Life is mysterious, that's its magic.
There are those who live this mystery with absolute naturalness, as if living were something common and ordinary, as if there was no need to ask questions.
Others live it continually astonished, perplexed by the mere fact of being.
The latter are poets and, sometimes, philosophers.
In indigenous societies, awe is a matter for shamans.
Problems demand a solution.
That's what engineers are for.
The engineering vision of the world has banished the mystery, but artists and poets have preserved it.
They know that the solution to the mystery is always inferior to the mystery.
For them it makes no sense to solve the mystery.
Your solution is always a false close.
The mystery is something that has to be lived, the very breath of living.
Certain plant substances, fungi, lianas and cacti, allow a different contact with that mystery.
They shift our assemblage point with reality.
They allow (and in this they are faithful to the best philosophy), to recognize our inherent ignorance.
They offer clues about the relationship between words and things.
They make it possible to experience what is outside the text.
María Sabina is probably the most famous shaman in Mexico.
A Mazatec Indian, she was reluctantly turned into a celebrity after her meeting with the banker and mushroom scholar Gordon Wasson, who made known in the United States the ceremonial and curative use of psilocybin mushrooms.
María unintentionally ended up at the center of a debate (unrelated to her culture) about the legal and open use of psychoactive substances.
Called the Holy Children, these mushrooms grow in the virgin mountains of Oaxaca (and in many other parts of the world such as Siberia or Galicia).
The Mazatecs feel love and reverence for them.
A cult that is not without reasons: the mushroom speaks.
And it talks about many things: about the divine, about coming, about life and death.
The mushroom is a fountain of words that challenge us.
They can help find lost people and even give a glimpse of “the place where God is.”
Some Mazatecs believe that the mushroom's messages come from Jesus Christ, that they are the spilled drops of his blood.
The word that designates them in the Mazatec language means “the one that sprouts.”
They are spontaneous, “like the wind that comes without knowing where or why.”
María Sabina is not a mystic but a healer.
Her use of the mushroom does not seek an ecstatic experience, nor does it seek to investigate the nature of reality.
The imaginal nature of reality is taken for granted.
It is used in order to cure a physical or mental illness, or solve a family problem.
The fungus is consulted through it.
And that consultation, like that of the doctor, has a fee.
María was born in Huautla de Jiménez in 1894, she is the daughter of peasants and solemnly poor.
Her father dies when she is only three years old.
She moves with her mother and sister to live with her grandparents, farmers and silkworm breeders.
Poverty and malnutrition plague her childhood.
María claims to have had ancestors who practiced the mushroom ceremony.
Her great-grandfather, Pedro Feliciano, her grandfather, and her father were healers, although she did not know any.
At six years old she has her first contact with them.
An evening is held at her house to heal one of her uncles.
On that occasion she did not eat them, but shortly after, while she was on the hill tending the cattle, she found some mushrooms similar to the ones she had seen and took them with her sister.
In that first intoxication she prays fervently.
She cries out of feeling, in her misery and helplessness.
She will say it many times, mushrooms have given her the courage to grow, fight and endure hardships.
Thus she begins a dialogue with fungal intelligence (somewhere between animal and plant) that will last until her death.
María is an extraordinary woman.
Wasson calls her “the Lady.”
At seven years old she gets up before dawn, works the land with a hoe, spins cotton and weaves huipils.
She learns to embroider and sells her fabrics or exchanges them for chickens.
At the age of fourteen, a traveling merchant, who travels to Orizaba carrying pots and blankets, asks for her hand.
On one of those trips he was recruited to fight with the Zapatistas.
He returns bringing horse and carbine.
María asks him to leave the revolutionary army.
Serapio deserts.
The union lasted seven years (Indians did not marry then) until Serapio died of Spanish flu in 1914. For 13 years, the widow picked coffee on her neighboring farms.
On one occasion she was asked the difference between a witch and a healer.
"I guess.
I arrive at the place where the dead are and if I see the sick person lying and people crying, I feel that sorrow is approaching.
Other times I see gardens and children and I feel that the sick person is relieved and the misfortunes go away.
Singing I guess what is going to happen.
The witch by praying drives away evil spirits and heals through offerings.”
Marcial, her second husband, was a witch and a fan of brandy.
Afraid that he would take her power from him, he hits her.
Maria hid her science from him and she never ate mushrooms in the 12 years of their union.
She did not give him money and mistreated the children.
He abandoned Mary for a married woman.
One night her husband and children beat her head in with clubs.
Widowed again, she has to support an increasingly large family, now with ten children.
Once she starts working with mushrooms, men stop interesting her.
She won't remarry.
She is convinced that, if she eats a large amount, she can see the disease and cure it.
She begins to be respected in the community when she prophesies the murder of a former mayor of Huautla.
Her fame will reach the United States when Gordon Wasson publishes an article in
Life
magazine .
María has to endure the visit of psychedelic adventurers, who disrespect her worldview and ignore her form of spiritual projection.
“A lot of people took advantage of me.
I remember when Wasson returned and gave me a record with my songs.
I asked him how he had done it, I never imagined hearing myself.
She was upset because at no time had I authorized her to record my songs.
"I was crying for a long time and the matter didn't let me sleep."
After her sister's miraculous healing, she begins to make a living from her profession as a healer and to gain the trust of the people.
She won't cut coffee again.
She assists women in labor, drives away evil spirits and those who she feels have lost their souls.
Maria only uses three kinds of psilocybin mushrooms.
The Pajarito, which sprouts in the cornfields or on the humid slopes of the mountains, the San Isidro (less esteemed), which grows in bull dung, and the Desbarrancadero, which is found in the bagasse of sugar cane and which It is also used to season soups.
Of the first (
psilocybe mexicana
), also called angelito, the healer eats 15 or 20 pairs.
For the person asking the question, it will depend on their weight.
In any case, it is the shaman who decides how many pairs he is going to take.
Mary's songs serve as the shamanic drum.
The images, scattered and undulating, seem to be ordered or make sense thanks to the songs.
The mushroom decants various metamorphoses, feelings of strength, elevation and greatness.
An amazing gallery of characters, some terrifying, others auspicious.
The presence of a mysterious and sacred power is felt.
Psilocybin acting on the Western mind elicits Western images.
María confesses that she sees mushrooms as children, like tiny clowns that sing and dance around her, tender as shoots, like flower buds, that suck out bad moods and poisoned blood, that heal.
She sings to the sick: “I am the lightning woman, the eagle woman, the wise herbalist.
Jesus Christ, give me your song.”
María incorporates Spanish words (she does not speak our language) and words that she invents, attentive to the rhythm of the song and its percussion.
“I am a clean woman, the bird cleans me, the book cleans me.”
She is known in heaven, God knows her, also the Moon, the Southern Cross or the morning star.
“The Holy Spirit comes down when I call on him.
You can see it, but not touch it.
Actually, it's the power of mushrooms that makes me talk.
I can't tell you what that power is.
Without mushrooms it would be impossible for me to sing, dance or heal.
Where are the words going to come from?
I can't invent them.
“Words come to me when I am intoxicated, like mushrooms come to light in the cornfield after the first rain.”
Emanations.
That's the way of the natural world.
Creation by spontaneous emanation.
There is nothing to do, simply sharpen your attention.
All matter is radioactive.
María is guided by the way of being of the people who consult her, by their needs.
If the consultation is from a Mazatec, she sees things with more work, because within the town there is a lot of envy and many curses.
She fixes her thoughts on the sick person and prays that the spirits of ancient times help her heal him.
She invokes the Saints, the Lord of the Hills, the Maiden of Creeping Water.
“And then I feel like a holy and great woman, like a woman who knows everything.
"I am away, very far from here, very far and very high and I receive nothing, I don't want anything, nor do I care about anything."
María has a favorite grandson.
She lives with ten relatives.
One of her daughters sews, knits and embroiders.
The other sows corn and beans.
One son is a day laborer and rocketeer and the gunpowder blew off four fingers on his left hand.
Everyone contributes to the family economy but she is the one who supports her children by working with the mushrooms.
Her dream is to set up a little shop and sell food, beer and embroidery to walkers.
But they burned her house (because she shared the secret of the mushrooms to foreigners) and she now must start from scratch.
The Mazatec healer María Sabina, in an undated image.
Contact
As a Mazatec Indian, María never had the desire for experiences, typical of the Western, expeditionary, bookish and quixotic mind.
Her ascensions do not seek ecstasy, they are typical of a technique (shamanic flight), which allows her to contemplate things in perspective, from above, or descend to hell, being able to see where her gaze cannot reach.
She draws maps, builds scales and finds new routes in the imaginal world.
It is not easy to find your way in this seemingly chaotic world.
Knowing her force fields, her routes and shortcuts, is the job of the shaman.
She descends into the world of the dead and restores broken bridges.
Maria knows she is famous.
Many foreign tourists visit it, attracted by its mushrooms.
She keeps portraits and press articles that have been written about her.
But she doesn't like to talk about it.
A recent documentary shows her aged, smaller and thinner, like the elves and the Holy Children.
She has thick eyebrows (a rarity among the Mazatecs), high cheekbones, a strong, wide nose, and a full, eloquent mouth.
She still endures the demanding evenings, in which she sings for five or six hours, dances and plays instruments, smokes tobacco and drinks small sips of brandy.
She still retains the prodigious energy of her.
The Mazatecs continue to go up to her lonely cabin seeking advice.
She goes to church and, full of humility, she sits in a corner.
She no longer officiates ceremonies without one of her grandchildren present.
Fernando Benítez, the great scholar of the Indians of Mexico, has described the scene: “The child sleeps curled up, like a lamb, resting his head on his folded legs.
“María caresses him from time to time and when he wakes up she offers him bread or covers him with a shawl.”
The bread she has earned by searching for remedies.
The sacred and the profane
Hallucinogenic mushrooms have never been sold on the street, just as wafers or any other sacred food have never been sold.
But within a few years, they were already offered in many places and constituted a business.
Charlatans, capricious psychonauts, children of the enlightenment and insensitive to indigenous mythologies, began to proliferate.
At the beginning of the 1960s, psilocybes became an illegal substance.
María suffers harassment from the police.
Federal agents arrive at her house, search her home and arrest her.
María defends herself before the mayor: “You know that our people do not use the tobacco that that unfortunate man claims that I sell.
"He accuses me of bringing gringos to my house, they come looking for me, take photographs of me, talk to me, ask me questions, the same ones that I have already answered many times... and they leave after taking part in an evening."
For María, the strength of the Holy Children has declined due to their recreational and recreational use.
She feels that she will pay for it with all the diseases she has cured.
Excess rationality is irrational.
The best is the enemy of the good.
Ecstasy is usually poisoned by Western logic.
María sahumes the mushrooms and distributes them in pairs.
They are eaten slowly, accompanied by chocolate.
The healer takes sips of brandy and smokes tirelessly while she chants in Mazatec.
“I am and I am not.
I am here and I am not.
“I am an actor and a witness.”
A presence is announced.
María dies in silence and in poverty, as she was born, in 1985.
The first narrator
One of the first anthropologists of the Nahuatl world was a Franciscan from Leon.
Don't forget that, to be an anthropologist, you have to be from outside.
This native language of Mexico, of Aztec origin, has remained a lingua franca in Central America for centuries (today it is spoken by three million Mexicans).
And we owe the first known lexicon in Nahuatl, the first great history of this culture, written in the Nahuatl language, to Bernardino de Sahagún, compiler of the
General History of the Things of New Spain
.
A text prepared thanks to the testimonies of accredited indigenous people.
There they talk about some mushrooms that, ingested with honey, produce a temporary alienation.
Under its effects the Indians sing, dance or cry.
In some cases they provoke visions of fear or laughter.
After the drunkenness has passed, they discuss the visions with each other.
Sahagún recognizes the deep knowledge that indigenous people have of herbs and roots.
“They take the root they call
peyotl
instead of wine, and they gather on the plain, where they spend the night singing and dancing.”
But Sahagún has a hidden agenda that is similar to that of the psychoanalyst: to cure spiritual illnesses, the first thing is to know them.
An agenda that he shares with modern anthropology, that he cannot help but carry his own backpack of values when he does his fieldwork.
In general, when preaching against idolatry, there is always an idol that replaces the dethroned one, whether in science or theology.
We are beings of idols.
Language inevitably creates them.
But ignoring the root of these idolatries and discarding them from the outset is not the most intelligent strategy for their deconstruction.
This is justified by Sahagún, who, after being commissioned by the Provincial, undertakes an investigation into Mexican culture that will take him a lifetime.
We are in 1529, eight years after the surrender.
Construction of the first cathedral in New Spain begins on the ruins of the Templo Mayor.
You can hear the blows of the stonemasons and the push of the oars in the canals of Tenochtitlan.
The center of the island has been assigned to the Spanish, the periphery to the Indians.
On the border of these two worlds, “like an outstretched arm from the conqueror to the conquered,” stands the convent of San Francisco (today on Madero Street).
A small church with a wooden roof, a thatched portal and a tree-lined atrium.
Outside the walls, an irrigation ditch provides drinking water.
There, the research of this 30-year-old from Leon, educated at the University of Salamanca, begins.
The New World wears the mask of utopia.
Mass conversions of Indians are considered miraculous.
But some like Sahagún are suspicious.
The evangelical way cannot be developed from ignorance of the customs of those to whom it is directed.
The beliefs of the Indians, their pantheon, their customs and their language become a priority.
Sahagún begins to study Nahuatl in the convent of Tlamanalco.
The indigenous people pretend to be Christians and go to church, but they have not renounced the worship of their gods.
A Franciscan of the 16th century cannot understand that these two attitudes are not incompatible.
In the valley of Puebla, Sahagún begins to write Christian texts in Nahuatl.
He's not the only one.
Others compose sermonaries, doctrines, vocabularies and grammars.
In 1547 he worked on a treatise on indigenous rhetoric and morals.
It is no longer a translation into Nahuatl of Christian doctrinal texts, but rather a compilation of prayers, exhortations and allegories commonly used among the ancient Mexica.
To this he adds a chronicle of the conquest, as told by the conquered, with the purpose of making known aspects of the war ignored by the Spanish.
It is the first known case of
history from below
, of the attempt to tell history from the side of the defeated.
Not all missionaries accept this initiative.
They fear that “writing things of idolatry in Nahuatl may give the Indians the opportunity to return to them.”
Sahagún ignores it and compiles in Nahuatl the most idolatrous of indigenous thought: the hymns to the gods.
For 20 years he met with the elders of the various indigenous communities, collected information, obtained pictographic codices, reorganized his extensive work into twelve books, and translated much of it into Spanish.
He is helped by four schoolboys from Tlatelolco who interview elders versed in the tradition.
When reading the work, one notices the friar's interest in compiling lexicon, whether it be about herbs or astrology.
When the time came, the Order of Saint Francis withdrew the support of the schoolchildren.
Strategically, he is not interested in knowledge of indigenous culture.
Sahagún will find himself alone and old.
He writes a brief compendium of his work and sends it to Madrid and Rome, requesting the favor of the Court and the Pontificate.
The president of the Council of the Indies grants him his support.
But in 1576 a devastating plague once again stopped his work, which required constant meetings with the clan leaders.
After the epidemic, he finally completed his monumental work, profusely illustrated, in 1577. The bilingual manuscript arrived at the Spanish court in 1580. It was part of the dowry that Philip II gave to his daughter when she married Lorenzo. the magnificent.
Since then it has been known as the
Florentine Codex.
.
Sahagún's work is the most important source for any study of Nahuatl culture.
The friar never stopped reviewing, collating and completing the information he received.
Although the work includes many value judgments, in general terms it can be said that it was the society under investigation that produced this monumental text, the most complete panorama of pre-Hispanic life in the Valley of Mexico, the result of a continuous dialogue. for more than four decades of research.
Sahagún structures the work in a medieval way: gods, men and the natural world.
A treasure of “many things worth knowing, which will be highly esteemed in New and Old Spain.”
He frames the value of his work and the historical necessity of it.
“All this work will take great advantage to know the quality of these Mexican people, who have not been known because that curse of Jeremiah came upon them.
“The divine wrath that struck down Judea and Jerusalem, that brought from afar very robust and brave people, very skilled in fighting, people whose language you will not understand, strong and courageous, very greedy to kill.
These people will destroy you and your women and children and everything you own, your towns and buildings.”
This is literally what has happened to these Indians with the Spanish.
They and all their things were so trampled and destroyed that no appearance remained of what they were before.
Thus they are considered barbarians and people of very low quality, although, in truth, in matters of politics they surpass many other nations without ruling out some tyrannies that their way of ruling contained.
And he cites the civilization of Tula, seat of Toltec culture, “very ancient and rich, with very wise and hardworking people, who had the adverse fortune of Troy.”
Sahagún does not hide his admiration for these ancient cultures.
“There is great fame for the wisdom of these people.
And it is said that the first settlers of this land were perfect philosophers and astrologers, skilled in the mechanical arts and of great courage... Also skilled in holy theology, strong to endure the labors of hunger and cold."
But he does not forget his evangelical work either: “With these lands the Lord has wanted to restore to the Church what the devil stole from her in England, Germany and France, in Asia and Palestine, for which we remain very grateful and obliged to work faithfully in this his New Spain.”
Grace will abound where crime abounded
.
Saint Paul's phrase is a premise for Sahagún, the first anthropologist of Mesoamerica, who valued the wisdom of the Mexican people, “who are our brothers, coming from the trunk of Adam like us, whom we are forced to love as ourselves. ... For this reason, twelve books have been written in the own and natural language of these Mexican people, which in addition to being very pleasant and useful writing, where all the ways of speaking and all the words that this language uses are found, so authorized like those of Virgil or Cicero.”
The amazing mushrooms
There are mushrooms and some herbs, Sahagún writes in his
History
, “that take man out of his senses and make him mistaken.”
He mentions these herbs that intoxicate in the eleventh book, "like that called
xoxouhqui
, which grows a seed called
ololiuqui
, a seed that makes one drunk and mad, and whoever eats it sees visions and frightening things."
“Sorcerers give it to eat with food or drink, it is also medicinal and cures the disease of gout.
There is another herb, called
peyotl
, that is taken in the north.
“Those who eat or drink it see visions of fear or laughter.
This intoxication lasts for two or three days and then goes away.
It is a common delicacy among the Chichimecas, which keeps them in the mood to fight and not be afraid, thirsty or hungry.”
“There are some mushrooms from this land called
teonanácatl
.
They breed under hay, in fields or moors.
They are round and have a high, thin and round foot.
Eaten they taste bad.
It hurts the throat and makes you drunk.
They are medicinal against fever and gout.
Have to eat just two or three.
Those who eat them see visions and have deep feelings from the heart, and the visions are sometimes frightening and other times hilarious.
Those who eat many of them cause lust.
They tell crazy or naughty young men that they have eaten
nanácatl
.”
Others “saw in vision that some beast devoured them and they died.”
Next, Sahagún lists the different types of mushrooms and their various medical or culinary uses, as well as the various medicinal herbs.
The mushrooms are small, tawny in color, bitter to the taste and with a certain pleasant freshness.
Some nobles look for them for their parties, because they get you drunk like wine.
Whoever eats them sings and dances all night.
Passing madness, irresistible hilarity.
While the peyote cactus sprouts under a blazing sun in the dryness of the desert, the fungus sprouts from humidity and putrefaction.
It is born hidden and must be taken under the cover of night.
It makes visions of all kinds appear, sacred geometries, combats, luminous snakes and demons.
The Franciscan historian Toribio de Benavente, called by the indigenous people Motolinia (“the afflicted”), identifies the fungus with the devil himself.
But the natives call it the “flesh of God.”
Motolinia admits the parallel between the ritual ingestion of mushrooms and Christian communion.
But in this case it would be a demonic communion.
We do not know whether informants communicated any significant epiphanies or revelations through this practice.
Perhaps they did and the friars omitted them from their story.
The last narrator
References to mushrooms cease in 1726. The psychedelic renaissance begins with the research of Huxley and Artaud.
In 1936, engineer Robert Witlander wrote a report on the consumption of hallucinatory mushrooms in the Sierra Mazateca.
In 1938, Evans Schultes took some specimens collected in Huautla Jiménez to Harvard.
He participates in a soirée, but does not ingest them.
He also mentions them the Swedish ethnologist Jean Basset Johnson.
These works go unnoticed, and the glory of the Western discovery of psilocybin mushrooms falls to a New York banker.
Robert Gordon Wasson will make the
nannacatl
of the Mazatec Indians famous with a series of articles in widely circulated magazines.
It all begins with an initiatory experience.
Wasson falls in love in London with the Russian pediatrician Valentina Pavlovna.
On their wedding trip, they both discover the magic of mushrooms in a forest near New York.
From then until the end of their days the couple dedicated themselves to the study, dissection and classification of fungi, creating a discipline, ethnomycology.
They dedicate themselves to her first in her free time and after her retirement full time.
Human societies can be divided into mycophiles and mycophobes: mushroom lovers and mushroom allergy sufferers.
Certain premodern cultures have a more consistent relationship with the other world that is divined after the experience with mushrooms.
And, among all of them, the psilocybes are the ones that have brought the most teachings, the superior entheogens.
The active ingredient, psilocybin, is produced naturally by around 200 species of mushrooms.
A useful tool for different meditation practices, introspection and traveling through the extended mind.
On the night of June 29, 1955, Wasson participated in a mushroom eating ceremony with María Sabina.
His experience transformed him to the point of dedicating the rest of his life to ethnomycology.
His articles attract a wave of hippies, unorthodox psychiatrists and thrill seekers, who head to Oaxaca in search of magic mushrooms.
A Nahuatl poem asks: “Where do the flowers that intoxicate come from?”
To which the shamans respond: “From his house, from the center of the sky, from the house of God come the flowers.”
As if the relationship with them were a way of opening new channels of communication with the divine.
The mushrooms transport the sky, whose dome they represent, to that mysterious place where everything was born.
Wasson assures that faith is not necessary to believe in mushrooms;
They themselves carry their own conviction: “Each communicant will be able to witness the miracle.”
Painting of María Sabina with the Beatles in Oaxaca, Mexico.migstock / Alamy / CORDON PRESS
The study of Mesoamerican cultures has not paid enough attention to these practices.
Wasson attributes this to the mycophobic inclinations of the Anglo-Saxons, founders of modern anthropology in colonial times.
But Wasson is part of that movement.
All anthropology must live in this paradox.
Genuine shamans avoid contact with foreigners.
For centuries the indigenous people preserved the secret of mushrooms so that it would not be desecrated.
And one of the first desecrators, and one of the great lovers of it, was Wasson himself.
In 1952 he receives a letter from Robert Graves from Mallorca.
It mentions a Harvard botany professor, Robert Evans Schultes, who has published two articles on 16th century friars that mention the cult of mushrooms.
Blas Pablo Reko informs him that this cult is still alive in some villages in Oaxaca.
Both visited Huautla Jiménez in 1937. Schultes returned in 1938 and 1939. Wasson and his wife did so in 1953. Wasson and Schultes shared interests and immediately became friends.
The banker's collection goes to the Harvard Botanical Museum.
Roger Heim, director of the Paris Mycology Museum, joins the project.
In India they acquire new knowledge about fungi.
According to traditional wisdom, an Orissa mushroom, the
putka
, is endowed with a soul, like humans and animals.
When asked why among plants only the fungus has that privilege, they respond: “Mushrooms must be eaten quickly, if not, they will stink like death.”
Indologist Stella Kramrisch informs them that
putka
derives from the Sanskrit
pūtika
(“putrid”), the name of an unidentified plant that the Aryans used as a substitute for Soma.
An evening in Oaxaca
During the 1950s, the Wassons devoted themselves to the study of entheogens in Mexico.
They do not practice any religion, although she belongs to the Russian Orthodox Church and he is the son of an Episcopalian minister.
Valentina dies in 1958, he will continue his investigation until the end of his days.
Wasson is not a professional investigator, but he knows how to relate.
To gain the trust of the Indians requires patience and tact.
We must avoid treating them like children.
His friendship with Roger Heim, director of the Paris mycology laboratory, will be decisive in his work.
Wasson arrives in Huautla Jiménez with photographer Allan Richardson.
He is fortunate to know the town's trustee, Cayetano García, in whose house the evening will be held.
His brothers lead the foreigners to a ravine, on the banks of a stream, where they find abundant clusters of mushrooms.
Sacred mushrooms must be transported in a closed bundle, so that they preserve their fragrance and humidity.
If they find a dead animal along the way, the mushrooms will lose their virtue.
Cayetano introduces them to María Sabina, “a first-class healer.”
When she shows him her mushrooms, the women burst into exclamations of joy.
Some time later, María will confess that she felt obliged to obey the trustee and that she should not have shown the secret to the foreigners.
Mary's presence impresses them.
She is circumspect, with solemn manners and a frank smile.
She has never dishonored her profession or used her powers to cause evil.
Wasson will spend many evenings with María and her daughter Apolonia.
The place where the evening is celebrated is a typical Zapotec house.
Chickens and turkeys circulate freely through the ranch.
A black hen hatches under the table and will be a witness to the evening.
Richardson takes some photographs.
The Lady asks him to stop taking photos “when she gets the hang of it.”
Cayetano's daughter serves chocolate.
Foreigners are impressed by the atmosphere.
The mushrooms receive a respectful treatment, but without too much formalism.
The ceremony takes the form of a “consultation.”
The sponsor wants to know how to deal with a setback.
The intelligence of the mushroom will help solve the crossroads through the shaman.
The evenings should be held at night, in the dark, in a secluded place where silence reigns.
Noise or light can hinder the trip.
Nature sounds are not considered interruptions.
There must be lookouts, one or two people who do not take the mushrooms.
Starting with breakfast, one must abstain from eating until nightfall.
During the evening you can have chocolate.
Four days before you have to deprive yourself of eggs, alcohol and sexual relations.
The same for the subsequent four days.
They are warned that no one should leave the room before dawn.
Some of those present lie on mats on the floor.
Mary and her daughter Apolonia sit before the altar.
The Lady asks the foreigners about her query.
They want to know about Wasson's son, Peter, then in the army.
The Lady opens the basket of mushrooms, removes the clods and passes them through the aromatic smoke of the copal.
The mushrooms are counted in pairs.
She places 13 pairs of mushrooms in each of the two pots, for herself and her daughter.
In different cups she places four, five or six pairs.
Wasson receives six pairs.
The children receive none.
The Church has stopped persecuting mushrooms, but this was not always the case.
Some open-minded priests are even said to have officiated the rite.
Over time, some Christian elements are introduced into the pagan ceremony.
The indigenous mentality ignores Semitic and confessional sectarianism.
It is sung in Nahuatl, but the Lord's Prayer is also sung in Spanish.
María is a parishioner of the local parish and begins her ceremonies in front of a picture of the Child God, on a small altar.
After inverting a flower over the last candle, the ceremony takes place in the dark.
The singing and music, the fear and reverence, continue until dawn.
In the semi-darkness they can barely distinguish the shadow of the shamans, whose voice rises in song.
She begins to chew and swallow the mushrooms in silence, both the cap and the stem.
The taste is pungent and unpleasant.
The Lady asks Wasson to change places, because the “language” will descend there.
After taking the last bite, the Lady crosses herself.
With a flower, she blows out the last of the candles.
Moonlight penetrates through a crack in the door.
Foreigners lie down on palm mats.
They feel chills and begin to see “things.”
They exchange murmurs.
Wasson tries to take notes and keep track of the hours.
He feels nauseous.
He vomits.
He wants to experience the mushrooms fully and, at the same time, be an impartial observer of what is happening.
But the fungi give no choice and take over the psyche.
His soul seems to leave the body and settle in a floating point in space.
He sees brightly colored geometric shapes, angular, not circular, like those that adorn tapestries and rugs.
These forms are transformed into oriental-style architecture, with colonnades and architraves of gold and ebony.
Everything is dazzling and motley.
The altar bouquet takes the shape of an imperial chariot pulled by mythological creatures and governed by a lady dressed in royal splendor.
With his eyes open, he sees visions pass by in endless succession.
The walls of the humble home have vanished.
“My spirit, free of obstacles, floats in the empyrean, carried by divine gusts.”
She remembers being told that “mushrooms take you to where God is.”
Only through conscious effort is he able to return to the confines of the room, but that contact makes him nauseous.
Passages open.
A vast desert and a caravan of camels.
He suddenly sees himself in her, listening to the snorting of the camels, feeling the sway of the march, the stench of the animal, the tinkling of the bells.
Tres días después Wasson vuelve a tomar hongos. No aparece la imaginería oriental sino motivos del periodo isabelino y jacobita inglés: armaduras, ornamentos, sillas catedralicias y escudos de armas. Las visiones le parecen arquetipos preñados de sentido. No se trata de alucinaciones o fantasías desquiciadas, sino de imágenes revestidas de la mayor autoridad. Ve ríos rebosantes de aguas transparentes. Advierte que los paisajes responden a la voluntad del espectador. Cuando algo le interesa, la visión se acerca y lo muestra en detalle. Escribe: “Quien ha ingerido hongos queda suspendido en el espacio; es una mirada descarnada, invisible, incorpórea, viendo sin ser vista. De hecho, es los cinco sentidos descarnados, todos ellos afinados en el más alto registro de sensibilidad y atención… uno deviene puro receptor de sensaciones infinitamente delicado. Lo que uno mira y lo que uno escucha parece ser una misma cosa: los cantos y las percusiones asumen formas armoniosas y sus armonías adquiere formas visuales”. La descripción de Wasson coincide con la cosmología hindú. El sonido como precursor de la luz y lo visible. La vibración original como portadora de todas las formas de la percepción y la imaginación. Todos los sentidos parecen funcionar como un solo. Y en la base de todos ellos está el sonido eterno.
Por primera vez en su vida adquiere sentido la palabra éxtasis. Hay un instante en que parece que las visiones van a ser trascendidas y que tras ellas va a encontrar lo esencial. Esa promesa no se cumple. Vuela como una mariposa hacia unas puertas sombrías alzadas a lo alto. Espera que las puertas se abran y le franqueen el paso. No lo hacen y, con un ruido sordo, cae a tierra jadeante y sin aliento. Se siente frustrado y, al mismo tiempo, aliviado de no haber enfrentado lo inefable.
Tiempo después, Aristeo Matías le describe las cuatro etapas que conducen al dominio de los hongos. La chamana ingiere una dosis alta y realiza un trabajo de precisión. El principiante se ve desbordado por el asombro y la turbación. Donde el inexperto ve caos y desorden, ella encuentra el camino del sentido y puede entender los mensajes del mundo imaginal. La Señora comienza a plañir. Hay pausas de silencio y luego renace el canturreo. Articula sílabas aisladas agudas, chasqueantes y rápidas, rasgando la oscuridad como puñales. Los cánticos se prolongan toda la noche. El canto es el guía. Ensalmos antiguos en mazateco, español o latín. Fraseo tierno y quejumbroso. Se oyen los nombres de Cristo. Uno de los hombres se acerca a Wasson y le susurra que Peter está vivo y arrepentido por no haber enviado noticias. Les dice que, como han tomado hongos, pueden hablar directamente con él. La Señora está de rodillas ante el altar, la luz de la luna perfila sus brazos alzados. Su hija se hace cargo del canto y ella inicia una danza que dura más de dos horas. A la luz de un cigarrillo, ve a la Señora beber de una botellita de aguardiente mientras baila (les han dicho que el alcohol es tabú antes, durante y después de la ceremonia). Con un ritmo perfecto, uniforme y rápido, golpea el petate con la base de la botella. El golpeteo llega a ser extremadamente doloroso. Wasson no lo soporta y comienza a gemir angustiado.
Los ojos de la Señora relampaguean, su rostro expresa sentimientos tiernos y generosos. Dos veces alarga su mano hacia Wasson buscando sus dedos en saludo amistoso, saltando por encima del abismo cultural y lingüístico. Los indígenas de Mesoamérica son reacios a mostrar afecto, incluso en el ámbito familiar. Los hongos emancipan de esas inhibiciones. También desquician la sensación del paso del tiempo. Visiones que parecen durar una eternidad transcurren en segundos. Refuerzan la memoria, hacen recordar cosas olvidadas. Despliegan todo un inventario de maravillas, pero también hacer que el mundo se detenga (viejo tema del budismo de Vasubandhu). Permiten viajar en el tiempo asomarse a otros ámbitos de existencia. Como dice William Blake, “mientras más diáfano sea el órgano, más nítido será el objeto”.
Wasson hace su propio retrato de María Sabina. La chamana es la receptora de los dolores y las esperanzas de la humanidad. Es el hierofante y psicopompo, en quien las generaciones han encontrado alivio y comprensión. Su mente debe estar templada como la cuerda de un violín. Es una forma de la santidad, de quienes ayudan a quienes lo necesitan. María pertenece “a los que saben”. Los hongos hablan a través de ella. Su mérito es su capacidad de entender lo que dicen. El chamán es simplemente un vehículo para que el hongo se exprese. El hongo es Palabra. Palabra delicada que hay que tratar con asombro y reverencia. María cura exclusivamente por la virtud del hongo, que es diagnóstico y guía para el tratamiento. Nunca ha empleado su poder para causar el mal. Los chamanes de segunda categoría son curanderos. Gentes que “construyen”, pueden curar “chupando el daño”, mediante pociones y conjuros. Una tercera categoría es la del brujo o hechicero que utiliza sus poderes para causar daño.
A quien come los hongos, los santitos se le aparecen como seres diminutos, del tamaño de un naipe. Cuando se toman en la circunstancia propicia y la dosis adecuada, estos hombrecillos se hacen cargo de las dificultades le que preocupan a uno. El hongo habla un lenguaje tan antiguo como la vida. Su melodía no puede ser desligada de lo que aparece. En México lo llaman la “carne divina” (teonanácatl). Y como lo divino brota de forma espontánea.
El micólogo francés Roger Heim ha clasificado científicamente las diversas clases de psilocibes. Afirma que los hongos levantan el silencio. Entre el oído y el mundo hay un velo de silencio. Los hongos descorren ese velo y los sonidos adquieren una vibración singular. El mundo, antes sordo, recobra su condición sinfónica y las más leves entonaciones de la voz aparecen magnificadas. El mundo recupera su melodía perdida, que es el lenguaje de lo divino. Los silencios son tan perfectos como la misma melodía. Silencios profundos como abismos. El canto abre el túnel. El universo es una sola voz. Un misterio con infinitos acordes. Música táctil, música que se ve. Uno se siente diminuta antena receptora que acompaña al poderoso ritmo y se sostiene con la secuencia del canto. La experiencia psicodélica comparte con la onírica y la fílmica en que limita su expresión a lo visto y lo escuchado. Pone en suspenso el instinto de conservación. Desactiva los sentidos vinculados a la supervivencia: el olfato (respiración), el gusto (alimento) y el tacto (reproducción sexual) y activa los sentidos que median para conseguir esos fines: la vista y el oído, que son, como decía Berkeley, sentidos indirectos. Y de estos dos, el oído es el facto dominante en todo el relato. Se parece también al barzaj o mundo imaginal de los sufíes, y al bardo o estado intermedio (entre una encarnación y la subsiguiente) del budismo tibetano, donde es posible liberarse mediante la audición.
Dónde está ahora el relato
Uno de los grandes errores del relato contemporáneo sobre las sustancias psicoactivas (psilocibios, peyote, ayahuasca o LSD), es considerarlas drogas. Todas estas sustancias no crean ningún tipo de adicción, como puede ocurrir con el tabaco, el alcohol, el opio o la heroína. Ahora bien, son sustancias peligrosas si no se toman en las circunstancias adecuadas y en el momento vital adecuado. En el caso de los hongos desecados, conservan su virtud durante largo tiempo y cada persona requiere una misma dosis a lo largo de su vida.
El laicismo moderno ha propiciado que estas sustancias se consuman fuera del contexto ritual. La contracultura favoreció estás prácticas, síntoma de una búsqueda legítima de jóvenes desencantados con la sociedad de consumo y los sueños de la vida burguesa. A mi entender, para tener una experiencia plena con estas sustancias, lo más importante es conservar cierta sensibilidad para la cosmovisión indígena, para la idea (desterrada por la modernidad) de que todo percibe y siente. Ya en su apartamento de Nueva York, Valentina Pavlova tomó unos hongos, fumó un cigarrillo y afirmó nunca haber fumado algo tan exquisito. Se asomó a un jarrón y vio una danza majestuosa, bailarines diminutos y una música remota. Bebió agua y la encontró superior al champán. La intensificación de la percepción es una de las bendiciones de estas sustancias, pero nunca serán experimentadas plenamente sin la interiorización de la cosmovisión que late por debajo de ellas.
El mundo natural está hecho de relatos. Relatos visionarios, antropológicos, teológicos o científicos. No hay un relato privilegiado, pero sí relatos más aptos que otros para ciertos propósitos. Para transformar el mundo natural el relato científico es el más efectivo. Para transformarse uno mismo son necesarios otros relatos, visionarios o imaginales. Lo que enseñan estas sustancias es que se puede transformar el mundo exterior transformase uno mismo. Esa es la distinción fundamental entre el itinerario occidental y el indígena. Pero tanto el que experimenta la visión como el que la describe (con la mayor objetividad posible) son relatores. Si los observamos con detenimiento, vemos que el primer relator y el último no son tan diferentes. Wasson probó el hongo, Sahagún no tuvo oportunidad de hacerlo. La episteme de su tiempo se lo impedía. María Sabina, la gran protagonista de esta odisea, nunca tuvo interés en hacer públicos sus hallazgos. Su trabajo era otro. Sanar las heridas mentales o físicas que todos traemos a este mundo. Cada relator tiene sus intereses y ambiciones. En medio, entre la espada y la pared, la experiencia visionaria e imaginal de una india, minúscula y poderosa, que sugiere que este mundo es una alucinación. Un mundo hecho del mismo material del que están hechos los sueños. Una tempestad para nuestro tiempo. Próspero nunca se ha ido.
You can follow
Babelia
on
and
X
, or sign up here to receive
our weekly newsletter
.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
Keep reading
I am already a subscriber
_