Blaise Daniel Staples

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(Blaise) Daniel "Danny" Staples (13 July 1948 — December 2005^[1]) was a Classical mythologist; a native of Somerset, Massachusetts, he received a B.A. in Comparative Religion and a Ph.D. in Classical Studies from Boston University. Working with R. Gordon Wasson, Jonathan Ott, and his life-partner, Carl A. P. Ruck, to coin the term "entheogen".

He co-authored with Carl A.P. Ruck The World of Classical Mythology: Gods and Goddesses, Heroines and Heroes (1994), which has become a standard textbook. With Ruck he has also written Apples of Apollo: Pagan and Christian Mysteries of the Eucharist (2001, with Carl Heinrich ISBN 0-89089-924-X), which builds upon Wasson's suggestion that the Vedic soma was the mushroom Amanita muscaria; with Ruck, Wasson and Albert Hofmann he wrote The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries.

With Ruck, José Alfredo González Celdrán and Mark Alwin Hoffman, he wrote his final book, The Hidden World: Survival of Pagan Shamanic Themes in European Fairytales (2007 ISBN 1-59460-144-5).

Staples was also the author of numerous articles in his field. He lived in Hull, Massachusetts with Ruck.