The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name

by Brian C. Muraresku

In the early centuries of the faith, there were many Christians in Rome who professed knowledge of the “True Drink.” Ruck mentions several in his “Jesus, the Drug Man” chapter from The Apples of Apollo: Pagan and Christian Mysteries of the Eucharist. The earliest high-profile example is Simon Magus, the Samaritan sorcerer of the first century AD who traveled to Rome all the way from Jesus’s neck of the woods in what today is Israel. He would establish a “rival sect” to the mainline Church, becoming “the founder of all heresies, with a religious following of Simonians who considered him a god.”3 His partner in crime was an alter–Mary Magdalene named Helena, a prostitute whom Simon Magus had picked up at a brothel in Tyre. She claimed to be the reincarnation of Helen of Troy. The Church historian Eusebius (AD 263–339) relates how Simon Magus won over “many of the inhabitants of Rome” through his “magic.” Justin Martyr claimed a statue in his honor was erected on an island in the Tiber, now to my left, with the inscription: SIMONI DEO SANCTO (to Simon, a holy god).