Sabina, Maria

Sabina, Maria, 88 Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, 88 safrole, 86... 

Magic mushrooms belong to the genus Psilocybe, and include Psilocybe mexicana and hougshagenii, traditionally considered to be most important, and also Stropharia cubensis and Panaeolus sphinctrinus. These contain psilocybine and psilocine which mimic the action of serotonin. The Mazatec shaman, Maria Sabina, described the effects of the mushrooms as follows This is a world beyond ours, a world that is far away, nearby and invisible. And this is where God lives, where the dead live, the spirits and the saints, a world where... 

One of the children, a girl of about ten, under the guidance of Maria 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 Jose 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 Maria Sabina and Don Aurelio, before it was delivered to me. 

In the middle of the ceremony Maria Sabina asked for our request. Gordon... 

As we took leave of Maria Sabina and her clan at the crack of dawn, the curandera said that the pills had the same power as the mushrooms, that there... 

How should we judge the conduct of Maria Sabina, the fact that she allowed strangers, white people, access to the secret ceremony, and let them try the sacred mushroom ... 

Maria Sabina, the Mazatec shaman made famous by Wasson, and who lives in the Mazatec highland town of Huautla, in Oaxaca, briefly mentioned her use of the plant in her autobiography (Estrada, 1977) ... 

Estrada, A. (1977) Vida de Marla Sabina, Siglo XXI Editores, Mexico, p. 108 (English Estrada, A. (1981) Maria Sabina, her Life and Chants, Ross-Erickson, Inc., Santa Barbara.)... 

Wasson, R.G., Cowan, G., Cowan, F. and Rhodes, W. (1974) Maria Sabina and her Mazatec Mushroom Velada. New York Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., New York, p. ix. Weil, A. (1972) The Natural Mind, Houghton Miflin Co., Boston, p. 29. 

Wasson, R.G. Cowan, G Cowan, F. Rhodes, W. 1974. Maria Sabina and her Mazatec Mushroom Velada. New York Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. 

ESTRADA A., 1977, Vida de Maria Sabina, la Sabia de los Hongos, Siglo Veintiuno, Mexico D.F., Mexico. Translated into English by H. Munn, 1981, Maria Sabina Her Life and Chants, Ross-Erikson, Santa Barbara, CA. 

Maria Sabina, the curandera who demonstrated to the Wassons how much to use of the psychoadive mushrooms they had collected over the previous couple of years, as well as how they were used ritually. R. Gordon Wasson claimed his greatest achievement was transcription of one of her veladas. 

Mendoza was as good as his word. Later that afternoon he took Wasson to his house where they gathered some of the mushrooms. By evening Mendoza had spoken to the famous curandera Maria Sabina, telling her without further explanation that she should serve Wasson, who then went with New York fashion photographer friend Allan Richardson to a mushroom ceremony. 

Maria Sabina, right, the Mexican curandera who revealed the experience of teonanacatl to R. Gordon Wasson. With her is her daughter, another curandera, who was present on that occasion. 

Shortly after Maria Sabina s 1955 velada, a botanist informant for the CIA in Mexico City sent along a description of R. Gordon Wasson s discovery. The report was brief, mainly indicating that the banker had envisioned "a multitude of architectural forms after he had ingested the mushrooms. That was enough for the CIA to be interested in the Wassons. 

On the 1962 expedition organized by R. Gordon Wasson to see Maria Sabina, Hofmann came along and brought a bottle of psilocybin pills. Sandoz was marketing them under the brand name Indocybin —"indo for both... 

In order to settle her doubts about the pills, more were distributed, bringing the total for Maria Sabina, her daughter, and the shaman Don Aurelio up to 30 mg., a moderately high dose by current standards but not perhaps by the Indians . At dawn, their Mazatec interpreter reported that Maria Sabina felt there was little difference between the pills and the mushrooms. She thanked Hofmann for the bottle of pills, "saying that she would now be able to serve people even when no mushrooms were available. ... 

The ceremony consisted of chanting that continued all night long, except for brief intermissions every forty minutes or so. The sabia Maria Sabina danced for two hours in the dark. The ritual aspect, in the context of feeling both adventurous and safe, seems to have influenced the quality (or tone) of Wasson s experience. 

Diethylamid) in the Mexican morning glory species or the Aztec ololouqui, and psilocin (Fig. 12.1) in the sacred but hallucinogenic mushroom teonanacatl (Psilocybe aztecorum) used by Maria Sabina, the famous Mexican chaman, are now exploited in recreational use. Other examples of recreational drugs are also documented.90 92... 

MARIA SABINA, R. GORDON WASSON, AND ALBERT HOFMANN... 

The encounter in 1956 between R. Gordon Wasson and Maria Sabina created an amazing bridge across times and cultures. Wasson participated in one of her all night mushroom veladas (vigils) and then pub-... 

Maria Sabina, mushroom curandera, in 1981, in Huatla. (Photo by Bonnie Colodzin courtesy of Richard Yensen)... 

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