"Entheogen" Defined
The word entheogen literally means generating the divine within. The word was created in 1979 by a group of ethnobotanical scholars, and in its strictest sense refers to a psychoactive plant or chemical substance taken to occasion spiritual or mystical experience.
In a looser sense, the word refers to non-addictive artificial and natural substances that induce alterations of consciousness similar to those documented for ritual ingestion of traditional shamanic inebriants. Entheogen replaces the judgment-laden misnomer hallucinogen, and the culturally freighted term psychedelic.
Alex Grey © 2003
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Entheogens 
