The Immortality Key

The Secret of the Religion with No Name Brian C Muraresku

St Martin’s Press 2020 Hb, 460pp, £23.99, ISBN 9781250207142

Forteans of a certain age may recall the furore caused by Carl Ruck’s The Road to Eleusis (written with R Gordon Wasson and Albert Hoffman), a book that suggested both that the Eleusinian Mysteries were based on a psychotropic drug experience, and that psychotropic ritual lay at the heart of early Christianity in the form of the Eucharist. It turned out to be a career killer for Ruck; but 40 years later, American author Brian Muraresku has taken up the Eleusinian gauntlet and run with it.

Much has happened in those 40 years, and quite a heap of evidence has turned up to support the original hypothesis. Ruck himself has continued to research and write on the subject, from the academic margins, and it is his work that drives this book, in the main. That, and two interconnected and equally fortean themes: recent experiments with psilocybin that suggest the drug can induce religious experiences in the user; and evidence from sites such as

Gobleki Tepe that our ancient ancestors were drinking psychedelic beer some

12,000 years ago.

Muraresku makes a – fairly – good fist of bringing the evidence up to date, and drawing a line of psychedelic succession from ancient Anatolia, via Eleusis, to the early, Hellenic forms of paleo-Christianity, and on to the witch hunts of mediæval Europe. He is clearly a passionate believer in the perennial religion (though oddly he hasn’t tried out the drug experience for himself). The scholarly effect is spoiled a bit by the irritating, slightly breathless, nerdygonzo narrative style, which sadly characterises much of contemporary popular science writing: the thesis as airport novel.

Nonetheless, this is a good read for those interested in the pagan continuity hypothesis, and the extension of it both through time and geographical location. And it’s nice to see Ruck

vindicated properly after all

these years.

★★★