What’s in a Name?: On Names for Psychedelics

by Jonathan Hansen, MDiv

Introduction: The Communal Nature of Language

Language is fascinating, not merely for its capacity to describe but for its communality. No single person invents a real living language. Even artificially crafted ones, such as Esperanto, survive only when put to use and developed by a community. Words carry authority merely because people collectively agree to use them. Though government propaganda campaigns and academies have long attempted to regulate vocabulary, language ultimately belongs to its speakers.

Because of that democratic quality, new words are anthropological windows: when a culture must name something unfamiliar, its chosen term discloses its worldview. The naming of psychedelic substances offers a particularly revealing case, for these substances defy easy categorization. They are, as William Richards notes, “the rare chemicals that reliably open the gates of mystical consciousness.”¹ In this regard, they occupy a category all their own as the only substances that possess this quality.

I. The Power of a Name

The first scientific term for this class of substances—psychomimetic—emerged in psychiatry during the 1950s. It literally means “mimicking psychosis,” reflecting an assumption that the experiences these chemicals produced were pathological rather than revelatory.² The related term hallucinogen likewise presupposes illusion, defining the experience by its apparent unreality.

A linguistic shift occurred when British psychiatrist Humphry Osmond proposed psychedelic in correspondence with Aldous Huxley in 1956, meaning “mind-manifesting.”³ The word suggested not disorder but understanding: for better or worse, an unveiling of one’s own self, or psyche. By the 1970s, theologians and anthropologists proposed yet another term—entheogen, meaning “generating the divine within.”⁴ Though this word choice can be seen to imply that psychedelics can “generate” or “create” God—a notion that is, at best, theologically contentious—it did serve as a weather vane indicating a shift toward acknowledging the particularly spiritual or mystical qualities of psychedelic experiences.

And so even entheogen carries limitations. The term risks overstating the autonomy of the substance, as if divinity were produced chemically rather than revealed relationally. For those working within a Christian or theistic worldview, it may be more fitting to speak of sacred plants or sacred medicine: not because these plants are inherently holier than any others, but because, in the right conditions of reverence and care, they are capable of serving sacred purposes. In both traditional religious ceremonies and modern research contexts—such as Walter Pahnke’s Good Friday Experiment and recent psilocybin studies at Johns Hopkins—these substances have demonstrated the capacity to occasion profound experiences of healing, reconciliation, and spiritual renewal.¹² To name them sacred medicine is to emphasize not the divinity of the molecule, but the grace that may move in conjunction with it.

II. Sacred Names in Ancient Contexts

Long before Western medicine, many cultures already had words for these same substances, and almost all were sacred. In Mesoamerica, teonanácatl means “flesh of the gods.”⁵ The Quechua ayahuasca translates as “vine of souls.”⁶ The Native American Church continues to call peyote “sacred medicine.”⁷ These names testify not only to the plants’ pharmacological effects but to the societies’ theological interpretation of them. The language itself encodes reverence; to ingest such a plant was not a recreational act but an encounter with the divine. The names they chose reflected and promoted a careful and reverential approach, serving also as a psychological primer for sacred experience.

III. The Modern Exception: LSD

Lysergic acid diethylamide—LSD—stands as an anomaly. Synthesized by Albert Hofmann in a Swiss laboratory in 1938, its name is purely technical.⁸ Unlike the sacred names of indigenous traditions, it emerged in the language of chemistry. Yet, as with so many technologies, the tool far exceeded its original purpose.

By the mid-20th century, LSD had leapt from laboratory to worship-space. Figures such as Timothy Leary and the League for Spiritual Discovery explicitly described it as a sacrament.⁹ What began as a “psychotomimetic” substance became, within a generation, a “vehicle of revelation.” That transition—from sterile acronym to spiritual icon—reveals how naming evolves alongside cultural perception.

IV. The Stakes of Naming

The debate over what to call these substances is more than semantic. It determines how societies frame the moral and theological status of altered states. Hallucinogen implies deception and pathology; psychedelic suggests psychological exploration; entheogen confers sanctity. The names trace a lineage of meaning from madness to mystery to ministry. As theologians like Hunt Priest and Bryan McCarthy note, “language governs whether a psychedelic is regarded as a chemical curiosity or as an instrument of grace.”¹⁰ The choice of vocabulary thus becomes a moral act—a declaration of what one believes about consciousness, creation, and divine presence.

V. Naming as Theological Practice

For Christians, naming has traditionally carried theological weight, both in Scripture as well as ritual. In Genesis, Adam’s first vocation is to name the creatures (Gen. 2:19–20). The Church Fathers understood this not as arbitrary labeling but as a divine act done as the image bearer of God: Adam, or rather ‘the man’ at this point in the story, perceived the essence of each creature and gave names accordingly. Origen writes that “Adam did not call irrationally, but understood the nature of each and gave it a fitting name.”¹ St. John Chrysostom echoes this: “He gave names, not as we do, from mere habit, but with great wisdom, knowing each creature’s properties.”² To name rightly was thus a form of participation in divine knowledge — a joining of word, world, and wisdom.

That theological thread of naming continues throughout the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. Abram and Sarai became Abraham and Sarah and Jacob became Israel. Jesus, acting with divine authority, renames his followers: Simon becomes Peter, “the rock” (Matt. 16:18); James and John become “sons of thunder” (Mark 3:17). Saul becomes Paul (Acts 13:9). Each renaming marks a transformation of calling — a revelation of identity as seen through God’s eyes. The Christian liturgical life inherited this pattern: baptismal naming, monastic professions, and confirmations often include the bestowal of a new name, signifying rebirth in Christ.³ To be named, in this sense, is to be known and called — to receive one’s being as gift.

The Church has long recognized that sacred language does more than describe; it mediates. The distinctions among “Holy Eucharist,” “the Lord’s Supper,” “Communion,” and “Mass” are not mere stylistic choices but reveal theological emphases: Eucharist highlights thanksgiving (eucharistia), Communion points to mystical union, Mass to mission (missa).⁴ The same phenomenon appears in our honorific language — “Mary” versus “the Ever Blessed Virgin Mary,” “Jesus” versus “Our Lord and Savior.” Each name shapes devotion and frames reality. In Christian theology, words are not idols to be worshiped but icons through which holiness is seen.⁵ An icon reveals without containing, naming without confining.

When applied to the contemporary discourse on psychedelics, this theology of naming offers a vital corrective. To call these substances hallucinogens is to say they present something unreal and perhaps deceptive; to call them psychedelics is to focus on the self, the psyche; to call them entheogens or sacred medicines is to situate them within a religious and perhaps sacramental worldview — one that acknowledges divine presence working through creation. In this way, the act of naming becomes a theological practice: not simply classification, but discernment of the Spirit’s movement through matter.

Conclusion: The Responsibility of Words

Language is never neutral. Each name we use for these substances—scientific, colloquial, or sacred—expresses a theology of consciousness. If we call them hallucinogens, we affirm a world of illusion; if psychedelics, a world of hidden depths; if entheogens, a world suffused with God.

Our vocabulary does not merely record history; it shapes expectation and experience. As researchers and religious practitioners continue to explore legally sanctioned psychedelic contexts, the challenge remains to speak of these highly unique substances with both precision and reverence.

For in naming, we are always doing more than classifying. We are, in a small but potent way, proclaiming what kind of world we believe this to be—and what kind of God we expect to meet within it.

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