The Immortality Key: A Catholic Response

Brian Muraresku's The Immortality Key became a New York Times bestseller in 2020. Propelled by a three-hour Joe Rogan appearance. Endorsed by psychedelic advocates like Michael Pollan and Graham Hancock. Central claim is provocative: the original Christian Eucharist was a psychedelic sacrament. Inherited from Greek mystery religions. Later suppressed by the institutional Church. Thesis designed to unsettle believers. Should also unsettle anyone who cares about historical rigor.

Let me say upfront—I'm not dismissing this because it challenges Catholic teaching. Spent three years at Dallas Theological Seminary before becoming Catholic. No stranger to having assumptions interrogated. Problem with The Immortality Key isn't that it asks uncomfortable questions. Problem is it doesn't earn its conclusions.

The Thesis

Muraresku argues for what he calls the "pagan continuity hypothesis with a psychedelic twist." Idea is that ancient Greek mystery religions—particularly the Eleusinian Mysteries honoring Demeter and Dionysus—involved ritual consumption of a psychedelic brew called kykeon. When Christianity emerged in the Greek-speaking world, it allegedly inherited this tradition. Earliest Eucharist wasn't just wine. It was spiked wine. Designed to produce ecstatic visions. Institutional Church later sanitized the sacrament into the "placebo" we have today.

Dramatic story. Reads like a Dan Brown novel. Not a compliment. Question is whether evidence supports it.

The Problem of Evidence

Muraresku spent twelve years researching this book. Visited archaeological sites. Consulted with chemists. Gained access to Vatican archives. Result is impressive travelogue. But impressive legwork doesn't equal compelling argument.

Book's archaeological evidence for psychedelic use in classical antiquity is real but limited. Muraresku leans heavily on findings from a site in Catalonia, Spain. Archaeochemists detected traces of ergot alkaloids in ancient vessels. Ergot is a fungus that grows on grain. Contains compounds related to LSD. Genuinely interesting. But it's a single site. Far from Greek heartland of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Substances detected aren't the same as LSD. Leap from "some ancient beers may have been spiked with psychoactive compounds" to "Greek mysteries were psychedelic" to "early Christianity inherited a psychedelic Eucharist" involves multiple jumps evidence doesn't support.

Kevin Clinton, Cornell classicist specializing in Eleusinian Mysteries, has been blunt. Notes that Athenian sanctuaries kept detailed financial records. Publicly audited. Inscribed on stone. Any expenses for psychedelic substances would have been public knowledge. No such evidence. Clinton also points out Muraresku's one-day tour of Eleusis with the site's head archaeologist yielded exactly what you'd expect: no evidence of drug use has ever been found at Eleusis itself.

Book's treatment of early Christianity is even weaker. Muraresku acknowledges his thesis about psychedelic Eucharist is speculative. That's putting it mildly. Evidence he presents consists mainly of:

None of this demonstrates early Christians were consuming psychedelics. Dionysus parallels prove only what scholars have long known: early Christianity emerged in Greco-Roman context, used language and imagery that would resonate with that culture. Basic missiology. Not evidence of secret drug rituals. And "medicine of immortality" is obviously metaphorical. Ignatius is making theological claim about what Eucharist accomplishes spiritually. Not describing chemical composition.

What the Book Ignores

Most damning critique comes from scholars actually sympathetic to entheogen research in religious history. Jerry B. Brown, writing in Journal of Psychedelic Studies, notes while book will "entice general readers," it will "exasperate academics" because of "recurring overreach and historical distortion, failure to consider relevant research on shamanism and Christianity, and presentation of speculation as fact."

Brown points out something crucial Muraresku ignores: Jesus was a Jew. Last Supper was a Passover meal. Want to understand origins of Eucharist? Look at Jewish ritual practice. Not Greek mystery cults. Book's "pagan continuity hypothesis" works only if you completely block out Jewish roots of Christianity. Which is exactly what Muraresku does. Presumes a "non-Jewish, pagan-like Jesus" because that's the only Jesus who fits his thesis.

Bad history. Theologically illiterate too. Early Church Fathers were acutely aware of both Jewish origins of Christianity and pagan context where they were evangelizing. Drew sharp distinctions between Christian worship and pagan mysteries. Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Hippolytus all polemicized against groups they considered heretical precisely because those groups incorporated pagan ritual elements—including, in some cases, what seem to have been drugged concoctions. Mainstream Church rejected these practices. Muraresku treats this rejection as evidence of cover-up. More parsimoniously explained as evidence mainstream Church never had a psychedelic Eucharist to suppress.

The Motive Behind the Thesis

At a Harvard Divinity School event, Muraresku was remarkably candid about what drives his inquiry. Admitted he has received Communion "hundreds and hundreds of times." Never felt anything like ecstatic experiences reported in Greek literature or modern psychedelic research. His conclusion: modern Eucharist must be "placebo" version of something originally pharmacologically potent.

Revealing. Muraresku's argument isn't really historical. It's autobiographical. Lapsed Catholic who can't square Church's promises about Eucharist with his own experience. Real pastoral problem. Have some sympathy for it. But solution isn't inventing historical narrative where Church secretly swapped real sacrament for fake one.

Here's what Muraresku apparently never considered: maybe problem is with his expectations, not the Eucharist. Church has never taught that Communion produces reliable psychedelic experiences. Effects of sacrament are spiritual, not neurological. Work through grace, not chemistry. Billions of Christians over two millennia have found Eucharist transformative without needing it spiked. Muraresku's inability to do so says more about him than about history of sacrament.

The Deeper Problem

Underneath The Immortality Key is a particular view of religion: authentic spiritual experience must be immediate, intense, personally verifiable. Didn't feel something dramatic? Didn't work. Very modern assumption. Very American. Profoundly at odds with how Catholic tradition understands spiritual life.

Church Fathers knew spiritual growth is usually slow. Often imperceptible. Frequently involves periods of dryness and darkness. Mystics describe years of disciplined prayer before experiencing consolations—and warn the consolations aren't the point. Sacraments work ex opere operato—by the work worked—not by subjective experience of recipient. Doesn't mean experience is irrelevant. Means absence of dramatic experience doesn't indicate absence of grace.

Muraresku wants a shortcut. "Fast-acting, reliable way" to experience God. Frustrated Eucharist doesn't deliver on demand. But Christianity has never promised that. Promises transformation through faith, sacraments, slow work of sanctification. Process that unfolds over lifetime. Not in a three-hour trip.

Conclusion

The Immortality Key is entertaining if you approach it as speculative historical fiction. As scholarship, falls apart under scrutiny. Archaeological evidence thin and overinterpreted. Textual evidence circumstantial at best. Thesis requires ignoring Jewish roots of Christianity. Attributes to early Church a level of coordinated deception that strains credulity.

More fundamentally, book misunderstands what Eucharist is and what it's for. "Medicine of immortality" isn't a drug. It's body and blood of Christ, received in faith, working grace in the soul whether or not recipient feels anything dramatic. Not a placebo. That's the sacramental economy Church has always taught.

Looking for shortcut to transcendence? Psychedelics might deliver an experience. But experience isn't same as salvation. Church has never claimed to offer the former. Offers the latter—through long, slow, often unglamorous work of faith, hope, and love. Not as exciting as a secret psychedelic history. Has the advantage of being true.


The Faith of Children. The Doctrine of Theologians. TheCatholicForge.com