{"id":2135,"date":"2010-12-12T01:00:31","date_gmt":"2010-12-12T08:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2135"},"modified":"2010-12-10T18:48:59","modified_gmt":"2010-12-11T01:48:59","slug":"entheogen-versus-psychedelic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2135","title":{"rendered":"‘Entheogen’ versus ‘Psychedelic’"},"content":{"rendered":"

At The Revealer<\/em>, Peter Bebergal unpacks the history and connotation<\/a> of the terms “entheogen” and the older “psychedelic.”<\/p>\n

But many find \u201centheogen\u201d to be problematic. Ethnopharmacologist Dennis McKenna, brother to the late psychedelic and speculative philosopher Terrence McKenna and a respected researcher in his own right, believes these drugs are capable of much more than inducing a mystical hierophany. The word entheogen privileges that experience over all others, but even more importantly, a true spiritual experience with these substances is a rare thing indeed. Why use a term that contains a built-in promise that cannot always be realized?<\/p>\n

In an email McKenna explains, \u201cOnly under certain, highly controlled circumstances do they manifest \u2018god within,\u2019 whatever that means.\u201d For the whole range of substances and the even greater range of their effects, McKenna prefers psychedelic: \u201cI like \u2018psychedelic\u2019 even with all its cultural baggage because it reliably describes what they do: they \u2018manifest\u2019 the mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rick Doblin, founder of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies<\/a> (MAPS), concurs. \u201cI never use the term \u201centheogen.\u201d \u00a0I feel it is positively biased to imply drugs that catalyze positive experiences of the divine, and is similar to hallucinogen that is negatively biased to imply drugs that catalyze fundamentally false and delusionary experiences.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Once I learned the term “entheogen,” I embraced it. For too many years I had heard the term “psychedelic”\u00a0 devalued to describe music, decor, attitudes, and other subcultural attributes. It seemed to have lost its savor. But what happens\u2014as it always does\u2014when someone uses the word “entheogen” commercially. That upends the discourse too.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At The Revealer, Peter Bebergal unpacks the history and connotation of the terms “entheogen” and the older “psychedelic.” But many find \u201centheogen\u201d to be problematic. Ethnopharmacologist Dennis McKenna, brother to the late psychedelic and speculative philosopher Terrence McKenna and a respected researcher in his own right, believes these drugs are capable of much more than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[8],"class_list":["post-2135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-entheogens"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-yr","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":620,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=620","url_meta":{"origin":2135,"position":0},"title":"Supremes uphold entheogenic churchEarlier post\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 21, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Supremes uphold entheogenic churchEarlier post here.The Supreme Court has upheld the right of followers of Uniao do Vegetal (UDV), a religion born in Brazil that uses ayahuasca as its sacrament, to use ayahuasca in the United States. The feds argued that preventing use of a \"controlled substance\" was more important\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":21,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=21","url_meta":{"origin":2135,"position":1},"title":"Psychedelic Venus Church","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 3, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"I had read Hans Holzer's rather sniffy assessment of the Berkeley-based Psychedelic Venus Church back in the 1970s in his book The New Pagans, but I was pleasantly surprised to see it listed under entheogen-based groups by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. Michael Marinacci wrote a more detailed history.Chief\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1003,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1003","url_meta":{"origin":2135,"position":2},"title":"The God with Many Eyes","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 6, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"The new issue of The Entheogen Review carries a piece by David Luke on cross-cultural encounters with a godlike being covered with a multitude of eyes. (Yes, Ezekiel's cherubim are one of the references.)His article, \"Disembodied Eyes Revisited: An Investigation into the Ontology of Entheogenic Entity Encounters,\" describes such encounters\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"entheogens\"","block_context":{"text":"entheogens","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=entheogens"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9037,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9037","url_meta":{"origin":2135,"position":3},"title":"On Dale Pendell (1947\u20132018)","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 9, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Every plant is a teacher But as in every crowd There are always A few loudmouths \u2013Dale Pendell I went to town this morning and drinking my Americano at the coffee house while reading the comments on Kocku von Stuckrad's memorial to Michael Harner. But then the screen went all\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"ethnobotany\"","block_context":{"text":"ethnobotany","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=ethnobotany"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=soutrocknatub-20&l=am2&o=1&a=1556438036","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":980,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=980","url_meta":{"origin":2135,"position":4},"title":"The Ayahuasca Diaries","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 6, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Two articles on the entheogenic drink ayahuasca, one from National Geographic and one from The Los Angeles Times.The second site requires registration: BugMeNot can give you a password.It's definitely your old-school entheogen:The concoction itself is said to taste so vile that most people fight their gag reflex to swallow it.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"curanderismo\"","block_context":{"text":"curanderismo","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=curanderismo"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":552,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=552","url_meta":{"origin":2135,"position":5},"title":"First peyote, now ayahuascaIt took\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 2, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"First peyote, now ayahuascaIt took decades of legal struggle for the Native American Church to receive a highly qualified exemption to federal drug law that permitted its members to use the entheogen peyote during the church's meetings.Now the Supreme Court is hearing argument in another case involving religion and an\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2135"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2140,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2135\/revisions\/2140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}