This is a summary of the book The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion With No Name by Brian Muraresku.
"When it comes to God - a word rarely used by the mystics - there seems to be some agreement on one crucial issue of paramount importance. God does not reside in a holy book." "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. ...The simplest and most effective method is to die before you die."
This concept is also referred to by the name "ego death," a common phrase among substance users.
The book investigates a theory by professor Carl Ruck from Boston University about the role of psychedelics in ancient religion comprised of two main points:
The kukeon, a drink in the Greek Eleusinian Mysteries, a yearly initiation ritual of the cult of the gods Demeter and Persephone and the most famous secret religious rite of ancient Greece, contained psychedelics.
Christianity was not only influenced by Greek religion, but its rites were derived from ancient Greece, including the rites used by Jesus. In other words, Western Civilization has psychedelic origins.
Ancient Greece has profoundly influenced Western society, so much so that the ancient culture is foundational to our current society. One of the most prominent aspects of ancient Greece was the Mysteries of Eleusis, the "longest running and most prominent spiritual tradition in ancient Greece" which ran from 1500 BC until 392 AD. The temple had a reputation of elucidating the mysteries of the universe and initiates universally claimed, after one experience, that "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." Quite an assertion after one experience! At the heart of the ceremony was the kukeon, an mysterious elixir, one that has since been proven to have had psychedelic properties.
Greek is inexorably related to Sanskrit, the sacred language of Hinduism, a linguistically validated fact. Within one of those sacred works, the Rigveda, there is a sacramental drink mentioned called the soma, "both a plant and the god residing in the plant." "It is referred to as the 'elixir of life' and is explicitly characterized as madira, the Sanskrit term that Watkins translates as 'intoxicant' or 'hallucinogenic.' One particularly memorable line from the Rigveda reads: 'We have drunk soma and become immortal; we have attained the light, the gods discovered.'" Scholars have naturally assumed the kukeon and soma are connected given the shared linguistic origins. Ancient Egypt, the Syrians, Canaanites, Romans, and Israelites have also been shown to have psychedelic involvement. "According to the oldest surviving 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.'" In fact, the practice of psychedelic brewing goes back to 12,000 BC. Turns out that drugs and religion have gone hand in hand for a very, very long time.
The meaning of priests and priestesses and their purpose changes based on this idea. The Greeks put female priestesses in charge of creating the kukeon by "harvesting... ergot-infected grain," verified by science as the chemical composition of LSD, which would then reveal the mystery of death and rebirth. With this understanding Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, starts to take on a different meaning. "Dionysus wasn't symbolized by the wine... he was the wine." Similarly, Greek Orthodox priests, in the ordination ceremony, receive the secrets of initiation. The Eucharist is placed "in the hands of the properly admitted priest, saying, 'receive this Divine Trust, and guard it until the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, at which time He will demand it from you." In other words, the priests are also told that there is a secret to the Eucharist that will be necessary during the second coming of Christ, something it clearly lacks currently as it isn't manifesting powerful experiences that turn people to the divine.
Carl Ruck even goes a step further beyond the use of drugs as spiritual amplifiers and says we must acknowledge our drug-based heritage. "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." It's even possible, or likely, that drugs influenced the advancements in society beyond just the spiritual. Plato took the kukeon and Shakespeare used drugs. Who knows how many great contributors were inspired by substances.
Well, Jesus was most likely one of them. "Some of the best evidence for ancient spiked wine just happens to come from modern-day Galilee." In 2013, near Nazareth, "forty jars of herbal wine were unearthed in what become known as the 'world's oldest wine cellar,' dating to about 1700 BC. Organic residue from each of the jars was subjected to thorough testing at the Brandeis University Department of Chemistry. 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.'" Technically that doesn't mean Jesus had to have used psychedelic wine but apparently it's been around the area of his ministry for a long ass time.
Interesting that Jesus and wine come up so frequently. In the Gospel of John the first miracle Jesus did was turning water into wine which the author states as "undoubtedly [trying] to establish Jesus as the new Dionysus." "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." "The changing of water into wine was Dionysus's signature miracle." The last supper is another classic example of when wine was used which is particularly interesting as the ergot, the psychedelic substance, was derived from grain, the bread being a symbol of the wine's psychoactivity. The author argues that the Bible has many references to the divine wine that the people at the time would've understood immediately as they knew Greek and Grecian history.
In the book The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross by John Allegro, the author claims that the writers of the Bible used a large amount of puns and coded language referring to mushrooms hidden to the lay person that would've been obvious to a reader at the time. Honestly, I'm not sure that I trust the source, it was a weird fucking book, but coded information is nothing new in religious works. Who knows, just a possibility.
Regardless, The Immortality Key states that monks in the Himalayas, upon their death, have been reported to have "disappeared into the ether in a burst of rainbows," something like the body of light that Christ inhabited upon his resurrection. If the experience wasn't just limited to Jesus, that means that any person is capable of the same feat. Most of us can't spend all day meditating in the mountains so maybe what Jesus offered was a short cut to a similar end.
So what happened to the sacred wine and why was it lost to the ages? Apparently the Catholics didn't like the idea that God could be found in a simple liquid and wanted control over how people found God. So how did they aim to eradicate the practice? By targeting women, the priestesses in whom the secrets of drug creation resided. The Inquisition makes more sense as a concentrated effort to destroy the priestesses of the divine wine, the witches, who received the information of creation through oral tradition, than as a random act without discernible cause. Turns out the war on drugs started a long time ago for similar reasons to what Johann Hari alludes in his book on the drug war, Chasing the Scream: power.
The author was allowed access to Catholic controlled frescos that showed clear symbology of the role of the wine, or a substance at least, that was more than wine. This is just one picture of many but I thought it was the most clear depiction. Interesting that it should show up in the church responsible for its elimination.
Many other religions and cultures have referenced their relationships with drugs. The Aztecs have a god of visions and hallucinogenic plants named Piltzintecuhtli who is depicted with mushrooms in hand. Ayahuasca has been used in South American cultures which "is sometimes referred to as the 'Vine of the Dead.'" Peyote is a common practice among Native Americans which was also attempted to be banned by the United States government at one point in time. Many societies throughout history have used drugs in rituals that help connect them to a higher power. The use of drugs and their ability to aid in connecting to the divine is ubiquitous across time and the world.
One of the most culturally recognized movements was that of the hippie movement in the United States in the 60's when LSD and other psychedelics became more mainstream. What was the result? A bunch of people who preached peace and love and protested war. Odd that it has such a bad wrap when the primary result was good.
Psilocybin and other drugs are being used in mental health treatments and have been shown to be incredibly effective in healing trauma, anxiety, marital problems, and other issues. I know a girl who healed her Bells Palsy through ketamine use. Ayahuasca is the strongest psychedelic on Earth and it's exclusively used for healing purposes. It's the only drug that really holds up as a substance to be revered in my opinion and its healing does absolute wonders. John Hopkins University certainly agrees with the positive impact of drugs when it comes to psilocybin.
"If you take the time to comb through the fifty peer-reviewed publications on the newly launched website of the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, you'll learn that their proud statistic has remained incredibly stable over the past fifteen years. 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."
"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. Psilocybin appears to unlock that code by tapping directly into what they mystics have been trying to mine over the history of Christianity with all their chanting, meditation, fasting, and prayer."
Three fourths of people rated their only drug experience in the top five meaningful experiences of their life. That was from one use. In the same category (theoretically) as marrying their spouse, having kids, getting their dream job, going on their dream vacation, and winning the Nobel peace prize. Its meaningful and if William Richards is correct, it opens possible channels to spirituality and religion like civilizations have experienced throughout history. If society were able to push past its own biases, then science could really make some quick headway, and quite possibly humanity as a whole.
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