Road to Eleusis, first published in 1978. I had read it at Brown, in addition to every other book in the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library that had anything to do with Ancient Greek religion. Together with coauthors Albert Hofmann and Carl Ruck, Wasson claimed a potent psychedelic was behind the life-changing vision universally witnessed over the millennia by initiates in Eleusis, the Greek spiritual capital, about thirteen miles northwest of Athens.» — Muraresku resume la tesis de The Road to Eleusis de 1978: según él, Wasson, Albert Hofmann y Carl Ruck sostienen que un psicodélico potente está detrás de la visión de los iniciados de Eleusis
«From Boston University, Ruck would later suggest that Christianity itself was similarly founded on drugs.» — el grado con que Muraresku reporta la extensión que Ruck hizo de la tesis al cristianismo: la presenta como sugerencia, no como resultado
«At the time, however, there was very little scholarship specifically dedicated to drug use in Ancient Greece or early Christianity.» — la deuda de bibliografía que Muraresku declara haber encontrado al empezar, y que explica por qué dejó el asunto años
«I then spent the next twelve years researching this book, as a thirty-year-old hypothesis became a forty-year-old hypothesis to which no one paid any attention.» — Muraresku cifra en doce años su investigación y en cuarenta la edad de la hipótesis desatendida
«To this day I have never personally experimented with psychedelics, in the conscious effort to let the objective evidence guide the investigation that has consumed my adult life.» — la abstención que Muraresku declara como método: nunca ha tomado psicodélicos, y lo dice para sostener que la evidencia guía la investigación
«While the Hopkins and NYU data was compelling from a circumstantial perspective, hard evidence linking the Ancient Greeks or paleo-Christians to a psychedelic sacrament was pretty elusive.» — el límite que Muraresku se reconoce: los datos de laboratorio son circunstanciales y la evidencia dura sobre griegos y paleocristianos era esquiva
«as additional data started coming in from other scientific disciplines like archaeobotany and archaeochemistry, which have now proven the existence of hallucinogenic beer and wine in the ancient Mediterranean. And its possible consumption for ritual purposes.» — Muraresku sostiene que la arqueobotánica y la arqueoquímica han probado la existencia de cerveza y vino alucinógenos en el Mediterráneo antiguo, y acota como posible el consumo ritual
«The problem is, this material is pretty dense. Take it from a onetime aspiring classicist: Google won’t help.» — la razón que Muraresku da para haber hecho trabajo de campo y de archivo en vez de bibliografía en línea
«The Greeks, unfamiliar to the general public at large, are also now» — la sentencia de Hanson y Heath que Muraresku cita para fechar el final: los griegos ya no solo son ajenos al público sino que están muertos dentro de la propia universidad; el tramo se corta en el cambio de plana y sigue en la p. 34
«Though we are liable to forget, Western civilization was not founded as a Christian enterprise. The Ancient Greece that invented democracy, and birthed all the arts and sciences we now take for granted, never heard of Jesus.» — la premisa con que Muraresku abre la Parte Uno: la civilización occidental no se fundó como empresa cristiana
«Before Jerusalem, before Rome, before Mecca, there was Eleusis. If Athens of the fifth and fourth centuries BC was the true source of Western life in the twenty-first century, then Eleusis was our first, undisputed spiritual capital.» — Muraresku coloca a Eleusis como primera capital espiritual de Occidente, por delante de Jerusalén, Roma y La Meca
«Its demise at the hands of the newly Christianized Roman Empire in the fourth century AD marked the beginning of an identity crisis that persists to this day.» — la tesis del capítulo: la crisis de identidad occidental arranca con el cierre de Eleusis por el Imperio romano ya cristianizado en el siglo IV
«Are we Greek or are we Christian?» — la pregunta con que Muraresku formula esa crisis, y que el libro repite como estribillo
«Why did the pilgrims flock to its temple for two thousand years, in search of life beyond the grave? Why was the age-old ritual performed under cover of darkness? Why was the magic potion hidden away? And why did the Christians shut it all down?» — las cuatro preguntas que Muraresku declara sin respuesta desde que empezaron las excavaciones de Eleusis en 1882
«There has to be more to the Mysteries of Eleusis, the longest running and most prominent spiritual tradition in Ancient Greece.» — Muraresku sostiene que no puede faltar algo en los misterios de Eleusis, y los califica de tradición espiritual más larga y prominente de la Grecia antigua
«Aristotle once said the initiates came to Eleusis not to learn something, but to experience something.» — el dicho de Aristóteles que Muraresku toma como llave de todo su argumento: a Eleusis no se iba a aprender algo sino a experimentar algo
«If you come to Eleusis, you will never die.» — la promesa que Muraresku atribuye al santuario, aislada como párrafo propio
«The Mysteries were said to hold “the entire human race together.”» — una de las fórmulas antiguas que Muraresku recoge sobre la función de los misterios
«It was a foolproof formula that ran uninterrupted from about 1500 BC until AD 392, when the annual festivities were abruptly outlawed by the Roman Emperor Theodosius, a die-hard Christian.» — las fechas con que Muraresku enmarca la duración del culto y su prohibición por Teodosio en el año 392
«The word “mystery” comes from the Greek muo (μύω), which literally means “to shut one’s eyes.”» — la etimología que Muraresku da del término misterio, con el griego en su alfabeto tal como lo imprime el libro
«In its heyday the temple attracted the best and brightest Athens had to offer, including Plato. To keep his experience classified, the godfather of Western philosophy used vague, cryptic language to describe the “blessed sight and vision” he witnessed “in a state of perfection”—the climax of his initiation into “the holiest of Mysteries.”» — según Muraresku, Platón describió su iniciación con lenguaje cifrado para no romper el secreto
«Following their sip of an unusual elixir called the kukeon (κυκεών), and a night of spectacles in the temple, each pilgrim earned the honorary title epoptes (ἐπόπτης), which means something like “the one who has seen it all.”» — Muraresku nombra la poción kukeon y el título de epoptes, con las dos palabras griegas tal como el libro las imprime
«Beyond any doubt, they claimed, death was not the end of our human journey. We do, in fact, survive the physical body. And underneath this mortal clothing, we are all immortals in disguise—gods and goddesses destined to the stars for eternity.» — lo que Muraresku atribuye a los iniciados como contenido de su certeza; la glosa conserva el grado del libro, que lo pone en boca de ellos
«At the time, most people believed the soul went down to the bleak and nebulous regions of Hades. Whether it would live there forever or eventually fade away was not entirely clear, and it scarcely mattered. Death was nothing to look forward to.» — el contraste que Muraresku traza: para la creencia griega ordinaria el alma bajaba al Hades y la muerte no era nada deseable
«When Odysseus visits the land of the dead, his fallen comrade Achilles famously grumbles, “I would rather be a paid servant in a poor man’s house, and be above ground, than king of kings among the dead.”» — la queja de Aquiles en la Odisea que Muraresku usa como emblema de esa creencia ordinaria; la traducción es la que él da
«One inscription found on the site says, “death is for mortals no longer an evil but a blessing.”» — la inscripción del propio yacimiento que Muraresku opone a esa creencia
«Pindar, perhaps the greatest lyric poet of Ancient Greece and a fellow initiate, wrote in the fifth century BC, “Blessed is he who has seen these things before he goes beneath the hollow earth; for he understands the end of mortal life, and the beginning [of a new life] given of God.”» — el testimonio de Píndaro, iniciado él mismo, en la traducción que Muraresku emplea
«For Sophocles, one of the most renowned playwrights of the time, the world could be divided into those who had set foot in Eleusis, and those who had not. Just like Plato and Pindar, he stresses the visual nature of the experience: “Thrice blessed are those among men who, after beholding these rites, go down to Hades. Only for them is there life [after death]; all the rest will suffer an evil lot.”» — el testimonio de Sófocles, que Muraresku subraya por insistir en lo visual de la experiencia
«Eleusis was an enduring tradition, said to provide concrete answers to timeless doubts, and optimism in the face of oblivion. It’s unavoidable: there was real religion before Christianity, which contradicts the running assumption that Greek spirituality was rather uninformed and idiotic.» — Muraresku objeta el supuesto corriente de que la espiritualidad griega fuese ingenua, y afirma que hubo religión real antes del cristianismo
«Like some cultural Big Bang, all the greatest hits suddenly burst on the scene some twenty-five hundred years ago. Where there was chaos, the Ancient Greeks gave us meaning through history, civics, and ethics. Where there was superstition, they created the first scientific disciplines, like physics, biology, and mathematics.» — el inventario con que Muraresku mide la deuda occidental con Grecia, y que le sirve para preguntar cómo esa inteligencia podría haberse equivocado en lo religioso
«Are we to believe the wisdom assembled on those steps got so much right, only to come up short on the most important questions of all? Why are we here? What happens when we die? What’s the point of it all?» — la pregunta retórica con que Muraresku sostiene que los griegos no pudieron quedarse cortos justo en las preguntas últimas
«By and large, animal slaughter, endless libations, and formulaic prayers were the kinds of things that seemed to please the twelve gods on Mount Olympus and keep disaster at bay. And for many Ancient Greeks, that was religion. But it didn’t answer the big questions.» — Muraresku separa la religión cívica griega, de sacrificio y libación, de la mistérica, y sostiene que la primera no respondía a las preguntas grandes
«At the core of the mystery religions was “an immediate or mystical encounter with the divine,” involving “an approach to death and a return to life.”» — la definición de religión mistérica que Muraresku adopta: encuentro inmediato o místico con lo divino, con aproximación a la muerte y retorno a la vida
«Those inquisitive, cynical Greeks were after bona fide evidence: proof of the hereafter. They would never blindly settle for empty promises of a future life among the heavens. They had to peek behind the curtain to see for themselves whether there was any truth to the matter.» — Muraresku atribuye a los griegos una exigencia de prueba empírica del más allá, que es el rasgo con que los acerca a su propio lector
«In the second century AD, the emperor Marcus Aurelius studied in Athens and was later initiated in Eleusis.» — Muraresku consigna la iniciación de Marco Aurelio en Eleusis
«He is reportedly the only lay person ever allowed inside the anaktoron (ἀνάκτορον), the holy of holies housed within the main temple, or telesterion (τελεστήριον).» — el grado con que Muraresku reporta el privilegio de Marco Aurelio, marcado como cosa que se dice; los términos griegos van tal como el libro los imprime
«The Philosopher, as he was called, oversaw an extensive construction project to restore the site after it was nearly destroyed by the barbarian Kostovoks in AD 170.» — Muraresku atribuye a Marco Aurelio la reconstrucción del santuario tras el incendio de los costobocos en el año 170
«Roughly three thousand people would have crowded onto the steps lining its interior to witness the secrets they had prepared up to a year and a half to observe.» — la cifra de asistentes y el tiempo de preparación que Muraresku da para el telesterion
«Only on the second visit to Eleusis did a prospective initiate or mustes (μύστης) actually enter the sanctuary to become a full epoptes.» — la distinción entre mystes y epoptes según el número de visitas, con las palabras griegas del libro
«An imposing, larger-than-life bust of Marcus Aurelius has survived all this time, with the defaced image of a serpent-headed Gorgon emblazoned on the Philosopher’s chest. The decapitated monster was a common way of warding off evil in those days.» — Muraresku describe el busto de Marco Aurelio con la gorgona desfigurada en el pecho y da la función apotropaica de la cabeza cortada
«forbidden from revealing what they saw on the inside.» — la prohibición bajo pena de muerte de revelar lo visto dentro, que Muraresku da como causa de la escasez del testimonio antiguo; el verbatim arranca en el cambio de plana y se corta antes de la llamada de nota pegada
«Whatever happened in Eleusis, stayed in Eleusis. Frustrating as it is for modern historians, that policy served the Mysteries well. The wall of silence only fed the mystique and guaranteed fans in high places.» — la fórmula con que Muraresku resume el secreto, y el efecto que le atribuye: el muro de silencio alimentó el prestigio
«Cicero, the great orator and statesman of the first century BC, recorded his take for posterity: For it appears to me that among the many exceptional and divine» — Muraresku introduce el testimonio de Cicerón sobre los misterios; el tramo se corta donde el troceo reemite la marca de plana y la cita sigue en el mismo folio
«things your Athens has produced and contributed to human life, nothing is better than those Mysteries. For by means of them we have been transformed from a rough and savage way of life to the state of humanity, and have been civilized. Just as they are called initiations, so in actual fact we have learned from them the fundamentals of life, and have grasped the basis not only for living with joy, but also for dying with a better hope.» — la continuación del testimonio de Cicerón: nada mejor que esos misterios, que según él sacaron a los hombres de una vida salvaje y les dieron el fundamento para vivir con alegría y morir con mejor esperanza
«The Gorgon would eventually be smashed in, replaced by a giant cross, carved with pleasure directly into Marcus Aurelius’s heart. The soldiers of Christ had a message of their own: this is godless land, polluted by demons.» — el emblema con que Muraresku cifra el cierre: la gorgona del busto sustituida por una cruz tallada en el pecho del emperador
«Catherine Nixey’s The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World sets the stage for our investigation:» — Muraresku declara qué obra moderna le sirve de marco para el capítulo de la destrucción: The Darkening Age de Catherine Nixey
«In a spasm of destruction never seen before—and one that appalled many non-Christians watching it—during the fourth and fifth centuries [AD], the Christian Church demolished, vandalized and melted down a simply staggering quantity of art. Classical statues were knocked from their plinths, defaced, defiled and torn limb from limb. Temples were razed to their foundations and» — Muraresku transcribe a Nixey sobre la destrucción de arte clásico en los siglos IV y V; el tramo se corta en el cambio de plana y sigue en la p. 46
«mutilated.… The violent assaults of this period were not the preserve of cranks and eccentrics. Attacks against the monuments of the “mad,” “damnable” and “insane” pagans were encouraged and led by men at the very heart of the Catholic Church. The great St. Augustine himself declared to a congregation in Carthage “that all superstition of pagans and heathens should be annihilated is what God wants, God commands, God proclaims!”» — la continuación de Nixey en la p. 46: los ataques no fueron de excéntricos sino alentados por hombres del corazón de la Iglesia, con la declaración de Agustín en Cartago
«When the once hallowed walls of Eleusis were trampled in AD 395, the Visigoths may have placed the dynamite, but the Church lit the fuse.» — la adjudicación con que Muraresku reparte la responsabilidad del saqueo de Eleusis entre visigodos e Iglesia
«Following Constantine’s blessing earlier in the century, Emperor Theodosius had already made Christianity the official state religion of the Roman Empire in AD 380. Twelve years later he proclaimed the Mysteries illegal, drawing a line in the sand.» — las dos fechas que Muraresku fija: el cristianismo como religión de Estado en el 380 y la ilegalización de los misterios doce años después
«For a secret religion like Eleusis that refused to keep written records, the extinction was swift and thorough.» — la razón que Muraresku da para la desaparición completa del culto: una religión secreta sin registro escrito no deja rastro
«Before the end of the fourth century AD, total victory was declared by the early Church Father Saint John Chrysostom: “The tradition of the forefathers has been destroyed, the deep rooted custom has been torn out, the tyranny of joy [and] the accursed festivals … have been obliterated just like smoke.”» — la declaración de victoria de Juan Crisóstomo que Muraresku cita como cierre del episodio
«From the late fourth century AD until about two hundred years ago, the history of Christianity and the history of the West are essentially one and the same:» — la tesis histórica de fondo del capítulo: desde el siglo IV la historia del cristianismo y la de Occidente son la misma
«It’s this legacy we see celebrated in Leonardo’s Last Supper. The moment Jesus is said to have offered himself to his closest friends in the form of bread and wine. A foreshadowing of the crucifixion he would endure the following day, according to tradition, for the salvation of all mankind. This intimate dinner became Christianity’s defining sacrament, the Eucharist.» — Muraresku usa la Última Cena de Leonardo como emblema de esa herencia y nombra la eucaristía como sacramento definitorio
«If only one image could tell the story of our humble origins, would it be The School of Athens or The Last Supper? Two of the most recognized paintings of all time. Two very different pictures of our past.» — la oposición de imágenes con que Muraresku plantea la crisis de identidad: la Escuela de Atenas contra la Última Cena
«It may all seem insignificant, but at the root of this Greek vs. Christian debate are some really profound questions. Are we a people of reason or faith? Is our society founded on science or religion?» — Muraresku traduce esa oposición a las preguntas que le interesan: razón o fe, ciencia o religión
«People of reason may have to concede that modern science has its limits. Not everything of value can be weighed and measured.» — la concesión que Muraresku pide al lado racionalista, y que es la acotación de su propio proyecto
«The whole point of this investigation is to test a crackpot theory that has been widely ridiculed and even censored by the academic establishment.» — Muraresku declara el estatuto de su asunto: una teoría de chiflados ridiculizada y censurada por la academia
«When one ill-fated classicist by the name of Carl Ruck at Boston University took charge of the pagan continuity hypothesis with a psychedelic twist in the late 1970s, he started by claiming that the sacramental potion known as the kukeon was a type of visionary brew. And that the inviolable secrecy surrounding the Mysteries of Eleusis had everything to do with protecting the psychedelic recipe that guaranteed immortality to the Greek-speaking world.» — según Muraresku, Carl Ruck sostuvo a fines de los setenta que el kukeon era un brebaje visionario y que el secreto de Eleusis protegía esa receta
«But that was only half the heresy. The Greeks had to invent the psychedelic Eucharist. And then the Christians had to give it shelter.» — Muraresku separa las dos mitades de la herejía, que son las dos preguntas de su libro
«the same classicist at Boston University would later claim that some version of the Hellenistic sacrament had indeed been incorporated into the fledgling faith by Greek-speaking pockets of paleo-Christians all over the Roman Empire. And that their original Eucharist was therefore intensely psychedelic.» — el grado con que Muraresku reporta la segunda tesis de Ruck: la presenta como reclamación de Ruck, no como dato
«When this hypothesis first appeared, in The Road to Eleusis, forty years ago,» — el juicio de oportunidad con que Muraresku explica el rechazo que recibió la tesis en 1978; el tramo se corta en el cambio de plana y sigue en la p. 49 diciendo que era la idea equivocada en el momento equivocado
«during that time psychedelics had gone from a respectable subject of intellectual pursuit among British gentlemen like Huxley to one of the most polarizing issues in America.» — Muraresku fecha el cambio de estatuto de los psicodélicos entre 1958 y 1978, de asunto intelectual respetable a cuestión polarizante
«When we look at The Last Supper, maybe we’re not looking at Christianity’s founding event. Maybe we’re getting a glimpse of the mysterious religion that was practiced by Plato, Pindar, Sophocles, and the rest of the Athenian gang. And just maybe this is how our identity crisis comes to a dramatic end: with a psychedelic plot twist.» — Muraresku formula su hipótesis sobre la Última Cena en condicional acumulado, con tres maybe seguidos: el grado es parte de la afirmación
«Rather than starting a new religion, was Jesus simply trying to preserve, or copy, the “holiest of Mysteries” from Ancient Greece? Or, more precisely, is that what his Greek-speaking followers wanted to believe?» — la pregunta se desplaza del Jesús histórico a sus seguidores de lengua griega, y Muraresku marca ese desplazamiento como la formulación más precisa
«If so, that opens up a can of worms, making Jesus more of a Greek philosopher-magician than a Jewish Messiah.» — la consecuencia que Muraresku reconoce para su propia hipótesis: un Jesús más filósofo y mago griego que mesías judío
«But a secret the Church would later try to suppress, according to the theory.» — la cláusula con que Muraresku marca que la supresión por la Iglesia es parte de la teoría y no un hecho consignado
«It was one of the oldest religious traditions of Ancient Greece and arguably the most famous.» — Muraresku fija Eleusis como punto de partida de la búsqueda y acota su rango con un arguably
«The one scholar who dared to question everything paid dearly for his original sin. A total pariah, he spies signs of redemption from a new generation of archaeologists and scientists. But the excommunication has been long and lonely.» — el marco con que Muraresku presenta el caso de Carl Ruck: excomunión académica larga y solitaria
«“As perverse as it is unconvincing will be the verdict of many,” began one scathing review of The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries. In a single paragraph, the learned critic quickly put the matter to rest, closing with a stiff punch: “Everything is wildly out of hand.”» — las dos frases de la reseña hostil a The Road to Eleusis que Muraresku cita como muestra de la recepción
«In a national press conference on June 17, 1971, President Nixon had stood before the cameras and declared drugs “public enemy number one,” vowing “to wage a new, all-out offensive” across the country and around the world.» — el contexto político que Muraresku da para explicar el rechazo: la declaración de Nixon de 1971
«In The Road to Eleusis, Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann, and Carl Ruck made a passionate and detailed argument for why the kukeon, the sacramental beverage of the Mysteries, must have been spiked with one or more psychedelics. And they did so in truly interdisciplinary fashion, which was basically unheard of in the stodgy field of Classics at the time.» — el argumento central del libro de 1978 según Muraresku: el kukeon iba cargado con uno o más psicodélicos, sostenido de manera interdisciplinaria
«Wasson was a J.P. Morgan banker turned amateur mushroom hunter. Or ethnomycologist, as he would prefer to be called—one who studies the relationship between people and fungi. His global anthropological fieldwork had convinced him that magic mushrooms played a pivotal role in the origin and development of humanity’s spiritual awareness.» — Muraresku presenta a Wasson y su tesis general: los hongos tuvieron papel central en el origen de la consciencia espiritual humana
«In the heart of the Sierra Mazateca, a traditional healer or curandera by the name of Maria Sabina had agreed to guide Wasson on a healing journey, an initiation no outsider had ever attempted.» — Muraresku sitúa la iniciación de Wasson con la curandera María Sabina en la Sierra Mazateca
«The visions were not blurred or uncertain. They were sharply focused, the lines and colors being so sharp that they seemed more real to me than anything I had ever seen with my own eyes. I felt that I was now seeing plain, whereas ordinary vision gives us an imperfect view; I was seeing the archetypes, the Platonic ideas, that underlie the imperfect images of everyday life.… The thought crossed my mind: could the divine mushrooms be the secret that lay behind the Ancient Mysteries?» — Muraresku transcribe el relato que Wasson publicó en Life en 1957, donde este declara haber visto los arquetipos y las ideas platónicas, y se pregunta por primera vez si los hongos divinos estaban detrás de los misterios antiguos
«Albert Hofmann was already an internationally renowned chemist. In 1938 he had struck psychedelic gold at his research laboratory in Basel by extracting LSD from special cultures of ergot, a naturally occurring fungus.» — Muraresku presenta a Hofmann y fecha en 1938 la extracción del LSD a partir de cultivos de cornezuelo
«From Wasson’s samples Hofmann was able to successfully isolate psilocybin as well, laying the groundwork for the experiments at Hopkins and NYU in recent years.» — Muraresku encadena el aislamiento de la psilocibina por Hofmann con los ensayos actuales de Johns Hopkins y la Universidad de Nueva York
«By the late nineteenth century, Percy Gardner, professor of archaeology at the University of Cambridge, swore puppets were involved, “some perhaps of considerable size and fitted to impress the awakened nerves of the auditors.”» — la segunda explicación previa: según Muraresku, Percy Gardner sostuvo que había títeres de tamaño considerable
«By the early twentieth century, the British classicist Jane Ellen Harrison struck a chord that would echo for decades to come. She saw Eleusis as a primitive fertility rite, a crude form of sympathetic magic.» — la tercera: según Muraresku, Jane Ellen Harrison leyó Eleusis como rito primitivo de fertilidad y magia simpática
«the great German classicist Ludwig Preller proposed that Eleusis was nothing more than an elaborate theatrical performance, complete with hymns, sacred dances, and stage props.» — Muraresku repasa las explicaciones previas de Eleusis: para Ludwig Preller era una representación teatral elaborada; el verbatim arranca después de la fecha, que el troceo parte a fin de renglón
«Thus Harrison understood the kukeon as a ritualized potion. Out on a limb, she even suggested such potions could lead to “spiritual intoxication,” with “moments of sudden illumination, of wider and deeper insight, of larger human charity and understanding.”» — Muraresku marca hasta dónde llegó Harrison: propuso una embriaguez espiritual con momentos de iluminación repentina; el verbatim se corta antes de la llamada de nota
«But she got nowhere near psychedelic territory.» — la frase con que Muraresku fija el límite que Harrison no cruzó, y que su propio libro se propone cruzar
«The Homeric Hymn to Demeter is one of those random clues that somehow made it past the wall of silence surrounding Eleusis.» — Muraresku presenta el Himno homérico a Deméter como la pista escrita que sobrevivió al muro de silencio
«Once upon a time, young Persephone is out and about picking wild flowers when Pluto abducts her into his underworld kingdom. The innocent girl would have been damned to eternity as Queen of the Dead,» — Muraresku resume el mito del rapto de Perséfone que el himno narra
«At Demeter’s command, the king and queen of the archaic town erect the temple in her honor. But there is no consoling the Lady of the Grain. Furious, she hides every seed from the Greek plow, withering the fields and sending famine throughout the land.» — la continuación del resumen: el templo erigido por orden de Deméter y la hambruna con que la diosa responde
«Forever after, Persephone would still spend one-third of the year in the underworld, in exchange for two-thirds of the year above ground with Demeter.» — el reparto estacional con que se cierra el mito según el resumen de Muraresku
«It’s an origin tale, providing a nice precedent for the legomena (λεγόμενα) or “things said,” the dromena (δρώμενα) or “things done,” and the deiknumena (δεικνύμενα) or “things shown” during the initiation.» — Muraresku nombra las tres partes rituales de la iniciación con sus términos griegos: legomena, dromena y deiknumena
«The most striking example is in line 209, where the famous kukeon is introduced.» — el verso exacto del himno donde, según Muraresku, aparece el kukeon
«Metaneira offers her some red wine, “sweet as honey,” but Demeter refuses, claiming it would be a “sacrilege” to break her fast with the beverage that was more to the taste of Dionysus, the boundary-dissolving god of wine, theater, ecstasy, and mystical rapture.» — el rechazo del vino por Deméter, que Muraresku lee como deslinde frente a Dioniso; la traducción del himno es la que él usa
«She requests the barley-based kukeon, which simply means “mixture” or “medley” in Greek.» — la traducción que Muraresku da del término kukeon
«she then rattles off the recipe of the magic potion that will be used in her rites for centuries: barley and water mixed with “tender leaves of mint” or blechon (βλήχων).» — los tres ingredientes que el himno enumera, con el término griego del poleo tal como el libro lo imprime
«The level of detail here doesn’t really advance the plot, which makes the passage stick out like a sore thumb. Another peculiar feature is the gap in the original manuscript that cuts this section off in mid-sentence. As many as twenty-six lines are missing, the largest gap in the entire poem.» — el hallazgo filológico que Muraresku subraya: el detalle de la receta no aporta a la trama y el manuscrito tiene ahí su mayor laguna
«Had the ancient author revealed too much, and did a later scribe try to correct the error? Were other, active ingredients of the kukeon originally included in the Hymn to Demeter?» — Muraresku formula como preguntas, no como afirmaciones, la posibilidad de que un copista haya suprimido otros ingredientes
«Where there is barley, there is ergot, that fungal parasite mentioned above, also known as Claviceps purpurea. It regularly infects cereal grains like barley, as well as wheat and rye.» — el dato químico que Hofmann aporta según Muraresku: donde hay cebada hay cornezuelo
«But ergot is notoriously poisonous. It’s more likely to give you gangrene and convulsions than launch a fantastic inner voyage to discover the meaning of life.» — la objeción que Muraresku se plantea a sí mismo: el cornezuelo es venenoso antes que visionario
«Across Europe in the Middle Ages, as a matter of fact, contaminated bread would lead to routine bouts of ergot poisoning, or ergotism. It became known as St. Anthony’s Fire, in reference to the monks of the Order of St. Anthony, who proved adept at treating the afflicted.» — Muraresku consigna el ergotismo medieval y el nombre de fuego de San Antonio
«To avoid those unpleasant and often toxic side effects, could the Ancient Greeks have figured out some crude way to chemically isolate a pure, powerful hallucinogen from ergot?» — la pregunta que organiza el capítulo, formulada como pregunta y no como tesis
«He had accidentally synthesized LSD while trying to create new relief for circulation and respiratory disorders. Its psychoactive profile wasn’t discovered until years later, in 1943, when Hofmann decided to self-experiment with 250 micrograms of LSD-25, his so-called “problem child.”» — Muraresku consigna que el hallazgo del LSD fue accidental y que su perfil psicoactivo no se conoció hasta la autoexperimentación de Hofmann en 1943
«At Wasson’s request Hofmann tracked down and analyzed the ergot of wheat and barley, both of which would have been plentiful on the Rarian plain so explicitly showcased in the Hymn to Demeter. He found they indeed contained two psychoactive alkaloids, ergonovine and lysergic acid amide.» — según Muraresku, Hofmann encontró en el cornezuelo del trigo y la cebada dos alcaloides psicoactivos
«There’s no psychopharmacological reason why the ancient ergot of Eleusis couldn’t have had the same effect as its chemical cousins, Hofmann’s LSD-25 or the psilocybin resident in Maria Sabina’s mushrooms. It’s all fungus in the end.» — la formulación más fuerte del argumento farmacológico de Wasson y Hofmann según Muraresku, dicha en negativo: no hay razón para que no pudiera
«By the late 1970s, over thirty alkaloids had been isolated from ergot.» — el dato con que Muraresku amplía el argumento más allá del LSD: más de treinta alcaloides aislados del cornezuelo; el verbatim se corta antes de la llamada de nota
«Found in plants and fungi, an alkaloid is any nitrogen-based organic compound that can interfere with the human nervous system. Some, like cocaine, caffeine, and nicotine, act as stimulants. Others can be psychotropic, producing a range of effects, including visions.» — la definición de alcaloide que Muraresku da para el lector, con la distinción entre estimulantes y psicotrópicos
«Both are soluble in water, meaning “with the techniques and equipment available in antiquity it was therefore easy to prepare an hallucinogenic extract.”» — el grado de la conclusión de Hofmann que Muraresku transcribe: con técnicas y equipo de la antigüedad era fácil preparar un extracto alucinógeno; el verbatim se corta antes de la llamada de nota
«Assuming, of course, that “the herbalists of Ancient Greece were as intelligent and resourceful as the herbalists of pre-Conquest Mexico.”» — la condición que Hofmann pone a esa conclusión, y que Muraresku conserva: que los herbolarios griegos fueran tan hábiles como los mexicanos preconquista
«Maybe this explains the three specific ingredients of the magic recipe: (1) ergotized barley, swimming with all kinds of alkaloids, some psychoactive; (2) water to separate the useful alkaloids from the toxic alkaloids; and (3) mint to cut the bitter, acrid taste known to accompany alkaloid admixtures.» — la reconstrucción que Muraresku propone de la receta, enunciada con un maybe: cebada con cornezuelo, agua para separar los alcaloides y menta para cortar el sabor
«Was Eleusis selected as the final site because its barley was uniquely prone to ergot infection? The kind of ergot that would produce just the right alkaloids, season after season, like clockwork?» — otra de las preguntas abiertas con que Muraresku avanza, sobre por qué Eleusis y no otro campo de cebada
«A solitary line of poetry from the seventh century BC seems like an awfully slim piece of evidence, but it’s where this puzzle begins.» — Muraresku reconoce el peso de su evidencia inicial: un solo verso del siglo VII antes de Cristo
«They were up against the oldest and most pedantic discipline in the academy, and they needed every scrap of ancient literary and archaeological data that could possibly support their novel theory. Frankly, they were in way over their heads.» — la razón que Muraresku da para que Wasson y Hofmann buscaran a un clasicista
«Wasson wrote the first chapter. Hofmann wrote the second. And Ruck filled the rest of the book with a staggering amount of well-sourced scholarship.» — el reparto de autoría de The Road to Eleusis según Muraresku
«Neither Wasson nor Hofmann had much to lose. Wasson, then seventy-nine, was independently wealthy, free from the politics and constraints of the university system. Hofmann, then seventy-two, had comfortably retired from the Sandoz Laboratories in Switzerland, which is now called Novartis—still a leading multinational company in the pharmaceutical industry. Ruck, the youngest member of the trio at forty-two, had everything to lose for consorting with “public enemy number one.” And he lost it hard.» — Muraresku explica el reparto de riesgo entre los tres autores por edad y posición
«So after almost a decade of obsessing over his scholarship, I finally reached out to the reclusive professor in the early summer of 2018.» — Muraresku fecha su propia entrevista con Ruck, que es la fuente de todo lo que sigue
«After bottling it up for forty years, the lanky classicist with fiery sapphire eyes and a brownish gray goatee spoke eloquently of his fraught relationship with an old nemesis. The one man who had the power and mettle to snuff out the psychedelic hypothesis before it even had a chance: John Silber.» — Muraresku nombra a John Silber como el adversario que, según Ruck en la entrevista, tenía el poder de sofocar la hipótesis
«“He was a kind of monster,” Ruck chuckled into his beer with the gravelly baritone voice and refined accent of a vanishing New England. “John was very conservative. People had trouble dealing with him.”» — la voz de Ruck en la entrevista, transcrita por Muraresku, sobre Silber
«He once referred to the gospel of psychedelic enlightenment espoused by Leary, its greatest prophet and America’s most dangerous man, as “hedonism sweetened with nihilism.”» — la fórmula que Muraresku atribuye a Silber sobre el evangelio psicodélico de Leary
«Zinn’s revisionist history may have put his patriotism in question, but Ruck’s put his sanity up for grabs. He had exposed a fatal flaw in the foundation of Western civilization, and Silber didn’t like it one bit.» — la comparación con que Muraresku cifra el riesgo mayor de Ruck: no la lealtad política sino la cordura
«trained Carl Ruck, then chair of the Classics Department at Boston University.» — las credenciales de Ruck, que es la pieza con que la tesis entra a la disciplina; el verbatim arranca en la segunda mitad de la palabra partida
«In an age before Google or Wikipedia—before any computerized searching or digital library in fact—Ruck performed a masterful study of Ancient Greek literature that, until then, had received little attention.» — el trabajo que Muraresku atribuye a Ruck: un estudio de literatura griega antigua desatendida hecho sin herramientas digitales
«Fans of Howard Zinn and his revolutionary A People’s History of the United States (1980) will recall the scholar’s own time at Boston University, where he happily taught for twenty-four years alongside Ruck. Silber was known to routinely deny the self-described Marxist his sabbaticals, promotions, and pay raises.» — el precedente con que Muraresku mide la política de Silber: el trato dado a Howard Zinn en la misma universidad; el año entre paréntesis es del cuerpo del libro y no de una nota bibliográfica, y el tramo se releyó entero en el crudo
«When enough doors had been slammed in their face, they finally found their champion» — Muraresku cuenta que Wasson y Hofmann tocaron muchas puertas antes de dar con un clasicista dispuesto; el verbatim se corta antes del compuesto *Harvard- and Yale-trained*, que el troceo parte a fin de renglón
«the classicist is quick to paraphrase the president’s sole commentary on the whole affair, “The Greeks just wouldn’t have done that sort of thing.”» — la única frase que, según Ruck en la entrevista, Silber dedicó al asunto, y que Muraresku transcribe como paráfrasis de Ruck
«His bigger challenge, the biggest challenge of all, would be convincing people that “the rational Greeks, and indeed some of the most famous and intelligent among them, could experience and enter fully into such irrationality.”» — Muraresku cita la página 61 de The Road to Eleusis, donde Ruck se plantea de antemano la objeción: que los griegos racionales entraran en tal irracionalidad
«Silber instantly turned Ruck into a persona non grata by demoting the classicist and cutting him off from students and peers alike. It was a mark of distinction even Zinn had managed to avoid. Shortly after publication of the bombshell, Ruck was removed as chair of the Classics Department and forbidden from teaching graduate seminars.» — las medidas que, según Muraresku, siguieron a la publicación: destitución de la jefatura del departamento y prohibición de dar seminarios de posgrado
«As a tenured professor, he couldn’t be fired. But he could certainly be ushered away, far from the reach of the next batch of younger, open-minded classicists. And even farther from the public eye.» — Muraresku acota el alcance de la sanción: con plaza fija no podía ser despedido, pero sí apartado de los estudiantes
«Every once in a while, another scholar will stop by to pour some salt in the wound, like this one-liner from a recent textbook: “for the power of the Eleusinian experience, the theater seems a better place to look than the kitchen or brewery.”» — la frase de un manual reciente que Muraresku cita como muestra de la recepción actual: el teatro antes que la cocina o la cervecería
«But the insults and intrigue have largely been replaced by more effective maneuvers, like silence.» — el diagnóstico de Muraresku sobre el estado de la disputa: al insulto lo sustituyó el silencio
«Wasson died in 1986 at the ripe age of eighty-eight. Hofmann died in 2008 at the even riper age of one hundred two. Ruck is the last man standing.» — las fechas de muerte de Wasson y Hofmann con que Muraresku sitúa a Ruck como único superviviente del trío
«A man on a mission since The Road to Eleusis first debuted, Ruck has spent the past four decades obsessively trying to prove that the Greeks found God in a mind-altering cocktail brewed by witches.» — la formulación con que Muraresku resume cuarenta años de trabajo de Ruck, incluida la atribución del brebaje a brujas
«So when the classicists were beyond scandalizing, Ruck went after Jesus. In the early 2000s, he started publishing years’ worth of research into the primitive origins of Christianity.» — Muraresku fecha a principios de los dos mil el giro de Ruck hacia los orígenes del cristianismo
«Each of the four Gospel writers—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—wrote in Greek. Saint Paul, who is almost single-handedly responsible for the success of the early Church, possessed total mastery of the language. He had to. From the mid-30s to the mid-50s in the first century AD, Paul founded a number of Christian communities around the Aegean Sea. His letters, or epistles, to these Greek or Greek-speaking pockets of faith account for twenty-one of the twenty-seven books in the New Testament.» — el dato filológico con que Muraresku sostiene la centralidad del griego en el cristianismo primitivo
«In Ruck’s analysis of the Gospels, Paul’s letters, and other Greek-language documents of the era, the earliest generations of Christians inherited a mind-altering sacrament from the Greeks, replacing Demeter’s beer with Dionysus’s wine as the vehicle for the psychedelic kick.» — la tesis de Ruck sobre el cristianismo según Muraresku: la primera generación heredó un sacramento alterador de la mente y cambió la cerveza de Deméter por el vino de Dioniso
«Rather than restrict its use to a special pilgrimage site or the wilderness of Greece and Italy, did the early Church domesticate the ancient potion?» — Muraresku formula como pregunta el paso siguiente: que la Iglesia primitiva domesticara la poción antigua en vez de atarla a un santuario
«It was there, in private homes and tombs, that the paleo-Christians used to gather to ingest their holy meal of bread and wine before the rise of the first basilicas in the fourth century AD.» — el escenario que Muraresku fija para la eucaristía primitiva: casas y tumbas, antes de las basílicas
«And it was there that the original Eucharist was nurtured in no small part by women, a new Greek sacrament to replace the old Greek sacrament.» — la parte que Muraresku atribuye a las mujeres en la eucaristía primitiva, y la fórmula con que la describe: un sacramento griego nuevo que sustituye al viejo
«The mind-altering Eucharist would be an excellent recruitment tool for the pagan converts, who had grown up hearing about the Eleusinian and Dionysian Mysteries from their parents and grandparents.» — la función que Muraresku atribuye a esa eucaristía: herramienta de captación entre conversos paganos
«It’s worth asking why so few classicists have picked up the challenge issued by Aldous Huxley in 1958 to assemble the kind of evidence that would historically support a new Reformation.» — la pregunta que Muraresku deja planteada sobre la ausencia de clasicistas en este terreno
«The fact of the matter is that classicists generally don’t care about Christianity. Classics and Theology are different academic departments for a reason.» — la explicación que Muraresku da para esa ausencia: el reparto institucional entre filología clásica y teología
«Men of the church have always pored over Greek and Latin Christian literature, but only as the source of their theology. Classicists, on the other hand, have thrown them hastily aside as containing nothing but information for the theologian. The result has been that the literature and civilization of a very extensive part of the world’s history has been very much neglected by the very ones best able to investigate it.» — Muraresku transcribe al filólogo Roy J. Deferrari, que en 1918 señaló que la literatura cristiana griega y latina quedó desatendida por quienes mejor podían estudiarla
«Yes, it was an elite school of priestesses who prepared and dispensed the potion at Eleusis.» — según Muraresku, en Eleusis eran sacerdotisas quienes preparaban y repartían la poción
«The Mysteries were always the women’s domain. At first, as a matter of fact, women were the only ones who were eligible for initiation.» — el dato con que Muraresku sostiene que los misterios fueron desde el origen dominio de mujeres
«There is simply no path to Jesus—and no way to understand his actual message—» — el principio metodológico que Muraresku atribuye a Ruck y que hace suyo: no hay acceso a Jesús ni a su mensaje sin la lengua original del Nuevo Testamento; el tramo se corta en el cambio de plana
«But what if he’s right? What if Ruck’s scholarship, scorned and sidelined for forty years, could finally answer the charges of “irrelevancy” and “impracticality” that threaten to scrub dead languages from the university curriculum altogether? What if this ultimate outsider, with no place in the academy, could once again demonstrate the critical importance of Classics at a time when the world might need it most?» — la apuesta que Muraresku formula como pregunta triple: que el trabajo de Ruck sirva para responder a los cargos de irrelevancia que amenazan a los estudios clásicos
«At the end of the nineteenth century, when the social sciences were threatening to unseat the Classics, it was the self-made millionaire and high-school dropout Heinrich Schliemann who saved the day. He discovered the actual city of Troy, which until then most scholars had rejected as pure myth, a fantasy invented by Homer. Schliemann would become the “Father of Mediterranean Archaeology.”» — el primer precedente que Muraresku alega de aficionados que salvaron la disciplina: Heinrich Schliemann y Troya
«But it was Parry who solved the riddle of Homer, proving the oldest “author” in Western civilization was really just an “illiterate bard.”» — el segundo precedente: Milman Parry y el Homero oral, con la conclusión que Muraresku le atribuye
«Finally, in the 1950s, just before the downward spiral of the field, Michael Ventris was able to crack the exotic script known as Linear B, the first known Greek characters on record and the oldest writing system in Europe.» — el tercer precedente: Michael Ventris y el lineal B, descifrado por un arquitecto en sus ratos libres
«It’s the dreamers and romantics who keep rescuing Homer from the morgue.» — la regla que Muraresku saca de esos tres casos, y con la que justifica su propio lugar de aficionado
«While psychedelics remain illegal at the federal level in the United States and much of the world, the clinical research is exploding at an unprecedented rate.» — el cambio de contexto que Muraresku alega frente a 1978: la investigación clínica se dispara aunque la prohibición siga
«In April 2019 the creation of the world’s first dedicated institution for the rigorous study of psychedelics, the Imperial Center for Psychedelic Research, was announced by Imperial College London.» — el dato institucional con que Muraresku mide ese cambio: el centro del Imperial College de Londres
«Equally unthinkable was the fact that 27 percent of all Americans now identify themselves as spiritual but not religious (SBNR), including a full 40 percent of my generation.» — la cifra de espirituales pero no religiosos con que Muraresku mide el público disponible para la tesis de Ruck
«The younger generation is ready for something different, and the psilocybin experiments at Hopkins and NYU are pointing the way toward the responsible, practical mysticism that Huxley predicted would be made widely available by some future “biochemical discoveries.”» — Muraresku enlaza los ensayos de laboratorio con la mística práctica que Huxley anunciaba
«What if there are lessons to be learned from the religion with no name that spoke to the best and brightest in Ancient Greece and the earliest generations of Christians? Neither appears to have had a problem entering into the kind of irrationality that is illegal today.» — la pregunta con que Muraresku cierra el capítulo y nombra por primera vez en el cuerpo la religión sin nombre del subtítulo
«It took weeks to arrange the meeting in September 2018 with Dr. Polyxeni Adam-Veleni, head of the General Directorate of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage in Greece.» — Muraresku fecha y nombra su entrevista con Polyxeni Adam-Veleni, directora general de Antigüedades y Patrimonio Cultural de Grecia
«“I’d like to discuss the Mysteries of Eleusis,” I would say into the staticky line connecting Washington, D.C., and Athens. It’s like calling the director of the CIA’s office and saying you had a few questions about the Kennedy assassination you’d like to have cleared up.» — el símil con que Muraresku describe el recibimiento que tuvo su petición de entrevista
«“Here, there are antiquities everywhere. There is great fear of the archaeologist in Greece, because if a developer wants to build something—like the metro, for example —they have to pay for the excavation first, which could last years. And cost millions of dollars. It’s really quite expensive. But it’s our duty to protect the antiquities and to show them to people.”» — la voz de Adam-Veleni en la entrevista sobre el peso de las antigüedades en la economía griega
«“Yes, we have. Thanks to Christianity,” the director interrupts me with a total curveball. “That’s the reason. It’s that simple. It’s nothing else. They changed everything.”» — la respuesta de Adam-Veleni cuando Muraresku le pregunta si se perdió algo en la traducción de los misterios; la adjudicación es de ella, no del autor
«This level of candor about Christianity’s role in the death of classical civilization is rarely voiced back home, even among academics. For American classicists, Christianity is the elephant in the room. The clash of religions that took place at the end of the fourth century AD is perfectly accepted as part of the history of Western civilization, but it can be considered impolite to state the obvious.» — Muraresku contrasta esa franqueza con el silencio que atribuye a los clasicistas de su país
«“The destruction of the Great Library of Alexandria,” she goes on. “This is a great loss, the greatest in the world, in my opinion. Things would be so different if we had all those sources, all those ancient texts. We have so little from antiquity.”» — el primer ejemplo que Adam-Veleni da por su cuenta en la entrevista, con su juicio sobre la pérdida
«In AD 392, the same year Emperor Theodosius outlawed the Mysteries, Bishop Theophilus of Alexandria led a rabid mob into “the most beautiful building in the world” and razed it to the ground.» — la coincidencia de fechas con que Muraresku enlaza la prohibición de los misterios y la destrucción del Serapeo por Teófilo de Alejandría
«The Christians “roared with delight” as a “double-headed axe” split Serapis’s face. The body of the pagan statue was then barbecued in the central amphitheater as a form of “public humiliation”—“burned to ashes before the eyes of the Alexandria which had worshipped him.” Insatiate, the “warlike” mercenaries for Jesus then tore the temple apart stone by stone, “toppling the immense marble columns, causing the walls themselves to collapse.”» — Muraresku transcribe el relato de Catherine Nixey sobre la destrucción de la estatua de Serapis y del templo
«Theophilus would replace the ancient temple of Serapis with a church to house some relics of John the Baptist that had been procured from Palestine. It was a “consciously planned provocation.” The goal, “in unmistakable fashion,” was to claim exclusive possession of “the physical and symbolic fabric of the city and capital of Egypt,” which “now belonged to Christ and the God of the Christians.”» — según Muraresku, la sustitución del templo por una iglesia con reliquias del Bautista fue una provocación planeada para reclamar la ciudad
«Eunapius, a Greek historian of the era, said the Christians “boasted that they had overcome the gods, and reckoned their sacrilege and impiety a thing to glory in.”» — el testimonio de Eunapio que Muraresku cita, con la voz antigua nombrada
«Sure enough, only nineteen of seventy-seven plays attributed to Euripides have survived. For Aeschylus, who was once prosecuted for revealing the Eleusinian secrets, it’s seven out of ninety-nine. For the other Eleusinian mystic Sophocles, it’s only another seven out of more than one hundred twenty.» — las cifras de pérdida textual que Muraresku da para Eurípides, Esquilo y Sófocles, y de paso el dato de que Esquilo fue procesado por revelar los secretos eleusinos
«The Christians can’t be blamed for all of it, of course, but scholars estimate that “perhaps only one percent” of all classical literature has survived to the present day.» — Muraresku acota la adjudicación de culpas por la pérdida y da la estimación del uno por ciento de literatura clásica conservada
«For centuries classicists have been trying to reassemble a million-piece jigsaw puzzle with what Ezra Pound once called “two gross of broken statues” and “a few thousand battered books.”» — la imagen con que Muraresku describe el trabajo de la filología clásica, con la fórmula de Ezra Pound
«His very first email to me in July 2018 contained the unforgettable phrase, “Just to be open: I regard the Wasson-Ruck theory as rather farfetched.”» — la voz del clasicista Fritz Graf, que Muraresku transcribe de su correo: la tesis de Wasson y Ruck le parece traída de los pelos
«She skips right over the controversy: “In fact, I think they used drugs. Because they wanted to have, eh … how do you say, illusions.”» — la posición de Adam-Veleni sobre el uso de drogas en los misterios, dicha sin rodeos en la entrevista
«“Yes, the poppy,” the director repeats. “You see the poppy everywhere. And then there’s Delphi. They say the Pythia has eaten leaves from what? From the laurel. This too provoked visions. Because it has oily leaves. And the oil is, in a way, a drug.”» — Adam-Veleni añade la adormidera y las hojas de laurel de la Pitia de Delfos como ejemplos que le parecen corrientes
«What’s certain is that women ran the show, just as they did in Eleusis. There would be three Pythias, or high priestesses, at any given time, each having dedicated her life to serving as a channel or mouthpiece for the god Apollo.» — Muraresku consigna el paralelo entre Delfos y Eleusis en el dominio femenino del rito
«After a bath in the Castalian spring and after the preliminary sacrifice of a goat, she enters the temple, which is fumigated with barley meal and laurel leaves on the ever-burning hestia [Greek for “hearth”], and descends into the adyton, the sunken area at the end of the temple interior. There is where the Omphalos [Greek for “navel,” it was the rounded stone thought to be the center of the world, allowing direct communication with the gods] and where, over a round, well-like opening in the ground, the tripod cauldron is set up.… Seated over the chasm, enveloped by the rising vapours, and shaking a freshly cut bay branch, she falls into a trance.”» — Muraresku transcribe la descripción del rito délfico que da Walter Burkert en Greek Religion, con los corchetes explicativos que el propio libro añade a las palabras griegas
«Burkert agreed with the 1948 edition of the Oxford Classical Dictionary, noting the fact that “volcanic fumes [rising] up from the earth has been disproved geologically; the ecstasy is self-induced.”» — la posición de Burkert que Muraresku recoge: los vapores volcánicos quedaron descartados y el éxtasis sería autoinducido
«The geologist, archaeologist, chemist, and toxicologist showed that the priestesses of Apollo were likely under the influence of ethylene—a “sweet-smelling gas once used as an anesthetic” that can produce feelings of “aloof euphoria.”» — según Muraresku, un equipo interdisciplinario de 2002 sostuvo que las sacerdotisas de Apolo estaban bajo el efecto del etileno
«In 1981 two hidden geological faults were serendipitously uncovered when the Greek government decided to carve into the hillside east of Delphi to make room for tour buses. In 1996, long after Burkert’s Greek Religion had been published, the new team finally surveyed the site, revealing that the sanctuary’s “underlying strata were bituminous limestone containing up to twenty percent blackish oils.”» — el hallazgo geológico en que ese equipo se apoya, posterior a la publicación de Greek Religion
«In 2000 the team’s toxicologist, Dr. Henry A. Spiller, lent further support to the theory after pharmacological analysis of a bedrock sample from the site. To him the effects of ethylene were well known: “In the first stages, it produces disembodied euphoria, an altered mental status and a pleasant sensation. It’s what street people would call getting high. The greater the dose, the deeper you go.”» — la voz del toxicólogo Henry A. Spiller sobre los efectos del etileno, en la transcripción de Muraresku
«First, the Classics are at their best when the experts and specialists from a wide range of disciplines are able to converge on one thorny problem.» — la primera de las tres conclusiones que Muraresku saca del caso de Delfos: la interdisciplina
«And third, when it comes to drugs, classicists are simply out of their depth.» — la tercera conclusión, que es la justificación de método de todo el libro
«On the immediately preceding page of Greek Religion, when discussing the ghostly visions reported at the Oracle of the Dead at Ephyra, he speculates that “perhaps the eating of certain kinds of beans had a hallucinogenic effect.”» — Muraresku consigna que el propio Burkert admitió la posibilidad alucinógena al hablar del Oráculo de los Muertos de Efira
«One of the only classicists to pick up where Ruck left off is Dr. David Hillman, who also sports a master’s degree in bacteriology.» — Muraresku nombra a David Hillman como el único clasicista que continuó esa línea
«Hillman was instructed by his thesis adviser to delete all references to the recreational use of narcotics, stimulants, and psychedelics in antiquity.» — el episodio de censura académica que Muraresku reporta de Hillman
«In personal correspondence Hillman explained that the medical and pharmaceutical texts that contain the evidence for ancient drugs are simply too complex for classicists, as they require a working knowledge of “biology, botany, anatomy, physiology, pathology, epidemiology, and pharmacology.”» — la razón que Hillman da a Muraresku por correo para que los clasicistas no trabajen ese material
«Despite the fact that there are more surviving works of Galen than of Homer, Pindar, Herodotus, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Euripides, Plato, and Aristotle combined, none of his pharmaceutical treatises has ever been translated into English.» — el dato con que Muraresku mide esa ausencia: ninguno de los tratados farmacéuticos de Galeno se ha traducido al inglés
«Graf spoke slowly and deliberately to make sure I didn’t miss a syllable. “The main thing is … there’s not one shred of evidence in our sources.”» — la objeción central de Fritz Graf en la entrevista telefónica, y el cargo que el libro tendrá que responder: no hay ni un fragmento de evidencia en las fuentes
«When I ask why she believes drugs were involved at Eleusis or Delphi, she quips, “I’m Greek! It’s common knowledge this.”» — la respuesta de Adam-Veleni sobre por qué le parece obvio el uso de drogas, en su propio inglés tal como el libro lo transcribe
«I flipped The Odyssey open to Book 10, where the witches of Eleusis and Delphi would have found their idol, the rock star sorceress who started it all. Widely feared and respected for her encyclopedic knowledge of plants and herbs, the goddess Circe gets a leading role in the oldest surviving work of Western literature.» — Muraresku presenta a Circe como la figura que enlaza la Odisea con las brujas de Eleusis y Delfos
«Like the Hymn to Demeter, Book 10 of The Odyssey contains a recipe. Homer reveals the contents of the elixir that Circe concocted to make swine of the men, a key piece of evidence cited by Ruck in The Road to Eleusis.» — el segundo pasaje-receta del libro: la poción de Circe, que Muraresku dice tomada de Ruck
«“Yes. Pharmaka … drugs,” she chimes in, translating the Greek word φάρμακα that gave us the English word “pharmacy.”» — Adam-Veleni traduce el término griego en la escena de la entrevista; el alfabeto griego va tal como lo imprime el libro
«In English, Hermes’s classic warning to Odysseus goes like this: “she [Circe] will mix thee a potion (kukeo), and cast drugs (pharmaka) into the food.”» — la advertencia de Hermes en la Odisea, en la traducción que Muraresku da, con los términos griegos entre paréntesis
«There Homer tells us the Grand High Witch “mixed” (anemisge/ ἀνέμισγε) the “evil drugs” (pharmaka lugra/φάρμακα λύγρ᾿) into the men’s food, after having “stirred up” or “mixed up” a special potion for the occasion. The Greek verb ekuka (ἐκύκα) is used—from the same root as kukeon.» — el argumento filológico de Muraresku: el verbo de la Odisea viene de la misma raíz que kukeon
«All in an effort to demonstrate why this and other passages from The Iliad and The Odyssey match, with “exact correspondence,” the core features of a well-documented ritual from ancient India.» — el resultado que Muraresku atribuye a Watkins: correspondencia exacta entre pasajes homéricos y un ritual indio
«A ritual that certainly predates Eleusis and, in Watkins’s opinion, influenced both Demeter’s actual kukeon used in the Mysteries and Circe’s mythical kukeon as portrayed by Homer.» — el grado con que Muraresku reporta la tesis de Watkins, marcada como opinión suya
«And there we find the original “mixed potion,” a sacramental drink called soma (सोम). In the Rigveda, soma is both a plant and the god residing in the plant.» — Muraresku presenta el soma del Rigveda como la poción mezclada original, planta y dios a la vez
«One particularly memorable line from the Rigveda reads: “We have drunk soma and become immortal; we have attained the light, the gods discovered.”» — el verso del Rigveda que Muraresku cita, en la traducción que él emplea
«After surveying the linguistic data, Watkins concludes that the similarities between the soma ritual of the Rigveda and “the ritual act of communion of the Eleusinian mysteries, by women for women” cannot be mere coincidence—“just too striking for a fortuitous resemblance to be plausible.”» — la conclusión de Watkins según Muraresku, con la acotación de que se trata de un parecido demasiado llamativo para ser casual
«And while the Circe passage above seems like a silly, little children’s story about witches and pigs, Homer is in fact “describing a religious ritual”—“a liturgical act of Indo-European date, identical with the soma ritual of Vedic India.”» — la consecuencia que Muraresku recoge de Watkins: Homero describe un acto litúrgico de fecha indoeuropea
«Is it possible that the linguistic success of Indo-European had something to do with this “religious ritual” or “liturgical act” that its speakers carried across the planet? If soma was undeniably “hallucinogenic,” perhaps the kukeon was as well?» — Muraresku formula como pregunta doble, y no como tesis, el salto del soma al kukeon
«Instead of a plant, however, Wasson suggested the visionary Amanita muscaria mushroom as the grandmother of all psychedelic rituals. Before he teamed up with Hofmann and Ruck, the ethnomycologist published his own breakout study in 1968, Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality.» — Muraresku consigna la identificación que Wasson propuso para el soma en su libro de 1968
«Right or wrong about the Indian sacrament, it’s not the point. When Adam-Veleni says that the relationship between drugs and religion is “natural,” I think this is what she’s referring to. After all, soma and the kukeon have been around a hell of a lot longer than the War on Drugs.» — la acotación con que Muraresku se desentiende de si Wasson acertó, y que marca el uso que hace del argumento
«That potion consists of cheese, barley, honey, and Pramnian wine (a dry, strong wine from the Greek island of Ikaria).» — los ingredientes de la poción de Circe según el resumen de Muraresku, con la cebada como nexo con Eleusis; el verbatim se corta antes de la llamada de nota
«Watkins’s paper makes a brilliant case for the true origin of Circe’s magic. Although it’s virtually unreadable for nonspecialists,» — Muraresku presenta el trabajo comparativo de Calvert Watkins sobre el origen de la magia de Circe; el verbatim se corta antes de la palabra que el troceo parte a fin de renglón, *all-knowing*
«marshals an artillery of obscure comparative linguistic evidence across no fewer than twelve Indo-European languages.» — el alcance del trabajo de Watkins que Muraresku subraya: evidencia comparada de doce lenguas indoeuropeas
«Sanskrit was a holy language with a mystical purpose, the earliest written example of which is the Rigveda, a collection of sacred hymns composed as early as 1700 BC.» — Muraresku sitúa el Rigveda como el testimonio escrito más antiguo de esa familia lingüística
«Just like the kukeon of Circe and Demeter, the preparation of soma is often tied to the “female presence.”» — el primer rasgo que Muraresku subraya del soma: la presencia femenina en su preparación, igual que en el kukeon; el verbatim se corta antes de la llamada de nota
«It is referred to as the “elixir of life.” And it is explicitly characterized as madira, the Sanskrit term that Watkins translates as “intoxicant” or “hallucinogenic.”» — el segundo rasgo: el término sánscrito madira que, según Muraresku, Watkins traduce por embriagante o alucinógeno
«In his catalogue introduction Dr. Demetrios Pandermalis, president of the Acropolis Museum, calls Eleusis “the most prominent” of all the visionary mystery cults, promising “personal bliss in life and happiness after death.”» — la caracterización de Eleusis que Muraresku toma del catálogo del Museo de la Acrópolis firmado por Demetrios Pandermalis
«Even so, he includes the kind of perfunctory sketch of the kukeon that would make Fritz Graf proud: “potential initiates would break their fast by drinking the kykeon [an alternative English spelling], a mixture of water, flour and royal mint.” Full stop.» — Muraresku contrasta esa presentación oficial del kukeon, sin mención de nada psicoactivo, con su propia tesis; la grafía kykeon es la del catálogo
«Then, as Pandermalis closes his brief summary of the Mysteries, he grabs my full attention: “It is our hope that this exhibition will be the herald for the celebratory year 2021, when Eleusis will serve as the cultural capital of Europe. Within the captivating sacred silence of that site we await the humming sounds of new initiates.”» — la frase del catálogo que Muraresku subraya: la espera de nuevos iniciados en el año en que Eleusis será capital cultural de Europa
«A letter on the website from the mayor of Eleusis, Giorgos Tsoukalas, laments the industrialization that overran the ancient city toward the end of the nineteenth century, leaving a “powerful footprint in the form of a series of derelict factories along the coastline” that now overlooks the otherwise crystalline Gulf of Elefsina.» — Muraresku consigna la carta del alcalde de Eleusis sobre la industrialización que arrasó la ciudad antigua
«Scrolling through my phone in the museum foyer, I can’t help but think of Vettius Agorius Praetextatus, a high-profile aristocrat of the fourth century AD. A prefect, consul and hierophant (literally, a priest who “shows the sacred things”), he held a number of respected political and religious positions in the Roman Empire. And like Cicero and Marcus Aurelius before him, Praetextatus was also initiated into the Mysteries.» — Muraresku presenta a Vetio Agorio Pretextato, prefecto, cónsul y hierofante iniciado en Eleusis
«In AD 364, the Christian emperor Valentinian abolished all nocturnal celebrations in an effort to shut down the Mysteries. The almost two-thousand-year march of pilgrims to Eleusis was in serious jeopardy of screeching to a halt. The Greek historian Zosimus credits Praetextatus with successfully convincing the powerful Valentinian to backtrack, permitting “the entire rite to be performed in the manner inherited from the ancestors.”» — el episodio que Muraresku toma de Zósimo: Pretextato convenció a Valentiniano de revocar la prohibición de las celebraciones nocturnas
«Faced with the obliteration of “the most sacred Mysteries,” Praetextatus declares that the shortsighted law “would make the life of the Greeks unlivable.” Having drunk the kukeon and experienced the vision for himself, the priest points to Eleusis as the one place that “hold[s] the whole human race together.”» — la declaración de Pretextato que Muraresku llama profecía: sin los misterios la vida de los griegos sería invivible
«The Greek word for “unlivable” is abiotos (ἀβίοτος)—literally, the absence or opposite of “life” (bios). It’s a rare, evocative word.» — el análisis léxico con que Muraresku sostiene el peso de esa declaración
«Kerenyi concludes that the word was consciously chosen to inform later generations that the Mysteries “were connected not only with Athenian and Greek existence but with human existence in general.”» — según Muraresku, Carl Kerényi sostiene en su libro de 1962 que la palabra se eligió para decir que los misterios tocaban a la existencia humana en general
«“Beyond any doubt,” says Kerenyi, a distinct contrast is being drawn between the lovers of Demeter and Jesus: “the sharpness of the formulation of the significance of Eleusis, which has no parallel in earlier documents, springs from the conflict between Greek religion and Christianity.”» — Kerényi, citado por Muraresku, adjudica esa formulación al conflicto entre la religión griega y el cristianismo
«For the disgraced classicist, it’s all about the Secret of Secrets, a phrase he coined to describe the archaic tradition of agricultural and biochemical expertise that was somehow able to manufacture the kukeon year after year.» — Muraresku presenta el Secreto de los Secretos, expresión que atribuye a Ruck para nombrar el saber agrícola y bioquímico del kukeon
«A vast trove of mysterious lore “passed on by word of mouth from herbalist to apprentice” throughout the long life of the Mysteries.» — el modo de transmisión que Ruck atribuye a ese saber según Muraresku: de herbolaria a aprendiz, de boca en boca
«But because of the volatile properties of ergot, the production of the magic potion is only possible when the untamed lives in harmony with the domesticated.» — la condición que Muraresku pone al argumento: la volatilidad del cornezuelo exige el equilibrio entre lo silvestre y lo cultivado
«Literally, chaos (χάος) is the “infinite darkness” of “unformed matter” that existed in the “first state of the universe.” While cosmos (κόσμος) is the “natural order” of the final product that we now glimpse in the night sky.» — las dos palabras griegas con que Muraresku traduce ese equilibrio, tal como el libro las imprime
«Ruck sees that painstaking process as the thin line between the “wild, nomadic” ways of a prehistoric era and the “civilized institutions” rooted in the Greeks’ biotechnology.» — según Muraresku, Ruck coloca ese cultivo en la frontera entre lo nómada y las instituciones civilizadas
«It is barley’s evil stepsister, darnel. The scientific name is Lolium temulentum. In Ancient Greek, it was aira (αἶρα)—a plant associated with “divine frenzy.” The funny thing about darnel or aira is that it serves as an excellent host for, what else, ergot.» — la pieza botánica del argumento: la cizaña, asociada en griego al frenesí divino, es huésped del cornezuelo
«The job of the priestesses, Ruck contends, would have been to monitor closely the growth of the darnel and ergot so that neither got out of control. Too much, and the deadly weed and fungus can ruin the entire crop, threatening life itself. Too little, and there’s no active ingredient for the kukeon.» — el grado con que Muraresku reporta lo que Ruck sostiene sobre la tarea de las sacerdotisas, con su doble límite
«Under the visionary spell of the kukeon, Persephone is thought to have revealed the mystery of death and rebirth directly to the initiates.» — el contenido de la visión según la reconstrucción de Ruck, que Muraresku marca como lo que se piensa y no como hecho
«It’s unknown whether Persephone was there in the flesh, perhaps played by a Greek priestess, or wholly envisioned in the mind’s eye. Maybe it was some special combination of the two that the ergot facilitated. The point is, the initiates believed it.» — la abstención con que Muraresku cierra el punto: no se sabe si la aparición era carne, actriz o visión, y lo que le importa es la creencia
«Tsoukalas quotes Nikos Gatsos, a twentieth-century Greek poet, to capture the scope of the modern desecration: “Where the initiates joined hands reverently before entering the sanctuary / now the tourists discard cigarette butts» — los versos de Nikos Gatsos que el alcalde cita sobre la profanación moderna del santuario, en la traducción que da el libro; el tramo se corta en el cambio de plana y sigue en la p. 81 con la refinería y el ruego a Perséfone
«In The Varieties of Religious Experience from 1902, psychologist William James used the term “noetic quality” to capture those rare moments of insight “into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect.”» — Muraresku trae la cualidad noética de William James para nombrar el carácter de esa visión
«Across the board, volunteers in the Hopkins and NYU experiments report becoming better versions of themselves—more open, more compassionate, more forgiving, more loving.» — el paralelo que Muraresku traza entre los iniciados antiguos y los voluntarios de los ensayos contemporáneos
«But it wasn’t an indulgent, self-obsessed New Ager that exited the psilocybin session, someone on the narcissistic hunt for her personal happiness and well-being. It was a “socially conscious” Dinah, who felt an innate sense of belonging as a fully-fledged member of the human tribe, passionately concerned about the future of the planet that her grandchildren’s generation will inherit.» — Muraresku insiste en el efecto social y no narcisista que atribuye a la experiencia de Dinah Bazer
«Clinical psychologist William Richards, the longtime collaborator in the Johns Hopkins psilocybin trials, concludes that ethics and morality are hardwired, “perhaps genetically encoded,” within the human organism.» — según Muraresku, William Richards sostiene que la ética y la moral están cableadas y quizá codificadas genéticamente
«Is this what Praetextatus meant by Eleusis holding “the whole human race together”? And life becoming “unlivable” in their absence? Did the transformational inner journey unleashed by the kukeon remind us how to care for one another and the planet? Was this the true technology on which Western civilization was built?» — Muraresku convierte su tesis en cuatro preguntas seguidas, que es el registro en que la deja
«another part of the campaign to rid the world of pagan influence, argues Ruck, was Christianity’s exclusion of women from positions of leadership—the same women, the grandmothers, who were so integral to sustaining the Secret of Secrets in Ancient Greece.» — según Muraresku, Ruck cuenta la exclusión de las mujeres del gobierno de la Iglesia como parte de la campaña contra lo pagano
«Like many pre-Christian cultures, the Greeks revered the goddess in three principal forms: the young virgin (Persephone), the adult mother (Demeter), and the old crone (Demeter, once Persephone had given birth during the climax of the Mysteries).» — las tres formas de la diosa que Muraresku atribuye a los griegos, con la anciana como tercera
«According to Ruck, Demeter’s transition to grandmother brings her closer to death and confers on her a mysterious “power over plants.” As she continues to mature, only then does the “female’s ancient religious power” come to perfection “through her awesome compact with the terrible metaphysical sources of life.”» — la lectura de Ruck sobre la abuela que Muraresku transcribe: la madurez confiere el poder religioso pleno
«Isn’t it strange that the Christian holy family—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—is an all-male ensemble? And isn’t it even stranger that the only woman worshipped alongside the Trinity never becomes a grandmother?» — la objeción que Muraresku dirige a la familia santa cristiana, formulada como pregunta
«Instead of marveling at the grandmother’s botanical know-how, the Church would demonize it. After the fourth century AD, Demeter and the old-crone archetype slowly disappeared.» — la operación que Muraresku atribuye a la Iglesia: demonizar el saber botánico de la anciana
«But according to Maria Tatar, who chairs the Program in Folklore and Mythology at Harvard University, “old women in fairy tales and folklore practically keep civilization together. They judge, reward, harm and heal. They’re often the most intriguing characters in the story.”» — la voz de Maria Tatar sobre las ancianas del cuento popular, que Muraresku cita en contraste
«Dionysus wasn’t symbolized by the wine … he was the wine. When a Greek celebrant ingested the fruit of the vine, she ingested the god himself.» — la fórmula con que Muraresku enuncia la identidad entre Dioniso y el vino, que sostiene la segunda mitad del libro
«How else do we explain the concept of “enthusiasm” (derived from entheos (ἔνθεος), meaning “divine frenzy” or “god-possessed inspiration”), considered the “one quality … more than any other” that gave birth to tragedy?» — la etimología de entusiasmo con que Muraresku ata posesión divina y tragedia; el término griego va como lo imprime el libro
«The British scholar Peter Hoyle best described how “at that moment of intense rapture,” Dionysus’s maenads, or female devotees, “became identified with the god himself.… They became filled with his spirit and acquired divine powers.”» — la descripción de las ménades que Muraresku toma de Peter Hoyle
«According to Ruck, “the nature of the theater experience was one of mass spiritual possession” that can be traced back to shamanic rituals “at the tombs of heroic persons, with the spirit of the deceased overtaking the priest and speaking through him or her to tell the dead person’s story or myth.”» — según Muraresku, Ruck remonta la experiencia teatral a ritos chamánicos en tumbas de héroes
«The Greeks brought this “dangerous intoxication of the god” from the primordial countryside right here, to the very center of our ancient democracy, where the poetry of drama turned the unique Athenian dialect—known as koine (κοινῆ) or “common” Greek—into the language of the New Testament.» — el eslabón que Muraresku necesita: el dialecto ático del teatro se volvió el griego koiné del Nuevo Testamento
«Behind it all was the special wine that was served in this theater: trimma (τρῖμμα), which literally means something “rubbed” or “pounded.” Ruck explains the drink took the name from whatever additives were “ground” into the potion to produce “a communal feeling of oneness” among the spectators, “with their shared cultural identity and with the spirits who were the city’s metaphysical allies from the otherworld.”» — el vino trimma del teatro según Ruck, y la etimología con que Muraresku lo liga a los aditivos molidos
«A recent article in Psychology Today explains the phenomenon as “a sense of embeddedness into collective folds and an increase in pro-social behaviours such as kindness, self-sacrifice, co-operation and resource» — la definición de la llamada ciencia del asombro que Muraresku toma de Psychology Today; el verbatim se corta antes de *resource-sharing*, que el troceo parte a fin de renglón
«Experiences that arouse awe can help us to re-conceptualize our sense of self, our role in society and from a more cosmic perspective, our place in the universe.”» — la segunda mitad de esa definición: el asombro recoloca el sentido de sí, el papel social y el lugar en el universo
«Unlike us today, the Greeks had no firm boundary between religion and entertainment.» — Muraresku sostiene que el teatro griego no separaba religión de entretenimiento; el verbatim se corta antes de la llamada de nota
«The whole point of the performance was to “approach more nearly to the presence of their divinity.”» — la finalidad que Muraresku atribuye a la representación teatral, con la fórmula que cita
«I can only imagine the atmosphere in 405 BC, when Euripides’s The Bacchae debuted here, just after the playwright’s death.» — Muraresku fecha el estreno de las Bacantes de Eurípides en el teatro de Dioniso
«But like a bible for maenads who otherwise thrived in a world of hushed oral tradition, The Bacchae left behind a thick trail of clues that we will begin exploring later in this book.» — el papel que Muraresku asigna a las Bacantes en su investigación: rastro escrito de una tradición oral de ménades
«Clues that lead to a magical version of Jesus: equal parts natural healer, initiator of mysteries, and concoctor of drugged wine.» — la figura de Jesús que Muraresku anuncia para la segunda parte del libro
«Before he seduced the fans of this very theater into the wild mountains and forests that would form his impromptu outdoor churches all across the Mediterranean well into the Roman period, Dionysus snuck his way into Eleusis as the child of Persephone.» — el nexo que Muraresku traza entre Dioniso y Eleusis por la vía del hijo de Perséfone
«It hadn’t always been that way, but the miraculous birth of the Holy Child, named Iacchus, who closed the Mysteries in the temple of Demeter, came more and more to be associated with the God of Ecstasy.» — la acotación histórica de Muraresku: la identificación de Yaco con Dioniso se fue haciendo con el tiempo
«In his doctoral dissertation from 1974, Fritz Graf himself penned the definitive study on how the delirium, frenzy, and madness associated with the God of Ecstasy made their mark on Eleusis.» — Muraresku recuerda que la tesis doctoral de Graf de 1974 trató el delirio y el frenesí en Eleusis; el verbatim se corta antes de la llamada de nota
«Though he’s no fan of the psychedelic hypothesis, Graf freely admits the irrational aspects of the rites that once belonged to Demeter and Persephone.» — la concesión que Muraresku obtiene de Graf: admite los aspectos irracionales del rito aunque rechace la hipótesis psicodélica
«“Indeed, it’s undoubted that the initiates in Eleusis could have had, let’s say, ecstatic experiences.» — la voz de Graf en la conversación, con su propio grado: experiencias extáticas, dice, son indudables
«Would he really have trained for a year and a half, fasted for days, and walked the half marathon from Athens to Eleusis—for a second time!—just to meet a metaphor?» — el argumento con que Muraresku objeta la lectura simbólica: nadie se prepara año y medio para encontrarse con una metáfora
«The classicist E. R. Dodds emphasizes the side effects of the original Dionysian sacrament that, very much like the kukeon of Eleusis, seems to have made life “livable” by drawing the human species and Mother Nature into a shared embrace: … a merging of the individual consciousness in a group consciousness: the worshipper θιασεύεται ψυχὰν [“joins his soul to the group”], he is at one not only with the Master of Life but with his fellow-worshippers; and he is at one also with the life of earth.» — Muraresku transcribe a E. R. Dodds sobre la fusión de la consciencia individual en una consciencia de grupo en el rito dionisiaco, con el griego que el propio Dodds cita
«Perhaps the founder of the National Resources Defense Council, Gus Speth, said it best: “I used to think the top environmental problems facing the world were global warming, environmental degradation and eco-system collapse, and that we scientists could fix those problems with enough science. But I was wrong. The real problem is not those three items, but greed, selfishness and apathy. And for that we need a spiritual and cultural transformation. And we scientists don’t know how to do that.”» — la voz de Gus Speth que Muraresku usa para enlazar crisis ecológica y transformación espiritual
«But maybe the Greeks did. Maybe the momentary annihilation of the ego that Praetextatus and his fellow initiates experienced at Eleusis, or the maenads found in the ecstasy of drugged wine, was enough to glimpse the big picture. To understand that the Earth is our solitary home for the moment. That we are all in this together. And that mistreating Mother Nature is more suicide than murder.» — la lectura ecológica que Muraresku propone de la aniquilación momentánea del yo, enunciada dos veces con maybe
«Alienation from nature and the loss of the experience of being part of the living creation is the greatest tragedy of our materialistic era. It is the causative reason for ecological devastation and climate change. Therefore I attribute absolute highest importance to consciousness change. I regard psychedelics as catalyzers for this. They are tools which are guiding our perception toward other deeper areas of human existence, so that we again become aware of our spiritual essence. Psychedelic experiences in a safe setting can help our consciousness open up to this sensation of connection and of being one with nature. LSD and related substances are not drugs in the usual sense, but are part of the sacred substances, which have been used for thousands of years in ritual settings.» — Muraresku transcribe el testamento que Hofmann dejó poco antes de morir en 2008: los psicodélicos como catalizadores de un cambio de consciencia y como sustancias sagradas antes que drogas; cita en bloque, tramo largo releído entero en el crudo
«“The Eleusinian Mysteries were closely connected with the rites and festivities in honor of the god Dionysus,” he wrote. “They led essentially to healing, to the transcendence of the division between humankind and nature—one might say to the abolition of the separation between creator and creation. This was the real, greater proposition of the Eleusinian Mysteries.”» — la formulación de Hofmann en el epílogo de la edición del trigésimo aniversario: el rito llevaba a trascender la división entre humanidad y naturaleza
«When I spoke to Graf, he focused on the neurochemical power of the endorphins that would have attended the initiates’ physical exhaustion after a ritual procession and several-day fast. He liked my buzz phrase, “an endogenously produced ecstatic experience.”» — la explicación alternativa de Graf que Muraresku consigna: endorfinas por agotamiento físico y ayuno, sin droga
«Despite that conviction and several dogged attempts over the past forty years, however, nobody has ever been able to successfully reproduce the alleged psychedelic beverage in the modern-day laboratory.» — el límite que Muraresku reconoce a la tesis que defiende: nadie ha logrado reproducir la bebida en laboratorio
«If one of those thirty ergot alkaloids really did the job, we still don’t know which one.» — la abstención con que Muraresku cierra el capítulo sobre la química del kukeon
«“The Eleusinian Mysteries and Christianity have so much in common. When I guide people through the threads of this archaeological site, I like to stress the similarities between ancient and modern,”» — la primera frase de Kalliope Papangeli, excavadora jefa de Eleusis, en la entrevista de Muraresku
«Papangeli is the chief excavator of Eleusis and the world’s expert on the original religion of Western civilization.» — las credenciales con que Muraresku presenta a su interlocutora
«She has shown me up close how key elements of the Ancient Mysteries never really disappeared. They merely stepped into the shoes of Christianity and kept marching forward.» — la tesis que Muraresku atribuye a la visita guiada de Papangeli: los elementos del misterio no desaparecieron sino que se calzaron los zapatos del cristianismo
«“In this ciste (κίστη),” explained Papangeli, using the original Greek word for a basket or hamper, “they carried the sacred things. They say that it was just some grain. Others believe inside the ciste were the small clay Mycenaean idols. Either way, it was something light. Because the priestesses had to transfer it to Athens and back, so it was something not very heavy.”» — Papangeli describe la cesta sagrada y lo que se dice que llevaba, con su propio grado: unos dicen grano, otros idolillos micénicos
«“Do you think some of the ingredients of the kukeon would have been in there?” “Maybe … maybe yes,” conceded Papangeli.» — el intercambio literal en que Papangeli concede como posible que la cesta llevara ingredientes del kukeon; el grado de la respuesta es el dato
«“You know, in the Orthodox Church, we» — la comparación que Papangeli introduce por su cuenta entre la cesta eleusina y la eucaristía ortodoxa; el tramo se corta donde el troceo reemite la marca de plana y sigue con las palabras *have a potion too*
«In addition Papangeli pointed out the enormous grain silo to our immediate left. “Every city of Greece sent part of its production of grain to the Sanctuary of Demeter,” she said, “because according to the legend, Demeter was the one who taught the people how to cultivate the earth.”» — Papangeli explica el silo de grano del santuario y la razón mítica del tributo de todas las ciudades griegas
«More than a farming lesson, Triptolemus’s travels across the ancient Mediterranean are referred to by Ruck as a “proselytizing mission” that was “analogous to that of Dionysus, as they both travel throughout the world on winged chariots drawn by serpents, spreading their respective gospels of the vine plant and the grain.» — según Muraresku, Ruck lee el viaje de Triptólemo como misión proselitista paralela a la de Dioniso
«The Holy Child Iacchus, clearly labeled as “Dionysos” (ΔΙΟNYΣΟΣ), is portrayed in processional line behind the prince.» — la pieza figurada con que Muraresku documenta la identificación de Yaco con Dioniso; la inscripción griega va tal como la imprime el libro
«If it’s the kukeon or a kukeon-like sacrament, does the gesture indicate that Demeter’s actual potion found its way to Ancient Greek colonists separated from the motherland, perhaps as far afield as Italy or sites even farther west? Would they have risked the goddess’s wrath by observing her holy rites outside the Eleusinian sanctuary?» — Muraresku formula como pregunta la posibilidad de que la poción viajara a las colonias griegas de Italia
«The next lesson in pagan continuity came a minute later, as Papangeli indicated the small boulder embedded in the ground on the very last steps of the Sacred Road that took initiates up a slight gradient to the now-vanished Temple of Demeter. “Maybe this is the Mirthless Rock,” the excavator instructed, referring to the so-called agelastos petra (ἀγέλαστος πέτρα), where Demeter was said to have sat in mourning, waiting for Persephone to return from the depths of hell.» — Papangeli señala en el terreno la Roca sin Risa, con el término griego que Muraresku transcribe
«“And here before the eyes of the initiates,” Papangeli continued, “we have the reunion of mother and daughter. It’s like we Christians have the Virgin Mother who lost her child.”» — la comparación que Papangeli hace por su cuenta entre el reencuentro de Deméter y Perséfone y la Virgen que pierde a su hijo
«“It’s interesting, isn’t it? The whole pagan continuity hypothesis. These universal themes that Christianity seems to have absorbed from Eleusis. You could say stole.” “Yes, many things they stole from Eleusis.”» — el intercambio en que Papangeli asiente a la hipótesis de la continuidad pagana y usa el verbo robar
«“Whatever they cannot extinguish … they keep. It’s a very clever technique.”» — la fórmula de Papangeli sobre el método de la Iglesia, que Muraresku retomará varias veces
«The ancient Mediterranean of the first century AD was a total melting pot. No faith is born in a vacuum. The Gospel writers and Saint Paul, perhaps even Jesus himself, would have found inspiration in the spiritual landscape of the time.» — el principio general con que Muraresku sostiene la continuidad: ninguna fe nace en el vacío
«“Those who have attended the celebration of a mass have witnessed the most ancient survival from a hoary antiquity,” he wrote.» — la frase del historiador Preserved Smith que Muraresku cita del Monist de 1918
«Smith put particular emphasis on the word “sacrament” (from the Latin sacramentum), which originally meant an “oath” or “solemn obligation.” By the early decades after Jesus’s death, however, it had already become the go-to translation for the Greek musterion (μυστήριον): “the initiation into holy secrets and magical practices characteristic of all the ‘mystery-religions,’ including Christianity.”» — el argumento léxico de Smith que Muraresku recoge: sacramentum tradujo el griego mysterion
«Smith identified an especially pagan influence on the so-called Gnostic churches of the time—the esoteric Christian sects that thrived in the second and third centuries AD, only to be condemned as heretical and erased from the history of the faith.» — Muraresku sitúa a las iglesias gnósticas como el punto de mayor influencia pagana según Smith
«“Gnostic” is derived from the Greek word gnosis (γνῶσις), meaning “knowledge.” But this is no ordinary learning. These Christians were after something far more profound than the rational, down-to-earth knowledge too often made synonymous with our Greek ancestors.» — la etimología de gnosis con que Muraresku distingue ese saber del conocimiento racional
«In The Gnostic Gospels, Pagels references many of the fifty-two Gnostic texts that were unearthed in Nag Hammadi, Egypt, like a massive time-bomb in 1945. Written in the Coptic language, a late form of Egyptian rendered in the Greek alphabet, the first full translations of the recovered “gospels” were not published until 1977.» — Muraresku consigna el hallazgo de Nag Hammadi de 1945 y la fecha de sus primeras traducciones completas
«Since then the Church has been forced to defend Archbishop Athenasius of Alexandria’s rabid call in AD 367 to “cleanse the church from every defilement” by rejecting these “apocryphal books” that are “filled with myths.”» — la carta de Atanasio de Alejandría del año 367 que Muraresku cita contra los libros apócrifos
«The bishop of what is now Lyon in southeastern France had determined in AD 170 that only four Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—were worthy of inclusion in the final New Testament. It was hard to argue with his unassailable logic: “there are only four principal winds, and four corners of the universe, and four pillars holding up the sky, so there can only be four gospels.”» — el argumento de Ireneo sobre los cuatro evangelios que Muraresku transcribe con ironía declarada
«According to Pagels, however, it was the “potentially subversive” impact of the Gnostic worldview that troubled Irenaeus and the other Church Fathers: “it claimed to offer to every initiate direct access to God of which the bishops and priests themselves might be ignorant.”» — según Muraresku, Pagels adjudica la reacción de Ireneo al carácter subversivo del acceso directo a dios
«In fact that’s exactly how one such Gnostic text, the Gospel of Thomas, opens its alternative account of Christianity’s founder: “whoever discovers the interpretation of these sayings shall not taste death.”» — la primera línea del Evangelio de Tomás en la traducción que Muraresku emplea
«Instead the Gnostics are invited to what Pagels calls “a state of transformed consciousness,” in which they gain unmediated, personal entry to the Kingdom of Heaven that is ordinarily denied to the uninitiated.» — la fórmula de Pagels sobre el estado de consciencia transformada que Muraresku enlaza con los misterios
«“Recognize what is before your eyes,” says the Gospel of Thomas, “and what is hidden will be revealed to you.”» — otra sentencia del Evangelio de Tomás que Muraresku cita
«Like the priestesses here at Eleusis, the Gnostic Jesus was encountered as a mentor on the path of self-discovery that Pagels compares to psychotherapy: “both acknowledge the need for guidance, but only as a provisional measure. The purpose of accepting authority is to learn to outgrow it.”» — la comparación de Pagels entre gnosis y psicoterapia, que Muraresku recoge: la autoridad se acepta para poder dejarla atrás
«It undercuts the uniqueness and originality of what is supposed to be Jesus’s singular intervention into human history, with a new and unprecedented» — Muraresku explica por qué la hipótesis resulta herética en ciertos círculos: mina la singularidad de la intervención de Jesús; el tramo se corta en el cambio de plana y sigue en la p. 97 con la alianza y el sacramento de la eucaristía
«The Greek language distinguishes between scientific or reflective knowledge (“He knows mathematics”) and knowing through observation or experience (“He knows me”), which is gnosis. As the Gnostics use the term, we could translate it as “insight,” for gnosis involves an intuitive process of knowing oneself. And to know oneself, they [the Gnostics] claimed, is to know human nature and human destiny … to know oneself, at the deepest level, is simultaneously to know God; this is the secret of gnosis.…» — Muraresku transcribe la definición de gnosis que Elaine Pagels dio en 1979, con su distinción entre saber reflexivo y saber por experiencia y su conclusión de que conocerse en lo más hondo es conocer a dios; tramo largo releído entero en el crudo
«the very canonical, straitlaced Gospel of Mark reveals in no uncertain terms why Jesus chose to fill his public ministry with so many of the enigmatic parables recorded in the New Testament—the Prodigal Son, the Rich Fool, the Mustard Seed. Why not speak plainly? “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the Kingdom of Heaven has been given to you, but not to them [the uninitiated].”» — el pasaje de Marcos sobre las parábolas que Muraresku lee como prueba de estructura mistérica en el cristianismo
«The word Mark uses for “secrets” is musteria (μυστήρια), the Mysteries. Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, first published in 1889, gives an even better definition: “religious secrets, confided only to the initiated and not to be communicated by them to ordinary mortals.”» — el argumento léxico de Muraresku, apoyado en el léxico de Thayer de 1889: la palabra de Marcos es la misma de los misterios
«Following the crucifixion, they [the Gnostics] allege that the risen Christ continued to reveal himself to certain disciples, opening to them, through visions, new insights into divine mysteries. Paul, referring to himself obliquely in the third person, says that he was “caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know.” There, in an ecstatic trance, he heard “things that cannot be told, which man may not utter.” Through his spiritual communication with Christ, Paul says he discovered “hidden mysteries” and “secret wisdom,” which, he explains, he shares only with those Christians he considers “mature,” but not with everyone.» — Muraresku transcribe a Pagels sobre las visiones postpascuales de los gnósticos y sobre el arrebato de Pablo al tercer cielo, con la reserva que el propio Pablo declara
«There’s little doubt that Christianity was born with all the trappings of a mystery cult. As the religion grew, however, the relationship between the initiated and uninitiated became a serious point of contention. Who should benefit from the young faith’s deepest secrets—the people or the priests?» — la tesis de Muraresku sobre el cristianismo como culto mistérico, y la pregunta con que la convierte en asunto político
«“Ah, this is interesting.” The archaeologist lit up. “A little Christian church, post-Byzantine, dedicated to our Virgin Mother. Mater Dolorosa also.”» — Papangeli identifica la capilla cristiana levantada sobre el santuario de Deméter
«“Yes,” Papangeli agreed. But there was more. “Her festival is also in the autumn. And the women of Eleusis come here bringing loaves of bread for the priest to bless.”» — el dato de continuidad ritual que Papangeli aporta: la fiesta otoñal y los panes que las mujeres de Eleusis llevan a bendecir
«Papangeli went on to explain how the chapel’s patroness, Panagia Mesosporitissa, literally means “Our Virgin of the Mid-Sowing.” In the Greek Orthodox Church the biography of the Virgin closely resembles the traditional growing season, making this specific Virgin the godmother of farmers.» — la etimología del nombre de la Virgen local que Papangeli explica, y su función agraria
«Mary is said to have died on August 15 and been buried on August 23, which coincides with the end of both the agricultural and liturgical calendars in Greece. It is then that “the Mother of God descends into the underworld, only to return in early autumn, when a new agrarian cycle begins.”» — el calendario mariano que Muraresku alinea con el ciclo de Perséfone: descenso al inframundo y retorno en otoño
«Many elements of the Mysteries remain. But gone is the vision, the inner transformation, and the personal responsibility for one’s own spiritual development. The fate of the soul has been placed in the hands of the priest.» — la diferencia que Muraresku marca entre la continuidad de las formas y la pérdida de la visión y de la responsabilidad personal
«It’s the longest-running old boys’ club in Western civilization. Blood brothers, sworn together as God’s bouncers, until the end of time.» — la fórmula con que Muraresku califica al sacerdocio; es juicio suyo y va con su voz
«“I wish you luck,” she teased me earlier on, “but let’s keep the Mysteries mysteries.”» — la posición de Papangeli sobre la investigación misma, dicha como broma
«When Ruck’s book was translated into modern Greek about a decade ago, Papangeli was the one who oversaw the translation. She has reviewed the old professor’s arguments in detail. And she’s proudly unconvinced.» — el dato que Muraresku aporta sobre la competencia de su interlocutora en el asunto, y su desacuerdo declarado
«“I don’t agree,” she states flatly, examining the cover. “Modern people find it hard to believe that the ancients could go to a higher spiritual condition without drinking some psychedelic.”» — la objeción de Papangeli a la hipótesis: la dificultad sería del lector moderno, no de los antiguos
«Plus, the anthropological record is full of countless, sometimes cruel, methods for achieving altered states of consciousness in the absence of psychoactive compounds. Consider the ritual ordeals so often present in traditional rites of passage: fasting, scarification, tattooing, body-piercing, fire-walking, beating, sleep and light deprivation, suspension in the air, amputation of fingers.» — la concesión de Muraresku a la explicación sin drogas: el repertorio de técnicas de éxtasis por privación y dolor
«Romanian scholar Mircea Eliade referred to them as the “archaic techniques of ecstasy,” employed since time immemorial in “tribal initiation rites” or “admission to a secret society.”» — Muraresku toma de Mircea Eliade la fórmula de las técnicas arcaicas del éxtasis; la obra no lleva ficha propia en este corpus todavía
«In 1962 Kerenyi called it the visio beatifica, or “beatific vision.” He borrowed the term that was “coined to designate the supreme goal” of Christianity: “those who obtain this vision are transported into a state of eternal beatitude.”» — Muraresku recoge el término con que Kerényi nombró la visión eleusina, tomado del vocabulario cristiano
«In the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, there is a marble plaque known as the Eukrates votive relief. Dating to the fifth century BC, it was found right here in Demeter’s temple. In the upper portion a goddess is depicted from the neck up, burnished rays of light emanating from her face. Below, two eerie, almond-shaped eyes stare back at us from across the millennia. Aside from a nose and eyebrows, the rest of the initiate’s face is completely missing. The Greek inscription at the bottom reads, “To Demeter, [from] Eukrates.”» — Muraresku describe el relieve votivo de Eucrates, del siglo V antes de Cristo, hallado en el templo de Deméter
«Kerenyi’s interpretation is provocative, if unprovable.» — la acotación con que Muraresku marca el estatuto de esa lectura
«At the climax of the Greek Orthodox ordination ceremony—when the magical, sacramental power is bestowed on the freshly ordained» — Muraresku describe el clímax de la ordenación ortodoxa, donde se confiere el poder sacramental; el tramo se corta en el cambio de plana y sigue en la p. 101 con la aclamación griega
«Kerenyi was comfortable with the comparison, however, given “the undeniable evidence that the epopteia conferred happiness.” And just like the Christian mystics blessed with “the immediate sight of God” in the» — el grado con que Kerényi sostuvo la comparación según Muraresku: la epopteia confería felicidad; el tramo se corta en el cambio de plana y sigue con la visión inmediata de dios de los místicos cristianos
«When its owner contemplated the head of the goddess, says Kerenyi, “he was probably reminded of the epiphany of Persephone” that cured his blindness.» — la lectura de Kerényi sobre el relieve que Muraresku transcribe; el verbatim se corta antes de la llamada de nota
«Her name was not supposed to be written down, so Eukrates replaced it with “Demeter” to safely record his visio beatifica for posterity.» — la explicación que Muraresku da de la sustitución del nombre: el de Perséfone no debía escribirse
«indistinguishable from those of sighted persons with respect to the elements that serve to define the classic NDE [near-death experience] pattern, such as the feelings of great peace and well-being that attend the experience, the sense of separation from the physical body, the experience of traveling through a tunnel or dark space, the encounter with the light, the life review, and so forth.» — la conclusión de Ring y Cooper que Muraresku transcribe: los relatos de los ciegos no se distinguen de los de personas videntes
«In his book Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences, Hopkins researcher William Richards takes note of the obvious: The literature on near-death experiences, reports of those who have entered into the physical processes of death and have been resuscitated, contains many intriguing stories to ponder that are often very similar to psychedelic experiences, complete with reports of moving through tunnels, encountering visionary beings, and being drawn toward sacred realms of light.» — Muraresku cita a William Richards sobre el parecido entre experiencias cercanas a la muerte y experiencias psicodélicas
«Rather than pitting Albert Hofmann and Fritz Graf against each other, isn’t it possible they’re both right? The Eleusinian initiates could have both suffered through the physical demands of a traditional rite of passage, and received a carefully dosed psychedelic potion to amplify whatever they experienced inside Demeter’s temple. The two theories aren’t mutually exclusive.» — la salida que Muraresku propone para la disputa: las dos explicaciones pueden convivir, y lo dice sin arbitrar
«Demeter and Dionysus are gods of important mysteries; the drinking of the barley potion or the drinking of wine are central ceremonies. Yet to derive mysteries from agrarian magic is at best a conjecture about prehistory.… It may rather be asked, even without the prospect of a certain answer, whether at the basis of the mysteries there were prehistoric drug rituals, some festival of immortality which, through the expansion of consciousness, seemed to guarantee some psychedelic Beyond.… A ritual can persist when the original drug has long been forgotten and replaced by harmless substances. Perhaps the night of the mysteries was not so very different from an Orthodox Easter festival or a Western Christmas.» — el pasaje de Walter Burkert que Muraresku considera clave y dice que la historiografía pasó por alto: cabe preguntar, dice Burkert, si en la base de los misterios hubo rituales prehistóricos de drogas; cita en bloque, tramo largo releído entero en el crudo
«“Did you know there’s an appendix in this edition dedicated to what Kerenyi calls ‘the pharmacological question’?”» — Muraresku descubre a Papangeli que Kerényi dedicó un apéndice a lo que llamó la cuestión farmacológica
«Instead of ergot, Kerenyi was focused on the kukeon’s third ingredient from the Hymn to Demeter, mint. Today it’s called Mentha pulegium. What species the Greeks had in mind with blechon (βλήχων), we’re not entirely sure. So the Teutonic scholar looked to a modern-day equivalent, with broad application from North Africa to Central Europe. He believed a form of pennyroyal could have been involved in the Mysteries; its oil and leaves known to possess medicinal properties.» — la vía alternativa de Kerényi: el poleo y no el cornezuelo como principio activo del kukeon
«Kerenyi quotes a personal letter he received from Hofmann at some point in the mid-1960s: “The principal ingredient of the poley oil (Oleum pulegii), prepared as an aromatic in southern Europe and obtained in distilling the wild plant [Mentha pulegium] is the aromatic substance pulegone.… In large doses it induces delirium, loss of consciousness, and spasms.» — la carta de Hofmann que Kerényi transcribe sobre la pulegona del aceite de poleo, con sus efectos a dosis altas
«It is possible that the kykeon at Eleusis conferred not only the “initial thrust” but also the necessary inner peace and perhaps still other prerequisites of the vision. Dr. Hofmann’s words are: “The volatile oils contained in poley oil (Oleum pulegii) might very well, added to the alcoholic content of the kykeon, have produced hallucinations in persons whose sensibility was heightened by fasting.”» — el compromiso que Muraresku ve entre Kerényi y Hofmann: el kykeon habría dado el empujón inicial y quizá también las alucinaciones en personas sensibilizadas por el ayuno
«“Do you think Eleusis could have started as a ‘prehistoric drug ritual,’ as Burkert calls it?” I ask. “Yes,” she replies with no hesitation. “Maybe it started as an agrarian festival, and then later it begins to have these eschatological meanings for the afterlife.”» — la concesión que Papangeli hace en la entrevista: acepta un origen prehistórico con droga y una eschatologización posterior
«“But by the time that prehistoric festival came here to Eleusis, it lost the drug? So the kukeon was nothing more than a harmless potion?” “Yes,” she agrees again.» — la segunda parte de la concesión de Papangeli: para cuando el rito llegó a Eleusis el kukeon ya sería inocuo
«The limitations of traditional archaeology —especially in deciphering the drinking, feasting, and other ritual habits of ancient cultures—have become all too apparent. Pioneering excavators are increasingly looking to other specialties to support their craft, resulting in the rapid growth of a scrappy, young discipline called archaeological chemistry.» — el giro metodológico con que Muraresku cierra la primera parte de su indagación: la química arqueológica
«scientists are now able to identify what our ancient ancestors were drinking by extracting the chemical signatures from organic residue that has either survived intact within excavated vessels, or been absorbed into the porous matrices of their ceramic pottery.» — la explicación técnica que Muraresku da de esa disciplina: firmas químicas de residuos absorbidos en la cerámica
«The age of speculation is over.» — la frase con que Muraresku declara cerrado el tiempo de la conjetura, aislada como párrafo propio
«“We have the ambition to find a kernos with something inside, so we can really have an experiment,”» — lo que Papangeli declara querer encontrar, y que Muraresku registra como apertura de la escéptica al análisis químico
«The phenomenon is almost identical to the visio beatifica witnessed by Gordon Wasson during his psilocybin trip in Mexico back in 1955: “the visions came whether our eyes were open or closed.”» — Muraresku alinea esos relatos con el de Wasson en México de 1955
«Quoting an ancient author, Kerenyi lists the produce that may have once filled the peripheral containers: “sage, white poppy-seeds, grains of wheat and barley, peas, vetches, okraseeds, lentils, beans, rice-wheat, oats, compressed fruit, honey, oil, wine, milk, egg, and unwashed wool.”» — el inventario antiguo del kernos que Kerényi transcribe, mucho más detallado que el himno; la grafía okraseeds es la que imprime el troceo
«An unruly mix that provides much more detail than the Hymn to Demeter, though Ruck thinks the kernos was largely symbolic. Its shape, moreover, would have made it “ungainly as a drinking vessel.”» — la objeción de Ruck que Muraresku recoge: el kernos sería simbólico y poco práctico para beber
«More probably it was used as a “chalice containing some important ingredient for the mixing ceremony” that took place in the temple below, perhaps ergotized barley or magic mint.» — la función alternativa que Muraresku propone para el kernos, con sus dos candidatos
«“So why haven’t you tested them yet?” “Because they were treated … cleaned. This is why. Of course, we have more in the storerooms,” she adds. “But they were also treated for conservation.”» — la razón que Papangeli da para que las vasijas de Eleusis no se hayan analizado: fueron limpiadas y tratadas para su conservación
«“They were all excavated a hundred years ago? And you haven’t found any since?” “I don’t excavate inside the site any longer. We excavate outside, within the modern city of Eleusis, which sits over the ancient city. We find graves and such things.”» — el dato que cierra esa vía: no se excava dentro del recinto desde hace un siglo
«and Sharon Cooper, surveyed thirty-one blind respondents, including those blind from birth. The vast majority reported crisp, detailed visual awareness during their moment of crisis.» — el estudio de 1997 de Kenneth Ring y Sharon Cooper sobre experiencias cercanas a la muerte en personas ciegas que Muraresku pone al lado de la visión eleusina; el verbatim arranca después del cambio de plana, que parte el nombre de los autores
«And just like the near-death X-ray vision of the Inuit shamans who could “see through the darkness” and plumb “the Land of the Dead,”» — Muraresku empareja la visión de Wasson con la de los chamanes inuit; el verbatim se corta antes de la palabra que el troceo parte a fin de renglón, *hyper-realistic*
«mental images unleashed by the psilocybin gave Wasson the distinct impression that he had been liberated from the physical body: “a disembodied eye, invisible, incorporeal, seeing but not seen.”» — la fórmula del ojo descarnado con que Wasson describió su salida del cuerpo, en la cita que da Muraresku
«one of the principal credos in archaeology could not go unmentioned: to dig is to destroy. The modern excavations that began here in 1882 may have been methodical compared to what came before, but any poking around the site is inherently destructive.» — el principio arqueológico que Muraresku recuerda para explicar el estado de los hallazgos de Eleusis
«“Why don’t you want to solve this thing?” “We have different aims, Brian.”» — la respuesta de Papangeli a la pregunta de por qué no quiere resolver el enigma
«“Everybody likes a mystery. It was the mystery that attracted you to this story, wasn’t it? So let the next generations be attracted to the mystery as well,”» — el argumento con que Papangeli defiende el secreto, y que Muraresku deja sin objetar
«all the ancient testimony from Plato, Pindar, Sophocles, Cicero, and Praetextatus indicates that two millennia’s worth of initiates flocked here for a compelling reason.» — el argumento de Muraresku contra la lectura de la continuidad como rito vacío: dos milenios de peregrinos tuvieron un motivo
«Perhaps the question is no longer whether mind-altering potions were used in the kinds of rituals that preceded Eleusis. But when, if ever, Burkert’s “original drug” had been “forgotten and replaced” by a» — el desplazamiento de la pregunta con que Muraresku cierra la entrevista: no si hubo droga sino cuándo dejó de haberla; el tramo se corta en el cambio de plana
«Toward the end of the last Ice Age, long before the Trojan War, the ancient land now known as Turkey was famous for something else. The birth of religion itself.» — el traslado geográfico que abre el capítulo siguiente: de Grecia a Anatolia y al nacimiento de la religión
«In 1953, J. D. Sauer from the University of Wisconsin’s Department of Botany proposed the only sensible answer: beer. Unlike his colleague and leading scholar of Middle East prehistory, Robert Braidwood of the University of Chicago, Sauer believed that the Natufians—who lived in what is now Syria, Israel, and Jordan from about 13,000 to 9500 BC—brewed a primitive beer before they ever baked the first loaf of bread.» — Muraresku presenta el debate cerveza contra pan y la posición de J. D. Sauer de 1953
«Contrary to the prevailing view at the time, it was not man who domesticated wild grain, but the other way around. And according to Sauer, the first farmers did not lure the passing hunters and gatherers into their risky agricultural endeavor with a dry piece of stale bread. It must have been a mind-altering potion.» — la inversión que Muraresku toma de Sauer: el grano domesticó al hombre, y el señuelo fue una poción
«“That is one of the major mistakes people are making if they think about former beer-making. It doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with heat. Just take the cereal and put it in water. That’s it.”» — la voz del cervecero Martin Zarnkow en la entrevista sobre lo simple que era la cerveza antigua
«“Yes, the yeast is coming from your hand,” replies the brewer. “And there’s really enough to kick-start the fermentation process?” “Yeah, you have enough. If the yeast is active and vital enough, then fermentation will start. Because our body has an entire microbiome on the skin.”» — la explicación de Zarnkow sobre de dónde salía la levadura
«As the diet became less diverse and balanced, reduced to just “a few starchy crops,” our overall health deteriorated. We grew noticeably shorter. And because of the crowded, unsanitary conditions that brought the former foragers into extended contact with each other and their filthy animals for the first time, parasites and infectious disease ran amok. Which is why historian Jared Diamond has referred to the Agricultural Revolution as “the worst mistake in the history of the human race.”» — los costos de la revolución agrícola que Muraresku enumera, con el juicio de Jared Diamond
«If the brewing of beer really preceded the baking of bread, then the mysterious origins of the poorly understood Agricultural Revolution would be rewritten as the Beer Revolution.» — la consecuencia que Muraresku saca en condicional: la revolución agrícola sería revolución cervecera
«Whatever made us abandon the caves for the cities would almost certainly have carried religious meaning, promoting beer from an everyday beverage to a sacrament.» — el paso de bebida cotidiana a sacramento que Muraresku propone, con su grado de casi certeza
«According to Hayden’s “feasting model,” as the earliest agrarian settlements grew and competed for the manual labor needed to sustain them, whoever threw the best keg parties stood to gain a loyal following.» — el modelo del banquete de Brian Hayden que Muraresku recoge como explicación social de la cerveza
«If beer really is the oldest biotechnology, it could very well be responsible for what archaeologists call “one of the most significant turning points in the history of mankind.”» — el alcance que Muraresku da al debate: la cerveza como causa posible del giro mayor de la historia humana; el verbatim se corta antes de la llamada de nota
«then altered states of consciousness have played a much bigger role in the development of our species than previously acknowledged.» — la consecuencia para su propia tesis: si se bebía cerveza hace doce mil años, los estados alterados pesan más de lo reconocido en la evolución de la especie
«archaeologist Li Liu examined three limestone mortars from a Natufian burial chamber in modern-day Mt. Carmel, just outside Haifa, Israel. Between 11,700 and 9700 BC, about thirty individuals were interred in the Raqefet Cave.» — Muraresku presenta el estudio de Li Liu sobre los morteros de la cueva de Raqefet, en el monte Carmelo
«For the Stanford team, the results are conclusive evidence that the stone mortars were used for brewing beer, “the earliest known experiment in making fermented beverages in the world.”» — la conclusión que Muraresku atribuye al equipo de Stanford sobre los morteros de Raqefet
«But at the Raqefet Cave this Stone Age brew was a craft recipe, “probably with legumes and other plants as additive ingredients.”» — la acotación sobre la receta: no era cerveza simple sino mezcla con legumbres y otras plantas
«Interestingly Liu says that the Natufians consciously incorporated this graveyard beer into their “mortuary rituals to venerate the dead,” demonstrating “the emotional ties the hunter-gatherers had with their ancestors.”» — según Muraresku, Li Liu adjudica a la cerveza un lugar en los ritos funerarios natufienses
«The primary indication of beer fermentation is a tough precipitate known as calcium oxalate, or beerstone.» — el marcador químico que Zarnkow busca para probar fermentación
«And if calcium oxalate were discovered in a deeply spiritual setting like the Raqefet Cave, it would also establish a sacramental link, however delicate, between prehistoric beer and the psychoactive kukeon at Eleusis.» — el eslabón que Muraresku propone en condicional entre la cerveza prehistórica y el kukeon
«Rediscovered by the late Klaus Schmidt of the German Archaeological Institute in 1994, the temple has been confidently dated to the end of the last Ice Age—a stunning twelve thousand years ago, contemporaneous with the Natufians. But dozens of T-shaped pillars were erected at Göbekli Tepe, unlike the prehistoric sites in Israel. It is the earliest megalithic architecture in the world.» — Muraresku fecha Göbekli Tepe y lo presenta como la arquitectura megalítica más antigua conocida
«Schmidt once called them “very powerful beings,” possibly ancestors or deities: “if gods existed in the minds of early Neolithic people, there is an overwhelming probability that the T-shape is the first known monumental depiction of gods.”» — la lectura de Klaus Schmidt sobre los pilares en forma de T, con el grado que él mismo le pone
«To put Göbekli Tepe in context, its megaliths predate Stonehenge by at least six thousand years. They predate the first literate civilizations of Egypt, Sumer, India, and Crete by even more.» — la escala temporal con que Muraresku sitúa el hallazgo
«For his part Schmidt believed Göbekli Tepe was a sacred burial ground for a lost society of hunters—“the center of a death cult.”» — la interpretación de Schmidt sobre la función del recinto
«At Göbekli Tepe the archaeological team sees unique evidence of a “skull cult”: human crania with “repeated and substantial cutting” performed just after death.» — el culto al cráneo que el equipo arqueológico describe en el yacimiento
«Echoing Hayden’s “feasting model,” the excavators envision the sanctuary hosting “collective work events,” complete with ritual dancing that might induce an “altered state of consciousness.” And, of course, a graveyard beer to match the potion at the Raqefet Cave, perhaps allowing “ecstatic” communion with the ancestors.» — lo que los excavadores proponen según Muraresku: trabajo colectivo, danza y un estado alterado de consciencia con comunión extática con los antepasados
«If further chemical analysis confirms the fermentation of beer in the Fertile Crescent, then it means the Agricultural Revolution was, in fact, the Beer Revolution. And civilization itself may have begun with a ritual potion.» — la condición explícita con que Muraresku enuncia su conclusión: si el análisis químico lo respalda
«Some of the microremains were found to “exhibit distinctive damage features typical of malting,” when the raw grain receives enough moisture to germinate, producing the enzymes needed for the brewing» — los indicios de malteado que el equipo de Li Liu describe en los morteros; el tramo se corta en el cambio de plana y sigue en la p. 116 con los signos de maceración
«Others appeared hollowed out and swollen, telltale signs of “gelatinization due to mashing,” when the starch chains in the malt are broken down and the fermentable sugars released.» — la segunda mitad del hallazgo: los signos de gelatinización por maceración, con la explicación técnica que Muraresku añade
«It was once thought that farming preceded the city, which in turn preceded the temple. God was supposed to come last, once our archaic ancestors had enough time on their hands to contemplate such impractical things. Schmidt’s “cathedral on a hill,” however, demonstrates the exact opposite.» — la inversión que Muraresku saca del yacimiento; el verbatim se corta antes de la llamada de nota
«Religion wasn’t a by-product of civilization. It was the engine.» — la formulación más breve de esa inversión, que es la tesis del capítulo
«Zarnkow and the team from the German Archaeological Institute unveiled the results of their chemical analysis on the “grayish-black residues” found in six enormous limestone basins scattered throughout the site. Some are rounded like barrels, others more square like troughs. Dating to the ninth millennium and considered “static, integral parts of particular rooms,” the barrels and troughs could accommodate forty-two gallons of liquid.» — Muraresku presenta el análisis químico que Zarnkow y el Instituto Arqueológico Alemán hicieron de seis pilas de caliza de Göbekli Tepe
«“I would say it’s inconclusive,” Zarnkow tells me, alluding to the promising but mixed results of his laboratory analysis. Using what’s known as a Feigl spot test, the beer scientist added a drop of chemical reagent to various samples taken by the field team at Göbekli Tepe. When calcium oxalate is present, the residue changes color. In the first round, none of the samples tested positive. In the second, there was one signal indicating beerstone, followed by another two signals in the third round.» — el resultado que Zarnkow declara sobre sus propias pruebas de oxalato de calcio: no concluyente, con una y luego dos señales en las rondas segunda y tercera
«“You need really sterile conditions—absolutely sterile—when you take these samples. And this is ten thousand years ago! So it’s really not that easy. But we just have to repeat the tests.”» — la razón que Zarnkow da para repetir el muestreo: la esterilidad de la toma
«a shared notion of pilgrimage, and an apparent obsession with the afterlife, this prehistoric tradition from Anatolia in modern-day Turkey could very well have laid the groundwork for Eleusis, just west across the Aegean Sea.» — el puente que Muraresku tiende entre Anatolia y Eleusis, formulado en condicional
«The Stone Age inhabitants of Turkey did not just influence the Stone Age inhabitants of Greece. They became the Greeks.» — el resultado genético con que Muraresku responde a su primera pregunta sobre la transmisión
«If anybody was going to smuggle drugs into Europe, it was the Proto-Indo-Europeans who exported the soma to India—that Vedic elixir explicitly characterized by Watkins as “hallucinogenic.”» — el argumento que Muraresku construye sobre el soma para sostener que la droga viajó también al oeste
«For some reason Western scholars are not so scandalized by the prospect of ancient Indians doing drugs. The eastern branch of our Indo-European family seems exotic and far-off, unconnected to our Greek foundations.» — la asimetría que Muraresku señala en la recepción académica: la India exótica se acepta, Grecia no
«Most linguists support the theory that places the genesis of the Proto-Indo-Europeans somewhere in the prehistoric steppes north of the Black and Caspian Seas, where southern Russia separates modern-day Ukraine and Kazakhstan.» — Muraresku expone la hipótesis mayoritaria sobre la patria indoeuropea antes de oponerle la de Renfrew
«As part of his Anatolian Hypothesis, first published in 1987, the respected archaeologist Colin Renfrew of Cambridge University tried to pinpoint the actual mechanism that would have allowed the earliest Indo-Europeans to replace existing languages so successfully over such a wide geographic area, from Iceland to Siberia to Sri Lanka.» — la hipótesis anatolia de Colin Renfrew que Muraresku prefiere, con el problema que Renfrew se plantea
«More than 75 percent of the DNA retrieved from nineteen ancient Minoan and Mycenaean specimens belonged to “the first Neolithic farmers” from Anatolia, who apparently began seeding Greece in the seventh millennium BC— four thousand years earlier than the traditional dating of the Minoans.» — el dato genético de 2017 que Muraresku alinea con la hipótesis anatolia
«If the Proto-Indo-European homeland has been spotted at long last, then whatever sacrament came from Anatolia could be regarded as the likely source, however distant, for both the Greek kukeon and the Indian soma.» — la consecuencia condicional que Muraresku saca del dato: un sacramento anatolio como fuente común del kukeon y del soma
«I had a long, productive phone call with Patrick McGovern, the director of the Biomolecular Archaeology Project at the University of Pennsylvania.» — Muraresku presenta a Patrick McGovern, arqueoquímico, como su otra autoridad de laboratorio
«That find came in the early 1990s, from a wide-mouthed fifty-liter jug unearthed at the Neolithic site of Godin Tepe in Iran, an historically significant trading post with links to the west among the Mesopotamian city-states of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley. The beerstone dated to as early as 3500 BC.» — el récord de McGovern en oxalato de calcio que Muraresku consigna
«The equivalent chemical signature for wine fermentation is tartaric acid. In 2017 McGovern would spot the earliest Eurasian evidence for that compound in Georgia, from around 6000 BC.» — el marcador químico del vino y la fecha más antigua que McGovern le encontró en Georgia
«It tested positive for elements of a blended grog consisting of barley beer, grape wine, and honey mead. Because of a similar beverage he had recently identified on Crete in “incredibly large numbers” within “cultic contexts,” McGovern called it a “Minoan ritual cocktail.”» — el resultado que McGovern obtuvo de la jarra micénica, y el nombre que le puso a la mezcla
«The results were a somewhat predictable mix of calcium oxalate (beer), tartaric acid (wine), and potassium gluconate (mead)—the same “Minoan ritual cocktail” enjoyed by the Mycenaeans centuries earlier on the other side of the Aegean.» — el mismo cóctel hallado en el túmulo de Gordion, en Anatolia, ocho siglos después
«The pharmacological properties of this brew—whether analgesic or psychoactive is unclear, but certainly exceeding what can be attributed to a high alcohol content—is implied in the Nestor account, as well as elsewhere in Homer (e.g., when Circe changed Odysseus’ companions into pigs with kykeon and a pharmaka in Odyssey 10:229-43).… The main point is that the mixed fermented beverage or “Minoan ritual cocktail,” which has now been identified chemically, probably bears some relationship to the kykeon of Greek heroic times.» — Muraresku transcribe la reserva declarada de McGovern: las propiedades farmacológicas de la mezcla exceden lo atribuible al alcohol, y probablemente guarda relación con el kykeon
«Although he has not yet found an overt psychedelic signal in these samples, even McGovern himself has to wonder about the mind-altering punch of the Greek graveyard beer:» — la acotación con que Muraresku enmarca esa cita: McGovern no ha hallado señal psicodélica explícita
«these earliest Indo-Europeans may have fanned out from the Fertile Crescent with valuable knowledge to share. The technology of farming could have prompted a smoother, more sustainable process of acculturation.» — el mecanismo pacífico que Renfrew propone según Muraresku: difusión agrícola y no invasión violenta
«It’s impossible to draw a straight line from Göbekli Tepe to Crete to» — el límite que Muraresku se reconoce al cerrar el argumento prehistórico; el tramo se corta en el cambio de plana y sigue con Micenas y Eleusis y con la declaración de que diez mil años de historia no se resuelven así
«Ten thousand years of labyrinthine history are not so easily resolved. But the chemical confirmation of a beer-based potion within a funerary context does potentially connect “the world’s first temple” in Stone Age Anatolia to the “ritual cocktail” of the Minoans and Mycenaeans, not to mention King Midas—a staggering eight thousand years later.» — la continuación de esa acotación: lo que la química sí conecta y con qué salto temporal
«Was a low-alcohol, lukewarm Budweiser really to credit for the Agricultural Revolution? If the first farmers were drinking their crop instead of eating it, they probably had a good reason.» — la pregunta con que Muraresku vuelve al asunto de la droga después del capítulo cervecero
«“In principle, I would believe that. Because it is impossible to have sterile conditions on the fields. Mutterkorn still happens. Today it’s easy to separate. But before it was not so easy. And in addition to the Mutterkorn, we have these micro-organisms on the surface of the cereals as well. They have an influence on every attribute of the grain.» — la respuesta de Zarnkow a la pregunta sobre cornezuelo deliberado en la cerveza antigua: en principio lo creería, porque no hay campos estériles
«Albert Hofmann, the father of LSD, included several in The Road to Eleusis, testifying to the parasite’s age-old relationship with grains: Rockenmutter, Afterkorn, Todtenkorn, and Tollkorn.» — los nombres alemanes del cornezuelo que Hofmann recogió, y que Muraresku usa para sostener que su hipótesis no era ajena a su lengua
«“In German folklore, there was a belief that, when the corn waved in the wind,” Hofmann once wrote, “the corn mother (a demon) was passing through the field, her children were the rye wolves (ergot).”» — la leyenda alemana que Hofmann cita sobre la madre del grano y los lobos del centeno
«Hofmann thought the word Tollkorn (mad grain), in particular, demonstrated a “folk awareness” of the “psychotropic effects of ergot”—“deeply rooted in European traditions.”» — la lectura de Hofmann sobre esa palabra como conciencia popular de los efectos psicotrópicos del cornezuelo
«“But these guys were professionals,” continues Zarnkow, referring to the prehistoric brewers, “and the ones who knew about medicines and such things could do a controlled contamination of Mutterkorn. So if we’ve had beers for feasting, and beers for medicine, why not this special type of drink? I totally believe we’ve had beers like that before.”» — la declaración de Zarnkow que Muraresku buscaba: los cerveceros prehistóricos pudieron hacer una contaminación controlada de cornezuelo
«Up until the sixteenth century, the local beer was a complex blend of plants, herbs, and spices—“its composition being a mystery for the common people, and in any event a trade secret for the privileged manufacturer.”» — el precedente moderno que Muraresku alega: la cerveza gruit como mezcla compleja y secreto de fabricación
«Before being strictly limited to its three essential parts—barley, water, and hops—beer of the era was a “highly intoxicating” recipe, “narcotic, aphrodisiacal, and psychotropic when consumed in sufficient quantity.” Some have used the word “hallucinogenic.”» — los efectos que Muraresku atribuye a la cerveza anterior a la ley de pureza, con la fuente marcada como algunos
«The gruit trade meant big money, and the Catholic Church enforced “a veritable ecclesiastical monopoly” on its taxable cash cow.» — el monopolio eclesiástico sobre el gruit que Muraresku consigna
«At its core the Bavarian push for tax-free hops was a spiritual protest against the perceived greed and self-indulgence of the Vatican’s clergy and their drugged beer.» — la lectura que Muraresku hace de la ley de pureza de 1516 como protesta espiritual contra la cerveza drogada del clero
«We know for a chemical fact that a Greek brew was circulating around the ancient Aegean. Because of recent analyses at the Raqefet Cave and Göbekli Tepe, there is strong data to suggest that elixir had Stone Age roots. And I now have it on good authority from the world’s preeminent beer scientist, here in the heart of Bavaria, that ancient brewmasters could very well have concocted a psychedelic potion spiked with ergot. But it’s gotten us no closer to a definitive answer at Eleusis.» — el balance que Muraresku hace al cerrar el capítulo, con la deuda reconocida sobre Eleusis
«“It’s purpureum,” adds Zarnkow, citing the Latin word for “purple” or “blackish” and the color of ergot’s darkened sclerotium, the slender, hardened mass that protrudes from the grain like a horn or spur. Hence the fungus’s modern classification: Claviceps purpurea.» — Zarnkow reconoce el cornezuelo en pantalla por su color y da la etimología del nombre científico
«So maybe it wasn’t the grain that was the focus of Triptolemus’s roaming lesson, but what grows on the grain. And how the ergot and humanity’s “first pets” could be manipulated through Zarnkow’s “controlled contamination” to deliver a potion that promised immortality.» — la reinterpretación que Muraresku propone del mito de Triptólemo: no la agricultura sino lo que crece sobre el grano
«If the kukeon made it outside the sacred precinct in Eleusis, then hard archaeobotanical evidence of the ritual drink should have survived somewhere in the vast Greek-speaking world of the ancient Mediterranean. And if Wasson, Hofmann, and Ruck were right about ergot as the active ingredient, then there should be evidence of that too.» — la condición probatoria que Muraresku se impone para la segunda mitad de la Parte Uno
«No matter how advanced your Ancient Greek, if something turns up at an archaeological site in a remote corner of the Mediterranean with a shunned modern language, the professionals might never hear about it. Nor the public, for that matter. Sometimes the evidence has to just sit there, waiting twenty years for somebody to take notice.» — el argumento de lengua con que Muraresku explica por qué el hallazgo catalán pasó inadvertido
«Ever since my meeting with Martin Zarnkow in Germany, I’ve been emailing with Dr. Enriqueta Pons, the former head of this museum and longtime director of excavations at an archaeological site thirty minutes to the north called Mas Castellar de Pontós.» — Muraresku presenta a Enriqueta Pons y el yacimiento de Mas Castellar de Pontós
«In 2008 a ceramic kernos was unearthed during ongoing excavations. It is a colonial variation of the very same vessels that were used to mix the kukeon, now on display in the Archaeological Museum of Eleusis.» — el hallazgo del kernos de Ampurias, que Muraresku empareja con los vasos de Eleusis
«The curators believe the discovery of many such vessels in this region of Spain is intriguing evidence of an ancient mystery cult linked to Demeter and Persephone.» — la lectura que los conservadores dan a esos vasos según Muraresku
«leading Pons to identify the head as Demeter or Persephone (sometimes called Kore). The archaeologist says the cave-like silo, once used to stockpile grain, had been converted into a sacred subterranean chamber.» — la identificación que Pons propone para la cabeza de terracota y su lectura del silo como cámara sagrada
«It is strangely reminiscent of the hollowed-out rock shelter below the Greek Orthodox Church overlooking the ruins of Eleusis, where Persephone was said to emerge from Hades during the reenactment of the Mysteries.» — el paralelo que Muraresku traza entre el silo catalán y el Ploutonion de Eleusis
«It’s the same Triptolemus on the same winged, snake-drawn chariot that I saw during my visit to the Archaeological Museum of Eleusis. No different from the Triptolemus pictured on the British Museum skyphos from Capua, Italy. What is he doing here in Spain?» — la pregunta con que Muraresku enmarca el hallazgo del kalathos de Sant Julià de Ramis
«According to Demetriou, religion in a cosmopolitan capital like Emporion was “more flexible” than back home in Greece, which meant the “usual exclusivity of cult” wasn’t always so strictly enforced.» — el argumento que Muraresku necesita: en las colonias la exclusividad del culto se aplicaba con menos rigor
«According to classicist François de Polignac, underworld cults like Demeter’s, with her “agrarian or even funerary connotations,” had a universal quality. Like the prehistoric skull cult from Anatolia, the Mysteries promised “a temporary return to a more primitive life and a period before the establishment of the city.”» — la lectura de François de Polignac sobre el carácter universal de los cultos ctónicos que Muraresku recoge
«One of the larger units measures almost 250 square feet and is described by Pons as a “domestic chapel” for an “agrarian cult.”» — la capilla doméstica que Pons identifica en la casa del asentamiento
«The archaeologist calls it a “shared space” for the human to come into contact with the divine, or the dead to speak to the living.» — la función que Pons atribuye a esa capilla, en la formulación que Muraresku transcribe
«In the very center of the room Pons discovered a large, rectangular hearth. She uses the Greek word eschara (ἐσχάρα).» — el hogar central de la capilla y el término griego que Pons emplea para nombrarlo
«Pieces of an elegantly carved column of Pentelic marble, complete with an Ionic capital, were reassembled to form a two-foot altar. On top, a rectangular cavity, charred by flames, showed signs of knife and axe cuttings—evidence of “bloody sacrifice.”» — el altar de mármol pentélico y los indicios de sacrificio cruento que Pons describe
«All together, Pons interprets the “domestic chapel” as a holy place where dog sacrifice was combined with ceremonial purifications and ritual drinking.» — la interpretación de conjunto que Pons da a la capilla: sacrificio de perros, purificación y bebida ritual
«As the mother of Circe and patron goddess of witchcraft, Hecate had a number of canine epithets: the “dog consumer” (kunosphages/κυνοσφαγής), the “dog leader” (kunegetis/κυνηγέτης), the “dog lover” (philoskulax/φιλοσκύλαξ), and the “black bitch” (kuon melaina/κύων μέλαινα).» — los epítetos caninos de Hécate que Muraresku enumera, con el griego tal como el libro lo imprime
«In one of the excavated silos, numbered 101, Pons discovered the disembodied terra-cotta head of a female deity.» — el hallazgo del silo 101 que abre el capítulo catalán; el verbatim se corta antes de la llamada de nota
«Deposited with her was an unguentarium, or oil container, which is elsewhere associated with graveyards. The vestiges of a firepit were identified, with three different types of wood: silver fir, oak, and Scotch pine. Each of the species grows in the mountains, some distance from the archaeological site. Mixed in with the trees were the remains of olive, millet, and barley.» — el resto del depósito del silo 101 según Pons, con las maderas y los granos que Muraresku enumera
«Though she doesn’t write about Mas Castellar de Pontós in any detail, Dr. Denise Demetriou at the University of California, San» — Muraresku presenta a Denise Demetriou, que describe Ampurias como centro económico y medio multiétnico; el tramo se corta en el cambio de plana
«Diego, does describe Emporion as both a “major economic center” and a “multiethnic environment,” whose “very existence stimulated cross-cultural interactions with the indigenous populations.”» — la caracterización de Ampurias que Muraresku toma de Demetriou; el verbatim arranca en la segunda mitad del topónimo, que el troceo parte en el cambio de plana
«In the Hymn to Demeter, Hecate, with her “blazing torches,” is the only goddess who aids Demeter on the desperate search for her missing daughter. And she alone can accompany Persephone through the land of the dead.» — el papel de Hécate en el himno que Muraresku subraya para ligarla a los misterios
«Throughout her career, Pons’s unwavering decision to write in Catalan has been a rebellious act that puts her scholarship at serious risk of being ignored by the global academic community, where the lingua franca in Classics, history, and archaeology is English, French, or German.» — el argumento de lengua con que Muraresku explica el aislamiento de la obra de Pons
«Mixed in with the charred barley and animal remains was a spectacular bell-shaped krater, or vase, featuring a komos: the ritualistic nocturnal procession named after the son and cupbearer of Dionysus.» — el crátera del silo 137 con el komos dionisiaco, que Muraresku suma al inventario eleusino del yacimiento
«Looking back over the past thirty years of Pons’s excavations, the intersection of the Eleusinian Mysteries and Mas Castellar de Pontós is overpowering: the twenty-five hundred grain silos; the terra-cotta head and incense burner depicting Demeter/Persephone; the ceramic vessel of their chief missionary, Triptolemus; the drunken symposium on the Dionysian vase; abundant evidence of underworld offerings and dog sacrifice within the “domestic chapel” and subterranean pits, all closely related to the goddesses’ sidekick, Hecate. The entire Eleusinian cast of characters is in attendance.» — el inventario completo con que Muraresku sostiene la relación entre el yacimiento catalán y Eleusis
«The only reason I contacted her in the first place was to make sure my Catalan wasn’t playing tricks on me. Did she really find archaeobotanical evidence of a psychedelic beer? And why did no one else who was supposed to know such things ever hear about it?» — la pregunta con que Muraresku declara el motivo de su viaje a Cataluña y su sorpresa por el silencio en torno al hallazgo
«From soil samples, the eminent archaeobotanist Hans-Peter Stika, of the University of Hohenheim, identified seeds of the vision-inducing henbane (Hyoscyamus niger), together with germinated hulled barley grains.» — el hallazgo de beleño y cebada germinada en el yacimiento celta de Eberdingen-Hochdorf
«The Greek naturalist referred to the plant as “Herba Apollinaris” (herb of Apollo), claiming that the Pythia priestesses at Delphi inhaled the smoke of smoldering henbane seeds to produce their oracular visions. Another ancient term for the species, Pythonion, cements the connection.» — lo que Muraresku toma de Plinio sobre el beleño y la Pitia de Delfos; el libro llama naturalista griego a Plinio, que escribió en latín
«Henbane is a member of the Solanaceae family, which, in addition to the more familiar tomato, potato, and tobacco, also includes mandrake (Mandragora officinarum), deadly nightshade (Atropa belladonna), and black nightshade (Solanum nigrum). The so-called nightshades are among the most poisonous plants in Europe.» — la familia botánica de las solanáceas que Muraresku presenta y que reaparecerá en el capítulo de las brujas
«Starting with Hecate and the Pythia in Ancient Greece, they became so synonymous with black magic in the Middle Ages and Renaissance that, even through the nineteenth century, the nightshades were still “easily anthropomorphized as witches and whores.”» — la asociación entre solanáceas y magia negra que Muraresku traza hasta el siglo XIX
«An intriguing find, but the site dated far too early (1600 BC) for Greek colonization.» — el límite que Muraresku pone a ese primer hallazgo: la fecha es muy anterior a la colonización griega
«The alkaloid hyoscyamine and traces of barley beer were recovered from the undisturbed burial cave at Calvari d’Amposta in Tarragona, south of Barcelona. The hyoscyamine could have come from any of the sinister nightshades. Dating to 2340 BC, the remains were interpreted as “a hallucinogenic beer that was consumed during the mortuary ceremonies.”» — el segundo informe: hiosciamina y cerveza de cebada en la cueva funeraria de Calvari d'Amposta, fechada en 2340 antes de Cristo
«founded in 575 BC by pioneers from the Anatolian port city of Phocaea in Ionia, the western coast of modern» — el dato que cierra el círculo del libro: la colonia griega de Ampurias la fundaron focenses de Anatolia, la misma región de Göbekli Tepe; el tramo se corta en el cambio de plana
«Writing in 2010, Stika ultimately thought a henbane-infused beer was pure speculation.» — el grado que el propio Stika puso a su hallazgo: pura especulación; el verbatim se corta antes de la llamada de nota
«But it’s a reasonable avenue of pursuit.» — la reserva con que Muraresku conserva esa vía pese al juicio de Stika
«luxurious tomb at the Necropolis of Las Ruedas in north-central Spain, outside Valladolid. Unlike the others, these remains dated to the pre-Roman, Celtic population known as the Vacceans from the second century BC.» — el tercer informe, el que Muraresku llama el más emocionante: hiosciamina en una tumba vaccea de la necrópolis de Las Ruedas
«The excavators of the Necropolis of Las Ruedas didn’t mince words in the 2003 publication of their organic residue analysis: the “psychotropic” beer was consumed by an “elite class of warriors” during a funeral feast, with the “clear intent” of propelling an otherworldly journey “to the Beyond.”» — la interpretación que los excavadores publicaron en 2003: cerveza psicotrópica bebida por una élite guerrera en un banquete funerario
«Interestingly, recent DNA studies have proven that the Catalonians can trace their roots to “the arrival of Anatolian Neolithic–associated ancestry,” a “pioneer colonization” of farmers from the east who settled the peninsula as early as 5475 BC.» — el dato genético con que Muraresku enlaza Cataluña con Anatolia
«the oldest archaeobotanical and archaeochemical evidence of beer consumption in all of Europe was discovered in 2006 at the very same place this Anatolian signal appeared in the ancient Iberian DNA: the Neolithic burial cave of Can Sadurní,» — la coincidencia que Muraresku subraya: la cerveza más antigua de Europa aparece donde aparece la señal genética anatolia
«When Triptolemus showed up on the shores of Catalonia after the founding of the Eleusinian Mysteries, he may have been surprised to learn that his services weren’t needed. The locals already knew how to brew beer and spike it with the kind of magical plants that might allow them to accompany their deceased loved ones to the Other Side,» — la inversión con que Muraresku lee la llegada griega a Iberia: los locales ya sabían hacer cerveza y cargarla de plantas
«In all the relevant studies from the early 2000s, the name of one young archaeobotanist kept popping up: Jordi Juan-Tresserras from the University of Barcelona.» — Muraresku nombra al arqueobotánico Jordi Juan-Tresserras, autor del análisis que sostiene todo el capítulo
«Stuffed into the middle of the nine-page article was a single paragraph about an apparently unremarkable discovery, “the remains of ergot sclerotia” at Mas Castellar de Pontós in not one, but two different artifacts connected to Pons’s iconic “domestic chapel.”» — el hallazgo bibliográfico que Muraresku presenta como el centro de su investigación: un párrafo sobre esclerocios de cornezuelo
«The fungus was found embedded between several teeth of a human jawbone. Microscopic evidence of the same organism was additionally identified in one of the miniature chalices that once contained a “special beer.”» — los dos soportes en que el cornezuelo apareció según Juan-Tresserras: una mandíbula humana y un cáliz en miniatura
«Given the “cultic” context of the area where both relics were unearthed in 1997, Juan-Tresserras linked whatever potion filled the tiny cup to “the consumption of the kykeon” during the Mysteries of Eleusis.» — la adjudicación que Juan-Tresserras hizo del hallazgo, ligándolo al consumo del kykeon
«To this day, the monograph has been published only in Catalan. I was able to find a copy at the Library of Congress, where I dove into one of Indo-European’s most distinctive tongues for days.» — el obstáculo de lengua que Muraresku declara haber salvado leyendo la monografía en catalán en la Biblioteca del Congreso
«That the ergot was ingested seems clear, leading the scientist to only two possible interpretations: accidental or intentional consumption.» — la disyuntiva que Juan-Tresserras plantea, y que Muraresku conserva sin resolver de antemano
«Interestingly, Juan-Tresserras did not detect any ergot in the two mills where Pons believes the grain was prepared and the beer was brewed. So there doesn’t appear to have been an accidental ergot outbreak.» — el argumento negativo con que Muraresku inclina la disyuntiva: no hay cornezuelo en los molinos
«Likewise Pons believes the jawbone was used in rituals for making contact with dead ancestors. Whatever took place in the sanctuary, she discerns a mix of Greek, Celtic, and indigenous Iberian influences.» — lo que Pons sostiene sobre la mandíbula y la mezcla de influencias que discierne en el santuario
«As a meeting place for distant Indo-European cousins, could Mas Castellar de Pontós be evidence of the same skull cult discovered at Göbekli Tepe?» — la pregunta con que Muraresku intenta cerrar el arco que va de Anatolia a Cataluña
«But for some reason the special brew was hiding out in yet another Iberian version of the Eleusinian kernos.» — el detalle que a Muraresku le importa del hallazgo vacceo: la bebida apareció en un kernos; el verbatim se corta antes de la llamada de nota
«It wasn’t the only kernos recovered from the site, but it was the only one that tested positive for the psychedelic graveyard beer.» — la acotación que Muraresku conserva: de todos los kernoi del yacimiento solo uno dio positivo
«But there was really only one person in the world who deserved a blind date with his potential smoking gun. So I called up a crazy old professor at Boston University and asked him to join me on a road trip.» — el gesto con que Muraresku organiza la escena final del capítulo: llevar a Ruck ante su propia prueba
«I introduce Ruck to the humble excavator who unearthed the twenty-year-old evidence to support a forty-year-old theory in the last place anyone expected to find it. The now-aged scholar and Pons exchange a warm hug.» — el encuentro entre Ruck y Pons que Muraresku pone como cierre de cuarenta años de exilio académico
«The Greeks would call it a kantharos, the ritual cup carried by Dionysus to induce his ecstasy.» — la identificación del cáliz en miniatura como kantharos, que enlaza el hallazgo con Dioniso
«“Well, the most important part is where it was found,” begins Ruck in that New England baritone, peering down into the chalice. “It was a sacred place for ritual. The shape of the vessel is only used for the shape of the cup drunk by the god Dionysus himself.» — la reacción de Ruck ante el cáliz: lo decisivo es el lugar del hallazgo y la forma del vaso
«And the minuscule size of the vessels would indicate that what was drunk was a very powerful potion of some kind. The size makes it clear: a tablespoon was all you needed. This was not a dinner party of wine and hors d’oeuvres.» — el argumento de Ruck por el tamaño del vaso: una cucharada bastaba, no era una cena
«And considering the fact that residue of ergot was found, it would seem to substantiate the idea that some kind of visionary ceremony for the Grain Goddess or Persephone was being celebrated in a household shrine.”» — la conclusión de Ruck, dicha con su propio grado: parecería sustanciar la idea de una ceremonia visionaria doméstica
«“We should have no trouble with that,” Ruck responds. “It’s time that we acknowledge our heritage.”» — la respuesta de Ruck a la pregunta de cómo encajar que los griegos usaran drogas para encontrar a dios
«If the Neolithic Revolution really was the Beer Revolution, then humanity’s oldest biotechnology could have existed almost ten thousand years before the Greek Mysteries.» — el marco temporal con que Muraresku cierra el capítulo, otra vez en condicional
«Exactly when, we still don’t know, but the initial findings from the Raqefet Cave and Göbekli Tepe keep pushing the dates closer and closer to the last Ice Age.» — la abstención que Muraresku mantiene sobre la fecha
«“This is not necessarily surprising,” says archaeologist Scott M. Fitzpatrick, “given that we have been hunters and gatherers for 99 percent of human history and would have come into contact with, consumed, and experimented with a wide array of plants.”» — la voz de Scott M. Fitzpatrick sobre lo esperable del contacto humano con plantas psicoactivas
«In 2012 the teeth of five such individuals, discovered at El Sidrón Cave in northwest Spain, were subjected to sequential thermal desorption-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (TD-GC-MS) and pyrolysis-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (Py-GC-MS). The teeth provided molecular data for cooking and smoke inhalation over a wood-burning fire, as well as “the first evidence for the use of medicinal plants by a Neanderthal.”» — el dato con que Muraresku lleva el uso de plantas medicinales más allá de la propia especie
«After the henbane lead, I came across three intriguing reports from Spain, all from the early 2000s, and all published in either Spanish or Catalan.» — el marco en que Muraresku presenta los tres informes ibéricos, y la razón por la que dice que pasaron inadvertidos
«Residues associated with a type of beer have been detected in good amounts: remains of gelatinized starches, starches with signs of enzymatic attack, yeasts, frustules of diatoms—something rather strange in such a small vessel. This find can be interpreted as either an offering of beer sediment or as the residue of a product that was used and/or consumed.…» — Muraresku transcribe, en su traducción del catalán, la primera mitad del análisis que Juan-Tresserras hizo en 1997 del cáliz en miniatura: almidones gelatinizados, levaduras y diatomeas; el tramo se corta en el cambio de plana
«presence of the remains of ergot sclerotia (Claviceps sp.), also identified in one of the human jawbones.… This purple-colored mushroom has been associated with Demeter as well, especially because the color is associated with the goddess, and also because this fungus undergoes a cycle similar to the myth of Demeter and Persephone. After infecting the grain plant with ascospores, the purple-colored sclerotia that envelop the ears of the mature grain begin forming. At first, the sclerotia fall to the ground, where they pass the winter and fruit with the first spring rains, forming little purple-colored mushrooms that release ascospores that, using the wind to intercede, wind up infecting the ears. The harvest of the ears infected with sclerotia and their later processing contaminate the grain with toxic alkaloids. The psychoactive alkaloids of ergot are basically derivatives of lysergic acid and have hallucinogenic effects.» — la segunda mitad del análisis, con los esclerocios de cornezuelo y la analogía que el propio Juan-Tresserras traza entre el ciclo del hongo y el mito de Deméter y Perséfone; tramo largo releído entero en el crudo
«According to Burkert, the expertise transferred for tens of thousands of years from Neanderthal to Neanderthal, and Stone Age homo sapiens to Stone Age homo sapiens, somehow came to a dead stop at the temple of Demeter. Without ever explaining how, the German scholar suggested that by the time these primitive rites arrived in Eleusis, the drugs had somehow vanished from the “festival of immortality” that “seemed to guarantee some psychedelic Beyond.”» — la objeción que Muraresku dirige a Burkert: la pericia botánica se habría detenido sin explicación justo en el templo de Deméter
«The hard data of hallucinogenic beer at Mas Castellar de Pontós says otherwise. Rather than being replaced by one of Burkert’s “harmless substances,” the original, Stone Age sacrament seems to have survived well into the historical period within certain Indo-European traditions. Not just the eastern branch, among the exotic Indians with their psychedelic soma. Not just the western branch, among the bloodthirsty Vaccean Celts with their graveyard beer at the Necropolis of Las Ruedas. But among bona fide Greeks who hailed from Phocaea as the Vikings of Antiquity with a well-defined lineage.» — la conclusión que Muraresku saca del hallazgo catalán frente a la tesis de las sustancias inocuas
«Some scholars may come along and object that the ergot-infused beer at Pons’s Greek farm has nothing to do with Greece. Like Prats, Tarragona, and the Necropolis of Las Ruedas, it’s just another example of Celtic and Iberian extravagance—hardly emblematic of the architects of Western civilization.» — Muraresku se plantea por escrito la objeción que espera recibir: que el hallazgo sea celtibérico y no griego
«They were far from merchants or traders in the ordinary sense. The Phocaeans embossed Persephone on their coins for a reason. They spent many centuries seeding Catalonia with very Greek ideas about her underworld and, much more important, how to access it.» — la respuesta de Muraresku a esa objeción: los focenses eran portadores de ideas griegas sobre el inframundo
«According to the scholar Peter Kingsley, one of the few classicists worth reading aside from Ruck, the Greek genius known as Parmenides “was among the first generation of children brought up by Phocaean parents in Velia, with the memories of Phocaea and of the journey from Phocaea still running fresh in their blood.”» — Muraresku trae a Peter Kingsley y su lectura de Parménides como hijo de focenses en Velia
«Thales, Anaximander, Theodorus of Samos: “the earliest pioneers of science” were all the children of merchants. “The enduring legacy of the Ionians are the tools and techniques they developed,” said Sagan, “which remain the basis of modern technology.”» — el linaje jonio de la ciencia que Muraresku recoge de Carl Sagan
«And there’s no coming to grips with the history of philosophy or wisdom in the West without understanding him. He lies at the central nerve of our culture. Touch him, and indirectly you’re in touch with everything else. He’s said to have created the idea of metaphysics. It’s said that he invented logic: the basis of our reasoning, the foundation of every single discipline that has come into existence in the West. His influence on Plato was immense. There’s a well-known saying that the whole history of western philosophy is just a series of footnotes to Plato. With the same justification Plato’s philosophy in its developed form could be called a series of footnotes to that man.» — Muraresku transcribe a Kingsley sobre el lugar de Parménides en la filosofía occidental, con la cadena que va de él a Platón y a toda la tradición posterior
«The same people who invented science also invented techniques for entering the underworld and communing with the immortals, whether gods, goddesses, or ancestors. Techniques, that is, for becoming immortals themselves.» — la tesis que Muraresku saca del caso jonio: quienes inventaron la ciencia inventaron también las técnicas de inmortalidad
«They sat right on the end of the so-called Royal Road that led through Anatolia and Syria into the Persian Gulf—the “caravan route” that Kingsley calls “a key point in the contact between ancient East and West.”» — la posición geográfica de Focea que Muraresku, con Kingsley, usa para explicar su papel de encrucijada
«When the earliest Christians began celebrating their Eucharist up the coast in Rome, the Velians would insinuate themselves into the very foundations of the latest mystery religion.» — el anuncio de la segunda parte del libro: los velios metidos en los cimientos del cristianismo
«For the devotees of Jesus and the Catholic Church especially, the notion that their religion was midwifed by Greek-speaking Italian mystics with a spiked Eucharist could prove a very hard pill to swallow.» — la formulación con que Muraresku mide el costo de su tesis para el creyente
«More than two hundred years before Jesus and his Last Supper brought the Mysteries into the dining room, the Greeks in Iberia beat him to the punch.» — la conclusión cronológica con que Muraresku cierra la Parte Uno
«“Do you think this vindicates the past forty years of your tortured life?” He grinned. “Well, it will certainly make some people unhappy, won’t it?”» — la última respuesta de Ruck en la escena de Girona, que Muraresku deja como cierre del capítulo
«The archaeobotanical find in Catalonia doesn’t automatically mean that Plato and the millions of initiates trekked to Eleusis for two thousand years to drink beer laced with ergot.» — la acotación expresa con que Muraresku limita lo que su hallazgo prueba
«But given all the material recovered from Mas Castellar de Pontós and its environs over the past thirty years by a dedicated and responsible archaeologist in Enriqueta Pons, I do see underworld cult activity that reeks of the Greek Mysteries.» — lo que Muraresku sí afirma, en primera persona y como juicio propio
«And given the intrepid work by Jordi Juan-Tresserras of good repute, I have no reason to doubt his data. I don’t think he’s lying, and I don’t think someone of his caliber mistook the ergot for something else.» — el grado de su confianza en el dato de Juan-Tresserras, dicho como ausencia de razón para dudar
«With complete confidence, can we say the Greek farm was founded by magicians, healers, and prophets as the Eleusis of the West with the stated goal of drinking hallucinogenic beer on a regular basis? Not any more than we can say Macbeth was written on a psychedelic vision quest. That’s not really how the historical sciences work. But somebody got high in Shakespeare’s backyard. And it’s not crazy to suggest that Mas Castellar de Pontós was a back door into Demeter’s temple at Eleusis.» — la formulación más cuidadosa de la tesis, con el símil de Shakespeare y el límite de lo que las ciencias históricas permiten decir
«On the quarantine call, McGovern said the absence of those original pictures adds an element of uncertainty to Jordi’s identification of ergot.» — la reserva que McGovern pone al dato: faltan las microfotografías originales
«To the best of my knowledge and until proven otherwise, the graveyard beers from Mas Castellar de Pontós and the Necropolis of Las Ruedas represent the first scientific data for the ritual use of psychedelic drugs in classical antiquity.» — la reclamación de primicia que Muraresku hace, acotada por dos cláusulas de grado
«In May 2020, when this book had already been written and we found ourselves in the midst of a global experiment in social distancing, I called up the godfather. Aside from being one of the smartest human beings I’ve ever known, Greg Nagy is also one of the kindest.» — Muraresku fecha en mayo de 2020 la consulta final a Gregory Nagy, y declara que el libro ya estaba escrito
«Enriqueta Pons’s meticulous fieldwork allowed for an interdisciplinary reading of those Greco-Iberian Mysteries as a curious echo of the Eleusinian Mysteries that Nagy found generally convincing.» — el grado del aval de Nagy que Muraresku consigna: generalmente convincente
«In 2015, when the chemical signature of cannabis was reported on pipe fragments excavated from the garden of the most celebrated writer in the English language, the headlines went all-in: “Was William Shakespeare high when he penned his plays?”» — el caso de Shakespeare que Muraresku usa como contraejemplo metodológico
«Most media ignored the fact that the original identification of cannabinoids by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) dated back to 2001, and was merely “suggestive” of cannabis.» — la corrección que Muraresku hace a esa noticia, con el grado real del dato
«Fullola sent me a hard copy of Jordi’s unpublished thesis from 1997, in which the young archaeochemist included a breakdown of the two samples taken from the jawbone of the “initiate.” The presence of ergot is clearly documented in the domestic chapel where the Mysteries are believed to have taken place.» — el documento inédito que Muraresku consiguió, con la presencia de cornezuelo documentada en la mandíbula
«A couple of weeks later, eureka! After more than two decades in a buried stack of notes, Jordi sent me his full analysis of both the jawbone and the miniature chalice, including a nice description of his methodology, instrumentation, and results.» — el hallazgo del informe completo de Juan-Tresserras que Muraresku narra como desenlace de su búsqueda
«What neither Jordi nor the University of Barcelona could find were those photomicrographs—images of the microscopic ergot that would allow us to see what he saw, and to confirm the hit.» — lo que falta, dicho por Muraresku sin atenuarlo: las microfotografías que permitirían ver lo que el analista vio
«As this book was going to print, Jordi had a final surprise in store: the original ergot samples may in fact be stashed away at the University of Barcelona, he told me, awaiting fresh analysis by today’s most advanced lab equipment.» — la deuda abierta que Muraresku deja por escrito: las muestras originales podrían seguir en Barcelona
«The data from Tarragona (2340 BC), Prats (1600 BC), and the Necropolis of Las Ruedas (second century BC) shows that ancient beer was combined with visionary alkaloids over thousands of years.» — el patrón regional que Muraresku reúne para sostener el caso catalán; las fechas entre paréntesis son del cuerpo y no de una nota bibliográfica
«In fact, the Roman conquest of places like modern-day Spain and France in the two centuries before the birth of Jesus was just as much cultural as political—where the wine of the Romans was regarded as the only civilized “drink of choice.”» — la lectura cultural que Muraresku hace de la conquista romana: el vino como instrumento de civilización frente a la cerveza
«According to Ruck, the so-called Profanation of the Mysteries is clear evidence of the movement that would replace beer with wine as the vehicle for the drugs.» — la lectura que Ruck hace del escándalo de la profanación de los misterios en 414 antes de Cristo
«In a series of incidents that occurred in 414 BC, several patrons of the Mysteries were caught initiating their dinner guests into the holiest secrets. Each ceremony was considered a blatant copy of Eleusis, and a sacrilege worthy of death.» — los hechos del escándalo según Muraresku: iniciaciones domésticas tenidas por copia de Eleusis
«One of Socrates’s most famous disciples, Alcibiades, was implicated in the scandal. Like some Ancient Greek Edward Snowden, he was forced into exile following the confiscation of all his property.» — el nombre propio que Muraresku destaca del episodio
«Jesus was born into the wine country of Galilee during the wine millennium.» — el accidente histórico con que Muraresku explica por qué el sacramento cristiano es vino y no cerveza
«Because it was precisely this wine, he argues, that was used in the earliest and most authentic celebrations of the Christian Eucharist by people just like Alcibiades.» — la tesis de Ruck que la Parte Dos desarrollará, marcada como argumento suyo
«And especially groomed by the Greek-speaking Gnostics whose holy texts never made it into the New Testament, and whose oral tradition apparently carried a pharmacological secret.» — el papel que Muraresku asigna a los gnósticos de lengua griega en su reconstrucción
«As a “card-carrying Indo-Europeanist,” Nagy had always been sympathetic to Wasson’s work on soma.» — la posición de Nagy que Muraresku reporta: simpatía declarada con el trabajo de Wasson sobre el soma; el tramo se corta en el cambio de plana y sigue en la p. 160
«The road to archaeochemical glory is littered with the carcasses of false positives and misinterpretations, McGovern reminded me.» — la advertencia que McGovern le hace a Muraresku sobre los falsos positivos de la arqueoquímica; el verbatim se corta antes de la llamada de nota
«McGovern has written elsewhere that a botanist or chemist by definition will always demand “ever-more definitive” proof.» — la acotación de McGovern sobre la exigencia de prueba en su disciplina; el verbatim se corta antes de la llamada de nota
«But he also acknowledged that despite technological advances, archaeochemistry remains a discipline still very much “trying to find its feet.”» — el estado que McGovern atribuye a la arqueoquímica, que Muraresku conserva como límite de su propia evidencia
«In Anatolia, Greece, and Italy beer slowly disappeared. And wine became the new sacrament for a new millennium.» — el desplazamiento de la cerveza por el vino que Muraresku fija como bisagra entre las dos partes de su libro
«If the earliest, Greek-speaking Christians really did inherit a psychedelic sacrament from the initiates of the Mysteries, the relationship had to start somewhere. So to put that pagan continuity hypothesis to the ultimate test, we’re looking for anything that connects the Ancient Greeks of the final centuries BC to the paleo-Christians of the early centuries AD.» — el programa de la Parte Dos que Muraresku enuncia: buscar el eslabón entre griegos y paleocristianos
«If Demeter and Persephone’s kukeon was spiked with psychedelic alkaloids, then any wine circulating in the eastern half of the Mediterranean in the centuries leading up to Jesus could have contained any number of plants, herbs, and fungi as well.» — el traslado del argumento de la cerveza al vino, formulado en condicional
«Because the simple fact is that Greek wine of the era did not remotely resemble anything we would call “wine.”» — la premisa del capítulo: el vino griego no se parecía a lo que hoy llamamos vino
«Among the Ancient Greeks, wine is routinely described as unusually intoxicating, seriously mind-altering, occasionally hallucinogenic, and potentially lethal.» — los cuatro rasgos que Muraresku atribuye a las descripciones antiguas del vino
«It’s well established that fermentation comes to a sudden halt when the alcoholic content of wine or beer approaches about 15 percent by volume. Most yeast can no longer survive past that natural barrier; they just die off, blocking any further production of the heady ethanol.» — el argumento químico con que Muraresku descarta el alcohol como explicación de la fuerza del vino antiguo
«“The Greek language did not distinguish between madness and inebriation,” he writes in The Road to Eleusis, “because Dionysus was the god of all inebriants and not of wine alone.”» — la formulación de Ruck que Muraresku toma como llave del capítulo del vino
«Indeed, if the Greeks had been so obsessed with alcohol, surely they would have invented a word for it. But they did not. Unlike the other 60 percent of the English language borrowed from Greek and Latin, our word “alcohol” comes from the Arabic al-kuhl (اَلْكُحْل). The root, kahala, can mean to “enliven” or “refresh.”» — el argumento léxico de Muraresku: no hay palabra griega para alcohol y la nuestra viene del árabe
«These vases show the female devotees of the god in ecstatic or maddened states of mind as they mix the wine in a krater or “mixing bowl” on a table behind which stands the masked pillar of the god. On the table or strung beneath it are various plants and herbs. One vase actually shows a woman adding a sprig of some herb to the krater.» — la nota de Ruck en The Road to Eleusis que, según Muraresku, describe la mezcla ritual del vino en la cerámica del Lenaia
«There was one illustration by Frickenhaus that really grabbed my attention: three women in profile, flanking two kraters on a mixing table. Two of the women are standing, gazing intently into the vessel on the left. The central figure extends her right hand palm up to the krater’s open lip, while her accomplice delicately stirs the contents with an elongated dipper. Some unknown ingredient has just been tossed into the still-fermenting wine. The likely additive: whatever the third woman, seated to the right, rigidly brandishes in both hands.» — la escena del vaso G 409 que Muraresku describe: dos mujeres mezclan el vino y una tercera sostiene dos especies vegetales
«She’s holding two different species. Neither is readily identifiable, but either could fit the “sprig of some herb,” exactly as Ruck described.» — la acotación con que Muraresku mantiene abierta la identificación de las plantas
«While the ancient artist could have completely invented the ritual that was painted onto G 409, what if it preserves the finer points of an actual wine mixing ceremony? What if G 409 is as close as we ever get to witnessing the real thing, just as it was performed twenty-five hundred years ago? And what if the two species in the hands of the seated maenad are the secret ingredients that spiked the original, Ancient Greek sacrament of holy wine?» — las tres preguntas condicionales con que Muraresku plantea lo que el vaso podría probar
«Dr. Alexandra Kardianou, the curator of Greek ceramics for the Louvre, has graciously invited me and a special guest to examine two red-figure vases from the fifth century BC.» — Muraresku nombra a la conservadora del Louvre que le dio acceso a los dos vasos
«In the photograph of the vase, two women are ladling wine from kraters into smaller drinking vessels; between them, the “masked pillar of the god,” again exactly as Ruck described.» — lo que Muraresku ve en la fotografía del G 408 y que coincide con la nota de Ruck
«The Roman Catholic priest is fresh in from Nepal, where he has just spent the past three weeks translating a medieval Tibetan manuscript written by a disciple of Milarepa, the black magician who later became a devout Buddhist.» — Muraresku presenta al padre Francis Tiso, su acompañante y perito en hierbas, con su trabajo tibetano
«It’s a nickname Father Francis earned for suggesting Jesus’s death and resurrection were not, in fact, a unique event— contradicting two thousand years of Church dogma.» — la razón por la que Muraresku llama a Tiso el sacerdote más polémico del mundo
«In Rainbow Body and Resurrection from 2016, the intrepid priest published the results of his decades-long inquiry into the so-called “rainbow body” phenomenon of Tibetan Buddhism. He schlepped all over the Indian subcontinent and the Himalayas, tracking down eyewitness accounts of spiritual gurus whose physical bodies were said to shrink or disappear after death, often transforming into radiant displays of multicolored light.» — el libro de Tiso sobre el cuerpo de arcoíris del budismo tibetano que Muraresku resume
«“It is no longer possible to dismiss the phenomenon as folklore,” says Father Francis.» — la posición declarada de Tiso sobre ese fenómeno, en su propia voz
«He also doesn’t see any point in denying the parallels to the so-called Transfiguration scene of the Gospels, when the face of Jesus suddenly “shone like the sun” and “his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning,” apparently cementing his true identity as the only Son of God.» — el paralelo que Tiso traza entre el cuerpo de arcoíris y la Transfiguración evangélica
«However enlightened they may have been, none of the lamas interviewed by Father Francis ever claimed to be the Son of God. So if they really disappeared into the ether in a burst of rainbows, it means each of us is capable of the same divine feat.» — la consecuencia que Muraresku saca del trabajo de Tiso: si el fenómeno es real, no sería privativo del hijo de dios
«Rather than looking to an external God, far off in the clouds, the atypical priest might counsel forward-thinking Christians to focus on their own, hidden potential deep within.» — la lectura que Muraresku atribuye a Tiso sobre el mensaje de Jesús: menos sobre sus capacidades y más sobre las nuestras
«When it debuted in 405 BC, the whole play was Euripides’s way of dramatizing the revolutionary movement of the time, and its stark challenge to a state-administered cult like the Mysteries of Eleusis.» — la lectura que Muraresku hace de las Bacantes como dramatización del desafío dionisiaco al culto de Estado
«But outside the cities, the real audience of the wine god was women, who were fleeing to the wild mountains and forests that would form the open-air churches of Dionysus all over Greece.» — el público que Muraresku atribuye al dios del vino: mujeres fuera de las ciudades, en iglesias al aire libre
«“They always get it wrong,” I tell Father Francis, referring to the Loeb’s English translation of the Greek passage we just read. “There is no other ‘treatment’ for misery,” I read from the right-hand page. “They might say ‘remedy,’ or ‘medicine,’ or ‘treatment.’ But they never just say what it is. Look at the actual Greek word for ‘treatment.’”» — la objeción de Muraresku a la traducción inglesa del pasaje, que es el eje del capítulo
«Euripides’s intentional inclusion of the word pharmakon here signals a rich, established tradition in the Greek language, one that would not be lost on the classical audience in Athens.» — la lectura que Muraresku hace del término pharmakon en Eurípides
«In an obscure article from 1980, the Harvard-trained classicist Ruth Scodel took note of a thousand-year tradition that connected Homer to later thinkers like Plato, Plutarch, and Nonnus—all of whom used the word pharmakon to describe wine. She matter-of-factly acknowledges that “wine is conventionally praised as a good pharmakon” across Greek literature, calling it a “ritual formula.”» — según Muraresku, Ruth Scodel señaló una tradición milenaria que llama al vino un buen pharmakon
«Wine’s reputation as a complex elixir traveled all the way from the Greek Dark Ages to the fall of the Roman Empire because that’s what it was—a versatile substance ranging from what Scodel calls a “drug against grief,” to a perilous, sometimes fatal “medicine,” to a tool for invoking wine gods both old and new.» — el rango de sentidos que Muraresku recoge de Scodel para el vino como pharmakon
«“You know … we call the Eucharist the pharmakon athanasias,” he beams, using the Ancient Greek phrase for the “Drug of Immortality.”» — la frase de Tiso que da título al capítulo, dicha en la escena del Louvre
«In his little-known letter Ignatius unambiguously refers to the Eucharist as the “Drug of Immortality” (pharmakon athanasias)—an “antidote” or “remedy” (antidotos) for death, capable of generating eternal life.» — la carta de Ignacio de Antioquía a los efesios que Muraresku pone como bisagra entre Dioniso y la eucaristía
«By this tiny example we gain tremendous insight into the very Hellenized world of the eastern Mediterranean into which Jesus and his early followers were born.» — el uso que Muraresku hace de ese dato: una ventana al mundo helenizado en que nace el cristianismo
«From Greece to North Africa to the Near East, a new generation of classicists is now referring to this melting pot of religious ideas as the “ancient cultural internet” that linked a diverse network of Greek speakers “in multi-voiced conversation.”» — la expresión internet cultural antiguo que Muraresku toma de una generación reciente de clasicistas
«From its initial discovery and ritual attachment to Greek life, wine was perceived as nothing less than a powerhouse drug with the potential to either slay or sanctify, at once toxic and miraculous.» — la caracterización del vino griego que Muraresku sostiene: droga capaz de matar o de santificar
«So if Greek wine was an actual pharmakon, does that mean Christian wine was an actual pharmakon as well? Or was Ignatius just using a little poetic license?» — la pregunta con que Muraresku deja abierto el punto, sin darlo por resuelto
«Without indicating a specific page, Ruck did cite the German scholar August Frickenhaus’s Lenaevasen, published in» — la referencia con que Ruck sostuvo esa nota y que Muraresku fue a verificar; el tramo se corta en el cambio de plana y sigue con Berlín, 1912
«interested in another piece labeled G 408, which is “également décoré d’une scène dionysiaque de culte”» — el segundo vaso que la conservadora del Louvre le señaló, con su descripción en francés tal como el libro la imprime
«Two things are chief among mortals, young man: the goddess Demeter—she is Mother Earth but call her either name you like— nourishes mortals with dry food. But he who came next, the son of Semele [Dionysus], discovered as its counterpart the drink that flows from the grape cluster and introduced it to mortals. It is this that frees trouble-laden mortals from their pain—when they fill» — el parlamento de Tiresias en las Bacantes que Muraresku lee en griego con Tiso: Deméter alimenta con lo seco y el hijo de Sémele descubrió la bebida del racimo; la traducción es la de la edición Loeb que el libro usa
«“At the end of nineteenth century, the problem is, they imagined something,” Kardianou begins, gesturing to the large triangular divot on G 409 where the painted surface of the ancient ceramic had chipped away at some point in its twenty-five-hundred-year history.» — la explicación de la conservadora sobre el dibujo de Frickenhaus: la mano derecha de la ménade está rota en el vaso y el dibujante la imaginó
«Whatever floral object Frickenhaus drew in the woman’s right hand, he just plain invented.» — el juicio de Muraresku sobre el dibujo decimonónico que había guiado la nota de Ruck
«“Yes, in this one … there is something.” Kardianou motions to the fully preserved “sprig of some herb” that Ruck footnoted in 1978.» — lo que sí queda intacto en el vaso: la rama o brote que Ruck había citado de oídas
«“I don’t think,” Kardianou laughs. “I’m not sure. I see three little lines. C’est juste mon interprétation. I can’t explain it.”» — la abstención de la conservadora sobre lo que había en la mano rota, dicha en francés y en inglés
«“It looks like a morel or some kind of mushroom.”» — la identificación que el padre Francis Tiso propone del objeto en la mano de la ménade
«“I don’t know … maybe.” I gaze through the magnifier. “It has a kind of fungal shape, and what almost looks like a stipe. It could be an herb, I guess. But look how thick that stem is. It’s a bit strange, isn’t it?”» — la reserva de Muraresku ante esa identificación, que conserva sin resolverla
«Another fifteen minutes of intense scrutiny and debate leaves us where we started. In the left hand: a blob of crimson that could very well be a mushroom. In the right: who knows?» — el resultado que Muraresku declara de la inspección de los vasos, sin adjudicar
«Across Greece the wine god was also known as the “tree god.” While he was especially associated with pine, fig, and myrtle trees, the spirit of Dionysus was thought to occupy all plants, herbs, and fungi.» — la extensión de Dioniso a toda la vegetación que Muraresku consigna
«According to the German classicist Walter Otto, his “theater of operation” was not just vegetation in general, but “a mysteriously aroused element of life which appears in an unusually clear focus in certain plants.”» — la fórmula de Walter Otto sobre el campo de acción de Dioniso que Muraresku cita
«As far as G 408 and G 409 are concerned, it’s inconclusive. Our examination has not revealed which drugs, if any, were worthy of adding to the sacred potion of Dionysus.» — la conclusión negativa que Muraresku escribe sin atenuarla sobre su propia visita al Louvre
«Written by Athenaeus of Naucratis in the third century AD, it is considered the oldest surviving cookbook from antiquity.» — la fuente antigua que Muraresku usa para el vino sin mezclar
«But there’s a catch. The wine has to be “pure” or akratos (ἄκρατος), meaning not watered down. Akratos is a very common expression in Ancient Greek, though surprisingly few classicists ever stop to ask why this “uncut wine” had to be diluted to avoid the kind of disaster that happens next.» — el término griego akratos y la pregunta que Muraresku dice que los clasicistas no se hacen
«“Thirty-five of those who drank the wine died on the spot from a chill, and another six did so after hanging on briefly in their tents. The man who drank the most, and took the prize, consumed four pitchers of pure wine.”» — el pasaje de Ateneo sobre el certamen de bebida de Alejandro, en la traducción que Muraresku da
«The priest takes pleasure in reciting along with me: “Because Erasixenus was not a serious drinker, two cups in a row of pure wine patently did away with him.”» — el segundo pasaje de Ateneo que Muraresku aduce: dos copas de vino puro bastaron para matar
«In his Historia Plantarum, the so-called Father of Botany takes a moment to consider aconiton (ἀκόνιτον). Aconite—variously referred to as the queen of poisons, the devil’s helmet, monkshood, and wolf’s bane—is extraordinarily deadly. Theophrastus leaves no doubt that the Greeks knew how to manipulate the poison. And no doubt that wine was a preferred method of delivery.» — lo que Muraresku toma de Teofrasto sobre el acónito y el vino como vehículo del veneno
«In the hands of a true master, says the Father of Botany, the spiked wine could be mixed in such a way that death came knocking anytime between two months and two years after the drug’s administration: “the longer the time, the more painful the death, since the body then wastes away.”» — la pericia de dosificación que Teofrasto atribuye al envenenador, y que Muraresku usa como prueba de saber farmacológico
«If drugged wine was such a common practice in Ancient Greece, what would make it mind-altering or hallucinogenic, so much so that it convinced the maenads they had shed their mortality, escaped death, and become one with Dionysus?» — la pregunta que Muraresku deja planteada al cerrar el examen de los vasos
«They come from a medical manuscript dated to 1598, containing the extant works of Dioscorides. The Greek physician and pharmacologist lived from about AD 40 to 90—the exact period when the Gospels themselves were being written.» — Muraresku fecha a Dioscórides en el mismo periodo en que se escriben los evangelios, que es lo que hace pertinente su farmacopea
«His five-volume De Materia Medica (On Medical Material), a Greek-language encyclopedia of herbal medicine, became the basis for all modern pharmacopeias.» — el lugar que Muraresku asigna a la Materia Médica en la historia de la farmacia
«Hippocrates may have been the Father of Medicine, but it was Dioscorides, the Father of Drugs, who proved more popular as time went on. For two millennia without interruption, the Materia Medica somehow never went out of circulation, providing a crucial bridge to the ancient world.» — la continuidad de circulación que Muraresku atribuye a la obra de Dioscórides
«Book 5 of Dioscorides’s magnum opus is dedicated to “vines and wines.” Name your favorite magical substance, and the Father of Drugs had a wine-based cocktail just for you: absinthe wine, salvia wine, hellebore wine, betony wine.» — el libro quinto de Dioscórides, que Muraresku presenta como catálogo de vinos medicados
«In this one section of Dioscorides alone, there are fifty-six detailed recipes, including a number of wines mixed with different members of the nightshade family, the same plants detected in the archaeobotanical and archaeochemical remains of the graveyard beers from Spain.» — la cifra de recetas y el nexo que Muraresku traza con las solanáceas halladas en Iberia
«A similar warning creeps up for mandrake wine (Mandragora officinarum), which relieves pain and induces a “heavy, deep sleep” at the proper dosage. Get the measurements wrong, and just one “winecupful” of the mandrake brew is fatal.» — el vino de mandrágora según Dioscórides, con el límite de dosis que separa el sueño de la muerte
«Dioscorides specifically characterizes it as psychedelic, saying a decoction of its root taken with wine produces “not unpleasant visions” or phantasias ou aedeis (φαντασίας οὐ ἀηδεῖς).» — la fórmula griega de Dioscórides sobre las visiones no desagradables del vino de hierba mora, que Muraresku transcribe en su alfabeto
«None of this is wine as understood today. We simply do not have any vocabulary for these infused potions, so mainstream historians like Philip Mayerson are left inventing creative euphemisms for drugs.» — el diagnóstico de vocabulario con que Muraresku explica por qué la historiografía no nombra las drogas
«In his standard reference textbook Classical Mythology in Literature, Art and Music, Mayerson says, “Wine, thus, has a religious value: the worshiper of Dionysus who drinks it—or any other sacramental drink associated with the god—has taken the god within himself.”» — el ejemplo de esos eufemismos que Muraresku toma de Philip Mayerson
«The priest looks up and reminds me of an old saying from his studies: “the real secret to pharmacology is posology.” Which means that when it comes to drugs, nothing is more important than getting the dose right.» — la máxima farmacológica que Tiso aporta y que ordena todo el capítulo: la dosis lo decide todo
«In strict measurements, a mushroom or nightshade wine could very well be therapeutic—what the classicist Ruth Scodel might call a “drug against grief.” At higher doses the same ingredients could quickly turn medicinal wine into hallucinogenic wine. At still higher doses just one cup laced with too many alkaloids could be fatal.» — la escala de dosis que Muraresku construye con Tiso: terapéutica, alucinógena y mortal
«The Materia Medica is proof positive that the Greeks not only spiked their wine with drugs, but had a keen eye for dosing.» — la conclusión que Muraresku saca de Dioscórides
«My long-awaited face-to-face with G 408 and G 409 has convinced me that something was added to the wine during the Dionysian rituals in Ancient Greece.» — lo que Muraresku dice haberse convencido, con su propio grado, tras la visita al Louvre
«It doesn’t mean that all ancient wine was spiked, of course. At least not for everyday use. But if the occasion called for a medicinal or religious elixir, or something more nefarious, the biotechnology was certainly there.» — la acotación con que Muraresku limita su tesis: no todo el vino antiguo iba cargado
«The priest would later admit he found the “wine formulas” from the Father of Drugs to be “extremely persuasive evidence,” not only of the Greeks’ expertise with psychedelic wine but its potential use among the early Christians as well.» — el juicio que Tiso emite después sobre las recetas de Dioscórides, marcado como suyo
«After all, Dioscorides was held in especially high regard by the monks of southern Italy, who kept his manuscripts in circulation for centuries. And with them, a written tradition of pharmacology as old as Christianity itself.» — el eslabón de transmisión que Muraresku necesita: los monjes del sur de Italia conservaron esa farmacopea
«So the next question is whether the Greek pharmakon really did influence the Drug of Immortality of paleo-Christianity. Did the drugged wine of Dionysus become the drugged wine of Jesus? And if so, how?» — la pregunta con que Muraresku enlaza este capítulo con el siguiente
«Dioscorides describes in detail how henbane seeds of the white variety (Hyoscyamus albus) can be pounded into wine to soothe “inflated genitals” and “swollen breasts.”» — el vino de beleño blanco según Dioscórides, con sus usos médicos; el verbatim se corta antes de la llamada de nota
«Unless you know what you’re doing, avoid black henbane (Hyoscyamus niger) at all costs, however, since it “causes delirium and sleep.”» — la advertencia de Dioscórides sobre el beleño negro, que Muraresku separa del blanco
«As the Greek travel writer Pausanias relates: “in the morning [the priests] are allowed to examine the seals, and on going into the building, they find the pots filled with wine. I did not myself arrive at the time of the festival, but the most respected Eleian citizens, and foreigners as well, swore that what I have said is the truth.”» — el milagro anual de Élide que Muraresku toma de Pausanias: las tinajas selladas aparecen llenas de vino
«So too on the island of Andros, just off the mainland, Dionysus’s “appearance” or epiphaneia (ἐπιφάνεια) came in the form of a particular miracle every year on January 5. A spring inside the god’s temple would suddenly transform into wine, said to flow continuously for seven days.» — el segundo milagro anual, en Andros, con el término griego de la epifanía
«By design, January 6 is now celebrated by Christians around the world as their Epiphany—the day when the Three Wise Men legendarily descended on Bethlehem bearing gold, frankincense, and myrrh for the newly incarnate infant Jesus.» — la coincidencia de fechas que Muraresku subraya entre la fiesta dionisiaca y la Epifanía cristiana
«The first two lines of the play stress the unusual bond between the wine god and his father in heaven. Dionysus calls himself the “Son of God” or Dios pais (Διὸς παῖς), and refers to his earthly mother as the “young girl” or kore (κόρη), which could also be “maiden” or “virgin.”» — el argumento léxico central del capítulo: Dioniso se llama a sí mismo hijo de dios y llama doncella a su madre mortal
«So in order to avoid scaring everybody to death with the full force of his godhood, the shape-shifter “exchanges his divine form for a mortal one.” And a funny one at that: a long-haired wizard. He is ridiculed as “effeminate,” with hair “tumbling all the way down his cheeks.” Just like the “luxurious locks” of Dionysus himself, who blurs the boundary between male and female.» — la forma mortal que Dioniso toma en las Bacantes, que Muraresku describe como mago de pelo largo
«In this version of the myth, the virgin mother has somehow survived her divine pregnancy.» — el recurso retórico con que Muraresku narra las bodas de Caná como si fueran un episodio dionisiaco, antes de revelar de quién habla
«In the old story that inspired this scene before me, the God of Ecstasy angrily reminds his mother in Ancient Greek, “My time has not yet come!” (oupo ekei e ora mou/ οὔπω ἥκει ἡ ὥρα μου).» — la frase evangélica en griego que Muraresku pone en boca del dios del vino mientras mantiene la ambigüedad del relato
«If he were here, Father Francis would note that only Jesus and the Virgin Mary, seated to his right, are painted with those shining halos. Of the roughly 125 figures on the busy canvas, only they have conquered death.» — lo que Muraresku lee en los halos del cuadro de Veronese, con la clave del cuerpo de arcoíris de Tiso
«In spite of early institutionalization, his worship retained or could recapture an element of choice, movement and individual enthusiasm.… Apart from the devotion of the sick to Asclepius, Dionysus provided the single strongest focus for private spontaneous pagan piety using ceremonial forms. Dionysiac initiations did not only, like those of Eleusis and Samothrace, confer a new status on the initiate: they also admitted him to groups of likeminded persons, possessed of the same status and often a similar hope for the hereafter—not exactly to a Church, but to congregations which used the same symbols and spoke the same language.» — Muraresku transcribe a A. D. Nock sobre el atractivo del culto dionisiaco: elección, movimiento y entusiasmo individual en congregaciones voluntarias
«In The Dionysian Gospel, published in 2017, Dennis MacDonald of the Claremont School of Theology compares the Ancient Greek of The Bacchae with the Ancient Greek of the Gospel of John to prove that the Evangelist was intimately familiar with these Dionysian “symbols” and “language.” In order to portray Jesus as the consummate Son of God, John knew all the loaded terms that would appeal to any Greek speaker of the time. And he used them throughout his Gospel to depict Jesus as the second coming of Dionysus.» — la tesis de Dennis MacDonald que Muraresku adopta: el evangelio de Juan usa deliberadamente el vocabulario dionisiaco
«In the very first chapter of John, the Evangelist uses the similar-sounding word genos (γένος), not once but twice. He is the only Gospel writer who describes the nativity of Jesus this way.» — el paralelo léxico que Muraresku traza entre Eurípides y Juan
«In one of the most frequently depicted scenes in Christian art, the Annunciation tells of an immaculate young girl who conceives the Son of God following unusual relations with a bird. Instead of Zeus’s eagle, God the Father manifests himself as a dove, the Holy Spirit sailing on golden rays of light to impregnate the Virgin Mary.» — el paralelo iconográfico que Muraresku traza entre el águila de Zeus y la paloma de la Anunciación
«And he interrupts his Latin text to record the name of this special holiday in Greek: the God’s Gift Day» — el nombre griego de la fiesta que Plinio conserva dentro de su texto latino; el verbatim se corta antes del paréntesis con la transliteración
«And there, at the center of the gargantuan table in front of me, is the long-haired wizard orchestrating the whole affair. But it’s not» — la revelación con que Muraresku cierra su recurso narrativo; el tramo se corta en el cambio de plana y sigue con el nombre de Dioniso negado y el de Jesús de Nazaret
«It’s the most famous human being in recorded history. Jesus of Nazareth.» — el remate del recurso: el mago de pelo largo del cuadro es Jesús
«When John includes the Greek phrase monogenes theos (μονογενὴς Θεὸς) in 1:18, he means the “only» — el segundo argumento léxico de MacDonald según Muraresku: el unigénito de Juan; el tramo se corta en el cambio de plana y sigue en la p. 196
«begotten” or “unique offspring” of God. But in case it weren’t obvious enough, John then goes on to say that Jesus is so close to God the Father, he resides in God’s “lap.” The Greek kolpon (κόλπον), “the region of the body extending from the breast to the legs, especially when a person is in a seated position,” could not be clearer.» — la continuación del argumento: el regazo del padre en Juan 1:18, con la palabra griega y su definición
«The only thing that is unclear about this passage is the English translation, which ignores the word kolpon entirely, putting Jesus “in closest relationship with the Father.”» — la objeción de Muraresku a la traducción inglesa del pasaje joánico; el verbatim se corta antes de la llamada de nota
«Without the Ancient Greek, the explicit reference to Dionysus has been entirely lost.» — la consecuencia que Muraresku saca de esa traducción
«But the scholar pays special attention to the one thing that really defined the God of Ecstasy in the centuries before Jesus: his sacrament. Without the wine, there is no Dionysus. And without the Eucharist, there is no Christianity.» — el eje que Muraresku toma de MacDonald: el sacramento define a los dos dioses
«This is how Dionysus enters Christianity. And this is how the Ancient Greek pharmakon is transformed into the pharmakon athanasias, the Drug of Immortality.» — la formulación con que Muraresku sitúa las bodas de Caná como puerta de entrada
«Here in the Louvre, across from the Mona Lisa sucking up all the air in the room, this is ground zero for the pagan continuity hypothesis. It places the Greek Mysteries at the very foundation of Christianity.» — el lugar que Muraresku asigna a esa escena en su propio argumento
«As MacDonald states, “the changing of water into wine was Dionysus’s signature miracle.”» — la fórmula de MacDonald sobre el milagro característico de Dioniso
«He goes on to quote the German scholar Michael Labahn: “The supernatural, miraculous transformation denotes the epiphany of Jesus according to the pattern of Dionysus.… The juxtaposition of Jesus and Dionysus depicts Jesus as a god.”» — la cita de Michael Labahn que MacDonald aduce y Muraresku reproduce
«The Greek word he uses for those enormous stone water jars is a very specific one: hudria (ὑδρία). We know from the material evidence that there was a bustling industry producing these soft limestone vessels. At the time their manufacture was centered in Jerusalem, where they were used for ritual purification.» — el término griego de las tinajas de Caná y su contexto material según Muraresku
«Each hudria that Jesus ordered filled with water could have held twenty to thirty gallons. It may not be the river of wine that the Andrians drank from every year, but that’s still a pretty obscene amount of alcohol to take down in one night. As much as 180 gallons, or a thousand bottles.» — el cálculo de volumen con que Muraresku mide el milagro
«Like the maenads on G 408 and G 409, could the latest wine god have added something to the wine to make it a little more miraculous? What kind of wine was this?» — la pregunta con que Muraresku enlaza el vaso del Louvre con el milagro evangélico
«Aside from the Gospel of John, art historian Philip Fehl identified an alternative source for Veronese’s banquet scene: Pietro Aretino’s Humanity of Christ, published in Venice in 1535.» — la fuente literaria del cuadro de Veronese que Muraresku consigna
«As he smelled the bouquet of wine which was made from grapes gathered in the vineyards of Heaven he was revived like a man who awakens from a faint when his wrists are bathed in vinegar. Tasting the wine he felt the trickle of its sharp sweetness down to his very toes. In filling a glass of crystal, one could have sworn it was bubbling with distilled rubies.» — la descripción que Aretino da del vino de Caná, de donde sale el título del capítulo
«In three different places Euripides uses the unique word gonos (γόνος), which literally means “begotten,” alluding to Dionysus’s emergence from Zeus’s thigh after the death of his virgin mother, Semele.» — el término griego de Eurípides para la generación de Dioniso, con su alusión al muslo de Zeus
«John’s is the only Gospel that records this event—the first miracle that launches Jesus’s public mission. In Matthew, Jesus starts his career by healing a leper.» — el dato comparativo con que Muraresku sostiene la singularidad del milagro de Caná; el verbatim se corta antes de la llamada de nota
«Throughout the Hellenistic period leading up to the birth of Jesus, the whole region in the north of modern-day Israel remained an “important commercial center for the production and marketing”» — el contexto vitivinícola de Galilea que Muraresku documenta
«On that drunken Epiphany in Cana around AD 30, the new wine god wasn’t playing to a random crowd. Jesus’s long-awaited appearance (epiphaneia) in Galilee came with home-field advantage.» — la conclusión que Muraresku saca de ese contexto: Jesús no improvisaba ante un público cualquiera
«Only slightly to the south and east, the ancient city of Scythopolis was the legendary birthplace of Dionysus himself. For that reason it was also called Nysa, providing a coherent solution for the unknown etymology of the wine god’s name: “the god” (Dio) “from Nysa” (Nysus).» — el dato geográfico con que Muraresku acerca a Dioniso y a Jesús, con la etimología propuesta del nombre del dios
«The God of Ecstasy remained the city’s patron deity, appearing all over its statues, altars, inscriptions, and coins.» — la presencia de Dioniso en Escitópolis que Muraresku consigna
«The appropriately titled “Mona Lisa of Galilee” can be found in the Greek-speaking capital of Sepphoris (modern-day Tzippori), a mere twenty minutes from Nazareth.» — el mosaico de Séforis que Muraresku usa para documentar la presencia dionisiaca en la Galilea de Jesús
«When these explicitly pagan images surfaced for the first time in 1987, Eric Meyers of Duke University shared the consensus of the archaeological community: their surprise discovery in a Jewish town, squarely in Jesus territory, “certainly blew most everyone’s mind.”» — la reacción de la comunidad arqueológica ante ese hallazgo según Muraresku
«The pagan and Judeo-Christian worlds weren’t supposed to intersect, especially in a post-Jesus Galilee. But the evidence was mounting that Dionysus and Jesus could very much coexist.» — la conclusión que Muraresku saca del hallazgo de Séforis
«In 2005 the remains of an elaborate hall were unearthed in Beidha, just a couple miles north of the Petra archaeological site, the famed cosmopolitan capital of the Nabataean Kingdom that stretched into the Arabian Peninsula during the Roman Empire. The colonnaded structure, complete with a courtyard, was dated to the reign of Malichos I, a mere three decades before the birth of Jesus. The Greek influence over the shrine that survived into the first century AD is overpowering: “the architecture and sculpture demonstrate how well the Nabataeans had absorbed Hellenistic motifs and blended them with Nabataean traditions, including the tradition of ritual dining.”» — el santuario nabateo de Beidha que Muraresku suma al inventario dionisiaco, fechado tres décadas antes del nacimiento de Jesús
«The presence of the “Dionysian cosmos,” including images of grapes and vines, led the team from the American Center of Oriental Research in Amman to envision a unique role for this sanctuary in the “transformational process that culminates in communion with the god.”» — la función que el equipo excavador atribuye a ese santuario según Muraresku
«Cut from Phrygian marble sometime in the late second century AD, a kantharos was discovered in the nearby Petra Church, the same kind of vessel recovered by Enriqueta Pons from the domestic chapel at Mas Castellar de Pontós in Spain.» — el nexo material que Muraresku traza entre el santuario nabateo y el yacimiento catalán: el mismo tipo de vaso
«The likely reason? This is where the Canaanite and Phoenician sailors kicked off the Mediterranean wine trade in the two millennia before Jesus.» — la explicación que Muraresku da para la presencia dionisiaca en el Levante: allí empezó el comercio del vino
«By making Jesus’s first miracle a wine miracle, the Gospel of John undoubtedly tried to establish Jesus as the new Dionysus, turning Cana into the new Elis and Andros: the place where miracles happen.» — la operación que Muraresku atribuye al evangelista Juan
«John’s audience would have understood that the Wedding at Cana wasn’t just a party trick, and that the wine wasn’t just party wine. It was a liquid pharmakon, with a rich heritage behind it.» — la tesis del capítulo: el vino de Caná se leía como pharmakon con historia
«In the distant past, far earlier than anyone else, the Canaanites and Phoenicians who occupied the Holy Land were ritually mixing psychoactive material into their wine.» — la afirmación que abre el capítulo del Levante, dicha sin condicional
«At the moment, no sites in Greece have yielded any hard data for the Drug of Immortality.» — la deuda de evidencia que Muraresku reconoce para Grecia misma
«McGovern says the wine enthusiasm that consolidated in this area of the Fertile Crescent “might be better dubbed a mixed fermented beverage or extreme beverage culture,” making use of “a wide assortment” of fruit, grains, honey, and plant additives to their grape juice.» — la expresión cultura de bebidas extremas que Muraresku toma de McGovern
«Pertinent to our investigation is what McGovern calls “special brews” with a ritualistic purpose, “perhaps laced with a flavorful or mind-altering herb.”» — el grado con que McGovern habla de esos brebajes especiales, que Muraresku conserva
«In “Ancient Egyptian Herbal Wines,” published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in May 2009, McGovern details his analysis of the tomb treasure from Abydos belonging to the proto-dynastic ruler Scorpion I. It was unearthed in 1988 by the Cairo branch of the German Archaeological Institute and dated to 3150 BC, at the very beginning of the pharaonic line that would govern the Egyptian kingdom for the next three thousand years. Some seven hundred pottery jars of a “foreign type” were found perfectly intact, amounting to about twelve hundred gallons of a royal potion.» — el análisis del ajuar de Escorpión I en Abidos, de 3150 antes de Cristo, que Muraresku resume
«Among other chemical compounds, camphor, borneol, carvone, and thymol were extracted from the ancient residue. They are all found in yarrow (Achillea), which McGovern has elsewhere described as “highly suggestive of a ritual involving psychoactive plants.”» — los compuestos hallados en esas tinajas y la lectura que McGovern hace de la milenrama
«Nearly all were domesticated or cultivated in the southern Levant in advance of their introduction into Egypt.… Beginning ca. 3000 B.C., as the domesticated grapevine was transplanted to the Nile Delta, one may reasonably hypothesize that some southern Levantine herbs accompanied or soon followed it into the gardens and fields of the country. These developments considerably expanded the Egyptian pharmacopeia.» — la procedencia que McGovern asigna a esos aditivos: el Levante meridional, que es la tierra de Jesús
«According to the oldest surviving illustrated papyrus roll, which preserves the ancient Egyptian coronation ceremony in amazing detail, wine would be presented as an “Eye of Horus” in order to cure the king of his “spiritual blindness.”» — el rito de coronación egipcio que Muraresku resume del papiro ilustrado más antiguo conservado
«In this supreme act of “mystical conjunction”—drinking the god to become the god—the human king sought to merge with Osiris as the Lord of Death.» — la fórmula con que Muraresku nombra el mecanismo común a todos estos ritos: beber al dios para ser el dios
«Thousands of years before Jesus or the lamas interviewed by Father Francis, the Egyptian pharaohs are said to have acquired the light body of a “shining spirit” (akh in Egyptian) that allowed them to traverse the starry afterlife.» — el cuerpo de luz egipcio que Muraresku empareja con el cuerpo de arcoíris y con la transfiguración
«He noticed the same blue water lilies (Nymphaea caerulea) depicted on Karnak’s pillars were also found as a garland around the golden neck of Tutankhamun, when the pharaoh’s tomb was first opened in 1922.» — la observación de Andrew Sherratt sobre el nenúfar azul en Karnak y en la tumba de Tutankamón
«Another incarnation of Osiris, the blue water lily is now extremely rare in the wild, but once grew abundantly on the shallow banks of the Nile. It was considered Ancient Egypt’s most sacred plant. And with the active compounds, apomorphine and nuciferin, it was full of psychoactive possibility.» — el estatuto botánico y químico del nenúfar azul según Muraresku
«In 1996 McGovern’s analysis of two ceramic vessels from the Hajji Firuz Tepe site (ca. 5400–5000 BC) in far west Iran, near the border with Turkey and Iraq, proved that Neolithic wine was resinated with» — el hallazgo de McGovern sobre el vino neolítico de Hajji Firuz Tepe; el tramo se corta en el cambio de plana y sigue con la resina de terebinto o de pino añadida como conservante y agente medicinal
«Because the divine intoxicant was meant to accompany the Egyptian pharaoh into the underworld, however, its use as an advanced religious biotechnology cannot be overlooked.» — la función que Muraresku atribuye a ese vino real: biotecnología religiosa que no se puede pasar por alto
«As part of the Sacred Weeds series that aired on the UK’s Channel 4 in 1998, Sherratt and his colleagues (an Egyptologist, an ethnobotanist, and a pharmacologist) enlisted two courageous volunteers to drink some wine-soaked flower concoction in the first televised re-creation of the ancient sacrament. After a nice fit of the giggles, the restless duo is seen frolicking through the rainy gardens of Hammerwood Park in East Sussex. Though no visions of Osiris were recorded, the blue water lily was shown to have undeniable mind-altering effects, even at relatively low dosage.» — el experimento televisado de 1998 con nenúfar azul en vino que Muraresku consigna, con su resultado acotado
«The homeland of Jesus was praised in antiquity for its wine production, going all the way back to the Canaanites. In 2013 murky hearsay met hard fact when the Tel Kabri site, an hour north of Nazareth, made international headlines. Forty jars of herbal wine were unearthed in what became known as the “world’s oldest wine cellar,” dating to about 1700 BC.» — el hallazgo de Tel Kabri, la llamada bodega más antigua del mundo, a una hora de Nazaret
«The results of the GC-MS analyses showed remarkable consistency across the entire batch, indicating “a sophisticated understanding of the botanical landscape and the pharmacopeic skills necessary to produce a complex beverage that balanced preservation, palatability, and psychoactivity.”» — la conclusión del equipo de Tel Kabri que Muraresku transcribe, con la psicoactividad nombrada entre los fines del brebaje
«By some estimates, however, only 20 percent of those species referenced in the dusty texts “have been definitively identified by genus.”» — el límite filológico que Muraresku reconoce: la mayoría de las plantas nombradas en los textos antiguos no está identificada
«That’s why, for example, the debate over the kind of “laurel” employed by the Pythian priestesses at Delphi can rage on, because the ancient plant may not quite correspond to our modern scientific classification of the Laurus genus, let alone the Laurus nobilis species.» — la consecuencia que Muraresku saca de ese límite para el caso de Delfos
«Completing it demands the rigorous collection of organic residue from ancient vessels, which can then be paired with paleoecological maps that plot where each of the analyzed species actually grew in antiquity.» — el método de tres patas que Muraresku describe: textos antiguos, datos químicos y mapas de hábitat
«According to the team, the most likely candidates that would have spiked the palatial red wine at Tel Kabri include honey, storax resin (Liquidambar orientalis), terebinth resin (Pistacia palaestina or terebinthus), cyperus roots (Cyperus rotundus), cedar oil (Cedrus libani), juniper berries (Juniperus communis or phoenicea), mint (Mentha), myrtle (Myrtus communis), and cinnamon bark (Cinnamomum).» — la lista de aditivos probables del vino de Tel Kabri según el equipo excavador
«Juniper berries contain rich, volatile oils with “antiviral, antibiotic, and antifungal properties,” which may explain their superstitious use for protection in traditional rites and ceremonies.» — la propiedad del enebro que Muraresku destaca de esa lista
«Historically shamans in Central Asia have resorted to juniper for “ritual, magical and medicinal purposes,” making it “likely one of the oldest fumigants of humankind.”» — el uso chamánico del enebro que Muraresku consigna
«They manifest their abilities only after inhaling the smoke of burning juniper branches and drinking warm goat’s blood. After this, they danced to rhythmic drum beats until they had attained the trance state. When asked about the future, they passed on the messages of the fairies in the form of songs.» — el testimonio sobre los bitaiyos del Hindú Kush que Muraresku transcribe, con la fórmula de magos, sanadores y profetas que él repite a lo largo del libro
«For the Canaanites the wine additives identified at Tel Kabri could have come in handy during their far-reaching but understudied marzeah ritual, a drunken funerary feast or memorial banquet for the dead that could last up to a week.» — el rito cananeo del marzeah que Muraresku introduce como pieza central del capítulo
«But the main purpose of the marzeah, as with the skull cults and graveyard beers we tracked over ten thousand years from Stone Age Israel and Turkey to Ancient Greece and classical Iberia, was to acquaint its participants with the afterlife and “to secure their beatification after death.”» — la finalidad que Muraresku atribuye al marzeah, en la cadena que va de la Edad de Piedra a Iberia
«Particularly fascinating about the marzeah is the possibility that it acted as the bridge between the more archaic drinking ceremonies from Egypt and the Near East, including Tel Kabri, and the later Mysteries belonging to both Dionysus and Jesus.» — la hipótesis del capítulo, enunciada como posibilidad: el marzeah como puente entre Egipto y los misterios
«Common to all these rituals is the concept of ingesting a special potion for a singular purpose: to transcend ordinary time and space, reaching a state of consciousness where the ancestors still live and breathe, and the gods and goddesses are made real.» — el rasgo común que Muraresku extrae de todos esos ritos
«For lack of vocabulary, scholars often refer to this place as the “underworld.” And maybe the initiates of the marzeah truly believed they went somewhere, just like the initiates of the Greek and Christian Mysteries in the centuries that followed. But at the end of the day, we’re only trying to get hold of the mechanism that created the sensation of otherworldly travel, and the conviction that creates whole religions in the wake of these unforgettable mystical experiences.» — la acotación metodológica de Muraresku: lo que le interesa no es si viajaban sino el mecanismo de la sensación
«In a reading that parallels the Indo-European graveyard beers, del Olmo Lete sees evidence for hallucinogenic wine as advanced religious biotechnology, calling The Divine Feast of El a “handbook” or “recipe” for “intoxication praxis” that induces a “cataleptic state of trance.”» — la lectura de del Olmo Lete sobre el texto ugarítico como manual de práctica de intoxicación
«In this “altered state of consciousness reached by drunkenness,” the initiate is permitted “terrifying entry” into the mysterious “Other World” of “infernal ghosts,” where a skilled explorer can secure divinatory answers to life’s existential questions from the godlike spirits.» — lo que del Olmo Lete atribuye a ese estado según Muraresku: entrada al otro mundo y respuestas adivinatorias
«To awaken from this near-death experience, the Ugaritic text orders the paralyzed body of the initiate to be anointed from forehead to navel with an unidentifiable wild plant.» — el detalle ritual del despertar que Muraresku conserva, con la planta sin identificar
«The active ingredients that may have potentiated the mixture remain an absolute mystery.» — la abstención expresa de Muraresku sobre los principios activos del marzeah
«“I think you’re absolutely right,” Koh said into the phone. “When we’re talking about ancient wine, we tend to have a one-size-fits-all approach. But think about beer these days, for example: it’s not just for drinking and watching football. We have some really complex beers with different alcohol and flavor profiles. Ancient wine was no different.» — la voz de Koh en la entrevista telefónica sobre la variedad del vino antiguo
«If you look carefully at the historical record, there was wine for very casual settings, all the way to very formal events like the Mysteries. But like everything else in life, it’s probably not so binary. Maybe it’s our puritanical background, but we want to separate the two—the casual, mundane drinking from the sacred, religious drinking. Back then, however, the lines were more blurred, and things more intertwined.”» — la acotación de Koh contra la separación tajante entre beber profano y beber sagrado
«at another site in Upper Galilee. Soon to be published in the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, his organic-residue analysis of small vessels from a Hellenistic administrative building in Tel Kedesh, on the border with Lebanon, revealed oil from the iconic Phoenician cedar (Cedrus libani) was spiked with the same imported storax resin (Liquidambar orientalis) from the same region of Rhodes that was found fifteen hundred years earlier in the Cannanite wine of Tel Kabri. Dating to the second century BC, it shows the continuity of psychotropic infusions in the region, well into the period when Greek influence was at its height.» — el hallazgo inédito de Tel Kedesh que Andrew Koh comunicó a Muraresku, con la continuidad de infusiones psicotrópicas que le atribuye
«For del Olmo Lete, professor emeritus at the University of Barcelona, the literal translation of marzeah is “descent,” implying a journey to the underworld.» — la etimología del marzeah que Muraresku toma de Gregorio del Olmo Lete
«So I call that kind of wine a potion, because it’s not just a drink. It’s a sacrament.”» — la distinción que Koh propone entre bebida y poción, y que Muraresku adopta
«The pagan ritual is actually mentioned twice in the Old Testament, disparagingly, of course—confirming the survival of this rather primordial tradition into Biblical times.» — la huella del marzeah en el Antiguo Testamento que Muraresku consigna
«In September 2009 a sandstone block accidentally turned up in Wadi Musa, near the Dionysian temple in Petra. Its partly legible inscription confirms that the hallucinatory marzeah ritual was still alive and well during Jesus’s lifetime.» — el epígrafe de Wadi Musa con que Muraresku data el marzeah en tiempos de Jesús
«But there’s a major difference between Dionysus and Jesus on the one hand, and their divine predecessors on the other: a political disagreement. Did this wine belong to the 1 percent or the 99 percent? Was it meant for the pharaohs, royalty, and elite? Or was it meant for everybody? Who should have access to the nectar of the gods?» — el giro político que Muraresku da a su tesis: la disputa por quién tiene acceso a la poción
«By the time of Jesus, a democratizing trend led by ecstatic women had revamped sacred wine into what Euripides, four centuries earlier, had called a sacrament for “simple folk” or phauloteron (φαυλότερον): “equally to the rich and to the lowly has [Dionysus] given the painless joy of wine.”» — el movimiento democratizador que Muraresku describe, con la fórmula de Eurípides sobre la gente sencilla
«From the beginning, the Christian potion was destined for mass consumption, just like the Dionysian potion that had been working its magic in Greece and Greek-speaking hubs of the eastern Mediterranean for centuries, including parts of Galilee.» — la tesis política del capítulo: la poción cristiana nació para el consumo masivo
«Scholars like Dennis MacDonald have concluded that John cast Jesus in the same mold as the God of Ecstasy to emphasize his godhood. Fair enough. John gets zero points for originality.» — el juicio de Muraresku sobre la originalidad del evangelio de Juan en este punto
«It all started at the Last Supper, a more intimate affair among friends. Where the wine became blood, and Jesus introduced part two of the trademark Dionysian sacrament: the raw flesh.» — el paso que Muraresku anuncia de las bodas de Caná a la última cena
«To the Greeks this magical procedure was known as apotheosis, or deification. Anyone who ate and drank the god became the god.» — el término griego con que Muraresku nombra el mecanismo: comer y beber al dios para ser el dios
«The Roman senate prohibited the full-blown Bacchanalia in 186 BC, creating an uncertain future for the God of Ecstasy.» — la represión romana de las bacanales que Muraresku pone como bisagra política
«The most powerful empire in the world, an all-male enterprise, was clamping down on a female-led religion that promised immortality to its initiates.» — la formulación política con que Muraresku resume el conflicto
«With only a few ounces of its secret potion, this religion with no name had finally broken the spiritual exclusivity of Egypt and the Near East, and the monopoly of the Greek families in Eleusis.» — la ruptura de monopolios que Muraresku atribuye a la religión sin nombre
«It’s a neat line of succession: Osiris to El to Dionysus to Jesus.» — la línea de sucesión que Muraresku propone para el dios del vino
«The final straw for the Roman senate was the Italian witch, Paculla Annia, the scandalous high priestess of Bacchus in Campania—the heartland of Magna Graecia, home to Naples and Pompeii.» — la figura de Paculla Annia que Muraresku destaca del relato de Livio; el verbatim se corta antes de la llamada de nota
«In the years leading up to the mass crackdown on the Dionysian Mysteries in 186 BC, Paculla Annia refused to initiate any men over the age of twenty.» — la medida que Livio atribuye a Paculla Annia y que, según Muraresku, colmó la paciencia del senado
«Mac Góráin, a classicist at University College London, “this cult is putting young, impressionable men under the control of women.”» — la lectura de Fiachra Mac Góráin sobre la amenaza social del culto, que Muraresku cita
«In the end Dionysus and Jesus were both really bad for the status quo. There’s a reason the crackdown on the Bacchanalia by the Roman senate in 186 BC was the first large-scale religious persecution in European history.» — el paralelo político con que Muraresku cierra el capítulo
«“The issue was exacerbated by the appeal of Christianity to women. The combination of stereotypes of foreign and female, which had been deployed by classical Greeks of eastern women out of control, has always been especially potent.”» — la cita de Mary Beard, John North y Simon Price sobre el papel de las mujeres en la persecución del cristianismo
«This is the political and spiritual backdrop of the pagan continuity hypothesis. And it can’t be dismissed. The same people who were attracted to the radical cult of Dionysus were the same people who were attracted to the cult of Jesus.» — la conclusión política de Muraresku: el mismo público para los dos cultos
«They were not so different from the spiritual-but-not-religious of today, seekers on the hunt for transcendence. A real experience with real meaning, where the key to that Dionysian experience was the kind of wine that was universally regarded as a pharmakon.» — el puente que Muraresku tiende con su lector contemporáneo
«Largely ignored by modern scholars, however, is the degree to which the common sacrament of wine motivated the harsh suppression of these revolutionary movements. And whether the great secret of Dionysus and Jesus alike—the secret that unlocked the key to immortality— was, in fact, drugged wine.» — la laguna historiográfica que Muraresku declara querer llenar
«Like the Italian head of Dionysus from the second century AD, with those “luxurious locks” twisting their way down the god’s neck and shoulders. If you ever wondered why Jesus was the only Jewish man of first-century Galilee to get the Jim Morrison look, this is why.» — la iconografía con que Muraresku explica el aspecto tradicional de Jesús en el arte
«Whenever startled by a passing shepherd, Pan would wake with a terrifying shout, giving us the word “panic.” The goat-man was the illiterate peasantry’s last refuge against an encroaching Christianity. As a result, our popular image of Satan likely comes from this horned, lustful deity—the “rustic one” (paganus in Latin, whence the word “pagan”).» — la etimología de pánico y de pagano que Muraresku recoge al recorrer la sala de Dioniso
«Slumped over in ecstasy, a shaggy-tailed satyr carries him along with thyrsos in hand— the long, hollow wand used to carry the wine god’s plant additives, according to Ruck.» — la lectura que Ruck hace del tirso como recipiente de los aditivos vegetales del vino
«What G 408 and G 409 tried to communicate, and what Dioscorides later recorded with his wine formulas, is now a scientific fact. The latest archaeochemical data from the Near East show that herbs, resins, and other plant additives were mixed into wine for at least three thousand years before the birth of Christianity to increase its psychoactive profile.» — el balance del capítulo, dicho como hecho científico: los aditivos vegetales en el vino están documentados tres milenios antes del cristianismo
«Why would that time-honored tradition suddenly stop at Jesus?» — la pregunta con que Muraresku traslada la carga de la prueba a quien niegue la continuidad
«This is the silenus Marsyas, another close companion of Dionysus. The eight-foot Marsyas supplicié, sometimes called the Torment of Marsyas or Hanging Marsyas, was originally cut around 200 BC. It memorializes the legend of the cocky satyr who challenged the god Apollo to a flute contest, and lost. His punishment was to be flayed alive.» — Muraresku presenta el Marsias colgado del Louvre, que le sirve de paralelo iconográfico de la crucifixión
«If the naked Marsyas were given a loincloth and hung in a church, I wonder how long it would take the faithful to realize it wasn’t Jesus.» — la observación con que Muraresku cifra el parecido iconográfico
«The theme of tonight’s dinner is apotheosis. What does it mean to become God?» — el asunto que Muraresku pone sobre la mesa en la conversación con Tiso
«And aren’t he and Ruck both committing the same arch-heresy by suggesting that the original, obscured truth of Christianity has nothing to do with worshipping Jesus, and everything to do with becoming Jesus?» — la herejía común que Muraresku atribuye a Tiso y a Ruck: no adorar a Jesús sino llegar a serlo
«He wanted to publicly debut the Oratio, together with his 900 Theses, in Rome on the Epiphany of 1487, the God’s Gift Day. But Pope Innocent VIII was not impressed. He put a halt to the spectacle and condemned every one of Pico della Mirandola’s theses for “renovating the errors of pagan philosophers.”» — el caso de Pico della Mirandola que Muraresku usa como precedente de censura
«Who would not long to be admitted to such mysteries? Who would not desire, putting all human concerns behind him, holding the goods of fortune in contempt and little minding the goods of the body, thus to become, while still a denizen of earth, a guest at the table of the gods, and, drunk with the nectar of eternity, receive, while still a mortal, the gift of immortality?» — el pasaje de Pico della Mirandola sobre Eleusis del que sale el título del capítulo
«The Vatican’s intervention was “the first case in history of a printed book universally banned by the Church.”» — el dato con que Muraresku mide el alcance de aquella condena
«If drugged wine was the Greeks’ path to immortality, did a drugged Eucharist offer the first Christians the kind of experience reported by the participants of the psilocybin experiments at Hopkins and NYU?» — la pregunta que Muraresku le hace al sacerdote, enlazando el rito antiguo con los ensayos de laboratorio
«But without the genuine psychedelic sacrament inherited from the Greeks, how could a placebo Eucharist convince anyone to drop paganism and the entrenched religion of their ancestors?» — el argumento de eficacia con que Muraresku sostiene su hipótesis: un sacramento placebo no convertiría a nadie
«In The Apples of Apollo: Pagan and Christian Mysteries of the Eucharist, published in 2001, Ruck devotes almost a hundred pages to this subject in a chapter titled “Jesus, the Drug Man.”» — el libro de Ruck de 2001 que Muraresku usa para la segunda mitad del argumento
«But according to Ruck, the true origin of Jesus’s Greek name is the root for “drug” or “poison” (ios), which supplies the Greek words for “doctor” or iatros (ἰατρός). Ruck says the “drug man.”» — la etimología que Ruck propone para el nombre griego de Jesús, con el griego que el libro imprime
«Each of them uses the verb iaomai (ἰάομαι) to describe Jesus’s healing miracles. A literal translation would be “to cure by means of drugs.”» — el argumento léxico que Muraresku añade sobre el verbo de los evangelios para las curaciones
«In just four centuries, how did Christianity go from being an obscure cult of “twenty or so illiterate day laborers” in a neglected part of the Mediterranean to the official religion of Rome, converting half the empire, perhaps some thirty million people, in the process?» — la pregunta histórica que Muraresku declara querer responder; el verbatim se corta antes de la llamada de nota
«What was the secret to Christianity’s success?» — la formulación más breve de esa pregunta, que ordena la segunda mitad del libro
«Philostratus goes a step further and says the satyr sentenced himself to death for playing out of tune. Marsyas “looks forward to the slaughter” so he can be reborn as a container for Dionysus’s potion, our liquid salvation.» — la lectura de Filóstrato que Muraresku recoge: Marsias se entrega a la muerte para renacer como odre del vino del dios; el verbatim se corta antes de la llamada de nota
«Dying so that we may live, this self-sacrifice on the tree for the good of humanity» — el paralelo que Muraresku traza entre ese autosacrificio en el árbol y la cruz; el tramo se corta en el cambio de plana
«Like the 180 gallons of wine at Cana. Or the Son of God in the “lap” of the Father. Or the “crown of thorns” (akanthinon stephanon) and “purple cloak” (porphuroun himation) that the Roman governor Pontius Pilate throws on Jesus in John 19:5, publicly mocking him as the “King of the Jews.”» — la corona de espinas y el manto púrpura de Juan 19:5, que Muraresku lee como señal dionisiaca
«In fact, the early Church Fathers were well aware of the disconcerting relationship between Dionysus and Jesus.» — el dato con que Muraresku desplaza la discusión: los padres de la Iglesia conocían el parecido
«“Well, they knew Greek!” interjects Father Francis. “Of course they could read Euripides. How could anyone possibly think they didn’t understand their own language?”» — la réplica de Tiso sobre la competencia griega de los padres de la Iglesia
«In the second century AD, Justin Martyr’s defense was to blame Satan for duping the Greeks into believing that Dionysus was the real Messiah, not Jesus. Even though Dionysus was reportedly born of a virgin, discovered the vine, and later “introduced wine into his Mysteries”—just like Jesus—the “Devil” apparently used the god from Scythopolis to obscure “the prophecy announced by the patriarch Jacob and recorded by Moses.”» — la explicación de Justino Mártir que Muraresku consigna: el diablo habría falsificado de antemano al mesías
«Justin conveniently sidesteps the fact that Dionysus, or some form of the wine god, predates the Biblical prophets by a couple thousand years.» — la objeción de Muraresku a esa explicación
«There is no better example than John 6:53–56, the Evangelist’s bizarre take on the Eucharist. It is the most explicit and intentional Dionysian reference in all of John’s Gospel.» — el pasaje que Muraresku considera el centro de su argumento sobre la eucaristía
«Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is the True Food and my blood is the True Drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them.» — el pasaje de Juan 6:53-56 en la traducción inglesa que Muraresku transcribe antes de objetarla
«No Greek speaker of the time could have heard this passage and not thought of Dionysus.» — la afirmación que Muraresku hace sin condicional sobre la recepción griega de ese pasaje
«The same key they already knew from the Dionysian Mysteries: apotheosis by means of what John calls the “True Food” and “True Drink” that promise “eternal life.”» — la clave que Muraresku atribuye a los dos misterios: apoteosis por comida y bebida verdaderas
«While New Testament scholars acknowledge the Bible isn’t the most accurate record of historical events, they have two general criteria for assessing authenticity: the age of the sources, and their multiplicity.» — los dos criterios de autenticidad que Muraresku dice tomar de la crítica neotestamentaria
«The earliest written evidence of the Last Supper, Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians, was probably composed two decades after Jesus’s death, around AD 53.» — la datación con que Muraresku fija el testimonio más antiguo de la última cena
«But it certainly wasn’t his Jewish upbringing, since the devouring of flesh and blood “amounts to a reinstatement of human sacrifice, which in Judaism was anathema. Indeed a large part of the Hebrew Bible constitutes a campaign against human sacrifice.”» — el argumento con que Muraresku descarta el origen judío de la teofagia eucarística
«The flesh and blood of dead men are commonly eaten and drunk to inspire bravery, wisdom, or other qualities for which the men themselves were remarkable.… It is now easy to understand why a savage should desire to partake of the flesh of an animal or man whom he regards as divine. By eating the body of the god he shares in the god’s attributes and powers. And when the god is a corn-god, the corn is his proper body; when he is a vine-god, the juice of the grape is his blood; and so by eating the bread and drinking the wine the worshipper partakes of the real body and blood of his god.» — el pasaje de Frazer sobre la teofagia que Muraresku transcribe, con la equivalencia entre dios del grano y dios de la vid
«Frazer concluded that “the coincidences of the Christian with the heathen festivals are too close and too numerous to be accidental.”» — la conclusión de Frazer que Muraresku cita
«For Dr. King it was pointless to deny that Christianity “was greatly influenced by the Mystery religions, both from a ritual and a doctrinal angle.” But rather than “deliberate copying,” he preferred “a natural and unconscious process” that placed the religion of Jesus in historical context, “conditioned by the contact with the older religions” and the “general trend of the time.”» — la posición intermedia de Martin Luther King Jr. en su ensayo de 1950 según Muraresku
«So with all due respect to Dr. King, it appears that John did, in fact, deliberately copy the language of Euripides to make the greatest recruitment pitch in the history of Christianity. And perhaps the most significant point of his entire Gospel: the sacrament of Dionysus and the sacrament of Jesus are one and the same.» — la discrepancia que Muraresku declara con King: sostiene copia deliberada y no proceso inconsciente
«In The Bacchae, the pointy crown fashioned from the fruit of nature is the definitive way of identifying the God of Ecstasy and his disciples.» — el paralelo que Muraresku toma de las Bacantes para la corona; el verbatim se corta antes de la llamada de nota
«And in Greek art Dionysus himself is frequently seen wearing such a crown, along with his trademark purple cloak.» — el paralelo iconográfico que Muraresku añade sobre el manto púrpura
«And John’s language is equally clear that you didn’t need a priest to mix it.» — la consecuencia política de esa lectura: el sacramento no exigía sacerdote
«Both of them are steeped in the same primitive rites of theophagy that had been transforming archaic humans into gods since time immemorial.» — la conclusión que Muraresku saca sobre la teofagia común a los dos sacramentos
«Not only because the words that John uses for “flesh” (sarx/ σάρξ) and “blood” (haima/αἷμα) are identical to what Euripides wrote in the The Bacchae five hundred years earlier,» — el argumento léxico final del capítulo: las palabras de Juan para carne y sangre son las de Eurípides
«Twice in this passage the Evangelist drops the word trogon (τρώγων). But to translate trogon as “eat,” as do most English translations of John’s Gospel, is at best to ignore, and at worst to suppress, the visceral act of theophagy so obviously intended to jump off the page.» — el verbo griego que Muraresku considera decisivo y la objeción que dirige a las traducciones inglesas
«“To gnaw, to munch,” affirms the priest, parsing through the dense mix of Greek and English characters on my phone.» — la traducción del verbo que Tiso da en la escena del bar
«Only in John’s Eucharist does trogon appear. Indeed, the only other instance of the verb trogon in the entire New Testament is in Matthew 24:38, in reference to the pagan feasting of the pre-Flood population “in the days of Noah.”» — el dato de concordancia con que Muraresku sostiene la singularidad del término
«In The Dionysian Gospel, Dennis MacDonald believes the Greek of John points rather obviously to “Dionysian cult imagery,” “specifically the eating of the flesh and blood of the god and the immortality that initiates gain by such activity.”» — la lectura de MacDonald sobre ese verbo que Muraresku transcribe
«As a matter of fact, the root of the English word “tragedy” that Dionysus gave birth to as the god of theater is tragos (τράγος), the Greek “goat” that was ritually sacrificed during competitions in Athens.» — la etimología de tragedia que Muraresku usa para introducir el macho cabrío dionisiaco
«Euripides calls it “the thankful meal of raw flesh,” the omophagon charin (ὠμοφάγον χάριν). This charin is the same root of the verb eucharisteo (εὐχαριστέω), “to be thankful.” It appears fifteen times in the New Testament. And it is, of course, where we get the word “Eucharist.”» — el argumento léxico decisivo del capítulo: la raíz de eucaristía está en la fórmula de Eurípides para la comida de carne cruda
«Piper puts particular emphasis on goats, including their love of juniper, which might explain all the guzzling of “warm goat’s blood” by the Hunza people of the Hindu Kush from the last chapter. Regarding the Dionysian meal, Piper believes the ritual may have facilitated the ingestion of certain hallucinogenic but otherwise poisonous alkaloids that could be better metabolized by the sacrificial animals, it often being “necessary to consume the flesh raw to preserve or maximize its psychoactive potency.”» — la tesis de Alan Piper sobre la carne de animales que pastan plantas psicoactivas, que Muraresku recoge con su grado
«In his first chapter, Jesus is referred to as the “Lamb of God” or amnos tou theou (ὁ Ἀμνὸς τοῦ Θεοῦ). Like the Wedding at Cana, it’s another of John’s inventions that will echo for centuries in Christian art—» — el sustituto que Muraresku atribuye a Juan: el cordero en lugar del macho cabrío
«in the Ghent Altarpiece, for example, which shows the holy blood draining from the chest of the still-living lamb directly into the Eucharistic chalice.» — la pieza que Muraresku usa para mostrar la continuidad iconográfica de la sangre en el cáliz
«We have no physical evidence for the mass slaughter of psychoactive lambs across the paleo-Christian world. It looks as if the gruesome meal was left in the backcountry where it belonged.» — la abstención que Muraresku declara sobre la carne cruda en el cristianismo
«The Ancient Greek musician and poet, Timotheus of Miletus (ca. 446–357 BC), explicitly refers to holy wine as the “blood of Dionysus” or haima Bacchiou (αἷμα Βακχίου).» — el precedente antiguo del vino como sangre del dios que Muraresku documenta en Timoteo de Mileto
«For John’s audience, the morbid language about drinking the blood of Jesus was not a call to animal sacrifice. It was a dog whistle to Greek-speaking initiates everywhere that Christianity’s state-of-the-art, Eucharistic meal was based on ancient Dionysian precedent. And, by extension, carried just as much of a mind-expanding kick as the pharmakon of Greek wine.» — la lectura que Muraresku propone del lenguaje eucarístico de Juan: una señal para iniciados griegos
«The Gospel of John is full of references to the concept of death and rebirth. In John 15:13, Jesus says: “the greatest way to show love for friends is to die for them.” In John 3:3, he adds, “I tell you for certain that you must be born again before you can see God’s Kingdom.”» — los pasajes joánicos de muerte y renacimiento que Muraresku enumera
«And just as in the Dionysian Mysteries, with its long tradition of the drugged wine, in the Gospel of John this new sight doesn’t come about by accident. Access to the Kingdom of Heaven is not based on blind belief, or the simple act of accepting Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior, as many Christian denominations profess today. The Greek of Jesus couldn’t have been more explicit in John 6:53–56, when he revealed the key to the Christian Mysteries. You had to actually do something. You had to sample the “True Drink.”» — la consecuencia práctica que Muraresku saca: el acceso no era por creencia sino por acto
«In the end John is saying that the Christian Mysteries would be as meaningless without their Eucharist as the Greek Mysteries would be without theirs. You do not become one with Dionysus by reading about him, or praying to him. You do it by drinking him.» — la formulación con que Muraresku cierra el argumento del capítulo
«If the Dionysian drink did all that, then the “True Drink” of John’s Gospel had to do the same.» — el paso condicional que Muraresku da y que es el nervio de toda su hipótesis
«The priest takes notes of all the similarities between Jesus and Dionysus, and the odd language in John 6:53–56. As Bob Marley’s “Buffalo Solider” blares over the Lizard Lounge’s speakers, and the French chatter rises to a crescendo, the priest looks me straight in the eye and cautions, “But it doesn’t mean that Jesus never existed … or that Jesus is Dionysus. It means this is the version of Jesus that John chose to present. As an esthetic.”» — la reserva que Tiso opone a Muraresku: el paralelo no significa que Jesús no existiera ni que sea Dioniso
«Father Francis reminds me that John’s was the last Gospel to be completed, probably toward the end of the first century AD. And that he was writing for a specific community of early believers in Ephesus,» — la acotación histórica que Tiso aporta sobre la comunidad de Éfeso a la que se dirige el evangelio
«When it comes to the pagan continuity hypothesis, Father Francis is a believer, I’m pleased to learn. He doesn’t deny the similarities between the Dionysian and Christian Mysteries. And fluent in the Greek, he can’t dismiss the secret “symbols” and “language” that seem to be intentionally included in John’s Gospel.» — el aval que Muraresku obtiene del sacerdote para la hipótesis de la continuidad pagana
«It was the God of Ecstasy, the classicist openly recognized, “whose blood is represented in the sacramental drinking of the wine.”» — la concesión de Walter Burkert sobre el vino como sangre de Dioniso, que Muraresku aprovecha; el tramo se corta en el cambio de plana y sigue con el bebedor que bebe al dios mismo
«“They were said as homilies of ecstatic individuals channeling Christ in the liturgy,” Father Francis continues, pointing to the Greek of the weathered Bible lying open on the table.» — la explicación de Tiso sobre el origen de esas palabras: homilías de individuos extáticos que canalizaban a Cristo en la liturgia
«Supper scene is poetic theology that doesn’t correspond at all to the Last Supper of the Synoptics, because it’s all coming out of a much later tradition of ecstatic, prophetic speech. Where the followers of John’s community are channeling the voice of Christ in their time. Because Christ is just as much present in the Eucharist as he is in Galilee in the year 30. In the year 90, he’s still risen. He’s still there.”» — la continuación de esa explicación: teología poética de una tradición posterior de habla profética extática
«Women were the main beneficiaries of the primordial rite of communion that brought the living into contact with the dead, and turned mere mortals into goddesses.» — la tesis sobre las mujeres con que Muraresku cierra el capítulo
«Reviewing the many texts, inscriptions, and tomb epigrams that prove these Dionysian rituals actually existed in the real world—and not just Euripides’s or John’s imagination—Kraemer concludes that men may have taken part in only the “lesser activities,” while “initiation with its practices of possession and sacrifice [were] denied to them.”» — la conclusión de Ross Kraemer sobre los niveles de iniciación por sexo que Muraresku recoge
«If the earliest Greek-speaking Christians really did inherit a psychedelic sacrament from the initiates of the Dionysian Mysteries, there was only one way it was going to happen. Women. More precisely, women with serious pharmacological expertise. Who else was going to cook up the Eucharist?» — el argumento que Muraresku considera el nervio de la hipótesis: solo mujeres con pericia farmacológica pudieron preparar la eucaristía
«At Eleusis, Ruck traced the Secret of Secrets, the recipe for preparing ergotized beer, to the hereditary priestesses of Demeter and Persephone. For the brewing of the graveyard beer in the domestic chapel at Mas Castellar de Pontós, Enriqueta Pons points to women as well.» — el inventario de precedentes femeninos que Muraresku reúne, de Eleusis a Cataluña
«It was not until the industrialization of brewing after the Protestant Reformation that men took over the trade.» — la fecha en que, según Muraresku, los hombres tomaron el oficio de la cerveza
«Calvert Watkins traced the preparation of all the Indo-European sacraments—the soma, kukeon, and even Dionysian wine—to a “liturgical act” in deep prehistory, a ritual “by women for women.”» — el mismo reparto en el vino según Watkins, que Muraresku había citado en la Parte Uno
«He posits a “long tradition” of women as beverage makers that could very well stretch back to the Upper Paleolithic. In many indigenous societies today, after all, it is still women who “generally take the lead in gathering the fruit, honey, and herbs for alcoholic drinks used to mark burials, deaths [and] rites of passage.”» — la tradición larga de mujeres bebedoras y preparadoras que McGovern postula
«In the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, a group of women led by Mary Magdalene are the first to witness Jesus’s impossible resurrection three days after his death and burial. Only in John does the risen Jesus appear to Mary Magdalene all by herself.» — el dato comparativo con que Muraresku destaca el papel de María Magdalena en Juan
«And as Karen Jo Torjesen makes clear in her book When Women Were Priests, “She was not only the first witness to the resurrection but was directly commissioned to carry the message that Jesus had risen from the dead.”» — la lectura de Karen Jo Torjesen sobre María Magdalena como primera testigo y enviada
«John knew his audience, and apparently wanted his Gospel to end there. But a later copyist added an additional, final chapter where Jesus appears separately to Peter, the first Pope, and the other male disciples— instructing them to “feed my lambs” for the rest of human history.» — la lectura textual con que Muraresku separa el final original de Juan del capítulo añadido
«No less an authority than Raymond E. Brown, the late Catholic priest and onetime premier scholar of John in the English-speaking world, endorsed a reading of the Gospel that did indeed make women heirs to Jesus. If not to the exclusion of men, then certainly their equals as “first-class disciples.”» — el aval católico que Muraresku alega para esa lectura: Raymond E. Brown
«In 1896, about fifty years before the discovery of the Nag Hammadi codices that I mentioned during our tour through the ruins of Eleusis, another secret book came to light in Egypt. Like all Gnostic literature, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene never made it into the New Testament. Because it didn’t fit the Church Fathers’ agenda.» — el Evangelio de María Magdalena y su exclusión del canon, que Muraresku consigna
«This precious text preserves a Jesus who came not to be idolized as an external God, but to reveal the divine spark that lives in us. And to unlock our own “innate capacity to know God,” says Princeton scholar Elaine Pagels— to actually experience that divinity here and now.» — la lectura de Elaine Pagels sobre ese evangelio que Muraresku transcribe
«In her own Gospel, Mary is presented as the disciple whom Jesus “loved” more than any other, and with whom Jesus shared hidden teachings and techniques that were intentionally withheld from his male followers.» — el lugar que ese evangelio da a María según el resumen de Muraresku
«It is Mary who receives personal instruction from Jesus in vivid hallucinations. And it is she who explains to Peter how such visions can be experienced as a normal (if untapped) part of human consciousness.» — lo que Muraresku destaca de ese texto: la instrucción por visiones y su carácter de facultad humana no explotada
«For Pagels, the conclusion is obvious: “Without visions and revelations, then, the Christian movement would not have begun.”» — la sentencia de Elaine Pagels sobre el papel de las visiones en el origen del cristianismo; el verbatim se corta antes de la llamada de nota
«For example, it was a woman named Lydia, a successful businesswoman in Philippi with influence over an extended social network in Greece, who became Saint Paul’s very first convert in Europe. Importantly, she was considered the “ruler of her household.” Though rare at the time, Lydia’s “administrative, financial, and disciplinary responsibilities” in the domestic sphere translated into a public prestige that was ordinarily denied to women. She could afford to host Paul, making her home among the very first house churches where Christianity found refuge.» — el caso de Lidia que Muraresku usa para documentar el liderazgo femenino en las iglesias domésticas
«“Whenever Christianity spread,” says the scholar Torjesen, “women were leaders of house churches.”» — la fórmula de Torjesen que Muraresku hace suya; el verbatim se corta antes de la llamada de nota
«Along with family tombs in the underground catacombs from Italy to Greece to North Africa, the house churches functioned as “private associations,” where the “centrality of the banquet meal” perfectly suited women’s entrenched authority over the home, including “receiving, storing and distributing” all the ingredients necessary for the Eucharistic ritual.» — los dos escenarios del cristianismo primitivo y el lugar que en ellos ocupaba la autoridad doméstica femenina
«But it was Junia who was hailed as “foremost among the apostles.”» — la figura de Junia que Muraresku destaca de las cartas paulinas
«The emperor could tolerate the state-run Mysteries of Eleusis, with its relative order and long cultural legacy. The undying devotion of women to the God of Ecstasy, with their “inappropriate desire for knowledge” and “ritual cannibalism,” according to the historians Beard, North, and Price, was another thing altogether: “fundamental breaches of the code of humanity.”» — el contraste político que Muraresku traza entre los misterios de Estado y el culto dionisiaco
«In the same way that Dionysus rescued his sacrament from Eleusis and brought it to the masses, Jesus was open-sourcing the wine of the Eucharist away from the palaces and mansions of the Near East. Immortality was now officially open to everyone. And not just in the rural hideouts of the Mediterranean, where the God of Ecstasy and his witches were forced into submission, but also in the comfort and secrecy of upscale homes all over the empire.» — el paralelo con que Muraresku explica la expansión del sacramento cristiano
«For the untested religion to have any chance of success, however, the Eucharist simply had to involve the kind of genuine mystical experiences so well documented in the Dionysian tradition. Unlike the cardboard wafer and cheap boxed wine of today’s Mass, it had to actually deliver.» — el argumento de eficacia repetido: el sacramento tenía que funcionar de veras
«Like many Catholics, I’ve taken Communion hundreds and hundreds of times in my life, and never once felt a fraction of the ecstasy reported in the art and literature of Ancient Greece.» — el testimonio personal con que Muraresku mide la distancia entre la comunión actual y el éxtasis antiguo
«Fortuitously, Dioscorides published his magnum opus in the same period that Lydia and her successors were looking to stock their lavish house churches in Greece. Just like Priscilla in Anatolia. Perhaps Junia and the many women that Paul recognizes in Rome, where more females are documented than any other church in the Mediterranean, would have found the Father of Drugs especially useful. The step-by-step instructions for creating one of Ruck’s hallucinogenic elixirs, doctored with any number of psychedelic plants, herbs, and fungi, were right at their fingertips.» — la coincidencia cronológica que Muraresku subraya entre la Materia Médica y las primeras iglesias domésticas
«The witches of Dionysus could very well have passed the sacrament along to the women who ran the new religion in those three hundred years after Jesus, when paleo-Christianity survived in the house churches and catacombs before receiving Constantine’s blessing in the fourth century AD. For a few generations, perhaps the witches of Dionysus and the witches of Jesus were fairly indistinguishable. Why couldn’t they worship both wine gods? The women who prepared the psychedelic beer and wine in the Greek Mysteries could have been the same women who prepared the original Eucharist across the Mediterranean, where the line between pagan and Christian did not yet exist.» — la hipótesis de transmisión que Muraresku formula sobre las mujeres del culto dionisiaco y las del cristiano
«If anyone with the right ingredients could mix up their own Eucharist at home, and meet Jesus on their own terms, Christianity never would have consolidated the wealth and power to replace the Roman Empire as Europe’s central governing authority for centuries. One patriarchal institution succeeding another.» — el argumento institucional con que Muraresku explica la exclusión de las mujeres
«The women and their Eucharist had to go. It may have started by altering John’s Gospel and getting rid of the Gospel of Mary Magdalene. But the campaign against women and drugs would last for a very long time.» — la tesis que Muraresku anuncia para el resto del libro: la campaña contra mujeres y drogas
«When initiates ingested the raw flesh and blood of Dionysus and tasted his visionary wine, they must have experienced something profound. Enough that it made them forget all duties to family, country, and Roman society at large, escaping like addicts into the wilderness, where immortality was available in a cup.» — la formulación con que Muraresku sostiene que la experiencia dionisiaca tuvo que ser real
«John could not possibly hope to sell Christianity to a skeptical, pagan world unless the Eucharist of the Christian Mysteries was just as magical. His entire Gospel seems engineered to make the single point that the sacrament of Dionysus and the sacrament of Jesus are one and the same.» — el argumento central del capítulo, repetido como conclusión
«As Greece’s expert on the archaeological reality of ancient plant use, she confirmed a number of prehistoric botanical finds in the north of the country that point to wine in the creation of “altered states of consciousness” on terms similar to the marzeah, where a “healer” could exploit their “knowledge of fermentation of grape juice” to “communicate with spirits, ancestors or gods.”» — lo que Soultana Valamoti dice a Muraresku sobre hallazgos botánicos prehistóricos en el norte de Grecia
«But despite the discovery of diffused remains, including grapes, opium, henbane, and black nightshade, Valamoti has not yet nabbed the visionary plants all together in one ritual setting. It’s the same story in Galilee, where Koh has not been able to unearth any overtly psychedelic potions amid some very promising leads. So at the moment, the two most obvious locations that might cough up a psychedelic sacrament for the Dionysian and Christian Mysteries, Greece and Galilee, have failed to deliver.» — la deuda de evidencia que Muraresku declara para Grecia y Galilea
«The seeds of Jesus’s sacrament may have been planted in Galilee and Jerusalem, but they took root here, in the onetime capital of the Roman Empire and home to the oldest functioning institution the planet has ever known: the Roman Catholic Church.» — el traslado geográfico con que Muraresku abre la parte romana de su investigación
«In a tradition that has been discarded and forgotten, Magna Graecia and Rome are where the Dionysian and Christian Mysteries smacked into each other and exploded into a hybrid ritual of secret meetings and magical sacraments.» — la tesis de los tres siglos paleocristianos que Muraresku sostiene
«He was the God of Drugs—any of the plants, herbs, or fungi spiking the wine that Euripides called a pharmakon in 405 BC.» — la definición de Dioniso que Muraresku repite: dios de las drogas y no del alcohol
«Aboveground, the original Eucharist was being consumed as part of a larger meal, a Greek-inspired pagan banquet called an agape (ἀγάπη) or “love feast,” that was “often marked by excessive convivial drinking.”» — el banquete agape en que, según Muraresku, se consumía la eucaristía primitiva
«Indeed the same Ignatius who coined the term pharmakon athanasias in the early second century seems to have regarded the Christian Eucharist and the pagan agape as identical.» — el dato con que Muraresku sostiene la confusión entre eucaristía y banquete pagano
«In 1 Corinthians 10:21, he chastises the Greek community established less than an hour’s drive from Eleusis. “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons.”» — la reprensión de Pablo a los corintios sobre la copa de los demonios, que Muraresku lee al pie de la letra
«In English the line is usually translated, “That’s why so many of you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep.”» — la traducción corriente de 1 Corintios 11:30 que Muraresku va a objetar
«The congregation had fallen into rival factions, owing individual allegiance to whoever had baptized them. Paul reprimands them to do the ordinary eating at home; and reminds them of the Eucharist that Jesus instituted, the table fellowship of the bread and the cup: whoever partakes unworthily will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. This is clearly not the ordinary eating, for many of them have fallen sick from taking the sacrament incorrectly, and some have even died, as if it could be a poison.» — la lectura entera de Ruck sobre ese pasaje, que Muraresku transcribe: algunos enfermaron y murieron por tomar mal el sacramento
«Has no one ever stopped to ponder why, two thousand years ago, “a considerable number” (hikanoi) of Corinthians were apparently dropping like flies during the proto-Mass?» — la pregunta que Muraresku considera desatendida por la exégesis
«As I dug deeper, I realized Ruck was not the only one who did a double take on the verb koimontai. The nineteenth-century English theologian Charles John Ellicott—dean of Exeter and bishop of Gloucester—compiled a sweeping commentary of the New Testament in 1878 that is still consulted by pastors and students of the faith to this day. Ellicott knew Greek, of course, and paid attention to the grammatical nuances that force an explanation of something as weird as koimontai. Like Ruck he preferred “and some die”» — el precedente que Muraresku encuentra en el comentario de Charles John Ellicott de 1878
«But the rest of his one-liner on 1 Corinthians 11:30 is priceless: “Even death sometimes resulted from their drunken orgies, either naturally, or by God’s direct visitation.”» — la explicación que Ellicott daba de esas muertes, que Muraresku cita con ironía declarada
«The Corinthians seem to have incorporated an extreme beverage into their liturgy. The boundary between psychedelic wine and poisonous wine is razor thin, however, and fatal dosing mistakes can be made.» — la lectura que Muraresku propone en su lugar: una bebida extrema con margen estrecho de dosis
«Or maybe they simply appeared dead, reveling in the near-death experience that brought the Corinthians closer to Jesus and the community of departed Christian saints.» — la lectura alternativa que Muraresku deja abierta sobre esas muertes
«In the footsteps of the priestesses who for centuries had been communing with Demeter in Eleusis to the east, Apollo in Delphi to the north, and Dionysus in the nearby mountains and forests, ecstatic women grabbed the reins in Corinth.» — el linaje de sacerdotisas en que Muraresku inscribe a las profetisas de Corinto
«First one would rise and speak a blessing, a commendation, a revelation or a word of wisdom. Before her oracle ended, another would rise with a word of encouragement or hope or exhortation. Mingled among these voices were the ecstatic exclamations of grace, thanks or praise. For these new Christians, the presence of the Spirit dramatized the fulfillment of [Old Testament] prophecy.» — la reconstrucción que Karen Jo Torjesen hace de una iglesia doméstica corintia, que Muraresku transcribe
«Paul complains in 1 Corinthians 11:21 that the communal meal in the Greek house church looks more like an agape» — el desorden que Pablo describe en Corinto según el resumen de Muraresku; el verbatim se corta antes de la palabra que el troceo parte a fin de renglón, *free-for-all*
«Finding evidence of psychedelic wine in this part of the Mediterranean would finally join the Greeks and Christians on the same ancient path of death and rebirth.» — la condición que Muraresku declara para convertir su hipótesis en hecho histórico y científico
«Instead of “fallen asleep,” however, Ruck translates the Greek word» — la traducción alternativa que Ruck propone para el verbo griego de 1 Corintios 11:30; el tramo se corta en el cambio de plana y sigue con el verbo koimontai y la versión un número considerable de ustedes está muriendo
«precisely the way it’s translated elsewhere in the New Testament: “That’s why … a considerable number of you are dying.”» — la versión que Ruck da del pasaje, que es la pieza que más convence a Muraresku
«If aboveground the Eucharist was being confused with the Greek agape, the tombs below proved to be the real melting pots of the pagan and Christian sacraments.» — el paso del banquete doméstico a las catacumbas que Muraresku anuncia
«Early Christianity did not have a clear idea what was supposed to happen to the deceased in the period between death and the Last Judgment at the end of time, but from the Roman cult of the dead it learned one very valuable lesson: the spirits are thirsty.» — la lección que Muraresku dice que el cristianismo tomó del culto romano a los muertos
«So the Christians began celebrating the refrigerium meal at the gravesite burials and anniversaries of their relatives’ deaths. It was believed that the dead, residing in their tombs, were actually present for the feasts.» — la práctica del refrigerium cristiano según Muraresku, con la creencia en la presencia de los muertos
«Such loving times in the recall of the dead went on for as long as the celebrants’ mood and their wine might last, even as an “all-nighter,” a vigilia. The dead themselves participated. They needed such remembrances for their tranquil existence in the Beyond. They were to be offered whatever food was at hand and, most especially, a toast in wine to be tipped onto their sarcophagus or into a pipe leading down to the head-end where they rested, athirst and happy. A party mood was essential. Participants, if they were challenged to defend the bad behavior that might attend too much eating and drinking, answered indignantly that loving thoughts, respect, and the recollection of fleshly pleasures offered to ancestors whose favor was certainly of more effect than any mere human’s—all this was not just picnicking. This was religion.» — Muraresku transcribe la reconstrucción que Ramsay MacMullen hace del refrigerium, con la libación vertida en el sarcófago y la defensa que los celebrantes daban de su conducta; cita en bloque, tramo largo releído entero en el crudo
«The Roman catacombs are filled with graffiti indicating refrigeria were being held on sacred ground to commemorate Jesus’s closest disciples, like Peter and Paul.» — la evidencia epigráfica del refrigerium en las catacumbas romanas que Muraresku consigna
«railed against the “drunken riots in cemeteries” and “social orgies” that had become a daily habit in the late fourth century in his bishopric of Hippo» — la reacción de Agustín contra los banquetes de cementerio, que Muraresku documenta
«The Latin word Augustine uses for “drunken riot” is comissatio, which the Lewis and Short Latin dictionary defines as a “Bacchanalian revel, and the succeeding nocturnal procession with torches and music”» — el análisis léxico con que Muraresku liga la censura de Agustín al komos dionisiaco
«It was not until the tenth century that Christian churches, with their accompanying graveyards, moved into the centers of town, finally uprooting the rural death cult.» — la fecha en que, según Muraresku, la Iglesia logró desarraigar el culto rural a los muertos
«If that didn’t already lump the agape and the refrigerium together into one paleo-Eucharistic tradition that was slowly taking shape in the early centuries after Jesus, the Catholic Encyclopedia from 1907 removes any doubt.» — la fuente eclesiástica con que Muraresku cierra el punto: la Enciclopedia Católica de 1907
«It’s easy to forget, even for most Catholics. But at its core, the Mass is a séance, where the living and the dead come together through the magic of the “True Food” and “True Drink.”» — la formulación con que Muraresku califica la misa, dicha con su voz
«According to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, that part of the liturgy known as the Intercessions specifically implores God to grant the departed “a place of refreshment” in the afterlife.» — la huella del refrigerium que Muraresku encuentra en la liturgia católica actual
«Discovered in 1919 when the Fiat shop around the corner was trying to expand into a sunken garage, this site is considered one of the most important funerary monuments from the first half of the third century AD, tentatively dated from 220 to 250.» — el hipogeo de los Aurelios que Muraresku va a visitar, con su datación
«In Rome alone the forty or so catacombs excavated to date run underfoot for hundreds of miles along damp, darkened tunnels—an entire shadow-city hosting thousands upon thousands of ancient tombs.» — la escala de las catacumbas romanas que Muraresku consigna
«A veritable time capsule of sub-surface frescoes that leap off the soft limestone, or tufa rock: a “remarkable coexistence of themes” that “demonstrates the passage from pagan to Christian imagery.”» — la caracterización de los frescos del hipogeo que Muraresku toma de la descripción oficial
«According to Barbara Mazzei, the Vatican archaeologist responsible for its eleven-year restoration, the Hypogeum in particular boasts “one of the most controversial scenes of the art of the catacombs.”» — el juicio de la arqueóloga vaticana Barbara Mazzei sobre la escena que Muraresku va a examinar
«In Latin refrigerium literally means a “cooling,” hence the English» — la etimología del refrigerium romano; el tramo se corta en el cambio de plana y sigue con la palabra refrigerador y con la definición del rito conmemorativo que refresca el alma del difunto
«word “refrigerator.” But in practice it came to describe “the commemorative rite that was intended to refresh the soul of the deceased in the afterlife and ensure its peaceful existence in the world of the dead.”» — la definición del rito que Muraresku da: refrescar el alma del difunto y asegurar su existencia apacible entre los muertos
«It says that the Eucharist,» — la introducción de la cita de la Enciclopedia Católica de 1907; el bloque citado sigue en la misma plana y va aparte por el cambio de línea del troceo
«The first shows the coexistence of the pagan refrigerium and the Christian Eucharist. Two ghostly meals in one.» — el programa de lectura que Muraresku anuncia para los tres frescos del hipogeo
«“Yes. This is the stibadium, the round couch at the table,” answers Giovanna. “These are the men seated around it. The servants with glasses and vessels in the foreground. And a young woman in the background. These scenes are very common in the third century in the Roman tradition. And they consider her Aurelia Prima,” the Vatican archaeologist motions to the female figure at the top of the painting, “just arriving for the heavenly banquet.”» — la descripción que la arqueóloga vaticana da del fresco del banquete funerario
«“I think it’s a ‘designation,’” my friend responds, mincing words. “He’s saying ‘this is something.’”» — la matización que Tiso opone a la palabra consagración
«In Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Paul, Jesus uses the same formula when consecrating the Eucharist for the very first time at the Last Supper: “This is (touto estin) my body.… This is (touto estin) my blood.”» — la fórmula griega de la consagración que Muraresku empareja con el gesto del fresco
«The fundamental meaning of that language and this arm raising, ancient and modern, is all the same: this ain’t grape juice. The god is present in this liquid. And once you drink it, the god will be present inside you. So proceed cautiously.» — la lectura que Muraresku hace del gesto, en su propio registro coloquial
«The priest begins counting the guests arranged in a semicircle around the table, laughing out loud when he gets to the final number. “Well, looks like we have twelve people all right.”» — el recuento de comensales que hace Tiso ante el fresco
«“A funerary banquet scene. Just the family feasting for the deceased. With the deceased probably,”» — la interpretación oficial que la arqueóloga vaticana da del fresco, y su corrección en el acto
«Given some of the more overt pagan motifs we’re about to examine in the neighboring frescoes, the Church is hesitant to call this meal a Eucharist.» — la reserva institucional que Muraresku atribuye a la Iglesia sobre ese fresco
«“But in this case, I wouldn’t say it’s the Last Supper,” interjects Father Francis. He doesn’t see Jesus and the Apostles, but he does see their legacy. “Whatever group this is,” he continues, “it must be celebrating a similar banquet. A ritual banquet with the Holy Grail.”» — la lectura que Tiso propone para el fresco, y de la que sale el título del capítulo
«The foremost authority on this lost tradition, the secular scholar MacMullen, has no problem confirming the pagan continuity between the refrigerium and the Eucharist. He notes these family gatherings in a Christian context “are not imaginary,” citing the “tangible testimonies” of excavations at the Papal Basilica of San Lorenzo, built to honor one of the first seven deacons of Rome who was martyred in AD 258. Several mausolea were unearthed with “bits of cooking and eating vessels,” objects that MacMullen attributes to the service of “Christian refrigeria.”» — el aval de Ramsay MacMullen para la continuidad entre refrigerium y eucaristía, con la evidencia excavada
«Establishing a channel of communication with the Other Side was mutually beneficial. On the one hand, the dead would receive the nourishment they needed while awaiting the Last Judgment; they would not go missing in limbo. On the other, the living got a little closer to their Creator, “since the martyred heroes of the congregation were believed to have special influence as petitioners at the throne of God.”» — el intercambio que Muraresku describe entre vivos y muertos en ese rito
«Underneath the largest Christian cathedral in the world, the seat of the papacy and the nerve center for Catholics the world over, a second-century shrine known as an aedicula was found, dedicated to Saint Peter himself. Around it, embedded in the earth, were heaps of bones from domestic animals. A neighboring sarcophagus was equipped with a libation tube for supplying wine to the deceased.» — la evidencia material que Muraresku consigna bajo la basílica de San Pedro: huesos y un tubo de libación
«The Romans designated their dead relatives as “gods” (dii or divi in Latin, sometimes adding immortales), much the way a Greek speaker might call them “gods” or theoi (θεοί).» — el vocabulario con que romanos y griegos nombraban a sus muertos, según Muraresku
«If it’s a purely pagan refrigerium, then twelve relatives are summoning the dead Aurelia Prima from the underworld. If it’s a Christian Eucharist, then twelve Romans who wanted to portray themselves as the twelve Apostles who attended the Last Supper are summoning a dead Christian from the Kingdom of Heaven so she can be their intermediary in the Beyond.» — las dos lecturas posibles del fresco que Muraresku enuncia sin arbitrar
«According to Ramsay MacMullen, the pagan and Christian rituals could coexist and overlap. Christians did perform the refrigerium. And the wine was essential for the magic.» — la conclusión que Muraresku saca de MacMullen para su propio argumento
«Here in the moldy depths of the tufa rock, with the Vatican archaeologist beginning to wonder what the Roman Catholic priest and his sidekick are really up to, am I looking at the first artistic rendering of the Drug of Immortality? If so, what was in that chalice?» — la pregunta con que Muraresku cierra el examen del primer fresco
«opposite wall was the bucolic landscape of a herdsman and goats, possibly John’s depiction of Jesus as the “Good Shepherd.” Why he’s tending goats instead of lambs is not entirely clear.» — el fresco del Buen Pastor con cabras que Muraresku señala como anomalía respecto del evangelio
«All as further evidenced by inscriptions left throughout this ancient city, which record “ancestor worship” in the form of promises or debts to the Christian deceased:» — las inscripciones romanas que MacMullen aduce y que registran culto a los antepasados cristianos; el tramo se corta en el cambio de plana
«promised a communion picnic, a refrigerium, as a vow”; “Tomius Coelius held a communion picnic for Peter and Paul.”» — las dos inscripciones concretas que Muraresku transcribe; el verbatim arranca después del nombre partido por el cambio de plana
«Covering much of the wall like a mural, the scene in front of me was only first unveiled in 2011, after a painstaking eleven-year restoration. By the Vatican’s own admission, it quickly became one of the most controversial scenes in all the Roman catacombs.» — el segundo fresco del hipogeo, restaurado en once años y descubierto en alta definición en 2011
«In the lower register, I spot three nude males. They seem caught off guard. To their right, a bearded man lifts an imposing right hand, fingers splayed, toward a woman standing by a loom for weaving fabrics.» — la descripción que Muraresku hace del registro inferior del fresco
«According to the Vatican itself, the key to unlocking this hodgepodge of imagery lies in the loom.» — la clave de lectura que la propia comisión vaticana propone
«In it Dr. Alexia Latini dedicates an entire chapter to this one composite scene. It’s the only chapter penned by the classical archaeologist from Roma Tre University, an Italian public research institution, otherwise unaffiliated with the Holy See.» — la autoría del capítulo decisivo de la monografía vaticana, que Muraresku subraya que es de fuera de la Santa Sede
«Latini focused my attention on Folio 58 of the Vergilius Vaticanus, where Circe is depicted tending a giant loom that is strikingly similar to the one painted here on the wall of the Hypogeum. She notes that both are “large and equipped with massive uprights, solid feet, and two beams.”» — la comparación de telares con que Latini identifica a Circe en el fresco
«It was cinnabar, the toxic mercury-sulfide ore (HgS) once used as a red pigment.» — el pigmento que la restauradora identificó y que exigió calibrar los instrumentos
«Latini further explains in her chapter of the Vatican monograph that the bloodred cinnabar must have been intentionally used to indicate the same witchy scene from Book 10 of The Odyssey, where the Greek hero notices some “fiery smoke” rising from the halls of Circe “through the thick brush and the wood.”» — el argumento de Latini sobre el uso del cinabrio para señalar la escena homérica
«Together with these telltale symbols, all the animals milling about point to the “cruel goddess” Circe, who, according to Vergil, had robbed her prisoners “of their human form with potent herbs” (potentibus herbis).» — el resto de la lectura de Latini: los animales remiten a Circe, que según Virgilio privó a sus presos de forma humana con hierbas potentes
«gave the unfortunate [companions of Odysseus] who landed at her home the kykeón, a wine-based mixture in which goat cheese, barley flour, and honey were dissolved, to which she added extraordinary phármaka [portentosi phármaka] capable of inducing oblivion. With the aid of a rhábdos, a magic wand, she then transformed them into pigs, enclosing them in a stable.» — el pasaje de Latini que Muraresku transcribe en su traducción del italiano: Circe dio a los compañeros de Odiseo el kykeón con phármaka portentosos
«It certainly explains the three nude men to the left of the loom. Latini spies their “just completed metamorphosis” (metamorfosi appena compiuta) from pigs back into humans a split second earlier.» — la explicación de Latini para los tres desnudos: la metamorfosis recién cumplida de cerdos a hombres
«In order to attract the spirits in the underworld, Odysseus is instructed by Circe to offer a few libations: milk and honey, followed by “sweet wine,” followed by water sprinkled with “white barley.” The witch’s final recipe.» — la receta final de Circe para atraer a los espíritus que Muraresku destaca del canto XI
«“The laser ablation allowed us to recognize with certitude the story of Odysseus» — la conclusión de la restauradora Barbara Mazzei sobre lo que el láser permitió reconocer; el verbatim se corta antes del compuesto que el troceo parte a fin de renglón, *witch-goddess*
«excluding the alternative hypothesis of an episode in the life of the Prophet Job.”» — la lectura alternativa que la restauradora descarta: no es un episodio del profeta Job sino Odiseo y Circe
«How did the witch Circe and her magical drugged wine sneak their way into a paleo-Christian tomb under the exclusive control of the Vatican? Right next to the pagan refrigerium that brought Aurelia Prima back from the dead» — la pregunta con que Muraresku mide el peso del hallazgo; el tramo se corta en el cambio de plana
«Of the 27,803 lines of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and the 9,896 lines of The Aeneid, why did the Aurelii include this one and only scene in their illegal underground church?» — la cifra con que Muraresku subraya lo improbable de la elección de esa escena
«He calls it “the bizarre realm” of neo-Pythagoreanism influenced by Plato, perhaps best represented by an enigmatic thinker like Plotinus (ca. AD 205–270), who was born in Egypt and died in the Italian region of Campania in Magna Graecia.» — el ámbito neopitagórico en que Muraresku sitúa esa doctrina, con Plotino como figura
«In his introduction to the Vatican’s monograph, Fabrizio Bisconti, the superintendent of Christian Catacombs, actually gives a nice shout-out to Plotinus. That bearded figure on the wall behind me, whom Father Francis and others have likened to Saint Paul? Well, Bisconti says the Aurelii must have borrowed it from the marble portraits of Plotinus that were just coming into vogue and had a major influence on all later Pauline iconography.» — la adjudicación del superintendente de catacumbas: el retrato barbado del hipogeo vendría de los retratos de Plotino
«“We must not look, but must, as it were, close our eyes and exchange our faculty of vision for another. We must awaken this faculty which everyone possesses, but few people ever use.”» — la fórmula de Plotino sobre la facultad de visión que todos tienen y pocos usan; el libro la reimprime palabra por palabra en la p. 273 y el locator es el de la primera aparición
«Lamberton traces this visionary technique to “the legend of Pythagoras’ own temporary death and resurrection.”» — el origen que Lamberton da a esa técnica visionaria según Muraresku
«In “The Cave of Euripides,” published in the peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journal Time and Mind in 2015, Ruck compares Pythagoras’s strange practice to Euripides’s own seclusion in a cave on the island of Salamis, just across the gulf from Eleusis.» — el artículo de Ruck de 2015 que Muraresku usa para enlazar Pitágoras, Eurípides y las catacumbas
«True to his forty years of scholarship on the subject, Ruck suggests that both Pythagoras and Euripides entered into “deified states of ecstasy” in their respective chambers through the “Dionysian pathway” of sacred drugs.» — el grado con que Muraresku reporta la propuesta de Ruck: la marca como sugerencia
«Is this Homeric fresco proof that subterranean rituals of death and rebirth not only flourished in southern Italy in the centuries before and after Jesus, but also entered paleo-Christianity through Greek speakers like the Aurelii? And does it suggest that drugs were essential to the process?» — las dos preguntas con que Muraresku formula lo que el fresco podría probar
«With countless scenes in Homer to choose from, the presence of Circe’s pharmaka in this dank chamber could hardly be a coincidence.» — el juicio de Muraresku sobre la elección de esa escena, que declara no casual
«In the case of Circe’s final underworld recipe—honeyed milk, wine, and barley water—Watkins called it a “ritual to call up the dead,” with Persian influences.» — lo que Watkins dice de esa receta según Muraresku: un rito para llamar a los muertos
«With soma it was the juice of a plant or fungal sacrament that Watkins explicitly characterized as “the source of the hallucinogenic agent.”» — el grado de Watkins sobre el soma que Muraresku conserva
«With the Greeks he couldn’t say for sure. But like Gordon Wasson, he thought the Amanita muscaria mushroom was a good candidate.» — la reserva de Watkins sobre el caso griego, que Muraresku no borra
«As for the Dionysian wine that replaced Demeter and Persephone’s beer, Watkins said, “clearly it is no ordinary wine.”» — la frase de Watkins sobre el vino dionisiaco que Muraresku toma como aval
«classicist Robert Lamberton charts the philosophical development in the second- and third-century Roman Empire that recasts Homer’s narrative as a religious allegory with a “secret doctrine.” Rather than a “fixed and unchanging” teaching committed to paper, Lamberton says the tradition refers “to a mystical and privileged ‘contemplation’ or mode of seeing.”» — la doctrina secreta que Robert Lamberton atribuye a la lectura alegórica de Homero, y que Muraresku adopta como clave; el verbatim arranca después del compuesto que el troceo parte a fin de renglón, *Harvard- and Yale-trained*
«In the last seventeen years of his life, Plotinus wrote a massive» — la obra de Plotino que Muraresku presenta como vehículo de esa doctrina; el verbatim se corta antes de *six-part*, que el troceo parte a fin de renglón, y la obra es las Enéadas
«treatise in Greek called The Enneads that repackaged the Greek genius Pythagoras for a whole new audience.» — lo que Muraresku dice que hacen las Enéadas: reempaquetar a Pitágoras para un público nuevo
«acknowledges the entire Odyssey as a parable of spiritual liberation, and specifically describes the Greek of Odysseus’s escape from Circe’s island as full of “hidden meaning,” Plotinus compares our journey through life (and the afterlife) to that of Homer’s main character.» — la lectura alegórica de la Odisea que Muraresku atribuye a Plotino, con la huida de la isla de Circe como pasaje de sentido oculto
«The poor early Christians of the Roman Empire customarily met in subterranean catacombs to celebrate the Eucharist. They did not do» — Muraresku transcribe la conclusión de Ruck sobre las catacumbas; el tramo se corta en el cambio de plana y sigue en la p. 272
«this to avoid persecution, since it was not apt to go unnoticed, nor would doing so arouse less suspicion than meeting above ground in private homes. The paintings on the catacomb walls indicate that drinking parties were celebrated there, apparently to invite the deceased to materialize and share in the banqueting.… This subterranean festive drinking amid the revenant spirits continued a tradition that goes back to the kinds of rites that were celebrated in the Cave of Euripides.» — la continuación de esa conclusión: las pinturas de las catacumbas indican fiestas de bebida para invitar a los muertos a materializarse
«But for those like Plotinus with eyes to see, Circe is here as a coded image for the pharmaka that offered access to the Kingdom of Heaven. If the wine that fueled this underground ritual was psychedelic, as Calvert Watkins concluded in his analysis of the very Homeric passage depicted right here, then it was not just any religion. It was the religion with no name.» — la lectura que Muraresku hace del fresco homérico, con su condicional intacto
«This recently restored fresco might finally explain how the cult of the dead and the all-night “communion parties” refused to surrender to Christian orthodoxy.» — lo que Muraresku dice que el fresco podría explicar, formulado en potencial
«After all, that’s what the beatific vision apparently did in Eleusis. It brought the best and brightest to Demeter’s temple, year after year for two millennia, on one basic principle: seeing is believing.» — el principio que Muraresku repite a lo largo del libro: ver es creer
«After Jesus reveals the key to the Christian Mysteries at the synagogue in Capernaum, a number of his Jewish followers leave in disgust after hearing the cryptic instruction to drink his blood. They couldn’t stomach the cannibalism. They called it too “harsh” or skleros» — el rechazo que el propio evangelio registra ante el mandato de beber la sangre; la palabra griega va como la imprime el libro
«With that curious ending to his bizarre scene, John is clearly saying that his Eucharist has hidden meaning. It wasn’t supposed to make sense at first blush. Only those versed in the secret “symbols” and “language” of Dionysus might understand. Only they might recognize the Greek, Gnostic Jesus.» — la lectura que Muraresku hace de ese rechazo: prueba de que el pasaje tiene sentido oculto para iniciados
«Nearly every surface of the cramped room, slightly more cave-like than the first, is covered with imagery that stirs the imagination: peacocks, flying billy goats, cupids, genies, and nature-demons crowned with flowers.» — la descripción del segundo cubículo del hipogeo, con su repertorio pagano
«In the middle of the bull’s-eye, the focal point of this entire chamber, two men flank a veiled woman. She is clothed from head to toe in a white robe. Only her face is visible.» — la escena central del techo que Muraresku vino a ver: una mujer velada entre dos hombres
«Like Circe’s loom in the neighboring room, the wand is the key to unlocking the meaning of this scene—and perhaps the entire Hypogeum.» — la clave de lectura que Muraresku propone para el tercer fresco
«Published in 1975 by the respected classical archaeologist Nikolaus Himmelmann, Das Hypogäum der Aurelier am Viale Manzoni: Ikonographische Beobachtungen (The Hypogeum of the Aurelii at Viale Manzoni: Iconographic Observations) provides the answer.» — la monografía alemana de 1975 con que Muraresku descifra la varita del fresco
«The magic wand in the hands of [the male figures] shines a light on the irrational “philosophy” which is taught in the Tomb of the Aurelii. For the inexplicably numerous magicians, to the best of my knowledge, there are no certain parallels in the iconography of ancient philosophers. Even if the magic wand appears with Moses, Ezekiel, Christ and Paul, this does not suffice to interpret the figures in the tomb at the Viale Manzoni as Christian.… This appears to represent an initiation ritual, known mostly from Dionysian and Eleusinian contexts.» — Muraresku transcribe a Himmelmann: la varita remite a una filosofía irracional y la escena parece un rito de iniciación conocido sobre todo por contextos dionisiacos y eleusinos
«For the connection to Eleusis, Himmelmann cites the “blessing branches” (Segenszweige) reportedly carried by the initiates in the “oldest versions” of the rites.» — el nexo con Eleusis que Himmelmann propone según Muraresku
«The German scholar directs the reader to the so-called Villa of the Mysteries located to our south, just outside one of the main gates at Pompeii. The forty-thousand-square-foot compound somehow survived the wrath of Mt. Vesuvius in AD 79. Seventeen feet of volcanic ash once protected the spectacularly vivid dining room murals that were unearthed in 1909. Dated to the first century BC, they are widely considered to be among the best surviving depictions of an initiation into the wine god’s Greco-Roman cult.» — la Villa de los Misterios de Pompeya que Himmelmann pone como paralelo
«According to Ruck, the maenads used to stash their drugs at the tips of these staffs, which is probably where our notion of the magic wand came from in the first place.» — la explicación de Ruck sobre el tirso como origen de la varita mágica
«Rather, the long goad is the Greek kentros, figuratively “whipping” the initiates into ecstasy.» — la lectura figurada del aguijón que Muraresku propone para la escena del látigo
«“Yes, the virga is quite interesting,” she responds, using the Latin word for “magic wand.” She adds that all the art work of the Hypogeum, both chambers we have now analyzed, was likely meant to be read together as one combined theme.» — lo que la arqueóloga vaticana concede: que toda la decoración del hipogeo se lee como un tema único
«All the Dionysian symbols make their way into the secret ritual sequence: the female initiate with her laurel crown, a pipe-playing satyr,» — el inventario de símbolos dionisiacos de los frescos de Pompeya; el verbatim se corta antes de *goat-suckling*, que el troceo parte a fin de renglón
«For two thousand years they have been the two biggest thorns in the side of the Church. Both senselessly scrubbed from the origins of the faith, as I’ve now witnessed in the Hypogeum.» — el juicio con que Muraresku cierra el capítulo, dicho con su voz
«With the initiation of Aurelia Prima into the Dionysian Mysteries, the whole sequence leaves no doubt that women enjoyed a privileged position in early Christianity.» — la conclusión que Muraresku saca de los tres frescos leídos juntos
«But for those who weren’t Christians, it would just look like a refrigerium. The whole scheme is a deliberately designed external presentation that would be acceptable in a society where Christianity was not a lawful religion. But even their Christian friends who came here would still have to acknowledge the persistence of this tradition,” he says, motioning to the ceiling, “this Dionysian worldview. You see, this is the whole paradox of an intercultural encounter.”» — la lectura de Tiso sobre el doble sentido deliberado de la decoración
«The Vatican, to my Catholic-school shock, goes a step further, calling scenes like the Holy Grail, the Homeric fresco, and the ecstatic initiation of Aurelia Prima “the most explicit and concrete evidence of the origins of Christianity.”» — la fórmula oficial de la comisión vaticana sobre esos frescos, que Muraresku aprovecha
«Since the first churches disappeared, obliterated by subsequent constructions, the catacombs, already abandoned in the fifth century, constitute the most significant assets of the paleo-Christian era.… We are facing a border monument, where pagan thought and Christian thought are joined, giving rise to a sort of syncretism.… And so the monuments of the dead speak to us about the community of the people of God. With the Hypogeum of the Aurelii, the parable of “Christianization” has not yet found its final solution, it presents all the peculiarities of a cultural process in progress.» — Muraresku transcribe el prefacio de monseñor Giovanni Carrù: el hipogeo es un monumento de frontera donde pensamiento pagano y cristiano se unen en una especie de sincretismo
«As Christians, they would have tried to depict their beliefs under the veil of other, more acceptable symbols.» — la estrategia de disimulo que Tiso atribuye a los Aurelios
«When the Aurelii painted Aurelia Prima joining their Eucharistic banquet, I’m inclined to believe it actually happened, if only in their drug-soaked minds. For the intoxicated agape and refrigeria to have survived as long as they did, something must have made the Christian initiates believe they had ingested and become one with the Son of God.» — la formulación con que Muraresku declara su propia creencia sobre el fresco, acotada con un si acaso en sus mentes
«The witches who were attracted to the visionary “secret doctrine” and Dionysian Mysteries in Magna Graecia were the same witches attracted to the idea of the original Eucharist and its promise of instant immortality, especially as captured by the Gospel of John and the Gnostic tradition. For that crowd, drawing additional inspiration from the all-night refrigeria with the Roman dead, the wine of Dionysus and the wine of Jesus could have been fairly interchangeable.» — la tesis de continuidad entre las brujas dionisiacas y las cristianas que Muraresku sostiene
«Instead of the ordinary bread and wine, wrote Eusebius, the followers of this fake “Christian philosophy” used special “incense” and “libations” in their “secret rites” that resulted in their being “thrown into marvel” or thambothesesthai (θαμβωθήσεσθαι) in the most Dionysian way possible, with utter “ecstasy” (ekstaseos/ ἐκστάσεως) and “frenzy” (manias/μανιάς).» — lo que Eusebio atribuye a los simonianos: inciensos y libaciones que producían éxtasis y frenesí, con el griego que el libro imprime
«The Church Father Irenaeus (ca. AD 130–202) said the Simonians’ sacraments were nothing but “love charms” (filtra/φίλτρα) and “love potions” (agogima/ἀγώγιμα).» — la descalificación de Ireneo sobre esos sacramentos, que Muraresku lee como testimonio de su carácter farmacológico
«Pagels looks to the Greek-educated Valentinus (ca. AD 100–160) as the most famous and influential of the early Gnostics, a “spiritual master” who established his school in the Eternal City around AD 140.» — Muraresku presenta a Valentín como el gnóstico más influyente de Roma
«He claimed to have been initiated by Theudas, a direct disciple of Saint Paul, “into a secret doctrine of God.”» — la cadena de transmisión que Valentín reclamaba para sí según Muraresku
«In perfect accord with John’s word choice—the gnawing and munching on the flesh of Jesus, just like the Dionysian Eucharist of raw flesh and blood (omophagon charin) from Euripides—part of the “secret doctrine” that apparently passed from Jesus to Paul to Theudas to Valentinus was a magical, drugged Eucharist.» — la conclusión que Muraresku saca sobre la doctrina secreta transmitida hasta Valentín
«And it was Valentinus’s student, Marcus, who unleashed the pharmakon on the ancient Mediterranean in the years he was active, between AD 160 and 180. Ruck notes that “although all the heretical sects had a reputation for herbalism and sorcery, Marcus himself was apparently notorious for his expertise with drugs: thus Irenaeus accused him of pharmacological deviltry.”» — la figura de Marcos el gnóstico y la acusación de Ireneo que Ruck destaca
«At Marcus’s Mass, women were invited to perform their own solemn consecration of the holy wine. After being handed a smaller chalice by the heretic, each woman would offer up the “Eucharistic prayer,” blessing the purple-reddish elixir that had been spiked with an unknown pharmakon.» — el rito marcosiano que Muraresku describe: las mujeres consagraban su propia copa
«In his recounting of the Marcosian ceremony, Hippolytus uses the Greek word for “drug” no less than seven times!» — el dato léxico con que Muraresku sostiene el carácter farmacológico del rito marcosiano
«Once the “silly women” had drunk from the central chalice and been “whipped into frenzy” and “ecstasy” like a bunch of maenads, they would then start prophesying.» — el efecto que las fuentes eclesiásticas atribuyen a esa copa, con el desprecio de su vocabulario conservado
«There were those like the Aurelii and the Gnostics, on the one hand, who thought initiation into Christianity’s biggest secrets belonged to anybody who consumed the “True Food” and “True Drink” of the Lord of Death, just as John promised.» — el primer bando de la fractura del siglo II según Muraresku: iniciación abierta a quien consumiera la comida y la bebida verdaderas
«And there were those like the Church Fathers, on the other, who thought a few men within the 1 percent were uniquely» — el segundo bando: unos pocos hombres llamados a manejar la eucaristía; el tramo se corta en el cambio de plana
«The earliest high-profile example is Simon Magus, the Samaritan sorcerer of the first century» — el primer caso de eucaristía herética que Ruck señala según Muraresku: Simón el Mago; el tramo se corta en el cambio de plana
«He would establish a “rival sect” to the mainline Church, becoming “the founder of all heresies, with a religious following of Simonians who considered him a god.”» — lo que las fuentes eclesiásticas atribuyen a Simón el Mago: fundador de todas las herejías con seguidores que lo tenían por dios
«It’s no wonder, then, that the Gospel of John became the favorite Gospel of the Gnostics in Rome.» — el dato que Muraresku aduce para ligar a los gnósticos con el evangelio que ha venido analizando
«For a time the heretical Eucharists of the Simonians, Valentinians, and Marcosians posed a genuine threat to Church. But like the Greek Mysteries themselves, Gnosticism in any robust form would not survive the fourth century AD.» — el desenlace que Muraresku fija para el gnosticismo
«If drugged wine was the real secret behind the Greek and Gnostic Mysteries, then finding enough skilled women to safely and reliably produce the sacrament must have been very difficult.» — el argumento práctico con que Muraresku explica la sustitución del sacramento
«By the death of Eleusis in AD 392, the Eucharist of the female-run house churches and subterranean refrigeria was no more. In perfect imitation of Roman governance and law, women had been systematically excluded from the priesthood.» — la fecha en que Muraresku da por terminada la eucaristía de las iglesias domésticas
«In a mix of misinterpreted Greek philosophy and shameful Biblical reasoning, Saint Augustine (AD 354– 430) and others blamed the passions and appetites of the female body for distancing women from the religious life. Free of the chains of the menstrual cycle, childbirth, and breastfeeding, only men could properly control and tap into the rational aspect of the soul that liberated the male species from their own irrational physicality, connecting them to a spiritual heaven.» — el argumento antiguo que Muraresku atribuye a Agustín para excluir a las mujeres, con su propio calificativo
«“The equation of women with sexuality,” says Karen Jo Torjesen in When Women Were Priests, “meant she was both subordinated to man and alienated from God.”» — la fórmula de Torjesen sobre esa exclusión que Muraresku cita
«invoke the goddess Grace or Charis (Χάρις) by name, the same Greek word that was used by Euripides to capture the Eucharist four hundred years before the birth of Jesus, omophagon charin.» — el nexo léxico que Muraresku traza entre la invocación marcosiana y la fórmula de Eurípides para la eucaristía de carne cruda; el verbatim arranca después del cambio de plana
«For Pagels the shadowy practices of the Gnostics simply “did not lend themselves to mass religion.”» — la explicación de Pagels sobre por qué el gnosticismo no prosperó; el verbatim se corta antes de la llamada de nota
«The Eucharist of John’s Gospel may have been intended for the 99 percent, but the Greek-speaking Christian mystics ran into the same problem as their Dionysian sisters centuries earlier. It’s hard to mainstream this stuff.» — el paralelo que Muraresku traza entre el fracaso gnóstico y el dionisiaco
«In 1976 the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith reaffirmed the infallible doctrine that women had been» — la declaración de 1976 sobre la prohibición del sacerdocio femenino; el tramo se corta en el cambio de plana y sigue con la fórmula conforme al plan de dios
«The 1976 declaration specifically mentions the admission of women to the priesthood by “a few heretical sects in the first centuries, especially Gnostic ones.”» — el reconocimiento que la propia declaración hace de la admisión de mujeres en las sectas gnósticas; el verbatim se corta antes de la llamada de nota
«With the Nag Hammadi texts, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, and other Gnostic writings strategically banned from the final version of the New Testament that was adopted by church councils in both the Catholic West and the Orthodox East during the fourth and fifth centuries AD, all memory of the Gnostics was “excised from the history of the Church of Rome,” according to Ruck.» — la consecuencia documental que Ruck señala y Muraresku recoge: la memoria gnóstica quedó extirpada de la historia de la Iglesia de Roma
«Original construction began in the fourth century under Constantine to mark the legendary tomb of Saint Peter, who was apparently crucified upside-down in the nearby Circus of Nero around AD 64. The Apostle was then reportedly interred in the existing Roman necropolis, on top of which the current basilica rises to this» — el origen de la basílica de San Pedro sobre la necrópolis romana, que Muraresku resume
«Twenty-two mausolea were unearthed in the end, hosting more than a thousand tombs dating mostly to the second and third centuries AD.» — la escala de la necrópolis vaticana excavada en los años cuarenta
«Taking a cue from the Romans, the earliest Christians came to visit Saint Peter in the intoxicated refrigeria around his second-century aedicula, or shrine. It was here that Yale scholar Ramsay MacMullen cited evidence for “religious picnics” and “communion parties” in the form of animal bones and a wine tube.» — la práctica del refrigerium junto al supuesto sepulcro de Pedro que Muraresku documenta con MacMullen
«But until the 1940s, no Pope ever bothered to properly investigate, partly because of a thousand-year-old curse “attested by secret and apocalyptic documents” that would rain destruction on whoever dared disturb the final resting place of Saint Peter.» — la razón que Muraresku da para que nadie excavara antes bajo la basílica
«Hundreds of tesserae, or minuscule tiles, come together to form the image of a regal charioteer partly obscured by two horses rearing on their hind legs. He wears a white tunic and billowing cloak. Seven beams of light extend from the halo around the figure’s head, suggesting the Roman god Sol Invictus (Unconquered Sun).» — el mosaico del techo del mausoleo M que Muraresku describe
«Some scholars, however, make the compelling case that this is Jesus. The ancient artist may have wanted to portray the wizard from Nazareth as the “Sun of Justice” or the “New Light.”» — la lectura alternativa del mosaico que Muraresku recoge, marcada como propuesta de algunos
«In his Exhortation to the Greeks, even Clement of Alexandria refers to Jesus as the “sun of righteousness,” who “rides over the universe” to banish darkness and death.» — el testimonio de Clemente de Alejandría que Muraresku suma a esa lectura
«Weaving in and out of the golden tesserae that make up the rich, eye-popping background of the ceiling mosaic, green tendrils wind their way on serpentine paths in every conceivable direction. Each of them sprouts brightly colored grape leaves by the dozens and dozens.» — el detalle que a Muraresku le importa del mosaico: las vides que recorren todo el techo
«“Ego eimi he ampelos he alethine,” begins the priest, bouncing the Ancient Greek around the echo chamber: “I am the True Vine.” The Greek word for “vine” is ampelos (ἄμπελος).» — la lectura en voz alta de Juan 15:1 que Muraresku y Tiso hacen en la cripta
«I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.… Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.» — el pasaje entero de la Vid Verdadera en la traducción que Muraresku usa
«For Zander, the Vatican’s expert on the City of the Dead, the mass of vegetation only further supports the traditional Christian interpretation of Mausoleum M. The way the fisherman is “significantly framed by soft vine shoots” (significativamente incorniciata da flessuori tralci di vite) is an “obvious reference” (evidente richiamo) to the above passage from John’s Gospel.» — la lectura oficial de las vides del mosaico según el arqueólogo vaticano Pietro Zander
«Others, however, can recognize the pagan continuity here: a motif that predates the paintings in the Hypogeum of the Aurelii by a few decades, establishing a nice precedent for Aurelia Prima’s initiation into the hybrid Dionysian and Christian Mysteries.» — la lectura alternativa que Muraresku prefiere, con el mosaico como precedente del hipogeo
«In his analysis of Mausoleum M, art historian John Beckwith says “the luxuriant vine of Dionysus has become the True Vine of Christ.”» — la fórmula de John Beckwith sobre el traspaso de la vid de Dioniso a Cristo
«To the Greek mind —and any Greek-speaking Romans who may have camped here overnight in the City of the Dead to commune with their ancestors and their wine god—the vine didn’t just represent the God of Ecstasy. The vine was the God of Ecstasy.» — la identificación entre la vid y el dios que Muraresku sostiene para el lector griego antiguo
«From as early as the sixth century BC, the testimony of Greek pottery across the Mediterranean is clear: “In contrast to the god himself, his followers or worshippers are not portrayed as carrying branches of vine. The vine branch with grape clusters is thus not a general symbol of the cult or worship of Dionysus. It is rather a specific symbol of the vine tree itself, suitable only to the god.”» — el dato iconográfico con que Muraresku sostiene que la rama de vid es atributo exclusivo del dios
«There it is, plain as can be. The same ampelos or vine of John 15:1, described centuries earlier as a pharmakon.» — la conclusión del capítulo: la misma palabra griega para la vid en Juan y en Eurípides, y en el segundo llamada pharmakon
«When an ancient Roman came here to mourn the dead with her Eucharist, which wine would she have chosen? The immortal blood of the Dionysus that I saw on the way in here with his magic wand, or the immortal blood of Jesus? During this unique period of paleo-Christianity, was there any real difference?» — las preguntas con que Muraresku deja abierta la identificación de los dos vinos
«There’s also an image of Thoth, the Egyptian god of magic and wisdom, often conflated with the Greek Hermes.» — el repertorio egipcio de la tumba Z de la necrópolis vaticana, con la identificación de Tot y Hermes; el libro nombra a Hermes pero no los Hermetica
«A marble sarcophagus that once held the inhabitant of this crypt holds a rare treat. Carved in relief, Dionysus is centered “drunk and seminude” between two fluted pillars.» — el sarcófago dionisiaco que Muraresku encuentra a la entrada misma de la necrópolis vaticana
«Just a few feet overhead, where Pope Francis blesses the watered-down grape juice that is the “beating heart of the Church,” the idea of a drugged Eucharist is now called “heresy.” It’s been that way for eighteen hundred years.» — el contraste vertical con que Muraresku cierra el capítulo romano
«But down here in a forgotten moment, before the Vatican grew too big for its britches, it was called “Christianity.”» — la formulación con que Muraresku reclama para lo hallado el nombre de cristianismo
«They all inherited a common tradition that seems at least as old as the Raqefet Cave and Göbekli Tepe, and likely much, much older.» — la conclusión genealógica que Muraresku sostiene para todos esos ritos funerarios
«But unlike the tame religions of today, the ancient mind refused to leave the mystery of death unexplored. They focused their efforts on the art and science of dying before dying, achieving that momentary glimpse of the hereafter for the sake of themselves and the ancestors.» — la diferencia que Muraresku marca entre las religiones domesticadas de hoy y el ánimo antiguo
«Named after the wife of a Roman senator, the catacombs were dug into an old quarry that makes the Hypogeum of the Aurelii and the Vatican Necropolis look like total child’s play. The labyrinth of shafts and chambers extends for a remarkable eight miles beneath what is now the Villa Ada Savoia, a sizeable public park.» — las catacumbas de Priscila que Muraresku visita, con su escala
«but my only target was the Capella Greca (Greek Chapel), a square third-century enclosure featuring several scenes from the Old and New Testaments.» — la capilla griega que Muraresku fue a ver en esas catacumbas
«If the Greek Chapel wasn’t used to bury people, it must have been used to consume the Eucharist. For Wilpert that was the only logical conclusion in 1894, after he was able to chemically remove the thick crust of stalactites that concealed the scandalous Fractio Panis (Breaking of Bread) fresco on the central arch of the subterranean church.» — el razonamiento de Joseph Wilpert sobre la función de la capilla, y el fresco que él destapó en 1894
«Seven figures are seated around a typical, semicircular stibadium, or» — la descripción del fresco de la Fractio Panis que Muraresku hace; el tramo se corta en el cambio de plana
«The far-left figure is clearly the officiant of this ritual, which is why his/her gender is of monumental importance. Wilpert apparently spotted a beard.» — el punto en disputa que Muraresku destaca: el sexo de quien oficia en el fresco
«Strangely the face of the figure is now smudged, leading some to believe that the Jesuit or some Vatican colleagues may have intentionally defaced the image.» — el dato material que Muraresku consigna sobre el rostro borrado, con la sospecha marcada como de algunos
«Without getting into conspiracy theory, the scholar Dorothy Irvin offered an alternative reading of the scene. In “The Ministry of Women in the Early Church: the Archeological Evidence,” published in the Duke Divinity School Review in 1980, she micro-analyzes the seven ghostly figures in white to conclude that the whole group is “unmistakably feminine”: “one wears a veil, and they are all characterized by upswept hair, slender neck with sloping shoulders, and a hint of earrings.”» — la lectura de Dorothy Irvin sobre el fresco: las siete figuras serían femeninas
«Either way the Vatican remains unconvinced by Irvin’s scholarship. In the guidebook published by the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology in 2016, Raffaella Giuliani repeats Wilpert’s original interpretation, saying the person seated at the head of the table in the “position of honor” (posto d’onore) is unambiguously “a bearded man wearing a tunic and pallium” (un uomo barbato indossante tunica e pallio).» — la posición oficial vaticana, que mantiene la lectura masculina del oficiante
«the telltale symbol of the True Vine signals a community uniquely dedicated to the Gnostics’ favorite book, the Gospel of John. A community that could very well have inherited the same “secret doctrine” that tied Marcus to his spiritual teacher and the most famous Gnostic of the era, Valentinus. A tradition of drugged wine that apparently linked Valentinus, through Theudas and Paul, all the way back to Jesus himself.» — la cadena que Muraresku propone desde el mosaico del mausoleo M hasta Jesús pasando por Valentín, Teudas y Pablo
«Regarding Wilpert’s “male” priest, Irvin notes the “shadow of a breast below the outstretched arm.” In addition she scrutinizes the length of the figure’s skirt.» — los indicios en que Irvin se apoya para leer a la oficiante como mujer
«Women’s skirts, however, would come to within an inch of the ground. Irvin notes how the officiant’s calf is completely covered by the skirt, which gathers “in a fold around the ankle.”» — el segundo indicio de Irvin: el largo de la falda que cubre la pantorrilla
«This particular scene is of immense value as an extremely early testimony to the eucharist, or rather, to one type of eucharist. This piece of catacomb religious art does not show us the community agape, but rather another usage, the eucharistic vigil. It is depicted in the catacombs because that is where this vigil was held on the anniversary of the death of a Christian. It seems to have included passing the night in the burial place, and celebrating the eucharist there in memory of the deceased. It was a eucharist only, not a full meal, and that is why there is no other food on the table.» — Muraresku transcribe la lectura de Irvin sobre el fresco: no es el ágape comunitario sino la vigilia eucarística celebrada en el aniversario de la muerte
«If seven women are really depicted here, it would perfectly fit the conclusion of the classicist Ross Kraemer, who was mentioned earlier, during my dinner with Father Francis in Paris. Her review of the material evidence for the Dionysian Mysteries found that “initiation with its practices of possession and sacrifice” was ordinarily denied to men in the Greek tradition.» — el encaje que Muraresku propone entre esa lectura y la conclusión de Ross Kraemer
«The dedication inscribed on the wall of this chapel is written in» — la inscripción griega que da nombre a la capilla y que Muraresku usa como indicio de comunidad helenófona
«But even the Vatican realizes that the barrier between the pagan and paleo-Christian practice was rather porous at this critical juncture in the development of the faith.» — la concesión que Muraresku obtiene de la propia posición vaticana sobre la porosidad entre lo pagano y lo paleocristiano
«This tableau leads the Church to the inescapable observation that the wine, bread, and fish all point to the “Sacrament of the Eucharist” and certain Gospel passages referring to it, including the feeding of the multitude, the Wedding at Cana, and the Last Supper.» — lo que la Iglesia sí reconoce en el fresco: los símbolos del sacramento
«Of particular interest to our investigation are the eight frescoes to be found here: banquet scenes dating to the late third or early fourth centuries, in which women very clearly command the Eucharistic cup.» — los ocho frescos de banquete de las catacumbas de Marcelino y Pedro, con mujeres al mando de la copa
«Archaeological excavations have uncovered thirty-three mensae, or small tables, complete with “fragments of glass and ceramic plates,” confirming funerary meals actually took place here in the shadows.» — la evidencia material de comidas funerarias en esas catacumbas
«In “Women Leaders in Family Funerary Banquets” from 2005, the scholar Janet Tulloch says, “It is likely that the represented action had been an accepted practice for some time in the early Christian community with the representation of the behavior lagging behind the actual practice.”» — la lectura de Janet Tulloch sobre esas escenas: la representación va por detrás de la práctica
«On seven of the eight banquet scenes, rather bizarrely, the Greek words Agape (love) and Irene (peace) appear in the Latin script.» — el dato epigráfico que Muraresku destaca: palabras griegas escritas en alfabeto latino sobre los frescos
«She ceremonially raises a cup in her right hand, delicately held between her thumb and two fingers. The four men seated around the couch take notice, some pointing to the banquet table in the middle, where a single fish seems to be placed.» — el gesto de la oficiante en la cámara 78 que Muraresku describe
«For Tulloch the exaggerated looks and gestures of the banqueters stress “the importance of this particular drinking rite,” which is “the pinnacle moment of the funerary banquet.”» — la lectura de Tulloch sobre el momento culminante del banquete funerario
«So in chamber 78 the woman shouts something like “To Love!” And the men respond, “Misce!” or “Mix it up!” In chamber 45 the Latin is equally clear: “Misce nobis!” or “Mix it up for us!”» — las aclamaciones latinas que Muraresku traduce de los frescos, con la orden de mezclar
«The woman is in charge of not just elevating, designating, or presenting the wine, but also of mixing the wine. Which, like the mixing rituals we analyzed on G 408 and G 409 back at the Louvre, raises the very real possibility that no ordinary wine was being consumed in these paleo-Christian meals that gave birth to the Mass as we know it.» — la consecuencia que Muraresku saca del verbo mezclar en esos frescos
«Indeed, Greek-speaking women in third-century Rome would have had access to a treasure trove of herbal knowledge, not only from the Father of Drugs himself, Dioscorides, but also from his successor. The Greek-writing pharmacologist Galen, who served several emperors before his death in the early third century, and praised the city of Rome for “its excellent supply of drugs,” left a staggering amount of material that to this day—as mentioned before—remains untranslated into English.» — la farmacopea disponible que Muraresku alega para esas mujeres, de Dioscórides a Galeno
«In chamber 39 a final Latin phrase is recorded on the left-hand side of the fresco. Nicely painted onto the wall can be discerned “Da calda!” or “Hand over the warm stuff!” The Latin calda is a curious word.» — la tercera fórmula latina de los frescos que Muraresku destaca
«In Rodolfo Lanciani’s Pagan and Christian Rome, published in 1893, we get a little more detail: The meaning of the word calda is not certain. There is no doubt … that the ancients had something to correspond to our tea: but the calda seems to have been more than an infusion; apparently it was a mixture of hot water, wine, and drugs, that is, a sort of punch, which was drunk mostly in winter.» — la definición de calda que Muraresku toma de Rodolfo Lanciani: mezcla de agua caliente, vino y drogas
«From the late second and early third centuries, the God of Ecstasy sarcophagus in Tomb Z and the “True Vine” in Mausoleum M are striking proof that the foundations of the Catholic Church are literally built on top of Dionysus, just as John’s Gospel tried to communicate with all those secret “symbols” and “language” ending in the True Drink that promises immortality.» — el balance que Muraresku hace de la evidencia de la necrópolis vaticana
«Across town at the Hypogeum of the Aurelii from the mid-third century, the psychedelic witch Circe leaps from the Homeric fresco— the lost symbol of a Stone Age tradition that would have spoken to initiates of the Greek Mysteries.» — el balance del hipogeo en el mismo resumen
«This, then, is the overlooked story of paleo-Christianity. For almost three hundred years, it was an illegal mystery cult, with women in Greek-speaking Italy leading funerary banquets in the underworld that was said to offer access to the Other Side.» — la formulación con que Muraresku resume la historia desatendida del paleocristianismo
«But “in accordance with God’s plan,” as the Vatican proclaimed in 1976, the witches and their Eucharist never made it out of the City of the Dead. The Eucharist was a man’s job. It still is.» — el cierre irónico del capítulo, con la fórmula vaticana de 1976 devuelta
«It records the death of a woman named Nestoriana.» — la inscripción griega que da nombre a la capilla griega de las catacumbas de Priscila
«Of all the places in the ancient Mediterranean to be hiding out for centuries, just waiting for the archaeologists to come along and nose through the untouched vessels, I shouldn’t have been surprised that southern Italy took the prize. It was there that I finally managed to pinpoint the most reliable data for psychedelic wine I have ever seen. Where the remains of the fabulously complex beverage were indisputably dated to the perfect moment in history, the first century AD.» — el anuncio con que Muraresku abre el capítulo del hallazgo italiano
«The same Phocaeans who carried the cult of Demeter and Persephone all the way from Anatolia to found the Greek colony of Emporion in Spain. The same colony that imported the Dionysian vase with the scene of a drunken wine party and left it for Enriqueta Pons to dig up in one of the many grain silos at Mas Castellar de Pontós. The same colony that seems to have introduced the classical Iberians to the graveyard beer full of ergot that opened the gates of the underworld. And the same colony that reconnected with their Indo-European cousins in a skull cult with Stone Age roots.» — el resumen con que Muraresku ata los focenses de Ampurias con los de Velia
«As mentioned earlier, the classicist Peter Kingsley is the world’s foremost expert on the esoteric tradition that seduced Italy in the wake of Plato’s guru, Parmenides, who was born in Velia in 515 BC.» — el lugar que Muraresku da a Peter Kingsley y a Parménides en su reconstrucción
«The melting pot that created the first scientists of Western civilization between 600 and 400 BC, laying the foundation for all the technology of the modern world, also created a secret tradition of magicians, healers, and prophets who perfected the ancient art of dying before dying.» — la tesis doble que Muraresku sostiene sobre Jonia: cuna de la ciencia y de una tradición secreta de magos, sanadores y profetas
«True philosophy has nothing to do with books. The starting point for the rationality and logic too heavily associated with Western thought was anything but the witty repartee and educated arguments that fill Plato’s dialogues. Behind all the mental gymnastics was a timeless teaching, mentioned only briefly by Socrates in Plato’s Phaedo: “those who engage with philosophy in the right way are practicing nothing else but dying and being dead.”» — la frase de Sócrates en el Fedón que Muraresku toma como emblema de esa tradición
«Kingsley describes the supreme goal of Parmenides and his disciples as a “cataleptic” state of trance in a “world beyond the senses,” where “space and time mean nothing” and “past and future are as present as the present is for us.”» — la descripción que Kingsley da del estado buscado por Parménides y sus discípulos
«“To go down to the underworld when you’re dead is one thing,” says Kingsley. “To go there while you’re alive, prepared and knowingly, and then learn from the experience—that’s another thing entirely.”» — la distinción de Kingsley entre bajar muerto al inframundo y bajar en vida
«Waking is a form of consciousness, dreaming is another. And yet this is what we can live for a thousand years but never discover, what we can theorize or speculate about and never even come close to—consciousness itself. It’s what holds everything together and doesn’t change. Once you experience this consciousness you know what it is to be neither asleep nor awake, neither alive nor dead, and to be at home not only in this world of the senses but in another reality as well.» — Muraresku transcribe a Kingsley sobre la consciencia como lo que sostiene todo y no cambia, y sobre el estado que no es ni sueño ni vigilia
«In order to achieve this special state of consciousness, according to Kingsley, there was no need for drugs. All you had to do was enter a cave and lie down “in utter stillness without any food for several days —just like animals in a lair.”» — la posición de Kingsley que Muraresku consigna sin armonizar: para él la incubación no necesitaba droga
«That’s how the Ancient Greek historian Strabo (63 BC–AD 29) defined the technique known as “incubation” that took pace in the Charonium, a famous cave in the region of Caria (south of Phocaea and Ephesus) dedicated to Pluto and Persephone.» — la técnica de incubación que Muraresku documenta en Estrabón
«Even before Parmenides came to Campania, the Italian region that stretches from Naples and Pompeii in the north to Velia in the south, Pythagoras was also obsessed with Persephone. It would explain why he constructed his home in southern Italy as a literal temple, complete with “a special underground room where he’d go and stay motionless for long periods of time.”» — la práctica análoga que Muraresku atribuye a Pitágoras en el sur de Italia
«If so, were the paleo-Christians merely dropping to the ground like hibernating bears, or did a magical potion occasionally lubricate the fits of incubation?» — la pregunta con que Muraresku enlaza la incubación con su hipótesis de la poción
«Recruited from their homes in Velia, the priestesses of Persephone would indeed take the route north for hundreds of years in the wake of Parmenides. Five hundred years before Jesus, these women made generation after generation of pilgrimage to fulfill their sacred duty at the temple of Demeter and Persephone that had been built in Rome to Greek standards.» — el dato institucional con que Muraresku liga Velia y Roma: sacerdotisas de Perséfone que viajaban al norte
«In The Cults of Campania, first published in 1919, classicist Roy Merle Peterson traces the Roman reverence for Apollo and the divinely inspired Sibylline Oracles to the Greek community in Magna Graecia by way of Cumae, west of Naples.» — la obra de Roy Merle Peterson que Muraresku usa para documentar el trasvase de cultos griegos a Roma
«Thereafter Peterson dates the introduction of the cults of Demeter, Persephone, and Dionysus into Rome by 493 BC, when grain from Campania was needed to stop a famine in Rome.» — la fecha que Peterson da para la entrada de esos cultos en Roma
«As only one example, consider Parmenides’ star disciple, Empedocles (495–435 BC), who lived in the Greek city of Akragas in Sicily. He left an enigmatic fragment about the magical use of pharmaka as a “remedy for death.” For a skilled shaman like Empedocles, familiarity with these unspecified drugs signals “a person capable of descending to and returning from the underworld at will.”» — Empédocles y su fragmento sobre los pharmaka como remedio contra la muerte, que Muraresku suma al linaje
«In 1996 a 30-by-30-square-meter farmhouse named the Villa Vesuvio was excavated in Scafati on the outskirts of Pompeii by the distinguished Italian archaeologist Marisa de’ Spagnolis. Because of the thick layer of pumice and lapilli (volcanic fragments) covering the site by the Sarno River, it was “perfectly sealed” and confidently dated to AD 79.» — el yacimiento de Villa Vesuvio, sellado por la erupción, que Muraresku presenta como su prueba mayor
«In “Drug Preparation in Evidence? An unusual plant and bone assemblage from the Pompeian countryside, Italy,” published in 2000 in the peer-reviewed journal Vegetation History and Archaeobotany, the archaeobotanist Marina Ciaraldi unveils the results of the analysis that found over fifty species of plants, herbs, and trees in the sample.» — el artículo de Marina Ciaraldi de 2000 con el análisis de los restos vegetales de una de las dolia
«Surprisingly, 58 percent of the botanical specimens belonged to taxa with medicinal properties. They included comfrey (Symphytum officinale) and vervain (Verbena officinalis), both long associated with magic and witchcraft.» — la proporción de especies medicinales del depósito y las dos que Muraresku liga a la brujería
«But the real kicker was the distinctive medley of opium (Papaver somniferum), cannabis (Cannabis sativa), and two members of the nightshade family, white henbane (Hyoscyamus albus) and black nightshade (Solanum nigrum).» — el hallazgo central del libro en su segunda mitad: opio, cannabis y dos solanáceas en una misma vasija
«The inclusion of the nightshades might as well have been lifted straight from the pages of Dioscorides, who specifically lauded the psychedelic properties of black nightshade with its “not unpleasant visions.”» — el nexo que Muraresku traza entre ese hallazgo y las recetas de Dioscórides
«Pushing the bizarre medley even further into witch territory, however, were the skeletal remains of lizards (Podarcis sp.), frogs (Rana sp.), and toads (Bufo sp.). Tendrils and berries of the domesticated grape (Vitis vinifera L.) were found alongside a profusion of grape seeds, suggesting the combination of plants, reptiles, and amphibians was steeped in wine.» — los restos animales del mismo depósito y la conclusión de que la mezcla estaba macerada en vino
«Unlike the well-documented finds in and around Mas Castellar de Pontós that place the Greek Mysteries at the Greek farm in Spain (finds that include the terra-cotta heads of Demeter/Persephone, the Triptolemus ceramic, and the Dionysian vase), the discoveries at the Villa Vesuvio are more cryptic. There simply isn’t enough context to rule out more pedestrian explanations for the psychotropic blend.» — el límite que Muraresku reconoce a su propio hallazgo: falta contexto que excluya explicaciones corrientes
«Ciaraldi herself believes the potion could represent either of the ancient medicinal concoctions known as the mithridatium or the theriac, compounded cure-all drugs for which countless recipes were recorded in the literature of the time.» — las dos explicaciones alternativas que la propia analista propone
«In fact, no less than sixty bone fragments belonging to lizards were present in the vessel, indicating a most unusual wine.» — el dato con que Muraresku sostiene que la mezcla no encaja del todo en esas recetas
«Is it too romantic to imagine the Villa Vesuvio as a laboratory for the production of a Dionysian sacrament that could have been used in the Villa of the Mysteries that was within walking distance, just west across Pompeii?» — la pregunta con que Muraresku formula lo que querría que el hallazgo probara, marcándola como romántica
«Only to receive another eerie response from the professionals. None of them ever heard of the Villa Vesuvio or this extraordinary wine.» — el dato que Muraresku consigna sobre la circulación nula del hallazgo entre especialistas
«The German Stika cautioned that the seeds, in and of themselves, don’t “mandatorily” make for a ritual psychedelic wine. And that the question mark in the title of Marina Ciaraldi’s paper is a fair reflection of the unknowns.» — la cautela de Hans-Peter Stika ante el hallazgo, que Muraresku conserva
«The Greek Valamoti took note and weighed in: “As an archaeologist, I am always cautious. But I would not be too cautious to say that the plants were not used for their medicinal/hallucinogenic properties.”» — la posición de Soultana Valamoti, con su doble negación intacta
«The American McGovern found some middle ground, saying the discovery was certainly “intriguing,” like something out of the witches’ brew in Macbeth. But he rightly suggested its credibility “hinges very much on the archaeobotanical expertise of Marina Ciaraldi,” who has since disappeared from the scene.» — la posición intermedia de McGovern, que hace depender la credibilidad del hallazgo de la pericia de la analista
«“For me, the Villa Vesuvio was a small farm that was specifically designed for the production of drugs.”» — la declaración que la excavadora Marisa de' Spagnolis da a Muraresku por correo
«The location of medicinal activities in the countryside was well known in the Greek world and was exported with success to the Roman world.… The presence of a “pharmacy” in the Pompeian countryside suggests that very specialised activities not directly connected to agricultural production may have not been limited to the city alone.» — Muraresku transcribe a Ciaraldi sobre la farmacia rural en el campo pompeyano
«As excavations continued, de’ Spagnolis would discover a V-shaped “maceration tank for cannabis” that further supports her position.» — el dato inédito que la excavadora aporta a Muraresku sobre el tanque de maceración
«And as a final touch, she also managed to decipher a lone piece of graffiti hidden under the plaster that only lends more romance to the site. In Latin, it reads Scito: ama et aude millia. “Know this: love and dare (to love) a thousand times.” Maybe we’re dealing with a love potion?» — el grafito latino que la excavadora descifró y la lectura que Muraresku propone en pregunta
«Just as Ruck seems to have correctly predicted the ergot-infused beer at Eleusis, there is now hard data suggesting that psychedelic wine did, in fact, exist in the earliest days of Christianity, right where the Mysteries of Dionysus and Jesus came into contact. And right where the paleo-Christians would have needed it most, in the burgeoning centers of the faith—Naples, Puteoli, and Capua.» — la conclusión que Muraresku saca del hallazgo pompeyano, con el grado que le pone
«What was once informed speculation, relying purely on Greco-Roman authors like Dioscorides, Galen, and Apicius for the written support, is now a paleobotanical fact. The ancient Italians manufactured a wine with mind-bending ingredients.» — la formulación con que Muraresku declara probado el punto: los italianos antiguos fabricaron un vino con ingredientes que alteran la mente
«Who? Women. Specifically Greek-speaking women with pharmacological expertise, who may have used the portrayal of Mary Magdalene in both the Gospel of John and the Gnostic texts to justify their leading role in the newest mystery cult.» — el primero de los cinco puntos con que Muraresku resume su reconstrucción
«The witches of Persephone, who were the primary missionaries of the Phocaeans’ secret cult, had every incentive to both influence, and in some cases even become, the witches of Christianity.» — la tesis de continuidad femenina que Muraresku sostiene, con su grado
«What? Drugged wine. All those plants, herbs, and fungi so heavily documented by the Father of Drugs in his sophisticated wine formulas, demonstrating a profound knowledge of dosing.» — el segundo punto del resumen: el vino drogado y el saber de dosis
«When? The first three hundred years after Jesus’s death. Before Christianity became legal under Constantine, it was an illegal mystery religion fighting for survival in a hostile and unfriendly world.» — el tercer punto: la ventana temporal en que Muraresku sitúa el sacramento psicodélico
«Because the sacrament is only a threat to the status quo if it’s driving people out of their minds.» — el argumento político con que Muraresku sostiene que el vino tenía que ser psicoactivo
«Where? Magna Graecia and Rome. Southern Italy was ground zero for Greek mysticism in the centuries before and after Jesus. It was almost more Greek than Greece itself.» — el cuarto punto: el sur de Italia como centro del misticismo griego
«Simply put, the story of paleo-Christianity is Greek-speaking mystics in southern Italy demanding personal access to the Eucharist. It wasn’t the priests who attracted them to Jesus. It wasn’t the Church Fathers. And it certainly wasn’t the Bible or the basilicas, because neither existed.» — la formulación más breve de la tesis del libro sobre el paleocristianismo
«Why? The only reason religions ever find an audience, the promise of an afterlife. Immortality. There are those who talk about it or read about it. And there are true philosophers who actually die for it.» — el quinto punto del resumen: la promesa de vida futura como único motor
«Not everyone needs psychedelic drugs to die before they die. Lying down in a cave for a few days will certainly get the job done. But not everyone has the time or temerity for that kind of exercise. That’s what sacraments are for. That’s what they’ve always been for, before the bureaucracy replaced them with empty rituals and placebos.» — la acotación con que Muraresku mantiene abiertas las dos vías, con droga y sin ella
«In its early days, did Christianity solve the age-old problem of delivering a life-changing mystical experience to as many people as possible by offering a chemical shortcut to enlightenment?» — la pregunta con que Muraresku cierra el capítulo, sin responderla
«The Church Fathers could have denied women the priesthood. And prohibited the drugged Gnostic Eucharist. But that was hardly going to stop the religion with no name that had survived since the Stone Age.» — el anuncio del último capítulo de la Parte Dos
«Not surprisingly, the hard scientific data in the thousand years between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Inquisition are incredibly sparse. If there are only a handful of archaeochemists looking for intoxicants in antiquity, there are even fewer studying medieval drugs.» — la deuda de evidencia que Muraresku declara para el milenio medieval
«To our left, the librarian points out the back wing of what has been called one of the “grandest historical collections in the world,” the impenetrable haystack of thirty-five thousand volumes of catalogue spanning fifty-three miles of shelving.» — la escala del Archivo Secreto Vaticano que Muraresku consigna
«According to the Vatican’s website, no one can access the Pope’s files without first identifying the exact “archival series” of the volumes they intend to consult. A semi-impossible task, since the online Collection Index is more of a long, meaningless table of contents, available only in Italian. And it’s completely unsearchable by subject matter. There are just broad, general categories of aged documents, arranged by relatively unhelpful headings like the names of centuries-old Popes, the sites of various international delegations, and lists of random religious orders. If you’re looking for drugs, you’re fresh out of luck.» — el obstáculo de acceso que Muraresku describe: hay que nombrar de antemano la serie archivística
«What I was really after was written evidence of the Vatican, in its own penmanship, confronting this supposed network—something that would indicate the past use of drugs in black and white.» — el tipo de evidencia que Muraresku buscaba en el archivo
«The Dominican monk was born in Nola in 1548, in what was then the Kingdom of Naples in Magna Graecia. He was imprisoned by the Roman Inquisition for seven years, before they burned him at the stake in the Campo de’ Fiori in 1600.» — los datos con que Muraresku presenta a Giordano Bruno, nacido en la Magna Grecia
«But the funny thing about the Father of the Scientific Method, perhaps the most famous heretic of all time, is that he wasn’t considered the most dangerous. Galileo got off much easier than Bruno, living another eleven years in the Vatican’s custody until his natural death at seventy-seven. They never sent him up in flames like the wizard from the south who died at fifty-two.» — la comparación de penas entre Galileo y Bruno con que Muraresku introduce su tesis
«A blasphemous cosmology is one thing. A blasphemous Eucharist is another.» — la explicación que Muraresku propone para esa diferencia de penas
«In his attempt “to return to the earliest centuries of Christianity” by recovering “the monuments of classical antiquity,” Bruno longed for a lost period of history that the brilliant scholar Frances Yates calls “a pure golden age of magic” based on Greek philosophy of supposed Egyptian origin.» — el proyecto de Bruno según la lectura de Frances Yates que Muraresku adopta
«Like his Greek-speaking ancestors from Magna Graecia, the “Renaissance Magus” was obsessed with the same “secret doctrine” that had earlier attracted Pythagoras, Parmenides, Empedocles, and Plotinus.» — la genealogía en que Muraresku inscribe a Bruno
«It’s an allegory about nine blind men in search of the same beatific vision that beckoned the pilgrims to Eleusis for two thousand years, the “highest and final illumination” that reveals the meaning of life.» — la alegoría de los nueve ciegos de De gli eroici furori que Muraresku analiza
«In describing the ecstasy that results from witnessing “the fairest work of God,” Bruno gets a little too close to exposing his love of the Greek Mysteries. “For a time it was like seeing so many frenzied Bacchanals (tanti furiosi debaccanti), inebriated with that which they saw so plainly.”» — la comparación con las bacantes que Bruno introduce y que Muraresku considera imprudente
«When he invokes Circe and her drugs, is it possible Bruno is talking about a real tradition? One that found its way from ancient Campania to Renaissance Rome, thanks to the Mystery Coast Highway?» — la pregunta con que Muraresku formula su hipótesis sobre Bruno
«His crime? Among a long list of other heresies, proclaiming the “gospel of infinity” that proposed the existence of multiple earths orbiting multiple suns across the endless expanse of the cosmos.» — la herejía por la que Bruno es recordado según Muraresku; el verbatim se corta antes de la llamada de nota
«One of the nine cries out for Circe to brew up a “remedy” for their affliction with her “plants” (piante), “charms” (incanti), and “drugs” (veneficii).» — el vocabulario de Bruno para las drogas de Circe; el verbatim se corta antes de la llamada de nota
«Bruno’s word for “drugs” is straight from the Latin veneficium, which the Lewis and Short dictionary defines as “the preparation of magic potions.”» — la etimología latina que Muraresku desglosa de esa palabra
«she presents them with an» — el elixir que Circe entrega en la alegoría de Bruno; el tramo se corta en el cambio de plana y sigue en la p. 326 con el líquido de virtud divina
«“elixir” (liquor) containing “god-like virtue” (la virtù divina). Sealed in a vase, the magical potion guarantees a vision of two starry objects.» — el elixir de virtud divina sellado en un vaso que garantiza la visión, en la alegoría de Bruno
«The Vatican did not only want Bruno’s fresh brand of neo» — lo que la Iglesia quiso hacer desaparecer según Muraresku; el verbatim se corta antes de *neo-paganism*, que el troceo parte a fin de renglón
«They also wanted any evidence of his detention, torture, and death to disappear as well. Because at some point over the past four hundred years, the original records of Bruno’s interrogation completely vanished, leaving only a fifty-nine-page summary of the many heresies with which he was accused.» — la desaparición de las actas del proceso de Bruno que Muraresku consigna
«Rather than classify the material and file it away for safekeeping, the presiding cardinal deliberately misplaced Bruno’s trial records among the personal archives of Leo’s predecessor, Pius IX.» — la peripecia archivística del manuscrito de Bruno que Muraresku reconstruye
«As the scholar Maria Luisa Ambrosini once remarked, “the Church realized that burning geniuses was bad for public relations.”» — la fórmula de Maria Luisa Ambrosini que Muraresku cita sobre esa ocultación
«Father Francis and I parsed through the archaic mix of Latin and Italian in the sixteenth-century trial summary for any explicit mention of drugs and came up empty-handed.» — el resultado negativo que Muraresku declara de su propia consulta en el Archivo Secreto
«In the passage on the Eucharist, Bruno is quoted by an informant making fun of the Most Blessed Sacrament, calling it a form of “bestiality, blasphemy, and idolatry” (bestialita, bestemie et idolatria).» — lo que el sumario inquisitorial atribuye a Bruno sobre la eucaristía, en el latín e italiano del manuscrito
«It says the bread and wine of the Eucharist possess some unseen and unfathomable quality that is fundamentally transformed into Jesus’s literal body and blood during the Mass, even if they appear unchanged to the untrained eye.» — la doctrina de la transubstanciación que Muraresku resume antes de medir su recepción actual
«His Eucharist was no mere symbol. And no placebo. It was an “elixir” of “god-like virtue,” spiked with the “plants,” “charms,” and “drugs” of antiquity’s most notorious Greek witch, Circe.» — la lectura que Muraresku hace de la eucaristía de Bruno
«To get the beatific vision, you have to die for it.» — la condición que Muraresku pone a la visión beatífica, aislada como párrafo propio
«The ego has to be destroyed. At least for a little while. Whether it’s a few minutes or a few hours or a few days, it doesn’t take very long. But everything you thought you knew about life—everything—has to be annihilated. It makes no sense, but it’s what the mystics have been saying all along. There is no way around it.» — la formulación con que Muraresku enuncia la aniquilación del yo como requisito
«According to a Pew poll from July 2019, 69 percent of self-described Catholics don’t believe a word of the Church’s core teaching.» — la encuesta con que Muraresku mide el descreimiento actual sobre la transubstanciación; el verbatim se corta antes de la llamada de nota
«What does not go advertised in Christianity today is the important footnote that Bruno sacrificed his life to record for posterity: “To hell with placebos. Drugs welcome.”» — la nota al pie con que Muraresku cifra la posición de Bruno, puesta en su boca entre comillas por el propio autor
«It was this same beatific vision that brought the very concept of psychedelics into the modern world. No one had ever heard of psilocybin mushrooms until Gordon Wasson reported his» — el papel que Muraresku asigna a la visión beatífica en la entrada del término psicodélico al mundo moderno; el verbatim se corta antes de *mind-blowing*, que el troceo parte a fin de renglón
«But if the blind are able to join in, then the beatific vision seems to be an expansion of consciousness that has nothing to do with the eyeballs.» — la conclusión que Muraresku saca de los relatos de ciegos: la visión no depende de los ojos
«was soon clarified by Cardinal Angelo Sodano, however, who ultimately defended the Inquisitors for condemning that particular heretic from Magna Graecia in an effort to “serve freedom” and “promote the common good.”» — la matización vaticana a la disculpa de 2000 que Muraresku consigna
«By the Renaissance the Latin term that Bruno used for the Greek pharmakon was especially associated with the kind of witch, sorceress, or medicine woman, the venefica, whom the Inquisition was targeting for their forbidden knowledge of psychotropic substances.» — el término latino venefica que Muraresku enlaza con la persecución inquisitorial
«Trained as a pharmacologist and botanist, Andrés Laguna was the personal physician to Pope Julius III. He spent years poring over the original Greek codices of Dioscorides’s Materia Medica that had survived since the first century AD. His translation of antiquity’s magnum opus was released in Latin and Italian in 1554 by the same publishing house in Venice» — Andrés Laguna, médico del papa Julio III y traductor de Dioscórides, que Muraresku presenta como testigo
«Laguna’s Materia Medica was reprinted seventeen times to a large following in Italy, mainly because of his running commentary and anecdotes that accompanied the text. They provide an exceptional window onto the Renaissance experience with drugs in Bruno’s lifetime.» — la difusión de esa traducción y el valor testimonial que Muraresku le da
«among other things in the abode of said witches was a jar half-filled with a certain green ointment, made of white poplar with which they anointed themselves. Its odor was heavy and offensive, proving that it was composed of herbs, cold and soporiferous in the ultimate degree, such as hemlock, black nightshade, henbane, and mandrake.”» — el acta de un decomiso inquisitorial que Laguna transcribe, con los ingredientes del ungüento de las brujas
«Even the early commentators knew that witches “do not leave their homes,” rather, “the devil enters them and deprives them of sense, and they fall as dead and cold.”» — el testimonio antiguo que Muraresku aduce: las brujas no salían de casa
«Laguna recorded the woman’s reaction to regaining consciousness after a full thirty-six hours: “Why did you wake me at such an inopportune time? I was surrounded by all the delights of the world.”» — el caso que Laguna registró de una mujer a la que se recetó el ungüento contra el insomnio
«Across the Mediterranean many of the sacred caves and temples of Asclepius were repurposed into martyria, pilgrimage sites for the consultation of Christian saints and martyrs.» — la continuidad de la incubación en los martiria cristianos que Muraresku documenta
«Some secured serious credentials to avoid the Vatican’s suspicion, joining the “Women of Salerno,” who would greatly influence the Medical School of Salerno along the Mystery Coast Highway south of Pompeii, just east of the Amalfi Coast on the Sorrentine Peninsula. Founded sometime in the tenth century under the guidance of Greek texts, with Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic wisdom to boot, it was the most preeminent institution of its kind. Particularly revered were the “huge collections of drug remedies.”» — la escuela médica de Salerno que Muraresku pone como salida legal para el saber femenino de las plantas
«It was the “only medical school in Europe that opened its doors to women,” who served on the faculty and played a vital role in the history of scientific achievement.» — el dato con que Muraresku subraya el lugar de las mujeres en esa escuela
«Well, the witches never flew anywhere, of course. As discussed in our examination of the nightshade beers in ancient Iberia, the family of plants that includes black nightshade and henbane is widely known for provoking delirium, intense hallucinations,» — la explicación farmacológica que Muraresku da del vuelo de las brujas; el verbatim se corta antes de *out-of-body*, que el troceo parte a fin de renglón
«Once again the motif is strangely reminiscent of the Near Eastern marzeah, which the scholar Gregorio del Olmo Lete described as a “cataleptic state of trance” induced by wine;» — el paralelo que Muraresku traza entre el trance de las brujas y el marzeah
«But in Campania specifically, MacMullen confirms that the “age-old practice of receiving visions of deities during a night’s sleep at the shrine” was maintained in Naples,» — la pervivencia de la incubación en Nápoles que MacMullen sostiene según Muraresku
«By the 1420s the nocturnal church service known as the witches’ Sabbat was erupting all across the Italian peninsula. At the center of these diabolic “companies,” stretching from the Alps to Sicily, were encounters with otherworldly characters known as the “ladies from the outside” (donas de fuera),» — el sabbat de las brujas italianas que Muraresku describe, con las llamadas damas de fuera
«The witches all came to the legendary walnut tree in the town of Benevento. There, they would frolic under the branches, which were sacred to the Greek goddess Artemis.» — el nogal de Benevento que Muraresku pone como centro de peregrinación de las brujas europeas
«Like all Sabbats the ritual in Benevento was an alternative Mass with an alternative Eucharist in honor of an alternative God. A Latin treatise from the era, the Errors of the Cathars, records the witches mixing their own “wine” during the Sabbat for the express purpose of “vilifying the Sacrament of the Eucharist and equally to dishonor it.”» — el tratado latino que Muraresku cita sobre el vino que las brujas mezclaban en el sabbat
«And that’s what changed everything. Because up until the 1420s the witches were just a ragtag outfit of harmless folk healers, innocently prancing naked through the forests of Italy. Pagans perhaps, but pagans the Vatican could afford to ignore when there were much bigger fish to fry, like the Muslims and the Cathars.» — la tesis del capítulo: la eucaristía alternativa fue lo que convirtió a la bruja en prioridad
«It was only when the Eucharist got involved that the witch was promoted from nuisance to apostate, assuming the title of “Cathar,” a suddenly generic term for heretics. And that’s when she became a top priority, truly worthy of all the fire and fury of the witch hunts that, even by the most conservative estimates, resulted in ninety thousand prosecutions and forty-five thousand executions.» — la cifra de procesos y ejecuciones con que Muraresku mide la caza de brujas
«They didn’t care about alcohol, or even drugs per se, which were for the most part legal. It’s what the drugs did to people that mattered.» — la distinción con que Muraresku explica la represión: no las drogas sino sus efectos
«Hatsis notes the secretions of certain poisonous toads can contain such psychoactive compounds as bufotenine (5-HO-DMT), which is structurally similar to LSD. There’s also 5-MeO-DMT, a chemical cousin of the dimethlytriptamine (N,N-DMT) that is used in ayahuasca, the South American psychedelic brew sometimes referred to as the “Vine of the Dead.”» — la química de las secreciones de sapo que Hatsis aduce y Muraresku recoge
«At the “responsible dose,” anyone who drank the toad Eucharist was said to “understand all the secrets of the sect and forever question orthodox teaching.”» — el efecto que las fuentes atribuyen a esa eucaristía de sapo
«A fisherman’s wife from Palermo, Sicily, who once completed the supposed journey to Benevento, was later cornered by the Inquisition. “All this seemed to her to be taking place in a dream, for when she awoke, she always found herself in bed, naked as when she had gone to rest.”» — el testimonio inquisitorial de Palermo que Muraresku transcribe sobre el carácter onírico del viaje
«Physically these women may not have gone anywhere. But spiritually they went everywhere. And like some whirlwind visit to Oz, they saw everything. Which made the Church and its Eucharist totally obsolete.» — la consecuencia que Muraresku saca de esos testimonios para la posición de la Iglesia
«From May to June of 1426, the itinerant Franciscan named Bernardino of Siena delivered a series of 114 sermons right here in St. Peter’s Square, and across the Eternal City, turning rumors and hearsay about witches and drugs into a policy statement from the Vatican.» — los sermones de Bernardino de Siena de 1426 con que Muraresku data el arranque de la caza de brujas
«And they would pay homage to a female divinity who went by many names: the Matron, the Teacher, the Wise Sibilla, the Queen of the Fairies.» — los nombres de la divinidad femenina del sabbat; el verbatim se corta antes de la llamada de nota
«And the one title that Bruno himself must have heard from his hometown of Nola, just an hour southwest of Benevento. The Greek Mistress.» — el título que a Muraresku le interesa de esa lista: la Señora Griega, oída a una hora de Nola
«In The Witches’ Ointment: The Secret History of Psychedelic Magic, published in 2015, Thomas Hatsis dredges up an awesome piece of overlooked trivia.» — el libro de Thomas Hatsis de 2015 que Muraresku usa para el caso de la eucaristía de sapo
«In consultation with the Pope, Bernardino decided that only those suspected of the most serious crimes would be brought to justice that summer, which is how the poor venefica named Finicella became the first victim in a war against women and their blasphemous pharmacopeia.» — el primer proceso de la caza de brujas según Muraresku, contra la venefica Finicella
«She reportedly used the magical witches’ ointment to transform herself into a cat, sneaking into people’s homes at night to “suck the fresh blood” from the sixty-five children she was accused of killing.» — el cargo que se imputó a Finicella, que Muraresku transcribe sin arbitrar
«The active ingredients in the unguent could well have been the magical plants that were later identified by the Pope’s physician, Andrés Laguna, including the psychedelic mandrake, which Dioscorides referred to as Circeium because of its mythical use by Circe herself.» — el nexo botánico que Muraresku traza entre el ungüento y Circe por la vía de la mandrágora
«Finicella was strangled to death and burned at the stake on the Campidoglio, the hilltop square designed by Michelangelo. It was a macabre event that “all of Rome went to see.”» — la ejecución de Finicella que Muraresku sitúa en la plaza diseñada por Miguel Ángel
«The leading Italian scholar on these matters, Carlo Ginzburg, has observed, “Thanks to the preachings of San Bernardino of Siena, a sect hitherto considered peripheral was discovered in Rome at the very heart of Christianity.”» — la observación de Carlo Ginzburg sobre el descubrimiento de esa secta en el centro mismo del cristianismo
«But is it possible this “sect” was there all along, from the Gnostics to the witches? That a psychedelic Eucharist was its deepest secret? And that it counted Giordano Bruno among its ranks?» — las tres preguntas con que Muraresku formula su hipótesis sobre la cadena de herejes
«Gianfranco, who has variously accused me of representing the CIA, Mossad, and the Freemasons, responds in Italian, “Credo che sia una stupidaggine pazzesca.” Which roughly translates: “I think that’s crazy-ass stupid.”» — la reacción del archivero vaticano a la tesis de Muraresku, que este transcribe y traduce sin suavizarla
«Of course it could all just be a dazzling coincidence that the greatest Renaissance magician who ever lived was born into the same region that lured every witch in Europe to its magical stronghold in Benevento.» — el registro irónico con que Muraresku enumera las coincidencias que sostienen su hipótesis
«And it could be a final coincidence that the drugs unearthed in the psychedelic lizard potion from the Villa Vesuvio in the Campania of AD 79 were the very same drugs named by the Pope’s drug expert in AD 1554, when Giordano Bruno was only six years old.» — la coincidencia farmacológica que Muraresku subraya entre el hallazgo pompeyano y el testimonio de Laguna
«But I didn’t come here for coincidences. I came here for evidence.» — la declaración de método con que Muraresku pasa al último capítulo
«Most of whatever the Inquisitors had stockpiled through 1559 was incinerated when a riotous crowd torched this palace now in front of me. The depot that would soon detain and torture Bruno was gutted of the documentation that might reveal all the gory details of the Vatican’s constant struggle to keep the flock in check.» — la pérdida documental del Santo Oficio que Muraresku consigna
«As the witch hunts went on, even more data would evaporate when Napoleon ordered the entire archive carted off to Paris in 1810. During its partial return in 1815, incalculable losses resulted when the “papal agent charged with recovering the material had much of it burned or sold as scrap paper on the dubious ground that the cost of shipping it all back to Rome was too high.”» — la segunda pérdida documental, con el papel vendido como desecho
«Until I finally came across one Italian scholar, Oscar di Simplicio, with an interest in Renaissance witches and their herbal expertise. He was among the first researchers who stormed the thirty-foot drawbridge-looking gate of the Holy Office when it first creaked open, champing at the bit to see what the Vatican had kept classified all these years. He went straight for the Inquisitio Senensis and wrote a fabulous book that was only published in Italian in 2000 as Inquisizione Stregoneria Medicina» — el investigador italiano cuyo trabajo guió a Muraresku por ese archivo
«One by one I clicked through a fraction of the evidence of an extended campaign that would execute at least forty-five thousand witches and torture, imprison, or exile countless more across the world. Within minutes a pattern developed. And one of the Church’s more sinister tactics came to light. It wasn’t just trying to rid Christendom of folk healers. It was trying to erase a system of knowledge that had survived for centuries in the shadows.» — la lectura que Muraresku hace del archivo: no solo perseguir curanderas sino borrar un sistema de saber
«But more precisely, they were often entrusted from older women to younger women. Because that’s the only way such complex recipes and prescriptions, like the over fifty ingredients of the psychedelic lizard potion from the Villa Vesuvio, can really survive. And the only way to eliminate that multigenerational scourge is to round up mothers and daughters.» — el argumento con que Muraresku explica el patrón de madres e hijas en los procesos
«Like Angelica di Gherardo and her daughter, Antera, whose trial and interrogation lasted five grueling years from 1583 to 1588. Or Margarita Straccioni and her daughter, Maddalena, from the same period. Another woman, Angela Mancinelli, was condemned with not one but two of her daughters, Livia di Rosato and Meca di Pietro. And then there were Angela di Cesare and her daughter, Camilla.» — los nombres de las procesadas que Muraresku transcribe del archivo de Siena
«In God’s Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World, journalist Cullen Murphy calls overemphasis on the numbers “pointless and distasteful.”» — la advertencia de Cullen Murphy contra el recuento de víctimas, que Muraresku hace suya
«Cullen focuses on the “deep psychological imprint” of an Inquisition that “levied penalties of some sort on hundreds of thousands of people” and generally affected millions. A campaign in which the “fear and shame instilled by any individual case, even a minor one, rippled outward to affect a wide social circle.”» — lo que Murphy propone medir en su lugar: la huella psicológica de la Inquisición
«The Vatican waged a profound psychological war on women.» — la parte de la tesis de Ruck que Muraresku da por respaldada en el archivo
«It’s a wine formula from 1640, cooked up by a wizard from a small town in Tuscany called Casole. A witness testifies that this anonymous witch doctor once prescribed a special “white wine” (vin bianco) for an old widow who had been cursed. In order to remove the spell, the man orders the wine to be mixed with “betony, rue, dry rose and ivy” (bettonica, la ruta, rose secche et ellera).» — la receta de vino de 1640 que Muraresku halla en el volumen 35 del archivo de Siena
«And I’m particularly taken aback by the mention of ivy. Aside from the grapevine, it is the Dionysian plant par excellence. Why would anyone mix it into their wine?» — el ingrediente que a Muraresku le llama la atención: la hiedra, planta dionisiaca por excelencia
«In the first century AD, Dioscorides specifically says that an ivy drink can “alter consciousness” or tarassousi ten dianoian (ταράσσουσι τήν διάνοιαν) when taken in higher doses.» — lo que Dioscórides dice de la hiedra, con el griego que el libro imprime
«I spent weeks reviewing their notes on the Sacred Congregation of the Index, which controlled the Index of Forbidden Books, an inventory of all the literature that was investigated and banned by the Catholic Church. It includes the obvious Protestant thinkers like Martin Luther and John Calvin, but also weirdly censors the work of botanists like Otto Brunfels (1488–1534) and Konrad Gesner (1516–» — el dato del Índice de libros prohibidos que Muraresku destaca: junto a Lutero y Calvino se censuró a botánicos; el verbatim se corta antes de la llamada de nota
«Why would the Vatican be afraid of plants and herbs, I wonder?» — la pregunta con que Muraresku lee esa censura
«“Inquisition” is a loaded term, it’s worth noting. The only documents here in Rome would have belonged to the Roman Inquisition, which began in earnest after the launch of Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation in 1517. But that was only one of several Vatican efforts to stamp out dissent over a period of some 650 years.» — el deslinde histórico que Muraresku hace entre las varias inquisiciones
«It was preceded by the Medieval Inquisition in 1184, which was followed by the Spanish Inquisition of 1478 to 1834 and the Portuguese Inquisition of 1536 to 1821, whereby the Grand Inquisitors hand-selected by the Pope put thousands to death in Europe and the Catholic colonies of India and the New World, including many Jews, Muslims, Hindus, American Indians, and African slaves who refused to bow to Rome’s definition of God.» — el alcance geográfico y confesional de las inquisiciones que Muraresku enumera
«There was one rare survivor that eluded Napoleon’s henchmen: the Inquisitio Senensis. A rare collection of Inquisition files from the Tuscan city of Siena» — el fondo de Siena que Muraresku pudo consultar, único archivo regional conservado en la Santa Sede
«The whole set was transported from Tuscany to the Holy Office in 1911, making it the only regional archive now sheltered by the Holy See.» — el dato que explica por qué ese fondo está en Roma
«According to the Greek naturalist Pliny, who identified twenty varieties of the plant, ivy has the power to “derange the mind.”» — lo que Plinio dice de la hiedra según Muraresku; el libro lo llama naturalista griego aunque escribió en latín
«And Plutarch said it could “drive out of their senses” anyone who is disposed to “spiritual exaltation,” leading to “drunkenness without wine.”» — lo que Plutarco dice de la hiedra en la cita que Muraresku emplea
«To absorb its hallucinogenic power, the maenads would apparently “rush straightaway for ivy and tear it to pieces, clutching it in their hands and biting it with their teeth.”» — el gesto de las ménades con la hiedra que Muraresku recoge de las fuentes antiguas
«It is impossible to know if this Tuscan ivy is related to the ancient ivy mentioned by Dioscorides, Pliny, and Plutarch, but it’s a very strange clue.» — la abstención expresa de Muraresku sobre el nexo entre la hiedra toscana y la antigua
«Equally strange is the manuscript’s note that this witch doctor had inherited his craft as part of a family tradition that stretched back to a notorious relative a bit west of Casole in Volterra. Her name was Lucretia.» — la tradición familiar que el manuscrito atribuye a ese curandero, y el nombre de la bruja de Volterra
«The Inquisition caught up with her in 1590, a decade before Bruno’s execution.» — el proceso de Lucrecia de Volterra, que Muraresku sitúa diez años antes de la ejecución de Bruno
«By my count, they received testimony from no less than thirty-nine accusers.» — el número de acusadores de ese proceso, que Muraresku usa para medir el empeño inquisitorial
«On the reverse of page 21, there’s another formula for an infused “white wine” (vin bianco). The recipe calls for the potion to be mixed with “ivy from an olive tree” (hellera d’ulivo).» — la receta inédita que Muraresku dice haber hallado en el manuscrito, con la hiedra como aditivo del vino
«Things get more interesting as I flip the jaundiced paper to the page 47, where Lucretia is described by one of her accusers as concocting an enhanced “incense” (incenso) containing “the herbs of St. Cyriacus and many [other] herbs” (erba di Santo Ciriaco et di molte erbe).» — el incienso compuesto que otro testigo atribuye a Lucrecia
«The witness says Lucretia had someone steal the original bundle of incense from the church.» — el procedimiento de sustracción que el testimonio atribuye a Lucrecia
«In pristine penmanship rendered in dark ink, the Inquisitors describe how Lucretia once asked another woman to steal a “consecrated Eucharist” (ostia sacrata) from the local priest in Volterra.» — el hallazgo que Muraresku considera decisivo: Lucrecia pidió robar una hostia consagrada
«Lucretia is then assumed to have doctored the Eucharist for use in her healing magic, love potions, or a possible heretical sacrament. The practice was not uncommon at the time.» — la finalidad que se le supone a esa hostia y la acotación de que la práctica era corriente
«In 1320 a letter to the Inquisitors in France from a certain Cardinal» — la carta de 1320 que Muraresku aduce como precedente papal contra el abuso de la eucaristía
«In Religion and the Decline of Magic, historian Keith Thomas notes how the Eucharist had become “an object of supernatural potency” in the Renaissance. It was believed capable of everything from curing the blind, to keeping caterpillars out of the garden.» — el estatuto mágico de la eucaristía en el Renacimiento según Keith Thomas
«Between the Dionysian ivy wine and the magical herbs, what emerges from this precious manuscript is what Oscar di Simplicio calls the “folk pharmacopeia” of a heretical witch escaping the Inquisition’s grasp and passing her knowledge on to her successors, a generation or two in the future.» — la lectura que Muraresku hace del manuscrito, con la fórmula de Oscar di Simplicio
«where the Inquisitors have recorded one very unusual ingredient for Lucretia’s “unguent” (unguento).» — el ingrediente del ungüento de Lucrecia que Muraresku fue a cotejar con el archivero
«Lucretia’s immediate prescription is to fire up an oil pan, tossing in a bunch of unnamed “herbs” (erbe), together with a lucertole.» — la receta del ungüento que el manuscrito registra, con la palabra italiana que Muraresku pide traducir
«“Lucertole … lucertole,” he mumbles. “It’s a kind of reptile,” he starts in Italian, heading for his desktop computer. He googles the animal, and shows me the images for the word he can’t translate into English. “Lizard!” I boom. “Yes, that’s what I thought. Any idea why this witch would be cooking up a lizard ointment?”» — la escena en que el archivero vaticano traduce la palabra y Muraresku ata el cabo con Villa Vesuvio
«Several Ancient Greek authors, he noted, mention the lizard’s association with vision. Because the reptile’s own blindness could be reversed by “opening its eyes toward the rising Sun,” the lizard was thought to restore human sight.» — lo que A. D. Nock recogió sobre la lagartija y la vista, que Muraresku usa para leer el ungüento
«There’s also an intriguing recipe from the so-called Greek Magical Papyri. If a sorcerer wishes “to make the god appear,” they simply drown a lizard in oil.» — la receta de los papiros mágicos griegos que Muraresku empareja con el gesto de Lucrecia
«At the very least Lucretia’s trial shows how anxious the Vatican was about pharmacology. It fought tooth and nail to keep women from acting the part of physician.» — la conclusión mínima que Muraresku extrae del proceso de Lucrecia
«If the use of plants and herbs as natural remedies proliferated and proved successful, everyone would begin to question the white magic of the Eucharist that was supposed to be a cure-all. And with it, the magical God on which the Most Blessed Sacrament depended.» — la razón institucional que Muraresku atribuye a esa inquietud
«By getting her pharmacopeia on the record, the Vatican had damning evidence that Lucretia was cooperating with the Devil, the only possible explanation for abilities that were considered supernatural.» — la función procesal que Muraresku atribuye al detalle farmacológico de las actas
«Much as the Church tried to convince people otherwise, however, the fame of women like Lucretia seems well deserved from testimony as far off as Elizabethan London in 1593: “she doth more good in one yeere than all these Scripture men will doe so long as they live!”» — el testimonio isabelino de 1593 que Muraresku cita en favor de las curanderas
«What is more threatening to the institutional integrity of the Vatican than a Eucharist that provides a true beatific vision? If Lucretia and her sisters could properly “consecrate” a Eucharist for themselves, what was the point of the priest? And if they could establish a direct pipeline to God, perhaps the way it was always meant to be, what was the point of the Church?» — las preguntas con que Muraresku cifra la amenaza que atribuye a esas mujeres
«Is it asking too much for the Vatican to just admit that its placebo Eucharist could never, ever compete with a visionary drug? And that it would do anything to suppress the competition?» — la pregunta con que Muraresku formula su acusación, y la respuesta que él mismo se da
«From the very first page none of the savages’ godless habits provoke as much disgust as the sacred beverages that contained ololiuhqui, peyote, and tobacco.» — los tres sacramentos indígenas que, según Muraresku, más repugnan al misionero
«In 1960 none other than Albert Hofmann identified the plant as a species of morning glory (Turbina corymbosa) containing ergine, the LSD-like alkaloid that is also present in ergot.» — la identificación botánica del ololiuhqui que Muraresku atribuye a Hofmann, con el nexo químico con el cornezuelo
«“By drinking it, they consult it like an oracle for everything whatever that they want to know, even those things which are beyond human understanding.”» — lo que Ruiz de Alarcón consigna sobre el uso oracular del ololiuhqui
«Taking a cue from the Vatican, the Protestant missionaries and Washington, D.C., joined forces to take the very first federal action banning the use of a drug.» — la tesis con que Muraresku data el origen de la guerra contra las drogas
«In an effort to banish the sacrament that was making a comeback on sovereign American Indian land throughout the United States, particularly among the Kiowa and Comanche, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) issued an instruction to all federal agencies on July 31, 1890, that they “seize and destroy the mescal bean, or any preparation or decoction thereof, wherever found on the reservation.”» — la instrucción federal de 1890 contra el peyote que Muraresku transcribe
«When the peyote cult continued to grow on the reservations, finding new converts, the commissioner of the BIA himself wrote to one of his deputies that the sacrament was “interfering quite seriously with the work of the missionaries.”» — el motivo declarado que Muraresku destaca de la correspondencia de la oficina de asuntos indios
«There has always been a right Eucharist and a wrong Eucharist. From the house churches and catacombs of paleo-Christianity, to the Italian graveyards and incubation temples of the Dark Ages, to the Sabbats of the Renaissance, the mystics have always tried to protect their version of the Drug of Immortality. And the bureaucrats have always responded with an iron fist:» — la tesis con que Muraresku cierra el capítulo final de la Parte Dos
«In “Mushroom Ritual versus Christianity,” published in the journal Practical Anthropology, Eunice Pike and Florence Cowan penned the confession I’ve been trying to extract from the Vatican for years. A simple recognition that finally puts all my work in the Secret Archives and the Archive of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith into perfect context:» — el artículo misionero de 1959 que Muraresku considera la confesión que buscaba
«It would appear that the eating of the mushroom has features in common with the Christian Eucharist, which are a potential source of confusion. During the mushroom ceremony the people all nibble on the mushroom at the same time. They make a kind of unit listening to the shaman sing and seeing visions together. In his description Wasson applied the word “agape” to the ceremony, and we have been asked (by outsiders) if the Mazatecos confuse it with the Lord’s Supper. Does the eating of the divine mushroom have for the Mazateco a psychological value comparable to that which the Eucharist has for the Christian? What teaching must accompany the introduction of the Lord’s Supper to the Mazatecos to prevent the Christians among them from seeking the same experience from the bread and wine that they have formerly gotten from the mushroom—and being disappointed?» — Muraresku transcribe a Eunice Pike y Florence Cowan, que se preguntan cómo evitar que los mazatecos busquen en el pan y el vino la experiencia del hongo y queden decepcionados; cita en bloque, tramo largo releído entero en el crudo
«But there was something else going on with Lucretia. The detail about her underhanded scheme to repurpose the “consecrated Eucharist” is no accident. It points to far higher sorcery and far deeper heresy.» — la lectura que Muraresku da al robo de la hostia: herejía más honda que la curandería
«In 1629, a couple of decades after the Inquisition managed to contain Lucretia and Giordano Bruno, a local priest named Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón wrote a long manifesto to the Archbishop of Mexico. It was meant as a guide to missionary work among the indigenous Aztec population.» — el tratado de Ruiz de Alarcón de 1629 con que Muraresku lleva su tesis a América
«But it wouldn’t suffice just to raid the homes of the Devil worshippers. Ruiz de Alarcón had to cut off the supply. In one instance he proudly orders the fields to be cleared of “a large quantity of bushes that produce the fruit.”» — la destrucción de cultivos que Ruiz de Alarcón se atribuye; el verbatim se corta antes de la llamada de nota
«In another he torches twenty-four gallons of seed in “a large bonfire made on a day of solemn festival,” which he forces all the Aztecs to come out and witness for themselves.» — la quema pública de semilla que el mismo misionero describe
«As you are doubtless aware, the term “Mescal” is a misnomer. The correct name for the plant is “Peyote.” … We do not call it mescal,» — Muraresku transcribe la carta de Albert Hensley de 1908 al gobierno estadounidense; el tramo se corta en el cambio de plana
«neither do we call it peyote. Our favorite term is “Medicine,” and to us it is a portion of the body of Christ, even as the communion bread is believed to be a portion of Christ’s body by other Christian denominations. We read in the Bible where Christ spoke of a Comforter who was to come. Long ago this Comforter came to the Whites, but it never came to the Indians until it was sent by God in the form of this Holy medicine. We know whereof we speak. We have tasted of God and our eyes have been opened.» — la continuación de esa carta, que llama al peyote una porción del cuerpo de Cristo y da título al capítulo
«But there was a second holdout. The Mazatecs. While Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón was busy complaining about ololiuhqui, peyote, and tobacco among the Aztecs, another psychedelic sacrament was hiding out in the mountains, just a bit farther to his south.» — el segundo reducto que Muraresku identifica frente a la campaña misionera
«If you’re in the latter camp, like the old friend I came to see in the Campo de’ Fiori, then the only way to experience God is to die before you die. And one of the most reliable ways to do that, say the heretics, is with the kind of drugs that reveal the cosmos for what it truly is.» — la formulación con que Muraresku cierra la Parte Dos, con Bruno como el amigo del Campo de' Fiori
«Practice dying, the philosophers have been telling us for twenty-five hundred years. So that when your time comes, you won’t even feel the flames that engulf everything you ever knew. This has happened before, you’ll remember. This is not dying.» — el consejo que Muraresku atribuye a los filósofos y que dirige a su lector
«I stand and toast the giant brass statue of Giordano Bruno in the center of the plaza. Today was a good day for the mystics.» — el gesto con que Muraresku cierra el capítulo ante la estatua de Bruno
«The beauty of the pagan continuity hypothesis with a psychedelic twist is that it’s either right, or it’s wrong. The idea that the earliest Christians and a secret chain of heretics inherited a drugged Eucharist from their Greek-speaking and prehistoric ancestors is something very knowable. Thanks to all the recent advances in archaeobotany and archaeochemistry, and the high-tech laboratory equipment that only gets better with each passing season, evidence of the use of psychedelics among the Stone Age Indo-Europeans, the Ancient Greeks, the paleo-Christians, and even the Renaissance witches is now observable, testable, repeatable, and falsifiable. That’s how science works, after all.» — la declaración de falsabilidad con que Muraresku abre el epílogo y define el estatuto de su hipótesis
«The old identity crisis that has been gnawing at the conscience of Western civilization for close to two thousand years: some days we’re Christian, some days we’re Greek. But the schizophrenia is getting a little old. We need some medicine.» — la formulación con que Muraresku reenuncia la crisis de identidad del primer capítulo
«In the preceding pages I’ve tried to establish the evidence as it exists today, particularly in southern Italy. Because in the early centuries of Christianity, that’s where the Greek spiritual presence was strongest.» — el alcance que Muraresku reclama para su propio libro
«The psychedelic graveyard beer at Mas Castellar de Pontós could very well be the smoking gun that proves Ruck’s forty years of scholarship on the Mysteries of Eleusis absolutely correct. Only time will tell. As is, there is plenty of good material for a serious debate.» — el grado con que Muraresku deja su hallazgo catalán: material para un debate serio, no prueba cerrada
«If beer really preceded bread an unbelievable twelve thousand years ago, what kind of beer was it?» — la pregunta que Muraresku deja abierta para Göbekli Tepe
«Did God descend from Heaven in a cup? And was this the kind of technology, the Secret of Secrets, that finally explains the unrivaled success of the many Indo-European languages that are spoken by half the planet today? All of them based on that strange missing tongue that fanned out from the Fertile Crescent, east and west of Anatolia, to transform the hunters and gatherers of the Stone Age into the first farmers of Asia and Europe? Did a psychedelic graveyard beer convince our prehistoric ancestors that their loved ones never disappeared, and there was life beyond death?» — la serie de preguntas con que Muraresku formula el alcance máximo de su tesis
«So McGovern’s inkling about the “pharmacological properties” of the kukeon “certainly exceeding what can be attributed to a high alcohol content” should be taken seriously. Despite looking in earnest, he hasn’t yet found the elusive ingredient(s) in or around the homeland of Western civilization.» — la deuda que Muraresku reconoce: McGovern no ha hallado aún el ingrediente en Grecia
«Over the millennia were prehistoric beer and wine routinely mixed with psychoactive material, as the Scorpion I and Tel Kabri caches suggest? And as wine slowly replaced beer in ceremonial drinking, did a psychedelic grape potion pick up where a psychedelic graveyard beer left off?» — las dos preguntas de investigación que Muraresku deja planteadas a la arqueoquímica
«When Ancient Greek wine was described as a pharmakon, maybe that’s exactly what it was: an unusually intoxicating, seriously mind-altering, occasionally hallucinogenic, and potentially lethal potion. And maybe Dionysus was not merely the God of Wine, but the God of Psychedelics.» — la conclusión que Muraresku enuncia con un maybe: Dioniso como dios de los psicodélicos y no solo del vino
«If ever there was a vehicle to marry the Greek and Christian Mysteries, it was the Roman refrigerium that Yale scholar Ramsay MacMullen has rigorously documented as a genuine “religion” in no uncertain terms.» — el papel que Muraresku asigna al refrigerium en su reconstrucción
«The person who controls the Hypogeum of the Aurelii, the Catacombs of Priscilla, and the Catacombs of Saints Marcellinus and Peter is the same person who controls the dozens and dozens of precious catacombs all over Italy, from Tuscany to Sicily. Each of them seething with valuable, empirical evidence just waiting to be unlocked. The Pope.» — el obstáculo institucional que Muraresku declara para probar su tesis
«A few emails into our correspondence, out on a limb, I asked if the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology still comes across ancient drinking vessels on their digs, and whether they’d be interested in having them tested. Surely there is scientific merit in chemically determining what the ancient followers of Jesus were consuming during the earliest Christian ceremonies.» — la petición que Muraresku dice haber hecho a la comisión vaticana
«I talked about the project to analyze the deposits of the containers that are in the catacomb with a colleague of mine, Dr. Matteo Braconi, who deals with the catacombs of Tuscany. In recent excavations (2017-2018) they found interesting objects with organic material that could be interesting to analyze. So we would be very pleased to collaborate on this project.» — la respuesta que Muraresku transcribe de la arqueóloga Barbara Mazzei, en su traducción del italiano
«When the shock wore off, I immediately reached out to Braconi.» — el desenlace de esa gestión, que Muraresku deja por escrito como deuda abierta
«At Tel Arad by the Dead Sea, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), cannabidiol (CBD) and cannabinol (CBN) were detected by gas chromatography-mass spectroscopy (GC-MS) in a heap of organic remains that had survived on a limestone altar recovered from a key» — el hallazgo de cannabis en el altar de Tel Arad, publicado en mayo de 2020 y que Muraresku alcanzó a incorporar
«Having analyzed the residue of the sacred incense, the authors conclude: “It seems feasible to suggest that the use of cannabis on the Arad altar had a deliberate psychoactive role.” They call this the “first known evidence of [a] hallucinogenic substance found in the Kingdom of Judah.”» — la conclusión de ese estudio: primer testimonio de sustancia alucinógena en el reino de Judá
«There was never one monolithic form of Christianity.» — la tesis que Muraresku da por respaldada en Nag Hammadi y en el Evangelio de María Magdalena
«The psychedelic trip to the underworld wouldn’t have happened in every house church or catacomb, of course. And probably not even the majority.» — la acotación con que Muraresku limita el alcance de su propia hipótesis
«The evidence I’ve presented suggests the drugs of the Upper Paleolithic never went anywhere. They appear to have survived the monopolies of the Near Eastern royal families and Greek hereditary officiants, the crackdown of the Roman senate, the aspersions of Saint Paul, and the united front of the Church Fathers.» — el balance final que Muraresku hace de su argumento
«If all this is right, then the religion with no name is the oldest continuously functioning spiritual tradition the world has ever known. Twelve thousand years and counting, at the very least.» — la reclamación mayor del libro, enunciada con su condicional intacto
«Because in the meantime I could see from the activity on my LinkedIn and Academia.edu profiles that the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology was trying to figure out why I was so intrigued by their catacombs. And their wine vessels. I never heard back again.» — el silencio con que esa gestión terminó, según Muraresku
«About 75 percent of the research volunteers consistently rate their one and only dose of psilocybin as either the single most meaningful experience of their entire lives, or among the top five.» — la cifra estable de los ensayos de Johns Hopkins que Muraresku toma como su dato de cierre
«These people are having the beatific vision.» — la afirmación con que Muraresku enlaza laboratorio y misterio, aislada como párrafo propio
«When you compare the testimony of the psilocybin volunteers to what little survived from the ancient initiates, it is strikingly similar.» — la comparación de testimonios que Muraresku declara como su prueba de última instancia
«But what I hear are pilgrims on the long trek home from Eleusis, struggling to make sense of their life-transforming vision. I hear maenads returning from the mountains and forests, in awe of Dionysus. I hear paleo-Christians, suddenly resurrected from the underworld, thanking Jesus for restoring their sight. I hear witches groggily waking up after a night’s flight to the walnut tree in Benevento, having spied “all the delights of the world.”» — la enumeración con que Muraresku reúne a todos los iniciados de su libro en un mismo relato
«The teams at Hopkins and NYU are somehow doing what the Greek and Christian Mysteries were never able to accomplish in antiquity. And what Aldous Huxley prophesied in 1958 would result in a “revival of religion” to outdo all others in the history of the species. Today’s scientists have now solved the critical flaws of the religion with no name: safety, reliability, and scalability.» — lo que Muraresku atribuye a los ensayos actuales: resolver los defectos de la religión sin nombre
«So the religion with no name will not be fully reborn until every consenting adult has the opportunity to experience something like what was happening in the Greek and Christian Mysteries, without fear of going to jail.» — la condición que Muraresku pone al renacimiento que anuncia
«By referring to his colleagues as “the high priestesses of the modern era,” maybe Bossis is onto something. The whole point of these psilocybin interventions, he concedes, is to trigger the same beatific vision that was reported at Eleusis for millennia.» — la fórmula de Bossis sobre sus colegas y el fin declarado de esas intervenciones
«If we all died before we died, maybe we’d all discover the big secret that was known to the initiates of the Mysteries. We are all God.» — la conclusión que Muraresku enuncia con un maybe y que es su lectura del secreto de los misterios
«“The Son of Man is within you,” said the Gospel of Mary Magdalene. But if you don’t die now, you might never realize that. You might never understand that Heaven is not what happens when the physical body wastes away. And that there is no afterlife. Because there is no after.» — el pasaje del Evangelio de María Magdalena con que Muraresku niega el más allá como tiempo futuro
«Which for the mystics was never about living forever within the field of time. Just going on and on until the cosmos implodes. It was never about life after death. It was always about escaping into the timelessness of the infinite present.» — la definición de inmortalidad que Muraresku atribuye a los místicos
«Not according to Alan Watts. In The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness, published in 1962, he wrote: “The reaction of most cultured people to the idea of gaining any deep psychological or philosophical insight through a drug is that it is too simple, too artificial, and even too banal to be seriously considered. A wisdom which can be ‘turned on’ like the switch of a lamp seems to insult human dignity and degrade us to chemical automata.”» — la objeción que Muraresku toma de Alan Watts contra el atajo químico, antes de citar su respuesta
«After his own experiences with mescaline, LSD, and psilocybin, however, Watts could find “no essential difference between the experiences induced, under favorable conditions, by these chemicals and the states of ‘cosmic consciousness’” registered in the mystical literature across the ages.» — la respuesta de Watts a su propia objeción, que Muraresku hace suya
«Only to the extent that the initial experience was sacred. And stayed sacred. Stayed meaningful. The Mysteries had a way of ritually ensuring the odds of that transformation from the mortal to the immortal: various stages of initiation, intense psychological preparation, a community of mentors, integration back into everyday life. The Mysteries were a machine for the making of gods and goddesses.» — la condición ritual que Muraresku pone al efecto transformador, con la fórmula de la máquina de hacer dioses
«Strange as it sounds after all this, I still consider myself a Christian.» — la declaración de pertenencia con que Muraresku cierra el libro
«When I contemplate the Last Supper, and the earliest and most authentic celebrations of the Eucharist, I see one obvious theme that disappeared long ago. I see very small groups of people gathered at home. I see micro-churches. And as the initial evidence from Mas Castellar de Pontós and the Villa Vesuvio suggests, I see home brews and house wines that may have found their way into paleo-Christianity.» — la propuesta práctica con que Muraresku cierra: microiglesias y vinos caseros
«“I hesitate, because it makes you into a campaigner. A religious prophet. Oh God, no! Let’s not have any more religions.”» — la respuesta de Ruck a la pregunta de si habría que restaurar la religión sin nombre
«When the smoking gun emerges, proving beyond any reasonable doubt that the original Eucharist was, in fact, psychedelic, we’re going to book the first flight to Rome. We’re going to bust Father Francis out of his laboratory to the south. And we’re all going to drink a chalice of psychedelic wine in the City of the Dead underneath St. Peter’s Basilica. As it was in the beginning. With a few nuns handling the blood of Christ. The first psychedelic experience for me and Father Francis. Ruck’s last of many. And we’re going to insist that the Pope join us.» — el pacto con que Muraresku cierra el libro, dicho en clave de broma y de programa
«The bottom of the barrel, this was by far the biggest swing of all fifteen languages surveyed by the Modern Language Association (MLA) in its 2016 comprehensive report on language programs at American universities.» — el dato de matrícula en griego antiguo que Muraresku documenta en sus notas finales
«In the first century BC the Greek ambassador to Rome from 45 to 26 BC had this to say: “Even if yours has always been a sedentary life, and you have never sailed the sea, nor walked the roads of the land, you should nevertheless go to Attica, so that you may witness those nights of the festival of great Demeter.» — el testimonio antiguo sobre Eleusis que Muraresku transcribe en las notas y no en el cuerpo
«Here Kerenyi explains that by the middle of the fifth century BC, the noble families who administered the Eleusinian Mysteries felt the “secret ceremonies” at Agrai, which took place in February just outside the walls of Athens, “constituted a necessary preparation for their own rites.» — la nota en que Muraresku desarrolla, con Kerényi, la preparación de los misterios menores de Agras
«Thus guidance and mentorship at the hands of a so-called mystagogue could have occurred from February of a given year until September of the following year—an eighteen-month process of initiation into the full secrets of Eleusis.» — la reconstrucción del calendario iniciático que Muraresku propone en las notas
«In footnote 3, Oesterreich briefly details his own self-experimentation, without necessarily explaining why he chose a Swiss resort at the base of the Alps as his test site: “I made at Locarno experiments in chewing fresh laurel-leaves, but without results of any interest.» — la autoexperimentación con hojas de laurel que Muraresku rescata de una nota de Oesterreich, con su resultado negativo
«Hillman kindly shared an unpublished article with the author: “Shattering the Victorian Lens of Classical History with Pharmaceutical Precision,” in which he adds: “Galen composed works on anatomy, physiology, humoral pathology, disease, and pharmacy.» — el artículo inédito de David Hillman que Muraresku cita en nota sobre la obra de Galeno
«Considering that half of Kuhn’s Galen is a Latin translation—and a notoriously bad one at that —it is fair to say that Classicists possess over 10,000 pages of untranslated sources.» — la cifra con que Hillman mide la deuda de traducción, que Muraresku transcribe en nota
«Why don’t they get to work? Because they can not; nor do they want to make sense of thousands of pages of thousands of drugs, drug compounds, drug theory, and drug use.» — la explicación que Hillman da para esa deuda, en la nota que Muraresku conserva
«In fact, the Hymn to Demeter anticipates Demeter’s transition from mother to grandmother, Ruck points out, with reference to her knowledge of “great herbs” and “talisman plants” that can combat sorcery.» — el detalle del himno que Ruck subraya y Muraresku pone en nota
«Combining the Greek for psyche (ψυχή) or “self” with delos (δῆλος) or “visible,” psychedelic means something like “that which makes clear the contents of one’s consciousness.» — la etimología de psicodélico que Muraresku da en nota, con el griego que imprime
«A statue of this youthful torch-bearing god would conduct the parade of initiates every step of the thirteen miles along the Sacred Road that led from Athens to Eleusis.» — el detalle procesional de Yaco que Muraresku relega a las notas
«Are they not sesame cakes, and pyramidal cakes, and globular and flat cakes, embossed all over, and lumps of salt, and a serpent the symbol of Dionysus Bassareus? And besides these, are they not pomegranates, and branches, and rods, and ivy leaves? And besides, round cakes and poppy seeds?» — el inventario antiguo del contenido de la cesta mística que Muraresku transcribe en nota, con las semillas de amapola incluidas
«In 1958, the Harvard Divinity School–trained historian was rooting around an Orthodox monastery just south of Jerusalem called Mar Saba, when he made the discovery of a lifetime.» — el hallazgo de Morton Smith en Mar Saba que Muraresku desarrolla en nota
«It mentions a covert, nocturnal rite of initiation that Christ allegedly reserved for his closest disciples—a “secret baptism” that offered the inner circle direct access to the Kingdom of Heaven.» — el contenido del evangelio secreto de Marcos según esa nota
«But they are cautious to point out that all subjects confirming the experience of visions did, in fact, have “a history of previous spontaneous visual activity” unrelated to LSD.» — la reserva metodológica que Muraresku conserva en nota sobre las visiones de personas ciegas con LSD
«Liu further states: “The time and effort invested in the manufacture of deep stone mortars in mortuary contexts and in acquisition of knowledge apparently required for beer brewing indicates an important ritual function played by alcohol beverages in the Natufian culture.» — la conclusión de Li Liu sobre el valor ritual de la cerveza natufiense, que Muraresku pone en nota
«And concerning Sauer’s theory from 1953: “Beer brewing may have been, at least in part, an underlying motivation to cultivate cereals in the southern Levant, supporting the beer hypothesis proposed by archaeologists more than 60 years ago.» — la formulación con que el equipo de Liu respalda la hipótesis cervecera, con su grado intacto
«Proponents of the Kurgan Hypothesis say the Indo-Europeans who traveled west used their horses and wheeled chariots to subdue the poorly equipped indigenous populations of Old Europe.» — la hipótesis kurgana que Muraresku resume en nota antes de oponerle la de Renfrew
«The picture that emerges is a first wave of Proto-Indo-European agriculturalists from Anatolia, followed by another wave of nomads in the third or fourth millennium BC.» — la síntesis que Muraresku propone en nota entre las dos hipótesis sobre la patria indoeuropea
«Brewing was widely known in the eastern Mediterranean and the method might have been introduced to Greece from the east at least as early as the end of the 3rd millennium BC or even earlier.» — lo que Valamoti sostiene sobre la llegada de la cerveza a Grecia, en la nota de Muraresku
«Our evidence shows that the stereotypical division between ‘wine cultures’ and ‘beer cultures’ is no longer valid for prehistoric southeastern Europe and the Aegean region.» — la conclusión de Valamoti que objeta la división entre culturas del vino y de la cerveza, conservada en nota
«Take the oil pressed out of fresh Herrings, a pint, a boar’s gall, juices of henbane, hemlock, arsel, lettuce, and wild catmint, each six ounces, mix, boil well, and put into a glass vessel, stoppered.» — una receta anestésica de beleño y cicuta que Muraresku transcribe en nota
«Take three spoonfuls and put into a quart of warm ale, and let the person to undergo any operation drink of this by an ounce at a time, till he falls asleep, which sleep he will continue the space of three or four hours, and all that time he will be unsensible to anything done to him.» — la posología de esa receta y su efecto declarado, que Muraresku conserva en nota
«At this time, their appearance usually coincided with a reorganization of the settlement and a transformation of the material culture indicating a general adoption of Greek models throughout the society.» — lo que Muraresku recoge en nota sobre las cabezas de terracota como marca de adopción de modelos griegos
«The yawning gates of Hades were guarded by the monstrous watchdog Cerberus, whose function was to prevent the living from entering the underworld, and the dead from leaving it.» — la función de Cerbero que Muraresku explica en nota, y que sostiene el sacrificio de perros de Pontós
«British archaeologist and art historian, Sir John Beazley: “Following Beazley’s system of nomenclature, deriving the artist’s name from the name of a city where an important vase is located, as the Berlin Painter from the hudria in Berlin, our artist is known as the Chicago Painter,» — la nomenclatura de los pintores de vasos griegos que Muraresku explica en nota
«Unearthed in 2011 at the ancient port city of Ainos in the Evros region of eastern Macedonia, where modern-day Greece meets Turkey, the vessel depicts a pithos urn embedded in the ground for the fermentation of wine.» — un vaso hallado en 2011 que Muraresku suma en nota al expediente del vino ritual
«It is accredited by Mucianus who was three times consul that the water flowing from a spring in the temple of Father Liber [Dionysus] on the island of Andros always has the flavour of wine on January 5th: the day is called God’s Gift Day.» — el pasaje de Plinio sobre el milagro anual de Andros, que Muraresku transcribe entero en nota
«The Old Testament references to the marzeah include Amos 6:4–7, Jeremiah 16:5, and Numbers 13:1–33, where Moses dispatches twelve spies—one from each of the twelve Israelite tribes—to see what the narco-pagans are really up to in the Promised Land.» — los pasajes veterotestamentarios del marzeah que Muraresku enumera en nota, con su glosa irónica
«But that didn’t stop some anonymous Christian artists from copying the “big, curly hair of Dionysus” in the early centuries of the faith, and passing the hippie look on to posterity.» — la nota en que Muraresku explica la iconografía capilar de Jesús
«There is a well-documented tradition of shamans drinking the deer’s urine, said to preserve the chief psychoactive compound of the mushroom, muscimol, while tempering other toxins that can be unpleasant for humans.» — el dato etnográfico sobre la orina de reno y el muscimol que Muraresku pone en nota
«Likewise in 1 Corinthians 7:39, I doubt Paul is suggesting a monogamous Christian woman is free to remarry another man every time her husband has merely “fallen asleep” or koimethe (κοιμηθῇ).» — el argumento adicional que Muraresku da en nota para su lectura del verbo griego de 1 Corintios 11:30
«The boy of good family was always attended by a trustworthy slave (paedagogus), who accompanied him to school, remained with him during the sessions, and saw him safely home again when school was out.» — el papel del pedagogo griego en Roma que Muraresku documenta en nota
«Wilkinson once noted in the nineteenth century, “the adoption of the pinecone to the head of the spear of Bacchus,” evident on the Borghese Vase and countless other examples from antiquity, “originated in the use of the resinous matter put into wine-skins, and afterwards into amphorae.» — la explicación del remate de piña del tirso que Muraresku recoge en nota, ligada a las resinas del vino
«In AD 1574, a monument was indeed found on the Isola Tiberina, part of whose inscription reads “SEMONI SANCO DEO,” not the “SIMONI DEO SANCTO” preserved by Justin Martyr.» — la corrección epigráfica que Muraresku consigna en nota sobre la estatua atribuida a Simón el Mago
«While the precise meaning of pharmaka in Empedocles’ fragment 111 is hotly debated, Kingsley notes that a “primary reference is, no doubt, to magical remedies extracted from plants.» — el grado con que Muraresku deja en nota la disputa sobre el fragmento 111 de Empédocles
«In the Malleus Maleficarum (1486), a widely circulated witch-hunting manual, this is blatantly put: ‘All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is in women insatiable.» — la frase del Malleus Maleficarum que Muraresku cita en nota sobre la lujuria de las mujeres; el año entre paréntesis es de la propia nota
«Berlin: Praxis, 1993), 4:398–407, where the authors make reference to the psychedelic properties of common ivy: “In the toxicological literature, it is noted that a 3-year-old child ate a large amount and had hallucinations.» — el caso toxicológico de hiedra que Muraresku aduce en nota para apoyar su lectura de la receta toscana
«mind that functions with your name in everyday life) may ebb and flow. Similarly, awareness of the body lying on the couch may come and go as one might expect to experience in a state of deep trance.… This threshold between the personal (that is, the everyday self) and the transpersonal (that is, more fundamental or universal dimensions of consciousness) is conceptualized by different people in different ways.» — la continuación del pasaje de William Richards sobre el umbral entre lo personal y lo transpersonal, que cruza el cambio de plana
«Back in the Garden of Eden, maybe the forbidden fruit was forbidden for a reason. Who needs the fancy building, the priest and all the rest of it—even the Bible—if all you really need is the fruit?» — la pregunta con que Muraresku cierra el primer capítulo, con el fruto prohibido leído al revés
«I’m standing in front of the breathtaking Acropolis Museum. Brainchild of the Swiss-French architect Bernard Tschumi, the design received high honors from the American Institute of Architects in 2011.» — la escena con que Muraresku abre el capítulo del catálogo de Eleusis
«As I pull up to the oldest working brewery in the world, the bearded giant is waiting for me in the gray Bavarian drizzle. Dr. Martin Zarnkow is head of research and development at the Weihenstephan Research Center for Brewing and Food Quality at the Technische Universität München.» — la presentación de Martin Zarnkow y del centro cervecero de Weihenstephan
«In operation since AD 1040, prior to the Crusades, the first kegs that came out of this former monastery were cooked up by the Benedictines. And right here on Weihenstephan’s doorstep in 1516, Duke Wilhelm IV of Bavaria issued the Purity Law that forever memorialized beer’s three principal ingredients: barley, water, and hops.» — la historia de esa cervecería y la ley de pureza de 1516 que Muraresku usará como hilo
«Reconstruction of how the skulls at Göbekli Tepe may have been displayed for ritual use. A cord would be inserted into the hole drilled into the top of the cranium, and then wrapped lengthwise around the skull along grooves of chiseled bone to stabilize the religious artifact.» — el pie de figura que describe la reconstrucción del culto al cráneo de Göbekli Tepe; es aparato del libro, no cuerpo
«Map of Greek influence in Catalonia, radiating from the main Ancient Greek colonies of Emporion and Rhodes in northeastern Spain (above). Site plan of the archaeological works at Mas Castellar de Pontós (below).» — el pie de figura del mapa de la influencia griega en Cataluña
«Terra-cotta head of Demeter or Persephone (top left); field photo of nine Greco-Italic amphoras (bottom left); and ceramic incense burner (thymiateria) of a Greek goddess (top right). Courtesy of M. Solé. All were excavated from the archaeological site at Mas Castellar de Pontós, and all date to the third century BC.» — el pie de figura de las piezas del yacimiento catalán, con su datación
«The Director of the Archaeological Museum of Girona, Ramón Buxó, revealing the miniature Greek vessel (kantharos) unearthed at Mas Castellar de Pontós for inspection by Carl Ruck. Under Jordi Juan- Tresserras’s optical microscopy and scanning electron microscope, this vessel tested positive for traces of ergotized beer in 1997.» — el pie de figura de la escena de Girona, que resume el hallazgo central del libro
«“We got our work cut out for us. How many pieces are in here, Dr. Kardianou?” “In this room, we have about a thousand.”» — el tamaño del depósito del Louvre que Muraresku registra en la entrevista
«It started there. And stayed there.» — la afirmación con que Muraresku cierra el capítulo de Galilea
«But the Dionysian Mysteries couldn’t just disappear. Everyone deserved a taste of divinity. So perhaps the only way to keep the magical wine alive was to fill the ancient world with more Paculla Annias than the Roman Empire could ever possibly control. But the wilderness wasn’t the safest or most convenient place to win new converts to the Greek death cult. The God of Ecstasy had to come indoors.» — la solución que Muraresku atribuye al culto dionisiaco frente a la represión romana
«Marble head of Dionysus from the second century AD, based on Greek statuary from ca. 500 BC, currently in the Salle des Caryatides in the Louvre. The feminine, flowing hair of the God of Ecstasy inspired early portrayals of Jesus that have persisted ever since.» — el pie de figura sobre la cabellera de Dioniso y su herencia iconográfica en las imágenes de Jesús
«It’s time for Father Francis to don that collar and smuggle me behind enemy lines.» — la fórmula con que Muraresku describe su entrada al Vaticano con el sacerdote
«Before Jesus, that primitive ritual of drinking the god to become the god had largely survived in the wild. With John’s Gospel, apotheosis came home. And it went viral. Because that’s how religions are born. And that’s how religions flourish. Until the bureaucrats come along. But technology that time-honored and that advanced doesn’t just evaporate. The witches would never allow it.» — el cierre del capítulo sobre las iglesias domésticas, con la tecnología que no se evapora
«We race a few blocks through the Trastevere neighborhood toward our destination in back of the chic Fiat showroom on Viale Manzoni, not far from the railroad tracks that stem in all directions from the Termini station. Despite the overcast Monday morning following a sunny weekend in Paris, as soon as we cross the Tiber over the Ponte Garibaldi, it soon becomes apparent why Rome has been described as “a poem pressed into service as a city.”» — la escena de llegada a Roma con la fórmula sobre la ciudad que Muraresku cita
«Leave it to Father Francis to find fault with the itinerary that has taken me the better part of a year to put together. After the Campidoglio, the hilltop square with the twelve-pointed star designed by Michelangelo, we round the Piazza Venezia and pass the Roman Forum for another favorite.» — la escena del trayecto en taxi por Roma, con el itinerario que Muraresku dice haber tardado un año en armar
«The Good Shepherd fresco in the first, underground chamber of the Hypogeum of the Aurelii. In John 10:11, Jesus refers to himself as the Good Shepherd who “lays down his life for the sheep.” But the presence of goats here removes this imagery from the Gospels. If this scene was really meant to portray Jesus, it instantly connects him to the goats of Dionysus.» — el pie de figura del Buen Pastor del hipogeo, donde el propio libro señala que las cabras sacan la escena del evangelio
«The ceiling fresco in the second, underground chamber of the Hypogeum of the Aurelii. In the center of the Greek cross, the female initiate is veiled in white. Is she being welcomed into the Mysteries of Dionysus or the Mysteries of Jesus?» — el pie de figura del techo del hipogeo, que deja la pregunta abierta sobre a qué misterios se inicia la mujer velada
«To flatten the site for his monumental church, Constantine buried some of the ancient tombs, leaving Saint Peter’s intact. By the Renaissance the aging shrine needed a makeover. When he took over from Bramante and Raphael in 1547 at the age of seventy-two, Michelangelo scrapped their designs for the basilica but kept the general position of the cupola, above Saint Peter’s alleged remains.» — la construcción de la basílica sobre la necrópolis que Muraresku reconstruye
«It was an altar. A clue to what the paleo-Christians were drinking in their all-nighters to coax Peter and the dead ancestors back from the grave emerges from a neighboring monument identified as Mausoleum M, the Tomb of the Julii, originally built for the Julian family as the second century became the third.» — el altar hallado en las excavaciones papales y el mausoleo que Muraresku va a examinar
«Not to worry: G 408 and G 409 have been off-limits to the public and remain well conserved.» — la búsqueda negativa de la conservadora del Louvre, que no halló más escenas de mezcla de vino en un catálogo de casi quince mil piezas
«As the largest painting in the largest art museum in the world, you’d think more people would look up and take notice.» — la frase con que Muraresku anuncia las bodas de Caná de Veronese; el tramo cierra la plana y sigue en la p. 187
«Funerary banquet fresco from chamber 78 of the Catacombs of Saints Marcellinus and Peter (top). The Latin above the priestess’ head reads: “Agape” (To Love!), “Misce” (Mix it up!). Another funerary banquet scene from chamber 76 of the Catacombs of Saints Marcellinus and Peter (bottom). The Latin reads: “Misce mi” (Mix it up for me!), “Irene” (To Peace!).» — los pies de figura de dos frescos de banquete de esas catacumbas, con las aclamaciones latinas traducidas por el propio libro
«Funerary banquet fresco from chamber 45 of the Catacombs of Saints Marcellinus and Peter (top). The Latin above the priestess’s head to the left reads: “Agape” (To Love!), “Misce nobis” (Mix it up for us!). The Latin above the second figure from the right reads: “Porge calda” (Hand over the warm stuff!). A final funerary banquet scene from chamber 39 of the Catacombs of Saints Marcellinus and Peter (below). The Latin on the left reads: “Irene” (To Peace!), “Da calda” (Hand over the warm stuff!).» — los pies de figura de otros dos frescos de la misma serie, con la fórmula sobre lo caliente
«the graveyard wine that built Christianity is a thing of the past. Buried perhaps. Though miraculously preserved. Against all odds. In the shadow of the world’s most dangerous volcano.» — el cierre del capítulo de las catacumbas, que anuncia el hallazgo pompeyano
«If the hunt for the psychedelic kukeon had taught me anything, it was how to expand my narrow definition of the Greek Mysteries. Whenever I envisioned the Mysteries of Eleusis, I had always thought about the archaeological site in Eleusis. And nothing else. Until I realized that things didn’t really work that way in the “ancient cultural internet” of the Mediterranean.» — la lección de método que Muraresku declara al abrir el capítulo del hallazgo italiano
«The spiritual history of Western civilization begins in Anatolia with the Proto-Indo-Europeans and, many thousands of years later, the Phocaeans. And it ends in Magna Graecia, where the Velian priestesses would travel back and forth between Rome and Campania.» — la síntesis geográfica con que Muraresku cierra su reconstrucción
«With St. Peter’s City of the Dead and the Roman catacombs checked off the itinerary, I have only one mission left in the Vatican this week. To learn the ultimate fate of the psychedelic Eucharist. If the Phocaean priestesses and the Gnostic witches helped jump-start Christianity with an injection of visionary drugs, what happened when the mystical period of paleo-Christianity came to an end? Who inherited the Ancient Greek tradition of spiked wine?» — el programa del penúltimo capítulo: qué fue del sacramento psicodélico
«A needle in the haystack. As impressive as the collection is, it’s also “one of the most useless,” according to one recent commentator, “because it’s so inaccessible.”» — el juicio sobre el Archivo Secreto que Muraresku cita y hace suyo
«within minutes was personally reviewed by the current prefect in charge of the Secret Archives, His Excellency Sergio Pagano. Yes, his last name means “pagan” in Italian.» — el detalle onomástico que Muraresku no deja pasar sobre el prefecto del Archivo Secreto
«It’s Thursday, February 21, 2019, and the camera crews are already in position. To my right in St. Peter’s Square, I spot members of the international media dusting their collars and checking their audio feeds. It’s the first day of the Vatican’s much-anticipated Protection of Minors summit. Close to two hundred delegates have descended on Rome from across the planet to discuss the biggest scandal facing the Church today. Sex» — la escena con que Muraresku abre el último capítulo, en el día de la cumbre vaticana sobre abusos
«It included the garden-variety sentence, “It is our understanding that some of the 255 volumes from the Holy Office of Siena contain rich information about the local history of the Tuscan region.”» — la frase de la carta con que Muraresku obtuvo acceso al archivo del Santo Oficio, redactada por Ruck
«there are early dates for farming in Spain around 5500 BC, but the picture there is not yet a very complete one, and earlier dates are to be expected.» — la reserva de Renfrew sobre las fechas de la agricultura en España, que Muraresku conserva en nota
«where Chovanec details her discovery of noscapine (derived from opium), thujone (derived from white wormwood), and artemiseole together with cis-sabinene (derived from absinthe wormwood)» — el hallazgo de opio y ajenjo en vasijas antiguas que Muraresku suma en nota
«the Israeli Antiquities Authority has now confirmed the importance of Upper Galilee for wine production during the Hellenistic era.» — el aval oficial sobre la producción vinícola de la Alta Galilea que Muraresku documenta en nota
«John McLaughlin, The Marzeah in the Prophetic Literature: References and Allusions in Light of the Extra-Biblical Evidence (Boston: Brill, 2001), 47: “In Nabataean religion Dushara is equated with, among others, the Greek god Dionysus,» — la identificación de Dushara con Dioniso que Muraresku recoge en nota para ligar el marzeah nabateo al culto del vino
«In the Secret Book of James, Jesus takes James and Peter on a hallucinogenic tour of the heavens, where the disciples see “trumpets blaring” and “angels rejoicing.”» — el pasaje del Libro Secreto de Santiago que Muraresku aduce en nota sobre el carácter visionario de los textos gnósticos
«Larraona, Missale Romanum (Rome: Sacrae Rituum Congregationis, 1962), 63: “accipiens calicem discoopertum cum Sanguine ambabus manibus, ut prius, elevat eum, et erectum quantum commode potest, ostendit populo adorandum.”» — la rúbrica latina de la elevación del cáliz que Muraresku transcribe en nota
«Bruno Bartoloni, “All the Mystery Surrounding St Peter’s Tomb,” L’Osservatore Romano, August 29, 2012,» — la fuente vaticana sobre la tumba de San Pedro que Muraresku cita en nota
«Thomas Hatsis, The Witches’ Ointment: The Secret History of Psychedelic Magic (Paris, ME: Park Street Press, 2015), 70.» — la referencia completa del libro de Hatsis del que sale el caso de la eucaristía de sapo
«“There is no other way to start a religion,” says the Benedictine monk Brother David Steindl-Rast.» — según Muraresku, el monje benedictino David Steindl-Rast sostiene que no hay otra manera de empezar una religión; el verbatim se corta antes de la llamada de nota
«“Every religion has its mystical core. The challenge is to find access to it and to live in its power.”» — la continuación de esa declaración: toda religión tiene un núcleo místico y el problema es el acceso
«Women and drugs. For two thousand years they have been the two biggest thorns in the side of the Church.» — las dos palabras con que Muraresku resume el tema del hipogeo, unidas a la frase que las explica porque aisladas no llegan al mínimo del verificador
«The Hermetic, Brunian understanding of the Eucharist, the true ceremony of the cup, involves a deeper commingling of essences than that allowed by either the Protestant or the traditional Catholic definitions of the Supper; Bruno’s communion is an active, two-way process, consistent with the Brunian view of the immanence of divinity in Man.» — Muraresku transcribe en nota a Gosselin y Lerner sobre la eucaristía de Bruno: una comunión activa y de doble sentido, coherente con su idea de la inmanencia de lo divino en el hombre, y que ellos llaman hermética
«Frances A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition» — la referencia completa del libro de Frances Yates que Muraresku usa para leer a Bruno, y la única otra vez en que el troceo imprime la palabra hermético
Sobre la obra
29 entradas — lo que el aparato y la investigación dicen de ella«The author and publisher have provided this ebook to you for your personal use only. You may not make this ebook publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this ebook you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.» — el aviso de derechos del ebook, firmado por autor y editorial, que pide notificar cualquier infracción a Macmillan; es aparato editorial y no voz del libro
«For Julieta Belén and Alexa Paz without whom this book never would have been born and because of whom it was almost never finished And my PJ, the formosissima causa sine qua non» — la dedicatoria del autor, con la fórmula latina final tal como la imprime el ejemplar
«Like Brian C. Muraresku, author of the excellent Immortality Key that it is my pleasure to introduce to you here, I was raised in a Christian household. My family was Presbyterian, whereas Brian’s upbringing was Roman Catholic.» — Graham Hancock abre su Foreword situando su propia crianza presbiteriana frente a la católica de Muraresku
«I determined that henceforth I would question everything and never again take anything on trust just because some authority figure, or some musty book, said it was so.» — Hancock declara el principio con que rompió con la fe de su familia a los catorce años: cuestionarlo todo y no aceptar nada por la sola autoridad de quien lo dice
«I’ve stayed an atheist ever since, in the strict sense of the word— which derives from the Greek átheos and means literally “godless.”» — Hancock se declara ateo en sentido estricto y da la etimología griega del término
«Nevertheless certain experiences that have come my way during this past half century have changed my outlook profoundly and, while “god” remains an unproven hypothesis, the experiences I speak of have persuaded me of the existence of realms and realities other than our own that coexist with ours, and exert influence upon every one of us, but that largely go unseen and unrecognized in modern technological societies—particularly those that have suffered long exposure to Christian teachings.» — Hancock acota su ateísmo: dios le sigue pareciendo hipótesis no probada, y a la vez dice que sus experiencias lo persuadieron de que hay reinos y realidades coexistentes con el nuestro que las sociedades tecnológicas no ven
«One thing is for sure, however: hearing the lecture or reading the book or paper is categorically not the same as the experience I would enjoy if I were actually having sex.» — el símil con que Hancock separa el saber leído del saber experimentado, que es el eje de su prólogo
«My first encounter with psychedelics was in 1974 in England when I took LSD on impulse at a festival and was rewarded with twelve hours of bliss, revelation, scary challenges, time travel, and mystery.» — Hancock fecha en 1974, en un festival inglés, su primer encuentro con el LSD
«The book, published in 2005, was Supernatural: Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind, and in 2002 during the preliminary stages of research, I came across the work of David Lewis-Williams, professor of anthropology at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa.» — Hancock nombra su propio libro de 2005 y al antropólogo David Lewis-Williams como la lectura que lo llevó al asunto
«David’s “neuropsychological theory of cave art” proposes that shamans of the Stone Age used a variety of means—notably psychedelic plants and fungi—to enter trance states in which they experienced powerful visions.» — según Hancock, la teoría neuropsicológica del arte rupestre de Lewis-Williams sostiene que los chamanes de la Edad de Piedra entraban en trance por varios medios, entre ellos plantas y hongos psicodélicos
«For my first research “trips” I chose to travel to the Amazon rain forest of South America to sit down with shamans and drink with them the sacred visionary brew known as Ayahuasca—“the Vine of Souls” or “Vine of the Dead”—in which the active ingredient is dimethyltryptamine (DMT), the most potent hallucinogen known to science.» — Hancock cuenta su viaje al Amazonas para beber ayahuasca con chamanes y nombra la dimetiltriptamina como principio activo
«All in all I had eleven Ayahuasca sessions in the Amazon in 2003, enough to provide me with the authentic firsthand experiences I felt needed to write my book.» — Hancock cifra en once las sesiones de ayahuasca que tuvo en el Amazonas en 2003
«The brew tastes obnoxious—a mixture of battery acid, rancid socks, raw sewage, and just a hint of chocolate—and routinely induces diarrhea, intense sweating, and projectile vomiting followed by exhausting bouts of dry retching.» — Hancock describe sin adorno los efectos físicos de la bebida, que es la contraparte del relato visionario
«Very commonly these entities appear as serpents or as serpent/ human hybrids, and “Mother Ayahuasca” herself, the entity believed by many to be the supernatural intelligence behind the brew, is frequently depicted in shamanic art as a serpent or as a serpent therianthrope.» — Hancock reporta la forma serpentina o de terianthropo con que se le aparecen las entidades y con que el arte chamánico representa a la llamada Madre Ayahuasca
«Those changes are real even if materialist science would like to reduce the entity who inspires them to a mere epiphenomenon of disturbed brain activity.» — Hancock sostiene que los cambios de conducta son reales aunque la ciencia materialista reduzca a epifenómeno cerebral a la entidad que los inspira
«For example, Dr. Jacques Mabit has for many years been offering heroin and cocaine addicts incredibly effective treatments with Ayahuasca at his Takiwasi clinic in Tarapoto, Peru, where they might typically undergo twelve sessions with Ayahuasca in the space of a month.» — Hancock nombra al doctor Jacques Mabit y su clínica Takiwasi de Tarapoto, Perú, como caso de tratamiento de adicciones con ayahuasca
«Meanwhile in Canada, Dr. Gabor Mate was offering phenomenally successful Ayahuasca healing sessions to his drug-addicted patients before the Canadian government stepped in and stopped his work on the grounds that Ayahuasca itself is an illegal drug.» — Hancock reporta que el gobierno canadiense detuvo las sesiones del doctor Gabor Mate por ser ilegal la ayahuasca
«But my experiences with Ayahuasca have convinced me, as no amount of reading or studying or listening to lectures or sermons ever could, that materialist-reductionism is a profound error, that to be alive and conscious at all is a mystery of enormous, immeasurable proportions and, in brief, as Shakespeare put it in Hamlet, that “there are more things in heaven and earth” than are presently dreamed of in our philosophy.» — Hancock declara su posición sobre la consciencia: la experiencia con ayahuasca, y no la lectura, lo convenció de que el reduccionismo materialista es un error profundo, y cierra con el verso de Hamlet
«although consciousness manifests in the body during life it is neither made by the body, nor confined to the body, nor inevitably extinct on the death of the body.» — la formulación con que Hancock enuncia su tesis sobre la consciencia: se manifiesta en el cuerpo pero ni la hace el cuerpo, ni queda confinada en él, ni se extingue necesariamente con su muerte
«About the Author Brian C. Muraresku graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Brown University with a degree in Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit. As an alumnus of Georgetown Law and a member of the New York Bar, he has been practicing law internationally for fifteen years. He lives outside Washington, DC, with his wife and two daughters.» — la solapa de autor del ebook, que no es voz de la obra sino aparato editorial: da su formación en latín, griego y sánscrito y su ejercicio del derecho
«First published in the United States by St. Martin’s Press, an imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group THE IMMORTALITY KEY. Copyright © 2020 by Brian C. Muraresku. Foreword © 2020 by Graham Hancock. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Publishing Group, 120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271.» — el pie editorial de la página de derechos
«Names: Muraresku, Brian C., author. Title: The immortality key: the secret history of the religion with no name / Brian C. Muraresku; foreword by Graham Hancock.» — la ficha de catalogación de la Library of Congress reproducida en la página de derechos, de donde salen el título y el subtítulo de esta ficha
«Subjects: LCSH: Christianity and other religions—Greek. | Christianity—Origin. | Greece— Religion. | Hallucinogenic drugs and religious experience. | Mysteries, Religious.» — las materias con que la Library of Congress clasifica el volumen, que resumen su asunto desde fuera
«Cover photograph of Demeter and Kore “Exaltation of the Flower,” Greek relief from Pharsalos, 470–460 BC © Erich Lessing / Art Resource» — el crédito de la fotografía de cubierta, que es el relieve de Deméter y Kore de Farsalia
«“beatific visions” and deeply meaningful experiences induced in both cases, however, appear to be quite remarkably the same.» — Hancock equipara en su Foreword las visiones beatíficas inducidas por dos vías distintas; el tramo abre la plana y viene de la p. 14
«Over the centuries, therefore, enormous and often deadly forces (with the power, for example, to burn people at the stake or imprison them for decades) have repeatedly been unleashed to prevent people from experiencing direct contact with realms and realities other than the mundane.» — la lectura de Hancock sobre las fuerzas desplegadas para impedir el contacto directo con otras realidades
«participated all around the world—ceremonies often led by women and held in secret like the Communion of the “primitive” Christians— have reintroduced spirituality into my life. For this I am deeply grateful. —Graham Hancock» — la firma del Foreword y la declaración final de Hancock sobre las ceremonias dirigidas por mujeres que le devolvieron la espiritualidad
«Throughout much of Western history, until the fourth century AD when early, “primitive” Christianity began to be systematically stamped out beneath the jackboots of the Roman Catholic Church, “beatific visions” were the primary recruitment tool of the enormously ancient and influential “religion with no name” that is the subject of The Immortality Key.» — Hancock enuncia en el Foreword la tesis del libro tal como él la entiende, con las visiones beatíficas como instrumento de captación de la religión sin nombre
«This religion could shift and morph into multiple forms—the Eleusinian and Dionysian Mysteries are among the examples Brian gives, and to these I would add the much older religion of the painted caves that I explored in Supernatural—but the common factor in every case was a psychedelic sacrament (sometimes food, sometimes drink, sometimes both) consumed by all participants.» — las formas que Hancock atribuye a esa religión y el factor común que le asigna: un sacramento psicodélico compartido
Conceptos tratados
Gnosis (conocimiento salvífico) — El conocimiento por experiencia y no por razonamiento que Muraresku pone en el centro de su reconstrucción: la definición de Elaine Pagels que distingue el saber reflexivo del saber por trato directo, la identidad entre conocerse y conocer a dios, y la lectura de los evangelios gnósticos como vía de acceso sin mediación sacerdotal.
Iniciación (recepción por grados / metamorfosis del ser) — Los grados y tiempos de la iniciación eleusina (mystes y epoptes, año y medio de preparación, dos visitas), la iniciación dionisiaca de los frescos de Pompeya y del hipogeo de los Aurelios, y la iniciación cristiana como bautismo secreto en el evangelio secreto de Marcos.
Secreto (lo que se jura no fijar por escrito) — El secreto bajo pena de muerte de Eleusis, el Secreto de los Secretos que Ruck atribuye a las herbolarias, la doctrina secreta que Lamberton lee en Homero y la que Valentín reclamaba de Pablo por vía de Teudas.
Cadena de transmisión (quién tomó de quién) — La cadena de herejes que Muraresku intenta documentar: de los gnósticos a las brujas medievales por la vía de los refrigeria italianos, la incubación campana y la escuela médica de Salerno; y la transmisión de boca en boca de herbolaria a aprendiza que las actas de Siena registran como cadena de madres e hijas.
Necromancia (nigromancia) — El trato ritual con los muertos que atraviesa el libro entero: el marzeah cananeo leído por del Olmo Lete, el refrigerium romano documentado por MacMullen, la receta de Circe para llamar a los muertos y la llegada de Aurelia Prima al banquete del hipogeo.
Transvection (el traslado corporal por seres demoníacos) — El vuelo de las brujas al nogal de Benevento, que Muraresku explica por las solanáceas del ungüento y no por desplazamiento físico, con el testimonio inquisitorial de Palermo y el caso que registró el médico del papa.
Crítica de fuentes (criterios de inclusión y descarte) — El método que el libro declara: la objeción a las traducciones inglesas de Juan y de Eurípides, la corrección del dibujo de Frickenhaus contra el vaso real, la enmienda epigráfica sobre la estatua de Simón el Mago y el reconocimiento de que faltan las microfotografías del análisis catalán.