An entheogen is a substance described in religious or spiritual terms rather than medical or perceptual ones. The word first appeared in a 1979 note titled “Entheogens” in the Journal of Psychedelic Drugs, by Carl Ruck, Jeremy Bigwood, Danny Staples, Jonathan Ott and R. Gordon Wasson (Ruck et al., 1979).
A 2026 paper explains the Greek as entheos, “god within”, and genesthai, “to come into being”, and says the authors introduced it to stress transcendence rather than mere hallucination (Seale-Feldman, 2026). Another 2026 paper calls Ruck, a classicist, the person who coined the term (Antonopoulos et al., 2026).
The choice of word carries a point of view. Psychedelic, hallucinogen and entheogen can all describe the same compound, but they suggest a medical or mind-revealing frame, a perceptual frame and a religious frame in turn. Researchers and writers who use “entheogen” usually mean to put ceremony and belief at the centre. Noticing which word an author picks is a quick guide to the angle they take. The word says nothing about safety or legal status.
Sources
- Ruck et al., 1979, “Entheogens”, Journal of Psychedelic Drugs
- Seale-Feldman, 2026, Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry
- Antonopoulos et al., 2026, Scientific Reports
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