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The Immortality Key
- The Secret History of the Religion with No Name
- Narrated by: Graham Hancock, Brian C. Muraresku
- Length: 15 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged Audiobook
- Categories: History, Ancient History
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Publisher's Summary
THE NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER
As seen on The Joe Rogan Experience!
This program includes a Foreword written and read by Graham Hancock.
A groundbreaking dive into the role psychedelics have played in the origins of Western civilization, and the real-life quest for the Holy Grail that could shake the Church to its foundations.
The most influential religious historian of the 20th century, Huston Smith, once referred to it as the "best-kept secret" in history. Did the Ancient Greeks use drugs to find God? And did the earliest Christians inherit the same, secret tradition? A profound knowledge of visionary plants, herbs and fungi passed from one generation to the next, ever since the Stone Age?
There is zero archaeological evidence for the original Eucharist - the sacred wine said to guarantee life after death for those who drink the blood of Jesus. The Holy Grail and its miraculous contents have never been found. In the absence of any hard data, whatever happened at the Last Supper remains an article of faith for today’s 2.5 billion Christians. In an unprecedented search for real answers, The Immortality Key examines the archaic roots of the ritual that is performed every Sunday for nearly one third of the planet. Centuries in the making, religion and science converge to paint a radical picture of Christianity’s founding event. And to solve history’s greatest puzzle once and for all.
Before the rise of Christianity, the Ancient Greeks found salvation in their own sacraments. Sacred beverages were routinely consumed as part of the so-called Ancient Mysteries – elaborate rites that led initiates to the brink of death. Athens’ best and brightest flocked to the spiritual capital of Eleusis, where a holy beer unleashed heavenly visions for two thousand years. Others drank the holy wine of Dionysus to become one with the god, achieving immortality. In the 1970s, renegade scholars claimed this beer and wine - the original sacraments of Western civilization - were spiked with mind-altering drugs. In recent years, vindication for the disgraced theory has been quietly mounting in the laboratory. The constantly advancing fields of archaeobotany and archaeochemistry have suggested the use of psychedelic drinks in antiquity. And with a single dose of psilocybin, the psycho-pharmacologists at Johns Hopkins and NYU are now turning self-proclaimed atheists into instant believers.
If these sacraments survived for thousands of years in our remote prehistory, from the Stone Age to the Ancient Greeks, did they also survive into the age of Jesus? Was the original Eucharist of Christianity, in fact, a psychedelic Eucharist? Is this the real secret behind the Holy Grail?
With an unquenchable thirst for evidence, Muraresku tours the ruins of Greece with its government archaeologists. He gains access to the hidden collections of the Louvre Museum to show the continuity between pagan and Christian wine. He unravels the Ancient Greek of the New Testament with the world’s most controversial priest. He spelunks into the catacombs under the streets of Rome to decipher the lost symbols of Christianity’s oldest monuments. He breaches the secret archives of the Vatican to unearth documents never before translated into English. And with leads from the archaeological chemists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania, he unveils the first hard data for the ritualistic use of psychedelic drugs in antiquity.
The Immortality Key reconstructs a suppressed history of women consecrating the forbidden, drugged Eucharist that was later banned by the Church Fathers. Women who were later targeted as witches during the Inquisition, when Europe’s sacred pharmacology largely disappeared. If the scientists of today have resurrected this technology, then Christianity is dead. Unless it returns to its roots.
A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Press
Featured Article: The Best Audiobooks About Psychedelics to Take You on a Trip
In recent years, the use of psychedelics and hallucinogens has been objectively researched and even included in talk therapy and guided meditation. After all, inducing a different state of consciousness can expand our understanding of ourselves. Learn more about the use of these drugs throughout history and explore the potential health benefits with the best audiobooks about psychedelics to take you on a fascinating listening trip.
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What listeners say about The Immortality Key
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Balls
- 10-02-20
Most important book of the now.
I listen to a lot of really good books. I honestly can't remember if I've ever given a review before. This book hits on so many truths I feel if I don't write this review I'll regret it forever. What Brian has accomplished here is a masterpiece. As an atheist I've explored my relationship with the universe via psychedelic's many times, so to have a book that explains the history of our ancestors path of finding god through the use of these taboo tools is so refreshing. I feel that spirituality is something we all feel at one level or another, yet a large majority of our species aren't aware that you can connect with the cosmos via these organic tools provided. This book is hands down the best yet at revealing the vast history of mans use of drugs to expand the collective consciousness, and the influence these compounds had on early religions. It's also a grim reminder of how some groups are threatened by these ideas and will stop at nothing to conceal them.
Fight the war on consciousness and buy this book. This work is an eye opener.
Brian and PJ, Thank you. You both made it happen.
P.S. Graham Hancock presents the forward to the book and knocks it straight out the F#%KING PARK!
71 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 10-01-20
PJ
PJ, be proud! Exceptional author! Incredible passion. Great legacy to leave behind! I would join him on this adventure if I could!
37 people found this helpful
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- Joshua
- 11-28-20
A Fun ‘Trip’—But Not a Sober One
As a well-researched and whimsical series of 'what if' hypotheses, this self-styled Indiana Jones travelogue makes for fun reading. It provides an engaging tour of the archaeological, classical, and chemical evidence for the religious use of psychedelics in the ancient world. Muraresku is popularizing key ideas from the pioneering scholarship of Ruck, Wasson, and others, who have brought the question of psychedelics into the anthropological mainstream.
The idea that psychedelics figured prominently in facilitating a sacramental religious experience, linking pagan Greeks and early Christians, is a fascinating thesis. And I hope the author’s right! But I finished the book far from convinced that he is. Muraresku’s book draws conclusions that wildly outrun the evidence used to support them.
For example: there is no clear archeological evidence that the ancient Greeks actually used psychedelics at Eleusis. There are a series of circumstantial clues which enable us to *guess* that they *might* have. But nothing more than circumstantial evidence has so far been uncovered by Muraresku or the other scholars devoted to this hunt. Greek words, read with special emphasis and interpreted in light of the main hypothesis; experiential reports from ancient initiates that align with the experiences of contemporary psychedelic users; ceremonial vessels that could have held psychedelic beer, etc. are the kinds of support used to make the case here. This isn’t to say that psychedelics were *not* used at Eleusis. It seems quite plausible that they were. But their use is just that: an elegant and exciting guess. Unfortunately, the author of this book makes it seem as if it were a fact beyond reasonable doubt.
Not only have the use of psychedelics not been convincingly established at Eleusis, but modern chemists haven’t even been able to reproduce the *kind* of psychedelic brew—sourced from ergot—that the ancient Greeks are supposed to have served up to the initiates at Eleusis for a millenium. The appendix to the Thirtieth Anniversary edition of ‘Road to Eleusis’ entitled ‘Kykeon Chemistry,’ written by Peter Webster, summarizes some of this research. The chemist describes using vodka to synthesize a psychedelic from prescription Rx containing ergotamine tartrate—a chemical somehow related to something that might be sourced from ergot. He ingested his concoction and reported “[a] definite but weak psychoactive effect”—plus major tummy trouble. That’s as close as he gets to brewing up anything resembling the ancient Greek kykeon. So, beyond pointing out that ergot contains chemicals similar to LSD, the chemists seem to be a long way from starting with ergot and producing—using the tech available to the ancient Greeks—anything similar to the powerful psychedelic beer that Muraresku claims was the secret of the Greek Eleusinian mysteries. Although Albert Hoffman, the discoverer of LSD, argues in the original ‘Road to Eleusis’ that “[w]ith the techniques and equipment available in antiquity it was therefore easy to prepare a hallucinogenic extract from suitable kinds of ergot,” it’s not at all clear to me that Hoffman, or anyone else, has actually done it.
The book’s treatment of psychedelics in early Christianity is similarly heavy on guesses and light on evidence. Do grape vines in an early Christian mosaic in a catacomb under St. Peter’s establish that early Christians, celebrating the refrigerium, were using psychedelics inherited from the Greeks? Do the presence of lizards in a potion found near Vesuvius really link first century witches to those persecuted by the Catholic church a millennium and a half later? Do the words of St. Paul in 1 Cor. 11 describing early Christians ‘falling asleep’ indicate catalepsis induced by psychedelics? Maybe! But, yeah, also maybe not. Lots of conjecture is stitched together into something masquerading as history.
One of the book’s core claims is that “the sacrament of Dionysius and the sacrament of Jesus are one and the same.” This argument centers almost exclusively on key passages from the Gospel of John. For early Roman Christians, did the eucharist extend and develop rites of death and rebirth from the ancient Greeks? Probably! But drawing a straight, clear line from Dionysius to Jesus is—at best—an historical oversimplification. It overlooks a couple of inconvenient facts: Jesus was a Jew. So were his followers--including his immediate disciples, St. Paul, and many of the authors of the New Testament. Neither Jesus nor his disciples were clandestine surrogates for a pagan deity—whose worship they would have, in fact, found repugnant. Is the author of the Gospel of John adapting Jesus’ story to appeal to culturally Greco-Roman pagans. Maybe! But this, again, is very different from claiming that Jesus himself, if his message is understood correctly (i.e., as the Gnostics did), was really the second-coming of Dionysius. Neither Jesus nor his early followers could possibly have seen the Christ in this way. First century Jews lived as members of a minority religion in an oppressive, colonial context in which they defined themselves against their oppressors, in part, by clinging to an austere monotheism, with little room for Bachic devotion.
Conceptually, the book depends heavily on the following assumption: in order to have experience of the divine, most people need the aid of something extraordinary—like a drug. Empirically speaking, this seems highly doubtful. Post-Covid, I’d encourage the author to do a little cross-cultural ethnography at his local Pentecostal church. Millions of people around the world—across different faith traditions and cultures—have what they would characterize as an immediate experience of divinity every week, without the help of drugs. Can psychedelics facilitate that experience for the many of us who *don’t* have such experiences on a regular basis? There is a growing body of psychological research suggesting that they can—which is very interesting and exciting. But why should we assume that most people (if they aren’t extraordinary sages, saints or mystics: that is to say, the Pythagoreans of the world) require drugs to experience God?
As an academic with training in late antiquity, I regularly do scholarly peer-reviews. And I find it hard to believe that this book would ever have passed a rigorous scholarly peer-review process. That’s fine! I’m glad we live in a world where globe-trotting lawyers spend years scouring obscure archives and archeological sites in a ballsy attempt to verify the use of psychedelics in ancient religion—then write up the results as a travel narrative! Just know what you’re getting. The book would have been much stronger with a heavy dose of humility, honesty, and transparency about what it shows—and what it doesn’t.
As published, this book’s a heady brew of textual analysis, archeological evidence, first-person dialogue, educated guesswork, and historical fiction.
33 people found this helpful
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- Matt
- 10-02-20
I hope this saves your marriage
I purchased this audio book to save the authors marriage. I hope things are well Brian. I heard you on Joe Rogan and loved the interview. I enjoyed hearing about the book and your process of writing it. I am writing this review before I listened to the book. If this saves your marriage please name you first born after me Matthew lol jk. looking forward to listening to this.
26 people found this helpful
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- MKid
- 10-02-20
Science helping shed light on history/religion!
I'm not the best with reviews, but if you're into science and facts supporting ideas that challenge the rigidity of what seems to be a false narrative force-fed to us as truth through modern day academia, then this will be up your alley. All of that told very elegantly but without overwhelming the audience with big words or scientific jargon. I hope you enjoy!
26 people found this helpful
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- Sarah
- 10-03-20
Phenomenal research and great story telling
Read by the author and feels more like he is telling us the story of his adventure in discovering rare gems hidden in dark corners of history. The historical information is remarkable. I am personally a believer in his theory. I think he has made a great case. An absolute must read!
15 people found this helpful
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- pcmommie3
- 10-08-20
headline
Great research and theorie's. However this book is 50% longer than it should be. Nobody wants to hear about the author tell us repeatedly about what restaurant he was eating and what he was drinking. Bad editing. Too much ego.
13 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 10-03-20
haven't read yet.
bought to save Brian's marriage. I'm sure Brian has more work to do and the only way its going to get done is if this PJ realizes this book is a certified banger.
13 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 10-02-20
So gooood
Haven’t finished it yet but had to hop on and give a great review before I forgot ! It’s a great read !
10 people found this helpful
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- J Michael
- 10-05-20
MUST READ/LISTEN
If you are humanist, feminist, alive... you need to understand why there is a war on drugs, women, and our psychological and spiritual freedom. This book will give you the context to begin to understand why those in power lie.
8 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 12-13-20
Loved it!
Great book, I was going to deduct a star for mispronounced Greek words, but then I realised its read by the author who speaks ancient Greek and I do not. So I deducted a star from myself instead.
Incredibly interesting read, very well researched I loved it!
31 people found this helpful
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- Asmodeous
- 10-06-20
Can’t wait for the sequel!
Comparisons with the Da Vinci Code can be made in the sense that this book reads like an investigation into the secret history of the past.
This book is based on solid research. The author is no crank but a leading expert in his field of study. The insights in the book are incredibly insightful and thought provoking - our past and culture has been smudged with important, significant aspects of our human heritage extinguished over the centuries by those who have sought to control the masses to their own benefit.
The book is intellectually stimulating , yet readable. The forward by Graham Hancock provides an outstanding start and the author reads his work with enthusiasm and humour.
Some reviewers have cited the Joe Rogan Podcast as a means of entry to see if you might like this work. I agree - not only is the podcast illuminating but I would also say why not go further and check out some of Joe’s other, many great podcasts that inspire discussions of truth and self empowerment? It’s stimulates the brain better than the mainstream tv media that clogs and warps the brain.
And I suppose this is what this book explores and exposes. It highlights how significant practices such as the centuries old use of psychedelics can transform the lives of so many people. They offered our ancestors a mysterious pathway to the gods - literally - and modern truth seekers are rediscovering their incredible benefits in the twenty first century. Psychedelics may appear to many to be a weird and dangerous pursuit for those who wish to hold on to their sanity...but the incredible, mind blowing truth appears to be that the opposite is true. Psychedelic practice has provided peace and acceptance to the dying, enabled those with mental health issues to discover a means for improving their lives and provided some of the most spiritually profound experiences ever felt to those who have taken them.
The author is not a taker of substances himself. He is a researcher, historian, language expert and lawyer who has studied the ancient texts with such scrutiny and care that he has been able to put the pieces of a jigsaw together to illuminate a story of the past that has never been told before. A story that forces the reader to question the truths they have been told by government and religious organisations. The book is not anti religious as such, but does show how early religions and spirituality has been hijacked, watered down and re-interpreted to the cost of us all.
I look forward to a sequel whereby the author embarks on his own psychedelic journey to document his journey, not through the evidence gathered from dusty tomes but through his experience and insight of altered states.
The books holds the keys to a modern revolution in spiritual thought and a means for re-awakening our common humanity. In that respect, this book is not only timely but profoundly necessary.
The author’s wife apparently questioned his use of time writing this book. Who would want to read this? I can only say look at all the positive reviews and thank goodness his enthusiasm and passion for the subject meant he saw it all through. If he hadn’t written this book then some of the hidden truths within might have been lost forever.
Give the book a try. It provides accessible and interesting research and Is carefully crafted by the best lecturer you never had at College, who delivers the fascinating insights the Church would rather not have you know.
26 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 12-09-20
Can't Stop Smiling
Absolutely amazing book.
Story line:10/10.
Authors voice: music to my ears.
Content: jaw dropping.
Get this in your lobes.
11 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 06-29-21
Paradigm Shattering
Best book I’ve ever had!
In the days of cancel culture and oppression of thought, this book reveals just how long the sovereignty of our minds has been under attack and what lengths the powerful have gone to, in the past, to prevent people from thinking freely.
the incredible amount of research and interpretation of it’s findings will both shock and come as no surprise.
6 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 01-27-21
This was a good day for the mystics
Thank you Joe Rogan for having amazing guests, thank you Graham Hancock for all your work and your forword and most of all, Thank you Brian for writing this revolutionary book.
6 people found this helpful
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- Craigy
- 03-26-21
So dam dangerous!
So good,full of knowledge and what I like about a book like this is it prompts you to learn more giving you other avenues of reading to connect you own dots
5 people found this helpful
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- John Szwec
- 10-07-20
briiliant
who knows whether Brian has got it right or not, but it is a brilliant read .
5 people found this helpful
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- Andrei Predoiu
- 07-31-21
Amazing and eye opening
It's a great book with a wonderful and captivating story. This book uncovers the mysteries behind the religion with no name and the potion of immortality.
4 people found this helpful
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- miss
- 04-04-21
Enlightening
The most enlightening book I have read in a long time. His research is so thorough.
Everyone should read
4 people found this helpful
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- Kathrina Rupit
- 08-22-21
Amazing
Amazing research! 100%recommended,
I hope with this type of work, humanity can recover what's our birthright and open the eyes of the biggest lie that has been imposed on us.
3 people found this helpful
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- Kyle M.
- 10-05-20
Such an incredible story
This well researched look into our shared ancestral past is fascinating to say the least. I'm blown away to have discovered so much about our global cultures use of psychedelics in unknown religions and the systematic persecution of our maternal teachers and healers by the Roman Catholic Church. So sad what we've lost and seeing the inquisitions from a whole new perspective!
4 people found this helpful
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- Ivan T Snjaric
- 10-10-20
Outstanding!
My favourite book of 2020. Brian takes you along on his 12 year journey to discover the mysteries of the religion with no name, and Boy one hell of a journey it is.
Cannot recommended this book enough and to Brian thank you for this gem and your hard work and dedication.
3 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 10-15-20
The Book We Have All Been Waiting For!
ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT! Not a single 'um' or 'ah' from beginning to end! What a beautiful speaking voice! Just love the content, as well as the overall presentation; must be one of the best books ever written!
2 people found this helpful
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- Shane
- 10-13-20
Eye opening
I must listen to this book again, at least 2 or 3 times more. There is a lot of interesting information packed in. Great book Brian, I really hope PJ lets you continue for the next 10 years. Hats off to you Sir.
2 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 10-11-20
Thought providing
A drugged wine whom the Greak ancients used up - to its banishment, which then with jesus reinforced it with the blood of christ hence introducing the Christian religion only it was hidden within the bible.. The only thing separating us from God was a glass of magical wine.. Immortality was given from eating or drinking the body of christ.. Being born again to be able to view the kingdom of heaven.. Psychedelic drugs Replacing the roman empire with Christian faith.. later on after it got out of their control with burning witches or so called, who brewd the drink and spread the use of a drug faith and not a now popular based on faith religion the Vatican did not want this to get out so it has become a case of conspiracy. Thought provoking..
1 person found this helpful
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- Kindle Customer
- 05-10-22
A story of a history every should know but doesn't
Great book. Excellently narrated and overflowing with information. I'm going to have to listen a second time just to let it begin to soak in.
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- Cate
- 03-16-22
This makes SO MUCH SENSE
A thoroughly researched exploration of how early Christianity was heavily influenced by the Ancient Greeks, especially delving into the evidence of the use of psychoactive substances for spiritual and initiation ceremonies. Also looks at the importance of women in these practices and how this led the church to label them as witches and start a lengthy era of persecution and murder to ensure the church’s (and political-military) goal of domination and power.
I highly recommend this important book to be enjoyed as an audio book as the author speaks beautifully and pronounces the many foreign words and names perfectly, something I would have struggled with if reading it as a hard copy.
Kudos to the author Brian Muraresku for such a brave book.
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- John Drakopoulos
- 02-25-22
WOW!
This book is well researched, provocative and incredibly compelling. It was a delightful experience going through the text. I wish my friends would read it so we can talk about it!
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- Anonymous User
- 02-01-22
Fascinating!
Would honestly recommend this book to anyone! A deep and thorough search for answers to some very interesting questions. A great and lively reading by the author too. Very enjoyable.
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- Anonymous User
- 01-16-22
Excellent but a little combative
Very interesting and as someone who has experienced "the true eucharist" it all makes perfect perfect sense. My one criticism is that the book is very anti Vatican. Understandable given the subject matter but in the process many would be Roman Catholic readers will be put off. Commentary about the difficult procedures of accessing the libraries of the Vatican for example is unnecessary here and creates needless enemies. For example I would be surprised if they let the author back in! Regardless an absolute tour De force in research and history of the Eucharist. Congratulations Brian Maresku.