Every pharmacy in America has a name that traces straight back to a word in your Bible. Not by coincidence, and not because some ancient scribe was clever with branding. The Greek word behind “pharmacy,” “pharmacist,” and “pharmaceutical” is pharmakeia, and in the New Testament it is translated “sorcery” and “witchcraft.” That is not a stretch of etymology. It is the actual word Paul and John used, and understanding why it covers both meanings tells you something real about how ancient magic worked and why Scripture takes it so seriously.
Quick Answer
Pharmakeia is the Greek word behind “sorcery” in Galatians 5:20 and “sorceries” or “magic arts” in Revelation 9:21 and 18:23. It literally means the use of drugs, potions, or poisons in spell-casting and ritual, which is exactly why the same word later gave English “pharmacy.” Scripture condemns pharmakeia because ancient sorcery routinely used mind-altering substances to open people to spiritual deception, manipulation, and false power, not because medicine itself is evil.
In this article
The word behind “sorcery” is also the word behind “pharmacy”
In koine Greek, pharmakon meant a drug, a potion, or a poison, and by extension the person who dispensed one, a pharmakos, a druggist-sorcerer. The verb form pharmakeia carried both senses at once, because in the ancient world they were rarely separated. Whoever mixed the herbs and compounds that could heal, harm, or alter consciousness was also believed to control spiritual forces through those same substances. There was no clean line between chemist and sorcerer.
That is why the New Testament writers reached for pharmakeia to describe occult, drug-assisted spiritual manipulation. It shows up in Paul’s list of the “works of the flesh” and twice in Revelation describing the sorcery of the end-times world system. English later inherited only the medical half of the word. Scripture is using the whole word, drugs and spellcraft together, because that is what it meant in the culture it was written into.
Pharmakeia among the works of the flesh
Paul lists pharmakeia right alongside idolatry and hatred, not as a minor vice but as a defining mark of a life lived apart from the Spirit. “The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft” (Galatians 5:19), and the list continues into verse 20 where “witchcraft” translates pharmakeia directly (Galatians 5:20).
The placement matters. Paul is not listing unrelated sins. He is describing a pattern of life that hands control of the self to something other than God, whether that is lust, rage, or a substance used to open the mind to influence it was never meant to entertain. Pharmakeia belongs in that list because, at root, it is a surrender of the will through a chemical shortcut to power.
Babylon’s sorceries deceived the nations
Revelation uses the same word twice, and both times it is tied directly to deception on a global scale. Describing the plagues that fall on a world still refusing to repent, John writes that people “did not repent of the work of their hands… nor did they repent of their murders, their magic arts, their sexual immorality or their thefts” (Revelation 9:21). “Magic arts” there is pharmakeia.
Then, in the judgment oracle against Babylon, the connection is explicit: “your merchants were the world’s important people, for by your magic spell all the nations were led astray” (Revelation 18:23). Babylon’s power over the nations is described not as military or economic alone, but as sorcery, an intoxicating deception that kept whole civilizations from seeing clearly.
The word Scripture uses for sorcery is the same word we now use for pharmacy, because ancient sorcery and drug use were never two separate things.
Pharaoh’s magicians and the limits of counterfeit power
Long before pharmakeia was a Greek word on Paul’s page, the pattern was already on display in Egypt. When Moses and Aaron performed the sign of the staff turning into a serpent, “Pharaoh then summoned wise men and sorcerers, and the Egyptian magicians also did the same things by their secret arts” (Exodus 7:11). They matched it again when the Nile turned to blood: “the magicians of Egypt did the same things by their secret arts” (Exodus 7:22).
Notice what the text does not say. It does not say the magicians had no power at all. It says they had counterfeit power, real enough to imitate the first two signs before it ran out. That is the honest biblical picture of sorcery: not fake theater, but not equal to God’s power either, a limited, borrowed imitation, and Aaron’s staff swallowing the Egyptians’ staffs a few verses later makes the hierarchy unmistakable.
What Deuteronomy actually forbids
Moses gives Israel the clearest single list in the Old Testament of the practices pharmakeia would later summarize under one Greek word: “Let no one be found among you who sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead” (Deuteronomy 18:10-11). The reason follows immediately: “Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord” (Deuteronomy 18:12).
What ties this list together is a consistent refusal to let Israel seek power or guidance from any source other than God. Pharmakeia, drug-assisted sorcery, is simply one more entry on that same list, and Revelation later treats it as a defining feature of a world system in open rebellion.
The Word Study
Why one word means both “drug” and “spell”
The root pharmakon appears throughout Greek literature long before the New Testament, already carrying this double edge, a drug that could heal or harm depending on who administered it. The ancient sorcerer’s toolkit was rarely just incantation. It was smoke, herbs, and compounds meant to alter perception and make a person receptive to spiritual suggestion, whether from a familiar spirit, an oracle, or the sorcerer’s own claimed authority.
That is the sense Paul and John inherited. When Revelation says Babylon deceived the nations “by your magic spell” (pharmakeia), it describes a system that kept people intoxicated, literally and spiritually, so they would not see clearly enough to repent. English kept the “medicine” half of the word. Scripture is a reminder the other half never disappeared, it just changed names, and that underlying danger is exactly what pharmakeia warned about.
What this means today
None of this makes medicine itself sinful. Scripture never condemns healing herbs, and Luke the physician is honored, not rebuked, in the New Testament. The target of pharmakeia was never the treatment of disease. It was the use of drugs and altered states as a doorway into occult power and spiritual manipulation, whether that looked like a sorcerer’s ritual brew in the first century or a substance marketed today as a shortcut to spirit contact or “expanded consciousness.” The line is crossed when a substance is used to contact spirits, divine the future, or manipulate outcomes through ritual, and anything sold as a chemical gateway to spiritual insight should be tested against Scripture, not against how convincing it feels.
Key takeaway
Pharmakeia is not a coincidence of language, it is a window into how ancient sorcery actually worked: through drugs and potions used to manipulate spiritual reality. Galatians 5:20 lists it among the works of the flesh, Revelation 9:21 and 18:23 tie it to a deceived and unrepentant world, and Exodus 7 and Deuteronomy 18:10-12 show the same pattern going back to Egypt and the wilderness. The consistent concern is not medicine. It is handing control of the mind to something other than God.
Frequently asked questions
What does pharmakeia actually mean in the Bible?
Pharmakeia is the Greek word translated “sorcery,” “witchcraft,” or “magic arts” in Galatians 5:20, Revelation 9:21, and Revelation 18:23. It refers to using drugs, potions, or poisons in spell-casting and occult ritual, which is why the same root later gave English the word “pharmacy.”
Does pharmakeia mean the Bible condemns medicine?
No. Scripture nowhere condemns treating illness with medicine, and Luke the physician is honored in the New Testament. Pharmakeia targets drugs used for occult power or spiritual manipulation, not medical treatment.
Why is pharmakeia listed with other sins in Galatians 5?
Paul groups pharmakeia with idolatry and other “works of the flesh” in Galatians 5:19-21 because it represents the same problem: surrendering control to something other than God, here through a chemical shortcut to spiritual power.
What happened with Pharaoh’s magicians in Exodus?
In Exodus 7:11 and 7:22, Pharaoh’s magicians used “secret arts” to imitate two of Moses’ signs. Their power was real enough to copy the first signs but limited and ultimately overwhelmed, showing counterfeit power’s ceiling against God’s.
What does Deuteronomy 18:10-12 forbid?
It forbids child sacrifice, divination, sorcery, omen interpretation, witchcraft, spell-casting, mediums, spiritists, and consulting the dead, calling all of these “detestable” to God.
