María Sabina: Saint Mother of the Sacred Mushrooms

MARIA SABINA

Almost forty years have passed since the eminent ethnomycologist R. Gordon Wasson stumbled into the tiny Oaxacan village of Huautla de Jiménez in search of teonanácatl, the magic mushroom of Mesoamerican folklore. His lifetime of studying mushrooms and current three year quest in the foothills of Oaxaca came to an end at the doorway of a small earthen hut with crumbling mud walls and a sunken thatched roof. This hut was the life-long home of Doña María Sabina, the most renowned curandera in all of history.

According to anthropologist Joan Halifax (1979), "For many decades she had practiced her art with the hallucinogenic mushrooms, and many hundreds of sick and suffering people came to her wretched hut to ingest the sacrament as she chants through the night in the darkness before her alter."

Being a kind soul, Doña María welcomed Wasson into her hut and shared the secrets of the sacred mushroom. How could she know that this small, innocent gesture of generosity and kindness would radically change her life and the course of history forever. Despite Wasson's attempts to keep Doña María's identity a secret, the story of the Mazatec witch and her mushrooms of wonder spread throughout the west like wildfire--from the halls of Harvard to the back-beat streets of big town America (when R. Gordon Wasson first wrote of María Sabina and her Veladas in Life magazine (13 May 1957), he referred to her as Eva Mendez, a pseudonym intended to protect her from scalawags and thrill-seekers who might disturb or disrupt her life and those around her).

Wasson's story inevitably piqued the interest of many people. Hoping the mushroom could be a powerful tool in chemical warfare, the CIA sent an undercover agent to Huautla de Jiménez to collect specimens (Marks, 1979). Again, Doña María shared her secret. What else could she do? The mushroom had shown her that the Westerners would never give her peace. Reluctantly she gave in, but with each desecration of the sacred mushrooms she could feel her curing powers fading.

She knew the Westerners would be coming by the dozens (doctors, scientists, thrill-seekers, spiritual pilgrims)all looking for truth, salvation, the curing magic, or even the face of God. Resigned to her fates, Doña María patiently accepted each weary searcher into her home and performed the velada, the all-night vigil, for them. Each time she gave the visitors what they were looking for. Each time she gave away a bit of herself.

Now all that's left of Doña María are memories, memories of the humble woman who inspired the lives of Tim Leary, Ralph Metzner, Andrew Weil, Jonathan Ott, and countless others. Beyond her memory only the mushrooms remain, the tiny magic toadstools Doña María spent her life mastering. Now that she's gone, the only way to find her is through them, through the sacred ceremonies of Mazatec wizards and healers.

Can you make out her face, dark and chiseled with age? Can you hear her songs and chants cutting through the still blackness of night? Her spirit is out there, caught in an endless rainbow spiral of wisdom and beauty. Her ghost is waiting to be heard. Just reach out...

CHILDHOOD

Wasson (Estrada, 1976) reported that María Sabina was born on the 17th of March, 1894. According to parish records María was baptized exactly one week after her birth. Her mother María Concepción said her daughter's birth was the day of the Virgin Magdalene (July 22).

According to a verbal account given to Señor Alvaro Estrada, Doña María first consumed the sacred mushrooms with her sister María Ana at an early age (possibly somewhere between the ages of 7 to 9-years-old). Doña María Sabina recalled that she and her sister were out in the woods tending the family's animals when they stopped under a tree to play games in the shade as little children often do when by themselves with no adults around. María looked to the ground and noticed several beautiful mushrooms growing under the tree and realized they were the same mushrooms used by a local curandero Juan Manuel to cure the sick.

Doña María reached down to the earth and carefully harvested several of the mushrooms exclaiming "if I eat you, you, and you, I know that you will make me sing beautifully." She slowly chewed and swallowed the mushrooms, then urged her sister María Ana to do the same. Slowly, young María began to realize that the mushrooms contained a very potent magic, one that she would never forget.

In the following months Doña María and her sister consumed the fungi several times. Once her mother had found her laughing and singing gaily and asked of her "what have you done?". However, she was never scolded for eating the mushrooms because her mother knew that scolding would cause contrary emotions.

According to Joan Halifax (1979) Doña María was eight years old when her uncle fell sick. Many shamans in the surrounding Sierras near her village had attempted to cure him with various herbs, but his condition only worsened. Doña María remembered that the mushrooms she had eaten while playing with her sister had told her to look for them if she ever needed them and that they would tell her what to do when she needed help.
Doña María went to collect the sacred mushrooms and returned to her uncle's home where she ate them. Immediately, Doña María was swept away into the world of the mushrooms. She asked them what was wrong with her uncle and what could she do to help him get well. According to Doña María, the mushrooms told her that an "evil spirit" had entered the blood of her uncle and possessed him. She would have to give him a special herb, but not the same herb which the other shamans and curanderos had previously given him. Doña María then asked the mushrooms where the herbs could be found and the mushrooms told her that there was a place on the mountains where the trees grew tall and the waters of the brook ran pure. In this place in the earth are the herbs which will cure your uncle.

Doña María knew the place the mushrooms had shown her and ran from her uncle's hut to find the herb. Just as the mushrooms had shown her, the herb was there. When she returned to her uncle's home she boiled the herbs and gave them to her uncle. Within a few days, her uncle was cured, and María knew this would become her way of life.

As Doña María grew older she became fully initiated into her role as a sabia (a wise one). She quickly became respected in her village as an honest and powerful sabia, and in her community she was a blessing to those who sought her services. For decades she practiced her healing arts, and countless hundreds of sick and suffering people sought out her magic. Except for her three marriages, where she was expected to care only for her husband, she continued her sacred practices throughout her life.

Being of the Mazatec (Nahua-speaking) people, María Sabina performed her ceremonies in Mazatec (in This Week magazine, Valentina Wasson, 1958 wrote that the ceremony was spoken in Mixtec). Like the pseudonym of Eva Mendez which R. Gordon Wasson gave to María Sabina, this latter report was also published with the intent of keeping her identity a secret from those who would abuse her livelihood.

Like many of the Mazatec shamans, curanderas, and healers, María Sabina referred to the mushrooms as xi-tjo, si-tho or 'nti-xi-tjo, meaning "worshipped objects that spring forth" ('nti=a particle of reverence and endearment, and xi-tjo=that which springs forth). Some Mazatecs refer to the mushrooms by saying "that the little mushroom comes of itself, no one knows whence, like the wind that comes, we know not when or why."

The sacred mushrooms which María Sabina used during an all night velada (vigil) are usually harvested in the evening when the moon is full, although sometimes they are gathered in the day (see footnote 1 at the end of this chapter). Mushrooms gathered in the moonlight may sometimes be harvested by a young virgin.

After the mushrooms are collected they must be taken to a church. There they are placed on an alter to be blessed before the holy spirit. If the virgin who picked the mushrooms comes upon the carcass of a dead animal, one which had died along the path she follows, she must then discard the mushrooms and find a new path back to the field where the mushrooms grew. There she must gather up more fresh mushrooms and then find a new trail leading back to the church, hoping and praying that she will not come across any more dead animals. Once the mushrooms have been consecrated on the alter they are ready for use.

The velada would begin in total darkness so the visions would be bright and clear. After the mushrooms were adorned and blessed by María Sabina, she would slowly pass each one through the swirling smoke of burning Copal incense. The mushrooms are always consumed in pairs of two, signifying one male and one female. Each participant in a ceremony consumes five to six pairs; though more will be given if requested. Because the spiritual energies of the sabia would always dominate the velada, María Sabina would normally consume twice as many mushrooms as her voyagers, sometimes up to twelve pairs.

In the tradition of Mazatec shamans and curanderas, María Sabina would first chew the mushrooms, hold them in her mouth for a while, and then swallow them. The mushrooms should be consumed on an empty stomach and eaten over a 20-30 minute period. She decides who is to take them and the spiritual energies of the sabia always dominate the sessions. These sessions are usually conducted at night, in total darkness so that the visual effects from the mushrooms will be fully effective. A candle or two may be used but is seldom necessary. As the energies of the mushrooms pour themselves into the spiritual voyagers, Doña María would chant, slap, and pound her hands against various parts of her body, creating many different resonant sounds while invoking ancient incantations.

The thumping chants would totally fill the space of her hut and go beyond the walls to the far horizons of infinity. The chants were used to invoke the mushrooms power and varied depending on the various illness or ailment which the healer is called upon to cure (see footnote 2 at the end of this chapter) (Krippner & Winkelman, 1983; also see Aromin, 1973 in Krippner & Winkelman, 1983). Being a devout Catholic her entire life, she would often blend ancient Mazatec rituals with Christian elements, such as the Eucharist of the Catholic religion. When the mushrooms were not in season, María Sabina would employ other sacred plants with Christian rites (see footnote 3 at the end of this chapter).

All accounts of María Sabina attest to the fact that she was indeed a humble and holy woman--a saint. Wasson himself described Doña María as "a woman `without blemish, immaculate, one who has never dishonored her calling by using her powers for evil. . .[a woman of] rare moral and spiritual power, dedicated in her vocation, an artist in her mastery of the techniques of her vocation (Wasson, 1980)." In her village, Doña María was exalted as a "sabia" (wise one), and was known among many as a "curandera de primera catagoria" (of the highest quality) and an "una señora sin mancha' (a woman without stain).

Father Antonio Reyes Hernandez is a man of the cloth, a man with the love of God in him, and the Bishop who resides in the parish of the Dominican church which Doña María belonged to. In 1970, when Father Antonio had just completed his first year as the Bishop of Huautla, Alvaro Estrada (1976) had inquired of Father Antonio if his ecclesiastic elders in the church hierarchy opposed the pagan-like rites of the shamans and sabias in Oaxaca and elsewhere in México as his conquering predecessors had during the last three centuries. Father Antonio replied that "the church is not against these pagan rites--if they may be called that. The wise ones and curer's do not compete with our religion. All of them are very religious and come to our mass, even María Sabina. They don't proselytize; therefore they aren't considered heretics, and it's not likely that any anathema's will be hurled at them."

Father Antonio never admonished or condemned her for her work in the village. He was aware that her rituals and practices had been handed down to her through the ages from her ancestors. He also knew that her services were valid treatments for those who sought her shamanic talents. Father Hernandez always recognized her work with the sick and suffering as the mark of a true Christian--one willing to help the less fortunate. Although he knew that Doña María used the mushrooms and pagan practice to heal and cure, he also understood that María Sabina's nature was not of a demonic spirit, "nor was it" satanic or even heretic. He appreciated her spirituality and treasured her work as a long termed good standing member of his church.

A Bishop interested in experiencing the visionary effects of the mushrooms came to María seeking guidance. However, he was turned away since it was not the season for the mushrooms and there were no mushrooms available for a ceremony. The Bishop had asked María Sabina if she would teach her children her talents. María Sabina told the bishop that her talents could not be taught to others but could only be achieved by those whose wisdom had been already naturally attained. However, it is said that before her death in 1985, Doña María spent most of her final years teaching others her talent in the communication of the mushrooms (Krippner (1987 [1983]).

As Doña María believed in the power of Christ, so she also believed in the power of the mushrooms. She gave of herself to her church and likewise to the mushrooms. While working for the church, her mass was spoken in Latin and her chants were always spoken in Mazatec, and it should be remembered that although Doña María was unlettered she was not illiterate.

Doña María was quick to notice that Wasson and his friends, being the first foreigners to (seek) out the `saint children' (mushrooms), had no sickness or illness to cure. They came only out of curiosity, or to find God (Estrada, 1976). Before Wasson and the others strangers came to Huautla,the mushrooms had always been used to treat the sick. Doña María foresaw the diminishing effects in her ability to perform her duties. She claimed that as more outsiders used the mushrooms for pleasures, or "to find God," the magic of the mushrooms slowly ebbed from her spirit. Her energy, and the energy of the mushrooms, was slowly fading away.

While María Sabina felt this debasement of her powers and relationship with the mushrooms was caused by the young foreigners who frivolously sought out and abused the sanctity of the sacred mushrooms, it should be noted that seeking and finding one's own god may also be a cure for many of mankind's psychological ills, woes, and faults.


The Coming of the Foreigners


In the beginning, the first travelers who came to Oaxaca in search of the sacred mushrooms were polite and kind to María Sabina. They displayed mutual respect for her personage. Many came bearing gifts and pesos for her services. Doña María received many people (young and old) into her home and performed for them the sacred ceremonies of her ancestors. One of the greatest gifts one could present her with for her services were photographs of her and her family. Some travelers would offer her gifts of no value and many gifts she considered useless. One tourist offered her a large dog in payment for her time, but she refused. She was too poor to afford feeding the animal. Although poor, María Sabina was spiritually enriched.

Doña María had also been widowed twice in her lifetime and once one of her sons had been brutally murdered before her very eyes. She claimed to have witnessed the crime in a vision prior to its happening. This supports the Wasson's assertions that the mushrooms have telepathic properties. In 1984, María Sabina had found a third husband.

Her three room home in Oaxaca where Doña María performed her ceremonies was created of mud with a straw thatched roof and a dirt floor. The interior of her humble dwelling whose walls were crumbling with age had uneven earthen floors which were almost barren of furniture except for the simplest alter. A candle provided the only light since there was no electricity. On a few occasions she was presented with a mattress or two, but she rarely accepted gifts beyond the value of her daily needs.

After Wasson published literature on his rediscovery of an ancient practice which utilized hallucinogenic mushrooms ritualistically in Oaxaca, many young foreigners from the United States, Canada, Europe and South America, began their long treks and tedious pilgrimages into Mexico. Soon Doña María took notice that many native Indians and Mexicans alike were debasing her customs by peddling mushrooms to the tourists in order to feed themselves and their families. During this period, many came seeking the mushrooms and many came only to be turned away.

By 1960, María Sabina realized that she was known the world over. This new found fame brought her much grief, and the agony it caused her soul was evident in her eyes and face. It brought turmoil and profanation to her village and upon her work.

The lack of respect and the total disrespect which the foreigners displayed towards her "saint children" shook the very foundations of her wisdom, strength, and world. Like the ancient mysteries of the "temple of Dionysus" where silence of the ancient rites was golden, María Sabina claimed that before Wasson came, "nobody spoke so openly about the `saint children'. No Mazatec before ever revealed what he or she knew about this matter (Estrada, 1976)".

After Wasson had attended his first voyage with her, every one seemed to know who she was and what she did.

When Wasson was first introduced to María Sabina in 1955, it was only because of an introduction by her friend Cayetano (Wasson, 1957; Wasson, 1980; Allen, 1987). He was a trusted friend, and María felt that Cayetano's requesting her to meet with the stranger who had traveled from afar in search of a "sabia" was harmless. Upon first meeting Wasson, María Sabina believed him to be a sincere and honest man, and felt that he would respect her ways and never bring shame to her world. Although she cautiously accepted Wasson when Cayetano approached her, she would later accept many into her home, and there were also many whom she would turn away.

María Sabina placed her trust in Wasson and his friends, especially when she allowed them to tape and photograph her during an all night mushroom velada. She gave Wasson and Alan Richardson, his photographer, permission to tell her story to others. Doña María hoped that Wasson would not profane her image nor divulge her anonymity to the world in an improper manner. Because Doña María neither read nor wrote (her language has no written words) she would never fully know exactly what Wasson had written of her life.

By 1960, Doña María had decided that if "foreigners come to her without any recommendations [whereas Wasson had one], she would of course still show them her wisdoms" (Wasson, 1980).

During the 1967 summer of love, many drugs and rampant drug use spread from out of the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco into the main stream continental United States of America. Many young hippie types and college students soon traveled to México in search of the magic mushroom which they had read about or heard about from their friends (Swain, 1962; Finkelstein, 1969; Lincoln, 1967; Sandford, 1973; Weil, 1980).

Doña María soon began to understand the breadth of her fame when over the years she remembered the pilgrimage of "the young people with long hair who came in search of God" but lacked the respect for the mushrooms and greatly profaned them.

Later, Doña María realized that "the young people with long hair didn't need [her] to eat the little things." She said that these "kids ate them anywhere and anytime [they could find them], and they didn't respect our customs." Doña María also claimed that "whoever does it [mushrooms] simply to feel the effects can go crazy and stay that way temporarily, but only for a while."

Wasson recognized the traditional values of the religious motivations of the Mazatec shamans and sabias, explaining that "performing before strangers is a profanation and that the curandera who today, for a fee will perform the mushroom rite for any stranger is a prostitute and a fakir" (Metzner, 1970), yet María Sabina did perform rituals for strangers, sometimes for a fee and sometimes not. At times, she had been known to charge for services which she used to provide for free.

At one point an American tourist once ate too many mushrooms and completely flipped out. He caused "much turmoil" and anxiety in an otherwise once quiet and peaceful community. Another tourist, with a live turkey dangling from his mouth, ran stark raving mad through the streets of Huautla. This incident necessitated intervention by local policia who apprehended him before he could do harm to himself or others. This incident, along with several others, soon led to the expulsion of thousands of long haired thrill seekers from Mexico.

The actions of these young people created many scandals. With the influx of drug-oriented young people, local authorities began to prohibit the use of mushrooms. By 1976, the thousands of foreign invaders began to drastically diminish, allowing the federales to slowly move out of the area. To the native peoples of Oaxaca, the bad elements had finally subsided and peace had once again returned to the village.

Throughout the years Doña María had been hassled many times by local government officials because of her use of the sacred mushrooms with the foreign intruders.

On several occasions she was arrested and jailed for her activities and on one occasion her home was burnt to the ground. A journalist who interviewed her in 1969, tried to intervene for her in this matter. He personally requested that the governor of Oaxaca "leave in peace the most famous shamaness in the world, whom anthropology and escapism have ruined" (Estrada, 1976).

As noted above, Federal authorities, army and police included, began the expulsion of hundreds of young foreign travelers, who came to Mexico "in search of the mushrooms and God" (Jones 1963; Unsigned, 1970).

May The Force Be With You


Doña María believed in the sacred force of the mushrooms with the same enthusiasm that many people came to believe in "the Force" of George Lucas and Luke Skywalker. As the years passed since Wasson first came to Huautla de Jiménez,Doña María felt the force of the mushrooms diminish within her spirit. Doña María realized that with the coming of the white man, the mushrooms were losing their meaning. Doña María claimed that "before Wasson, I felt that the `saint children' elevated me. I don't feel like that anymore. The force has diminished. If Cayetano had not brought the foreigners...the `saint children' would have [probably] kept their powers. From the moment the foreigners arrived, the `saint children' lost their purity. They lost their force; the foreigners spoiled them. From now on they won't be any good. There is no remedy for it."

This revelation from María Sabina most assuredly rings of the truth. The debasement of the mushrooms by casual thrill-seekers is widespread throughout the planet. Apolonio Teran, a fellow sabio (wiseman) was once interviewed by Alvaro Estrada. Estrada asked Apolonio about the breach of sanctity of the mushrooms by debasement wondering if the mushrooms were still considered to be a sacred and powerful source of medicine.

Apolonio claimed that "the divine mushroom no longer belongs to us [the Indians of Mesoamerica]. It's sacred language has been profaned. The language has been spoiled and it is indecipherable for us...Now the mushrooms speak NQUI LE [English]. Yes, it's the tongue that the foreigners speak...The mushrooms have a divine spirit. They always had it for us, but the foreigners arrived and frightened it away..." Later Wasson (1980) agreed that "since the white man came looking for the mushrooms, they have lost their magic." This could mean that the magic is gone forever among the shamans and native peoples who worship them.

Wasson believed that Doña María's words rang of truth. In exemplifying her wisdom, Wasson stated that "a practice carried on in secret for three centuries or more has now been aerated and aeration spells the end (Estrada, 1976)."

Before Wasson's death (December, 1989), he felt that he alone was responsible and accountable for what must surely be a sad and tragic end to a culture whose traditions and customs involving the sacred use of teonanácatl spanned and flourished majestically for almost three millennia. It now appears that the use of mushrooms among native peoples of Mesoamerica are in their final stages of extinction. Soon the cultural use of mushrooms and other sacred plants could vanish from the face of the earth.

Wasson's eloquent approach in presenting María Sabina's world to the public is without a doubt, beyond reproach. He presented a most unique tale of María Sabina and her sacred mushrooms. His writings took us where no man had gone before and he presented to the world her story as no other person would have. Wasson brought María Sabina and her world into view of the public eye. He told of her chants, her way of life, her reasoning, and of her magic with her fellow village members, all who visited her seeking her advice and divination. Wasson orated her virtues with the highest respect and the finest regards and what he put to paper was only the truth as she revealed it to him and as he first saw and heard it.

Wasson knew that María Sabina was relevant to the balance of nature within her community. He held an extreme profound reverence for the woman and her work. At the same time he displayed features of her spirituality without bringing shame upon her heritage. He presented her to the world with an integrity that brought enchantment with what he wrote. Wasson's discoveries in Mesoamerica and his integral interpretations are what María Sabina would have written and described if she had been able.

Because of Wasson's intrusion into her life and the myriad who followed, a part of María Sabina's world and way of life was taken away. However, the vast treasures of ethnomycological knowledge and wisdom which Wasson extracted from her world became public only because she shared it with the outsiders. This knowledge will now remain a part of history because it was recorded by an honorable man who cared about what he had observed, experienced, and wrote of.

María Sabina was many things: an earth woman, a mother, a sabia, a poet, a healer, a curer, a believer, an achiever, and a curandera who stood at the very edge of her universe and glimpsed the secrets and meaning of life. Doña María had shared her secrets of magic and plant knowledge with the outside world. Only through hope and prayer will the benevolence she provided to the world be fully understood and appreciated. Through the pursuance of R. Gordon Wasson's persistency in following his dream of the trail of the magic mushrooms, Doña María has truly presented mankind with a magical key (mushroom) concerning some plausible answers surrounding some of the mysteries of our religious beginnings and maybe the origin of the earth.

Doña María may be gone, but her spirit and her wisdom still remain. Reach out and take the wisdom she was so willing to share. Take it with care and share it with love and respect. Can you see her face in the dark? Can you hear her chanting?


Notes

1). María Sabina used many different species of the sacred mushrooms for divination. She preferred Psilocybe mexicana Heim, the preferred species of the Mazatec shamans. However, the mushrooms which she shared with R. Gordon Wasson and Alan Richardson were Psilocybe caerulescens var. mazatecorum.



2). The sacred mushrooms are usually consumed when fresh but may sometimes be served when dried. In pre-Columbian México the mushrooms were served and eaten with chocolate and/or honey. A trait left over from the times of the Aztec priests, a cultural tradition handed down through centuries of use by their ancestors. In some regions like Juxtlahuaca, the Mixtec shamans grind the mushrooms into a fine powder and brew a tea with the ground material.



Metzner (1970) reported that "in the land of the Mixe (Mijes) there are no curanderas. Most of the Mixe know and share the secret of the mushrooms and how to use them. One might take the mushrooms alone but will always have an observer present, to help guide him or her in their journey. The reason one might seek the mushrooms are medical and divinatory: to find a diagnosis and/or cure for an otherwise intractable condition; to find lost objects, animals or people; to get advice on personal problems or some great worry."

Although María Sabina had gracefully preserved within her the power and wisdom derived from her relationship with the mushrooms, she only used them for good purposes. She also incorporated old traditions, blending them with certain Christian values and ideologies to divinate a particular situation, thereby diagnosing it correctly for the person in need of healing.

Singer and Smith (1958) believed that "the religious healing ceremonies of the Mazatec are also directed by the curanderos [or curanderas], but more emphasis is given to the revelations obtained by the intoxicating persons, so that the use of the mushrooms in Huautla is at least partly divinatory rather then medical." Metzner (1970) felt that "the use of mushrooms for the [sole] purpose of divination is accepted as a matter of fact. Demonstrations of its capacity to bring about altered states of consciousness combined with brilliant kaleidoscopic visions of glorious colors and patterns have been convincingly made." Aguirre-Beltran (1955) claimed the healer (whether shaman or curandera) "looked not at the context of what it was in these plants that make them do their magic, but felt that the Indians' thoughts on these plants possessed two different aspects in their use in treatment:

1). the mystical force that the plants projected into ones mind; and

2). the actual diagnostic power that the use of the plant brings out."

Beltran was positive that the "sacred herbs, deities in themselves, act by virtue of their mystical properties; that it is not the herb itself that cures but the divinity, the part of the divinity or magic power with which it is imbued."

In considering the outcome of these ancient pagan practices in traditional societies, we cannot forget that in María Sabina's world the velada and mushrooms that she feeds upon provide the guideposts to her spiritual existence. Doña María had already foreseen the diminishing effects in her ability to perform her duties as the mushrooms became known to the outsiders. She claimed that the more outsiders who used the mushrooms for pleasure or "to find God" caused the magic of the mushrooms to slowly ebb from her spirit. Her energy and the energy which were within the mushrooms was slowly fading away. Metzner (1970) wrote that the "practice which she employed was all that remained among a primitive and illiterate people today of a practice which was once so widespread throughout the mighty and powerful [Aztec] empire" that 300 years ago, a catholic conqueror named Cortez and a hoard of conquistadors almost succeeded in obliterating from the face of the earth any knowledge pertaining to their use and existence.

3). When the mushrooms are not in season, Mazatec shamans and curanderas (including María Sabina) employ several other common psychotropic plants for divination.

One such plant is Salvia divinorum, a member of the mint family which is rich in essential oils. Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann (1980) reported that it was a plant used ceremoniously by María Sabina. Mazatec shamans and sabias refer to this plant as "Hojas de la Pastora" (leaves of the shepherdess). Doña María Sabina referred to it as "la hembra" (the female) (Wasson, 1962b). Salvia's divinatory powers can be experienced by rolling twelve to sixteen mature leaves into a plug and holding it between the cheek and gum for fifteen minutes. Profound visual effects will be noticed with eyes closed or in total darkness. Dried Salvia leaves can also be smoked for milder effects.

When the Salvia herb is not available for use in divination, the Mazatecs employ two different species of Coleus found in Oaxaca. Coleus pumilus is referred to as "el macho" (the male). Two other varieties of Coleus blumi are referred to as (1) "El nene" (the children) and (2) "el ahijado" (the godson). The psychoactivity of Coleus is debated.

Another popular plant, a perennial, is the morning glory Rivea corymbosa, whose seeds contain lysergic acid amides. Also known as ololiuhqui. In Oaxaca, Mazatec shamans refer to the seeds as "Semillas de la Virgen" (seeds of the Virgin). 50 to 300 ground seeds are soaked in cold water for 1 to 3 days and the filtered liquid is consumed in the evening. However, María Sabina had never used these seeds in any of her ceremonies.


Albert Hofmann and the Synthesis of Psilocybine and Psilocine


Albert Hofmann became interested in the Mexican relatives of LSD late in 1956, having read about them in a daily newspaper which had piqued his curiosity. However, the newspaper article offered no information as to where the mushrooms might be obtained, so Hofmann had to wait two years before the sacred mushroom would come to him. It was because of Hofmann's research with LSD that the mushrooms finally found their way into his laboratory, where he was able to quickly isolate their active principles.



In 1958, in a spotless laboratory at the Swiss pharmaceutical firm of Sandoz in Basel, this trim 52-year-old research chemist, at the time the Director of Natural Products, performed an unusual experiment. Hofmann had succeeded in isolating and synthesizing two alkaloids first extracted from dried specimens of Psilocybe mexicana Heim. The mushrooms had been grown in vitro in Paris by the eminent French mycologist Roger Heim (Hofmann, 1958; Unsigned, 1959). For two years, Heim had sought unsuccessfully to isolate the active ingredients from the mushrooms. Aware of Hofmann's discovery of LSD, Heim had mailed some 100g of dried P. mexicana to Hofmann. Hofmann and his colleagues, after exhausting this supply of mushrooms, grew their own cultures of P. mexicana and other species.



At first Hofmann and co-workers tried to isolate the active principles of the mushrooms using animal bioassays (mice and dogs), which proved unsuccessful. These experiments were inconclusive inasmuch as the animals were unable to describe the effects the mushrooms, which were not evident to observers. Hofmann had exhausted the bulk of the mushrooms sent to him by Heim, and decided to ingest some of the remaining mushrooms to verify that they were indeed active. Albert Hofmann, the "Father of LSD", thus proceeded to eat 32 dried specimens (2.4 g.) of Psilocybe mexicana which, according to published reports by Wasson and Heim, was roughly equivalent to an average dose used by shamans in México during their curing ceremonies.

Albert Hofmann and Geoffrey Brooke, Amsterdam, Psychoactivity,1999.

Hofmann had decided to ingest the mushrooms himself since he could not ask his colleagues to consume them until he had first tried them himself. Hofmann later wrote that the 2.4 grams of dried P. mexicana represented a potent dose by Indian standards. According to Hofmann (1980), "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 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." Hofmann also described some of the psychoptic effects, noting:

"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." When the experiment had concluded, Hofmann was happy to have returned home from a very strange and fantastic world. Hofmann then related his mushroom experience to his colleagues, who were later also to ingest them. For subsequent studies, Hofmann and his colleagues used themselves as bioassay, which led quickly to isolation of the active principles, which were subsequently synthesized.

Albert Hofmann and Jochen Gartz, Rovereto, Italy, April, 1992.

In March of 1959 they published their findings in Experientia. Eight months later, in November of 1958, Drs. A. J. Frey, H. Ott, T. Petrzilka and F. Trozler, all colleagues of Albert Hofmann, then published the chemical structures of psilocybine and psilocine.

The 16 June 1958 issue of Time magazine, reporting on Hofmann's synthesis of psilocybine and psilocine, wrote that he had dissolved five milligrams of pure-white crystals in a test-tube with water and while his colleagues and assistants looked on, had swallowed the potion, lain-down on a couch and waited. Hofmann reported "I am losing my normal bodily sensations. . .My perception of space and time is changing....Your faces appear strange..."and finally, "Now as I close my eyes, I see a wonderful but indistinct kaleidoscopic train of visions. They are vividly colored."

This account of June 16th, 1958, brings confusion to the actual dates of these experiments and is quite different from Hofmann's first reported experience with the 32 dried specimens in which he described himself as being in a partial paranoid- like state. This report of the crystallized chemical intoxication was published between the March, 1958 and November, 1958 issues of Experientia as mentioned above. Hofmann soon discovered that the effects from the mushrooms were similar to the effects he had earlier experienced from ingestion of LSD and speculated that both worked on the same part of the brain.

John W. Allen, Hans van den Hurk and Albert Hofmann, Amsterdam, Psychoactivity, 1998.

Hofmann reported that the mushroomic alkaloids were related to the natural neurotransmitter serotonine (5-hydroxytryptamine) and that their chemical structure was likewise similar to that of LSD. Hofmann and his colleagues named the substances in the Mexican mushrooms psilocybine and psilocine. The former given the pharmaceutical trade-name as "indocybin (Registered trademark)" in recognition of the Indians who first used the mushrooms. Indo both for the Indians and for indole, the nucleus in the chemical structure of psilocybine; and-cybin after Psilocybe. Sandoz then manufactured pills with 2 and 5 milligram doses of Indolcybin (Registered Trademark).

Three years later (Hofmann, 1980), Hofmann and his wife Anita accompanied Gordon Wasson on an expedition to the Sierra Mazateca where they were received most graciously by the now-famous curandera Doña María Sabina. Wasson, Albert and Anita Hofmann attended a velada and all requested a potion made from the leaves of Salvia divinorum, which gave an experience similar to that of the entheogenic mushrooms, although the duration of the leaves effects were shorter---two-three hours as compared to four-six hours for the mushrooms.

During the velada, Doña María Sabina did not consume the Salvia divinorum but rather partook of Hofmann's Indocybin pills which he later presented to her as a gift. "She was obviously impressed when it was explained to her that we had managed to confine the spirit of the mushrooms in pills." (Hofmann, 1980) María Sabina reportedly consumed 6 of the 5 milligram pills. In the morning she thanked Hofmann for the pills and added that there was no difference between the effects of the pills and the mushrooms, which quite amazed her. She was happy that now she would be able to perform her ceremonies when the mushrooms were out of. Much later however, she said she had not really appreciated that the foreigners had taken the power from the mushrooms and recreated it in a laboratory in the form of pills.

Hofmann and colleagues also synthesized various homologues and analogues of psilocybine (CZ-74, CMY-16, and CY19) and psilocine (CY-39 and CX-59), which were also made available for research by Sandoz and later the National Institute of Mental Health (Baer, 1979).

Albert Hofmann also became a collaborator and close friend of Richard Evans Schultes. Over the years they have given lectures at various conferences on entheogenic plants and have also written two books describing their studies of entheogens (Schultes & Hofmann, 1973; Schultes & Hofmann, 1979).

In Memory of Terrence McKenna, 1946-2000.

Graphic Desgin by John W. Allen



Mushrooms and Timothy Francis Leary

According to Timothy Francis Leary, he was allegedly conceived on a military reservation known as West Point in 1920. His father Timothy (Tote) was a military man with a penchant for distilled alcohol and his mother Abigail was considered to be the most beautiful woman on post.

After an exciting non-conformist childhood, in August of 1940, Tim, as his father had done before him, entered West point---a mistake if there ever was one. Because of Tim's shenanigans (drinking and covering up his actions), he was court-martialed and in two minutes of judgment Tim was acquitted. However, his sentence was total silence by his fellow cadets, a silence which lasted for more than seven months. During this period, Tim was constantly harassed and by August of 1941 he had decided to resign his commission from West Point (Leary, 1983).

In August of 1941, Tim began his study of human behavior at the University of Alabama with psychology as his major, yet by the fall of 1942, Tim was expelled for sexual misconduct and because of his expulsion he lost his draft deferment. In January 1943, Tim reported for basic training at Fort Eustis, Virginia where he was trained in anti-aircraft artillery. After basic training, Tim was selected for Officer's training and before too long Tim was promoted to corporal and assigned to the Acoustic Clinic as a clinical psychologist. After five years in the military, Tim and his new wife Marianne moved west and in 1946, Tim finally received his master's degree in psychology from Washington State University. His thesis was a statistical study of the dimensions of intelligence. In September Tim was accepted as a doctoral student in psychology at Berkeley. It was at Berkeley where Tim began to foster his ideas on existentialism.

By 1959, Tim had become somewhat successful yet was sufficiently broke. He was the author of numerous scientific papers and two well-regarded books on the diagnosis of personality and had just finished typing a manuscript on new humanist methods for behavior change which he called Existential Transaction. Tim was living in a penthouse in Florence, Italy when he was visited by an old drinking buddy from Berkeley, a creativity researcher named Frank Baron. It was Frank who first told Timothy of the Sacred Mexican Magic Mushrooms. Frank even told Timothy that he had brought a bag of the sacred mushrooms back to Harvard. Timothy balked at the idea of the mushrooms and suggested to his friend about the possibility of losing his credibility if he babbled this information to any of his other colleagues. It was Frank Baron who set up an appointment for Tim with David McClelland, Director of the Harvard Center for Personality Research. McClelland was interested in Tim's ideas of existentialism, saying to Tim that "You're just what we need to shake things up at Harvard."

In the summer of 1960 (August), Timothy Leary began his lectureship at Harvard University. This began yet another colorful and exciting chapter in the history of the divine and sacred mushroom. Leary had read R. Gordon Wasson's amazing account recalling his rediscovery of "mushrooms that caused strange visions." This Life magazine article had apparently generated Leary's interest enough so that he wished he could someday experience the effects of the Mexican "magic mushrooms".

Because of Leary's interest in the sacred mushrooms as an adjacent to psychotherapy, clinical applications were soon brought to the academic scene and psilocybin became a new therapeutic tool in psychiatric medicine. This course would soon lead to the widespread recreational use of other drugs such as LSD, mescaline and marijuana, all of which were readily available to students, especially undergraduates, at Harvard University. Such use became pandemic, soon leading to mass civil disobedience in many large metropolitan cities throughout America. All of a sudden, millions of citizens throughout the United States started to take drugs. Eventually, interest and use of psychedelic drugs spread to other countries throughout the world.

While the use of these substances caused no mental or physical problems among those in academic circles where users reported that they experienced euphoria, insight and an awareness of God, there were many new unguided "trippers" who experienced severe dysphoria---resulting in what became known as a "bum trip" or "bad trip". It was because of the "bad trips" resulting from the frivolous use of LSD which eventually led to the prohibited use of these substances by mainstream society's law-making legislature. The death of TV host Art Linkletter's daughter who jumped from a window while high on LSD led the country into a mass hysteria, and many states as well as the Federal Government soon passed legislature banning the use, manufacture and sales of LSD and many other natural entheogenic plant substances. Years later Art Linkletter changed his attitude about many drugs and even felt that marijuana should be legalized.

Timothy Francis Leary holds the honor as the man most responsible for the creation of a new era by which mankind used psychoactive substances in search of neo-religious ideologies through the consumption of certain psychotropic herbs/plants. The use of these magical herbs by individuals who were interested in seeking god caused much confusion and disillusionment in the world. It offered many individuals an alternative lifestyle, one which had not existed for perhaps a millennium.

Because of a few individual dysphoric reactions which occurred in individuals who had ingestion psychoactive drugs, a lot of new laws were created and voted upon, mostly out of fear by legislators who enacted new and harsh drug laws in ignorance---laws which would specifically curb the illicit use of drugs among common citizens of America. This occurred quite hastily in order to pacify the law-enforcement agents who had no real knowledge of drugs. This might cause one to ask, "How can a just society create unjust laws that make criminals out of its citizens?"

These unjust laws eventually brought forth a new breed of American citizens, young and old alike, from all walks of life, including law-enforcement officials. These laws also brought forth an unreal form of civil disobedience, where millions of citizens decided that they were not afraid of being arrested and sent to prison just because they felt that they were within god's right to smoke a joint, eat peyote or consume a sacred mushroom, or any of the other drugs/plants which society deemed to be unacceptable.

John W. Allen and Timothy Leary, Psychedelic Symposium, 1994.

Nowhere in any other society or culture in the history of the world have millions of people so blatantly disobeyed the law with such ill-respect as in regards to the drug laws of America. If one is caught breaking these sanctions then that person is liable to prosecution and may be punished for his or her beliefs. Many casual users of entheogenic drugs/plants believe that the plants let them achieve a oneness with god. It must never be forgotten that, when Wasson (1957), Schultes (1978), Leary (1968), and Weil (1980) first experienced the majesty of spirit communion with mushrooms,many of the natural drug-plants were not illegal and that their initial exposure caused a reaction which brought unto them a symbiotic relationship with the magical plant and the true meaning of life. We must never forget that many different species of entheogenic plants were not illegal until the late 1960's and their existence was shared only by an elitist academic segment of society, who for many decades had kept their knowledge sacred and only shared it with their close friends or colleagues.

While Wasson and his colleagues introduced us into the fascinating world of the "magic mushrooms," it was Leary who introduced us into the "psychedelic" age. He shared his special knowledge with the world. What else could he do once the mushrooms had spoken to him? "Tune in, turn on, drop out" found meaning with many. It became the creed of a whole generation. Imagine that, the beneficial and euphoric rewards of "mind-tripping" into the subconscious, what a trip. Fantastic journeys through the mind. By the early 1970's, President Richard Milhous Nixon had referred to Timothy Leary as "the most dangerous man in the world."

Leary's First Voyage


Prior to the "hippie" and "bohemian" invasion into Mexico during the 1960's by thousands of individuals seeking out the sacred mushrooms, Timothy Francis Leary, still a young Harvard psychologist, was spending his summer vacation in a quiet villa near the tiny village hamlet of Cuernavaca, Mexico. It was at Leary's rented villa resort swimming pool, while relaxing under the hot Mexican sun, that Timothy Leary consumed his first "magic mushrooms."

Leary was waiting for Gerhardt Braun, an anthropologist-historian-linguist from the University of Mexico. Braun was a frequent visitor to Leary's villa, and he had read of the mushrooms while translating ancient Aztec Nahuatl texts. His growing interest had aroused something within him, definitely causing him to want to experience the wondrous mushrooms. After a short period of time Braun learned that the so-called "magic mushrooms" could be found growing on the volcanic slopes of Toluca near the village hamlet of San Pedro.

However, it was on the streets of San Pedro, under an arch in the local market, that Gerhardt Braun finally purchased a bag of "magic mushrooms" which he had obtained from an elderly sun-baked Señora named "Old Juana." So, Braun, very excited, then called Leary at the villa in Cuernavaca to inform him that at last he had finally purchased some "magic mushrooms." Leary had first heard of the mushrooms from his friend and colleague Frank Baron. In Baron's own words, "And so I commended the mushroom to the attention of a colleague of mine at Harvard University, Dr. Timothy Leary, who was an active practitioner of group therapy. He [Leary] became interested in its possibilities as a vehicle for inducing change in behavior as a result of the altered state of consciousness that the drug produces (Baron, 1963)." Thus began the "psychedelic age" as Leary and several of his friends would participate in their first communion with the sacred mushrooms of Mexico.

As Leary consumed the fungi (seven mushrooms, Psilocybe caerulescens Murr.), he complained of their somewhat bitter and acrid taste with no impending comprehension as to what was about to happen to him. He never thought for one minute that it would forever change the course of his life.

Leary (1968) later claimed that "It was the classic visionary voyage and I came back a changed man. You are never the same after you've had that one flash glimpse down the cellular time tunnel.

You are never the same after you've had the veil drawn." Later, Leary returned to the market place where the mushrooms were purchased from Crazy Juana but he was unable to find her or anyone who might be able to provide him with more specimens of the fungi.

Later, Leary's friend and colleague Richard (Baba Ram Dass) Alpert, also from Harvard, had flown down to Mexico and offered Leary a ride back to Massachusetts. Leary decided to share with his friend some comments concerning his mushroom experience by describing to Alpert his most recent ecstatic and religious experience while under the influence of the metaphoric fungi. Leary claimed that "I was whirled through an experience which could be described in many extravagant metaphors but which above all and without question was the deepest [most] religious experience of my life" (Leary, 1968, 1983).

Tim Leary, Psychedelic Symposium, Chapman University, 1994.

Alpert's response to Leary's experience came as a shock, since neither person had attained much knowledge in the field of psychoactive drugs. However, Alpert was familiar with the "tea" scene (the use of marijuana and hashish) and related to Leary his impression of the drug marijuana by mentioning that there were cults of beatniks and Bohemians in San Francisco who used hashish and marijuana in dark corners of jazz houses and other nightclubs. They did this in secret out of fear of being arrested for their illicit activities. Alpert even went on to refer to this practice as "cultic." At the time of this conversation, very little research had been conducted involving humans and psychedelic drugs. These comments by Leary and Alpert in the fall of 1960 appeared to be their only knowledge of drugs and drug use. This occurred approximately two to two and a half years before Leary had consumed his first tablet of Sandoz LSD. Of course, it should be mentioned that there were numerous sessions of drug therapy being conducted at Harvard where researchers in a controlled environment gave LSD, mescaline, marijuana, hashish and DMT to student volunteers.

For several years after Leary first consumed the sacred mushrooms in Cuernavaca, he had been offered LSD but was afraid to experiment with it (Metzner, 1970). The mushroom trip which Leary had experienced would soon trigger a series of events during the next few years, events which would lead to the massive popularization of many mind-altering drug/plants. Leary eventually came to prosthelytize the use of mind-altering chemicals and his advocacy of these drugs played a central role in their re-emergence into western civilization. The use of these drugs was like a religious revival, a revival of people from all walks of life, who would soon become willing pawns in the psychedelization of mind-altering drug/plants. These innocent pawns would soon began to experiment with many varieties of entheogenic drug/plants and use them as sacraments and as a new form or type of recreation. Leary's eminent concern of course would be to use these substances as adjacents to psycho-therapy. Soon research grants were sought and applied for and eventually approved. Leary soon began to conduct laboratory experiments with human subjects in controlled environments, all within the framework of the law. It should be mentioned that when Leary conducted this research, most, if not all of the drugs he utilized, were legal at the time, possibly with the exception of peyote (mescaline) and marijuana

The Harvard Psilocybin Project and Marsh Chapel

Leary's first experiments using what became known as psychedelic drugs involved prisoners at the Concord Massachusetts Reformatory for Men. At first, Leary earned public acclamation among his peers and colleagues at Harvard by opening the door into a new and somewhat mystical dimension and an unusual approach to psycho-therapeutic research.

A new adventure and chapter into the often mysterious subconscious mind of man was about to formulate into existence, a concept in therapy that would shake the very foundation of an established Christian-orientated society. A society which would not condone mankind's intellectual use of mind-altering drugs as a way of life.

One of the most important factors which evolved from Leary's research with psychoactive substances was that Leary created an atmosphere where, because of him, millions of individuals began to use hallucinogenic drugs for purposes other than spirituality, healing or divination. However, who is to say that one's experience under the influence of such drugs is not of a religious nature? This frivolous use of mind-altering drugs created an overall negative attitude amongst the ruling class and legislative branches of the government. They were apparently afraid that these drug/plants would enable users to expand their natural minds into a more flexible opened mind and a new way of thinking--a way of thinking which was definitely not adherent within society's moral turpitude and Christian way of living.

Leary also began to turn friends on to these mushrooms and felt that theses sacred mushrooms should only be used by gifted people. Allen Ginsburg ate mushrooms at Leary's home in Millbrook, took off all his clothes and then ran naked from Leary's home.

He was not to be seen for more that a few months. Leary also turned on many other gifted people to the mushrooms during the early and middle 1960's (Koestler, 1960).

Leary first began his program of therapeutic mushroom use by placing an order with Sandoz Pharmaceuticals in Basil, Switzerland, for the mushroom pills known as "indocybin". Leary had no comprehension that his work with hallucinogenic drugs as an adjacent to psycho-therapy would ever become as popular as it did.

On the day Leary received his first batch of "indocybin" pills, he was at his home in MillBrook and his friends soon encouraged him to return to his office at Harvard to retrieve the pills. Leary and his friends had decided that if they were to attempt to use these pills on human subjects then maybe they should try them first. Before the night was over, Leary and several of his friends had somehow managed to consume the entire vial (100/ 2 mg. pills) of "indocybin". This caused Leary to then re-order another vial of the mushroom pills. It took several weeks for the pills to arrive, giving Leary enough time to prepare his group of researchers to begin implementation of his program. Leary, like María Sabina, also believed that the mushroom pills were no different in effect than the actual mushrooms which he had consumed while vacationing in Mexico (Leary, 1968).

During 1961 (Leary, Litwin & Metzner, 1963; Leary, 1968), and the following academic year, Leary and Jonathan Clark worked an intensive tightly structured program involving several small groups comprised of inmates from the Concord Massachusetts State Reformatory for Men. The experiments conducted by Leary and his colleagues on prisoners in this institution gave the psychopharmacologists a new insight into each prisoner's mind and life (Leary, 1961e).

One of the primary goals set in the Harvard psilocybin research projects which used LSD, mescaline and psilocybin as anadjacent to psycho-therapy, was to set goals for the prisoners so that upon their release from prison they would be better able to adjust their lives--both physiologically and psychologically--back into society.

Another goal was to help the prisoners by changing their aggressive thinking disorders which originally caused them to be put in prison. It would appear that the ultimate goal of Leary and his associates would be to change these unhappy thinking anti-social individual souls into happy peaceful loving citizens who, upon release from prison, would end up becoming more productive members of society.

The end results of these early experiments using human subjects were quite satisfactory, but inconclusive as far as prison officials were concerned. The program was abruptly halted because of the adverse publicity which surrounded Leary and his use of consciousness-expanding drugs on human volunteers. Thirty-four-years later, follow-up studies to Tim's experiments at Concord were conducted and the results published (Doblin, 1999-2000; Leary, 1963; Leary, 1969; Leary & Metzner, 1968; Metzner, 1999-2000; Metzner & Weil, 1963; Reidlinger & Leary, 1994).

Another interesting aspect to Leary's approach to psychoactive substances occurred when Leary administered psilocybin pills to a pregnant woman. Leary provided this subject with psilocybin every two weeks during the woman's pregnancy until her delivery. Leary continued to do follow-up research on the woman for about one year after the child was born. Both the woman and child suffered no ill effects from the consumption of the mushroom pills. The mother did experience some nausea with vomiting while under the influence of the mushroom pills, but no other uncomfortable, unpleasant, or undesirable effects were noticeable or reported during the experience (Leary, Litwin & Metzner, 1963). Other studies by JWA in 1976-1977 (unpublished notes) indicate that severe nausea does occur from the consumption of psilocybin- containing mushrooms if taken during pregnancy and if taken with alcohol. Furthermore, no one should ever, under any set of circumstances, take any drugs when pregnant unless prescribed by a physician.

Another well-publicized experiment occurred in a University Chapel in Boston on the evening of Good Friday 1962. It was here that twenty theology students took part in Walter Pahnke's Psilocybin experiments. Ten students were given 30 mg. of psilocybin and ten others were giver 200 mg. of nicotinic acid, laced with a small amount of Benzedrine to stimulate the initial physical sensations attributed to a psychedelic experience.

This experiment became know as "The Miracle of Marsh Chapel. During the following six months after this experiment, researchers collected extensive data which included tape recordings, group discussions, follow-up interviews and a 147 - item questionnaire used in quantifying the characteristics of a psychedelic experience (Stevens, 1987c, d; Leary, 1961c, 1961d; Koestler, 1961; Roberts & Jesse, 1998).

Eventually, Tim was fired from Harvard for failure to attend his lectures. Interestingly, it was partially the fault of Harvard Crimson reporter Andrew Weil that brought Tim Leary his walking papers. Weil had been reporting on Tim's extra-curricular activities involving the giving of drugs to undergraduates which resulted in the firing of both Tim and his friend and colleague Richard (Baba Ram Dass) Alpert (Unsigned, 1963a, 1963b).

Years later, John Lennon and Yoko Ono wrote Tim that they had written a song during their Toronto bed-in in Tim's honor. The song: Come Together.

In June of 1996, Tim Leary passed away and in March of 1997, one gram of Timothy Leary's cremated ashes, along with the ashes of "Star Trek's Gene Roddenberry and 23 others, was launched into space via a satellite and is now part of the universe.

As a final word regarding some of the early research involved with hallucinogenic mushrooms, the author remembers hearing a story which circulated during the early 1970's which indicated that Sandoz laboratories in Mexico allegedly received a grant to study psilocybin.

They were supposed to manufacture a headache tablet to replace aspirin. According to this story, Sandoz could not produce a pill for headaches because they could not separate the visuals from the tranquil effects of the mushroom experience. It should be noted that this story has not been verified by the author. However, it would appear that if Sandoz had conducted such investigations, they could have made a mild pill which would have produced mild tranquillity in patients rather then a hallucinogenic visual experience.

Biographies of Other Mushroom Pioneers


Below are several dozen short biographies of some of those psilophorians whose interest in the sacred mushrooms goes far beyond that of their own minds.



Arno Adelaars graduated from the University of Amsterdam, is a Dutch freelance journalist and has published a fine book on European psilocybian mushrooms, "Alles Over Paddo's". Adelaars, together with Hans van den Hurk and Claudia Müller-Ebeling, were the organizers of the October 1998 "Psychoactivity" conference at the Tropen Museum in Amsterdam.

Michael Aldrich is curator of the Fitz Hugh Ludlow Memorial Library and author of "The Dope Chronicles 1850-1950". Mr. Aldrich presides over the largest collection ever assembled of drug-related material from all over the world.

John Marc Allegro was a British theologian and expert in ancient and archaic languages of Asia Minor (1925-1988). During the 1950s, Allegro was a colleague of the international team of scientists assigned to decipher and translate the Dead Sea Scrolls and was therefore made an Honorary Adviser by King Hussein of Jordan. The publication of his brilliantly written basic study on the fly agaric as a possible origin of early Christian belief systems (The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, 1970) gave him worldwide recognition, but led also to furious hostilities by orthodox theologians, who reacted angrily at the thought provoking title of his book and not justly recognizing the value of the scientific records which Allegro had formulated within the book.

John W. Allen is an amateur ethnomycologist living in North America. Mr. Allen is the author of ten books (including Magic Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest (1976-1997) the oldest selling identification guide on entheogenic mushroom identification) and more than two dozen articles on the subject of visionary mushrooms and the editor and author of the series Ethnomycological Journals Sacred Mushroom Studies. Additionally, Mr. Allen has photographed mushrooms in America, Hawai'i, Southeast Asia, Great Britain and Europe.Furthermore, Mr. Allen is the discoverer of a new entheogenic mushroom species from Thailand, named Psilocybe samuiensis Guzmán, Bandala and Allen. Since the late 1980's Allen has lectured at conferences and symposia, given many slide-show presentations on the history and identification of entheogenic mushrooms and mushroom art throughout the ages at various universities world-wide. His current works include the new CD-ROM, Volume V of Ethnomycological Journals Sacred Mushroom Studies, Psilocybian Mushroom Cultivation: A Brief History co-authored with Jochen Gartz, Volume VII: Mushroom Pioneers (February 2002) and a forthcoming bibliography of psilocybian and other species of Entheogenic Fungi also co-authored by Dr. Jochen Gartz of the University of Leipzig, Germany.

Richard Alpert, also known as Baba Ram Dass, was Timothy Leary's colleague. He has worked extensively in the field of transcendental meditation, yoga and other eastern philosophies. Alpert, along with Leary, obtained a supply of synthetic psilocybine from Sandoz for use in experiments on prisoners at the Concord State Prison in Massachusetts.

James Arthur is recognized as one of the worlds foremost experts on mushrooms and human consciousness. He is an ethnomycologist, author, lecturer, theological researcher, shaman, teacher, and soul healer. His book 'Mushrooms and Mankind' uncovers a natural link between man, consciousness, plants and God. Proposing that original religious concepts were influenced by the ingestion of entheogenic (psychedelic) plants is not a new concept but the tale does not end there; it is so much more complex. Arthur pulls no punches as he explores the idea that Religions have become entities far removed from their original intention as helpers of mankind and have, through ego-inspired mis-interpretation of revelation and/or simple control motivation (The Pharmacratic Inquisition), becomes oppressive to mankind. I. E. - In ancient times man consumed these plants and attempted to convey that which they experienced through mythological tales and anthropomorphism of the plants. Combined with Astro-theology these tales became the original religion from which most others evolved (plagiarized). Purporting the idea that all tribal cultures used some sort of entheogens is not an arguable fact, and the development of these concepts should not be shunned or ignored. Receiving rave reviews, Arthur is a dynamic speaker combining wit and humor to divulge information that is astounding audiences everywhere he speaks. "This information is sensationally heavy yet James conveys a message of profound importance to our time (Jordan Maxwell). Mr. Arthur has been on dozens of radio shows and has lectured around the U.S. and as far away as Egypt, due to his knowledge and expertise. He speaks at New Age, U.F.O., Theological and Consciousness events as well as Mycological Societies and Ancient Studies Conferences.

Wolfgang Bauer is a a German psychologist who has studied extensively on optical illusions by Prof. Rausch at the J.W. Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt/Main. Bauer is also editor of Sergius Golowin's classic treatise on witches herbs and magic mushrooms (Magie der verbotenen Märchen, Hamburg, 1973), which became a cult-book in the Seventies and which was secretly xerox-copied in the then communistic eastern part of Germany and later redistributed in the hippie-underground there. Furthermore, Bauer is co-editor of Integration - Journal for Mind-Moving Plants and Culture and also editor and co-author of Der Fliegenpilz - Traumkult, Märchenzauber, Mythenrausch (Aarau 2000). His collection of objects relating to the fly-agaric has been exhibited by the Karl Ernst Osthaus-Museum (Hagen) several times throughout many European Museums.

Michael Beug was Academic Dean at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. Beug has taught mushroom identification at Evergreen and at mushroom conferences throughout the U.S.A. since 1972. He is also a contributor of photographs to more than a dozen books, and has published numerous scientific papers on mushroom toxins and mushroom- identification keys.

Frank Barron was a colleague of Timothy Leary, who first told Leary that he had brought some mushrooms he had obtained in México back to Harvard. This was the first Leary had heard of their special power, and later inspired Leary to ingest these special mushrooms.

Antonio Bianchi is an Italian anesthesiologist and toxicologist, and is an expert on visionary mescaline-containing cacti from Perú (San Pedro) and México (péyote). Bianchi has also studied the soma mushroom, Amanita muscaria.

Jeremy Bigwood (right). Photo: Linda Dea

Jeremy Bigwood is a biochemist and mushroom cultivator. In the late 1970's Bigwood was a co-ordinator of the Second International Conference on Hallucinogenic Mushrooms, where he lectured on new and improved methods for the cultivation of Psilocybe cubensis. Bigwood was also co-editor with Jonathan Ott and contributor to Teonanacatl: Hallucinogenic Mushrooms of North America. He attended Evergreen State College in Washington State where he collaborated both with Michael Beug and Jonathan Ott. Bigwood and Michael Beug contributed two scientific articles to the Journal of Ethnopharmacology on potency levels of in vitro grown specimens of P. cubensis and other psilocybian mushrooms from the Pacific Northwest of the United States. Furthermore, Bigwood and Ott presented one of the first methods for inoculating shrooms spores using syringes.

Richard Glen Boire is a California attorney who defends clients charged with drug-law violations. He is the publisher of a newsletter The Entheogenic Law Reporter, devoted to drug-related law and news. Boire is also the author of Sacred Mushrooms and the Law and Marijuana Law.

Masha Wasson Briten is the adopted daughter of R. Gordon Wasson, who, along with her mother, Valentina Pavlova Wasson, became the first westerner to consume the magic mushrooms outside of a ceremonial context.

J. Christopher Brown is a graduate student in Botany at the University of

Massachusetts who helped to organize the Gordon and Tina Wasson Ethnomycological Collection at the Harvard Botanical Museum.

Carlos Castaneda is an anthropologist who has written several novels ostensibly about a Yaqui Indian medicine-man named Don Juan. In the what is the first saga , being an account of an alleged relationship with a Yaqui Indian medicine man, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, mentions a smoking-mixture which Don Juan allegedly referred to as humilito.According to Castaneda, this smoking-mixture contained psilocybian mushrooms ground into a fine powder. This book led many pilgrims to México in search of the "magic mushrooms." It should be noted that no other Yaqui Indians are known to use psilocybian mushrooms, nor have the mushrooms ever been reported to be smoked elsewhere by anyone in México.

Stephan F. de Borhegyi is an archeologist who studied the mushroom stones of Middle America and published a few papers regarding them.

Jim de Korne is the author of Psychedelic Shamanism and has contributed two chapters in his book on the sacred mushrooms.

Richard de Mille has exhaustedly studied the Carlos Castaneda controversy in the process shedding doubt on the authenticity of Castaneda's research and his books concerning his relationship with the (to De Mille) non-existent shaman, Don Juan.

Herman de Vries is a Dutch artist who is also editor-in-chief of Integration - Journal of Mind Moving Plants and Culture. De Vries, spent most of his life suffering from asthma. Doctors told him that he would not lived beyond fifty years of age. However, on the 17th of January 1970, De Vries said goodbye to his illness after an LSD-experience which forever changed his life. And since that very day he has been in the best of health. De Vries believes that as a humans we all have an existential basic right to test and experience all the possibilities which nature offers us. As an artist, De Vries has participated in almost 500 exhibitions and his works are represented in 48 museums.

Rick Doblin is the founder and current president of MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies) and has recently conducted a follow-up study to Timothy Leary's, Concord Psilocybin Prison Project. Rick is currently in the Ph.D. program in Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and has previously graduated from Stan and Christina Grof's Holotropic Breathwork 3-year training program.

Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty was co-author with R. Gordon Wasson of Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality, and is an expert on the Hindu epic Reg Veda, also having edited an anthology with some of the original text.

William Emboden is Professor of Biology at the University of California at Northridge and author of Narcotic Plants, an excellent book on visionary and other psychoactive plants. A section of this fine book is devoted to mushrooms.

Leonard Enos is author of the first identification manual for psilocybine-containing mushrooms common in the Pacific Northwest United States. Mr. Enos' A Key to the North American Psilocybin [sic] Mushroom" is poorly written, illustrated with imaginative water-colors of the common species, and tells the prospective collector where, when and how to find several species of psilocybian mushrooms. There is also a un-practical chapter on cultivation of psilocybian mushrooms and another chapter on a so-called philosophy involving psilocybin mushrooms.

Alvaro Estrada is a Mazatec Indian who speaks and writes Spanish. His interviews with María Sabina were the basis for her autobiography Vida de María Sabina: La Sabia de Hongos, translated into French as ("Autobiographie de María Sabina: La Sage aux Champignons Sacrés"); English as ("María Sabina: Her Life, Her Chants"); into Portuguese ("A Vida de María Sabina, a Sabia dos Cogumelos"); and in German as {"María Sabina: Botin der Heiligen Pilze").

Michael Fehr is director of the Karl Ernst Osthaus-Museum in Hagen (Germany). Fehr has organized several exhibitions on the studies and use of the fly-agaric mushroom Amanita muscaria. One article of importance to this work has Dr. Fehr discussing the role of psychoactive fungi as objects of museum didactic considerations published in Der Fliegenpilz - ein kulturhistorisches Museum (Köln, 1991), a book, of which Michael Fehr is also the editor.

Jochen Gartz is a biochemist and mycologist at the University of Leipzig, Germany. Gartz is also founder of the Department of Fungal Biotransformation at that University. Gartz has traveled extensively and conducted field-research in Europe, South Africa and the US Pacific Northwest. He has authored more than 50 scientific papers on the chemistry and cultivation of entheogenic mushrooms and has authored field guides (publ. in German and English) for the identification of psilocybian mushrooms. Gartz is the discoverer of a new entheogenic mushroom from Africa, which he named Psilocybe natalensis. His books include Magic Mushrooms Around the World (1996), an English translation of of the two German editions of "Narrenschwämme" (1993); and (co-authored two books on CD-ROM with John W. Allen) "Magic Mushrooms in Some Third World Countries" (1998) and "Psilocybian Mushroom Cultivation: A Brief History" of which the latter is currently being translated into a German edition by Gartz.


Jochen Gartz John W. Allen, Sasha Shulgin and Jochen Gartz, Chapman University, 1994

Rich Gee is co-author with Jule Stevens of How to Grow and Identify Psilocybin Mushrooms and author of an aquarium guide to the latest techniques for growing psychoactive mushrooms, Cubensis Aquarium Gardening Workbook Edition. Mr. Gee is a pioneer in the field of mushroom cultivation.

Ewald Gerhardt is a European mycologist who recently published a revision of the genus Panaeolus. In German.

Hartmut Geerken is a german writer, musician and paramycologist. As a child Geerken shared a symbiotic relationship with wild edible mushrooms which helped in his survival during the famine after world war II. Increasingly intererested in fungi Geerken eventually became the Editor-in-Chief of Paramykologische Rundschau (a paramycological review; 1979 cont.). Geerken also conducted several field studies of Afghan fungi and in the late 1970s along the Afghan-Pakistani border discoverd the up to then unknown "boletus (tubiporus) pactiae gee". (s. Afghanistan Journal, Graz; 1978/1). Geerken also worked on hallucinogenic mushrooms and mycological folklore healing practises in the middle hindukush and introduced the term rabenbrot to the mycological discussion. In Namibia he did research on the Termitomyces 'omajowa'. Additionally, Geerken has also published numerous books of contemporary literature, directed radio plays and performances and composed musical works in which mushrooms always played an important role. He is also playing the musical works of the mycologist John Cage.

Allen Ginsburg was one of the first people Timothy Leary introduced to psilocybian mushrooms. According to Leary, Ginsburg, after becoming inebriated by the mushrooms, ripped-off all of his clothes and from Leary's Millbrook estate ran stark naked down the street and was not to be heard from until several months later.

F. F. Ghouled is author of The Field Guide to Psilocybin Mushrooms. Ghouled, along with colleague Richard Meridith, later published Psilocybin Cultivation after changing his name to F. C. Gould. This former book described collection of Psilocybe cubensis found only in the Southeastern United States from Texas to Florida and north to Georgia. Ghouled also alleged Amanita muscaria was the famed "magic mushroom "of México [sic!] and mis-identified two photographs of Psilocybe cubensis in their young stage of grow as Panaeolus subbalteatus.

Sergius Golowin is a renown Swiss writer and folklorist, who in his book Die Magie der verbotenen Märchen (Hamburg, 1973), was the first person to infer that there was a connection between the caps of the dwarfs and other beings in fairy tales and the appearance of the fly agaric, a mushroom which sports a red cap (hat). Golowin is also the founder of the Psychedelic Folklore (Psychedelische Volkskunde) and has made in the early Seventies, a very impressive experiment when he bioassayed seven dried caps of the fly agaric. The account of his experience is printed in Der Fliegenpilz - Traumkult, Märchenzauber, Mythenrausch. Furthermore, when Dr. Timothy Leary was arrested in Switzerland after his flight from the U.S.A., Golowin started an initiative intended to get Leary out of Swiss prison and later attempted to help Leary get a residence permit for Leary to remain in Switzerland.

Adam Gottlieb is author of The Psilocybin Producer's Guide, a poorly written book on cultivation with several identification errors which were never corrected in subsequent printings (Psychedelic Underground Library: Nine Rare Classics) and reissues of the original book and later the same errors were reprinted in an updated version of his booklet retitled as Psilocybin Production.

Robert Graves was a British author and historian Who wrote also on Greek Mythology and was one of the first persons to whom R. Gordon Wasson gave the sacred-Mexican mushrooms. Graves wrote several articles about mushrooms, including one in which he described his experience while under the influence of psilocybian mushrooms--This article appeared in an issue of Holiday magazine (Graves, 1962).

Gastón Guzmán is a Mexican mycologist, co-founder and past President of the Mexican Mycological Society. Guzmán has spent more than 44 years studying mushrooms, working mainly in taxonomy, ecology and ethnomycology. He presently works at the Instituto de Ecología, Xalapa, Veracruz, México, where he founded the Mycology Department in 1989.Guzmán has published more than 350 papers on fungi and 8 books. His first book, published in 1977 was the first mushroom field guide published in Mexico. In 1983 Cramer published his monograph on Psilocybe (now out of print): The Genus Psilocybe: A Systematic Revision of the Known Species Including the History, Distribution and Chemistry of the Hallucinogenic Species . In 1995 Cramer also published a supplement to that monograph. Guzmán had described more than one hundred new species of Psilocybe throughout the world. His most recent book, published in 1997, is a checklist of Spanish names for mushroom species of Latin American mushrooms, a monumental work covering more than 5,500 common names with scientific equivalents ( over 1600 species). Guzmán began his first studies in 1955 and 1957 became field assistant to Rolf Singer, then investigating the hallucinogenic fungi of México. In an obscure village of southern México, Guzmán attended an Indian ceremony where he partook of the visionary mushroom (Psilocybe cubensis).Since 1995 and 1997 Guzmán has been honored as an Emeritus National Research Fellow in Mexico and an Emeritus Research Fellow of his Institution. Guzmán's current work is A Worldwide Geographical Distribution of the Neurotropic Fungi, Analysis and Discussion, a listing all of the known psychoactive species (218 and counting) and their worldwide distribution, co authored with John W. Allen and Jochen Gartz. This large monograph will appear in the Italian Journal Annal des Musei Civici de Rovereto. Guzmán is considered to be the leading authority on the taxonomy of the Mexican entheogenic mushrooms.

Gastón Guzmán in his laboratory working on his Monograph, The Genus Psilocybe

Richard and Karen Haard were not directly involved in the study of hallucinogenic mushrooms, but they did publish in the mid-1970's one of the first field guides devoted specifically to the identification of both poisonous and hallucinogenic mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest United States. Richard Haard, Ph.D., is a graduate of Kansas State University, and formerly an associate Professor of Biology at Western Washington State College. Haard taught at the Nature Study Institute, Bellingham, Washington, which he and his wife Karen founded in 1974, and also worked as a biological-system consultant for various Indian tribes of North America. Karen Haard, B.Sc. is also a graduate of Kansas State University, and a former research technician in a biological laboratory.

Joan Halifax is an anthropologist with an interest in shamanism and preliterate cultures that have used drug-plants. She was a close friend of R. Gordon Wasson's.

Martin Hanslmeier is a German physician and psychotherapist who has been engaged in the study of mycology since childhood. Hanslmeier is also a painter and photographer of psychoactive fungi. His study on German psychoactive mushrooms (Mykographie einer Wiese in der Rhön) has been printed in Herman de Vries' catalogue of a large collection of herbs and plants (natural relations, Nürnberg 1989). Also numerous articles on magic mushrooms have appeared in many journals and publications throughout Germany.

Bob Harris is the author of Growing Wild Mushrooms and the creator, along with David Tatelman, of the Homestead Mushroom Kit. Harris also invented a wheat-straw pasteurizer to be used in mushroom cultivation.

Roger Heim was the noted French mycologist who accompanied R. Gordon Wasson on several expeditions into the Sierra Madre of México and identified taxonomically the first seven species of hallucinogenic fungi used in traditional healing ceremonies in Oaxaca, México [see Wasson, 1957; Heim & Wasson, 1958]. Heim contributed amply to scientific journals, including more than fifty articles concerning the sacred mushrooms of México and, together with his colleague Roger Cailleux and many other specialists, was first to cultivate the entheogenic mushrooms.

Margaret Holden is an English mycologist who reported on the poisoning of a young boy who had allegedly consumed Panaeolina foenisecii. Similar intoxications were reported by the Australian physician R. V. Southcott (1974) and by the American mycologist Orson Miller, (1971).

Hans van den Hurk is the founder of the Conscious Dreams Smart Shop and wholesale operation in Amsterdam, which legally sells fresh psilocybian mushrooms, péyotl and other natural entheogens. Conscious Dreams, which now has five shops in Holland, was the first Smart Shop in Amsterdam and also the first to offer psilocybian mushrooms for sale. Conscious Dreams is renowned throughout Europe. Currently The legality of psilocybian mushrooms in the Netherlands is being challenged by the courts.

Aldous Huxley spent the last decade of his life in the study of entheogens, after Humphrey Osmond introduced him to mescaline in 1953. Mr. Huxley is the author of Brave New World and Island, both of which were about drugs and their integration into society.

Jim Jacobs has done field-work on psychoactive mushrooms throughout México, Canada, and the United States since 1975. His collections were described in the monograph The Genus Psilocybe by Gastón Guzmán. Jacobs is a member of the Oregon Mycological Society's Toxicology Committee and is an independent consultant with Oregon's Poison Control Center. Recently a species of Psilocybe was named in his honor (Psilocybe jacobii Guzmán..


Jim Jacobs and Karl L. R. Jansen Chantrelle hunting, Breittenbush, Oregon, 1991.

John W. Allen and Karl L. R. Jansen, Breittenbush, Oregon, 1991.

Karl L. R. Jansen is the co-author, M. D., Ph. D., is a member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and is the co-author, together with John W. Allen and Mark D. Merlin, of the paper An Ethnomycological review of Psychoactive Agarics in Australia and New Zealand, was published in a 1991 issue of Journal of Psychoactive Drugs. Jansen is also one of the worlds leading experts on ketamine. He has studied ketamine at every level: from photographing the receptors to which ketamine binds in the human brain, to publishing numerous papers on his discovery of the similarities between ketamine's psychoactive effect and the near-death experience.

His writings have appeared in over 30 medical journals and popular magazines of our times. Jansen's recent book, Ketamine: Dreams and Realities, is a tour de force, and the authoritative tome on the subject. Jansen has also published several papers on the Thai narcotic plant known as kratom (Mitragyna speciosa.

Irmgard Weitlaner Johnson is a specialist in prehispanic and contemporary Mesoamerican textiles and was one of the first westerners to witness a sacred mushroom ceremony.

Everett Kardel, A pioneer in publishing a successful Indentification manual for Pacific Northwet Psilocybe mushrooms is an Oregon author of an early identification guide for mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest (Magic Mushrooms), a unique pamphlet printed on a mimeograph machine.

Keewaydinoquay [M. Peschel] is a North American Indian shaman from Miniss Kitigan, Michigan, a member of the Ahnishinaubeg, one of the few Native American tribes (located in Northern Michigan and Southern Ontario known to uses a mushroom [Amanita muscaria] in a ceremonial context.

Edzard Klapp has studied under the tuttledge of the well-known German mycologist Hans Haas (Die Pilze Mittel-Europas), having, at an early age, discovered the strangeness and the hidden secrets of the sacred fungi. In 1971, Klapp encountered The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross and was began a long-time correspondence with the author John Marco Allegro. Further nurturing Allegro's beliefs, Klapp wrote an essay in 1982 (Rabenbrot). In this essay, Klapp discusses the amanita and its relationship and its association in hypothesis to the bread which the raven brought to Elija the prophet in the Holy Bible. This essay has been reprinted on many ocassions. The metalinguistic term "intentional speech" proved hereby of heurestic value. Carrying on his thesis, Klapp wrote The Masks of the Fly Agaric printed in Der Fliegenpilz - Traumkult, Märchenzauber, Mythenrausch (Aarau 2000).

Stanley Krippner, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology at Saybrook Graduate School, San Francisco, California. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Association of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, the Society for the Scientific Study of Sex, and is a Charter Fellow of the American Psychological Society and the American Academy of Clinical Sexologists. He is a member of the American Anthropological Association, the Association for the Study of Dreams, The International Council of Psychologists, the InterAmerican Psychological Association, The American Academy of Social and Political Science, the Center for Shamanic Studies, and a Charter Member of the International Society for Multiple Personality and Dissociation.

He served as Director of the Dream Laboratory at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn for ten years, and for three years was director of the Child Study Center, Kent State University. Dr. Krippner has been a visiting Professor at the College of Life Sciences, Bogota, Colombia and the University of Puerto Rico, and a Lecturer at the University of Minais Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil. He is co-author of several books, including The Mythic Path, Personal Mythology, Spiritual Dimensions of Healing, and Healing States, co-editor of Broken Images, Broken Selves, and editor of Dreamtime and Dreamwork as well as eight volumes of Advances in Parapsychological Research. He has authored or co-authored over 500 journal articles, book chapters and monographs. Dr. Krippner, along with co-author Michael Winkleman, contributed a fine article on María Sabina to The Journal of Psychoactive Drugs and has a long term interest in shamanic medicine of Third World countries.

Weston LaBarre is an anthropologist with a special interest in the use of entheogens by primitive societies. He is author both of The Peyote Cult, the definitive book on the peyote religion, and The Ghost Dance: The Origins of Religion and numerous journal publications on the subject of drug-use in primitive cultures.

Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain are authors of Acid Dreams: The CIA, LSD, and the Sixties Rebellion, a book which retells the story of the CIA infiltration of R. Gordon Wasson's expedition to México in 1956. Their book also provides some insight into Timothy Leary's research at Harvard. See John Marks and Jay Stevens.

Roger Liggenstorfer is co-editor of María Sabina. Botin der heilige Pilze. Liggenstorfer has contributed numerous articles to scientific publications. Additionally, Liggenstorfer also believes in "Oink" (the hidden power of Psilocybe cyanescens) which is derived from an experience on Psilocybe cyanescens, see his book on María Sabina.

Anita Hofmann, Roger Liggenstorfer and Albert Hofmann.

Photo: Hansjörg Sahli.

Gary Lincoff is president of the North American Mycological Society, employed at the New York Botanical Garden and is editor of the Audubon Field Guide to the North American Mushrooms and The Simon and Schuster Mushroom Field Guide. Lincoff has also contributed, with D. H. Mitchell, a 35-page chapter to the book Toxic and Hallucinogenic Mushroom Poisoning.

Frank J. Lipp is professor in the Department of Anthropology of Duke University and has studied the use of psilocybian mushrooms among the Chinantec and Mixe of Oaxaca, México.

Bernard Lowy was professor Emeritus in the Botany Department of Louisiana State University. He has served for 15 years as a member of the editorial board of Mycologia and contributed numerous articles on hallucinogenic mushrooms, including describing his collection of Psilocybe mexicana in Guatemala. He is posthumous co-author of a forthcoming book on the history of entheogenic mushrooms.

Thomas Lyttle is editor and publisher of the now-defunct journal Psychedelic Monographs and Essays. Currently the editor of Psychedelics reimagined.

John Marks is author of The Search for the Manchurian Candidate. Marks first uncovered the story of the CIA's infiltration of R. Gordon Wasson's Mexican mushroom expedition in 1956. See related information under James Moore, Jay Stevens and Lee & Shlain.

Dennis McKenna has been involved in the interdisciplinary study of ethnopharmacology and plant hallucinogens for the past 25 years. He is co-author, with his brother Terence, of The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens, and the I Ching, a philosophical and metaphysical exploration of the ontological implications of psychedelic drugs which resulted from the two brothers' early investigations of Amazonian hallucinogens in 1971. He received his doctorate in 1984 from the University of British Columbia. His doctoral research focused on ethnopharmacological investigations of the botany, chemistry, and pharmacology of ayahuasca and oo-koo-he, two orally-active tryptamine-based hallucinogens used by indigenous peoples in the Northwest Amazon. Following the completion of his doctorate, Dr. McKenna received post-doctoral research fellowships in the Laboratory of Clinical Pharmacology, National Institute of Mental Health, and in the Department of Neurology, Stanford University School of Medicine. In 1990, he joined Shaman Pharmaceuticals as Director of Ethnopharmacology. He relocated to Minnesota in 1993 to join the Aveda Corporation, a manufacturer of natural cosmetic products, as Senior Research Pharmacognosist. He currently works as a scientific consultant to clients in the herbal, nutritional, and pharmaceutical industries. Together with two colleagues in the natural products industry, he incorporated the non-profit Institute for Natural Products Research (INPR) in October 1998 to promote research and scientific education with respect to botanical medicines and other natural medicines. Additionally, Mckenna serves on the Advisory Board of the American Botanical Council, and on the Editorial Board of Phytomedicine, International Journal of Phytotherapy and Phytopharmacology.He is a founding board member and Vice-President of the Heffter Research Institute, a non-profit scientific organization dedicated to the investigation of therapeutic applications for psychedelic plants and compounds and has also served as board member and Research Advisor to Botanical Dimensions, a non-profit organization dedicated to the investigation of ethnomedically significant plants. He was a primary organizer and key scientific collaborator for the Hoasca Project, an international biomedical study of Hoasca, a psychoactive drink used in ritual contexts by indigenous peoples and syncretic religious groups in Brasil. He has conducted extensive ethnobotanical fieldwork in the Peruvian, Colombian, and Brasilian Amazon. He has served as invited speaker at numerous scientific congresses, seminars, and symposia. Dr. McKenna is author or co-author of over 35 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals. His publications have appeared in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology, European Journal of Pharmacology, Brain Research, Journal of Neuroscience, Journal of Neurochemistry, Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, Economic Botany, and elsewhere. Additionally, Dennis Mckenna and his brother Terence, using the pseudonyms O. N. Oeric and O. T. Oss, published the first popular of several psilocybin mushroom growing guides in the 1970s. In fact, it was Dennis Mckenna who actually devised the technology for growing these mushrooms in jars.


Terence McKenna was a world-renowned guru of sacred mushrooms, author, evangelistic proselyte of the Amazon and the mind; and a noted lecturer, specializing in shamanic-plants, entheogens from the Amazon and spiritual transformation. Born in 1946, Mckenna has spent the last twenty-five years of his life studying the ontological foundations of shamanism, in digesting mushrooms, yopo snuff, and ayahuasca. Together with his brother Dennis he published The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens and the I Ching, a scientific and philosophical effort to explain the results of their investigations into the phenomena of time and tryptamine pharmacology.A narrative of the brothers adventures in the Amazon was the subject of a later book by Terence, True Hallucinations, although his last trip to the Amazon occurred in 1981 when he accompanied his brother Dennis on an expedition, sponsored by the University of British Columbia, to investigate the use of oo-koo-he, an orally active Virola hallucinogen used by the Witotos and Boras in Peru and Columbia. A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, McKenna survived the sixties by traveling extensively in the Asian and New World Tropics and extensively studied and lectured on shamanism of the Amazon basin. Terence, along with his wife Kat Harrison and brother Dennis, was also a co-founder of Botanical Dimensions, a non-profit botanical garden on the Island of Hawai'i. Additionally, Terence was a popular lecturer among college students. Besides being co-author with his brother Dennis The Invisible Landscape and the classic cultivation guide written under the pseudonyms of Oeric and Oss, Terence wa also the author of Food of the Gods. Terence passed away in April, 2000 from terminal brain cancer and he will be surely be missed by those whose paths he crossed and touched.



Gary Menser was a real estate agent in Florence, Oregon and a past President of the Eugene, Oregon Mycological Society. He was author of Hallucinogenic and Poisonous Mushroom Field Guide (later retitled Magikal Mushroom Handbook). Menser was also an expert on truffles and their collection.

Mark D. Merlin is a biogeographer in the Biology Program of the University of Hawai'i at Manoa with special interest in the ethnobotany and cultural history of entheogenic plants. He has published academic press books on Cannabis [Man and Marijuana: Some Aspects of Their Ancient Relationship, Fairleigh Dickinson, University Press, 1972], opium or [Papaver somniferum [On the Trail of the Ancient Opium Poppy, Associated University Presses, 1984], and more recently co-authored a book kava (Piper methysticum), an important traditional drug-plant of many Pacific Islands [Kava: The Pacific Drug, Yale University Press, 1992] The latter publication was later retitled as Kava: The Pacific Elixer.

Dr. Merlin has also co-authored seven papers with John W. Allen on identification and non-traditional use of entheogenic mushrooms in Hawai'i and Southeast Asia.


Mark D. Merlin in his office, Hawaii

Richard Alan Miller is a warlock and herbalist who co-authored with David Tatleman the first psilocybian mushroom handbook featuring color photographs for identification of psilocybian mushrooms: The Magikal Mushroom Handbook. Miller also wrote another book, Magikal and Ritual Use of Herbs. In the first edition of the latter publication, Miller reported on the (non-existent) sexual mushroom-rituals of the Mazatec Indians. However, the Indians of Oaxaca refrain from any sexual activity for three days before and after a sacred mushroom ceremony. This portion of Mr. Miller's book was removed from subsequent editions.

James Moore was a CIA "short order cook" [a chemist] who infiltrated one of R. Gordon Wasson's mushroom expeditions to Oaxaca, México in 1956. Moore even ingested the mushrooms during a ceremony and according to Peter Stafford (1992), in Moore's own words, Moore recalls that "I had a terrible cold, we damned near starved to death, and I itched all over. There was all this chanting in the dialect. Then they passed the mushrooms around, and we chewed them up. I did feel the hallucinogenic effect, although `disoriented' would be a better word to describe my reaction." Obviously Moore had an uncomfortable experience, probably due to the fact that he was not whom he appeared to be. His mind caught up with his phoniness and placed him in an awkward and uncomfortable position. Mr. Moore eventually returned to his laboratory in Delaware where he attempted in vain to isolate the active compounds from the mushrooms.--compounds which were to be used by the CIA in "non-conventional chemical warfare." Luckily for all of us, Moore was unsuccessful in this endeavor.

Henry Munn contributed an excellent essay on the mushrooms of language (Munn, 1973).

Richard Hans Norland is author of What's In A Mushroom? Part Three, a book on psilocybian mushrooms which contains a lot of graphs and charts on the chemical analysis of certain species of entheogenic fungi which were collected in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It should be noted that Norland failed to publish What's in a Mushroom? Parts One and Two. Furthermore Norland also advertised a psilocybian bibliography for $5.00 in advance of publication--This volume was never published.

György-Miklos Ola'h is a mycologist and chemist at Laval Université in Québec, Canada. In the late 1960,'s Ola'h conducted several studies of the genus Panaeolus and published a monograph, Le Genre Panaeolus, identifying several species Panaeolus mushrooms as latent psilocybian and/or non-psilocybian. Ola'h also studied species from Southeast Asia, Africa and the Philippines.

Jonathan Ott is an ethnopharmacolgnosist, natural-products chemist and botanical researcher, is considered by many to be the "Master of Entheogens." A protégé of R. Gordon Wasson, Ott was one of the original organizers of the now-famous mushroom conferences of the late 1970's. Ott is founder of Natural Products Co., a small chemical- manufacturing business based in Vashon, Washington.

John W. Allen and Jonathan Ott, Botanical Preservation Corps, Maui, 1994.

He us a fellow of the Linnean Society, and a long time member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Society for Economic Botany and the Society of Ethnobiology. Ott co-authored a book and paper with his friend and teacher, the late ethnomycologist R. Gordon Wasson and has also collaborated closely with Richard Evans Schultes and Albert Hofmann. Furthermore, Ott is the author of Hallucinogenic Plants of North America, book on The Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Hallucinogenic Mushrooms, Teonanácatl: Hallucinogenic Mushrooms of North America (co-edited with Jeremy Bigwood) both out-of print, as well as The Cacahuatl Eater: Ruminations of an Unabashed Chocolate Addict, Pharmacotheon: Entheogenic Drugs, their Plant Sources and History. Most recently he published a book on the famous South American visionary-drug, Ayahuasca Analogues, as well as The Age of Entheogens and The Angels' Dictionary and Pharmacophiles ir the Natural Paradises. Ott is working on a book of shamanic snuffs. Ott, together with Rob Montgomery, conducts annual seminars under the auspices of Entheobotany Seminars Corps. These annual entheogenic-plant seminars have taken place in Equador, Maui, Hawai'i, Veracruz and Palenque, Mexico.

Steven Peele is curator and President of the Florida Mycology Research Center. At one time, Mr. Peele was the only private citizen in the United States who had a Schedule One permit for possession and sale of psilocybe spores, mushrooms and mushroom-cultures. Due to unorthodox methods for storage of such material, the DEA withdrew his permit. Peele publishes a newsletter, The Mushroom Culture: Journal of Mushroom Cultivation and a second Journal, TEO: The International Journal of Psychoactive Mushrooms..

Eunice V. Pike and Florence Cowan are Wycliff Bible translators who lived among the Mazatec Indians of Oaxaca. They wrote two articles in Practical Anthropology on the Mazatecs who used magic mushrooms albeit Christian converts. These two women and Richard Evans Schultes gave R. Gordon Wasson the incentive to search for the mushroom cult he rediscovered in México.

Steven Hayden Pollock followed in Andrew Weil's footsteps by reporting in scientific journals, a history of the contemporary use of psilocybin mushrooms as recreational drugs. Pollock also contributed several noteworthy papers on both Psilocybe and Panaeolus species to the scientific and academic communities. He was the first investigator to report on the use of visionary mushrooms in Hawai'i. Pollock was also involved in the propagation of Psilocybe cubensis and is noted for the marketing of what he referred to as "Cosmic Camote" or "Philosophers Stone."

These epithets were given to the sclerotia of a new species discovered by Pollock, Psilocybe tampanensis. Pollock also produced a potent strain of Psilocybe cubensis which he named Matias Romero after a town in southwestern Mexico and was the first cultivator to use horse manure and straw compost for cultivating the visionary mushrooms.

Steven Hayden Pollock. 1st International Conference on Hallucinogenic Mushrooms, 1976. Photo: Linda Dear.

Andrija Puharich was a man who overcame poverty and many personal tragedies who etched his way through medical school, going on and establishing a Parapsychological research foundation to oversee his medical discoveries which covered over 75 patents. Puharich was a maverick, a dedicated researcher, a rebel scientist, scorned by colleagues, and revered and encouraged by those gifted with foresightedness, including Aldous Huxley. His involvement in the field of ethnomycology began when he first filmed forays delving into the ancient mysteries and secrets of the sacred mushroom rites of the Chatino Indians of Mexico and later, on a trip to to the Hawaiian Islands where Puharich, along with Hawaiian Kahuna David Bray sought evidence that a mushroom may have been used and played an important role in the early religious rites of the Hawaiian people. Unfortunately, Puharich reported that he had not uncovered any conclusive proof supporting the mushroom theory, based on documented evidence which claimed that the mushrooms, which when eaten, gave the user extra-sensory perception. It was because of the similarity between the Hawaiian word "akua" referring to the supernatural and the word "aku" with a similar meaning in five other areas of the world which brought Puharich to Hawaii. Puharich was also interested in and supported Uri Geller, UFO's and was an authority on E.L. F (extremely low frequency magnetic fields), pollution and its effects on human organisms. His book The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross is a classic testament to his beliefs in the historical value of these mushrooms.



Christian Rätsch is a cultural anthropologist from Hamburg, Germany, specializing in the sacred and secular use of magical plants. His fieldwork among the Lacondos of Chiapas includes study of Datura and balché potions. Rätsch's books include Gateway to Inner Space, Dictionary of Sacred and Magical Plants, and diverse publications on the Maya, alchemy, psychedelics, aphrodisiacs and oracles. Rätsch and his colleague Roger Liggenstorfer co-authored and edited a translation of Estrada's book on the life and times of the Mexican shaman Doña María Sabina (Maria Sabina: Botin der Heiligen Pilze). Rätsch is also editor of The Yearbook for Ethnomedicine and the Study of Consciousness and author of Enzyklopädie der psychoaktiven Pflanzen. Botanik, Ethnopharmakologie und Anwendungen.

C. Rätsch and R. Liggenstorfer.


Alan B. Richardson is a professional photographer and was a personal friend of R. Gordon Wasson. Richardson's photographs of María Sabina and her nocturnal velada graced the pages of Life magazine [May 13, 1957]. Richardson was the first outsider together with R. Gordon Wasson, to eat the sacred mushrooms.

Thomas J. Riedlinger is a researcher who was editor of The Sacred Mushroom Seeker: Essays for R. Gordon Wasson. This book contains numerous essays in honor of R. Gordon Wasson, written by those who knew him best.

Ronald Rippchen is the author and editor of a German book devoted to psilocybian mushrooms. Numerous articles by well- known authors in this field are presented and the book is lavishly illustrate

Alexandra Rosenbohm is a German cultural anthropologist and exhibition maker who is a specialiist in trance-inducing plants and mushrooms in the context of historic and contemporary shamanism and witchcraft. She has developed and organized several exhibitions regarding that subject and has published books like Halluzinogene Drogen im Schamanismus (about the use of the fly agaric in Siberia). Rosenbohm was also editor and co-author of Schamanen zwischen Mythos und Moderne (Leipzig 1999) and Der Fliegenpilz - Traumkult, Märchenzauber, Mythenrausch (Aarau 2000
Barry Rumack and Emanuel Salzman are authors of an excellent book with several chapters devoted to visionary mushrooms, Mushroom Poisoning: Diagnosis and Treatment. It provides a good section on treatment for various kinds of mushroom poisoning, including that of Amanita muscaria.

María Sabina was the famous Mazatec curandera who kept alive the archaic practices of her ancestors the ancient Olmecs, Toltecs and Aztecs. It was Doña María Sabina who first initiated R. Gordon Wasson and Alan Richardson in the "magic mushrooms" of México. Through the writings of Wasson and Wasson (1957), Heim and Wasson (1958) and subsequent writings by others, María Sabina became world-renowned as the most famous shaman of the twentieth century. (see Allen's [1997a] volume I of Ethnomycological Journals Sacred Mushroom Studies and Estrada's [1976] autobiography of María Sabina).

María Sabina.

Bernardino de Sahagún was a Franciscan friar who documented the most important historical information on the use of the sacred mushrooms of the New World. It was Sahagún who first wrote down the word teonanácatl. Some other colored Spanish clergymen and historians also mentioned the sacred mushrooms in their writings--these include Juan de Córdova, Jacinto de la Serna, Diego Duran, Francisco Hernéndez, Alonzo de Molina, and Motolina (a pseudonym for Toribio de Benavente)

Luc Sala is a German television personality involved in the media and various aspects of the European drug subculture. He is also the author of Paddos: Our Little Brothers. Starter Guide of Magic Mushroom Psychonauts. Published in the Netherlands in both English and Dutch editions.

Giorgio Samorini is an Italian researcher of psychoactive plants and mushrooms with a special interest in the archaeology of mushroom art throughout the ages (including Amanita art and the art of the Tassilli plains). Samorini also has a special interest in the African entheogenic/aphrodisiac plant Tabernanthe iboga. Samorini is the only white person to have been initiated into the Bwiti cult of Gabon, Africa where this plant is used ceremoniously. Samorini has also studied the mycoflora of Italy.

Jeremy Sandford is the author of In Search of the Magic Mushroom. Sandford describes his adventures in México while seeking out the magic mushrooms he had heard so much about.

J. H. Sanford is author of an article about the accidental ingestion of psilocybian mushrooms in Japan. Some of the case studies provided by Mr. Sanford date back to the 11th century.

Georges Scheibler is a French mycologist who published the first European guide to identification of psilocybian mushrooms. After its publication Scheibler was harassed by French authorities. European narcotics agents believed that his book would lead to widespread abuse of the mushrooms in France and other European countries.

Alexander and Ann Shulgin are chemists and authors of Pihkal: Phenlethylamines I Have Known and Loved and their new monumental work Tihkal: Tryptamines I Have Known And Loved, a book about their interest in the tryptamine compounds and the chemistry and chemical formulae of many analogues of psilocine and psilocybine.

Rolf Singer was a leading figure in mycology who was also a prolific writer who held important academic and research positions in Europe, North America and South America. Singer also was a Research Associate in the Department of Botany at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Illinois, from 1968-1994. Most noted for developing the nearly universally used classification for the Agaricales (mushrooms and related fungi), Singer reportedly named 86 genera, over 2460 species and infraspecies of fungi distributed in 222 genera. His 440 papers written in 9 languages, covered topics ranging from fungal systematics, nomenclature, ecology, ethnomycology, and mushroom cultivation. Singer, along with noted Michigan mycologist Alexander H. Smith, provided the academic world with the first monograph of the newly discovered species of psilocybian Psilocybes and their distribution in the Pacific Northwest of the United States and Mexico.

Both of these intrepid scholars hold a special place in the ethnomycology of the sacred mushrooms of Mexico. After Roger Heim provided the taxonomy and naming of the first seven species recognized from México, the late mycologist,

Singer(Cont.) accompanied by two young Mexican botanists, M. A. Palacios and Gastón Guzmán, arrived in Oaxaca, México to conduct a taxonomic study on the Mexican mushrooms. Soon they met R. Gordon Wasson, and eventually followed his footsteps tracing the route of the sacred mushrooms throughout Oaxaca, Mexico. Later Singer and his colleague from the University of Michigan, Alexander H. Smith, co-authored a short monograph on the taxonomy of psilocybian mushrooms common in the Pacific Northwestern United States and México (including a few species from México). They also contributed a paper on the sacred mushrooms among the Aztecs and their Náhua descendants. Singer was the second author to note the possible medical use of the sacred mushrooms after Valentina P. Wasson by writing an excellent article on the curative properties of these mushrooms among some groups of indigenous peoples living in Oaxaca (Singer, 1957). Furthermore, Singer contributed numerous articles to books and journals regarding both the medical and recreational use of the sacred fungi. His book The Agaricales in Modern Taxonomy was the first book in modern times to discuss the idea that Teonanácatl was a mushroom, even providing some evidence linking the word Teonanácatl to certain species.

Prakitsin Sihanonth is the head of the Department of Microbiology at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand. Dr. Sihanonth is considered to be a leading authority on mushroom cultivation and excels in the identification of edible, poisonous and psychoactive mushrooms of Thailand.

Alexander H. Smith was Professor Emeritus of Botany at the University of Michigan and who along with his colleague Alexander H. Smith, published some of the earliest papers on the occurrence of psilocybian mushrooms in the United States. Smith also once wrote a paper about the hallucinations of those who study hallucinogenic mushrooms, causing several defensive responses in privately published papers between Smith, Ott and Wasson.

Peter Stafford is author of the Psychedelics Encyclopedia which covers many of the entheogenic plants used as ludible drugs by certain segments of contemporary society. This has a fine chapter on the history of entheogenic mushrooms and their pandemic ascent as a popular drug. Mr. Stafford is also a regular contributor to Bruce Eisner's Island Views, a quarterly publication devoted to psychedelic drugs and their social use in . Recently Stafford published a new book Magic Grams, containing interviews of scholars involved with entheogenic drug research and/or who's interest were similar and the pages are mingled with montages and collages.

Paul Stamets is the Paul Bunyan of mushrooms common to the Pacific Northwest United States. Stamets has been studying mushrooms in the woods of the Pacific Northwest for more than twenty years, and has discovered and co-authored four new psilocybian mushrooms: Psilocybe azurescens, P. cyanofibrillosa, P. liniformans var. americana, and P. weilii.Stamets (Cont.). Stamets also runs a mushroomic mail-order business, Fungi Perfecti, which grows and sells gourmet and medicinal (no psilocybian) mushrooms, and conducts in-depth workshops on edible-mushroom cultivation. Stamets has lectured on psilocybian mushrooms at numerous universities and presented seminars and slide-presentations all over the world. His books include Psilocybe Mushrooms and Their Allies [out of print], The Mushroom Cultivator co-authored by Jeff S. Chilton, Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms, and the recent book Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World.

Paul Stamets. 1st International Conference on Hallucinogenic Mushrooms, 1976. Photo: Linda Dear.

Sam I. Stein was an M.D. who wrote the first medical report concerning a naegative reaction and bad trip after ingesting five dried grams of in vitro grown specimens of Psilocybe cubensis (Earle) Singer (Stein, 1958). Another important contribution was Stein's paper on the effects of Panaeolus subbalteatus and Psilocybe caerulescens in a therapeutic mode (Stein, 1959).

Jay Stevens is author of Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream. Stevens devoted three chapters of this book to the sacred mushrooms. Mr. Stevens talks about the CIA involvement with the mushrooms and the controversy of the Harvard Psilocybin Projects initiated by Timothy Leary and Jonathan Clark. See related information under the headings of John Marks, Lee and Shlain.

Jule Stevens is co-author with Rich Gee of How to Identify and Grow Psilocybin [sic] Mushrooms, a field-and cultivation-guide to mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest United States and Hawai'i. This guide has step-by-step photographs of the process involved in producing good strains of Psilocybe cubensis.

Tjakko Stijve was born in Utrecht (Netherlands) where he recieved an education in analytical chemistry. Since 1967 he has lived in Switzerland, where (until his retirement in 1999) he ran a section on food contaminants in the Quality Assurance Department of Nestle.Stijve (Cont.). Early on he developed an interest in the chemistry of higher fungi, resulting in the publication of many papers on mushroomic toxins and on the bioaccumulation of potentially-toxic trace-elements in macromycetes. While studying tryptophan-derivatives in the early 1980's, he came upon the tryptamines bufotenine, psilocine and psilocybine in some fungi. This awakened his curiosity about psychoactive mushrooms, and prompted him to look for the tryptamines in (at that time) unexplored genera such as Inocybe and Pluteus. In the early 1990's together with mycologist André de Meijer, he made an inventory of the psychoactive mushrooms occurring in Paraná, a province in Southern Brazil. He is presently involved in a study on selenium and bioactive compounds in the genus Albatrellus, which will mark the end of his professional activities in mycochemistry. After his retirement, Stijve will explore a number of ethnomycological subjects.



Tjakko Stijve in his lab as Psilocybe cubensis begins to fruit, 1983.

Frederick Swain was a student who traveled to México in the early 1960's and was graciously greeted by María Sabina who performed a mushroom ceremony for him. Swain wrote of his experience in the Journal Tomorrow, later reprinted in Psychedelic Review No. 2.

David Tatelman is President and founder of the Homestead Book Company. By selling thousands of Mushroom kits and spores over a period of 25 years, he is directly responsible for most of the psilocybe mushrooms now cultivated in the United States. He also published one of the first field guides, The Magickal Mushroom Handbook and was the publisher of Paul Stamets' first book, Psilocybin Mushrooms and Their Allies. His genius has been in popularizing mushrooms to the masses.


David Tatelman. 1st International Conference on Hallucinogenic Mushrooms, 1976. Photo: Linda Deer.

Peter Vuchich of Hongero Press was the first person to commercially sell Psilocybe cubensis spores, which he did by including them in his early book about cultivating mushrooms in the early 70's. Vuchich was also the first person in the United States to successfully advertise his products in High Times magazine selling spore kits to the general public.

Johanna Wagner was a German ethnologist (1923-1990) who became a practicing medicine-woman (mganga) in Africa. In 1982, Dr. Wagner participated in a scientific experiment where she bioassayed fresh caps of the fly agaric. Her experiences with the fly agaric-man during an experience covering almost three days and nights, was recorded on tape and eventually published in Ein Füllhorn göttlicher Kraft. Unter Schamanen, Gesundbetern und Wetterbeschwörern (Berlin, 1985).



R. Gordon Wasson and John W. Allen,

Ft. Wordon, Port Townsend, Washington, 1977.

R. Gordon and Valentina Wasson were pioneer researchers of the entheogenic mushrooms and they are also the main reason we are all here reading this manuscript. Together they coined the terms mycophobia and mycophilia. R. Gordon Wasson is also referred to as the Father of Ethnomycology. Wasson and his wife Valentina are the epitome of the heart of sacred mushrooms. In the middle 1950's, they became the first outsiders to partake of the sacred mushrooms. Gordon Wasson also studied the Aryan entheogen soma; the Kuma aborigines of New Guinea who used theragenic Boletus and Russula species,Wasson and Wasson and extensively researched the use of Amanita muscaria among certain of Siberia. Later, he brought to the attention of the public and academic communities the discovery of a North American tribe which uses Amanita muscaria in a religious context [Wasson & Wasson, 1957; Wasson, 1957a, Wasson, 1958b, Wasson, 1979, jpd on Ojibway].


Roy Watling is an English mycologist, the Senior Principal Scientific Officer of the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh, Scotland. Watling has contributed numerous articles on the taxonomy and use of psilocybian mushrooms from Australia and Great Britain and has published papers with Gastón Guzmán.

Roy Watling, John W. Allen and Prakitsin Sihanonth, Hua Hin, Thailand, 1998.

Andrew Weil is a recipient of an AB degree in botany from Harvard University and also worked for the National Institute of Mental Health. Currently, Dr. Weil is the director of the Program in Integrative Medicine and clinical professor of internal medicine at the University of Arizona in Tucson. As a fellow of the Institute of Current World Affairs, Weil traveled extensively in Mexico, Central and South America gathering information about medicinal plants and healing. Weil was the first investigator to report on the ludible use of psilocybian mushrooms from the Pacific Northwest United States, Colombia in South America and México. He is a graduate of Harvard Medical School who has traveled extensively writing on drug-use throughout México, Central and South America. Weil is author of The Natural Mind, The Marriage of the Sun and the Moon, From Chocolate to Morphine, and numerous books on holistic health and healing. It was Weil who first reported on the ludible use of Psilocybe semilanceata (the 'liberty-cap' mushroom) in Oregon. Weil has also contributed several papers on psilocybian mushrooms to The Harvard Review, The Crimson (Harvard's newspaper), The Botanical Museum Leaflets of Harvard, The Journal of Psychedelic Drugs, The Journal of Altered States of Consciousness and Look Magazine



Andrew Weil and John W. Allen, Drug Awareness Week, Oahu, Hawaii, 1988.


Arnold Wolman is author of a small pamphlet on Psilocybe cubensis. This 16-page booklet described the collection of P. cubensis from the southeastern United States. This guide was published in Chicago, Illinois and was somewhat limited in its distribution.

Anthony Young is a mycologist from Australia who has studied extensively the Genus Panaeolus in Australia. He has also published a review of the genus Panaeolus from Australia.