Not only do reports condemn Teonanacatl, but actual illustrations denounce it. In 1656, a guide for missionaries argued against Indian idolatries, including mushroom ingestion, and recommended their extirpation. "They possessed another method of intoxication, which sharpened their cruelty for if they used certain small toadstools.they would see a thousand visions and especially snakes.They called these mushrooms in their language teunamacatlth, which means 'God's flesh,' or of the Devil whom they worshipped, and in this wise with that bitter victual by their cruel God were they houseled." The mushrooms were especially offensive to the European ecclesiastical authorities, and they set out to eradicate their use in religious practices. When the Spaniards conquered Mexico, they were aghast to find the natives worshipping their deities with the help of inebriating plants: Peyotl, Ololiuqui, Teonanacatl. Even though, as fungi, mushrooms do not blossom, the Aztecs referred to them as "flowers," and the Indians who still use them in religious rituals have endearing terms for them, such as "little flowers." So hallowed were these fungi that the Aztecs called them Teonanacatl ("divine flesh") and used them only in the most holy of their ceremonies. Thus does the famous Mazatec shaman, Maria Sabina, reverently describe the god given powers of the intoxicating mushrooms that she uses in her ceremony which has come from from ages past.įew plants of the gods have ever been held in greater reverence than the sacred mushrooms of Mexico.
When I return from the trip that I have taken with them, I tell what they have told me and what they have shown me." It is they, the sacred mushrooms, that speak in a way I can understand.
The sacred mushroom takes me by the hand and brings me to the world where everything is known. And there is where God lives, where the dead live, the spirits and the saints, a world where everything has already happened and everything is known. "There is a world beyond ours, a world that is far away, nearby, and invisible. This document in other languages: French, Hungarian
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