Church of the Sacred Mushroom

Humanity's use of the Sacred Mushrooms extends back to Paleolithic times. Few people, even anthropologists, comprehend how influential mushrooms have been in affecting the course of human evolution.

Mushrooms have also played pivotal roles in ancient Greece, India and Meso-america. Due to their beguiling nature, fungi have always elicited deep emotional responses: from adulation by those who understand them to outright fear by those who do not.

The historical record reveals that mushrooms have been used for less than benign purposes. Claudius II and Pope Clement VII were both killed by enemies who poisoned them with deadly Amanitas. Buddha died, according to legend, from a mushroom that grew underground. Buddha was given the mushroom by a peasant who believed it to be a delicacy.
In an ancient verse, that mushroom was linked to the phrase "pig's foot" but has never been identified. (Although truffles grow underground and pigs are used to find them, no deadly poisonous species are known.)

Tassili Cave Drawing: Bee-headed Mushroom King
The oldest archaeological of mushroom use discovered so far is probably a Tassili image from a cave which dates back 3,500 years before the birth of Christ. The artist's intent is clear. Mushrooms with electrified auras are depicted outlining a dancing shaman. The spiritual interpretation of the image transcends time and is obvious.
No wonder that word "be-mushroomed" has evolved to reflect the devout mushroom lover's state of mind.

In the winter of 1991, hikers in the Italian Alps came across the well preserved remains of a man who died over 5,300 years ago, approximately 200 years later than the Tassili cave artist. Dubbed the "Iceman" by the news media, he was well equipped with a knapsack, flint axe, a string of dried Birch Polypores (Piptoporus betulinus) and another yet unidentified mushroom.

The polypores can be used as tinder for starting fires and as medicine for treating wounds. Further, a rich tea with immuno-enhancing properties can be prepared by boiling these mushrooms. Equipped for traversing the wilderness, this intrepid adventurer had discovered the value of the noble polypores. Even today, this knowledge can be life-saving for anyone astray in the wilderness.

Fear of mushroom poisoning pervades every culture, sometimes reaching phobic extremes. The term mycophobic describes those individuals and cultures where fungi are looked upon with fear and loathing. Mycophobic cultures are epitomized by the English and Irish.
In contrast, mycophilic societies can be found throughout Asia and eastern Europe, especially amongst Polish, Russian and Italian peoples. These societies have enjoyed a long history of mushroom use, with as many as a hundred common names to describe the mushroom varieties they loved.

The use of mushrooms by diverse cultures was intensively studied by an investment banker named R. Gordon Wasson.

His studies concentrated on the use of mushrooms by Mesoamerican, Russian, English, and Indian cultures. With the French mycologist, Dr. Roger Heim, Wasson published research on Psilocybe mushrooms in Mesoamerica, and on Amanita mushrooms in Euro-Asia/Siberia.
Wasson's studies spanned a lifetime marked by a passionate love for fungi.

His publications include:

• Mushrooms, Russia, & History;
• The Wondrous Mushroom;
• Mycolatry in Mesoamerica;
• Maria Sabina and her Mazatec Mushroom Velada;
• and Persephone's Quest: Entheogens and the Origins of Religion.

More than any other individual of the 20th century, Wasson kindled interest in ethnomycology to its present state of intense study. Wasson died on Christmas Day in 1986.

Aristotle, Plato, and Sophocles all participated in religious ceremonies at Eleusis where an unusual temple Honored Demeter, the Goddess of Earth.
For over two millennia, thousands of pilgrims journeyed fourteen miles from Athens to Eleusis, paying the equivalent of a month's wage for the privilege of attending the annual ceremony. The pilgrims were ritually harassed on their journey to the temple, apparently in good humor.
Upon arriving at the temple, the gathered in the initiation hall, a great telestrion.
Inside the temple, pilgrims sat in rows that descended step-wise to a hidden, central chamber from which fungal concoction was served. An odd feature was an array of columns, beyond any apparent structural need, whose designed purpose escaped archaeologists. The pilgrims spend the night together and reportedly came away forever changed.

In this pavilion crowded with pillars, ceremonies occurred, known by historians as the Eleusinian Mysteris.
No revelation of the ceremony's secrets could be mentioned under the punishment of imprisonment or death. These ceremonies continued until repressed in the early centuries of the Christian era.

Hallucinogenic Psilocybe were known to the Aztecs as teonanácatl (literally "god's mushroom" or, more properly, "mushroom of the gods" - agglutinative form of teó (god) and nanácatl (mushroom) in Náhuatl) and were reportedly served at the coronation of the Aztec ruler Moctezuma II in 1502. Aztecs and Mazatecs referred to psilocybin mushrooms as genius mushrooms, divinatory mushrooms, and wondrous mushrooms, when translated into English. Bernardino de Sahagún reported ritualistic use of Teonanácatl by the Aztecs, when he traveled to South America after the expedition of Herando Cortés.

After the Spanish conquest, Catholic missionaries campaigned against the "pagan idolatry," and as a result, the use of hallucinogenic plants and mushrooms, like other pre-Christian traditions, were forcibly suppressed. The Spanish believed the mushroom allowed the Aztecs and others to communicate with "devils".

Amanita FrescoAmanita Fresco In order to gain control over the people, they had to convert them to Christianity, and in doing so the Spanish pushed for a switch from Teonanácatl to the Christian sacrament of the Eucharist. Despite this history, in some remote areas the use of Teonanácatl has remained.

By the 20th century, hallucinogenic mushroom use was thought by non-Native Americans to have disappeared entirely[citation needed]. Some authors even held that Mesoamerican cultures did not use mushrooms as hallucinogens at all and that the Spanish had simply mistaken peyote for a mushroom[citation needed]. Later investigations by Blas Pablo Reko, Richard Evans Schultes, and R. Gordon Wasson demonstrated that hallucinogenic mushrooms were still widely used by several indigenous Mesoamerican peoples, particularly the Mazatecs of Oaxaca.

At present, hallucinogenic mushroom use has been reported among a number of groups spanning from central Mexico to Oaxaca, including groups of Nahua, Mixtecs, Mixe, Mazatecs, Zapotecs, and others. There has not, however, been any confirmed observations of hallucinogenic mushroom use among the Maya peoples, either in the pre-Columbian or post-Contact eras.

According to the BBC, the first documented use of psychedelic mushrooms was in the Medical and Physical Journal: In 1799, a man who had been picking mushrooms for breakfast in London's Green Park included them in his harvest, accidentally sending his entire family on a trip. The doctor who treated them later described how the youngest child "was attacked with fits of immoderate laughter, nor could the threats of his father or mother refrain him."

In 1955, Valentina and R. Gordon Wasson became the first Westerners to actively participate in an indigenous mushroom ceremony. The Wassons did much to publicize their discovery, even publishing an article on their experiences in Life in 1957. In 1956, Roger Heim identified the hallucinogenic mushroom that the Wassons had brought back from Mexico as Psilocybe and in 1958, Albert Hofmann first identified psilocin and psilocybin as the active compound in these mushrooms.

Inspired by the Wassons' Life article, Timothy Leary traveled to Mexico to experience hallucinogenic mushrooms firsthand. Upon returning to Harvard in 1960, he and Richard Alpert started the Harvard Psilocybin Project, promoting psychological and religious study of psilocybin and other hallucinogenic drugs. After Leary and Alpert were dismissed by Harvard in 1963, they turned their attention toward evangelizing the psychedelic experience to the nascent hippie counterculture.

The popularization of entheogens by Wasson, Leary, and others has led to an explosion in the use of hallucinogenic Psilocybe throughout the world. By the early 1970s, a number of psychoactive Psilocybe species were described from temperate North America, Europe, and Asia and were widely collected. Books describing methods of cultivating Psilocybe cubensis in large quantities were also published. The relatively easy availability of hallucinogenic Psilocybe from wild and cultivated sources has made it among the most widely used of the hallucinogenic drugs.

In 1977, at a mushroom conference on the Olympic Peninsula, R. Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann, and Carl Ruck first postulated, that the Eleusinian mysteries centered on the use of psychoactive fungi. Their papers were later published in a book entitled The Road the Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries(1978).

That Aristotle and other founders of western philosophy undertook such intellectual adventures, and that this secret ceremony persisted for neary 2,000 years, underscores the profound impact that fungal rites have had on the evolution of western conciousness.

1000 - 500 BCE
Central American cultures build temples to mushroom gods and carve "mushroom stones" found in Mexico & Guatamala. 1  

13th - 15th Century

Vienna Codex depicts the ritual use of mushrooms by the Mixtec gods, showing Piltzintecuhtli and 7 other gods holding mushrooms in their hands. These were most likely psilocybin-containing mushrooms. (The Wondrous Mushroom) 

16th Century
Xochipilli statue carved. Aztec statue depicts the Prince of Flowers decorated with 6 psychoactive plants: mushrooms, tobacco, morning glory, sinicuichi, cacahuaxochitl, and one unidentified.  

Jun 15, 1521
The use of hallucinogenic mushrooms and peyote are driven underground as use of "non-alcohol" intoxicants is forbidden by Europeans in Mexico. Catholic priests punish the use of entheogens by native people.  

1560
Spanish priest Bernardino de Sahagún writes in his Florentine Codex about the use of peyote and hallucinogenic teonanacatl mushrooms by the Aztecs. He estimates peyote has been in use since at least 300 B.C. 2  

Oct 3, 1799
First documented psychedelic mushroom experience/ingestion takes place in London. 3  

Mid 1800s
Xochipilli statue discovered by Europeans in central Mexico.  

1936
Blas Pablo Reko confirms the existence of teonanacatl as the psilocybin mushroom, refuting the scholarly misunderstanding of that time that teonanacatl was peyote.  
1938
Schultes and Reko travel to Mexico and collect specimens of several psychoactive mushroom species which are deposited in the Harvard herbarium.  

1939
Richard Evans Schultes publishes a paper describing teonanacatl as a specific psilocybin-containing mushroom. (Probably the first academic release of this fact.)  

Jun 29, 1955
R. Gordon Wasson participates in a mushroom velada led by Maria Sabina.  

May 13, 1957
R. Gordon Wasson publishes an article about psychoactive mushrooms in Life Magazine, the first popular media coverage of their existence.  

1958
Psilocybin is first isolated from psychoactive mushrooms by Albert Hofmann working at Sandoz Pharmaceutical in Switzerland. 4  

1959
Albert Hofmann first publishes the synthesis of psilocybin. 5

1960
Sandoz Pharmaceutical begins producing psilocybin pills. They contain 2 mg of psilocybin per small pink pill. 6

Aug 1960
Timothy Leary first ingests psilocybin-containing mushrooms in Cuernavaca, Mexico.     [Details]

Oct 1960
Timothy Leary first tries pure psilocybin.  6 [Details]

1960-1961
Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert begin a series of experiments with Harvard graduate students, using pure psilocybin.   

1960s
Albert Hofmann gives synthetic psilocybin to Maria Sabina.  

Apr 1962
Good Friday Experiment - 20 students at Boston University participate in a psilocybin ritual/experiment. 7    [Details]

1963
Leary and Alpert were dismissed from their academic positions at Harvard due, at least in part, to their continued experiments with students and psychedelics. 4  

Oct 24, 1968
Possession of Psilocybin & Psilocin become illegal in the United States.  

Oct 27, 1970
The Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act is passed. Part II of this is the Controlled Substance Act (CSA) which defines a scheduling system for drugs. It places most of the known hallucinogens (LSD, psilocybin, psilocin, mescaline, peyote, cannabis, & MDA) in Schedule I. It places coca, cocaine and injectable methamphetamine in Schedule II. Other amphetamines and stimulants, including non-injectable methamphetamine are placed in Schedule III.  

1960-1977
Psilocybin is studied as a psychotherapeutic medicine through the 1960s and 1970s. FDA approved research with humans ends in 1977, not to be continued until the late 1990s.  

Late 1990's
Research with psilocybin begins to see a small resurgence.  

Jun 1999
An improved synthesis method for psilocybin is published. 8    [More Info]

Jun 5, 2002
Japan. Psilocybin mushrooms become illegal to sell in Japan. Although already illegal to eat, Japanese head shops had previously been allowed to sell mushrooms.  

May 2006
Survey results published in Neurology show that both psilocybin-containing mushrooms and LSD may reduce severity and frequency of cluster headaches. 9    [Details]

Jul 11, 2006
Research shows psilocybin can induce mystical experiences. 10    [More Info] [Details]

References:

1. Schultes RE, Hofmann A. Plants of the Gods. Inner Traditions, 1992.
2. Stafford P. Psychedelics Encyclopedia. Ronin, 1992.
3. Brande E. "On A Poisonous Species of Agaric". London Medical and Physical Journal. 1799;XI:41-44.
4. Ray O, Ksir C. Drugs, Society, and Human Behavior. Mosby, 1996.
5. Hofmann A, Troxler F. "Identifizierung von Psilocin". Experientia. 1959;15:101-102.
6. Leary T. High Priest. Ronin Pub, 1995.
7. Pahnke W. Drugs and Mysticism: An Analysis of the Relationship between Psychedelic Drugs and the Mystical Consciousness. Thesis Harvard University, 1963.
8. Nichols DE, Frescas S. "Improvements to the Synthesis of Psilocybin and a Facile Method for Preparing the O-Acetyl Prodrug of Psilocin." Synthesis, 1999;6:935-938.
9. Sewell RA, Halpern JH, Pope HG Jr. "Response of cluster headache to psilocybin and LSD". Neurology. 2006;66(12):1920-2.
10. Griffiths RR, Richards WA, McCann U, Jesse R . "Psilocybin can occasion mystical-type experiences having substantial and sustained personal meaning and spiritual significance". Psychopharmacology (Berl). 2006;187(3):268-83.