Opium was ingested in the Minoan culture to produce the ecstatic states needed for religious ceremonies (Kritikos 1960). On Crete, seeresses would give oracles and divine the future while under the influence of opium:
Around 1300-1250 B.C.E., in the land of the goddesses of health and healing [Crete], opium was inhaled or used as an incense; this is evidenced by an ash heap and a tube-shaped vase with an opening on the side that was found during excavations . . . of the divine idols of Gazi. . . . The same effects were expected from opium smoke as were later of tobacco smoke: cheerfulness, forgetfulness, or ecstasy.
Demeter, the earth goddess and mother of grain, who was adorned in wreaths of poppies, was originally venerated on Minoan Crete. From there, her cult spread to the other Greek islands and the mainland. One of her sacred plants was the poppy (cf.kykeon):
The inebriating plant can be demonstrated to have been everywhere in the Demeter cult, which was not limited to Eleusis, but was found throughout the entire settlement area of Magna Graecia, for example, in Enna on Sicily, upon whose sacred mountain a Demeter shrine was enthroned in which quite riotous initiation mysteries were also held. Similar rites and festivals were associated with the goddesses corresponding to Demeter, for example, Cybele in Asia Minor and later Ceres in Rome, as the influence of the Greek cults of the gods manifested themselves in the new centers of power.

In the ancient world, the poppy was regarded as the nourishment of divining dragons, as a mysterious magical plant, and as a sleeping and dreaming agent. According to Theocritus, the poppy grew from the tears that Aphrodite shed as she mourned her youthful lover Adonis. The plant was sacred to many gods and goddesses: The Great Mother goddess Cybele was depicted holding poppy capsules in her hand, as was Hypnos, the god of sleep, the “resolver of cares.” Hermes/ Mercury carried the plant in his left hand (cf. moly). Thanatos, or Death, was decorated with garlands of poppies, while Nyx, the goddess of the night, was portrayed with poppies wrapped around her temples.

In late antiquity, poppy seeds were an important ritual smoke offering to Hypnos, the god of sleep, at the Orphic mysteries (a cult of Dionysos). The poppy also symbolized the prophetic dream. Opium appears to have been used in the sacred incense of Epidauros and in preparations for inducing the healing and vision-giving temple sleep. Poppies and opium occupied a firm place in the religious healing cult of ancient times.

The opium poppy was also a magical and ritual plant among the Germanic tribes. It was sacred to the southern Germanic (Prankish) god Lollus. Ludwig Bechstein described an amazingly long-lived pagan custom in Der Sagenschatz des Frankenlandes [Treasury of Tales from Franconia] (1842):
One can still read of a purported pagan idol whose type and name belongs to Franconia quite alone. This is Lollus, Lollus, or Lullus, whose special veneration is said to have taken place on the Main River (near the later city of Schweinfurt). The bronze image of the idol, in the form of a youth with curly golden hair, was found. From around his neck, a garland of magsamenkopfen (poppy seed capsules) hung down over his chest. The right hand of the image is reaching for its mouth and grasping the tongue with its thumb and indexfinger;in the left it holds a cup of wine, in which stand ears of grain. Apart from a loincloth, the body was completely naked. The image is said to have stood in a sacred, enclosed grove by the banks of the Main, and the people are said to have brought it offerings of grapes and ears of grain at certain times.
The name Loll(us) suggests the German word lallen (“slur”). In other words, Lollus was an oracular god who, so to speak, was inebriated from opium and/or wine and slurred his words, perhaps “speaking in tongues.” The name Lull(us) is suggestive of lullaby, “to put to sleep.” After all, even in the present day one can sometimes hear of the rural custom of administering some poppy juice (raw opium) to restless or crying children to put them to sleep. Perhaps the image of Lollus represents an iconographic recipe: poppy heads (opium) are added to wine along with grain (perhaps ergot; cf. Claviceps purpurea). If a person partakes of this drink, then he or she will “speak in tongues”. Speaking in tongues, also known as glossalalia, is a type of unconscious flow of speech that has been known since ancient times and appears both in shamanic rituals and in religious cults.

Opium played a role in the meditations and mystical rituals of several Islamic sects and secret societies (Sufis, dervish orders). Because of the secrecy of their traditions, however, no details are known about such activities.
Women in Oriental harems were quite fond of using opium and developed certain rituals in their dreary solitude:
The nights in the harem swelled with keyf (ultimate fulfillment) induced by opium pills and the drowsy peace of sated senses. The women indulged in drawn-out opium rituals, spending the evenings inhaling hookahs or eating opium, the “elixir of the night,” dreaming of faraway lands beyond the latticed windows. Mostly, they preferred eating rather than smoking opium because the effect lasted longer,dreamslingeringuntiltherisingofthe sun. Amnesia followed; night after night of this induced chronic insomnia. The women began forgetting their distant homes, their lives before the seraglio. In order to remember, they told stories to one another. A thousand stories of faraway lands, stories told in the night. At first it was a thousand nights of stories, but even numbers brought bad luck, so they added one.

In Asia, opium was often used as an aphrodisiac in the erotic rituals of the Taoists and Tantrists (cf. Camellia sinemis, Oriental joy pills).
In Asia, opium is still used today by fakirs, yogis, sadhus, and shamans (cf. Aconitum ferox, Cannabis indica). The shamans of the Miao, a mountain tribe in northern Thailand, smoke opium before a healing ceremony in order to enter the trance that is needed to heal (Geddes 1976, 218f.). In this condition, they can travel to heaven and act on behalf of the ill person while they are there. In Thailand, opium is also used as an offering to sacred trees and rocks. According to a legend of the Akha tribe (Thailand), the first poppy plant arose from the heart of a beautiful woman who was killed because she had given herself in love to all the men Medicinal Use.
As early as the time of the Middle Kingdom, the Egyptians were aware of the sleep-promoting effects of the poppy:

“A remedy for too much crying in a child: spoon [poppy] seeds; fly dung from the wall; is made to a paste, strained and drunk for four days. The crying will cease instantly” (Papyrus Ebers, 782).

Such uses of the poppy and poppy juice have been preserved even into our day. In modern Egypt, opium is said to incite men to war and to love and to produce spectacular dreams. It is usually eaten mixed with spices, or it may be smoked. It is a popular aphrodisiac, especially in Oriental joy pills. The ancient Assyrians valued even the root as an aphrodisiac.
Opium was one of the most important medicines of the ancient Hippocratics, who used it to treat almost all illnesses, especially dropsy, diarrhea, uterine disorders, inflammations of rectal fistulas, hysterical complaints, and, of course, sleep disorders.
In Germanic folk medicine, poppy juice (opium) was taken internally to protect against nocturnal pests, bloodsucking vampires, nightmares, and nickel goblins. As late as the twentieth century, pharmacists were still making poppy pacifiers to calm small children.
“The dried poppy leaves are only occasionally used as sedatives in folk medicine” Opium is used throughout the world as a folk medical treatment for coughing (cf. codeine) and diarrhea.

The opium poppy was also an important ingredient in poplar ointment (unguentum populeum; cf. witches’ ointments). In her Krauterbuch (“Herbal”), Elisabeth Blackwell wrote, “The leaves are taken among cooling ointments, they are considered useful for burned areas, inflammations, acute swelling, and come to the unguent, Popul”.

Opium is used in homeopathy (usually in higher potencies) according to the medical description for such conditions as agitated states:
Hahnemann said that the effects of poppy juice are more difficult to evaluate than almost any other medicine. The effects of opium, as they are expressed in the insensibility of the nervous system, the suppression of bodily functions, the sleepy dazed feeling, the lack of pain, the inactivity, the general sluggishness, and the lack of vital reactions, represent the main indications for the homeopathic use of this drug.