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"Seeking the Magic Mushroom" is a 1957 photo essay by amateur mycologist Robert Gordon Wasson describing his experience taking psilocybin mushrooms in 1955 during a Mazatec ritual in Oaxaca, Mexico. Wasson was one of the first Westerners to participate in a Mazatec ceremony and to describe the psychoactive effects of the Psilocybe species. The essay contains photographs by Allan Richardson and illustrations of several mushroom species of Psilocybe collected and identified by French botanist Roger Heim, then director of the French National Museum of Natural History. Wasson's essay, written in a first person narrative, appeared in the May 13 issue of Life magazine as part three of the "Great Adventures" series.

The essay was part of three related works about mushrooms released around the same time period. It was preceded by the limited release of Mushrooms, Russia and History, a two-volume book by Wasson and his wife, Valentina Pavlovna Wasson. The Life magazine essay was followed six days later by "I Ate the Sacred Mushroom", an interview with Valentina in This Week magazine. Against Wasson's wishes, a Life magazine editor added the term "Magic Mushroom" to the title and brought its use into popular culture. The essay influenced the nascent counterculture in the United States and led many hippies to travel to Mexico in the 1960s in search of the mushroom, including Timothy Leary. In the 1970s, Wasson expressed misgivings about the wide publicity the essay brought to the Mazatec culture and the defilement of the mushroom ritual.


(https://en.wikipedia.org)




Wasson's studies in ethnomycology began during his 1927 honeymoon trip to the Catskill Mountains when his wife, Valentina Pavlovna Guercken, a pediatrician, chanced upon some edible wild mushrooms. Fascinated by the marked difference in cultural attitudes towards fungi in Russia compared to the United States, the couple began field research that led to the publication of Mushrooms, Russia and History in 1957.

In the course of their investigations they mounted expeditions to Mexico to study the religious use of mushrooms by the native population, and claimed to have been the first Westerners to participate in a Mazatec mushroom ritual.

It was the curandera María Sabina who both allowed the Wassons to participate in the ritual and who taught them about the uses and effects of the mushroom. Sabina let him take her picture on the condition that he keep it private, but Wasson nonetheless published the photo along with Sabina's name and the name of the community where she lived.


(https://en.wikipedia.org)




  Click here to see and read the entire article online. 

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The Wassons are the authors of "Mushrooms, Russia & . History," published May 13 by Pantheon Books. This contains an account of a long-forgotten long-forgotten long-forgotten Mexican Indian rite based on mushroom worship and the strange properties properties of the "sacred" mushroom. The Wassons" work appears in a two-volume two-volume two-volume edition limited to 510 copies at $125 each.


(This Week Magazine via The Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, California), 19 May 1957, Sun, Page 444)

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(http://books.google.com/)

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Berkeley LSD 'Lab' Raided

Police federal agents arrest two Spruce Street residents

  A laboratory believed be police and federal agents to have been used in manufacturing LSD was discovered in a home at 515 Spruce St and two Berkeley men are in federal custody as a result.
  Arrested around 7 am yesterday [May 13, 1976] were Dennis B Federico 26 who police said will soon receive a doctors degree in genetics from UC-Berkeley and Eric Rappaport 28 holder of a bachelors degree in science from the University of Pennsylvania.
  Both residents of the Spruce Street address the men were booked into federal court on charges of possessing controlled substances with intent to sell and were being held for further investigation which could lead to additional charges of manufacturing LSD according to a Drug Enforcement Administration source.
  Al Bierce of the Berkeley Police Departments special investigations bureau said the arrests followed a one-week investigation based on information contained in a letter received by police from an unidentified source.
  After surveillance and observation had confirmed the information included in the letter police and drug enforcement officers obtained a warrant from a US magistrate for a search of the house.
  Evidence uncovered yesterday according to Bierce included a culture mold used in a biological process of making LSD developed in 1963 14 test tubes containing the drug in various stages of an incubation process additional LSD substance found in a refrigerator plus quantities of cocaine marijuana and LSD (in tablet form).
  Bierce said the LSD tablets apparently were received from an outside source since no tabbing machinery was found in the search of the home.
  Drug Enforcement Administration officer Ken Kruskow said it was "extremely rare to discover an LSD laboratory and even more unusual to find a biological process being employed in the manufacture of the drug.
  Bierce who headed the local investigation of the case said the suspects apparently obtained the mold and other items necessary for producing the drug sometime in February and may not have had time to complete the manufacturing process.
  Kruskow said the material confiscated yesterday is being analyzed to determine its exact nature.


(The Berkeley Gazette (Berkeley, California) 14 May 1976, Fri Page 1)




Authorities said they are uncertain how long Federico has been involved with drugs, but noted he had a newspaper clipping from 1976 detailing his arrest for manufacturing LSD while he was a graduate student at UC Berkeley. Federico reportedly told the arresting officers the offense was reduced to a misdemeanor, but that it was sufficient to get him "bounced out of school."


(The Press Democrat (Santa Rosa, California) 19 Jan 1988, Tue Page 2)

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OneMoreRobot3021 said:

A really awesome Shroomerite gave me an actual copy of this issue of Life magazine as a gift, I am getting it framed. Here it is sitting on my coffee table:

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I got one through a trade in the Marketplace - historical psychedelia is Super Cool

Love the Shroomery

Thanks Learyfan - another informative post

Light and Love,
DW

Learyfan said:

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Learyfan said:

You're absolutely right.  Maria Sabina was passing that torch on right there.  Although, later in life, she regretted doing so because we didn't treat it with respect.  We completely ruined it for her and she was pissed about it.

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Learyfan said:

You're absolutely right.  Maria Sabina was passing that torch on right there.  Although, later in life, she regretted doing so because we didn't treat it with respect.  We completely ruined it for her and she was pissed about it.

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OneMoreRobot3021 said:

For those who haven't read it, Andy Letcher's "Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom" is a very, very good book that may make some of us very uncomfortable.

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Learyfan said:

...but it was important for everyone to have access to psilocybin mushrooms, so I'm glad Wasson took that trip. 

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Yes that picture really captures an amazingly transcendent moment in the history of humanity.

I mean we're all at a place called the Shroomery for goodness sakes

When I see that picture it just conjures up a freight train of thoughts!

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dwpineal said: I think we are still a long ways from learning how to integrate our culture and society into the ever-blooming shamanic-entheogenic-nature-conscious technological force - but when we develop frameworks for responsible entheogenic exploration and have a matured infrastructure for dissemination of the substances and re-integration with society to create a better life for the individual and world for all species, then she will be smiling down.


And I see this all as a possibility - the work has already begun.

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Wow, well said.  But hey, what do you mean the community turned on her for a gift?  I hadn't heard that.  What was the gift and who gave it?

dwpineal said:

I think we are still a long ways from learning how to integrate our culture and society into the ever-blooming shamanic-entheogenic-nature-conscious technological force - but when we develop frameworks for responsible entheogenic exploration and have a matured infrastructure for dissemination of the substances and re-integration with society to create a better life for the individual and world for all species, then she will be smiling down.


And I see this all as a possibility - the work has already begun.

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I dig your rap, dw.