E is for Entheogen: the Pagan Blog Project

The Wytch of the North

The word entheogen (from the Greek entheos, or “full of god”) was coined sometime in the seventies by mythologists to refer to any psychoactive plant used in a religious or shamanic context for the purpose of producing a sense of divinity within the worshipper or promoting inspiration (which, when you come down to it, means pretty much the same thing). Most often, entheogens were also an aid to producing ecstasy–no, not the street drug, but a euphoric trance state (of varying degrees of intensity) in which the barriers between self and the divine dissolve, grow thin, or perhaps entirely melt away.

Odin, in the northern traditions, is commonly considered to be the god of inspiration and ecstatic states, and as such is the patron of poets and berserkers as well as shamans and (sometimes, in about a 50/50 split with Freyja) seidhr practitioners. In fact, His very name…

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~ by Sable Aradia on February 18, 2015.