First published at 05:07 UTC on March 19th, 2018.
Teonanácatl: Flesh of the Gods. Despite the historical evidence of psychoactive mushrooms being used in Mexico, the idea was discouraged by William Safford – a leading botanist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture -who insisted that teonanácatl r…
MORE
Teonanácatl: Flesh of the Gods. Despite the historical evidence of psychoactive mushrooms being used in Mexico, the idea was discouraged by William Safford – a leading botanist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture -who insisted that teonanácatl referred to peyote. He claimed that the Indians were trying to mislead the Catholic Church so they could consume their sacramental peyote in secret. 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; furthermore, the Harvard ethnobotanist knew that peyote was a plant of the northern deserts rather than the tropical regions of southern Mexico. In an adroit bit of ethnobotanical detective work, Schultes located a letter addressed to the herbarium Director J.N. Rose from an Austrian-born national in Mexico named Blas Pablo Reko. 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.
Schultes met up with Blas Pablo Reko in Huautla, the capital of Mazatec country, and searched for a local shopkeeper who was said to have firsthand knowledge of the mushroom cults. 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 (later named Panaeolus campanulatus var. sphinctrinus) and Psilocybe cubensis. This was the first identifiable botanical collection of teonanácatl.
A later analysis by Schultes’ colleague Albert Hofmann of Sandoz Labs – who later became famous as the creator of LSD - eventually extracted compounds from these mushrooms that would lead to the creation of the first beta blocker cardiac drugs."
LESS