PDF Summary:The Immortality Key, by Brian C. Muraresku

What was the secret that kept ancient Greeks and early Christians from fearing death? In The Immortality Key, attorney and scholar Brian Muraresku argues that the origins of Christianity are rooted in the psychedelic rituals of ancient Greek life and that these rituals allowed people to embrace their mortality.

Presenting a decade’s worth of research and evidence, Muraresku delves into the origins of Christianity, its overlap with pre-existing pagan customs, and its eventual diversion. Along the way, he asks how we might glean some wisdom from those ancient traditions to reconsider the place of psychedelics in the modern world—can a transcendent experience provide a key to our immortality?

In this guide, we’ll discuss the evidence and arguments Muraresku presents about Christianity and its connection to Greek paganism, as well as his questions about what psychedelics have to offer humanity. We’ll also explore current research and varied viewpoints regarding the use of psychedelics for therapeutic purposes.

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Muraresku says the Gnostic Gospels were originally part of the Christian scriptures but were later eliminated because they encouraged experiencing direct union with God. He explains that the more orthodox leaders of the Church wanted the priests to be the only arbiters of God because people who have their own direct experience of God are harder to convert and control. So they ultimately sought to keep the populace from these mystical experiences.

Muraresku believes these gospels provide a window into the beliefs and traditions that defined proto-Christianity, and that they explain why it would have appealed to the ancient Greeks—because, he says, Christianity in its original form was itself a mystical tradition.

The Separation Between Humans and the Divine

In the Greek language, the word gnosis means knowledge. In the Gnostic tradition, this implies seeking a hidden knowledge of the divine through direct spiritual experience. In other words, this is the path of mysticism.

Gnosticism flourished in the Greco-Roman world from around AD 80-200. The major feature distinguishing the Gnostic texts and the texts that were accepted as canon (forming the “orthodox” scriptures) is the idea of the separation between humans and the divine.

The Orthodox tradition says that God is entirely separate from humanity and essentially unknowable to humans. In this tradition, one must follow the instructions in the texts, and of the church leaders, as a guide for living, rather than seeking that knowledge for oneself. Humans should follow Jesus' teachings, but can never actually become like him, in the sense of becoming divine. This is the view of most mainstream Christian denominations today.

Conversely, Gnostics believe the divine is accessible to everyone within themselves. There is no separation between human and divine; one must only know oneself to know God. In this tradition, Jesus serves as an example for humanity, and everyone has the potential to become divine like him. It was essentially this distinction that determined which gospels were canonized, and which were rejected.

Jesus as Dionysus

So, Muraresku establishes that the form of Christianity that arrived in Greece in AD 49 was likely characterized by mysticism, making the philosophy and practices understandable to the existing population. But why would people who already have a pantheon of gods and goddesses have any interest in a new god or prophet? Muraresku says this new prophet would have to be relatable and recognizable, and he argues that this was the case because Jesus was essentially another form of Dionysus, the god of ecstasy who was worshiped in the Eleusinian rituals.

The two had several similarities that would have made Jesus a recognizable (and acceptable) figure to the Greeks, including:

Immaculate conception:

• Dionysis is the son of the god Zeus and a young human woman named Semele, who is described as a “maiden” or “virgin.” He’s conceived when Zeus visits Semele in the form of an eagle and is described in the mythology as the only begotten son of God. His birthday is celebrated around the Winter solstice.
• Jesus is the son of God and a young virgin woman, Mary. He’s conceived when God visits Mary in the form of a dove. He’s described in the Gospel of John as the only begotten son of God. He’s said to have been born around the Winter solstice.

Turning water into wine:

• Turning water into wine was Dionysus’s specialty. Dionysus was associated with a miracle that occurred every year on January 5 when a spring in the temple would start flowing with wine, called “God’s Gift Day.”
• The Gospel of John tells the story of Jesus performing the miracle of turning water into wine at a wedding feast. The wedding is said to have occurred on January 6, which Christians now celebrate as “Epiphany.”

Blood as wine offers immortality:

• The Bacchae (the story of Dionysus, written by Euripedes in 405 BC) refers to wine as the “blood of Dionysus” and says drinking it will lead to immortality.
• The Gospel of John describes bread and wine as the “true food and true drink, [Jesus’] flesh and blood, that promises eternal life.” John’s words are the identical Greek words used in The Bacchae in reference to Dionysus.

Visual similarities:

• Both Dionysus and Jesus are depicted with long flowing hair and associated with a purple cloak and a crown of thorns. The crown of thorns was the signature way of identifying Dionysus and his disciples and is a symbol associated with the crucifixion of Christ.

Muraresku argues that these similarities can hardly be coincidental. He says people of this time and place would not have accepted a god without wine, so these descriptions of Jesus, most obviously in the Gospel of John, written between AD 90-100, would have been a perfect way to get Greeks to relate Jesus with Dionysus.

Dionysus, Bacchus, and the Free Father

During this time period, the Greek and Roman cultures and religions were intertwined, and many of the gods and goddesses had counterparts in both pantheons. So the Greek god Dionysus was also called Bacchus in Rome, and the two versions of this god became indistinguishable.

However, there was also a third god related to wine and ecstasy—a Roman god called Liber Pater, who became intertwined with Dionysus/Bacchus as well, making this deity something of a trinity. Liber Pater, meaning the “Free Father” in Latin, was associated not only with wine and ecstasy but also with freedom and liberation.

Refrigeriums: Depictions of the Divine Feminine and the Eucharist

Another overlap between Greco-Roman pagan customs and Christianity, which may be the most obvious link to the Eucharist, is the ancient Roman custom called the refrigerium. This was a funerary feast common in the pre-Christian Roman world that served the function of honoring and communicating with the dead. Two central features of the refrigeriums were wine and women. Wine was said to enable contact between the living and the dead, and sacred priestesses prepared and dispensed it.

Muraresku says any new religion introduced to the Greeks (in this case, Christianity) would have to include a divine feminine element in order for the Greeks to adopt it. So, he argues that divine femininity was another essential feature of proto-Christianity. In the refrigeriums, we see the combination of sacred wine and sacred femininity, coming together in a mystical ritual that continued for hundreds of years after the introduction of Christianity to the Greeks and Romans.

There are hundreds of miles of catacombs underneath Rome, and artwork still remains on the walls and ceilings. Scholars debate whether some of the art depicts pagan refrigerium rituals or Christian Eucharist rituals because it contains elements of both. Muraresku describes scenes of female-led, or possibly entirely female, rituals centered around wine, bread, and fish. Believed to be from the third century AD, he argues that these artworks are likely depictions of that time period when the pagan and Christian rituals were inseparable.

Another area of the catacombs has art dated to the late third or early fourth century that clearly depicts women officiating ceremonies. These scenes include the words “love” and “peace,” as well as the phrases “mix it up for me!” and “hand over the calda.” Calda, Muraresku explains, literally translates to warm (or hot) stuff, but scholars say it refers to a drink that was a mixture of wine, hot water, and herbal intoxicants, commonly drunk in the winter. He says these scenes show women presiding over groups of men, indicating that women were in charge of the ceremonies and also of “mixing” and dispensing the wine.

(Shortform note: In this video, art historians discuss a Roman artwork from around AD 400. This was after Christianity was officially adopted and pagan customs were outlawed, but the artwork has the distinctive pagan features that Muraresku discusses—a woman who appears to be a priestess making some sort of offering at an altar. The scholars also point out that an oak tree and some ivy in the art are symbolic of the gods Jupiter and Bacchus.)

Based on what he learned from the Roman catacomb art and the related scholarship, Muraresku argues that these refrigeriums were the origin of the Eucharist. He argues that these were rituals for remembering the dead, which evolved into rituals for remembering the death and resurrection of Christ. And the wine, he says, was what enabled the living and the dead to be in contact.

The Psychedelic Element

Now that the pagan continuity hypothesis is defended, the next task is to show that the pagan and proto-Christian ritual sacraments were, in fact, psychedelic brews.

Again, how did Christianity take hold in a world with such a rich mystical tradition? In addition to having beliefs and iconography that paralleled that of the existing traditions, Muraresku believes the practices also had to have been similar enough to be meaningful for people to adopt. Proto-Christianity, therefore, incorporated mysticism, through the use of a magical wine that promises redemption and immortality. In this section, we’ll look at the written and archaeological evidence Muraresku presents for the existence of psychoactive beer and wine in the ancient Greco-Roman world.

Psychoactive Beer

Muraresku first attempts to find evidence that the kukeon used in the Eleusinian Mysteries was in fact a psychedelic beer. We’ll look at the evidence he presents, from both the historical written record and the physical archaeological remains of sites from the region, in the early days of Christianity.

Written and Historical Evidence

Muraresku begins by discussing a written record that says kukeon was barley-based, as well as images of barley carved on the temple, to show that kukeon was a type of beer. But he says it’s also known that beer of that time was not like the beer we drink today. He believes kukeon was likely ergotized beer.

Ergot is a fungus that infests barley. Even today, brewers have to be careful about removing it from the grain. In high amounts it can be lethal, but in lower amounts it acts as a hallucinogen.

It’s likely that most early beer had some ergot in it, Muraresku explains, because it would have been difficult to create the sterile conditions necessary to remove all of it. So, he says early people in various parts of the world were probably drinking (at least mildly) hallucinogenic beer. Those at Eleusis, he argues, may have been brewing it that way purposefully, knowing the right techniques and dosages, in a “controlled contamination” process. For physical evidence of this, Muraresku turns to new advances in archaeological methods.

Ergot Experimentation Leads to LSD

In the early 1900s, European researchers investigated the potential medical uses of ergot, and in 1935, a Swiss chemist named Albert Hofman began experimentation with ergot alkaloids. Through this experimentation, Hofman identified a chemical component of ergot called lysergic acid, and he began to create derivatives of it—the 25th derivative would be a revolutionary invention called “LSD-25.”

Hofman discovered LSD-25’s effects through self-experimentation. On April 19, 1943, he ingested a small amount of the LSD-25, and he rode his bicycle home from the lab while experiencing history’s first “acid trip,” which is recorded in full detail in his diary. Decades later, LSD found its way into the larger culture, particularly in the United States, where its usage became popular in the 1960s counterculture movement. April 19 is now known in counterculture circles as “Bicycle Day.”

Archaeochemistry and Archaeobotany

Recent scientific advancements in archaeology make it possible to test for traces of chemical and botanical compounds on ancient vessels. Unfortunately, Muraresku learned that all the vessels excavated at Eleusis had been cleaned before this method became available, so none can be tested. He also discovered that there are numerous uncleaned vessels from sites in the region that are owned and stored at the Vatican—as of yet, they haven’t allowed them to be tested. So, his archeological investigation had to turn to other sites where Greek settlements had formed abroad. Here he finds the evidence he’s looking for.

A Greek settlement on the eastern coast of Spain, settled around 450 BC, was found to have a similar ritual space to the one in Eleusis. Since it also had depictions of Demeter and Persephone, archaeologists believe it could have been a version of the Mysteries taken abroad. At this site, traces of ergotized beer were identified in a small chalice and on the teeth in a human male jawbone, indicating that it was being consumed. Also, he says, the shape, style, and small size of the chalice indicate that it was a ritual vessel, and whatever was drunk from it was likely very potent.

So, this and several other sites in Spain found evidence of psychedelic brews contemporaneous with the time of Eleusis. According to Muraresku, this evidence suggests that the kukeon of the Eleusian mysteries could have been psychedelic.

Poison or Medicine?

Researchers at the University of Victoria’s Institute for Substance Abuse Research have created an educational paper about the distinction between harmful substance abuse and the medicinal and ritual use of psychoactive plants by indigenous peoples. Some of the important points they make are:

• People living in traditional cultures had a deep connection to the natural environment and relationships with the plants in that environment. They had complex, nuanced understandings of the use of those plants.

• The difference between whether something is “poisonous” or “medicinal” is usually just a matter of dosage.

• Mind-altering substances that were used by ancient peoples (many of which are still commonly used today) include cacao, tobacco, coca, coffee, alcohol, opium, cola, betel nuts, and cannabis.

• All of these substances can be used in healthy or unhealthy ways.

They end by asking the reader to consider what causes some people in some cultures to use these substances in healthy or spiritual ways, and others to use them in unhealthy and destructive ways.

Psychoactive Wine

Wine was clearly a component of Dionysian rituals for millennia, and copious ancient art and written sources depict ritual consumption of wine, so it’s established that people were drinking wine ceremonially in Greece at the time of early Christianity. Once Dionysus was incorporated into the Mysteries, Muraresku believes the wine that would have replaced the kukeon also would have been prepared with specific herbs to make it psychedelic.

Like beer, wine in ancient times was different from the wine we know today. It was lower in alcohol content, and yet there are many accounts suggesting it was far more potent, so scholars conclude it must have contained other substances.

The most compelling written evidence Muraresku presents here is a Greek encyclopedia of herbal medicine called De Materia Medica from AD 40-90. This document describes 56 different detailed recipes for wines spiked with botanical ingredients, including those with psychoactive properties. The author describes one mixture, wine mixed with black nightshade, as “producing not unpleasant visions.” This is solid evidence that the Greeks during the time of proto-Christianity were mixing potent psychoactive herbs into their wine.

(Shortform note: Much of the inspiration for Muraresku’s research comes from the work of scholar Carl A.P. Ruck. In his article entitled Entheogens in Ancient Times: Wine and the Rituals of Dionysus, Ruck discusses how early wine fermentation necessitated the addition of botanical ingredients to give it potency. He says the fermentation process without modern methods, combined with the custom of diluting the wine with water, only yielded a beverage with about 1% alcohol content, and yet there are descriptions reporting severe intoxication after only a couple of glasses of such wine. This means, Ruck concludes, they were clearly mixing other potent ingredients into their wine.)

Archaeological Evidence

In terms of the archaeological evidence, Muraresku points first to depictions in ancient art that show priestesses or goddesses mixing mushrooms and other unidentified herbs into wine.

But the most exciting evidence suggesting the presence of psychedelics comes from Pompeii, Italy. Although the city was destroyed by a volcano in AD 79, the volcanic ash preserved everything exactly as it was at the moment the volcano hit—including hard evidence of many herbal preparations mixed with wine.

Muraresku explains that just outside the main gates of the city is a site called “Villa of the Mysteries,” a 40,000 square-foot ritual compound that contains clear evidence that Greco-Roman Dionysian mysteries were being practiced there. In walking distance from this ritual site is a farm that contained many large vessels for storing liquid, indicating that what was being stored in them was being prepared in mass quantities to supply people.

Testing revealed the vessels contained wine mixed with a number of botanical ingredients. Traces identified include opium, cannabis, henbane, and black nightshade—all mind-altering substances. Muraresku believes this provides the strongest evidence that people were using psychedelic beverages as part of their rituals in the proto-Christian era.

Psychedelic Art Can Provide Insight

Yale and Harvard archaeologists Karen Polinger Foster and Andrew Koh have analyzed artwork on pottery and wall murals from ancient sites at Knossos, Greece. They compare this artwork side-by-side (which you can see in a video here) with modern psychedelic artwork and note the similarities in style and themes. They note such themes as kaleidoscopic forms, optical illusions creating a sense of movement, and distorted, vibrant representations of elements of nature. They argue that, paired with the archaeochemical evidence of botanical ingredients mixed with wine at sites like this, the artwork can give us further insight into the psychedelic experience of ancient peoples.

Elimination of Mystical Traditions

By the fourth century, religious traditions had become deeply fractured. On the one hand, there were the Gnostic proto-Christians, who were practicing the mystical traditions aligned with the pagan practices; and on the other, there were a growing number of powerful leaders who aimed to establish Christianity as an ecclesiastical tradition. This means the elite, particularly in Rome, wanted to establish a hierarchical church, within which only the leaders had access to power and divinity—this would become Orthodox Christianity. Muraresku says establishing such a tradition meant the elimination of two things sacred to the mystical tradition: women and drugs.

Exclusion of Women

One way to ensure the Mysteries couldn’t survive, Muraresku says, was to exclude women from the priesthood or official church leadership. The Mysteries relied on women to prepare the sacrament—it was a knowledge that was considered their domain. So, removing women from leadership positions was crucial for eliminating all traces of pagan customs.

(Shortform note: In 2021 Pope Francis changed some policies to allow women some expanded roles in the church, such as giving readings and assisting priests with Mass. However he, and the Catholic Church as a whole, remain staunch on their policy that women cannot be ordained into the priesthood.)

But, he asks, what happened to the sacramental wine traditions? Where did the knowledge go? And he argues that this issue is at the basis of the long era of witch hunts throughout Europe.

Muraresku says the persecution of women by the church, especially of those with healing and plant knowledge, continued for centuries, and ultimately resurfaced later in the witch trials. He says over time the church systematically exterminated the knowledge of the preparations, not just individuals.

In reference to a document in which the Catholic Church called witches “the most dangerous of all enemies to the human race and the Christian Church,” Muraresku asks how could women cooking up “potions” in their homes be that dangerous to such a massively powerful organization? And he argues that it’s because those potions made people realize they could directly commune with the divine and that would make the church obsolete if people had access to that experience. A record from AD 1320 specifically orders Inquisitors to target those who “abuse the sacrament of the eucharist….by using them or things like them in their sorcery.” Muraresku believes this to be evidence of a longstanding attempt by the Christian church to eradicate the mystical element of the earlier rituals, by suppressing and eliminating women and their knowledge of drugs.

(Shortform note: Historians estimate that around 40,000 people, most of them women, were executed for witchcraft in Europe during the Middle Ages. Some believe these campaigns were largely about a competition for followers between the Protestant and Catholic churches. Once the majority of the population was convinced that witchcraft was a source of evil in the world, the two branches of Christianity set out to compete for who could execute the most witches and prove themselves to be the more efficient church.)

Stigmatizing of Drugs

Muraresku says that mysticism was bad for the social order because it allowed everyone the sacred experience, and emphasized women’s important role in spiritual leadership. This undermined the authority of the Church as well as the patriarchal order. The major problem the powerful elites wanted to eliminate, he says, was that people who “tasted the forbidden fruit” would not submit to orthodox teachings. So, the Orthodox branch of the church persecuted the Gnostics, and the prevailing power structure (backed by the emperor) eventually allowed them to dominate. By the fourth century AD, the Gnostic mysteries had been all but eradicated. At this point, Muraresku believes the original (psychedelic) sacrament was replaced by a placebo, which became the Eucharist as we know it today.

Muraresku also points out that this “anti-drug” campaign has continued throughout the history of the Christian church, not only in the persecution of women but in the colonization of indigenous peoples, as well as being observable in the attitudes of Christianity today toward drugs.

He presents some examples of this to show that the Christian church has an explicit agenda to eradicate mysticism, specifically because it makes people impossible to convert and control. Two key examples of this include:

1) The Aztecs and ololiuhqui: According to Muraresku’s research, ololiuhqui was the most commonly used entheogen (medicinal hallucinogen) by the Aztecs. In a 1629 letter, a Spanish missionary said the Aztecs consult it for gaining knowledge “beyond human understanding.” The priests seized the ololiuhqui and kept people from accessing it, even razing the fields where it was being grown.

2) Native Americans and peyote: Peyote, a psychedelic cactus, has long been used as an entheogen by some Native American tribes. Muraresku tells us that in 1890 the US launched a concerted effort to eliminate it, saying it was “interfering with the work of the missionaries” on the reservations.

These examples are meant to show that the opposition by the Christian church to mysticism, and specifically to mystical experience through psychedelics, is not simply a matter of preference or prejudice. According to Muraresku’s argument, it’s a 2,000-year deliberate effort to restrict the population’s access to a transcendental awareness that might liberate them from the need for scriptural dogma.

Reality or Hallucination?

In his book How to Change Your Mind, Michael Pollan suggests that we are entering a “psychedelic renaissance.” He addresses the skeptical criticism that psychedelic experiences are simply hallucinations by pointing out that the modes of consciousness we experience are all products of our brains. He says that what we think of as our default mode of consciousness might not always be the best way to approach every aspect of life, arguing that perhaps the molecules in psychedelics just open up other modes of consciousness that we’re ordinarily unable to access but can give us great benefits.

This is why the term “hallucinogen” is often shunned by anthropologists and psychedelic advocates—it implies a false experience. Pollan points out that the effects psychedelics have on people are very real, and since we clearly have the capability to experience a variety of modes of consciousness, there’s no valid reason to presume our everyday waking mode is the only one that produces an experience of reality.

Immortality and the Psychedelic Experience

In addition to the above evidence, Muraresku looks at the way people describe their ritual experiences in ancient sources, and he compares them to modern-day experiments with psychedelics. There’s an undeniable similarity.

The Ancient Ritual Experience

In descriptions of the Eleusinian Mysteries, it’s said that the ancient secret was that one must die before dying. According to Muraresku’s research, the most common description by initiates is that they underwent a transformative experience involving a metaphorical death and rebirth and were given a sense of their own immortality.

In AD 364, the Christian emperor Valentinian attempted to shut down the Mysteries, but after substantial pushback, he eventually relented because the pagan high priest, Praetextatus, told him that outlawing the mysteries “would make the life of the Greeks unlivable” and implied that the future of all humanity would suffer if these rites were lost. There was a belief that these rituals held the whole human race together. Likewise, Muraresku tells us, an inscription on St. Paul’s Monastery (10th-11th century) in Attica, Greece says “if you die before you die, you won’t die when you die.” And in Greek, the Catholic Eucharist is sometimes called the pharmakon athanasius, meaning the “drug of immortality.”

The theme of death, rebirth, and immortality resurface often in descriptions of psychedelic experiences, from cultures around the world, throughout history. In looking at such cross-cultural descriptions, Muraresku says that we can find evidence in many places and times of rituals that involve ingesting a sacred beverage for the purpose of a mystical or transcendental experience.

Additionally, ancient Greek sources refer to wine as a “drug against grief” and a “treatment for misery,” and Muraresku’s investigation into modern-day psychiatric research shows that psychedelics are proving to be an effective treatment for mental health conditions such as PTSD and depression.

The Psychedelic Experience and the Art of Dying

After a period of strict legal suppression, researchers in the US and Europe revived interest in psychedelic experimentation in the 1960s. One of the most well-known “psychonauts” of this period was Harvard psychologist Timothy Leary. Leary and his colleagues conducted experiments with psilocybin (the hallucinogenic compound found in “magic mushrooms”) on college students, and often on themselves as well, as part of the Harvard Psilocybin Project. This project wasn’t well received by the public or college administration and was suspended in 1963. However, Leary continued to research, use, and write about psychedelics, outside of the university, throughout the rest of his life.

In 1964, he published The Psychedelic Experience: a Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. This book, co-authored with Ralph Metzner and Richard Alpert, discusses the potential for psychedelic treatments of mental illness, and for mystical experiences. It specifically looks at the psychedelic experience as connected to the philosophy of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, exploring the themes of death, rebirth, and immortality.

The Modern Psychedelic Experience

For comparison to the experiences described by ancient people, we can look at some of the research in psychedelics today. In a 2022 study, the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research reported that 75% of respondents rate a single psychedelic session as one of the top five—or the single most—meaningful experiences of their life. One of the most common experiences people report after having a psychedelic session is ego death: a sense of oneness with everything. They also often report feeling a union with the divine, and a sense that they’re transformed in some meaningful way.

Muraresku points out that these reactions are reminiscent of the “apotheosis” belief underlying the Eucharist. He points to a 2016 study of cancer patients who underwent a psilocybin treatment session, in which 87% of participants reported increased life satisfaction and well-being that lasted for months. One of those participants was a woman whose diagnosis had sent her into an existential crisis. Although she had identified as an atheist, she said during her session she had experienced the feeling of “being bathed in God’s love.”

Researchers on the psychedelic frontier, such as those at Johns Hopkins, believe these treatments have great potential for easing end-of-life suffering, fear of death, and healing psychological trauma. And Muraresku believes we could be on the verge of rediscovering the secrets the ancient Greeks believed made life worth living.

Psychedelic Treatment for Addiction

Another contemporary pioneer in the field of psychedelic treatment is Dr. Gabor Maté, an addiction specialist who has created treatment programs using ayahuasca. Ayahuasca is a brew made from plants native to the Amazonian jungle that has been used by the indigenous peoples of that region for centuries. Native Amazonians consider ayahuasca a sacred “plant medicine” and use it for healing and spiritual purposes.

Dr. Maté facilitates ayahuasca retreats for those struggling with addiction as well as other mental and physical health problems, from cancer to depression, and he reports astonishing stories of recovery. He attributes the healing power of this plant medicine to its ability to unlock deep-seated trauma that’s at the root of the issue, and says that Western psychology is generally unequipped for this. Maté suggests that the combination of indigenous shamanic wisdom, modern psychology, and psychedelics have the power to transform lives and the world.