The Secret History of Teonanácatl: Flesh of the Gods,
In Precolumbian times the mysterious mushroom had been known by
the Aztec's as Teonancatl or 'God's flesh' testifying to its divine potency.
Despite the historical evidence of psychoactive mushrooms being used in Mexico,
the idea was discouraged by William Safford, who insisted that teonanácatl referred to peyote. Safford also cast doubt on the botanical knowledge of the Aztecs as well as the early Spanish chroniclers.
Schultes was skeptical of Safford’s theory. There was little resemblance between
the peyote cactus and the fungi; Writing from Guadalajara, Reko stated that Safford was mistaken and that teonanácatl was a magic mushroom celebrated and consumed by the Mazatec Indians in the state of Oaxaca.
In 1936, Schultes headed to Oaxaca to investigate. They explored around Huautla and the nearby city of San Antonio Eloxochitlán with little success. There were rumors of mushroom cults, but Schultes and Reko were unable to find definitive proof.
One day, as Schultes was drying plants in town, a middle-aged Mazatec man
named Dorantes brought him a dozen fresh mushrooms, referring to them as
los niños santos (the “sacred children”). Dorantes handed Schultes an assortment of mushrooms, and within the handful Schultes identified a species of Panaeolus and Psilocybe cubensis. This was the first identifiable botanical collection of teonanácatl.
Mushroom Ceremony of the Mazatec Indians of Mexico,
María Sabina, Saint Mother of the Sacred Mushrooms
Mazatec healer, curandera, and Shaman.
She is famous for the role she played introducing
the sacred mushroom ceremony velada to the world.
Doña María believed in the sacred force of the mushrooms
with the same enthusiasm that many people came to believe in "the Force".
Maria Sabina on The Power of Teonanacalt:
I was eight years old when a brother of my mother fell sick. He was very sick, and the shamans of the sierra that had tried to cure him with herbs could do nothing for him.
Then I remembered what the teonanacatl told me: that I should go and look for them when I needed help. So I went to take the sacred mushrooms, and I brought them to my uncle's hut. I ate them in front of my uncle, who was dying. And immediately the teo-nanacatl took me to their world, and I asked them what my uncle had and what I could do to save him.
They told me an evil spirit had entered the blood of my uncle and that to cure him we should give him some herbs, not those the curanderos gave him, but others. I asked where these herbs could be found, and they took me to a place on the mountain where tall trees grew and the waters of a brook ran, and they showed me the herb that I should pull from the earth and the road I had to take to find them...
[After regaining consciousness] it was the same place that I had seen during the trip, and they were the same herbs. I took them, I brought them home, I boiled them in water, and I gave them to my uncle. A few days later the brother of my mother was cured.
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The Secret History of Teonanácatl: Astonishing Gift of the Gods
María Sabina, Saint Mother of the Sacred Mushrooms played a key role in introducing the sacred mushroom ceremony velada to the world. Sabin was a Mazatec shaman who allowed R.G. Wasson to partake in her native rites, bringing psychedelic mushrooms to the attention of the Western world. This sparked a revival in their use – but she was ostracized from her own community as a result.
I began as the unspeakable,
because the unspeakable has many dimensions
but the possibility of communication
creates the interface necessary to understand,
Perception, reflection, and projection
are intertwined faculties of consciousness that
are implicated in reality-formation. Extensions of perception
are features & functions of the invisible landscape
Into the Trenches of Hyperspace
There's a whole world there-
a whole new reality, which they can enter and even change
Each new opening leads to the discovery of an entirely
New world, each connected to countless other new worlds
broken through to an infinitely more complex
and rewarding network (Ideas are networks)
Sol Cumbia : Mushroom Ceremony
The sacred mushrooms are considered the source of Language itself — are, "the mushrooms of language."
María Sabina, Saint Mother of the Sacred Mushrooms received her poems/songs through use of the psilocybe mushroom at all-night curing sessions 'veladas'
Shamans as the first shapers of myth (feat. Joseph Campbell)
So who would have been in these early elementary Cultures, as you call them, the equivalent of the poets today?
The shamans, The shamans, The shaman is the person who has in his late childhood, early youth, could be male or female, had an overwhelming psychological experience that turns them totally inward. The whole unconscious, The whole unconscious, The whole unconscious has opened up and they’ve fallen into it, they’ve fallen into it And it’s been described many, many times, and it occurs all the way from Siberia right through the Americas down to Tierra del Fuego. It’s a kind of schizophrenic crack-up, the shaman experience.
