This isn’t esoteric, conspiracy, occult or anything like that. This book is based on historical, archaeological and scientific facts. It doesn’t tell the whole story, because there are holes, but it builds a compelling case supporting the author’s hypothesis that Christianity was build over the believes and practices of ancient cults. The author acknowledges that there is yet a lot to uncover, but that there are signs that new discoveries will support his hypothesis.
The premise: thousands of years ago, perhaps tens of thousands of years ago, humans left nomad, hunter-gatherer life to come to live into bigger settlements, like cities. There is common agreement that this was triggered by the invention of agriculture. However Muraresku believes that before agriculture, that before humans were baking bread, they were brewing beer. There is some archaeological evidence showing this. Beer is a stronger motivation for humans to gather in bigger groups. Some archaeological evidence also shows that humans added a series of additives to their beer, including hallucinogens. The kinds of additives and hallucinogens varied depending on geographical location and time frame. However there is some evidence that these practices are extremely old.
Anyways, fast forward a few millennia, and we find some well known civilisations following these practices, now becoming more elaborated and sophisticated rituals, think Egypt and Greece. (There are more mentioned in the book but for the sake of brevity…). There are written records of the motivations of these people to follow these practices and the effects on them. These are explained in several ways but all testimonies coincide in that those drugs help people to see beyond death, to stop being and experience God. Once you have experienced this you will not fear death and actually you will not die when you die. What is amazing is that these testimonies very much coincide with modern testimonies of users of psychedelics and hallucinogens, for example, Aldux Huxley relates something similar in his book The Doors of Perception. The same happens with patients who relate their medically-supervised, psychedelic experiences as the best in their lives. Modern medical literature indicates that psychedelics help with anxiety and to overcome fear of death.
Muraresku devotes a lot of words to explain the Mysteries of Eleusis (Greece), a cult which lasted about 2 thousand years, in which women prepared a beer-based beverage, called Kukeon, seasoned with some sort of hallucinogenic (of which there is no physical evidence yet, but which can be inferred from old texts) and which was given only to initiates, once a year in a temple in Eleusis. A trip to Eleusis would change anyone’s life. It would open their mind to cosmic revelations. People like Plato, Sophocles and Cicero are said to have participated in the ritual. As Eleusis was a secret cult no one was allowed to talked about what happened inside but some of these philosophers left hints in their writings. Muraresku also discusses traces of Eleusis in Homer’s work. The Dionysian rituals are also analysed in detail. Dionysius followers drunk wine instead but as with Eleusis it was spiked with drugs. At some point it is believed that the Eleusian and Dionysian cults merged.
The role of women in these rituals is important. They appear as the carriers, the priestesses, the pharmacologists in writings and in archaeological evidence in several civilisations. Everything is very much connected to fertility thus the connection with women. They are the ones who kept the secret knowledge and passed it generation after generation. For example think of Demeter and Persephone, two women connected to the Dionysian Myth.
Fast forward a few centuries. We now have proto Christian groups/cults, in the first 3 centuries AD, writing about Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection with so much Greek mythology (e.g. The Bacchae by Euripides) embedded that it is evident that there is a continuity between those beliefs. Muraresku calls this the “Pagan Continuity Hypothesis with a Psychedelic Twist”. It states that Christianity is based in ancient pagan rituals. To prove this, Muraresku discusses some of the Gospels, including John, Thomas and Mary Magdalene. Muraresku says that the Gospel of John is very much influenced by The Bacchae. The Gospel of Thomas and Mary Magdalene are Gnostic Gospels and where rejected by the church because they didn’t agree with their official narrative. In the Gospel of Thomas we can find some references to the transformation of consciousness and which can allow you enter the kingdom of heaven. The way the text is written it reminds of the use of Psychedelics in the search of God. This would imply that Jesus was not God but an initiate (in the Mysteries) who could help others experience God. (Think about the Wedding at Cana and the Last Supper with a psychedelic lens.) Also the Gospel of John does not mention anything about an all-male priesthood. And this is confirmed in the Gospel of Mary Magdalene in which we are told that she was Jesus’s favourite apostle, and to whom Jesus revealed things he didn’t tell the other apostles. This has clear connotations for the role of women in Christianity. As it seems Christianity was a successor of the ancient psychedelic practices and, as in those practices, women were in charge. All this ended when Constantine converted to Christianism and when, a few decades later, Emperor Theodosius made Christianity the official religion and made the Eleuisian Myseries illegal. And with this, all the secret proto-Christian networks. (The reasons very well explained in the book.) As Christianity became institutionalised, women and drugs were erased, (actually women were hunted as witches) and replaced with male priests and with, as Muraresku says, a fake sacrament that would not make you experience God.
There is much more in the book. Muraresku relates his trips to Spain, Greece, France and Italy to interview scholars, visit ruins, study artifacts and read ancient manuscripts. (Muraresku reads ancient Greek, Latin and Sanskrit…). And there is more but it would be better if you Read the book!
The book is very well researched. It includes pages and pages of endnotes, and long bibliographies per chapter. Some of the sources look interesting. I might read some of them at some point. Starting maybe with Elaine Pagels.
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