Phanerothyme is the name Aldous Huxley suggested for mescaline-type drugs before “psychedelic” existed. Humphry Osmond’s BMJ obituary says Huxley built it from Greek words for “to show” and “spirit”, and sent it with a rhyming couplet (BMJ, 2004).
Osmond replied with his own word and couplet: “To fathom Hell or soar angelic / Just take a pinch of psychedelic” (BMJ, 2004). A review of their published letters says Osmond coined “psychedelic” in a 1956 letter to Huxley (Abraham, 2020), and he used it in print in March 1957 (Osmond, 1957). The exchange reaches us through the obituary and the edited letters, not through an original letter we have read.
Phanerothyme never caught on, and it survives mainly as a footnote in histories of the word psychedelic. It is a useful reminder that the vocabulary of this field was chosen on purpose. The people who named these drugs were arguing about what the experience was, a revelation of spirit or of mind, and the name they picked carried that view with it.
Sources
- Humphry Osmond obituary, BMJ, 2004
- Abraham, 2020, review of the Huxley–Osmond letters
- Osmond, 1957, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
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