The discovery of the shamanic use of psilocybin amongst contemporary Mexican Indians was indicative of a sacred tradition that, although almost buried, had its roots firmly set in the glories of past civilisations. In particular, the great Aztec empire had been familiar with the mushroom and the various documents written by Spanish Conquistadors almost 500 years ago which mention mushroom use by the Aztecs, can be re-analysed according to what we now know of the actual entheogenic experience. Psilocybin emerges as no mere incidental feature of the natural world restricted to secretive and isolated use, rather its ritual role as a potent sacrament was overtly established within the very fabric of ancient Mesoamerican society. Until, that is, it came under the merciless gaze of the Catholic Spanish conquistadors.
The Aztecs were an immensely powerful civilisation whose cultural achievements are ranked by some in the same league as those of ancient Egypt and Babylonia. Religious ideology permeated all aspects of Aztec society, driving them to conquest and expansion and giving rise to their infamous bloody human sacrifices on a scale that cannot fail to shock.
Located in the Central Valley of Mexico, the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan (now Mexico city) reached it's peak of power and magnificence immediately prior to the arrival of Hernán Cortés and his gold rushing Spanish army in 1519. With the advent of the Spanish conquest, all aspects of Aztec religion including the use of the psilocybin mushroom were systematically wiped out, being condemned as devilish heresy.
To the invading Spanish clergy, the Aztec's claim that certain mushrooms (some two dozen psilocybin-containing species are indigenous to Mexico) were teonanacatl, or 'God's flesh', was to admit to some blasphemous unholy communion. In the Roman Catholicism touted by the marauding conquistadors, communion with the divine was not based upon personally revealed knowledge or gnosis. Absolutely not. Rather it was the case that 'inside' information concerning the divine was considered acceptable only if one was connected to a formally established religious hierarchy within which accepted, without question, its most cherished doctrines.
In other words, the organised drive of Catholicism which descended upon the Aztec nation derived its power structure through force-feeding religious dogma to its adherents. To openly question such dogma, or to criticise it, could and did mean death 500 years ago. One is therefore hard pushed to conceive of a more heretical act than that of the Aztecs consumption of supposedly divine fungi. The Catholic Spanish clergy, eager to spread their faith, would have been utterly appalled at the concept of eating some foul and unsightly fungus in order to commune with the Gods. As we shall see, this negative reaction was clearly reflected in the lively written Spanish accounts of Aztec customs.
The intense disgust generated within the orthodox religious minds of the Spanish priests echoes the hatred meted out to the women accused of being satanic witches in medieval Europe as they too were found guilty of possessing heretical botanical knowledge. Whereas the Aztecs employed psilocybin mushrooms in order to induce numinous states of awareness, the witches of the Middle Ages achieved similar states using plants like henbane and belladonna. Historically it would seem that all such occult practices with plants and fungi unfortunately generate the same type of response in the male psyche of the dominator culture eager to perpetuate its own ideology, namely, unremitting persecution. The Aztec religion succumbed to just such a fate.
The Aztec's use of psilocybin is clearly revealed in many of the records made by Spanish chroniclers at the time of the conquest who diligently recorded their observations and began translating Aztec historical documents. For instance, during the coronation of Montezuma the second in 1502, we learn that teonanacatl was consumed during the celebrations. Many war captives were slaughtered to honour the new king, their hearts torn out and offered to the gods. After the grisly sacrifices, the celebrants were bathed in blood and then given raw psilocybin mushrooms to eat.
Perhaps it was this kind of terrible juxtaposition that helped the finger of heresy point toward the mushroom. After all, a mass bloody sacrifice followed by some strange ritual fungal inebriation is a hellish concept to the West, yet it was bound up to the Aztec's desire to supplant their pantheon of gods. Blood spilled in the name of religion whether through war or sacrifice is, unfortunately, a kind of pious tradition that highlights the immense power of the religious impulse over the minds and souls of men. The gods of the Aztecs were deemed real, they had to be worshipped and placated.
At any rate, the Aztecs utilised psilocybin in their religious rituals as well as engaging in various other rites that would have appeared horrendously alien to the invading Spanish who were unlikely to react in the manner of refined social anthropologists. The excessive sacrifices together with the deliberate intoxication with mushrooms must have sorely confused the Spanish invaders. For whilst they were at once amazed at the glorious wealth and regality of the Aztec cities that they encountered, they were less enthusiastic about the underlying psychological forces which had lead to the physical magnificence set in stone.
Further accounts from the occupying Spanish clergy reveal the Aztec's use of psilocybin. Diego Duran, a sixteenth century Dominican friar translating a Nahuatl (the language spoken by the Aztecs) document, writes of the coronation of Tizoc in 1481:
"And all the lords and grandees of the provinces rose, and to solemnise further the festivities, they all ate of some woodland mushrooms, which they say make you lose your senses, and thus they sallied forth all primed for the dance."
On the aforementioned coronation of Montezuma, Duran tells us:
"The sacrifice finished and the steps of the temple and patio bathed in human blood, they all went to eat raw mushrooms; on which food they went out of their minds, worse than if they had drunk much wine; so drunk and senseless were they that many killed themselves by their own hand, and, with the force of those mushrooms, they would see visions and have revelations of the future, the Devil speaking to them in that drunken state."
Because of his own personal experiences with psilocybin, and in the light of his historical research which clearly shows the Aztec's reverence for teonanacatl, our mushroom expert Wasson came to the conclusion that Duran was imposing his own views on the matter in order to further abominise the mushroom practice. Which is to say that to identify the Devil at the heart of the psilocybin experience was an interpretation peculiar to the psyche of this 16th century friar. With his particular theological training he would have had no choice but to sniff the sulphurous traces of the Devil in the Aztec's unusual entheogenic rites. Duran's reading of psilocybin-inspired suicides from the Nahuatl texts is therefore more than likely exaggerated translation than actual fact.
Another friar, the Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagun, also left us an account of native mushroom use. In the Florentine Codex he writes of a merchant's celebration:
"At the very first, mushrooms had been served. They ate them at a time when, they said, the shell trumpets were blown. They ate no more food; they only drank chocolate during the night. And they ate the mushrooms with honey. When the mushrooms took effect on them, then they danced, then they wept. But some while still in command of their senses entered and sat there by the house on their seats; they danced no more, but only sat there nodding."
On the face of it, this would seem to be a less biased portrayal of psilocybin use, though in the following report, also by Sahagun, he soon slides into the familiar tabloid-like sensationalist mode whilst describing mushroom use:
"It is called teonanacatl. It grows on the plains, in the grass. The head is small and round, the stem long and slender. It is bitter and burns; it burns the throat. It makes one besotted; it deranges one, troubles one.... He who eats of them sees many things which make him afraid, or make him laugh. He flees, hangs himself, hurls himself from a cliff, cries out, takes fright."
Such scare stories are parodied by the rumours that surrounded LSD use in the sixties. People were supposedly hurling themselves from high-rise apartments and foolishly attempting to stop motorway traffic by the power of thought alone. In actuality, of all the millions of doses of LSD taken in the 1960's there were only a handful of deaths through misadventure resulting from LSD's effects. It appears that any psychedelic substance with a powerful mystique seems to instil fear in those who are unfamiliar with its effects and who are easily threatened by the unknown. Moreover, such fear often precedes persecution and the spreading of inaccurate information, which is why it is so important to have an unconditional flow of informed, hysteria-free knowledge regarding the psychological action of visionary plants and fungi. One hopes then, that we live in more enlightened times. The fact remains however, that the Aztec's use of psychoactive agents, which included the use of other entheogenic agents like the morning glory plant (whose seeds contain LSD-related compounds), proved to be so abhorrent to the Spanish that they sought to drive the all such practices to extinction.
That they were successful in forcibly burying the mushroom is made clear by the academic events in the early part of this century, since it was erroneously believed that there never were any intoxicating mushrooms to be found in Mexico in the first place. It was assumed by scholars that a confusion had been made by the obviously dim-witted Spanish historians, and that dried peyote cactus buttons (containing the visionary alkaloid mescaline) were the legendary teonanacatl. At the time of this botanical conjecture, or blunder as it was, in 1915, it went completely unchallenged by the academic fraternity and remained unchallenged until a species of hallucinogenic mushroom still being used in Huautla was identified in 1938.
Perhaps then, we should conclude that mycophobia is not merely a cultural phenomenon but a remorseless genetic trait, an idea Wasson would certainly have appreciated since he was to come across much in the way of scholarly disregard as to the religious role of psilocybin within ancient Mesoamerican culture. It is only since Wasson's work has come to be acknowledged, that historians have begun to realise that psychedelic agents like the Mexican mushroom have the power to move people, that their tremendous psychological impact was significant in shaping the belief systems of those cultures who used them. The point that Wasson was continually at pains to make was that one should never underestimate the cultural and historical role of entheogenic flora, although, of course, he came to this conclusion by way of his own personal psychedelic experiences. Alas, such personal insights are not shared by most other Mesoamerican scholars.
One of the most remarkable pieces of evidence testifying to the exalted role conferred upon the psilocybin mushroom by the Aztecs, is in the form of an early sixteenth century statue of the god Xochipilli or 'The Prince of Flowers'. The significance of this magnificent piece of art was first recognised by Wasson and thereafter the real message that it conveyed became glaringly apparent.
The statue represents a cross-legged male figure - the god Xochipilli - caught up in an ecstatic trance. There can be no mistake. The very essence of ecstasy has been captured in stone. The arms, legs, and base of this stone-carved ecstatic prince carry stylised engravings of flowers, and on each of the four sides of the base of the statue are carved mushroom motifs. These mushroom motifs also appear upon the subject so enraptured.
Until these carvings came under the attentive gaze of Wasson, they had never been botanically identified. Wasson realised that the stylised flowers were the key to deciphering the true meaning of the Aztec statue and, moreover, the very meaning of 'flowers' in classic Aztec literature. As soon as Wasson intimated the statue's full raison d'être, he immediately contacted noted ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes at Harvard's Botanical Museum, who was the obvious man to consult regarding botanical analysis of the motifs.
Schultes was subsequently confident enough to identify the carved 'flowers' as; Nicotiana tabacum - the common tobacco plant considered sacred by almost all native American cultures; Turbina corymbosa - a species of morning glory whose hallucinogenic seeds are known to have been employed by Mesoamerican cultures; and another identified as Heimia salicifolia - also a psychoactive species. Wasson noted that these species were representative of the Aztec's most revered plants, hence there were no depictions of less esteemed plants such as were employed by the Aztecs to make pulque or maize beer.
Wasson believed that previous ignorance of the statue's true nature reflected the aforementioned widespread failing of historians to acknowledge the important role that psilocybin mushrooms and other sacred flora played in Mesoamerican history. He writes:
"Our statue of Xochipilli serves us as a touchstone, as a cultural Rosetta Stone, bypassing the friars encumbered with their theological preconceptions, speaking to us directly with the voice of the pre-Conquest Aztecs."
It appears then, that the Spanish clergy were ultimately unsuccessful in silencing the claims made by their subdued and conquered subjects; messages in stone speak louder than words and provide rock-hard testimony to the Aztec's sacred links to the natural environment, with its varied potent botanical offspring. What exactly the Aztecs experienced through psilocybin remains debatable, although we can be sure that their psychedelic visions were vivid and convincing enough for them to regard the mushroom as being a link to the divine realm, no less than the appearance of God's flesh upon the Earth.
Wasson also went on to study pre-Conquest Aztec poetry written in the native Nahuatl language. When this poetry first became accessible to the West, it had been noted that 'flowers' were referred to often. Peculiarly often in fact. Moreover, the oft mentioned 'flowers' were seldom, if ever, distinguished from one another. Like the statue of Xochipilli, Wasson realised that the 'flowers' referred to visionary plants, most notably the psilocybin mushroom.
For instance, the poetry speaks of 'the flowers that inebriate', 'the joyous flowers', 'the flowers without roots', 'the precious flowers', and so on. Careful study shows that Nahuatl poetry is teeming with such embellished references to 'flowers'. This makes sense only if we accept that the Aztecs worshipped the mushroom and other entheogenic plants because of their transcendental psychological effects and thence set their praises to poetry. As in the sculpting of the 'Prince of Flowers', the Aztec poets who wrote of 'flowers' were producing their art from direct experience, their works channelling their deific respect.
As a final testimony to the Aztec's use of psilocybin, mushroom motifs are also to be found in pre-Conquest codices (the existing pictorial records of the Aztecs themselves) in particular within the pages of the Vienna Codex, an historical document rich in pictographic information on the mythological Origin of Things. One page of this Codex depicts the famous Mesoamerican god Quetzalcoatl being tutored in the use of mushrooms. There is no ambiguity in the depictions - an entire page clearly portrays ritual mushroom use.
Prior to the Aztec's rise to dominance and before the time of the Toltecs reign previous to them, the premier ritual centre of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica was the mighty city of Teotihuacan located in the north-eastern Valley of Mexico, near Mexico city. Dating from 150 BC. to A.D.750, little is known about the Teotihuacans although Aztec legends equate this city with the birthplace of their deities. Its very name was given by the Aztecs who had discovered it 600 years after its mysterious collapse and means 'Place of the Gods' in Nahuatl.
Due to the immense scale of Teotihuacan's religious architecture which includes the spectacular Pyramids of the Sun and Moon and highly sophisticated wall paintings rife with ornate serpent motifs, it can be reasonably assumed that it was the centre of an important religious cult. The overt presence of serpent motifs upon the architecture is a strong indication of religious worship since the pantheon of almost all Mesoamerican cultures include mythical serpentine entities, such as the feathered serpent god Quetzalcoatl. Elaborately stylised serpents were used both to represent gods and to symbolise divine power penetrating the mundane world. Their fearsome presence on and around temples signified that the temple was a sacred place to be guarded from profane intrusion.
Of most concern here are the style and content of the numerous mural paintings which adorn most of Teotihuacan's temples and shrines. In these murals we once more find depictions of various flowers, one of which is the morning glory (either Turbina corymbosa or Ipomoea violacea). As stated, the seeds of this plant species contain LSD-related compounds known to have been used by the Aztecs for religious communion. It is therefore reasonable to assume that the temple-goers at Teotihuacan knew of, and thus utilised, the psychedelic effect of the morning glory.
Whether mushrooms are depicted in the temple murals is a somewhat contentious issue. Whilst Wasson affirmed this and pointed out what he considered to be mushroom symbols, these same motifs have been identified by other Mesoamerican scholars as representing the water-lilly. Although various related African species of water-lilly are thought to be psychoactive, it has not been established whether the New World variety are equally as potent. Either way, Wasson conjectured that the various temples of Teotihuacan, decorated as they are with depictions of psychedelic plants (the morning glory at least), were sacred sites where the ritual ingestion of entheogens took place.
Such an historical concept in which indigenous visionary agents are consumed ritually in order to induce theophany and religious solidarity should come as no surprise. In ancient Greece the classic Eleusinian Mystery cult echoes the inferred scenario occurring at Teotihuacan. The mystery rites which took place each year at Eleusis near Athens, centred around the drinking of some secret potion that granted a numinous vision to initiates, the entire sacred ceremony taking place within the guarded confines of a hallowed temple.
Recent theories have proposed that this Eleusinian drink was made from ergotised barley which would mean that it contained entheogenic substances since ergot, a tiny plant fungus which grows on wheat and barley, contains a number of LSD-related compounds. Though this psychedelic scenario has not been confirmed and remains merely an engaging hypothesis (ergot is also potentially toxic), the point is that the potion was almost certain to have contained some form of entheogenic alkaloid with the capacity to engender the type of mystical experience attested to in Greek historical literature. Wasson thus assumed that Teotihuacan was a Mesoamerican equivalent to Eleusis, that is, that both were sacred places where visionary agents were administered in a ritual context.
Clearly the morning glory plant was utilised for its psychoactive effect by the Teotihuacans (assuming of course that they did not just like the look of it) as the various murals testify, and it would follow that psilocybin mushrooms would also have been ingested had their properties been known at the time.
Claims which infer that psychoactive plants and fungi played a major role in ancient religion might be considered to belittle religion in some way, as though one were reducing everything to 'damnable drugs'. Nothing is further from the truth. Far from reducing the religion, the religion becomes firmly entwined with the unequivocal numinous effects of vision-inducing fungi and plant species. That is the strength and force of such species. They cannot fail but have a dramatic impact. Anyone like Wasson who has made the sacred connection within their psyche through the action of natural psychedelics knows of their profoundly religious/spiritual impact.
Ultimately one comes to suspect, like Wasson, that the very historical source of Homo sapiens' religious impulse lies in our ancestor's primeval encounters with raw entheogenic species like the psilocybin mushroom which are effective without the need for elaborate preparation. This scenario does not lessen religion, it empowers it, giving it an unstoppable impetus created through the effect of visionary alkaloids in opening up the boundless capacities of the human mind. God becomes connected to a level or state of consciousness, an inwardly felt presence mysteriously welling up from the depths of the psyche and not from some abstract religious dogma. However, religious dogma might well allude to the experience, and indeed testify to the reality of entheogen-induced theophany. Yet, once a detailed knowledge of the plant or fungus in question is lost in the hazy mists of time, then any lingering memory of it's original entheogenic power will be no more than words, an echo of a once living mystery.
The greatest reason to embrace an entheogenic fungus or plant-orientated explanation for the rise of the religious impulse however is that it is couched in wholly naturalistic terms, therefore lending itself to scientific study. If a man claims to have had a life-changing theophany then that is one thing. But if he bears in his hand the very method whereby he attained such an experience then you are obliged, if you wish to determine the man's claims, to explore and verify the means. In more ways than one, psychedelic plants and fungi must be taken seriously in their role in the development of religious ideology. As stated, their historical influence can never be overestimated.
Psilocybin mushroom use has also been associated with the spectacular Mayan civilisation of Mesoamerica, whose Classic period held sway from 250 to 900 AD.. At the turn of this century Guatemalan 'mushroom stones' came to the attention of archaeologists. These Mayan relics, of which hundreds have been found, some dating as far back as 1000 BC., were initially considered to be phallic representations though the current consensus is that the mushroom stones reflect a Mayan religious mushroom cult.
To bolster support for this theory, it has been noted that some of the stone mushrooms are carved emerging from human figures with trance-like facial expressions. Others are linked to kneeling female figures at a metate, a kind of work surface upon which plant items are crushed. When Wasson first explored mushroom use in Huautla in the 1950's, metates were still sometimes used in order to grind mushrooms so that an entheogenic infusion could be made. Still other of the mushroom stones carry 'toad' effigies at their base, and this creature has always been mysteriously linked with psychoactive fungi the world over, perhaps because of knowledge that certain toads exude hallucinogenic alkaloids from their skin glands (incidentally, this odd 'toady' fact might also account for the fairy story The Frog Prince since magical events happen after a frog has been 'kissed').
Is there any other evidence that the Maya employed psilocybin mushrooms in their religion? A look at Mayan codices might help on this matter, yet our not-so-delightful conquering Spanish priests have hindered such study due to their blundering haste in burning everything that stood in their theological way, including virtually all Mayan scriptures. As an example, consider the fact that in 1562, one Diego de Landa, a hardened Spanish priest of some frightening zeal, seized thousands of Mayan 'idols' and books, burning all and sundry as though it were worthless. Among the treasures destroyed were 27 roles and signs of hieroglyphics, invaluable sources of knowledge about the Mayan civilisation. Landa commented:
" We found among them a number of books written in these characters and as they contained nothing in which there were not to be found superstitions and devilish lies, we burned them all, which they regretted to an amazing degree and caused them great affliction."
Such a foolish and insensitive act has left the world with only a handful of Mayan codices on which to assess Mayan customs and beliefs. Within two of these remaining works, the Popul Vuh and the Annals of Cakchiquels, are references to psychoactive fungi, but there is no indication as to the extent of their role within Mayan belief systems. In the Books of Chilam Balam there is mention of trance-like states, though no mention of hallucinogenic plants. Again, in many Mayan relief carvings, which seem to possess a psychedelic air about them, are found scenes depicting visionary ecstasy though plants are not explicitly shown. Some scholars have therefore rejected the notion that the Maya employed natural entheogenic agents in their religious rituals (despite the existence of the many mushroom stones) and have opted instead for the alternative view that the Maya, unlike the martial psilocybin-using Aztecs who were to follow, were of a radically different nature and temperament. However, recently discovered Mayan mural paintings have depicted fearsome looking battle scenes so that it is not absolutely certain that these two cultures were so different.
It is worth looking more closely at the actual similarity in religious belief between the Maya and Aztecs, as it demonstrates a common historical thread connecting the two cultures. Both peoples divided the cosmos into upper worlds and lower worlds with their respective gods. Both believed in the cyclical destruction and regeneration of the Earth, and both followed a ritual 260 day calendar. Bearing in mind these cultural similarities, it has been reasonably suggested that the Maya also utilised the mushroom as well as other psychedelic agents and that this practice influenced the nature of ancient Mesoamerican cosmology.
It has also recently come to light, as many Mayan vases and pieces of pottery attest, that the classical Mayan elite used enemas. The objects which depict scenes of enema use date from the first millennium AD.. The daunting practice of administering enemas has been well documented in South American native peoples. In particular, it has been established that the Incas introduced hallucinogenic infusions into the body via enema, using bulbed syringes made from local rubber sap. Apparently, the use of an enema to introduce psychoactive compounds into the body is almost as effective with regard to speed of action as is the method of intravenous injection. It's effectiveness with hallucinogens occurs because the colon is the receptive site of the enema and this is where absorption by the bloodstream occurs. A number of scholars have therefore claimed that hallucinogenic brews were involved in these Mayan enema rites and thus psilocybin might well have been employed in this manner.
We should also be aware that much Mayan artwork is given over to portrayals of 'vision serpents' manifesting themselves before entranced members of the Mayan nobility. As I stated earlier, to the Mayan mind serpents represented the entry of divine forces into normal reality, and to depict fantastically decorated serpents hovering above an enraptured individual signified a communion with the gods. Such individuals are often shown holding a special receptacle. This object is believed to either hold blood from a bloodletting rite or an hallucinogenic brew, both alternatives offering an effective avenue for attaining a desired visionary state of consciousness.
Taking into account all of this data, particularly the hundreds of elaborately carved mushroom stones so far uncovered, many historians are compelled to accept that the Maya utilised entheogenic flora including psilocybin mushrooms, and that the visionary realms made accessible by these plants and fungi influenced the development of the Mayan cosmological and religious outlook on reality.
Psilocybin mushroom use has also been inferred in prehispanic Colombia due to the discovery of 100's of beautiful gold objects belonging to the Sinú culture, dated circa 1200 AD. These are decorative anthropomorphic works of art which characteristically carry two bell-shaped forms atop the head and were originally referred to by historians as 'telephone-bell gods'. Some of these bell-shaped forms are tipped with a small peak whilst others are soldered onto the main body of the anthropomorphic figure by a thin 'stem'. Harvard's ethnobotanical expert R.E.Schultes has therefore suggested that the bell shapes are representations of the psilocybin mushroom, which would seem reasonable since several species of psilocybin mushroom are known to flourish in Colombia, some of which possess thin stems and whose caps are also topped with a small peaked tip or umbo.
It is also worth noting that these mushroom objects are often adorned with toad effigies as is the case with many of the Mayan mushroom stones. Schultes sees this as further evidence that these objects were made in veneration of entheogenic agents, since, as you will recall, certain toads, including South American species, excrete hallucinogenic substances from their skin. The evidence is overwhelming then that the historical use of psilocybin fungi and other entheogens extended well beyond Mexico and Guatemala, and that wherever they were employed they were deified and incorporated into works of art.
Viewed in the historical light of the Aztec and the Mayan empires, and to a lesser extent in prehispanic Colombian culture, the psilocybin mushroom thus emerges as the conductor of a sacred legacy. These once powerful native peoples knew its worth as an entheogen; a naturally occurring device for communicating with the spiritual domain. This is the botanical Holy Grail that Wasson had long quested for and eventually found half-buried in a remote Mexican village. An unlikely Grail knight, he nonetheless recovered the power of the psilocybin mushroom from more than 400 years of subjugation and presented it to the modern world. Once unleashed, the psilocybin mushroom helped initiate a tremendous cultural change, only to fade once more into a period of obscurity. Before its departure however, psilocybin had inched its way into the very heart of the West's academic establishment leaving a profound impact upon all who came its way. We now return to the wake set by Wasson's fortuitous discovery.