The High Priestess of Mushrooms
Once upon a time, long before psychedelics and microdosing became fashionable, a Mazatec shaman called Maria Sabina was working with psilocybin mushrooms in the remote Mexican village of Huautla de Jiménez. Located in the southern Oaxaca mountains, Sabina, born in 1894, was known to have come from a long lineage of curanderos (healers). When she was eight years old, Sabina tried sacred mushrooms for the first time – and was said to have developed the plant’s healing powers.
In the early 1950s, Sabina’s psychedelic healing ceremonies grew popular with nearby villagers. She was also said to have cured her sister’s physical ailments. Sabina’s evening sessions, called veladas, often included a mix of fungi, chanting, mezcal consumption, tobacco smoke and plant-based ointments. Like most legends, the local mystery of Sabina seeped out of the jungle and over to America where a New York City banker (and amateur mycologist) named Robert Gordon Wasson became intrigued. In 1955, Wasson, along with a photographer and his wife, Valentina, showed up at Sabina’s modest mud hut. Here, the trio conducted night vigils on mushrooms and documented their experiences (this would continue for several trips). They also learned the way of an indigenous culture.
Under Sabina’s guidance, Wasson noted that they were “the first white men in recorded history to eat the divine mushrooms.” He also touted the plant’s hallucinogenic history and healing powers. Almost a decade later, Wasson published yet another book (called The Wondrous Mushroom), which also featured Sabina. The secret was no longer a secret. Of course, this opened the floodgates to the curandera, and Oaxaca quickly grew into a destination for Western spiritual-seekers and mystics.
Meanwhile, back in America, psychedelic counterculture was exploding. Thanks to Wasson’s reporting, leading psychonauts that went to see Sabina included Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary, Carlos Castenda, John Lennon and the founder of LSD, Albert Hofman (and although there is no official record – it was even said that Walt Disney visited Sabina).
While Mexican poet Homero Arijdis called Sabina, “the greatest visionary poet in twentieth-century Latin America,” not everyone on Sabina’s homefront echoed the same sentiment. Some villagers argued Sabina was profiting from exploiting the land’s native plants, culture and way of life. Even Wasson grew distraught: “I have unleashed on lovely Huautla a torrent of commercial exploitation of the vilest kind. Now the mushrooms are exposed for sale everywhere—in every marketplace, in every village doorway,” he said. In 1985, Sabina died at the age of 97. Still, despite the controversy surrounding her work, Sabina’s simple chants, documented by writer Alvaro Estrada, live on:
Get strong with bare feet on the ground and with everything that is born from it
Get smarter every day by listening to your intuition, looking at the world with the eye of your forehead.
Jump, dance, sing, so that you live happier
Heal yourself, with beautiful love, and always remember: you are the medicine.