A DRUG, POTION — and by extension SORCERY. One Greek word covers medicine, poison, and magic potion at once, because in the ancient world a healer, a poisoner, and a sorcerer were often the same trade: the same substance could cure, kill, or (it was believed) work magic, depending on who used it and how. English 'pharmacy' and 'pharmacist' descend directly from it. ⚠ Revelation uses the plural, pharmakōn, in a bare list of unrepented vices (9:21) without ever naming an actual potion or its effect; the noun pharmakeia recurs once more, of Babylon's own trade, 'by your sorcery all the nations were deceived' (18:23, not yet on these pages). The ancient overlap between medicine and magic has narrowed, by the time this book was written, into a single forbidden practice. → first discussed at Rev 9:21