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psilocybe mexicana |
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the mushroom gods
Psychedelic mushrooms have been around as long as humanity.
The Incas called them teonanactl or 'flesh of the gods'. The Aztecs considered
them divine and referred to a trip as "the flowery dream". Prehistoric Saharan
tribes painted mushroom-headed figures on cave walls.
Siberian shamans fed their reindeers fly agaric
mushrooms and then drank their urine to journey to the spirit world. They would
also drink each other's urine, and the mushroom could be passed through the bodies
of half a dozen people before their potency was lost.
Fancy getting pissed anyone?
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Aztec mushroom
god |
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religion and ritual
The Central American tradition firmly encased sacred mushrooms
in religion and ritual - in the kinds of ceremonies that evolved into today's
(legal) peyote rituals of the Native American Church in the US. These rituals
encourage spiritual development, expand the consciousness and enrich the soul.
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R Gordon
Wasson - the first Westerner to tuck into some magic mushrooms |
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bankers & shamen
Colonising Spaniads in the 16th century had brutally stamped
out the 'satanic' mushroom rites of the indigenous South American peoples.
For hundreds of years, the rites and rituals and even the mushrooms themselves
were forgotten, thought lost.
Until, that is, the unlikely figure of the vice-president of JP Morgan investment
bank, R. Gordon Wasson, trundled into the Mexican highlands in 1954 and rediscovered
them.
mycophiles
In the early 20th century, interest in botany and classification of species was
rampant. Loads of moustachioed Victorians were out to catalogue the world. Ancient
legends of a psychoactive mushrooms and a primitive 'mushroom cult' native to
South America were unearthed.
Several enthnobotanists and mushroom-lovers (mycophiles) made forays to Mexico
and Peru to try to discover these holy shrooms.
In their spare time, R. Gordon Wasson and his Russian wife Valentina were obsessive
mushroom-lovers and had made it their life-quest to find the sacred mushrooms.
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Maria Sabina - a Mexican curandera or shaman |
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wasson's first
trip
After years of field trips and false starts, they finally tracked
down a 'curandera' or shaman in a mountainous Mexican village. Wasson was permitted
to take part in the lengthy religious ceremony and was dosed with a sizeable handful
of psyilcybin mexicana.
In his own words:
"At the peak of the intoxication, about 1½ hours after ingestion
of the mushrooms, the rush of interior pictures, mostly changing in shape and
colour, reached such an alarming degree that I feared I would be torn into this
whirlpool of form and colour and would dissolve."
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life magazine
Wasson was amazed. Being a gentleman and pillar of the financial
establishment, his report of the adventure was documented in Life magazine.
You can read the open minded and often hilarious piece here
- a good example of literature untainted by drugs hysteria.
The magazine coined the snappy phrase "magic mushrooms" to describe his find.
The phrase would soon catch on...
The article caught the eye of the CIA who approached Wasson to find out whether
the mushrooms had any potential military use. Wasson refused to help them so they
smuggled an operative onto his next expedition.
But by then the mushrooms were attracted some new disciples...
magic
mushrooms and the sixties »
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