LSD - My Problem Child
Albert Hofmann
6. The Mexican Relatives of LSD
The Sacred Mushroom Teonanácatl
Late in 1956 a
notice in the daily paper caught my interest. Among some Indians in southern
Mexico, American researchers had discovered mushrooms that were eaten in
religious ceremonies and that produced an inebriated condition accompanied by
hallucinations.
Since, outside of the mescaline cactus found
also in Mexico, no other drug was known at the time that, like LSD, produced
hallucinations, I would have liked to establish contact with these researchers,
in order to learn details about these hallucinogenic mushrooms. But there were
no names and addresses in the short newspaper article, so that it was impossible
to get further information. Nevertheless, the mysterious mushrooms, whose
chemical investigation would be a tempting problem, stayed in my thoughts from
then on.
As it later turned out, LSD was the reason that these
mushrooms found their way into my laboratory, with out my assistance, at the
beginning of the following year.
Through the mediation of Dr.
Yves Dunant, at the time director of the Paris branch of Sandoz, an inquiry came
to the pharmaceutical research management in Basel from Professor Roger Heim,
director of the Laboratoire de Cryptogamie of the Museum National d'Histoire
Naturelle in Paris, asking whether we were interested in carrying out the
chemical investigation of the Mexican hallucinogenic mushrooms. With great joy I
declared myself ready to begin this work in my department, in the laboratories
for natural product research. That was to be my link to the exciting
investigations of the Mexican sacred mushrooms, which were already broadly
advanced in the ethnomycological and botanical aspects.
For a
long time the existence of these magic mushrooms had remained an enigma. The
history of their rediscovery is presented at first hand in the magnificent
two-volume standard work of ethnomycology, Mushrooms, Russia and History
(Pantheon Books, New York, 1957), for the authors, the American researchers
Valentina Pavlovna Wasson and her husband, R. Gordon Wasson, played a decisive
role in this rediscovery. The following descriptions of the fascinating history
of these mushrooms are taken from the Wassons' book.
The first
written evidence of the use of inebriating mushrooms on festival occasions, or
in the course of religious ceremonies and magically oriented healing practices,
is found among the Spanish chroniclers and naturalists of the sixteenth century,
who entered the country soon after the conquest of Mexico by Hernando Cortés.
The most important of these witnesses is the Franciscan friar Bernardino de
Sahagun, who mentions the magic mushrooms and describes their effects and their
use in several passages of his famous historical work, Historia General de
tas Cosas de Nueva Espana, written between the years 1529 and 1590. Thus he
describes, for example, how merchants celebrated the return home from a
successful business trip with a mushroom party:
Coming at the very first, at the time of feasting, they ate
mushrooms when, as they said, it was the hour of the blowing of the flutes.
Not yet did they partake of food; they drank only chocolate during the night.
And they ate mushrooms with honey. When already the mushrooms were taking
effect, there was dancing, there was weeping.... Some saw in a vision that
they would die in war. Some saw in a vision that they would be devoured by
wild beasts.... Some saw in a vision that they would become rich, wealthy.
Some saw in a vision that they would buy slaves, would become slave owners.
Some saw in a vision that they would commit adultery [and so] would have their
heads bashed in, would be stoned to death.... Some saw in a vision that they
would perish in the water. Some saw in a vision that they would pass to
tranquillity in death. Some saw in a vision that they would fall from the
housetop, tumble to their death. . . . All such things they saw.... And when
[the effects of] the mushroom ceased, they conversed with one another, spoke
of what they had seen in the vision.
In a
publication from the same period, Diego Duran, a Dominican friar, reported that
inebriating mushrooms were eaten at the great festivity on the occasion of the
accession to the throne of Moctezuma II, the famed emperor of the Aztecs, in the
year 1502. A passage in the seventeenth-century chronicle of Don Jacinto de la
Serna refers to the use of these mushrooms in a religious framework:
And what happened was that there had come to [the village] an
Indian . . . and his name was Juan Chichiton . . . and he had brought the
red-colored mushrooms that are gathered in the uplands, and with them he had
committed a great idolatry.... In the house where everyone had gathered on the
occasion of a saint's feast . . . the teponastli [an Aztec percussion
instrument] was playing and singing was going on the whole night through.
After most of the night had passed, Juan Chichiton, who was the priest for
that solemn rite, to all of those present at the fiesta gave the mushrooms to
eat, after the manner of Communion, and gave them pulque to drink. . .
so that they all went out of their heads, a shame it was to see.
In Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, these mushrooms were described
as teo-nancatl, which can be translated as "sacred mushroom."
There are indications that ceremonial use of such
mushrooms reaches far back into pre-Columbian times. So-called mushroom stones
have been found in El Salvador, Guatemala, and the contiguous mountainous
districts of Mexico. These are stone sculptures in the form of pileate mushroom,
on whose stem the face or the form of a god or an animal-like demon is carved.
Most are about 30 cm high. The oldest examples, according to archaeologists,
date back to before 500 B.C.
R. G. Wasson argues, quite
convincingly, that there is a connection between these mushroom stones and
teonanácatl. If true, this means that the mushroom cult, the
magico-medicinal and religious-ceremonial use of the magic mushrooms, is more
than two thousand years old.
To the Christian missionaries,
the inebriating, vision- and hallucination-producing effects of these mushrooms
seemed to be Devil's work. They therefore tried, with all the means in their
power, to extirpate their use. But they succeeded only partially, for the
Indians have continued secretly down to our time to utilize the mushroom
teonanácatl, which was sacred to them.
Strange to say,
the reports in the old chronicles about the use of magic mushrooms remained
unnoticed during the following centuries, probably because they were considered
products of the imagination of a superstitious age.
All traces
of the existence of "sacred mushrooms" were in danger of becoming obliterated
once and for all, when, in 1915, an American botanist of repute, Dr. W. E.
Safford, in an address before the Botanical Society in Washington and in a
scientific publication, advanced the thesis that no such thing as magic
mushrooms had ever existed at all: the Spanish chroniclers had taken the
mescaline cactus for a mushroom! Even if false, this proposition of Safford's
served nevertheless to direct the attention of the scientific world to the
riddle of the mysterious mushrooms.
It was the Mexican
physician Dr. Blas Pablo Reko who first openly disagreed with Safford's
interpretation and who found evidence that mushrooms were still employed in
medicinal-religious ceremonies even in our time, in remote districts of the
southern mountains of Mexico. But not until the years 19338 did the
anthropologist Robert J. Weitlaner and Dr. Richard Evans Schultes, a botanist
from Harvard University, find actual mushrooms in that region, which were used
there for this ceremonial purpose; and only in 1938 could a group of young
American anthropologists, under the direction of Jean Bassett Johnson, attend a
secret nocturnal mushroom ceremony for the first time. This was in Huautla de
Jiménez, the capital of the Mazatec country, in the State of Oaxaca. But these
researchers were only spectators, they were not permitted to partake of the
mushrooms. Johnson reported on the experience in a Swedish journal
(Ethnological Studies 9, 1939).
Then exploration of the
magic mushrooms was interrupted. World War II broke out. Schultes, at the behest
of the American government, had to occupy himself with rubber production in the
Amazon territory, and Johnson was killed after the Allied landing in North
Africa.
It was the American researchers, the married couple
Dr. Valentina Pavlovna Wasson and her husband, R. Gordon Wasson, who again took
up the problem from the ethnographic aspect. R. G. Wasson was a banker,
vice-president of the J. P. Morgan Co. in New York. His wife, who died in 1958,
was a pediatrician. The Wassons began their work in 1953, in the Mazatec village
Huautla de Jiménez, where fifteen years earlier J. B. Johnson and others had
established the continued existence of the ancient Indian mushroom cult. They
received especially valuable information from an American missionary who had
been active there for many years, Eunice V. Pike, member of the Wycliffe Bible
Translators. Thanks to her knowledge of the native language and her ministerial
association with the inhabitants, Pike had information about the significance of
the magic mushrooms that nobody else possessed. During several lengthy sojourns
in Huautla and environs, the Wassons were able to study the present use of the
mushrooms in detail and compare it with the descriptions in the old chronicles.
This showed that the belief in the "sacred mushrooms" was still prevalent in
that region. However, the Indians kept their beliefs a secret from strangers. It
took great tact and skill, therefore, to gain the confidence of the indigenous
population and to receive insight into this secret domain.
In
the modern form of the mushroom cult, the old religious ideas and customs are
mingled with Christian ideas and Christian terminology. Thus the mushrooms are
often spoken of as the blood of Christ, because they will grow only where a drop
of Christ's blood has fallen on the earth. According to another notion, the
mushrooms sprout where a drop of saliva from Christ's mouth has moistened the
ground, and it is therefore Jesus Christ himself who speaks through the
mushrooms.
The mushroom ceremony follows the form of a
consultation. The seeker of advice or a sick person or his or her family
questions a "wise man" or a "wise woman," a sabio or sabia, also
named curandero or curandera, in return for a modest payment.
Curandero can best be translated into English as "healing priest," for
his function is that of a physician as well as that of a priest, both being
found only rarely in these remote regions. In the Mazatec language the healing
priest is called co-ta-ci-ne, which means "one who knows." He eats the
mushroom in the framework of a ceremony that always takes place at night. The
other persons present at the ceremony may sometimes receive mushrooms as well,
yet a much greater dose always goes to the curandero. The performance is
executed with the accompaniment of prayers and entreaties, while the mushrooms
are incensed briefly over a basin, in which copal (an incense-like resin)
is burned. In complete darkness, at times by candlelight, while the others
present lie quietly on their straw mats, the curandero, kneeling or sitting,
prays and sings before a type of altar bearing a crucifix, an image of a saint,
or some other object of worship. Under the influence of the sacred mushrooms,
the curandero counsels in a visionary state, in which even the inactive
observers more or less participate. In the monotonous song of the
curandero, the mushroom teonanácatl gives its answers to the
questions posed. It says whether the diseased person will live or die, which
herbs will effect the cure; it reveals who has killed a specific person, or who
has stolen the horse; or it makes known how a distant relative fares, and so
forth.
The mushroom ceremony not only has the function of a
consultation of the type described, for the Indians it also has a meaning in many
respects similar to the Holy Communion for the believing Christian. From many
utterances of the natives it could be inferred that they believe that God has
given the Indians the sacred mushroom because they are poor and possess no
doctors and medicines; and also, because they cannot read, in particular the
Bible, God can therefore speak directly to them through the mushroom. The
missionary Eunice V. Pike even alluded to the difficulties that result from
explaining the Christian message, the written word, to a people who believe they
possess a means-the sacred mushrooms of course - to make God's will known to
them in a direct, clear manner: yes, the mushrooms permit them to see into
heaven and to establish communication with God himself.
The
Indians' reverence for the sacred mushrooms is also evident in their belief that
they can be eaten only by a "clean" person. "Clean" here means ceremonially
clean, and that term among other things includes sexual abstinence at least four
days before and after ingestion of the mushrooms. Certain rules must also be
observed in gathering the mushrooms. With non-observance of these commandments,
the mushrooms can make the person who eats it insane, or can even kill.
The Wassons had undertaken their first expedition to the
Mazatec country in 1953, but not until 1955 did they succeed in overcoming the
shyness and reserve of the Mazatec friends they had managed to make, to the
point of being admitted as active participants in a mushroom ceremony. R. Gordon
Wasson and his companion, the photographer Allan Richardson, were given sacred
mushrooms to eat at the end of June 1955, on the occasion of a nocturnal
mushroom ceremony. They thereby became in all likelihood the first outsiders,
the first whites, ever permitted to take teonanácatl.
In the second volume of Mushrooms, Russia and History, in enraptured
words, Wasson describes how the mushroom seized possession of him completely,
although he had tried to struggle against its effects, in order to be able to
remain an objective observer. First he saw geometric, colored patterns, which
then took on architectural characteristics. Next followed visions of splendid
colonnades, palaces of supernatural harmony and magnificence embellished with
precious gems, triumphal cars drawn by fabulous creatures as they are known only
from mythology, and landscapes of fabulous luster. Detached from the body, the
spirit soared timelessly in a realm of fantasy among images of a higher reality
and deeper meaning than those of the ordinary, everyday world. The essence of
life, the ineffable, seemed to be on the verge of being unlocked, but the
ultimate door failed to open.
This experience was the final
proof, for Wasson, that the magical powers attributed to the mushrooms actually
existed and were not merely superstition.
In order to
introduce the mushrooms to scientific research, Wasson had earlier established
an association with mycologist Professor Roger Heim of Paris. Accompanying the
Wassons on further expeditions into the Mazatec country, Heim conducted the
botanical identification of the sacred mushrooms. He showed that they were
gilled mushrooms from the family Strophariaceae, about a dozen different
species not previously described scientifically, the greatest part belonging to
the genus Psilocybe. Professor Heim also succeeded in cultivating some of
the species in the laboratory. The mushroom Psilocybe mexicana turned out
to be especially suitable for artificial cultivation.
Chemical
investigations ran parallel with these botanical studies on the magic mushrooms,
with the goal of extracting the hallucinogenically active principle from the
mushroom material and preparing it in chemically pure form. Such investigations
were carried out at Professor Heim's instigation in the chemical laboratory of
the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris, and work teams were occupied
with this problem in the United States in the research laboratories of two large
pharmaceutical companies: Merck, and Smith, Kline and French. The American
laboratories had obtained some of the mushrooms from R. G. Wasson and had
gathered others themselves in the Sierra Mazateca.
As the
chemical investigations in Paris and in the United States turned out to be
ineffectual, Professor Heim addressed this matter to our firm, as mentioned at
the beginning of this chapter, because he felt that our experimental experience
with LSD, related to the magic mushrooms by similar activity, could be of use in
the isolation attempts. Thus it was LSD that showed teonanácatl the way
into our laboratory.
As director of the department of natural
products of the Sandoz pharmaceutical-chemical research laboratories at that
time, I wanted to assign-the investigation of the magic mushrooms to one of my
coworkers. However, nobody showed much eagerness to take on this problem because
it was known that LSD and everything connected with it were scarcely popular
subjects to the top management. Because the enthusiasm necessary for successful
endeavors cannot be commanded, and because the enthusiasm was already present in
me as far as this problem was concerned, I decided to conduct the investigation
myself.
Some 100 g of dried mushrooms of the species
Psilocybe mexicana, cultivated by Professor Heim in the laboratory, were
available for the beginning of the chemical analysis. My laboratory assistant,
Hans Tscherter, who during our decade-long collaboration, had developed into a
very capable helper, completely familiar with my manner of work, aided me in the
extraction and isolation attempts. Since there were no clues at all concerning
the chemical properties of the active principle we sought, the isolation
attempts had to be conducted on the basis of the effects of the extract
fractions. But none of the various extracts showed an unequivocal effect, either
in the mouse or the dog, which could have pointed to the presence of
hallucinogenic principles. It therefore became doubtful whether the mushrooms
cultivated and dried in Paris were still active at all. That could only be
determined by experimenting with this mushroom material on a human being. As in
the case of LSD, I made this fundamental experiment myself, since it is not
appropriate for researchers to ask anyone else to perform self-experiments that
they require for their own investigations, especially if they entail, as in this
case, a certain risk.
In this experiment I ate 32 dried
specimens of Psilocybe mexicana, which together weighed 2.4 g. This
amount corresponded to an average dose, according to the reports of Wasson and
Heim, as it is used by the curanderos. The mushrooms displayed a strong
psychic effect, as the following extract from the report on that experiment
shows:
Thirty minutes after my taking the mushrooms, the exterior world
began to undergo a strange transformation. Everything assumed a Mexican
character. As I was perfectly well aware that my knowledge of the Mexican
origin of the mushroom would lead me to imagine only Mexican scenery, I tried
deliberately to look on my environment as I knew it normally. But all
voluntary efforts to look at things in their customary forms and colors proved
ineffective. Whether my eyes were closed or open, I saw only Mexican motifs
and colors. When the doctor supervising the experiment bent over me to check
my blood pressure, he was transformed into an Aztec priest and I would not
have been astonished if he had drawn an obsidian knife. In spite of the
seriousness of the situation, it amused me to see how the Germanic face of my
colleague had acquired a purely Indian expression. At the peak of the
intoxication, about 1 1/2 hours after ingestion of the mushrooms, the rush of
interior pictures, mostly abstract motifs rapidly changing in shape and color,
reached such an alarming degree that I feared that I would be torn into this
whirlpool of form and color and would dissolve. After about six hours the
dream came to an end. Subjectively, I had no idea how long this condition had
lasted. I felt my return to everyday reality to be a happy return from a
strange, fantastic but quite real world to an old and familiar home.
This self-experiment showed once again that human
beings react much more sensitively than animals to psychoactive substances. We
had already reached the same conclusion in experimenting with LSD on animals, as
described in an earlier chapter of this book. It was not inactivity of the
mushroom material, but rather the deficient reaction capability of the research
animals vis-à-vis such a type of active principle, that explained why our
extracts had appeared inactive in the mouse and dog.
Because
the assay on human subjects was the only test at our disposal for the detection
of the active extract fractions, we had no other choice than to perform the
testing on ourselves if we wanted to carry on the work and bring it to a
successful conclusion. In the self-experiment just described, a strong reaction
lasting several hours was produced by 2.4 g dried mushrooms. Therefore, in the
sequel we used samples corresponding to only one-third of this amount, namely
0.8 g dried mushrooms. If these samples contained the active principle, they
would only provoke a mild effect that impaired the ability to work for a short
time, but this effect would still be so distinct that the inactive fractions and
those containing the active principle could unequivocally be differentiated from
one another. Several coworkers and colleagues volunteered as guinea pigs for
this series of tests.
Psilocybin and Psilocin
With the help of this reliable
test on human subjects, the active principle could be isolated, concentrated,
and transformed into a chemically pure state by means of the newest separation
methods. Two new substances, which I named psilocybin and psilocin, were thereby
obtained in the form of colorless crystals.
These results were
published in March 1958 in the journal Experientia, in collaboration with
Professor Heim and with my colleagues Dr. A. Brack and Dr. H. Kobel, who had
provided greater quantities of mushroom material for these investigations after
they had essentially improved the laboratory cultivation of the mushrooms.
Some of my coworkers at the time-Drs. A. J. Frey, H. Ott, T.
Petrzilka, and F. Troxler-then participated in the next steps of these
investigations, the determination of the chemical structure of psilocybin and
psilocin and the subsequent synthesis of these compounds, the results of which
were published in the November 1958 issue of Experientia. The chemical
structures of these mushroom factors deserve special attention in several
respects. Psilocybin and psilocin belong, like LSD, to the indole compounds, the
biologically important class of substances found in the plant and animal
kingdoms. Particular chemical features common to both the mushroom substances
and LSD show that psilocybin and psilocin are closely related to LSD, not only
with regard to psychic effects but also to their chemical structures. Psilocybin
is the phosphoric acid ester of psilocin and, as such, is the first and hitherto
only phosphoric-acid-containing indole compound discovered in nature. The
phosphoric acid residue does not contribute to the activity, for the
phosphoric-acid-free psilocin is just as active as psilocybin, but it makes the
molecule more stable. While psilocin is readily decomposed by the oxygen in air,
psilocybin is a stable substance.
Psilocybin and psilocin
possess a chemical structure very similar to the brain factor serotonin. As was
already mentioned in the chapter on animal experiments and biological research,
serotonin plays an important role in the chemistry of brain functions. The two
mushroom factors, like LSD, block the effects of serotonin in pharmacological
experiments on different organs. Other pharmacological properties of psilocybin
and psilocin are also similar to those of LSD. The main difference consists in
the quantitative activity, in animal as well as human experimentation. The
average active dose of psilocybin or psilocin in human beings amounts to 10 mg
(0.01 g); accordingly, these two substances are more than 100 times less active
than LSD, of which 0.1 mg constitutes a strong dose. Moreover, the effects of
the mushroom factors last only four to six hours, much shorter than the effects
of LSD (eight to twelve hours).
The total synthesis of
psilocybin and psilocin, without the aid of the mushrooms, could be developed
into a technical process, which would allow these substances to be produced on a
large scale. Synthetic production is more rational and cheaper than extraction
from the mushrooms.
Thus with the isolation and synthesis of
the active principles, the demystification of the magic mushrooms was
accomplished. The compounds whose wondrous effects led the Indians to believe
for millennia that a god was residing in the mushrooms had their chemical
structures elucidated and could be produced synthetically in flasks.
Just what progress in scientific knowledge was accomplished by natural
products research in this case? Essentially, when all is said and done, we can
only say that the mystery of the wondrous effects of teonanácatl was
reduced to the mystery of the effects of two crystalline substances-since these
effects cannot be explained by science either, but can only be describe.
A Voyage into the Universe of the Soul with Psilocybin
The relationship between the psychic effects of psilocybin and those of LSD,
their visionaryhallucinatory character, is evident in the following report from
Antaios, of a psilocybin experiment by Dr. Rudolf Gelpke. He has
characterized his experiences with LSD and psilocybin, as already mentioned in a
previous chapter, as "travels in the universe of the soul."
Where Time Stands Still
(10 mg psilocybin, 6 April 1961,
10:20)
After ca. 20 minutes, beginning effects: serenity, speechlessness,
mild but pleasant dizzy sensation, and "pleasureful deep breathing."
10:50 Strong! dizziness, can no longer concentrate .
10:55 Excited, intensity of colors: everything pink to red.
11:05 The world concentrates itself there on the center of
the table. Colors very intense.
11:10 A divided being,
unprecedented-how can I describe this sensation of life? Waves, different
selves, must control me.
Immediately after this note I went
outdoors, leaving the breakfast table, where I had eaten with Dr. H. and our
wives, and lay down on the lawn. The inebriation pushed rapidly to its climax.
Although I had firmly resolved to make constant notes, it now seemed to me a
complete waste of time, the motion of writing infinitely slow, the
possibilities of verbal expression unspeakably paltry - measured by the flood
of inner experience that inundated me and threatened to burst me. It seemed to
me that 100 years would not be sufficient to describe the fullness of
experience of a single minute. At the beginning, optical impressions
predominated: I saw with delight the boundless succession of rows of trees in
the nearby forest. Then the tattered clouds in the sunny sky rapidly piled up
with silent and breathtaking majesty to a superimposition of thousands of
layers-heaven on heaven-and I waited then expecting that up there in the next
moment something completely powerful, unheard of, not yet existing, would
appear or happen - would I behold a god? But only the expectation remained,
the presentiment, this hovering, "on the threshold of the ultimate feeling." .
. . Then I moved farther away (the proximity of others disturbed me) and lay
down in a nook of the garden on a sun-warmed wood pile-my fingers stroked this
wood with overflowing, animal-like sensual affection. At the same time I was
submerged within myself; it was an absolute climax: a sensation of bliss
pervaded me, a contented happiness-I found myself behind my closed eyes in a
cavity full of brick-red ornaments, and at the same time in the "center of the
universe of consummate calm." I knew everything was good-the cause and origins
of everything was good. But at the same moment I also understood the suffering
and the loathing, the depression and misunderstanding of ordinary life: there
one is never "total," but instead divided, cut in pieces, and split up into
the tiny fragments of seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, and years: there
one is a slave of Moloch time, which devoured one piecemeal; one is condemned
to stammering, bungling, and patchwork; one must drag about with oneself the
perfection and absolute, the togetherness of all things; the eternal moment of
the golden age, this original ground of being-that indeed nevertheless has
always endured and will endure forever-there in the weekday of human
existence, as a tormenting thorn buried deeply in the soul, as a memorial of a
claim never fulfilled, as a fata morgana of a lost and promised paradise;
through this feverish dream "present" to a condemned "past" in a clouded
"future." I understood. This inebriation was a spaceflight, not of the outer
but rather of the inner man, and for a moment I experienced reality from a
location that lies somewhere beyond the force of gravity of time.
As I began again to feel this force of gravity, I was childish enough
to want to postpone the return by taking a new dose of 6 mg psilocybin at
11:45, and once again 4 mg at 14:30. The effect was trifling, and in any case
not worth mentioning.
Mrs. Li Gelpke, an artist,
also participated in this series of investigations, taking three
self-experiments with LSD and psilocybin. The artist wrote of the drawing she
made during the experiment:
Nothing on this page is consciously fashioned. While I worked on
it, the memory (of the experience under psilocybin) was again reality, and led
me at every stroke. For that reason the picture is as many-layered as this
memory, and the figure at the lower right is really the captive of its
dream.... When books about Mexican art came into my hands three weeks later, I
again found the motifs of my visions there with a sudden start....
I have also mentioned the occurrence of Mexican
motifs in psilocybin inebriation during my first self-experiment with dried
Psilocybe mexicana mushrooms, as was described in the section on the chemical
investigation of these mushrooms. The same phenomenon has also struck R. Gordon
Wasson. Proceeding from such observations, he has advanced the conjecture that
ancient Mexican art could have been influenced by visionary images, as they
appear in mushroom inebriation.
The "Magic Morning Glory" Ololiuhqui
After we had
managed to solve the riddle of the sacred mushroom teonanácatl in a
relatively short time, I also became interested in the problem of another
Mexican magic drug not yet chemically elucidated, ololiuhqui.
Ololiuhqui is the Aztec name for the seeds of certain climbing plants
(Convolvulaceae) that, like the mescaline cactus peyotl and the
teonanácatl mushrooms, were used in pre-Columbian times by the Aztecs and
neighboring people in religious ceremonies and magical healing practices.
Ololiuhqui is still used even today by certain Indian tribes like the
Zapotec, Chinantec, Mazatec, and Mixtec, who until a short time ago still led a
genuinely isolated existence, little influenced by Christianity, in the remote
mountains of southern Mexico.
An excellent study of the
historical, ethnological, and botanical aspects of ololiuhqui was
published in 1941 by Richard Evans Schultes, director of the Harvard Botanical
Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is entitled "A Contribution to Our
Knowledge of Rivea corymbosa, the Narcotic Ololiuqui of the
Aztecs." The following statements about the history of ololiuhqui derive
chiefly from Schultes's monograph. [Translator's note: As R. Gordon Wasson has
pointed out, "ololiuhqui" is a more precise orthography than the more
popular spelling used by Schultes. See Botanical Museum Leaflets Harvard
University 20: 161-212, 1963.]
The earliest records about
this drug were written by Spanish chroniclers of the sixteenth century, who also
mentioned peyotl and teonanácatl. Thus the Franciscan friar
Bernardino de Sahagun, in his already cited famous chronicle Historia General
de las Cosas de Nueva Espana, writes about the wondrous effects of
ololiuhqui: "There is an herb, called coatl xoxouhqui (green
snake), which produces seeds that are called ololiuhqui. These seeds
stupefy and deprive one of reason: they are taken as a potion."
We obtain further information about these seeds from the physician
Francisco Hernandez, whom Philip II sent to Mexico from Spain, from 1570 to
1575, in order to study the medicaments of the natives. In the chapter "On
Ololiuhqui" of his monumental work entitled Rerum Medicarum Novae
Hispaniae Thesaurus seu Plantarum, Animalium Mineralium Mexicanorum
Historia, published in Rome in 1651, he gives a detailed description and the
first illustration of ololiuhqui. An extract from the Latin text
accompanying the illustration reads in translation: "Ololiuhqui, which
others call coaxihuitl or snake plant, is a climber with thin, green,
heart-shaped leaves.... The flowers are white, fairly large.... The seeds are
roundish. . . . When the priests of the Indians wanted to visit with the gods
and obtain information from them, they ate of this plant in order to become
inebriated. Thousands of fantastic images and demons then appeared to them...."
Despite this comparatively good description, the botanical identification of
ololiuhqui as seeds of Rivea corymbosa (L.) Hall. f. occasioned
many discussions in specialist circles. Recently preference has been given to
the synonym Turbina corymbosa (L.) Raf.
When I decided
in 1959 to attempt the isolation o the active principles of ololiuhqui,
only a single report on chemical work with the seeds of Turbina corymbosa
was available. It was the work of the pharmacologist C. G. Santesson of
Stockholm, from the year 1937. Santesson, however, was not successful in
isolating an active substance in pure form.
Contradictory
findings had been published about the activity of the ololiuhqui seeds.
The psychiatrist H. Osmond conducted a self-experiment with the seeds of
Turbina corymbosa in 1955. After the ingestion of 60 to 100 seeds, he
entered into a state of apathy and emptiness, accompanied by enhanced visual
sensitivity. After four hours, there followed a period of relaxation and
well-being, lasting for a longer time. The results of V. J. Kinross-Wright,
published in England in 1958, in which eight voluntary research subjects, who
had taken up to 125 seeds, perceived no effects at all, contradicted this
report.
Through the mediation of R. Gordon Wasson, I obtained
two samples of ololiuhqui seeds. In his accompanying letter of 6 August
1959 from Mexico City, he wrote of them:
. . . The parcels that I am sending you are the following: . . .
A small parcel of seeds that I take to be Rivea
corymbosa, otherwise known as ololiuqui well-known narcotic of the Aztecs,
called in Huautla "la semilla de la Virgen." This parcel, you will find,
consists of two little bottles, which represent two deliveries of seeds made
to us in Huautla, and a larger batch of seeds delivered to us by Francisco
Ortega "Chico," the Zapotec guide, who himself gathered the seeds from the
plants at the Zapotec town of San Bartolo Yautepec....
The first-named, round, light brown seeds from Huautla proved in the
botanical determination to have been correctly identified as Rivea (Turbina)
corymbosa, while the black, angular seeds from San Bartolo Yautepec were
identified as Ipomoea violacea L.
While Turbina
corymbosa thrives only in tropical or subtropical climates, one also finds
Ipomoea violacea as an ornamental plant dispersed over the whole earth in
the temperate zones. It is the morning glory that delights the eye in our
gardens in diverse varieties with blue or blue-red striped calyxes.
The Zapotec, besides the original ololiuhqui (that is, the seeds
of Turbina corymbosa, which they call badoh), also utilize
badoh negro, the seeds of Ipomoea violacea. T. MacDougall, who
furnished us with a second larger consignment of the last-named seeds, made this
observation.
My capable laboratory assistant Hans Tscherter,
with whom I had already carried out the isolation of the active principles of
the mushrooms, participated in the chemical investigation of the
ololiuhqui drug. We advanced the working hypothesis that the active
principles of the ololiuhqui seeds could be representatives of the same
class of chemical substances, the indole compounds, to which LSD, psilocybin,
and psilocin belong. Considering the very great number of other groups of
substances that, like the indoles, were under consideration as active principles
of ololiuhqui, it was indeed extremely improbable that this assumption
would prove true. It could, however, very easily be tested. The presence of
indole compounds, of course, may simply and rapidly be determined by
colorimetric reactions. Thus even traces of indole substances, with a certain
reagent, give an intense blue-colored solution.
We had luck
with our hypothesis. Extracts of ololiuhqui seeds with the appropriate
reagent gave the blue coloration characteristic of indole compounds. With the
help of this colorimetric test, we succeeded in a short time in isolating the
indole substances from the seeds and in obtaining them in chemically pure form.
Their identification led to an astonishing result. What we found appeared at
first scarcely believable. Only after repetition and the most careful scrutiny
of the operations was our suspicion concerning the peculiar findings eliminated:
the active principles from the ancient Mexican magic drug ololiuhqui
proved to be identical with substances that were already present in my
laboratory. They were identical with alkaloids that had been obtained in the
course of the decades-long investigations of ergot; partly isolated as such from
ergot, partly obtained through chemical modification of ergot substances.
Lysergic acid amide, lysergic acid hydroxyethylamide, and
alkaloids closely related to them chemically were established as the main active
principles of ololiuhqui. (See formulae in the appendix.) Also present
was the alkaloid ergobasine, whose synthesis had constituted the starting point
of my investigations on ergot alkaloids. Lysergic acid amide and lysergic acid
hydroxyethylamide, active principles of ololiuhqui, are chemically very
closely related to lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), which even for the
non-chemist follows from the names.
Lysergic acid amide was
described for the first time by the English chemists S. Smith and G. M. Timmis
as a cleavage product of ergot alkaloids, and I had also produced this substance
synthetically in the course of the investigations in which LSD originated.
Certainly, nobody at the time could have suspected that this compound
synthesized in the flask would be discovered twenty years later as a naturally
occurring active principle of an ancient Mexican magic drug.
After the discovery of the psychic effects of LSD, I had also tested lysergic
acid amide in a self-experiment and established that it likewise evoked a
dreamlike condition, but only with about a tenfold to twenty-fold greater dose
than LSD. This effect was characterized by a sensation of mental emptiness and
the unreality and meaninglessness of the outer world, by enhanced sensitivity of
hearing, and by a not unpleasant physical lassitude, which ultimately led to
sleep. This picture of the effects of LA-111, as lysergic acid amide was called
as a research preparation, was confirmed in a systematic investigation by the
psychiatrist Dr. H. Solms.
When I presented the findings of
our investigations on ololiuhqui at the Natural Products Congress of the
International Union for Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) in Sydney, Australia,
in the fall of 1960, my colleagues received my talk with skepticism. In the
discussions following my lecture, some persons voiced the suspicion that the
ololiuhqui extracts could well have been contaminated with traces of
lysergic acid derivatives, with which so much work had been done in my
laboratory.
There was another reason for the doubt in
specialist circles concerning our findings. The occurrence in higher plants
(i.e., in the morning glory family) of ergot alkaloids that hitherto had been
known only as constituents of lower fungi, contradicted the experience that
certain substances are typical of and restricted to respective plant families.
It is indeed a very rare exception to find a characteristic group of substances,
in this case the ergot alkaloids, occurring in two divisions of the plant
kingdom broadly separated in evolutionary history.
Our results
were confirmed, however, when different laboratories in the United States,
Germany, and Holland subsequently verified our investigations on the
ololiuhqui seeds. Nevertheless, the skepticism went so far that some
persons even considered the possibility that the seeds could have been infected
with alkaloid-producing fungi. That suspicion, however, was ruled out
experimentally.
These studies on the active principles of
ololiuhqui seeds, although they were published only in professional
journals, had an unexpected sequel. We were apprised by two Dutch wholesale seed
companies that their sale of seeds of Ipomoea violacea, the ornamental
blue morning glory, had reached unusual proportions in recent times. They had
heard that the great demand was connected with investigations of these seeds in
our laboratory, about which they were eager to learn the details. It turned out
that the new demand derived from hippie circles and other groups interested in
hallucinogenic drugs. They believed they had found in the ololiuhqui
seeds a substitute for LSD, which was becoming less and less accessible.
The morning glory seed boom, however, lasted only a
comparatively short time, evidently because of the undesirable experiences that
those in the drug world had with this "new" ancient inebriant. The
ololiuhqui seeds, which are taken crushed with water or another mild
beverage, taste very bad and are difficult for the stomach to digest. Moreover,
the psychic effects of ololiuhqui, in fact, differ from those of LSD in
that the euphoric and the hallucinogenic components are less pronounced, while a
sensation of mental emptiness, often anxiety and depression, predominates.
Furthermore, weariness and lassitude are hardly desirable effects as traits in
an inebriant. These could all be reasons why the drug culture's interest in the
morning glory seeds has diminished.
Only a few investigations
have considered the question whether the active principles of ololiuhqui
could find a useful application in medicine. In my opinion, it would be
worthwhile to clarify above all whether the strong narcotic, sedative effect of
certain ololiuhqui constituents, or of chemical modifications of these,
is medicinally useful.
My studies in the field of
hallucinogenic drugs reached a kind of logical conclusion with the
investigations of ololiuhqui. They now formed a circle, one could almost
say a magic circle: the starting point had been the synthesis of lysergic acid
amides, among them the naturally occurring ergot alkaloid ergobasin. This led to
the synthesis of lysergic acid diethylamide, LSD. The hallucinogenic properties
of LSD were the reason why the hallucinogenic magic mushroom teonanácatl
found its way into my laboratory. The work with teonanácatl, from which
psilocybin and psilocin were isolated, proceeded to the investigation of another
Mexican magic drug, ololiuhqui, in which hallucinogenic principles in the
form of lysergic acid amides were again encountered, including ergobasin-with
which the magic circle closed.
In Search of the Magic Plant "Ska María Pastora" in the Mazatec Country
R. Gordon Wasson, with whom I had maintained friendly
relations since the investigations of the Mexican magic mushrooms, invited my
wife and me to take part in an expedition to Mexico in the fall of 1962. The
purpose of the journey was to search for another Mexican magic plant. Wasson had
learned on his travels in the mountains of southern Mexico that the expressed
juice of the leaves of a plant, which were called hojas de la Pastora or
hojas de María Pastora, in Mazatec ska Pastora or ska
María Pastora (leaves of the shepherdess or leaves of Mary the
shepherdess), were used among the Mazatec in medico-religious practices, like
the teonanácatl mushrooms and the ololiuhqui seeds.
The question now was to ascertain from what sort of plant the "leaves of
Mary the shepherdess" derived, and then to identify this plant botanically. We
also hoped, if at all possible, to gather sufficient plant material to conduct a
chemical investigation on the hallucinogenic principles it contained.
Ride through the Sierra Mazateca
On 26 September 1962, my
wife and I accordingly flew to Mexico City, where we met Gordon Wasson. He had
made all the necessary preparations for the expedition, so that in two days we
had already set out on the next leg of the journey to the south. Mrs. Irmgard
Weitlaner Johnson, (widow of Jean B. Johnson, a pioneer of the ethnographic
study of the Mexican magic mushrooms, killed in the Allied landing in North
Africa) had joined us. Her father, Robert J. Weitlaner, had emigrated to Mexico
from Austria and had likewise contributed toward the rediscovery of the mushroom
cult. Mrs. Johnson worked at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City,
as an expert on Indian textiles.
After a two-day journey in a
spacious Land Rover, which took us over the plateau, along the snow-capped
Popocatépetl, passing Puebla, down into the Valley of Orizaba with its
magnificent tropical vegetation, then by ferry across the Popoloapan (Butterfly
River), on through the former Aztec garrison Tuxtepec, we arrived at the
starting point of our expedition, the Mazatec village of Jalapa de Diaz, lying
on a hillside.
There we were in the midst of the environment
and among the people that we would come to know in the succeeding 2 1/2 weeks.
There was an uproar upon our arrival in the marketplace,
center of this village widely dispersed in the jungle. Old and young men, who
had been squatting and standing around in the half-opened bars and shops,
pressed suspiciously yet curiously about our Land Rover; they were mostly
barefoot but all wore a sombrero. Women and girls were nowhere to be
seen. One of the men gave us to understand that we should follow. him. He led us
to the local president, a fat mestizo who had his office in a one-story
house with a corrugated iron roof. Gordon showed him our credentials from the
civil authorities and from the military governor of Oaxaca, which explained that
we had come here to carry out scientific investigations. The president, who
probably could not read at all, was visibly impressed by the large-sized
documents equipped with official seals. He had lodgings assigned to us in a
spacious shed, in which we could place our air mattresses and sleeping bags.
I looked around the region somewhat. The ruins of a large
church from colonial times, which must have once been very beautiful, rose
almost ghostlike in the direction of an ascending slope at the side of the
village square. Now I could also see women looking out of their huts, venturing
to examine the strangers. In their long, white dresses, adorned with red
borders, and with their long braids of blue-black hair, they offered a
picturesque sight.
We were fed by an old Mazatec woman, who
directed a young cook and two helpers. She lived in one of the typical Mazatec
huts. These are simply rectangular structures with thatched gabled roofs and
walls of wooden poles joined together, windowless, the chinks between the wooden
poles offering sufficient opportunity to look out. In the middle of the hut, on
the stamped clay floor, was an elevated, open fireplace, built up out of dried
clay or made of stones. The smoke escaped through large openings in the walls
under the two ends of the roof. Bast mats that lay in a corner or along the
walls served as beds. The huts were shared with the domestic animals, as well as
black swine, turkeys, and chickens. There was roasted chicken to eat, black
beans, and also, in place of bread, tortillas, a type of cornmeal pancake
that is baked on the hot stone slab of the hearth. Beer and tequila, an
Agave liquor, were served.
Next morning our troop
formed for the ride through the Sierra Mazateca. Mules and guides were engaged
from the horsekeeper of the village. Guadelupe, the Mazatec familiar with the
route, took charge of guiding the lead animal. Gordon, Irmgard, my wife, and I
were stationed on our mules in the middle. Teodosio and Pedro, called Chico, two
young fellows who trotted along barefoot beside the two mules laden with our
baggage, brought up the rear.
It took some time to get
accustomed to the hard wooden saddles. Then, however, this mode of locomotion
proved to be the most ideal type of travel that I know of. The mules followed
the leader, single file, at a steady pace. They required no direction at all by
the rider. With surprising dexterity, they sought out the best spots along the
almost impassable, partly rocky, partly marshy paths, which led through thickets
and streams or onto precipitous slopes. Relieved of all travel cares, we could
devote all our attention to the beauty of the landscape and the tropical
vegetation. There were tropical forests with gigantic trees overgrown with
twining plants, then again clearings with banana groves or coffee plantations,
between light stands of trees, flowers at the edge of the path, over which
wondrous butterflies bustled about.... We made our way upstream along the broad
riverbed of Rio Santo Domingo, with brooding heat and steamy air, now steeply
ascending, then again falling. During a short, violent tropical downpour, the
long broad ponchos of oilcloth, with which Gordon had equipped us, proved quite
useful. Our Indian guides had protected themselves from the cloudburst with
gigantic, heart-shaped leaves that they nimbly chopped off at the edge of the
path. Teodosio and Chico gave the impression of great, green hay cricks as they
ran, covered with these leaves, beside their mules.
Shortly
before nightfall we arrived at the first settlement, La Providencia ranch. The
patron, Don Joaquin Garcia, the head of a large family, welcomed us hospitably
and full of dignity. It was impossible to determine how many children, in
addition to the grown-ups and the domestic animals, were present in the large
living room, feebly illuminated by the hearth fire alone.
Gordon and I placed our sleeping bags outdoors under the projecting roof. I
awoke in the morning to find a pig grunting over my face.
After another day's journey on the backs of our worthy mules, we arrived at
Ayautla, a Mazatec settlement spread across a hillside. En route, among the
shrubbery, I had delighted in the blue calyxes of the magic morning glory
Ipomoea violacea, the mother plant of the ololiuhqui seeds. It
grew wild there, whereas among us it is only found in the Garden as an
ornamental plant.
We remained in Ayautla for several days. We
had lodging in the house of Doña Donata Sosa de García. Doña Donata was in
charge of a large family, which included her ailing husband. In addition, she
presided over the coffee cultivation of the region. The collection center for
the freshly picked coffee beans was in an adjacent building. It was a lovely
picture, the young Indian woman and girls returning home from the harvest toward
evening, in their bright garments adorned with colored borders, the coffee sacks
carried on their backs by headbands. Doña Donata also managed a type of grocery
store, in which her husband, Don Eduardo, stood behind the counter.
In the evening by candlelight, Doña Donata, who besides Mazatec also
spoke Spanish, told us about life in the village; one tragedy or another had
already struck nearly every one of the seemingly peaceful huts that lay
surrounded by this paradisiacal scenery. A man who had murdered his wife, and
who now sits in prison for life, had lived in the house next door, which now
stood empty. The husband of a daughter of Doña Donata, after an affair with
another woman, was murdered out of jealousy. The president of Ayautla, a young
bull of a mestizo, to whom we had made our formal visit in the afternoon, never
made the short walk from his hut to his "office" in the village hall (with the
corrugated iron roof) unless accompanied by two heavily armed men. Because he
exacted illegal taxes, he was afraid of being shot to death. Since no higher
authority sees to justice in this remote region, people have recourse to
self-defense of this type.
Thanks to Doña Donata's good
connections, we received the first sample of the sought-after plant, some leaves
of hojas de la Pastora, from an old woman. Since the flowers and roots
were missing, however, this plant material was not suitable for botanical
identification. Our efforts to obtain more precise information about the habitat
of the plant and its use were also fruitless.
The continuation
of our journey from Ayautla was delayed, as we had to wait until our boys could
again bring back the mules that they had taken to pasture on the other side of
Rio Santo Domingo, over the river swollen by intense downpours.
After a two-day ride, on which we had passed the night in the high
mountain village of San Miguel-Huautla, we arrived at Rio Santiago. Here we were
joined by Doña Herlinda Martinez Cid, a teacher from Huautla de Jiménez. She had
ridden over on the invitation of Gordon Wasson, who had known her since his
mushroom expeditions, and was to serve as our Mazatec and Spanish-speaking
interpreter. Moreover, she could help us, through her numerous relatives
scattered in the region, to pave the way to contacts with curanderos and
curanderas who used the hojas de la Pastora in their practice.
Because of our delayed arrival in Rio Santiago, Doña Herlinda, who was
acquainted with the dangers of the region, had been apprehensive about us,
fearing we might have plunged down a rocky path or been attacked by robbers.
Our next stop was in San José Tenango, a settlement lying deep
in a valley, in the midst of tropical vegetation with orange and lemon trees and
banana plantations. Here again was the typical village picture: in the center, a
marketplace with a half-ruined church from the colonial period, with two or
three stands, a general store, and shelters for horses and mules. We found
lodging in a corrugated iron barracks, with the special luxury of a cement
floor, on which we could spread out our sleeping bags.
In the
thick jungle on the mountainside we discovered a spring, whose magnificent fresh
water in a natural rocky basin invited us to bathe. That was an unforgettable
pleasure after days without opportunities to wash properly. In this grotto I saw
a hummingbird for the first time in nature, a blue-green, metallic, iridescent
gem, which whirred over great liana blossoms.
The desired
contact with persons skilled in medicine came about thanks to the kindred
connections of Doña Herlinda, beginning with the curandero Don Sabino. But he
refused, for some reason, to receive us in a consultation and to question the
leaves. From an old curandera, a venerable woman in a strikingly
magnificent Mazatec garment, with the lovely name Natividad Rosa, we received a
whole bundle of flowering specimens of the sought-after plant, but even she
could not be prevailed upon to perform a ceremony with the leaves for us. Her
excuse was that she was too old for the hardship of the magical trip; she could
never cover the long distance to certain places: a spring where the wise women
gather their powers, a lake on which the sparrows sing, and where objects get
their names. Nor would Natividad Rosa tell us where she had gathered the leaves.
They grew in a very, very distant forest valley. Wherever she dug up a plant,
she put a coffee bean in the earth as thanks to the gods.
We
now possessed ample plants with flowers and roots, which were suitable for
botanical identification. It was apparently a representative of the genus
Salvia, a relative of the well-known meadow sage. The plants had blue flowers
crowned with a white dome, which are arranged on a panicle 20 to 30 cm long,
whose stem leaked blue.
Several days later, Natividad Rosa
brought us a whole basket of leaves, for which she was paid fifty pesos. The
business seemed to have been discussed, for two other women brought us further
quantities of leaves. As it was known that the expressed juice of the leaves is
drunk in the ceremony, and this must therefore contain the active principle, the
fresh leaves were crushed on a stone plate, squeezed out in a cloth, the juice
diluted with alcohol as a preservative, and decanted into flasks in order to be
studied later in the laboratory in Basel. I was assisted in this work by an
Indian girl, who was accustomed to dealing with the stone plate, the
metate, on which the Indians since ancient times have ground their corn
by hand.
On the day before the journey was to continue, having
given up all hope of being able to attend a ceremony, we suddenly made another
contact with a curandera, one who was ready " to serve us ." A confidante
of Herlinda's, who had produced this contact, led us after nightfall along a
secret path to the hut of the curandera, lying solitary on the
mountainside above the settlement. No one from the village was to see us or
discover that we were received there. It was obviously considered a betrayal of
sacred customs, worthy of punishment, to allow strangers, whites, to take part
in this. That indeed had also been the real reason why the other healers whom we
asked had refused to admit us to a leaf ceremony. Strange birdcalls from the
darkness accompanied us on the ascent, and the barking of dogs was heard on all
sides. The dogs had detected the strangers. The curandera Consuela
García, a woman of some forty years, barefoot like all Indian women in this
region, timidly admitted us to her hut and immediately closed up the doorway
with a heavy bar. She bid us lie down on the bast mats on the stamped mud floor.
As Consuela spoke only Mazatec, Herlinda translated her instructions into
Spanish for us. The curandera lit a candle on a table covered with some
images of saints, along with a variety of rubbish. Then she began to bustle
about busily, but in silence. All at once we heard peculiar noises and a
rummaging in the room-did the hut harbor some hidden person whose shape and
proportions could not be made out in the candlelight? Visibly disturbed,
Consuela searched the room with the burning candle. It appeared to be merely
rats, however, who were working their mischief. In a bowl the curandera
now kindled copal, an incense-like resin, which soon filled the whole hut
with its aroma. Then the magic potion was ceremoniously prepared. Consuela
inquired which of us wished to drink of it with her. Gordon announced himself.
Since I was suffering from a severe stomach upset at the time, I could not join
in. My wife substituted for me. The curandera laid out six pairs of
leaves for herself. She apportioned the same number to Gordon. Anita received
three pairs. Like the mushrooms, the leaves are always dosed in pairs, a
practice that, of course, has a magical significance. The leaves were crushed
with the metate, then squeezed out through a fine sieve into a cup, and
the metate and the contents of the sieve were rinsed with water. Finally,
the filled cups were incensed over the copal vessel with much ceremony.
Consuela asked Anita and Gordon, before she handed them their cups, whether they
believed in the truth and the holiness of the ceremony. After they answered in
the affirmative and the very bitter-tasting potion was solemnly imbibed, the
candles were extinguished and, lying in darkness on the bast masts, we awaited
the effects.
After some twenty minutes Anita whispered to me
that she saw striking, brightly bordered images. Gordon also perceived the
effect of the drug. The voice of the curandera sounded from the darkness,
half speaking, half singing. Herlinda translated: Did we believe in Christ's
blood and the holiness of the rites? After our "creemos" ("We believe"), the
ceremonial performance continued. The curandera lit the candles, moved
them from the "altar table" onto the floor, sang and spoke prayers or magic
formulas, placed the candles again under the images of the saints-then again
silence and darkness. Thereupon the true consultation began. Consuela asked for
our request. Gordon inquired after the health of his daughter, who immediately
before his departure from New York had to be admitted prematurely to the
hospital in expectation of a baby. He received the comforting information that
mother and child were well. Then again came singing and prayer and manipulations
with the candles on the "altar table" and on the floor, over the smoking basin.
When the ceremony was at an end, the curandera asked us
to rest yet a while longer in prayer on our bast mats. Suddenly a thunderstorm
burst out. Through the cracks of the beam walls, lightning flashed into the
darkness of the hut, accompanied by violent thunderbolts, while a tropical
downpour raged, beating on the roof. Consuela voiced apprehension that we would
not be able to leave her house unseen in the darkness. But the thunderstorm let
up before daybreak, and we went down the mountainside to our corrugated iron
barracks, as noiselessly as possible by the light of flashlights, unnoticed by
the villagers, but dogs again barked from all sides.
Participation in this ceremony was the climax of our expedition. It brought
confirmation that the hojas de la Pastora were used by the Indians for
the same purpose and in the same ceremonial milieu as teonanácatl, the
sacred mushrooms. Now we also had authentic plant material, not only sufficient
for botanical identification, but also for the planned chemical analysis. The
inebriated state that Gordon Wasson and my wife had experienced with the
hojas had been shallow and only of short duration, yet it had exhibited a
distinctly hallucinogenic character.
On the morning after this
eventful night we took leave of San José Tenango. The guide, Guadelupe, and the
two fellows Teodosio and Pedro appeared before our barracks with the mules at
the appointed time. Soon packed up and mounted, our little troop then moved
uphill again, through the fertile landscape glittering in the sunlight from the
night's thunderstorm. Returning by way of Santiago, toward evening we reached
our last stop in Mazatec country, the capital Huautla de Jiménez.
From here on, the return trip to Mexico City was made by automobile. With
a final supper in the Posada Rosaura, at the time the only inn in Huautla, we
took leave of our Indian guides and of the worthy mules that had carried us so
surefootedly and in such a pleasant way through the Sierra Mazatec. The Indians
were paid of, and Teodosio, who also accepted payment for his chief in Jalapa de
Diaz (where the animals were to be returned afterward), gave a receipt with his
thumbprint colored by a ballpoint pen. We took up quarters in Dona Herlinda's
house.
A day later we made our formal visit to the
curandera María Sabina, a woman made famous by the Wassons' publications.
It had been in her hut that Gordon Wasson became the first white man to taste of
the sacred mushrooms, in the course of a nocturnal ceremony in the summer of
1955. Gordon and María Sabina greeted each other cordially, as old friends. The
curandera lived out of the way, on the mountainside above Huautla. The
house in which the historic session with Gordon Wasson had taken place had been
burned, presumably by angered residents or an envious colleague, because she had
divulged the secret of teonanácatl to strangers. In the new hut in which
we found ourselves, an incredible disorder prevailed, as had probably also
prevailed in the old hut, in which half-naked children, hens, and pigs bustled
about. The old curandera had an intelligent face, exceptionally
changeable in expression. She was obviously impressed when it was explained that
we had managed to confine the spirit of the mushrooms in pills, and she at once
declared herself ready to " serve us" with these, that is, to grant us a
consultation. It was agreed that this should take place the coming night in the
house of Doña Herlinda.
In the course of the day I took a
stroll through Huautla de Jiménez, which led along a main street on the
mountainside. Then I accompanied Gordon on his visit to the Instituto Nacional
Indigenista. This governmental organization had the duty of studying and helping
to solve the problems of the indigenous population, that is, the Indians. Its
leader told us of the difficulties that the "coffee policy" had caused in the
area at that time. The president of Huautla, in collaboration with the Instituto
Nacional Indigenista had tried to eliminate middlemen in order to shape the
coffee prices favorably for the producing Indians. His body was found,
mutilated, the previous June.
Our stroll also took us past the
cathedral, from which Gregorian chants resounded. Old Father Aragon, whom Gordon
knew well from his earlier stays, invited us into the vestry for a glass of
tequila.
A Mushroom Ceremony
As we returned home to Herlinda's
house toward evening, María Sabina had already arrived there with a large
company, her two lovely daughters, Apolonia and Aurora (two prospective
curanderas), and a niece, all of whom brought children along with them.
Whenever her child began to cry, Apolonia would offer her breast to it. The old
curandero Don Aurelio also appeared, a mighty man, one-eyed, in a
black-and-white patterned serape (cloak). Cacao and sweet pastry were served on
the veranda. I was reminded of the report from an ancient chronicle which
described how chocolatl was drunk before the ingestion of
teonanácatl.
After the fall of darkness, we all
proceeded into the room in which the ceremony would take place. It was then
locked up-that is, the door was obstructed with the only bed available. Only an
emergency exit into the back garden remained unlatched for absolute necessity.
It was nearly midnight when the ceremony began. Until that time the whole party
lay, in darkness sleeping or awaiting the night's events, on the bast mats
spread on the floor. María Sabina threw a piece of copal on the embers of
a brazier from time to time, whereby the stuffy air in the crowded room became
somewhat bearable. I had explained to the curandera through Herlinda, who
was again with the party as interpreter, that one pill contained the spirit of
two pairs of mushrooms. (The pills contained 5.0 mg synthetic psilocybin
apiece.)
When all was ready, María Sabina apportioned the
pills in pairs among the grown-ups present. After solemn smoking, she herself
took two pairs (corresponding to 20 mg psilocybin). She gave the same dose to
Don Aurelio and her daughter Apolonia, who would also serve as curandera.
Aurora received one pair, as did Gordon, while my wife and Irmgard got only one
pill each.
One of the children, a girl of about ten, under the
guidance of María Sabina, had prepared for me the juice of five pairs of fresh
leaves of hojas de la Pastora. I wanted to experience this drug that I
had been unable to try in San José Tenango. The potion was said to be especially
active when prepared by an innocent child. The cup with the expressed juice was
likewise incensed and conjured by María Sabina and Don Aurelio, before it was
delivered to me.
All of these preparations and the following
ceremony progressed in much the same way as the consultation with the
curandera Consuela Garcia in San José Tenango.
After
the drug was apportioned and the candle on the "altar" was extinguished, we
awaited the effects in the darkness.
Before a half hour had
elapsed, the curandera murmured something; her daughter and Don Aurelio
also became restless. Herlinda translated and explained to us what was wrong.
María Sabina had said that the pills lacked the spirit of the mushrooms. I
discussed the situation with Gordon, who lay beside me. For us it was clear that
absorption of the active principle from the pills, which must first dissolve in
the stomach, occurs more slowly than from the mushrooms, in which some of the
active principle already becomes absorbed through the mucous membranes during
chewing. But how could we give a scientific explanation under such conditions?
Rather than try to explain, we decided to act. We distributed more pills. Both
curanderas and the curandero each received another pair. They had now
each taken a total dosage of 30 mg psilocybin.
After about
another quarter of an hour, the spirit of the pills did begin to yield its
effects, which lasted until the crack of dawn. The daughters, and Don Aurelio
with his deep bass voice, fervently answered the prayers and singing of the
curandera. Blissful, yearning moans of Apolonia and Aurora, between
singing and prayer, gave the impression that the religious experience of the
young women in the drug inebriation was combined with sensual-sexual feelings.
In the middle of the ceremony María Sabina asked for our
request. Gordon inquired again after the health of his daughter and grandchild.
He received the same good information as from the curandera Consuela.
Mother and child were in fact well when he returned home to New York. Obviously,
however, this still represents no proof of the prophetic abilities of both
curanderas.
Evidently as an effect of the hojas,
I found myself for some time in a state of mental sensitivity and intense
experience, which, however, was not accompanied by hallucinations. Anita,
Irmgard, and Gordon experienced a euphoric condition of inebriation that was
influenced by the strange, mystical atmosphere. My wife was impressed by the
vision of very distinct strange line patterns.
She was
astonished and perplexed, later, on discovering precisely the same images in the
rich ornamentation over the altar in an old church near Puebla. That was on the
return trip to Mexico City, when we visited churches from colonial times. These
admirable churches offer great cultural and historical interest because the
Indian artists and workmen who assisted in their construction smuggled in
elements of Indian style. Klaus Thomas, in his book Die kunstlich gesteuerte
Seele [The artificially steered mind] (Ferdinand Enke Verlag, Stuttgart,
1970), writes about the possible influence of visions from psilocybin
inebriation on Meso-American Indian art: "Surely a cultural-historical
comparison of the old and new creations of Indian art . . . must convince the
unbiased spectator of the harmony with the images, forms and colors of a
psilocybin inebriation." The Mexican character of the visions seen in my first
experience with dried Psilocybe mexicana mushrooms and the drawing of Li Gelpke
after a psilocybin inebriation could also point to such an association.
As we took leave of María Sabina and her clan at the crack of
dawn, the curandera said that the pills had the same power as the
mushrooms, that there was no difference. This was a confirmation from the most
competent authority, that the synthetic psilocybin is identical with the natural
product. As a parting gift I let María Sabina have a vial of psilocybin pills.
She radiantly explained to our interpreter Herlinda that she could now give
consultations even in the season when no mushrooms grow.
How
should we judge the conduct of María Sabina, the fact that she allowed
strangers, white people, access to the secret ceremony, and let them try the
sacred mushroom?
To her credit it can be said that she had
thereby opened the door to the exploration of the Mexican mushroom cult in its
present form, and to the scientific, botanical, and chemical investigation of
the sacred mushrooms. Valuable active substances, psilocybin and psilocin,
resulted. Without this assistance, the ancient knowledge and experience that was
concealed in these secret practices would possibly, even probably, have
disappeared without a trace, without having borne fruit, in the advancement of
Western civilization.
From another standpoint, the conduct of
this curandera can be regarded as a profanation of a sacred custom-even
as a betrayal. Some of her countrymen were of this opinion, which was expressed
in acts of revenge, including the burning of her house.
The
profanation of the mushroom cult did not stop with the scientific
investigations. The publication about the magic mushrooms unleashed an invasion
of hippies and drug seekers into the Mazatec country, many of whom behaved
badly, some even criminally. Another undesirable consequence was the beginning
of true tourism in Huautla de Jiménez, whereby the originality of the place was
eradicated.
Such statements and considerations are, for the
most part, the concern of ethnographical research. Wherever researchers and
scientists trace and elucidate the remains of ancient customs that are becoming
rarer, their primitiveness is lost. This loss is only more or less
counterbalanced when the outcome of the research represents a lasting cultural
gain.
From Huautla de Jiménez we proceeded first to Teotitlán,
in a breakneck truck ride along a half-paved road, and from there went on a
comfortable car trip back to Mexico City, the starting point of our expedition.
I had lost several kilograms in body weight, but was overwhelmingly compensated
in enchanting experiences.
The herbarium samples of hojas
de la Pastora, which we had brought with us, were subjected to botanical
identification by Carl Epling and Carlos D. Jativa at the Botanical Institute of
Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They found that this plant was a
hitherto undescribed species of Salvia, which was named Salvia
divinorum by these authors.
The chemical investigation
of the juice of the magic sage in the laboratory in Basel was unsuccessful. The
psychoactive principle of this drug seems to be a rather unstable substance,
since the juice prepared in Mexico and preserved with alcohol proved in
self-experiments to be no longer active. Where the chemical nature of the active
principle is concerned, the problem of the magic plant ska María Pastora
still awaits solution.
So far in this book I have mainly described my scientific work
and matters relating to my professional activity. But this work, by its very
nature, had repercussions on my own life and personality, not least because it
brought me into contact with interesting and important contemporaries. I have
already mentioned some of them-Timothy Leary, Rudolf Gelpke, Gordon Wasson. Now,
in the pages that follow, I would like to emerge from the natural scientist's
reserve, in order to portray encounters which were personally meaningful to me
and which helped me solve questions posed by the substances I had discovered.
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