After some twenty minutes Anita whispered to me that she saw striking, brightly bordered images. Gordon also perceived the effect of the drug. The voice of the curandera sounded from the darkness, half speaking, half singing. Herlinda translated: Did we believe in Christ's blood and the holiness of the rites? After our "creemos" ("We believe"), the ceremonial performance continued. The curandera lit the candles, moved them from the "altar table" onto the floor, sang and spoke prayers or magic formulas, placed the candles again under the images of the saints-then again silence and darkness.
Thereupon the true consultation began. Consuela asked for our request. Gordon inquired after the health of his daughter, who immediately before his departure from New York had to be admitted prematurely to the hospital in expectation of a baby. He received the comforting information that mother and child were well. Then again came singing and prayer and manipulations with the candles on the "altar table" and on the floor, over the smoking basin.
When the ceremony was at an end, the curandera asked us to rest yet a while longer in prayer on our bast mats. Suddenly a thunderstorm burst out. Through the cracks of the beam walls, lightning flashed into the darkness of the hut, accompanied by violent thunderbolts, while a tropical downpour raged, beating on the roof. Consuela voiced apprehension that we would not be able to leave her house unseen in the darkness. But the thunderstorm let up before daybreak, and we went down the mountainside to our corrugated iron barracks, as noiselessly as possible by the light of flashlights, unnoticed by the villagers, but dogs again barked from all sides.
Participation in this ceremony was the climax of our expedition. It brought confirmation that the hojas de la Pastora were used by the Indians for the same purpose and in the same ceremonial milieu as teonanácatl, the sacred mushrooms. Now we also had authentic plant material, not only sufficient for botanical identification, but also for the planned chemical analysis. The inebriated state that Gordon Wasson and my wife had experienced with the hojas had been shallow and only of short duration, yet it had exhibited a distinctly hallucinogenic character.
On the morning after this eventful night we took leave of San José Tenango. The guide, Guadelupe, and the two fellows Teodosio and Pedro appeared before our barracks with the mules at the appointed time. Soon packed up and mounted, our little troop then moved uphill again, through the fertile landscape glittering in the sunlight from the night's thunderstorm. Returning by way of Santiago, toward evening we reached our last stop in Mazatec country, the capital Huautla de Jiménez.
From here on, the return trip to Mexico City was made by automobile. With a final supper in the Posada Rosaura, at the time the only inn in Huautla, we took leave of our Indian guides and of the worthy mules that had carried us so surefootedly and in such a pleasant way through the Sierra Mazatec. The Indians were paid of, and Teodosio, who also accepted payment for his chief in Jalapa de Diaz (where the animals were to be returned afterward), gave a receipt with his thumbprint colored by a ballpoint pen. We took up quarters in Dona Herlinda's house.
A day later we made our formal visit to the curandera María Sabina, a woman made famous by the Wassons' publications. It had been in her hut that Gordon Wasson became the first white man to taste of the sacred mushrooms, in the course of a nocturnal ceremony in the summer of 1955. Gordon and María Sabina greeted each other cordially, as old friends. The curandera lived out of the way, on the mountainside above Huautla.
The house in which the historic session with Gordon Wasson had taken place had been burned, presumably by angered residents or an envious colleague, because she had divulged the secret of teonanácatl to strangers. In the new hut in which we found ourselves, an incredible disorder prevailed, as had probably also prevailed in the old hut, in which half-naked children, hens, and pigs bustled about. The old curandera had an intelligent face, exceptionally changeable in expression. She was obviously impressed when it was explained that we had managed to confine the spirit of the mushrooms in pills, and she at once declared herself ready to " serve us" with these, that is, to grant us a consultation. It was agreed that this should take place the coming night in the house of Doña Herlinda.
In the course of the day I took a stroll through Huautla de Jiménez, which led along a main street on the mountainside. Then I accompanied Gordon on his visit to the Instituto Nacional Indigenista. This governmental organization had the duty of studying and helping to solve the problems of the indigenous population, that is, the Indians. Its leader told us of the difficulties that the "coffee policy" had caused in the area at that time. The president of Huautla, in collaboration with the Instituto Nacional Indigenista had tried to eliminate middlemen in order to shape the coffee prices favorably for the producing Indians. His body was found, mutilated, the previous June.
Our stroll also took us past the cathedral, from which Gregorian chants resounded. Old Father Aragon, whom Gordon knew well from his earlier stays, invited us into the vestry for a glass of tequila.
A Mushroom Ceremony
As we returned home to Herlinda's house toward evening, María Sabina had already arrived there with a large company, her two lovely daughters, Apolonia and Aurora (two prospective curandera s), and a niece, all of whom brought children along with them.
Whenever her child began to cry, Apolonia would offer her breast to it. The old curandero Don Aurelio also appeared, a mighty man, one-eyed, in a black-and-white patterned serape (cloak). Cacao and sweet pastry were served on the veranda. I was reminded of the report from an ancient chronicle which described how chocolatl was drunk before the ingestion of teonanácatl.
After the fall of darkness, we all proceeded into the room in which the ceremony would take place. It was then locked up-that is, the door was obstructed with the only bed available. Only an emergency exit into the back garden remained unlatched for absolute necessity. It was nearly midnight when the ceremony began. Until that time the whole party lay, in darkness sleeping or awaiting the night's events, on the bast mats spread on the floor. María Sabina threw a piece of copal on the embers of a brazier from time to time, whereby the stuffy air in the crowded room became somewhat bearable. I had explained to the curandera through Herlinda, who was again with the party as interpreter, that one pill contained the spirit of two pairs of mushrooms. (The pills contained 5.0 mg synthetic psilocybin apiece.)
When all was ready, María Sabina apportioned the pills in pairs among the grown-ups present. After solemn smoking, she herself took two pairs (corresponding to 20 mg psilocybin). She gave the same dose to Don Aurelio and her daughter Apolonia, who would also serve as curandera. Aurora received one pair, as did Gordon, while my wife and Irmgard got only one pill each.