| On Wasson’s trip to Mexico with Roger Heim, they met with shaman and curandero Maria Sabina. This led to several follow-up expeditions as well and Wasson was allowed to gather a fair amount of research into the psilocybin mushroom experience by Mexican natives. Maria Sabina was a Curandera (shaman) from Mexico and because of Wasson’s research and interest, Robert Graves guided Wasson in her direction based on the original discovery of Mazatec entheogenic mushroom use by Weitlaner in 1936. (53) Some of the gifts or prophetic visions the mushroom is said to give the inhabitants of Oaxaca, include the art of finding lost objects, whether cattle or burros had been lost or stolen and where it might be, and if a family member goes missing, the mushroom can be a messenger and sent news to him over long distances. It was agreed upon by all Indians that the mushrooms are capable of doing this. (54) Mushrooms are frequently referred to as the “little children” among the curanderos. They are given names which are indicative of both affection and respect. (55) The man whose name one of the Mexican mushrooms is named for, Searle Hoogshagen reported that under the proper circumstances the mushrooms “put one in a trance whereupon little men known as Los Senores appear and help you with your troubles.” (56) In some of Wasson’s notes documented in Mexico, an informant for the Chicantla quotes a curandero as saying, “four or five mushrooms well ground are taken in water.” In one of the poems by the native people, composed before the Spanish conquest, spoken in Nahuatle (a group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family), it reads, “I have drunk the inebriating liquor of mushrooms.” These mushrooms were commonly ground down on a metate, or mealing stone more popularly known for grains. (57) One of the common substances found to be mixed with mushrooms according to the old Mexican traditions is chocolate, usually drank as hot chocolate, during or before the velada, or ceremony. The chocolate is usually drank following a fast of one day. Recently I came across some information, via Tom Lane, that it may be the alkaloids in the cacao bean shell which provide this effect being spoken of, not just any chocolate and not just cacao. Abstinence from alcohol is required as well as eggs and sexual intercourse and following the velada, for another four days. Pregnant women are not allowed to participate in the ritual consumption. (58) Alvaro Estrada, in his book La Vida de Maria Sabina, writes on the subject of the mushrooms post-Wasson, among the native people whom Wasson visited. It appears he is quoting Maria Sabina or, more likely, a representative of the Mazatec people: “Certainly, before Wasson, no one spoke with such freedom about the ‘children.’ No Mazatec would reveal what he knew on this subject. … The ‘children’ are the blood of Christ. When we Mazatecs speak of the veladas, we do so in a low voice and so as not to pronounce their name in Mazatec we call them ‘little things’ or ‘Little Saints.’ Thus, they were called by our forebearers. From the moment when the strangers arrived the ‘Holy Children’ lost their purity. They lost their strength. They were profaned. From now on they will serve no purpose. There is no help for it. Before Wasson I feel that the Holy Children elevated me. I no longer feel so.” |
Wasson responds to this with a classic “fellow traveler” retort, in The Wondrous Mushroom: “These words make me wince, but I was merely the precursor of the New Day. I arrived in the same decade with the highway, the airplane, the alphabet. The Old Order was in danger of passing with no one to record its passing. The Old Order does not mix with the New. The wisdom of the Sabia, genuine though it was, has nothing to give to the world of tomorrow. I think it was ever so with the arrival of the alphabet. Now the young generation is intent on the new learning, wants to forget the mushrooms that only yesterday evoked their awe, chooses the young doctor from the medical school in the city in preference to the wise-woman, and is not learning or is forgetting the language of his ancestors.” (59) In the preceding page, Wasson makes another very revealing wordplay: “Here is why Theophrastus and Dioscorides are disappointing for us: they were the heralds of the New Dawn in botany but were beginning from scratch. They would have failed to win the trust of the herbalists in their midst. I am not dogmatic about these trends of long ago but am suggesting a plausible framework to explain what may have happened. The herbalists knowledge was secret but of different degrees of secrecy. In Mesoamerica, the entheogens were known to everyone, but in Greece secrecy was the rule.” In the last two paragraphs, anyone with a study in esoteric occultism, for which I have long been a student, would easily recognize the pre-programmed wordplay in use. This is how secret knowledge is communicated between Masons and how this has been going on now for a long, long, time. These two paragraphs I have quoted are back to back in the book, The Wondrous Mushroom. I believe Wasson was trying to communicate something very important to fellow craftsmen. The phrase “New Dawn” is first used, followed by “knowledge was secret” followed by “degrees of secrecy.” The next paragraph starts with “New Day” and following that comes “Old Order.” All of these words are capitalized which implies they are “known phrases” of a sort or stand for something. (53) Hallucinogens and Culture, Peter T. Furst, p. 83 (54) Persephone’s Quest, p. 37-38 (55) Wondrous Mushroom, p. 4 (56) ibid, p. 38-39 (57) ibid, p. 32 (58) ibid, p. 34 (59) Wondrous Mushroom, P. 223 |