Mazatec

Psilocybin mushrooms hold ceremonial roots running far deeper and wider than the Massatech tradition alone, worth understanding in its fuller scope.

Archaeological evidence points to ritual mushroom use across Mesoamerica for at least 3500 years, the Maya calling their sacred mushroom Caizalaj o Kosh, the Aztecs calling it Teonanacatl, consumed as well by the Huastec, Totonac, and Zapotec peoples alongside the Mazatec.

Physical evidence survives in the form of mushroom stones, carved stone artifacts shaped unmistakably like mushrooms, some featuring human or deity faces carved directly into the stem, found across Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.

At Caminalhuyu in Guatemala alone, Archaeologists uncovered nine separate miniature mushroom stones dating to roughly 1,000 to 500 BCE, which one researcher, Stephen Debor Hezhi, connected directly to the Mayan concept of the nine lords of the night, underworld deities governing the nine-night cycle.

But it's a serious enough proposal resting on real, traceable philological reason rather than pure speculation, that it's worth including directly rather than dismissing outright.

One more example this season of how a single word choice in translation history can carry enormous unresolved weight.

Few more traditions worth naming directly, since the Mazatec sacred pharmacy extends well beyond mushrooms alone, and neighboring cultures held their own distinct plant sacraments too.

Salvia divinorum, called Sca Maria Pastora, the leaf of Mary the Shepherdess, was traditionally used by Mazatec shamans, specifically when psilocybin mushrooms were out of season.

after the breakdown of the civilization of the humid lands of central america following the mayan cataclysm the abandoned regions appeared to have been repopulated by a stream of tribes from south america who swept up the coast of the caribbean sea and across the peninsula of yucatan as far as the There was also a strong northern movement of tribes along the Pacific coast, seen more clearly in the distribution of languages belonging to the Chiapanecan or Chorotecan stock.

The early historic records show the Mazateca in transit from their old home in Costa Rica to their new one in northern Oaxaca.

Cortes in 1526 found these Indians in Yucatan.

section eleven of ancient civilizations of mexico and central america by herbert j a cross-section of new world history this survey of ancient history in mexico and central america discloses a condition which doubtless holds true of the archaeological record in other parts of the world the earliest sedentary culture was by far the most homogeneous and widespread this means it modified slowly and lasted for ages at the same time owing to the connection of the archaic complex with agriculture the initial spread might have been rapid the plants domesticated by the american indians were developed far beyond the wild types much farther indeed than the domestic plants of the old world this development must have extended over many centuries the first horizon of agriculture was based on plants of an arid highland environment The second horizon of agriculture was based on these same plants after they had been slowly modified to fit a humid lowland environment as well as on certain new plants of humid lowland origin.

We can trace the current global legal suppression of these drugs specifically back to the United States of America.

In 1955, the Mazatec curandero Maria Sabina introduced Gordon and Valentina Wasson to mushroom healing ceremony in Mexico.

Two years later, the couple published accounts of their experience, most famously Gordon's article in Life Magazine entitled Seeking the Magic Mushroom.

[gentle music] They were both fascinated by the historical relationship different cultures had with fungi and were blown away by their experiences in ceremony with psilocybin mushrooms.

And it has a square stem.

And so this plant, it's endemic to the Sierra Mazateca mountain range outside of Oaxaca in Mexico.

Now, if I grow that plant here at my house, can I get in trouble? Is it illegal or is it legal?

It is federally legal.

So it enhances the witness, but as well, it seems as if when people work with Salvia, people refer to Salvia as a she.

It's a very strong feminine female force and entity and spirit.

In the Syrah Mazateca, they believe she's the embodiment of the Virgin Mary, but there's a strong, strong, fierce feminine presence that is associated with Salvia.

And when one takes it into one's body, you can actually feel this awareness of other physiologically moving through your body and scanning you and being aware of one's awareness of it.

And what I think is quite interesting is that in some traditional healing rituals in the Amazon, it was actually the healer that took the ayahuasca, not the patient, so that the healer could interact with the plant and spirit allies to receive information about the illness of their patient so that they could determine what treatment or song or whatever it was was needed.

Then we can look to Mazatec mushroom traditions in Mexico.

So Maria Sabina very famously accounted that these psychedelic mushrooms allowed them to interact with powerful beings that they called principal ones.

We can also think about the Wixorica relationship with peyote that shows us a different but pretty related idea as well.

And I also think it's interesting to think about what kind of deities or encounters people experience based on their prior beliefs.

So for example, a Christian might encounter Jesus.

A Mazatec healer is probably more likely to encounter the principal ones because that's what they've experienced and heard about.

Someone who spent six months on DMT Reddit might encounter aliens or machine elves or something that looks like psychedelic art that they saw on these Reddit threads.

And in reality, mushrooms, magic mushrooms, was something that has come from ancient civilizations and cultures, primarily from Mexico.

And we can see this in healing ceremonies for generations, most famously by the Mazatec people of Oaxaca, Mexico.

And there's a healer as well named Maria Sabina who is kinda very well-known in this space.

Then it kinda entered the world in the 1950s, and that's when people started using it in a more recreational space.

We've heard a lot about it today.

As Rob mentioned, in the 50s, the American ethnomycologist R. Gordon Wasson had travelled to Mexico and encountered the Mazatec tradition of using sacred mushrooms in rituals.

And that famous 1957 Life magazine article brought the story to a huge Western audience.

The Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman, who'd already discovered LSD, subsequently isolated the active compounds of psilocybin and psilocin.

Oaxaca, Mexico, and the interest in psilocybe mushrooms has skyrocketed, but the availability of psilocybe mushrooms in nature is limited because of climate change, seasons, et cetera.

So, so many of the indigenous Mazatec curanderos now are using cultivated psilocybe cubensis.

That's an in vitro scientific technology that now allows indigenous people to practice and scalable and a ready resource so they can continue their traditions.

That's an example of two-eyed seeing, is protecting indigenous wisdom, but enabling it.

I had too much self doubt.

And so I went and ceremonies, um, In traditional Mazatec medicine, ceremonies always take place at night.

So in the morning, I went to her house.

Her son came to pick me up at the hotel.

Um, And yeah, so I said, I was here in 2019 and you changed my life.

And she doesn't speak Spanish.

She speaks Mazatec.

And so her son translated and as he's translating, she's nodding her head.