The Assyrians called henbane by the name sakiru. They used the plant for medicinal purposes, as an inebriating additive to beer, and as an incense (in combination with sulfur) to protect against magic.

In ancient Persia, henbane was known as bangha, a name that was subsequently applied to hemp (Cannabis sativa) and other psychoactive plants. Like the still uncertainly unidentified haoma, henbane had a religious significance as a ritual drug. Many Persian sources describe journeys to other worlds and visions that were evoked by various henbane preparations. Prince Vishtasp, who has gone down in history as the protector of Zoroaster (= Zarathustra), drank mang, a preparation of henbane and wine. After doing so, he fell into a deathlike sleep that lasted for three days and three nights. During this time, his soul journeyed to the Upper Paradise.
According to a later source, he drank a mixture of horn (= haoma) and henbane in wine. Another Persian visionary named Viraz also made a three- day journey into other worlds with the aid of a mixture of henbane and wine. At the end of the third night, “the soul of the righteous [= Viraz] had the feeling of being in the midst of plants and inhaling scents. It sensed an intensely scented wind that blew from the south. The soul of the righteous inhaled this wind through its nose”.

The Celts knew black henbane as beleno and consecrated it to Belenus, the god of oracles and the sun. It was burned as a fumigant in his honor. Druids and bards who inhaled the smoke were taken to the “other world,” where they could communicate with fairies and other beings.

Henbane also appears to have been one of the most important ritual plants of the Vikings. Iron Age Viking graves have yielded hundreds of henbane seeds. The grave of a woman on Fyrkat (Denmark) is widely known. The most important grave good worn by the woman was a leather bag filled with countless henbane seeds.

The oldest ethnohistorical evidence of the Germanic use of henbane as a magical plant is contained in the nineteenth book of the collection of church decrees (Deutsche Bufibuch [German Book of Atonement]) of the Bishop Burchard von Worms (died 1025). In one confessional question, the following ritual was described in astonishing detail:
Did you do as certain women are wont? If they need rain and have none, they gather several girls and select from these a small maiden as a kind of leader. They disrobe her and take her outside of the settlement to a place where they find hyoscyamus, which is known as bike in German. They have her pull out this plant using the little finger of the right hand and tie the uprooted plant to the small toe of the right foot with any kind of string. Then the girls, each of whom is holding a rod in her hands, lead the aforementioned maiden to the next river, pulling the plant behind her. The girls then use the rods to sprinkle the young maiden with river water, and in this way they hope to cause rain through their magic. Then they take the young maiden, as naked as she is, who puts down her feet and moves herself in the manner of a crab, by the hands and lead her from the river back to the settlement. If you have done this or have agreed to do this.

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Such activities bring henbane into association with Donar, the Germanic god of thunder, weather, and storms. The Romans associated the plant with their god Jupiter, whom they equated with the Germanic god of thunder. In Switzerland, the folk name jupitersbon, “Jupiter’s bean,” is still used today.
Of all the Germanic gods, Donar was the most enthusiastic drinker and the most able to hold his drink. Because of this, the strongly inebriating bock beers were consecrated to him. The beer of the thunder god was brewed with henbane, his plant. Because of the great demand for henbane, which is quite rare in Germany and northern Europe, ancient Germans planted henbane gardens specifically for the purpose of brewing beer. These fields of cultivated henbane stood under the protection of Wotan/Odin, Donar’s father, and were considered sacred. This history of many of the sites where these gardens once stood lives on in their names, such as Bilsensee (Henbane Lake), Billendorf (Henbane Village), Bilsengarten (Henbane Garden), and especially the Bohemian Plzeh (= Pilsen = henbane).

During the Middle Ages and the early modern period of Europe, henbane was generally associated with witchcraft and magic, and especially with oracles and love magic. Lonicerus noted, “The old women use this plant to make magic, they say that anyone who carries the root around with them will remain invulnerable.”
It was also believed that henbane smoke could make one invisible, and the leaves were smoked in a pipe for this purpose. If any plant was in fact a true ingredient in witches’ ointments, it was henbane :
Henbane poison acts quickly, for it is absorbed by the skin. And something else. It works especially quickly and intensively when taken up through the mucous membranes. But since henbane was also smeared on the broomsticks that men and women rode upon nude, the effects were profound. Among the women, the effects were considerably stronger and were felt more rapidly, as the mucous membranes of the anus and vagina came into contact with the broomstick during wild movements and the effects were immediate. 
In modern occultism, henbane seeds were used as fumigants to conjure spirits, especially for necromancy, or the conjuration of the dead. 

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The following recipe was used to mix a powder for use as a fumigant:
1 part fennel root/seeds (Foeniculum vulgare) 
1 part olibanum (Boswellia sacra)
4 parts henbane (Hyoscyamus niger)
1 part coriander seeds (Coriandrum sativum L.)
1 part cassia bark (Cinnamomum cassis Presl)

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It was said that one should take this incense into a ghostly, dark forest and light a black candle and the incense vessel on a tree stump. The powder was to be burned until the candle sud- denly went out. Then one would see the spirits of the night appear in the darkness from out of the smoke. To dispel the spirits, a mixture of equal parts of asafetida (“devil’s dirt”) and olibanum should be burned.

Henbane was and still is used for psychoactive purposes in Asia. The Pen-ts’ao Ching, a very ancient Chinese herbal, contains the following information about the subspecies known as langtang:
The seeds, when properly prepared and ingested over a long period of time, make it possible for one to go for a very long way, are useful for the mind, and increase power. . . . Moreover, through them one can commu- nicate with spirits and see devils. If they are taken in excess, they will make one stupid.

The seeds appear to have been used together with those of Caesalpinia decapetala as a psychoactive incense.