Huahutla, the land that always accompanied María Sabina

This Psychedelic Sunday, I posted Teonanácatl, which is about the Secret History of the Aztec's Sacred Mushroom known as Teonancatl or Astonishing Gift of the Gods. In Precolumbian times the mysterious mushroom was center of confusion and ambiguity, Teonanacatl was not known botanically until the late 1950s. And is personally my favorite psychedelic.

María Sabina, Saint Mother of the Sacred Mushrooms played a key role in introducing the sacred mushroom ceremony velada to the world. Sabin was a Mazatec shaman who allowed R.G. Wasson to partake in her native rites, bringing psychedelic mushrooms to the attention of the Western world. This sparked a revival in their use – but she was ostracized from her own community as a result. But first some little-known history on Teonanacatl.

Over sixty years have passed since the legendary ethnomycologist R. Gordon Wasson stumbled into the tiny Oaxacan village of Huautla de Jiménez in search of Teonanácatl, Astonishing Gift of the Gods. His lifetime of studying mushrooms and the three-year quest in the foothills of Oaxaca came to an end at the doorway of a small hut. This hut was the home of Doña María Sabina, the most celebrated curandera in all of history.

According to anthropologist Joan Halifax (1979):

For many decades she had practiced her art with the hallucinogenic mushrooms, and many hundreds of sick and suffering people came to her wretched hut to ingest the sacrament as she chants through the night in the darkness before her alter.

Teonanacatl: Astonishing Gift of the Gods

In Precolumbian times the Aztec called all the many different varieties of sacred mushroom Teonanácatl, the “Astonishing Gift of the Gods.” The Spanish Inquisition changed the name to the “Flesh of Gods,” which made its use blasphemous in the eyes of the church, who had damned it as the devil’s tool.

16th century Codex Florentine, depicting the Mushroom God Teonanácatl

Teonanactl was mentioned by Spanish chroniclers as early as the 16th century. The most important source of information on this is de Sahagun's famous chronicle, "historia General de la Cosa de nueva Espana", written in the years 1529-1590.

It contains data on the use of sacred mushrooms which were eaten by the Natives of Mexico at their feasts and religious ceremonies. From the Sahagun's chronicle and from other reports it can be seen that Teonanacatl was ingested at social and festival occasions and also by shamans and healers. Teonanácatl, the Astonishing Gift of the Gods endowed them with clairvoyant properties, which enabled them, besides other strange things, to identify the causes of diseases and indicates the way in which they could be treated.

Although this ritual mushroom use is very old, our knowledge of it is very little. For some centuries the reports in the old chronicles were given surprisingly little attention because they were regarded as extravagances of a superstitious age.

One of the oldest reports found is written by Bernardino de Sahágun, a Spanish Catholic clerk from the 16th century:

Before sunrise they ate the mushrooms with honey, and when the got excited because of that, they started to dance, some smiling, others crying (…) some sat down as if they where sunk in ideas. Some saw themselves die; some saw themselves being eaten by a wild beast, others imagined that they where in a fight and captured their enemies, some believed they had committed adultery and that their skulls would be cleaved as a punishment' Shortly after their arrival, the Spanish took control and forced their catholic philosophy upon the domestic population, they would not want to know anything about the worship of nature gods. In their eyes, that stood right next to adoring the devil. There existed only one god and that was without doubt the Roman Catholic one. Therefore, the use of the holy Teonanácatl (the denomination of the mushroom in the Indian language Nahuatl, rather translated 'the flesh of the gods') was soon prohibited. If the Indians were nevertheless caught during a mushroom ritual, then death penalty was their punishment.

The Spanish reports of that time remain silence as well concerning ritual mushroom use. In 1916, the botanist Dr. William E. Safford brings up the subject. He reanalyzes the Spanish reports and comes to the conclusion that the 16th-century observers made a big mistake. It would not have been the mushrooms that were used by the Natives in their rituals, but Peyote cactuses.

But there were a lot of stubborn Europeans, who do not believe in Saffords ‘misunderstanding-theory’, head for the American continent in search of Teonanácatl.

In the early 1930's, prior to Maria's rise to prominence, Robert J. Weitlaner witnessed, but it is not recorded he participated in, the Mazatec mushroom ceremony just northeast of Oaxaca.

On July 16, 1938, his daughter Irmgard, with an anthropologist Jean Bassett Johnson, together with two others, Bernard Bevan and Louise Lacaud, attended a mushroom rite in Huautla. Johnson later gave a full account of the event and were the first white persons "recorded" to attend such a ceremony. Although it is said they did not participate in the ceremony or ingest the mushrooms.

At around the same time ethnobotanics, Richard Evans Schultes and physicist Plasius Paul Reko discover in the 30's that the so-called Veladas, Indian mushroom ceremonies with both Indian and Catholic spiritual influences are still alive in some areas.

In 1955, Gordon Wasson and Allan Richardson made history by becoming the first KNOWN white men documented or publicized to participate in the nocturnal mushroom ceremony.

Under the guidance of Maria Sabina, Wasson and Richardson each consumed six pairs of the Psilocybe Mushroom after which they began to feel the effects, manifesting visions of geometric patterns, scared palaces, and astonishing vistas. The results of that experience were published in Life Magazine, May 13, 1957, in an article titled "Seeking the Magic Mushroom."

Before midnight the Señora (as Eva Mendez is usually called) broke a flower from the bouquet on the altar and used it to snuff out the flame of the only candle that was still burning. We were left in darkness and in darkness we remained until dawn. For a half hour we waited in silence. Allan felt cold and wrapped himself in a blanket. A few minutes later he leaned over and whispered, "Gordon, I am seeing things!" I told him not to worry, I was too. The visions had started. They reached a plateau of intensity deep in the night, and they continued at that level until about 4 o'clock. We felt slightly unsteady on our feet and in the beginning were nauseated. We lay down on the mat that had been spread for us, but no one had any wish to sleep except the children, to whom mushrooms are not served. We were never more wide awake, and the visions came whether our eyes were opened or closed. They emerged from the center of the field of vision, opening up as they came, now rushing, now slowly, at the pace that our will chose. They were in vivid color, always harmonious. They began with art motifs, angular such as might decorate carpets or textiles or wallpaper or the drawing board of an architect. Then they evolved into palaces with courts, arcades, gardens--resplendent palaces all laid over with semiprecious stones. Then I saw a mythological beast drawing a regal chariot. Later it was though the walls of our house had dissolved, and my spirit had flown forth, and I was suspended in mid-air viewing landscapes of mountains, with camel caravans advancing slowly across the slopes, the mountains rising tier above tier to the very heavens. Three days latter, when I repeated the same experience in the same room with the same curanderas, instead of mountains I saw river estuaries, pellucid water flowing through an endless expanse of reeds down to a measureless sea, all by the pastel light of a horizontal sun. This time a human figure appeared, a woman in primitive costume, standing and staring across the water, enigmatic, beautiful, like a sculpture except that she breathed and was wearing woven colored garments. It seemed as though I was viewing a world of which I was not a part and with which I could not hope to establish contact. There I was, poised in space, a disembodied eye, invisible, incorporeal, seeing but not seen.

The visions were not blurred or uncertain. They were sharply focused, the lines and colors being so sharp that they seemed more real to me than anything I had ever seen with my own eyes. I felt that I was now seeing plain, whereas ordinary vision gives us an imperfect view; I was seeing the archetypes, the Platonic ideas, that underlie the imperfect images of everyday life. The thought crossed my mind: could the divine mushrooms be the secret that lay behind the ancient Mysteries? Could the miraculous mobility that I was now enjoying be the explanation for the flying witches that played so important a part in the folklore and fairy tales of northern Europe? These reflections passed through my mind at the very time that I was seeing the visions, for the effect of the mushrooms is to bring about a fission of the spirit, a split in the person, a kind of schizophrenia, with the rational side continuing to reason and to observe the sensations that the other side is enjoying. The mind is attached as by an elastic cord to the vagrant senses. (R. GORDON WASSON )

Maria Sabina on The Power of Teonanacalt:

"I was eight years old when a brother of my mother fell sick. He was very sick, and the shamans of the sierra that had tried to cure him with herbs could do nothing for him.

Then I remembered what the teonanacatl told me: that I should go and look for them when I needed help. So I went to take the sacred mushrooms, and I brought them to my uncle's hut. I ate them in front of my uncle, who was dying. And immediately the teo-nanacatl took me to their world, and I asked them what my uncle had and what I could do to save him.

They told me an evil spirit had entered the blood of my uncle and that to cure him we should give him some herbs, not those the curanderos gave him, but others. I asked where these herbs could be found, and they took me to a place on the mountain where tall trees grew and the waters of a brook ran, and they showed me the herb that I should pull from the earth and the road I had to take to find them...

[After regaining consciousness] it was the same place that I had seen during the trip, and they were the same herbs. I took them, I brought them home, I boiled them in water, and I gave them to my uncle. A few days later the brother of my mother was cured."

Maria Sabina had visions on the "little saints" that someone (Wasson) was coming and would take the tradition to the world after 500 years of secrecy under Spanish rule.

Back in New York Wasson starts a study of the Magic Mushrooms and a year later he goes back again to Mexcio. This time he is accompanied by Roger Heim, a French mycologist. Together they identify seven different types of hallucinogenic mushrooms. Of the spores which they take back Heim manage to grow artificial fruit bodies. Among others an adult copy of the psilocybe cubensis. Wasson writes a big article about that in 1957 under the title 'Seeking the Magic Mushroom'. It is published in the American magazine Life which is then available all over the world in English as well as in Spanish. It is a big success and true mushroom-hype is unleashed. Although Wasson did not mention any names in his article, he cannot prevent that the origin of the Teonanácatl leaks out. Innumerable amounts of hippies head off for Mexico, Maria Sabina becomes a local celebrity and the village of Huautla de Jimenez changes into a pilgrimage harbor.

Yet the question remained, which exact component of the mushrooms did the hallucination-trick. In an attempt to unlock this 'secret' Heim sends a few grams of his self-grown material to Albert Hofman(the one who earlier synthesized LSD). This Swiss scientist isolates the two operative substances psilocybin and psilocin. As an ultimate test Wasson and Hofman visit Maria Sabina in 1962. Hofman let her try the pills with synthesized psilocybin and she concludes that the pills have the same effect on her as the mushrooms.

The mushroom pilgrims are searching for the mushrooms for all the wrong reasons in her eyes. Because the Indians used the mushrooms only for medical and religious reasons; the hippies are just using them for their own pleasure. In the sixties, there was a huge psychedelic movement which the mushrooms were an important part of.

It's that in me there is no sorcery, there is no anger, there are no lies. Because I don't have garbage, I don't have dust. The sickness comes out if the sick vomit. They vomit the sickness. They vomit because the mushrooms want them to. If the sick don't vomit, I vomit. I vomit for them and in that way the malady is expelled. The mushrooms have power because they are the flesh of God. And those that believe are healed. Those that do not believe are not healed. (MARIA SABINA)

Doña María believed in the Astonishing Gift of the Gods. As the years passed since Wasson first came to Huautla de Jiménez, Doña María felt the force of the mushrooms diminish within her spirit. Doña María realized that with the coming of the white man, the mushrooms were losing their meaning. Doña María claimed that

before Wasson, I felt that the 'saint children' elevated me. I don't feel like that anymore. The force has diminished. If Cayetano had not brought the foreigners...the 'saint children' would have [probably] kept their powers. From the moment the foreigners arrived, the 'saint children' lost their purity. They lost their force; the foreigners spoiled them. From now on they won't be any good. There is no remedy for it.

This revelation from María Sabina rings of the truth. The debasement of the mushrooms by casual seekers is widespread throughout the earth. Apolonio Teran, a fellow sabio (wiseman) was once interviewed by Alvaro Estrada. Estrada asked Apolonio about the breach of the sanctity of the mushrooms by debasement wondering if the mushrooms were still considered to be a sacred and powerful source of medicine.

Apolonio claimed that

the divine mushroom no longer belongs to us [the Indians of Mesoamerica]. It's sacred language has been profaned. The language has been spoiled and it is indecipherable for us... Now the mushrooms speak NQUI LE [English]. Yes, it's the tongue that the foreigners speak...The mushrooms have a divine spirit. They always had it for us, but the foreigners arrived and frightened it away...

Later Wasson (1980) agreed that "since the white man came looking for the mushrooms, they have lost their magic." This could mean that the magic is gone forever among the shamans and native peoples who worship them. Wasson believed that Doña María's words rang of truth. Wasson stated that:

a practice carried on in secret for three centuries or more has now been aerated and aeration spells the end (Estrada, 1976).

María Sabina: from The Mushroom Velada

María Sabina, Saint Mother of the Sacred Mushrooms received her poems/songs through use of the psilocybe mushroom at all-night curing sessions (veladas): a practice going back to Precolumbian Mexico. Witnessed by the Spanish chronicler who wrote:

They pay a sorcerer who eats them [the mushrooms] and tells what they have taught him. He does so by means of a rhythmic chant in full voice.

The sacred mushrooms are considered the source of Language itself — are, "the mushrooms of language."

translation

Ah, Jesu Kri
I am a woman who shouts
I am a woman who whistles
I am a woman who lightnings, says
Ah, Jesu Kri
Ah, Jesusi
Ah, Jesusi
Cayetano García
[She calls his name to get his attention. "Yes," he
responds, "Work, work."]
Ah, Jesusi
Woman santa, says
Ah, Jesusi
[Here she begins humming and clapping, uttering the
meaningless syllables "so" and "si." Throughout the
entire passage that follows she goes on clapping
rhythmically in time to her words.]
hmm hmm hmm
hmm hmm hmm
hmm hmm hmm
hmm hmm hmm
hmm hmm hmm
so so so si
hmm hmm hmm
hmm hmm hmm
Woman who resounds
Woman torn up out of the ground
Woman who resounds
Woman torn up out of the ground
Woman of the principal berries, says
Woman of the sacred berries, says
Ah, Jesusi
Woman who searches, says
Woman who examines by touch, says
ha ha ha
hmm hmm hmm
hmm hmm hmm
She is of one word, of one face, of one spirit, of one light, of one day
hmm hmm hmm
Cayetano García
[He answers "Yes …" She says, "Isnt't that how?" He responds:
"Yes, that's it." She says: "Isn't that it? Like this. Listen."]
Woman who resounds
Woman torn up out of the ground
Ah, Jesusi
Ah, Jesusi
[In the background the man laughs with pleasure.]
Ah, Jesusi
Ah, Jesusi
Ah, Jesusi
hmm hmm hmm
so so so
Justice woman
hmm hmm hmm
["Thank you," says the man.]
Saint Peter woman
Saint Paul woman
Ah, Jesusi
Book woman
Book woman
Morning Star woman
Cross Star woman
God Star woman
Ah, Jesusi
Moon woman
Moon woman
Moon woman
hmm hmm hmm
hmm hmm hmm
Sap woman
Dew woman
[The man urges her on. "Work, work," he says.]
She is a Book woman
Ah, Jesusi
hmm hmm hmm
hmm hmm hmm
so so so
Lord clown woman
Clown woman beneath the ocean
Clown woman
[The other words are unintelligible.]
Ah, Jesusi
hmm hmm hmm
hmm hmm hmm
so so so
Woman who resounds
Woman torn up out of the ground
hmm hmm hmm
Because she is a Christ woman
Because she is a Christ woman
ha ha ha
so so so
so so so
so so so
Whirling woman of colors
Whirling woman of colors
Big town woman
Big town woman
Lord eagle woman
Lord eagle woman
Clock woman
Clock woman
ha ha ha
so so so
so so so
so so so
[That’s it. Work, work," exclaims the man.]
hmm hmm hmm
hmm hmm hmm
so so so
hmm hmm hmm
so so so
so so so
si si si
si si si
si si si
so sa sa
si si si
so sa sa sa
hmm hmm hmm
hmm hmm hmm
hmm hmm hmm
si so soooooooooiiiiii
[The end of "so" is drawn out into a long tone. She calls,
"Cayetano García." "Work, work," he relies. She goes
on humming, clapping faster and faster. "Cayetano
García," she calls again, in between her humming, almost
as if she were animating him, bringing him to himself with
her clapping. "Work, work," he says, "don’t worry." And
the passage ends on an expiring "siiiiii."]
You my Father
You Christ
You Christ
Along the path of your soles, along the path of your feet
Where you triumphed, Christ
Where your saliva is, where your sweat is, Christ
That is why I am searching for the path of your soles, that is why I
am searching for the path of your feet
Where you stopped, Christ
Where you stopped, Father
Where you stopped, Old One
You are a respectable Father, an admirable Father
You are a respectable Mother, an admirable Mother
You are a green Father, a Father of clarity
You are a green Mother, a Mother of clarity
You are a budding Mother, a Mother of offshoots
You are a green Mother, a Mother of clarity

Father Jesus Christ
We go to you speaking poorly and humbly, holding out our hands to
you in supplication
With all of the santos
With all of the santas
Because there are santos, because there are santas
Because there are santos, because there are santas
All the clean spirits
All the good souls
It is a clean soul
It is a well-prepared soul
It is a respectable soul
It is a radiant soul
Greenness and sap
Flower of the dew
Flower in bud
Translucent flower
Flowering flower
Respected flower
Ah, Jesus Christ
It is a flower of fresh water
A flower of clear water
Fresh flower
Translucent flower
Because there are clean flowers where I am going
Because there is clean water where I am going
Clean flower, clean water
Fresh flower
Growing flower
Mine that is increasing
Green mine
Budding mine
There is no wind, there is no spit, there is no garbage, there is no
dust
There is no whirlwind, there is no weakness in the air
That is the work of my santos, that is the work of my santas
Ah, Jesus Christ
Ah, Jesusi
Ah, Jesusi
Ah, Jesus Christ
He is the santo
Ah, she is the santa
Ah, he is the santo
Ah, she is the santa
Ah, he is spirit
Ah, he is spirit
Ah, it is light
Ah, it is dew
Ah, it is sap
Ah, it is sap
Ah, it is greenness
Jesus Christ
Jesus
Jesus Christ
There is no resentment, there is no rancor, there is no insult, there is no
anger
It is not a matter of insults, it is not a matter of lies
It is a matter of life and well-being, of lifting up, of restoring
["Thank you," says the man.]

Source: Álvaro Estrada, María Sabina: Her Life and Chants, Ross-Erikson Publishers, 1981. Recorded July 21-22, 1956, by R. Gordon Wasson in Huautla de Jiménez, Oaxaca Mushroom Ceremony of the Mazatec Indians of Mexico, Folkways Records, FR 8975.

References:

• Seeking The Magic Mushroom

• María Sabina: Saint Mother of the Sacred Mushrooms

• Henry Munn: from “The Uniqueness of María Sabina”

• Teonanacatl: The Narcotic Mushroom of the Aztecs

• History of the Magic Mushroom

• Teonanácatl and Ololiuqui, two ancient magic drugs of Mexico

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Also Check Out:

Thus Spoke Teonanácatl

I began as the unspeakable,
because the unspeakable has many dimensions
but the possibility of communication
creates the interface necessary to understand,
Perception, reflection, and projection
are intertwined faculties of consciousness that
are implicated in reality-formation. Extensions of perception
are features & functions of the invisible landscape

Into the Trenches of Hyperspace

There's a whole world there-
a whole new reality, which they can enter and even change
Each new opening leads to the discovery of an entirely
New world, each connected to countless other new worlds
broken through to an infinitely more complex
and rewarding network (Ideas are networks)

Psychedelic Sundays: Teonanácatl

Mushroom Ceremony of the Mazatec Indians of Mexico,
María Sabina, Saint Mother of the Sacred Mushrooms
Mazatec healer, curandera, and Shaman.
She is famous for the role she played introducing
the sacred mushroom ceremony velada to the world.

Sol Cumbia : Mushroom Ceremony

The sacred mushrooms are considered the source of Language itself — are, "the mushrooms of language."
María Sabina, Saint Mother of the Sacred Mushrooms received her poems/songs through use of the psilocybe mushroom at all-night curing sessions 'veladas'

Shamans as the first shapers of myth (feat. Joseph Campbell)

So who would have been in these early elementary Cultures, as you call them, the equivalent of the poets today?
The shamans, The shamans, The shaman is the person who has in his late childhood, early youth, could be male or female, had an overwhelming psychological experience that turns them totally inward. The whole unconscious, The whole unconscious, The whole unconscious has opened up and they’ve fallen into it, they’ve fallen into it And it’s been described many, many times, and it occurs all the way from Siberia right through the Americas down to Tierra del Fuego. It’s a kind of schizophrenic crack-up, the shaman experience.