Teonanacatl was the name given to one or more species of psilocybe mushrooms in the Nahuatl language of the Aztec people. From Conquest times onward the name has been translated as “god’s flesh”. The Spanish friars seized upon this to justify the equation of Nahua mushroom ceremonies to devil worship. By regarding it as a diabolical mockery of the consumption of the body of Christ in banning the religious practice of the Indigenous. However, in his 1980 book The Wondrous Mushroom, ethnomycologist R. Gordon Wasson, who rediscovered the shamanic ritual use of psilocybe mushrooms in contemporary Mexican Indigenous Cultures, pointed out that teonanacatl could also, and more correctly, be translated as “wondrous mushroom”, “sacred mushroom”, or even “awesome mushroom”.
What is clear, both from the account of the Spanish chroniclers and from the accounts of modern anthropologists, is that these vision- inducing mushrooms were(and are) revered by the Indigenous for providing deep spiritual insight and inspiration. The names given to the mushrooms by some of the Mesoamerican tribes -Mazatec, Mixtec, Zapotec and others- confirm the reverence and affection the mushrooms inspire: “holy lords” “little saints” “children”(los ninos), “dear little ones that spring forth” (nti-ix-tho, Mazatec), “little princes”. The Mexicas also called them “little flowers,” although fungi do not bloom. For them “flower” was a metaphor, as it was for the Maya, for whom “flowering dreams” refers to ecstatic visions. -Teonanácatl : sacred mushrooms of visions
Indigenous knowledge about psychedelic mushrooms is not a pearl of isolated or fortuitous wisdom, but is deeply rooted in ancient Mesoamerican tradition. Archaeological evidence and written historical sources have demonstrated the use of sacred mushrooms by the Maya, Mixtec, and Aztec civilizations. Psychedelic mushrooms, known variably as entheogenic, magic, medicinal, neurotropic, hallucinogenic, psychoactive, sacred, saint, or visionary mushrooms, were used by different indigenous groups in Mexico prior to the Spanish Conquest, but were unknown to science until the 20th century.
This is why We(Satorid and Pseudos aka Myco) have started a Psychedelic Sundays research group and will be starting up Psychedelic Sundays again to go thru the origin of the use of magic mushrooms and the symbiotic relationship between sacred mushrooms and humans. This intertwines different fields of knowledge such as politics, economics, religion, therapeutics, botany, ethnomycology, archeology, arts, psychology, pharmacology, chemistry, biology and psychoanalysis. However, the history of Western man’s contact with Teonanácatl is filled with mistakes, errors, distortions and prejudices. It begins with a partial, or mistaken, interpretation of the translation of the word Teonanácatl , translated by the Spanish as “flesh of the gods”. According to this narrative of the Christian religion, the communion of the Eucharist is the very incarnation of the triune God. Therefore, if the “flesh of God” is the Eucharist, by exclusion, this other flesh of the Fungi Kingdom , which is supposed to be transcendental, could only be that of the devil. The confrontation was direct. Spanish priests and colonizers attributed mushroom rituals to the work of the devil and banned the practice of this religion among the natives.
Only in 1980 did Teonanácatl have its translation revisited by the ethnomycologist Robert G. Wasson, who suggested that the most appropriate translation, according to the Mazatec people of Mexico, would be “wonderful mushroom”, or “sacred mushroom”, or even “impressive mushroom”. We will detail this episode later. The fact is that, with this supposedly religious obstacle, the colonizers began a systematic hunt for healing and ritualistic practices using mushrooms. The little we know about that time 500 years ago is reported by Spanish chroniclers in few works, such as the Historia general de las cosas de nueva España , also known as the Florentine Codex , with 12 volumes, written by Spanish chroniclers with the help of Aztec writers and compiled by friar Bernardino de Sahagún, which contains detailed reports on the use of mushrooms both in rituals, in festivals with sacrifices (including human ones) or for various purposes such as healing, being used as a “medicine”. Friar Diego Durán reports that King Moteczuma invited kings and enemies to hold parties where everyone ate mushrooms. It was called the “festival of revelations”.
Mushroom Shamanism in Ancient and Indigenous Mesoamerican Cultures
Although “shamanism” is a term derived from the Siberian Yakut culture, it has come to refer to any of a group of practices that involve going into an altered states of consciousness for the purposes of healing or divination (Harner 1973). The psilocybe mushrooms have apparently been used in shamanistic ceremonies in Mesoamerica for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years. Contemporary patterns of usage of the mushrooms among indigenous communities in Mexico, although long unknown to Western science, are consistent with the use patterns for ayahuasca in South America, peyote in North America, and iboga in equatorial Africa: they are used ceremonially for communing with the spirits of the natural world for healing and knowledge (Schultes and Hofmann 1979).
Miniature mushrooms stones, some dating back to 1000 BCE, have been found in the lands of the ancient Maya in Guatemala, Ecuador and Southern Mexico. Long misidentified, these are now understood as effigies of a mushroom deity: they may have a human or animal(jaguar, bird, monkey, hare) figure or face under the huge overshadowing mushroom cap. The pleated skirt on the one shown in the picture probably indicates a female deity, and the nine-pointed starburst around the head suggests a flower with radiating leaves, or the radiance of flowering visions induced by the mushroom. Finds of mushrooms effigies in the tomb of Mayan nobles suggest an association with the Lords of Xibalba, deity rulers of the land of the dead, as described in the Popul Vuh.
Among the Spanish friars in 19th century Mexico, the Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagun devoted himself to recording extensive descriptions and testimonies on the culture, history and religion of the native peoples. The testimonies, recorded in Nahuatl and Spanish paraphrase, were preserved in numerous handwritten volumes known as the Florentine Codex. Wasson suggested that because Sahagun came from a family of Jewish converts in Spain, he perhaps had more instinctive sympathy for the conquered natives. In any event, his attitude, though pejorative, also had a certain kind of detachment and objectivity.
Among the otherwise meager material on mushroom use, there is one description of a mushroom ceremony that stands out: it describes prophetic visions that individuals had of themselves and others, including visions of their own death. The text begins by describing how the group of people came together to eat mushrooms: the blowing of a conch, fasting, except for taking chocolate and honey with the mushrooms, and some dancing, some weeping, or sitting quietly (Wasson 1980):
One saw in vision that he would die, and continued weeping. One saw in vision that he would die in battle; one saw in vision that he would be eaten by wild beasts; one saw in vision that he would take captives in war; one saw in vision that he would be rich, wealthy; one saw in vision that he would be slaves…one saw in vision that he would commit adultery- he would be stoned; one saw in vision that he would perish in water; one saw in vision that he would live in peace, in tranquility, until he died…However many things were to befall one, he then saw in vision what would befall those who had eaten no mushrooms, and what they went about doing. Some were perhaps thieves, some perhaps committed adultery. Howsoever many things there were. all were told — that one would take captives, one would become a seasoned warrior, a leader of the youths, one would die in battle, become rich, buy slaves… provide banquets, be strangled, perish in water. Whatsoever was to befall one, they then saw all in vision.
So here we have an account of classical visionary experiences in the form of divinations about one’s own future and that of others. Those familiar with entheogenic experiences and practices will understand that these visions should not be considered undesirable effects of a drug or fungus. The visions one has are a function of the “set and setting,” the intention or purpose of the ceremony; in other worlds, we must assume that the Aztec mushroom-eaters sought out those kinds of precognitive visions intentionally. Clearly, the experiences described in this informant’s account are visions anticipating one’s death, as might be found in the traditions of ancient mystery cults, or in contemporary research on “near-death experiences” (NDEs). Similar deathbed visions can be found in some of the experiences described in this book. They bring the individual to an enlarged and compassionate perspective that is informed by acceptance of one’s own mortality.
Some of the visions described in the account are precognitions of one’s future life-path — to be a merchant, a warrior, a “leader of youth.” Others are healing visions that may be called “course corrections”: here a person foresees the consequences of present bad actions, such as thieving, adultery and so forth. These accounts are consistent with those described in the research with hoasca in Brazil, where subjects report seeing in vision the eventual consequences of their behavior and are thus enabled to move on to a road of recovery (Grob 1999). Interestingly, the Nahua account also includes mention of a kind of integrative discussion after the mushroom ceremony — very much in accord with the kinds of healing and divination sessions that contemporary seekers arrange.
R.G. Wasson, in his marvelous book The Wondrous Mushrooms — Mycolatry in Mesoamerica, has pointed out that “flowers,” botanically unspecified, are a huge recurring theme in Nahuatl poetry. He explains that for the Nahua poets and singers, “flowers” and “flowering” or “dream flowers” referred to the visionary experience induced by teonanacatl mushrooms. “The flowers took them to another world…a world that they called their Tlalocan, a world of strange and wondrous beauty, where they reveled in sensations beyond imagining.” (Wasson 1980). Hence the poets would speak of “inebriating flowers” and “songs that inebriate,” pointing to a quality of the mushroom experience often remarked on by inner space explorers: their ability to stimulate creative expression in voice, song and poetry.
It was Wasson too, who first identified the famous Aztec deity known as Xochipilli, the “Prince of Flowers,” as the deity of ecstatic mushroom trance. The remarkable seated figure, dating from the 16th century and now in the Museum of Archaeology in Mexico City, wears a mask with hollowed-out eyes, his face lifted upward with a fixed gaze. This is a depiction of a man in ecstatic trance. His feet are crossed, toes curled, hands held lightly above the knees at the level of the heart. All around the base of the figurine as well as on his body are images of various flowers, including the hallucinogenic morning glory (ololiuhqui), and mushrooms in profile. This deity is a kind of Mesoamerican Dionysus, a god of rapture and inebriation. Wasson writes: “Here is the work of a master, a supreme carving of a man in the midst of an unearthly experience, the formal hieratic effigy of the God of Rapture, the God of Flowers (as the Aztecs put it): the god of youth, of light, of the dance and music and games, of poetry and art; the Child God, the god of the rising sun, of summer and warmth, of flowers and butterflies, of the ‘Tree-in-Flower’ that the Nahuatl poets frequently invoke, of the inebriation mushrooms.” (Wasson 1980, p 59)
The suppression of the visionary mushroom cult by the Spanish clergy was effective and complete. For four centuries it disappeared from the memory of the general and scholarly public, so much so that at the beginning of the 20th century some identified teonanacatl with the peyote cactus, and some questioned whether such a practice had ever existed. After Wasson rediscovered in the 1950s the practice of mushroom divination in the person of the famous Mazatec curandera Maria Sabina, it emerged that there were still practicing shamans among the Mazatec, Chinantec, Chatino, Mixe, Zapotec and Mixtec of Oaxaca; the Nahua and possibly Otomi of Puebla; and the Tarascan of Michoacan. The Mazatec in the mountains of Oaxaca probably have the largest number of mushroom-using healers, though they are disappearing. There are three accounts in this book of Euro-Americans partaking of the mushrooms in small circles of people in the Mazatec country, under the guidance of Maria Sabina or another curandero.
According to anthropologist and Mayanist Christian Ratsch, who has made extensive studies of psilocybe and other shamanic entheogens, the Mixe people of Oaxaca (who, according to the linguistic evidence, may be descended from the Olmec, the oldest Mesoamerican culture) used several different species of psilocybe mushrooms in their religious life. From these cultures we have strange clay figurines, with a drum between the legs, and mushroom-like protrusions sticking out from the head on both sides; they look almost like antennae for cosmic visions and inspirations, which is a suggestive metaphor for the teonanacatl mushrooms experience. -Teonanácatl : sacred mushrooms of visions
Aztec, Mexican and Mazatec Mushroom Connection: Traditional and Contemporary Mushroom Names of the World
“Eruption of the earth,” “mushroom of reason,” “children of the water,” “our masters, the mushrooms of the world,” “the most holy of lords,” “little ones that spring forth,” “mushrooms of the saints,” and “los señor (the lords, used by Mesoamericans),” are but a few of the many endearing epithets used to describe the adoration, respect, and esteem many Mesoamericans hold when expressing their love for the sacred mushrooms.
To the indigenous population of Mesoamerica, the sacred mushrooms were and are treasured like beautiful flowers by the people of the Nahua nation. And what more could the Nahua have done to show their love, respect, and admiration for the sacred fungi than to have them immortalized along with other sacred plants by depicting them on an ancient statue known as ‘Xochipilli,’ referred to as the Aztec ‘prince of flowers.’ What is unique about this statue is that it botanically depicts several of the sacred fungi and flowering plants used by the Olmecs, Toltecs, Aztecs, and their descendants.
The Nahuatl mushroom names under discussion in this document originally appeared in several codices and journals written by the early Spanish historians, botanists, and friars during the 16th and 17th centuries, all who undoubtedly wrote under the supervision of the strict hierarchy and guidance of the Holy Office of the Inquisition.
Psychedelic Sundays Reading List:
Teonanacatl: Sacred Mushroom of Visions: Teonanácatl was the name given to the visionary mushrooms used in ancient Mesoamerican shamanic ceremonies, mushrooms that contain psilocybin, the psychoactive agent identified by Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann, the discoverer of LSD. The rediscovery of these visionary mushrooms by the Mazatec healer Maria Sabina and mycologist R. Gordon Wasson ignited a worldwide mushroom culture that inspired the consciousness revolution of the 1960s.
This book describes in vivid detail the consciousness-expanding experiences of psychoactive mushroom users — from artists to psychologists — and the healing visionary inspiration they received. It provides firsthand accounts of studies performed in the controversial Harvard Psilocybin Project, including the Concord Prison study and the Good Friday study. It describes how the use of the psilocybe mushroom spread from the mountains of Mexico into North America, Asia, and Europe by seekers of consciousness-expanding experiences.
The sacred mushrooms of Mexico : assorted texts. This work presents significant new readings in ethnomycology, a discipline that examines the role of fungi in human affairs. The greatest cultural and historical impact of mushrooms has resulted from psychoactive compounds found in certain species, and native interpretations of their mental effects in humans, as revealed through intensive multidisciplinary studies coordinated by the late R. Gordon Wasson, the father of ethnomycology. Wasson’s research in the 1950s led to the elucidation of mushroom cultism in Mexico, a phenomenon dismissed as unfounded rumor by “experts” only a few decades earlier. Discoveries made by Wasson and his collaborators intersect a staggering number of disciplines, so much so that individual fields have had difficulty assimilating them. The Sacred Mushrooms of Mexico presents six texts concerning the mushrooms. Five of them are translations of relevant scholarly sources in Spanish previously unavailable in English. The sixth is a transcript of The Sacred Mushroom, a celebrated episode of the classic television series “One Step Beyond.” This T.V. program may have been the only show in broadcast history in which the host ingested hallucinogenic mushrooms and endured their effects on camera for the viewing pleasure of the home audience.
Teonanácatl: Hallucinogenic Mushrooms of North America. Based on the proceedings of the second International Conference on Hallucinogenic Mushrooms. held in Port Townsend Washington in October 1977, this is the first comprehensive book on teonanácatl the sacred mushrooms of North America.