Upon his arrival in America in 1529, the missionary Fray Bernardino de Sahagún was surprised by the “black mushrooms” that the Aztecs consumed in their ceremonies. “They intoxicate and give visions and even provoke lust,” he wrote. “When they began to get used to them, they began to dance and some sang and others cried, because they were already drunk on mushrooms.”
The testimony, collected in one of the volumes of General History of Things in New Spain (written between 1540 and 1565) also describes mood transitions after eating mushrooms. “Some who would not sing sat in their rooms and were there as if they were pensive and some saw in vision that they were dying and wept,” he wrote. “When the intoxication of the mushrooms had passed, they talked to each other about the visions they had seen.”
The anecdote is repeated in some texts that the missionaries wrote upon their arrival in America and constitutes irrefutable proof that humanity has been consuming psychedelic substances for centuries. However, the antecedents could go much further and some would place it in the Stone Age (a period that extended from 3 million years ago to 40,000 years ago).
The book by author Naief Yehya The Mushroom Planet (Anagrama) elaborates an anthropological and cultural journey of all the societies that consumed (or suppose they took) hallucinogenic mushrooms or other entheogenic substances. The path extends from prehistory to the present day, where the substance has undergone a cultural renaissance and has been adopted even by employees of Silicon Valley technology companies.
“It is impossible to know when our ancestors tried psychoactive mushroom species and when they found ritual use for them,” the author writes. “There is evidence in petroglyphs, wall paintings, and carved stones of prehistoric mycolatry that has survived and spread to influence modern religions by inducing mystical experiences.”
Evidence of the use of hallucinogenic mushrooms in antiquity also takes the author to Siberia, where Paleolithic petroglyphs have been discovered showing human-like depictions with mushrooms on their heads that are believed to have been fly agaric, one of the most powerful varieties.
In the caves of the Sahara, in Tassili, in southern Algeria, paintings of men running with mushrooms in their hands and their bodies covered in mushrooms have also been found, made between 9,000 and 6,000 BC. In the cave paintings of Gwion Gwion, in northern Australia, dating back 12,000 years, there are also images that resemble shamanic ceremonies in which mushrooms containing psilocybin, one of its psychedelic components, may have been used.
Although this evidence is not as compelling as the missionary texts, many experts consider them to be evidence of lost rites that used mushrooms to contact the divine. Similar references have also been found in Sumatra, the Philippines, Scandinavia, and virtually everywhere else in the world, in what is believed to have been widespread use throughout humanity in different human groups that were not related to each other.
The book, loaded with bibliographical references, also explains the decline of psychedelic mushrooms in America after the arrival of the colonizers, who banned their use when they understood that they allowed the indigenous peoples to establish a kind of communion with their gods. From 1620, their ingestion was considered a heresy and the shamans as well as all their consumers were persecuted.
Far from disappearing, the legacy of mushrooms remained hidden in these societies and the rituals related to them continued to be practiced secretly and have survived to the present day. In parallel, explorers from the mid-17th century also documented the use of psychedelic mushrooms in rituals from Siberia to the Baltic Sea. These ceremonies remained in force among the Lapps or the Saami until the 20th century.
The place where we find the least information about the use of these mushrooms in antiquity is precisely in Western Europe. “The idea was consolidated that with the arrival of Christianity, psychedelic knowledge was disappearing in Europe, to which was then added the persecution of any type of entheogenic substance in the colonies,” the author believes.
The psychedelic renaissance
The text also covers the foundations of the so-called “psychedelic renaissance” in the mid-20th century, when Albert Hoffman successfully isolated LSD, the first manufactured compound capable of producing very intense effects in small doses. They dubbed it “the new pharmaceutical marvel.”
It describes how, during the 1950s, thousands of patients were treated with psychoactive drugs to combat addictions and mental disorders. International meetings of professionals and academics were held and up to a thousand scientific publications were produced on its use (some of dubious rigor). Even the CIA was interested in the properties of this substance and experimented with it for years.
In the early 1960s, with the onset of the so-called “War on Drugs,” psychedelics were once again ostracized, research into their uses was hampered, and they became a polarizing force: hippies They saw it as a countercultural and recreational substance. On the other hand, the most reactionary part of society and some media triggered a moral panic in the face of its harmful effects.
Yet another renaissance of this substance was expected, which would be adopted by employees of Silicon Valley technology companies from the mid-1970s and, later, by beliefs. new age and the shamanic charlatans who have multiplied in recent decades.
“Many engineers and programmers who worked at Stanford and MIT developing e-mail systems and other digital communication resources took LSD to stimulate and accelerate creativity,” Yehya writes. “Probably no industry, not even music or the arts, has embraced the use of hallucinogens with the same fervor as Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, programmers, designers, and engineers.”
The author also profiles the “microdosing culture” that prevails in the technology sector today. He argues that among some of these employees, there is a “dogma” that creativity is enhanced and developed by using small doses of LSD or psilocybin, to the point that some companies have established the Microdosing Friday (microdose Fridays) among their employees.
The last psychedelic renaissance has also been scientific, and currently several psychiatrists and companies are researching and experimenting with the possible properties of different psychedelics to treat mental illnesses, which represents the umpteenth renaissance of a product that has accompanied us throughout our lives. humanity and will surely never abandon us.
“After decades of prohibition and paranoia, during which psychotropics and hallucinogens were classified as the most powerful and destructive drugs, the cultural current is changing,” the author concludes. “Psychedelic substances are slowly beginning to be legalized.”
