History and Culture of Psilocybin Mushrooms
Neurotropic fungi have been used by cultures since before recorded history.[60] Psilocybin mushrooms specifically have played an important part in many cultures, often being incorporated into folklore and religion. This can be partially explained by the prevalence of different psilocybin containing mushroom species across the globe along with the powerful mystical effects they produce. The sacramental use of mushrooms goes back at least 7000 years, but is most likely even older.[6][51][64] Some even theorize the use of these mushrooms goes back before Homo sapiens. Our understanding of the historical use of psilocybin mushrooms is limited, although the works of Blasious P. Reko, Richard E. Shultes, Roger Heim, and R. Gordon Wasson provide invaluable insight.[51] These original ethnomycologists were the first to re-discover and document the use of psilocybin mushrooms in shamanic rituals by indigenous Mesoamerican peoples and other cultures.[51] Their research suggests that the modern-day American mushroom cults are remnants of ancient psilocybin use by the Aztec and Mayan cultures.[51]
Gastón Guzmán, a leading mycologist on the genus psilocybe, split the history of neurotropic fungi into 4 general historical periods, with present day being the 5th period involving a recapitulation in the study of new species and chemical analysis.[20] These five periods are: 1) the use of neurotropic fungi by ancient peoples in several parts of the world (North America, Mesoamerica, Siberia, and New Guinea); 2) uncertain or erroneous studies about the identification of such fungi in the beginning of the 20th century; 3) scientific investigations (Starting with Wasson’s studies in the 1950’s); 4) utilization of fungi as a recreational drug and a degeneration of the traditional use of these fungi (in the 1960’s); 5) recapitulation of the knowledge, description of new species and chemical analysis.[20] There were many ancient cultures that had a relationship with psilocybin containing mushrooms. Some of the oldest being in Northern Africa, Europe, and Mesoamerica. For the Paleolithic human, the effects from consuming psilocybin mushrooms would elicit nothing less than one of the most phenomenal events ever experienced: “a virtual cascade of of consciousness, such as the awakening of the spiritual and intellectual self, the introduction to complex fractals, and the introduction to other dimensions.[51] The specific species they might have consumed may have been P. mairei, which thrive in riparian habitats (open areas with sandy soils seasonally littered with wood debris).[51] Terrence Mckenna went as far as to say that this experience for ancient humans may have even influenced the evolution of the brain.
The best piece of evidence that supports the idea that the relationship between Man and hallucinogenic mushrooms is indeed an ancient one comes from the ancient populations of the Sahara desert.[6] Today, southeastern Algeria is in stark contrast to its water-rich past.[51] Once filled with rivers and riparian woodlands the Tassili plateau is now part of the Sahara desert.[51] In the 1930s and 1940s murals dated 9000 to 7000 B.C. were found depicting horned beings dressed as dancers holding mushroom-like objects.[5][6][51] Also found in the Tassili region of Algeria is one of the most important scenes, in which there is a “series of masked figures in line and hieratically dressed or dressed as dancers surrounded by long and lively festoons of geometrical designs of different kinds”.[5] Each dancer holds a mushroom-like object in the right hand and, even more surprising, two parallel lines come out of this object to reach the central part of the head of the dancer, the area of the roots of the two horns”.[5] The original artist lived at a time where glaciers were rapidly receding.[51] As these glaciers melted, estuaries were etched through the floodplains fueling the life cycles of many mushroom species, including psilocybin containing species.[51] The artist's intention in this piece is unambiguous; mushrooms were a powerful influence on their vision of the world.[51] The double line is thought to signify an indirect association of the object to the mind.[5] This interpretation supports the theory that the objects are hallucinogenic mushrooms due to the lines representing the effect that the mushroom has on the human mind. In a separate site in the same region a common feature is the presence of mushroom symbols starting from the fore-arms and thighs; others are hand held. In the case of the Matalem-Amazar figure, these objects are scattered over the entire area surrounding the body.[5]
The use of psychoactive mushrooms was also present in European culture.[51] One such culture were the ancient greeks where there were religious ceremonies honoring Demeter, the goddess of agriculture.[51] Thousands of pilgrims would travel for the privilege of attending this ceremony.[51] At the ceremony pilgrims sat in rows on steps that descended to a central chamber where the fungal concoction was served.[51] The people that partook were reportedly changed forever and could not discuss the ceremony for fear of death.[51] These ceremonies carried on for centuries until they were repressed during the Christian era.[51] In Greek culture there was also…?? The Greeks were not the only European culture to partake in the consumption of psilocybin mushrooms. 6,000-year-old pictographs have been found near the Spanish town of Villar del Humo which depict several hallucinogenic mushrooms (possibly identified as Psilocybe hispanica).[6][23] In 1799 a British family prepared a meal with liberty caps (Psilocybe semilanceata).[6] This being the first reliable documentation of intoxication from liberty caps, being Europe's most common psychedelic mushroom.[6]
In Mesoamerica, psychedelic mushrooms have been consumed in ritual ceremonies for 3000 years.[3][6][76] The majority of the knowledge we have about the ancient and rich cultural heritage of Psilocybe use in Mesoamerica was because a 16th century Franciscan friar named Bernadino de Sahagún spent fifty years studying the native cultures along with other missionaries.[6][51] He learned the Aztec language and repeatedly refers to teonanácatl, the sacred mushroom of Mesoamerica.[6][51] This was all in spite of misguided Catholic missionaries systematically destroying mushroom motifs in their campaign against “mushroom idolatry”.[51][52][60] One type of motif that still survived are “mushroom stones that are thought to be evidence for the ritual use of Psilocybe.[6][51] The Mixtec culture of Central America worshiped a god known as Pilzintecuhtli who was the god for hallucinatory plants, especially the divine mushrooms.[51][52][60] The Psilocybe mushrooms (P. mexicana) were so esteemed as a sacrament that it was called teonanacatl meaning God’s Flesh. They were even so important that Guzmán (1997) reported more than two hundred common names of them, many in Indian languages, as apipiltzin, atkad, di nizé taaya, shi thó, and teotlaquilnanácatl (which translate to: kid or little boy, mayor or leader, fungus of the genius, that eruptions thing, and divine fungus, respectively).[20][52] Despite the persecution by Spanish Catholic missionaries, ancient ceremonies, such as “the feast of the revelations, persisted in secret for the next four centuries.[6][51] However, the existence of these mushrooms was very controversial, and some even doubted their existence, until Roberto Weitlaner was able to obtain a specimen in 1936.[52] Similar specimens collected by a separate botanist, Richard Evans, were identified to be: Psilocybe caerulescens, Panaeolus campanulatus, and Psilocybe cubensis.[52]
The story of how these mushrooms were rediscovered starts in 1927.[89] Robert Gordon Wasson, an American journalist and banker, had recently married Valentina Pavlovna, a Muscovite Russian.[89] The couple were walking in the Catskill Mountains one day, when Valentina ran off the path to gather wild mushrooms.[89] Gordon’s initial reaction was one of horror and disgust, fearing that she might poison herself.[89] This incident triggered what could be considered an obsession in the two to find out why different cultures distinctly manifest either a great fear of mushrooms (“mycophobes”) or love (“mycophiles”).[89] Their obsession with this cultural rift, led them to look everywhere for references to mushrooms.[89] Separately, in 1928 Heinrich Klüver (a German psychologist and philosopher known for his work with mescaline) wrote a little monograph on the nature of the “mescal vision”, issued by the University of Chicago Press.[89] A few years later a young Richard Evans Shultes, studying medicine at Harvard, happens upon this volume in connection with a botany class.[89] This event, as he would later write, was to alter his life’s course and open up a lifelong interest in mind changing drugs.[89] Going back in time, Dr. Blas Pablo Reko, who in 1919 published a book titled El Mexico Antiguo (The Old Mexico) expresses his belief that there are people in Mexico using mushrooms for the production of “visionary experiences”.[89] In 1936 he was to see his faith confirmed when an Austrian-born anthropologist, Roberto Weitlaner, found sacred mushrooms in use in the town of Huautla de Jiménez in the state of Oaxaca and gave him some.[89] Reko, in turn, forwarded them to Harvard where Schultes was studying.[89] What was received was in such deteriorated condition that the only their identification was possible.[89] Schultes decided to advance the idea that these may have been the mushroom referred to in a few spanish records as having been worshipped as teonanacatl.[89] This thesis was in direct contrast to William Safford’s (a botanist for The U.S. department of agriculture) declaration that the Spanish writers had mistaken it for peyote.[89] In Harvard Botanical Museum Leaflets, Schultes disputed this declaration and urged that attention be brought back to the mushrooms.[89]
The Wassons continued spending much of their leisure time pursuing the story of mushrooms, however the story pauses during WW1 until 1952.[89] Two scholars, Robert Graves from Majorca and Hans Mardersteig of Verona, both wrote to the Wassons calling attention to the early Spanish writers who had made reference to an increasing number of “mushroom stones” being discovered in the Guatemalan highlands, El Salvador and southeastern Mexico.[89] This led the Wassons to the leaflets of Schultes, written some 15 years earlier.[89] The Wassons took these “mushroom stones” as evidence that ancestors, perhaps as far back as 6000 years ago, had worshipped a mushroom.[89] Although anthropologists and other experts throughout the early twentieth century referred to these artifacts as “mushroom stones”, this was more thought of as a convenient label, and regarded the stones as more phallic.[89]
Even more important to the Wassons than these stones were the pamphlets by Schultes.[89] These gave them an idea of where to look if any ‘mushroom cults’ remained.[89] The Wassons contacted Schultes where he filled them in on the theories held by Dr. Reko, the 1936 discoveries of Roberto Weitlaner, and later of his daughter (who in 1938 had actually seen a mushroom ceremony).[89] Schultes even went as far as to arrange a guide for them who had lived in Oaxaca.[89] Thus began what would eventually become 8 expeditions by the Wassons into southeastern Mexico.[89]
Being in their fifties they undertook the trips in spirit of a pilgrimage.[89] For three summer trips they searched the Oaxacan highlands for mushrooms; Speaking to all the curanderos the could find, hoping that someone could identify the “sacred mushroom”.[89] Finally, The Wassons traveled to the town of Huautla de Jiménez in Oaxaca, Mexico, in June and July 1955 with photographer Allan Richardson.[6][52] This is the same village where the mushrooms given to Dr. Reko had originated back in 1936.[89] Here, on the 29th of June 1955, they found occasion to speak briefly to the 35-year-old official presiding at the town hall.[89] Under the impression they would not have a chance to talk very long Gordon Wasson asked rather quickly: “Will you help me learn the secrets of the divine mushroom?”.[89] Wasson used the term `nti si tho for the object of his search.[89] The first syllable shows reverence and endearment, the second expresses “that which springs forth.”[89] To his surprise after all the false leads pursued over the previous three years, the answer to the question was: “Nothing could be easier”.[89]
The official was good on his word. Later that afternoon he took Gordon to his house where they gathered some of the mushrooms growing just outside.[89] By evening theft met with the Oaxacan shaman Maria Sabina to participate in a mushroom ritual.[51][52] This ritual consisted of a strange fusion of Christianity and mushroom rituals.[51] Her mushroom ritual was permeated with Catholic practices such as an altar to Christ, portraits of the Virgin Mary and etc.[51] Richardson had promised his wife that if such an eventuality arose, he wouldn’t try any mushrooms, but at around 10:30 that evening Maria offered them about thirteen pairs of fresh Psilocybe caerulescens to ingest.[51][89] “Allan and I were determined to resist any effects they might have,” Gordon wrote later, “to observe better the events of the night”.[89] However, he soon began to notice some unusually harmonious colors and then some geometric patterns he could make out in the dark, then a lot of “visions” of palaces and gardens.[89] Gordon later described his experience as what the Greeks must have meant when they created the word “ecstasy” - meaning flight of the soul from the body.[89] Their experience continued until 4:00am the next morning, thus making Wasson and Richardson “the first recorded whites to be ‘bemushroomed’”.[89] The Wassons were left with no doubt that they had uncovered the secrets of the mushroom.[89]
This trip was chronicled in a May 13, 1957 photo-essay in Life Magazine. “Seeking the Magic Mushroom”.[51][52] This article introduced psychedelic mushrooms to an entire generation of Americans in the pre-sixties social period.[51] Gordon described colorful, and complex vivid visual hallucinations:[76]
This took place during the Wassons third trip to Oaxaca. Three days after he first ingested the “sacred mushrooms” Gordon tried the experience a second time.[89] A few days later Valentina and their daughter tried it. Six months later, back in New York, Gordon tried some dried specimens and found them to be “even more fantastic”.[89]
Others had earlier described and even identified specific mushrooms with the “teonanacatl” noted by the Spanish.[89] However, the Spanish were mycophobes; not one of them leaving records had tried them or even offered a botanical description.[89] As for the group in 1938 who had actually observed a mushroom ceremony, it had been quickly forgotten after an appearance in Swedish journal.[89] In 1938 Richard Schultes had also gone to Mexico where he met Dr. Reko.[89] Though he had identified the psychoactive mushroom “Stropharia cubensis” and two others, his investigations in this area had pretty much been aborted by the Second World War.[89]
The Wassons next expedition into Oaxaca was during the summer of 1956.[89] The Wassons had convinced Roger Heim, Director of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris and an acclaimed expert on mushrooms, to accompany them.[89] He was to supervise the collecting of specimens alongside a chemist from the University of Delaware and a botanist from the Sorbonne.[89] Roger Heim had brought back samples to France to be cultured.[89] He was able to identify and cultivate the mushrooms used in the ritual with Maria Sabina. While in France he heard from Albert Hofmann, the discoverer of LSD, after he had read the Life article.[89] He then sent 100g of dried Psilocybe mexicana to the renowned Swiss chemist in 1957.[2][6][52][57][76] Hofman ingested 2.4g of the dried mushroom to confirm that it was active and then used paper chromatography to separate the compounds present in the mushrooms.[6][52] He and his team identified the active component and named it psilocybin.[52][57] Hofmann's team went on to synthesize psilocybin for the first time in 1958.[2][6][76] On the expedition of the following year Hofmann was included.[89] He was able to give some of the synthetic psilocybin to Maria Sabina. As someone who had used mushrooms for some 35 years, she was doubtful at first.[89] But soon after trying she confirmed that the effects were identical.[89] The patents on psilocybin and psilocin, as a result of the work of Hofmann and others, belong to Sandoz Pharmaceuticals Their research also led to the development of ethocybin and CZ-74.[6] Quite rapidly the company realized that with these psilocybin – which prompts a shorter-lasting, more euphoric and less tiring experience than LSD – it might have something marketable.[89] After extensive tests in animals and humans, psilocybin was distributed worldwide under the name Indocybin® (Sandoz) as a short-acting and more compatible substance (than, for example, LSD) to support psychotherapeutic procedures.[2]This started in 1960 when Sandoz distributed tablets containing 2 mg of psilocybin advertising it as an useful drug adjuvant to psychotherapy.[52]
From 1960-1980 there were more than 100 published reports about psilocybin that included human use, analytical and biochemical studies.[52] These studies looked at psilocybin for conditions including alcoholism, addiction, depression, anxiety, and compulsive disorders.[76] Unfortunately many of the human studies did not have the same strict design and guideline protocols as we do today and neglected the importance of set and setting.[70] A significant portion of these studies took place at Harvard University through the efforts of Timothy Leary and his associates Ralph Metzner Ram Dass.[6] After the Wassons, Leary was the next most important investigator/publicist of “sacred mushrooms”.[89] He got started back in 1960, when he was offered a lectureship at Harvard.[89] That summer he went on vacation to the town of Cuernavaca (near Mexico City) where he met an anthropologist friend from the University of Mexico City.[89] He gave Leary seven small mushrooms bought from a medicine man in a nearby village.[89] It was a sunny day beside the pool of Leary’s rent villa, when he soon felt himself
- Timothy Leary: Psychedelic Encyclopedia
After this life changing psychedelic experience, Leary vowed “to dedicate the rest of my life as a psychologist to the systematic exploration of this new instrument.”[89] That fall he returned to Harvard where he became a drinking companion of Richard Alpert, a co-lecturer in a course on game theory.[89] Before long, Leary had organized a program of volunteers to experiment with psilocybin made available by Sadoz.[6][89] Alpert was asked by the chairman of the social relations department to keep an eye on Leary and this “mushroom project”; however, by early March 1961, Alpert had taken the drug himself.[89] Within just a few hours he had an experience that would turn his life around.[89] Here is a partial description of the event:
Aldous Huxley happened to be in the area of Harvard as a visiting lecturer and was soon brought in on the research project by Leary.[89] Soon there were actually three major studies undertaken with psilocybin.[89] Leary and Alpert’s speciality was the psychology of gameplaying.[89] The first experiment set up was with convicts.[89] They thought that perhaps psilocybin could help a prisoner “see through” their asocial activities and the self-defeating “cops and robbers” game and thereby become a less destructive citizen.[89] This study took place at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution, a maximal security prison for younger offenders, where 32 prisoners volunteered to go through two psilocybin experiences along with six weeks of bi-weekly meetings.[89] The study tentatively found that those who participated were able to “detach themselves from their everyday roles and recognize constructive alternatives to their formerly limited lives”.[89] The real test however was what would happen to these prisoners when they returned to society?[89] Would these experiences help them lead useful and rewarding lives? Or would they soon return to prison? Dr. Stanley Krippner sums up what happened:
This experiment, although it had many flaws such as not having a control group, offered sound basis for hope.[89] It should have led to another set of experiments along the same lines and at least one controlled study.[89] What happened instead was that when Leary returned to the prison to report on the findings the warden interrupted him and showed off new plans for a facility three times as large.[89] Leary realized that lowering the recidivism rate wasn’t a top priority for prison officials and before long the psilocybin studies were terminated.[89] In a second, controversial, series of experiments Leary and his associates in the Harvard Psilocybin Research Project gave the drug to a large number of graduate students, psychologists,religious figures, writers, artists, musicians, and other creative individuals to see what sorts of reactions they might have.[89] Aldous Huxley was given 10 mg. and was recorded as having “sat in contemplative calm throughout; occasionally produced relevant epigrams; reported the experience as an edifying philosophic experience.”[89] Although extensive recordings were made on all this, only a few accounts had been published as of 1976.[89] In the December 1963 issue of the Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, however, there is a summary of the findings in regard to the first 129 men and 48 women tested.[89] 70% considered the experience either pleasant or ecstatic. 88% felt they had learned something from it or had some important insights, 62% believed the experience to have changed their life for the better, and a full 90% expressed desire to try the drug again.[89]
The third area of experimentation had to do with the “resemblance of psilocybin-induced mystical experience to the naturally occurring phenomenon”.[89] This was the special thesis project of Walter Pahnke, then a graduate student at Harvard.[89] It was based on nine checkpoints listed by Dr. W.T. Stace, Professor at Princeton and a leading philosophical authority on mysticism, as fundamental characteristics of a mystical experience.[89] These characteristics are “universal and not restricted to any particular religion or culture”: unity, transcendence of time and space, deeply felt positive mood, sense of sacredness, “objectivity and reality”, paradoxicality, alleged ineffability, transiency, and persisting positive changes in attitude and/or behavior.[89] The experiment occurred in a private chapel on Good Friday in 1962.[89] 20 Christian theology students took part after having been tested and screened exhaustively.[89] Ten were given 30 mg. psilocybin and the others (as close to a duplicate/control group as possible) received 200 mg. of nicotinic acid, a vitamin that causes tingling of the skin and other physical sensations simulating certain psychedelic effects.[89] Neither the subjects nor their guides knew which drug had been given to whom.
It came to be known as “The Miracle of Marsh Chapel”.[89] Over the following six months, extensive data was collected. This included tape recordings, group discussion, follow-up interviews, and 147-item questionnaire used to quantify the characteristics of mystical phenomenon.[89] The reaction level in each of the nine categories was found to be significantly higher for the psilocybin group than for the controls.[89] Nine out of ten people who had the psilocybin experience reported having religious experiences they considered authentic, while only 1/10 from the control claimed to have had even “minimal spiritual cognition”.[89] The most important finding was that there was a lasting effect upon behavior and attitudes after the mystical experience.[89] Phanke summarized these results:
Timothy Leary went on to be terminated from Harvard and started advocating psychedelics.[6] Many historians today agree that Leary’s advocation of psychedelics and the increasing association with these drugs and the counterculture "further undermined an objective scientific approach to studying these compounds".[6] The association of psychedelics with the counterculture, increasing fear of the corruption of youth caused, negative press, and a general hardening stance against drugs led to a ban on the production, trade or ingestion of psychedelic compounds in 1966.[6] In the same year Sandoz stopped manufacturing psilocybin.[6] Things would be made worse when in 1970 Congress would go on to pass the Controlled Substances Act which made psychedelics illegal to use for any and all purpose, including scientific research.[6] Unfortunately the agenda against LSD swept psilocybin along into the Schedule 1 category of drugs.[6] These restrictions made human studies almost impossible to fun, globally, and scientists who tried to study psychedelics were looked down upon.[6]
Despite the laws and legal restrictions, the 1960-70s had psilocybin be the “entheogen of choice”.[6] This was largely due to the wide circulation on the topic of how to grow psilocybin mushrooms by authors such as Carlos Castenada and Terrence Mckenna.[6] In 1970 A key to North American Psilocybin Mushroom, in which Leonard Enos described 15 varieties that grow in the U.S. and offered the first widely-available instructions for cultivating psilocybin mycelium on agar.[89] One of the most popular growing guides was published in 1976 by the McKenna brothers entitled Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide.[6] The new techniques in this guide allowed for the cultivation of psilocybin mushrooms, specifically psilocybe cubensis, using just ordinary kitchen implements.[6][89] For the first time the average person could have a potent entheogen without access to sophisticated equipment or chemicals.[6]
Since 1980, however, there have been about 200 published reports. Since 1996 there have been an increasing number of reports studying the effects of psilocybin on human perception, emotion, and psychopharmacology.[52] Of these reports there are about 112 and counting reported studies conducting trials using psilocybin in response to depression, anxiety, and substance use disorders.[52]
Timeline
During the late 60s to early 70s the counterculture, specifically in the US and UK, took off.
An overview of the history of psilocybin from “Psilocybin Magic Mushroom Grower’s Guide” (Compiled by Irimias the Obscure) and Erowid:
- 1000-500 B.C. - Central American cultures build temples to mushroom gods and carve “mushroom stones” found in Mexico and Guatemala
- C. 290 C.E. - Chang Hua’s “Record of the investigation of Things” (Po-wu chih) describes what may be hallucinogenic mushrooms in Chin Dynasty China \
- 13th Century: In his treatise “De Vegetabilibus”, Albertus Magnus cautions against eating mushrooms that “stop up in the head the mental passages of the creatures [that eat them] and bring on insanity”
- Vienna Codex depicts the ritual ruse of mushrooms by the Mixtec gods, showing Piltzintecuhtii and 7 other gods holding mushrooms in their hands. These were most likely psilocybin-containing mushrooms. (The Wondrous Mushroom)