"If a youth appeared intoxicated in public... he was punished
by being beaten to death with stick or garrotte before all other
youths assembled there...to serve as an example."
Only old people were allowed to drink the alcoholic beverage
pulque. Sahagun has an error in his writings, the mushrooms
were not ingested with food:
"It is an ancient custom
for people to eat mushrooms and these they ate in a trice, as
is said. They had had no food exept some cacao drunk the night
before. They ate these mushrooms with honey."
The Aztecs (1400-1521) took other hallucinogenic drugs such
as tlapatl, mixitl grain and peyotl or peyote, use of which
originated from the north of Mexico, where it had been in use
since 300 B.C. "Mushroom stones" in which figures
under the cap of a mushroom are depicted have been found even
from an earlier era (1000-500 B.C.) The purpose of these sculptures
is not certain, but these stones may have been religious objects.
The Codex Vienna Mixtec manuscript (ca 13th-15th century) depicts the ritual
use of the teonanácatl by the Mixtec gods. The god
known as 7 Flower (his name presented in the pictoral language
as seven circles and a flower) was the Mixtec god for hallucinatory
plants, especially the divine mushroom, and is depicted with
a pair of mushrooms in his hand.
The Aztec also had their god for the entheogens, Xochipilli,
Prince of Flowers. He was the divine patron of "the flowery
dream" as the Aztecs called the ritual hallucinatory
trance.
Mushrooms ingested by the indians were supposedly Psilocybe
mexicana or caerulescens and Panaolus sphinctrinus. Stropharia
cubensis, which is currently quite popular as it is easy to
locate and cultivate, was not introduced to America until
the arrival of the Europeans and their cattle. Today indians
regard Stropharia cubensis inferior to Ps. mexicana for it
grows in dung.
In the beginning of twentieth century interest in psychoactive
mushrooms stirred. The teonanácatl was first identified
as Lophophora williamsii or peyote, and it was thought that
Sahagun had mistaken the cactus for mushrooms. Finally ethnobotanist
Richard Evan Schultes and physician Plasius Paul Reko traveled
for the mushrooms to Oaxaca, and collected specimens of Panaeolus
sphinctrinus. They found out that mushroom ceremonies - veladas
- were still being held in the area.
A decade after World War II, after long search the mycophile-family
of R. Gordon Wasson came to little Village of Huatla de Jimenez,
and Wasson and his friend Allan Richardson attended a velada
held by curandera Maria Sabina.
Information about the mushrooms soon spread. Psilocybin and
psilocin were found and their analogues  were
synthesized. Experimentation with the mushrooms and the synthesized
substances began and magic mushrooms were soon part of the
60's 'psychedelic' movement, ie. every second middle class
kid was opening the doors of perception and [ab]using hallucinogenic
drugs. |
