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. However, many people object to using the word "entheogen" to describe taking psychedelic drugs for recreational, and not spiritual/religious purposes.
Entheogenic plants or chemicals can provoke in human beings an enlargement of usual consciousness, in which there is a kind of contemplative or meditative experience.
