Psychedelics, Eleusis, and the Invention of Religious Experience

Introduction: This article corrects an idea in psychedelic science and culture that the ancient Eleusynian Mysteries used psychedelics, as claimed by Carl Ruck and co-authors in The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries (1978), revitalized by Brian Muraresku’s The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name (2020), and popularized by social media heavyweights such as Joe Rogan. Methods: It begins by exposing critical methodological flaws in the arguments, namely, a pattern of presenting claims, followed by mild circumstantial evidence, rhetorically solidifying the interpretation of this evidence into a “fact,” on which is built each subsequent round of conjecture. Analysis: We then explore how the dogged pursuit of evidentiary mirages contributes to the project of establishing a western civilizational pedigree to dignify the use of stigmatized drugs and revitalize experiential religion. Discussion: Although the desire for legitimacy and meaning is understandable, the strategies used by the writers of this pseudo-history constitute a kind of religious fundamentalism. Their writing attempts to show that a relatively new practice is the old, true religion, in this case, the “religion with no name” that underlies every religious tradition. In doing so, they miss seriously relating to the many well-documented historical and living Indigenous histories of psychedelics, or seeing contemporary psychedelic practice in continuity with other, and maybe even older, nonpharmacological methods of changing consciousness. Overall, the “psychedelic Eleusis” discourse focuses on the purported Eleusynian drug and its phenomenology rather than focusing on practices for taking up the spiritual injunctions of those psychedelic experiences. Conclusions: We conclude that, given how the psychedelic hypothesis is fundamentally flawed in its study of antiquity, it is a shaky foundation on which to build an argument for modern psychedelic use for therapeutic and spiritual practice. Since scholarly research is key to moving forward decriminalization, legalization, medical regulation, and other roles for psychedelics in society, it is crucial that scholars and popular audiences communicate effectively around psychedelic history and culture. Instead of committing to a specific (and erroneous) view of history, psychedelic scholarship must commit to academic discussion and debate.