Carl A.P. Ruck is a professor in the Classical Studies department at Boston University. He is an authority on the ecstatic rituals of the god Dionysus. With the ethno-mycologist R. Gordon Wasson and Albert Hofmann, he identified the secret psychoactive ingredient in the visionary potion that was drunk by the initiates at the Eleusinian MNystery. In Persephone's Quest: Entheogens and the Origins of Religion, he proclaimed the centrality of psychoactive sacraments at the very beginnings of religion, employing the neologism entheogen to free the topic from the pejorative connotations for words like drug or hallucinogen.
