MUSHROOMS of many species were used as hallucinogens by the Aztec Indians, who colled them teonanacotl, meaning "flesh of the gods" in the Nahuatl Indian language. These mushrooms, all of the family Agaricaceae, are still valued in Mexican magic or eligious rites. They belong to four genera: Conocybe and Panaeolus, almost cosmopolitan in their range; Psilocybe, found in North and South America, Europe, and Asia; and Stropharia, known in North America, the West Indies, and Europe.
MUSHROOM WORSHIP seems to have roots in centuries of native tradition. Mexican frescoes, going back to A.D. 300, have designs suggestive of mushrooms. Even more remarkable are the artifacts called mushroom stones (p. 60), excavated in large numbers from highland Maya sites in Guatemala and dating buck to 1000 B.C. Consisting of a stem with a human or animal foce and surmounted by an umbrella-shaped top, they long puzzled archaeologists. Now interpreted as a kind of icon connected with religious rituals, they indicate that 3,000 years ago, a sophisticated religion surrounded the sacramental use of these fungi.
It has been suggested that perhaps mushrooms were the earliest hallucinogenic plants to be discovered. The other- worldly experience induced by these mysterious forms of plant life could easily have suggested a spiritual plane of existence.
Detail from a fresco at a Tepantitla (Teotihuacán Mexico) representing Tloloc, the god of clouds, rain, and waters. Note the pale blue mushrooms with orange stems and also the "colorines' - the darker blue, bean-shaped forms with red spots. See pages 90 and 97 for discussion of colorines and piule. (After Heim and Wasson.) Typical icons associated with mushroom cults dating back 3,000 years in Guatemala.
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