One of the children, a girl of about ten, under the guidance of María Sabina, had prepared for me the juice of five pairs of fresh leaves of hojas de la Pastora. I wanted to experience this drug that I had been unable to try in San José Tenango. The potion was said to be especially active when prepared by an innocent child. The cup with the expressed juice was likewise incensed and conjured by María Sabina and Don Aurelio, before it was delivered to me.
All of these preparations and the following ceremony progressed in much the same way as the consultation with the curandera Consuela Garcia in San José Tenango.
After the drug was apportioned and the candle on the "altar" was extinguished, we awaited the effects in the darkness.
Before a half hour had elapsed, the curandera murmured something; her daughter and Don Aurelio also became restless. Herlinda translated and explained to us what was wrong. María Sabina had said that the pills lacked the spirit of the mushrooms. I discussed the situation with Gordon, who lay beside me. For us it was clear that absorption of the active principle from the pills, which must first dissolve in the stomach, occurs more slowly than from the mushrooms, in which some of the active principle already becomes absorbed through the mucous membranes during chewing. But how could we give a scientific explanation under such conditions? Rather than try to explain, we decided to act. We distributed more pills. Both curandera s and the curandero each received another pair. They had now each taken a total dosage of 30 mg psilocybin.
After about another quarter of an hour, the spirit of the pills did begin to yield its effects, which lasted until the crack of dawn. The daughters, and Don Aurelio with his deep bass voice, fervently answered the prayers and singing of the curandera. Blissful, yearning moans of Apolonia and Aurora, between singing and prayer, gave the impression that the religious experience of the young women in the drug inebriation was combined with sensual-sexual feelings.
In the middle of the ceremony María Sabina asked for our request. Gordon inquired again after the health of his daughter and grandchild. He received the same good information as from the curandera Consuela. Mother and child were in fact well when he returned home to New York. Obviously, however, this still represents no proof of the prophetic abilities of both curandera s.
Evidently as an effect of the hojas, I found myself for some time in a state of mental sensitivity and intense experience, which, however, was not accompanied by hallucinations. Anita, Irmgard, and Gordon experienced a euphoric condition of inebriation that was influenced by the strange, mystical atmosphere. My wife was impressed by the vision of very distinct strange line patterns.
She was astonished and perplexed, later, on discovering precisely the same images in the rich ornamentation over the altar in an old church near Puebla. That was on the return trip to Mexico City, when we visited churches from colonial times. These admirable churches offer great cultural and historical interest because the Indian artists and workmen who assisted in their construction smuggled in elements of Indian style. Klaus Thomas, in his book Die kunstlich gesteuerte Seele [The artificially steered mind]
(Ferdinand Enke Verlag, Stuttgart, 1970), writes about the possible influence of visions from psilocybin inebriation on Meso-American Indian art: "Surely a cultural-historical comparison of the old and new creations of Indian art . . . must convince the unbiased spectator of the harmony with the images, forms and colors of a psilocybin inebriation."
The Mexican character of the visions seen in my first experience with dried Psilocybe mexicana mushrooms and the drawing of Li Gelpke after a psilocybin inebriation could also point to such an association.
As we took leave of María Sabina and her clan at the crack of dawn, the curandera said that the pills had the same power as the mushrooms, that there was no difference.
This was a confirmation from the most competent authority, that the synthetic psilocybin is identical with the natural product. As a parting gift I let María Sabina have a vial of psilocybin pills. She radiantly explained to our interpreter Herlinda that she could now give consultations even in the season when no mushrooms grow.
How should we judge the conduct of María Sabina, the fact that she allowed strangers, white people, access to the secret ceremony, and let them try the sacred mushroom?
To her credit it can be said that she had thereby opened the door to the exploration of the Mexican mushroom cult in its present form, and to the scientific, botanical, and chemical investigation of the sacred mushrooms. Valuable active substances, psilocybin and psilocin, resulted. Without this assistance, the ancient knowledge and experience that was concealed in these secret practices would possibly, even probably, have disappeared without a trace, without having borne fruit, in the advancement of Western civilization.
From another standpoint, the conduct of this curandera can be regarded as a profanation of a sacred custom-even as a betrayal. Some of her countrymen were of this opinion, which was expressed in acts of revenge, including the burning of her house.
The profanation of the mushroom cult did not stop with the scientific investigations.
The publication about the magic mushrooms unleashed an invasion of hippies and drug seekers into the Mazatec country, many of whom behaved badly, some even criminally.
Another undesirable consequence was the beginning of true tourism in Huautla de Jiménez, whereby the originality of the place was eradicated.
Such statements and considerations are, for the most part, the concern of ethnographical research. Wherever researchers and scientists trace and elucidate the remains of ancient customs that are becoming rarer, their primitiveness is lost. This loss is only more or less counterbalanced when the outcome of the research represents a lasting cultural gain.
From Huautla de Jiménez we proceeded first to Teotitlán, in a breakneck truck ride along a half-paved road, and from there went on a comfortable car trip back to Mexico City, the starting point of our expedition. I had lost several kilograms in body weight, but was overwhelmingly compensated in enchanting experiences.
The herbarium samples of hojas de la Pastora, which we had brought with us, were subjected to botanical identification by Carl Epling and Carlos D. Jativa at the Botanical Institute of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They found that this plant was a hitherto undescribed species of Salvia, which was named Salvia divinorum by these authors.
The chemical investigation of the juice of the magic sage in the laboratory in Basel was unsuccessful. The psychoactive principle of this drug seems to be a rather unstable substance, since the juice prepared in Mexico and preserved with alcohol proved in self-experiments to be no longer active. Where the chemical nature of the active principle is concerned, the problem of the magic plant ska María Pastora still awaits solution.
So far in this book I have mainly described my scientific work and matters relating to my professional activity. But this work, by its very nature, had repercussions on my own life and personality, not least because it brought me into contact with interesting and important contemporaries. I have already mentioned some of them—Timothy Leary, Rudolf Gelpke, Gordon Wasson. Now, in the pages that follow, I would like to emerge from the natural scientist's reserve, in order to portray encounters which were personally meaningful to me and which helped me solve questions posed by the substances I had discovered.