Incunabula
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Dec 10, 2010
- Messages
- 1,862
Absolutely!True - mushrooms may have played a bigger part in the past but I was really struck when I read a book about Maria Sabina - she was literally the only person in the entire village who ever took mushrooms. And she only took them to diagnose illness like some kind of witchdoctor. So whatever tradition there was had died out by the time Wasson got there.
It didn't just "die out", aztec use of entheogens was totally forbidden by the conquistadors because it was thought to be a devilish unchristian practice. And by the time Wasson and Hoffman made their expedition to Mexico, mushroom use was almost forgotten.
from http://www.erowid.org/plants/mushrooms/mushrooms_historyWith Cortez's defeat of the Aztecs in 1521, the Europeans began to forbid the use of non-alcohol intoxicants, including sacred mushrooms, and the use of teonanácatl ('wondrous mushroom', or 'flesh of the gods') was driven underground.