Ancient Psychedelia: Alien Gods & Mushroom Goddesses
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| In Book X of Sahagun’s book, the people and their local customs are described, and several types of women are featured including the Noblewomen. Noblewomen come from rulership, being either “good” or “bad.” The good one is described as being either “legitimate or a bastard child, modest, ashamed of evil, timid, and works willingly and voluntarily.” The bad noblewoman is “infamous, very audacious, stern, proud, stupid, brazen besotted, drunk. She goes about demented; she goes about eating mushrooms.” (39) The Harlot or carnal woman is a “‘whore of the itching buttocks,” who lives like a bathed slave, acts like a sacrificial victim, goes about with her head high, rude, drunk, shameless, eating mushrooms.” (40) About boys who consume these mushrooms, it was written, “The Lewd Youth is “a drunkard, foolish, dejected; a drunk, a sot. He goes about eating mushrooms.” (41) “The One of Noble lineage when he is a bad nobleman is a flatterer – a drinker, besotted, drunk. He goes about becoming crazed on both kinds of Daturas; he goes about eating Daturas and mushrooms. He becomes vail, brazen. (42) “The Bad Youth goes about becoming crazed on both kinds of Daturas and mushrooms; he is dissolute, mad; he goes about mocking, telling tales, being rude, repeating insults.” (43) In one of the few early accounts of Mexican heresy against the Catholic Church through the use of mushrooms, there is the story of two brothers named in Nahuatl, Mixcoatl and Tlaloc or Andres and Juan (Spanish). According to the account from 1537, they were accused of inciting revolt against the Inquisition by involving their local gods and arming their fellow Indians and the worst part of all, is that they were baptized apostates. These were truly “terrible” brothers, obviously. The most terroristic part of their venture was the consumption of mushrooms. It seems mushrooms often lead to revolt against authority, and this is precisely why the Romans wanted to stamp it out so desperately. The brothers were convicted and sentenced, placed on donkeys and paraded around the town for humiliation, received 100 lashes, and had their property confiscated by the Exchequer of the Holy Office. They also had to renounce their heresies and live in a monastery for a year. (44) Mexican Mushroom Artifacts and Codexes In 1898, on May 29, German geographer Carl Sapper published the first picture of a “mushroom stone” in the journal Globus. Sapper mentioned in the article the fact that they were religious objects. The mushrooms stones have been found throughout the Guatemala highlands (80c). Nine mushroom stones were found in a cache, some with metates for grinding, featured as part of the base, at Kaminaljuyu, Guatemala, dating from 1000-500 BC. Mushroom stones have also been found, which are just caps with no base. They were not broken off but were fashioned this way. Scholars speculate as to what they were used for, from ballgame use to burial objects. Approximately 300 mushroom stones have turned up at the time of Wasson’s estimate (1980) with many of them now held in private collections. (45) |
 (80c) Mesoamerican Mushroom Stone Guatemala c. 1500 BC-200 AD In June 1977, Dr. Richard Rose submitted a doctoral thesis on mushrooms stones to the Department of Anthropology of Harvard University in June 1977 in which the mushroom stone “caps” have been found with no base and suggest a use for them in possibly making rubber balls for ball games. These particular mushrooms “caps” are believed to date from the earliest period of the creation of the mushrooms stones. (46) Personally, I give little credence to the idea of “ball games,” cited by historians. I believe it’s proper to question everything. I don’t question whether or not they played with balls, in sport, but whether they had sacrifices involved with these sports, which is the impression one gets from historians. According to historians, when the Spanish first conquered the lands, they outlawed the games claiming their association with sacrifice. If there was no real sacrifice, other than taking mushrooms, then these ball games were harmless and were for fun and celebration only. One of the only surviving Codexs of the pre-conquest Nahuatl culture is the Codex Vindobonensis, the “Vienna Codex” from 1300-1400 AD (75h). This Codex was painted in the Miztec scriptorium, not in Nahuatl and reveals the mythological “Origin of Things.” Some of the deities are mushrooms deities with mushrooms in their hair or on their head, and others are images of priests holding mushrooms in their hands. This image was first published in 1963 by Dr. Alphonso Caso, dean of Mesoamerican scholars, in Estudios de Cultura Nahuatl, Vol. IV. (47) (39) Wondrous Mushroom, p. 208; Book X, p. 49 (40) ibid 208, p. 55 (41) ibid 208, p. 37 (42) ibid 208, p. 20 (43) ibid 208, p. 12 (44) ibid, 209-210 (45) ibid, p. 175 (46) Wondrous Mushroom, p. 195 (47) ibid, p. 105-106 |
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