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some conjecture among the observations, otherwise quite informative
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The Wonderous Mushroom: Sacred Mushrooms in Mexico and Mesoamerica
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"From now on any comprehensive study of Ancient Mexican civilization must start from (and with) your discoveries."-Octavio Paz Gordon Wasson's May 1957 LIFE article describing his encounter with a Mexican shaman woman triggered the psychedelic revolution. In celebration of its fiftieth anniversary, we present Wasson's groundbreaking classic, The Wondrous Mushroom, an illustrated, in-depth exploration of the history and cultural meanings of the shamanic use of psychedelic mushrooms in contemporary and ancient Mesoamerican culture. R. Gordon Wasson (18981986), former vice president of JP Morgan Trust, authored groundbreaking books and articles on sacred mushroom use, culture, and history.
304 pages, Paperback
First published January 1,1980
This edition
- Format
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304 pages, Paperback
- Published
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May 1, 2007 by City Lights Publishers
- ISBN
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9780872864849
- ASIN
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0872864847
- Language
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English
About the author
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Robert Gordon Wasson was an American author, ethnomycologist, and a Vice President for Public Relations at J.P. Morgan & Co.
Wasson spent most of his career is banking in his position at J.P. Morgan. Later in his life, despite having little formal training in the field, he turned his interests to the study of hallucinogenic mushrooms, religion, and ethnomycology, publishing papers that received attention and acclaim. In the course of work funded by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Wasson made contributions to the fields of ethnobotany, botany, and anthropology. He is perhaps most famous for the problem of the botanical identity of soma–haoma in the ancient Aryan religion. Wasson suggested that "soma" described in the Rigveda was the fly agaric mushroom, and "haoma" in the Avesta was a hallucinogen.
Wasson spent most of his career is banking in his position at J.P. Morgan. Later in his life, despite having little formal training in the field, he turned his interests to the study of hallucinogenic mushrooms, religion, and ethnomycology, publishing papers that received attention and acclaim. In the course of work funded by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Wasson made contributions to the fields of ethnobotany, botany, and anthropology. He is perhaps most famous for the problem of the botanical identity of soma–haoma in the ancient Aryan religion. Wasson suggested that "soma" described in the Rigveda was the fly agaric mushroom, and "haoma" in the Avesta was a hallucinogen.
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Wonderful, underrated, comprehensive, convincing. I never realized how serious of an anthropologist Wasson was — after reading his research on the mushrooms and ethnographies, it’s hard to fault him for the sometimes unfortunate but certainly unforeseeable consequences of his ‘bringing the mushrooms’ to America. If his ‘followers’, or those who sought out the mushrooms in Mexico and Oaxaca after he published his discovery of Maria Sabina in Life, had half the care and respect he had for the drugs and their attendant religion, perhaps our own culture of psychedelics would be in a different, more accepted, and more responsible place…
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Informative and groundbreaking at the time (late 1950's), The Sacred Mushroom deals mostly with anthropological observations made upon the Mayatecan and Aztecan culture of religious mushroom use throughout the ages and the complete suppression of it by the Church, post-Conquest. This is a good book with lots of citations and cross referencing to solidify the posits put forth, but unfortunately written by an author who holds his own judgments and who lacks the ability to color his prose. The book trudges along at ~220 pages, and after awhile, you feel like you're reading the same facts and arguments restated over and over. If you're looking for a more imaginatively authored work, and one that also cites Wasson (the author) from time to time, look to Terrence Mckenna's 'Food of the Gods'.
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