Sacred Mushroom of Visions Read online

  Edited by Ralph Metzner, Ph.D.

  with Diane Conn Darling

  Park Street Press

  Rochester, Vermont

  THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO

  MARÍA SABINA (1894–1985), Mazatec Wise Woman and Healer who spoke the Holy Language of the niños santos and preserved their spiritual wisdom.

  ROBERT GORDON WASSON (1898–1986), scholar, world traveler and ethnomycologist who rediscovered the teonanácatl cult of the indigenous people of Mexico and brought the gifts of this ancient religion to the modern world.

  ALBERT HOFMANN (who celebrated his ninety-ninth birthday in 2005), scientist, alchemist and nature mystic who found the Stone of the Wise, identified the crystal essence—psilocybin—of the holy mushroom, and fathomed the secret of the Eleusinian Mysteries.

  TIMOTHY LEARY (1920–1996), psychologist, visionary philosopher, and trickster, who ate the sacred mushroom and inspired a generation to “go out of your mind and come to your senses.”

  TERENCE MCKENNA (1946–2000), scholar, bardic seer, emissary from the mushroom world, who mapped the hidden landscape of hyperspace, communed with alien intelligence, and showed the way to join the cosmic community.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The editors acknowledge with gratitude

  Visionary artist Robert Venosa, for permission to use his magnificent painting Shroomglow (oil, collection of Glenn Bailey) on the cover of the first edition of this book, published by Green Earth Foundation, 2004. See: www.venosa.com.

  Elizabeth Gordon and the late Bob Wallace for financial support on the first edition.

  Kathleen Harrison, for permission to use her drawings of the psilocybe life-cycle, and the Bee-Mushroom Goddess from the Tassili Plateau.

  ———

  The information provided in this book is for educational, historical, and cultural interest only and should not be construed as a guide to or advocacy of the use or ingestion of the teonanácatl mushrooms. The psilocybe mushrooms, wild or cultivated, as well as substances derived from them, are controlled substances under U.S. laws. In no way should the material in this book be taken to advocate, explicitly or by implication, the use of these mushrooms or any other illegal substance. Neither authors nor publisher assume any responsibility for physical, psychological, or social consequences resulting from the ingestion of these mushrooms or their derivatives.

  CONTENTS

  Introduction: Visionary Mushrooms of the Americas

  RALPH METZNER, PH.D.

  1. Ethnomycology and Distribution of the Psilocybian Mushrooms

  JOHN W. ALLEN AND JAMES ARTHUR

  2. Global Ecologies, World Distribution, and Relative Potency of Psilocybin Mushrooms

  PAUL STAMETS

  3. The “Wondrous Mushroom” Legacy of R. Gordon Wasson

  THOMAS RIEDLINGER

  4. Biochemistry and Neuropharmacology of Psilocybin Mushrooms

  DAVID E. PRESTI, PH.D., AND DAVID E. NICHOLS, PH.D.

  5. A History of the Use of Psilocybin in Psychotherapy

  TORSTEN PASSIE, M.D.

  6. Prisoner Behavior Change and Experimental Mysticism: Two Classic Studies from the Harvard Psilocybin Project

  DIANE CONN DARLING, RICK DOBLIN, AND RALPH METZNER

  7. A Note on Current Psilocybin Research Projects

  RICK DOBLIN, PH.D.

  8. The Initiation of the “High Priest”

  TIMOTHY LEARY

  9. Initial Experiences from the Harvard Psilocybin Project

  RALPH METZNER

  Experiential Teachings of the Mushroom Spirits

  The Mushroom Beings Would Help Us Return to Our True Nature

  LEILA CASTLE

  The Land of Eternal Waiting—Report of a Mushroom Experience with Maria Sabina

  FREDERICK SWAIN

  A Mazatec Indian Curandero’s Healing Practice Using Psychoactive Mushrooms

  BRET BLOSSER

  I Was Awed by the Mysterious Precision and Generosity of the Mushroom Spirits

  RAOUL ADAMSON

  I Was Being Told to Paint with the Blood of the Heart

  KATE S.

  I Was Having a Conversation with the Sun

  EVAN PSILO

  Shadow, Be My Friend

  GANESHA

  Where Ancient Spirits Dwell and the Air Hums with Magic and Mystery

  CAT L.

  My Heart Was the Doorway to Greater Vision and Awareness

  ABRAHAM L.

  It Was the Divine Play of Hide and Seek

  JASON SERLE

  The Power of the Heart in the Face of Darkness

  MINDFIRE

  Encounter and Metamorphosis with the Sirenian

  LEOPOLD

  My Role, However Humble, Was Necessary and Cosmically Inspired

  PHIL O. CYBE

  I Felt the Vitality of What It Was Like to Be Primitive

  THIRDPALISSY

  I Saw My Entire Worldview and Value System Realign

  DAVID S.

  Pondering the Separation between What I Experience and What Actually Is

  MARK BRYAN

  I Remember What It Was Like before I Had This Face

  JACK SILVER

  We Are All Actors and Directors in a Giant Cosmic Drama

  MARK A. SCHROLL, PH.D.

  The Little Beings Tell Me That Laughing Is Also Holy

  KARIN RIESE

  Mushroom Magic in the Lightning Field

  MARTIN GOODMAN

  Biographical Information

  About the Author

  About Inner Traditions

  Copyright

  Introduction

  VISIONARY MUSHROOMS OF THE AMERICAS

  RALPH METZNER, PH.D.

  Teonanácatl was the name given to one or more species of psilocybe mushrooms in the Nahuatl language of the Aztec people. From Conquest times onward, the name has been translated as “god’s flesh.” The Spanish friars seized upon this to justify the equation of Nahua mushroom ceremonies to devil worship. By regarding it as a diabolical mockery of the consumption of the body of Christ in the Eucharistic communion rite, the friars felt justified in banning the religious practice of the Indians. However, in his 1980 book The Wondrous Mushroom, ethnomycologist R. Gordon Wasson, who rediscovered the shamanic ritual use of psilocybe mushrooms in contemporary Mexican Indian cultures, pointed out that teonanácatl could also, and more correctly, be translated as “wondrous mushroom,” “sacred mushroom,” or even “awesome mushrooms.”

  What is clear, both from the accounts of the Spanish chroniclers and from the accounts of modern anthropologists, is that these visioninducing mushrooms were (and are) revered by the Indians for providing deep spiritual insight and inspiration. The names given to the mushrooms by some of the Mexican Indian tribes—Mazatec, Mixtec, Zapotec, and others—confirm the reverence and affection the mushrooms inspire: “holy lords,” “little saints,” “children” (los niños), “dear little ones that spring forth” (nti-xi-tho, Mazatec), “little princes.” The Aztecs also called them “little flowers,” although fungi do not bloom. For them “flower” was a metaphor, as it was for the Maya, for whom “flowering dreams” refers to ecstatic visions.

  In 1957, Wasson published in LIFE magazine his account of a mushroom session with a Mazatec curandera in a remote mountain village in the state of Oaxaca. The psilocybe mushroom exploded into Western consciousness and during the transformative 1960s, thousands of hippies trekked to the mountains of Oaxaca, seeking consciousness-expanding mushroom experiences. This development was much to the dismay of Wasson and other conservative researchers, who felt that this kind of activity cheapened and desacralized the religious dimensions of the mushroom experience.

  Wasson had b
ecome friends with Albert Hofmann, the brilliant research chemist of the Sandoz pharmaceutical company in Switzerland. About ten years earlier, in 1943, Hofmann had discovered the astounding mind-expanding effects of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), a compound derived from the ergot fungus that grows on rye and other grains. Upon obtaining samples of the Mexican mushroom from Wasson, Hofmann was able to identify and then synthesize the psychoactive ingredient, which he named psilocybin, after the psilocybe mushroom. Thus Western scientific and psychiatric research with psychedelic hallucinogens was linked with ancient Meso-American shamanic practices that used visionary mushrooms as well as plants.

  After the initial wave of North American and European magic mushroom hunters had descended on the mountain villages of Mexico, reports started appearing that psilocybin-containing mushrooms were not limited to Mexico. In fact, they could be found in many parts of the world, including Hawaii, South America, Europe, and Southeast Asia—and were particularly widespread in the American Pacific Northwest coastal areas, due to the abundant rainfall. To date, several new species and varieties of psilocybin-containing mushrooms have been identified. The chapters by John Allen and Paul Stamets in this volume describe the worldwide distribution and ecology of these psychoactive mushrooms. More extensive and detailed information can be found in two books by Jonathan Ott (1976, 1978); in German mycologist Jochen Gartz’s Magic Mushrooms Around the World (1996); and in Paul Stamets’s Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World (1996). Both of the latter two books are illustrated with full-color photographs, an essential feature for safe identification of mushrooms in the wild. None of the psilocybin-containing species of mushrooms outside of Mexico are known to have been associated with shamanic healing practices.

  In addition to the increasing discovery and identification of wildgrowing psychoactive mushrooms, a major boost to free-lance personal explorations of visionary mushroom experiences occurred when relatively simple techniques of home cultivation of major species, especially Psilocybe (originally Stropharia) cubensis, were developed and published. One of the first was the cultivation guide written by the McKenna brothers, under the pseudonyms O. T. Oss and O. N. Oeiric (1976), which has sold over one hundred thousand copies. The spread of mushroom cultivation provided thousands, perhaps millions, of individuals in North America and elsewhere easy access to powerful tools for exploring the visionary dimensions and potentials of human consciousness. These tools and the experience they afforded have inspired the growth of a “mushroom culture,” including visual, literary, and musical arts as well as ritualistic dance forms, such as the Grateful Dead “shroom” events. Because of the controlled legal status of psilocybin mushrooms, cultivation methods will not, of course, be described in this book.

  Psilocybin, and the mushrooms from which it was first isolated, falls into a group of substances that defy classification. Besides psilocybin, they include: mescaline, derived from the Mexican and North American peyote cactus; DMT (dimethyltryptamine) and several of its chemical relatives, which are the psychoactive component of the Amazonian visionary concoction ayahuasca, as well as of plant-derived snuff powders known as cohoba or epena; the infamous LSD, originally derived from the ergot fungus that grows on grains; ibogaine, derived from the roots of the central African Tabernanthe iboga tree; and many others. As plant extracts or synthesized drugs, these substances (and others with similar properties that were discovered in laboratories but are not known to have been used in shamanic rituals) have been the subject of a large number and variety of scientific research studies over the past fifty to seventy years (in the case of mescaline and peyote, going back over one hundred years). The research studies have primarily had as their aim the elucidation of the basic chemistry and pharmacology of these substances; secondarily, exploration of their potential applications as adjuncts to psychotherapy; and, in a few cases, their application in the expansion of consciousness, enhancement of creativity, and amplification of spiritual exploration and religious experience.

  In a kind of testament to the bewildering variety of effects that these substances can elicit in human observers, they have been called by a variety of names that reflect the different backgrounds and mind-sets with which they have been regarded. The first psychiatric researchers called them psychotomimetic (“madness mimicking”), seeing them as training tools for psychiatrists. Those who wanted to use them as adjuncts to psychoanalysis called them psycholytic (“mental pattern loosening”). Humphrey Osmond, the English psychiatrist who pioneered the use of LSD in the treatment of alcoholism and who gave Aldous Huxley his first mescaline experience, coined the term psychedelic (“mind manifesting”). This term was adopted by the Harvard psilocybin research projects.

  The older term hallucinogenic (“hallucination inducing”) was universally rejected by those investigators who had actually experienced these substances, since it was clear that they do not cause one to see hallucinations in the sense of illusions: rather one sees all the ordinary objects of the sense world plus another whole range of energies and phenomena normally not seen. However, etymology reveals that the original meaning of the Latin verb alucinare, from which “hallucination” is derived, means to “roam or wander in one’s mind.” This is actually a fairly appropriate metaphor for the experience—a journey in the mind, in consciousness; a “trip,” as it became known colloquially.

  The term entheogenic (“connecting to the sacred within”) was coined in the 1980s by Wasson, Ott, and others to refer to plant or fungal substances that have a role in traditional shamanic rituals. These scholars wanted to avoid the associations of “psychedelic” with the counterculture of the 1960s, since many such substances were known and used in places and in times far removed from that particular historical context.

  In my book on the Amazonian shamanic hallucinogen ayahuasca (Metzner 1999), I pointed out that the discovery of psychedelic mind-expanding substances such as LSD and DMT, as well as the rediscovery of indigenous shamanic practices involving entheogens, and the diffusion of these practices into the creative counterculture, all seem to have catalyzed a series of profound socio-cultural transformations.

  A powerful resurgence of respectful and reverential attitudes toward the living Earth and all its creatures seems to be a natural consequence of explorations with visionary plant or fungal teachers. This revival of entheogenic shamanism can be seen as part of a worldwide response to the degradation of ecosystems and the biosphere—a response that includes philosophical movements such as deep ecology, ecofeminism, bioregionalism, ecopsychology, herbal and natural medicine, organic farming and nutrition, and others. In each of these movements individuals are expressing a new awareness, or rather a revival of ancient awareness, of the organic and spiritual interconnectedness of all life on this planet (Metzner 1999).

  My interest in consciousness-expanding substances began when I was a graduate student research assistant to Timothy Leary on his Harvard University Psilocybin Research projects. Later, through contact with the work of anthropologist Michael Harner and others, I become aware of shamanic teachings and practices around the globe involving nonordinary states of consciousness in which the shaman seeks otherwise hidden knowledge (a process called “divination”) and healing. The two main types of methods for inducing the shamanic “journey” or altered state of consciousness are psychoactive plants or fungi, and rhythmic drumming; the latter more in the Northern Hemisphere parts of Asia, Europe, and America; the former more in the tropical and subtropical areas of central and South America, Africa, and Asia (presumably because of the greater profusion of plant life of all kinds).

  I have come to see the revival of interest in shamanic practices as expressions of a worldwide seeking for the renewal of a spiritual relationship with the natural world. Over the past two millennia Western civilization has increasingly developed patterns of domination and exploitation based on an arrogant assumption of human superiority. This dominator pattern, which, from the point of view of Earth’s ecosystems, functions like a
pathogenic parasite, has involved the gradual desacralization, objectification, and exploitation of all nonhuman nature and its inorganic substrate. Indigenous peoples with shamanic practices, though greatly reduced in numbers, have maintained beliefs and values that honor and respect the integrity, indeed the sacredness of all of nature in its infinite variety of manifestations. Their life-style includes rituals of remembrance of the living intelligences inherent in the natural world.

  In the modern Western worldview dominated by materialisticmechanistic science, such recognition of “spirits” in nature, or spirits of dead ancestors, is considered quite beyond the pale of reason or proof. The spiritual dimension of life is more or less associated with institutionalized religion, completely dissociated from nature. “Spiritual” and “natural” are virtually considered opposites. However, those seekers who are partaking again of the sacramental plants and mushrooms of earlier times and cultures are rediscovering a sense of the sacredness of nature that is not at all incompatible with the curiosity and respectful knowledge-seeking of a scientific explorer or researcher.