Salvia divinorum is a psychoactive plant in the Labiatae family (sometimes called the "mint family"). So far as is known, it is endemic only to the Mazatec region of the Sierra Madre mountains in Oaxaca, Mexico, also known as the Sierra Mazateca (Ott 1996). Some Mazatec curanderos and curanderas (medicine men and women, frequently referred to as shamans) use S. divinorum as an aid to prophecy in healing rituals. The plant's species name, "divinorum", is said to mean "of the seer", (Ott 1996) and refers to its traditional use in medicinal divination (learning the cause or identification of an illness).

Interestingly, Dr. Albert Hofmann—who along with R. Gordon Wasson originally brought a cutting of the plant out of Mexico in 1962—remarked: "... Salvia divinorum... is a wrong name, bad Latin; it should actually be Salvia divinatorum. They do not know very good Latin, these botanists. I was not very happy with the name because Salvia divinorum means "Salvia of the ghosts", whereas Salvia divinatorum, the correct name, means 'Salvia of the priests'." (Grof & Hofmann 2001).

However, Salvia divinorum was named by the botanist Carl Epling, who probably had a better handle on Latin than Albert Hofmann. Hildegarde of Bingen's "Liber divinorum operum", translates as "The book of divine works". Although there was a rush to publish the identity of the plant, the naming debate is more of a trivial footnote than a substantive problem with its botanical name.