Reviews
"Absolutely one of the most fascinating podcasts I've ever done ... fucking sensational."
― Joe Rogan, host of The Joe Rogan Experience
"Like the Da Vinci Code. Tremendous. Stunning. Chock full of information. Brian, I really do think you've got something big on your hands here."
― Michael Smerconish, CNN
"Like nothing I had read before. Part popularized classical scholarship and part Da Vinci Code-influenced investigative journalism ... it puts other ‘popular scholarship’ to shame."
― Candida Moss, The Daily Beast
"The Immortality Key is an astonishing and remarkable book that explores the mysterious links between psychedelic drugs, human consciousness, and the origins of Christianity. It presents truly ground-breaking research on many levels, tracing the use of psychedelic drugs from Ancient Greece through Rome and into the early days of Christianity, where they played a role—possibly a crucial one—in the new religion of Jesus Christ. This is a fascinating book, which I highly recommend."
— Douglas Preston, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Lost City of the Monkey God
"An outstanding inquiry into the power of the Mysteries in the ancient world.
A sweeping, persuasive argument from a true Renaissance intellect."
― Gregory Nagy, Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature, Harvard University
― Michael Pollan, New York Times bestselling author of How To Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence
"In Muraresku, the psychedelic theory of religion has its newest and most accomplished historian. This is no crackpot idea. This is genuine scholarship at its deepest, most comparative, and most conceptually radical. The breadth of the investigation is simply astonishing: the Eleusinian Mysteries; the cosmic love of God; Göbekli Tepe and Indo-European studies; Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, and Catalan; flying witches and the long religious war on women; the Vatican's secret archives; hard archaeochemical and DNA evidence; the political radicalism of the Eucharist; LSD-laced graveyard beer and psychedelic wine. Buckle up tight, Toto. You were never in Kansas. It’s Oz everywhere and always."
― Jeffrey J. Kripal, Associate Dean of Faculty and Graduate Studies, Rice University
"Muraresku has successfully unwrapped one of history's greatest riddles with a measured, skeptical eye. His ability to sift through the evidence with an open mind and discriminating wit keeps the pages turning."
― Leslie Kean, author of UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record and Surviving Death: A Journalist Investigates Evidence For An Afterlife
― Brad Meltzer, New York Times bestselling author of over 12 million books
"In his Introduction alone, Muraresku captures the excitement of what psychedelics can offer our species in this time of crisis. What an exhilarating adventure into the heart of the Ancient Mysteries, and the psychedelic key to Eleusis. Somewhere over the rainbow, my dear friend Albert Hofmann is smiling. The secret is out!"
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— Amanda Feilding, Founder and Director of the Beckley Foundation
"A manifesto, briskly paced and engaging from page one, on the very real possibility of a psychedelic eucharist. I strongly recommend this intriguing, provocative, and thoughtful book."
— Julie Holland, MD, author of Good Chemistry: The Science of Connection From Soul to Psychedelics
"A fascinating analysis of the mystical roots of ancient religion, and a rediscovery of a forgotten ritual for the modern world."
― Deepak Chopra™, author of Metahuman
"Like a modern-day Galileo, combining meticulous scholarly analysis with highly rarefied fieldwork, Muraresku is willing to bravely challenge sacred cow orthodoxies, unafraid of where the facts and evidence lead him. He has the standing and erudition to do so. Deftly weaving in humor and contemporary policy, Muraresku’s book is of utmost urgency in the search for what it means to be alive and inevitably die. This page-turner presents the hard archeological evidence substantiating the LSD-like chemical presence in the Eleusinian and Dionysian Mysteries, which carried on for thousands of years, reappearing in democratized form as the Eucharist in the mystery cult of early Christianity before its suppression under the Roman Empire. Here revealed are the true origins of the dominant religion of Western civilization, and the lengths to which its early progenitors went to preserve female spiritual leadership, and the psychedelic sacrament that was their lodestar."
— Sunil Kumar Aggarwal, MD, PhD, Co-Founder and Co-Director, Advanced Integrative Medical Science Institute; Affiliate Clinical Assistant Professor of Rehabilitation Medicine, University of Washington School of Medicine
"His analysis of the roots of Christianity will shake the foundation of organized religion and point the way to a revolution in consciousness."
― Andrew Weil, MD
"An impeccably researched journey to the crossroads of history. The questions are provocative, the disclosures earth-shaking. Brian Muraresku has achieved nothing less than a radical re-envisiong of the Christian story."
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― Mark Arey, Former Director of the Office of Inter-Orthodox, Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America
"With his new book, The Immortality Key, Brian Muraresku offers an invigorating look at the birth of religion as the ancient secret of dying before dying, providing us with a rejuvenating blast of what my friend Huston Smith described as authentic enthusiasmos, an ecstatic experience of the god within."
— Phil Cousineau, author of Once and Future Myths, and coauthor with Huston Smith of And Live Rejoicing: Chapters from a Charmed Life