Entheomedia

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Entheogens Carl A. P. Ruck, Jeremy Bigwood, Danny Staples, Jonathan Ott & Gordon Wasson (This paper first appeared in The Journal of Psychedelic Drugs, Vol. 11(1-2) Jan-Jun, 1979) All languages grow together with the peoples who speak them, borrowing or inventing terms to keep pace with what is new and retiring others when they are no longer needed. When the recent surge of recreational use of so-called “hallucinogenic ” or “psychedelic ” drugs first came to popular attention in the early 1960 ’s, it was commonly viewed with suspicion and associated with the behavior of deviant or revolutionary groups. Apart from the slang of the various subcultures, there was no adequate terminology for this class of drugs. Words were manufactured, and in their making they betrayed the incomprehension or prejudice of the times. Out of the many words proposed to describe this unique class of drugs only a few have survived in current usage. It is the contention of the authors who have subscribed their names to this article that none of these terms really deserve greater longevity, if our language is not to perpetuate the misunderstanding of the past. We commonly refer, for example, to the alteration of sensory perceptions as “hallucination ” and hence a drug that effected such a change became known as an “hallucinogen. ”(1) The verb “hallucinate, ” however, immediately imposes a value judgment upon the nature of the altered perceptions, for it means “to be deceived or entertain false notions. ” It comes from the Latin (b)al(l)ucinari, “to wander mentally or talk nonsensically, ” and is synonymous with verbs meaning to be delirious or insane. It appears, moreover, to have been borrowed from the Greek, where it is related to a group of words that imply restless movement and perplexed excitement, such as that caused by grief and despair. How can such a term allow one to discuss without bias those transcendent and beatific states of communion with deity that numerous peoples believe they or their shamans attain through the ingestion of what we now call “hallucinogens? ” The other terms are not less damning. During the first decade after the discovery of LSD, scientific investigators of the influence of these drugs on the mental processes (most of whom, it is clear, had no personal experience of their effects) had the impression that they seemed to approximate deranged and psychotic states. Hence the term “psychotimimetic ” was coined for a drug that induced psychosis. Psychology, which is etymologically the study of the “soul, ” has until recently concerned itself only with mental illness and aberrant behavior, and all of the terms formed from the psycho- root suffer from this connotation of sickness: psychotic, for example, cannot mean “soulful. ” Osmond attempted to avoid these adverse associations when he coined “psychedelic, ”(2) the only word in English that employs the anomalous root psyche- instead of psycho-, in hopes that this term, as distinct from "psychotomimetic, ” might indicate something that “reveals the soul.

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