Taking minor exception to the Oxford English Dictionary's etymology for "Entheogen" and "Entheogenic" (OED third edition, June 2007)

Carl A. P. Ruck, Boston University

The OED defines “Entheogen” as: “A psychoactive substance which is used in a religious ritual or to bring about a spiritual experience, typically a plant or fungal extract; (more widely) any hallucinogenic drug.” In then offers as the word's first occurrence:

1979 J. Bigwood et al. in Jrnl. Psychedelic Drugs 11 146/1 We...propose a new term that would be appropriate for describing states of shamanic and ecstatic possession induced by ingestion of mind-altering drugs... The term we are proposing: entheogen.

The reference is to the article “Entheogens,” Journal of Psychedelic Drugs 11.1-2 (1979): 145-146.  It was indeed in this brief article that the term “entheogen” was proposed as an alternative to the more common “hallucinogen.”   The problem is that the OED entry should read “C. Ruck et al.” instead of “J. Bigwood et al.”   The article represented the work of a committee that lead to the publication of a proposal (the article) issued jointly by five individuals:  Carl A. P. Ruck, Jeremy Bigwood, Danny Staples, Jonathan Ott, and R. Gordon Wasson.  However, the committee was chaired by Dr. Carl Ruck, a classicist at Boston University, who notes that "As the only classical scholar in the group, I invented the neologism, and others signed on to give it an endorsement" (personal communication, Oct 12, 2017).
As a result, Ruck's name appeared first on the article, which led to its being mentioned first by those referencing the piece.

A second issue with the OED etymology is that it improperly traces the noun "entheogen" and the adjective "entheogenic" to two different sources, the former to the article discussed above and the latter to a separate article 

in the same issue of the Journal of Psychedelic Drugs, which actually follows on the heels of the former mentioned article. Here is the OED's offering for the first occurrence of the adjective "entheogenic":

1979   J. Bigwood et al. in in Jrnl. Psychedelic Drugs 11 148/1   The experiment left us convinced that ergonovine was psychoactive, but only J.B. was persuaded that the drug was entheogenic.

In fact, the two terms (noun and adjective) both go back to a single source.  The former article had already referred to "entheogens or, in an adjectival form, of entheogenic plants or substances."

Professor Carl Ruck kindly directed me to this online version of Carl A. P. Ruck, Jeremy Bigwood, Danny Staples, Jonathan Ott, and R. Gordon Wasson's "Entheogens," Journal of Psychedelic Drugs 11.1-2 (1979): 145-146. Mark Hoffman, editor of the Entheos journal, where the version appeared, assures me that, "There are no changes or additions in the Entheos reprint." 

Eager to make sure the online version accurately represented the original article, I wrote to Professor Ruck expressing my particular interest in "confirming that the original proposal included not only the noun form, but also the adjective form," to which he replied on Oct 11, 2017: "Yes, 'entheogenic' is specifically mentioned in the essay."

Update (Feb 2022): The reader may have noticed that the link to an online version mentioned above is unfortunately no longer active. However, I have now obtained a copy of the original article, which enables me to confirm directly that the original article already used the adjective "enthogenic." Here is a a clip of the relevant passage here from page 146 of the original article:

Consequently, then, the OED first reference entry for "Entheogenic," should be corrected to read:

1979 C. Ruck et al. in Jrnl. Psychedelic Drugs 11 146/1 We…propose a new term that would be appropriate for describing states of shamanic and ecstatic possession induced by ingestion of mind-altering drugs...We could speak of entheogens or, in an adjectival form, of entheogenic plants or substances.