Ritual and Religious Uses of Psilocybe Mushrooms in Mesoamerica

Edited by Aaron Michael Ullrey.

The following Research Reflection is part of an ongoing series spotlighting CSWR scholars and their research.

Psilocybin and its counterpart, psilocin, have played a predominant role in the resurgence of research into psychedelics, often called the psychedelic renaissance. These chemical compounds are thought to have great potential for treating such conditions as depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and addiction, as well as helping with palliative care. Mental health treatments have displaced the War on Drugs with dizzying cultural transformations that include rapidly expanding scientific research and legislative challenges for using psilocybin and psilocin chemicals. While this all may seem novel, mushrooms of the genus Psilocybe naturally produce psilocybin and psilocin, and the relationship between humans and these mushrooms has a long history among Indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica, specifically Mixtec and Nahua cultures.

Mushrooms are 80 to 90 percent water, so finding material data for these fungi is not possible. Cultural data, however, is plentiful. Archaeological and historical evidence suggests that psilocybe mushrooms were used in Mesoamerica as early as 3,000 years ago. They were used in multiple ways: ritual, therapeutic, divinatory, and for pleasure.  I wish to focus on their ritual use. Psilocybe mushrooms are depicted on ritual paraphernalia and sculptures. Their rituals are portrayed by iconography found in pictographic manuscripts known as codices. Additionally, colonial sources also describe rituals, including participants’ descriptions of the mushrooms’ effects.

The Codex Vindobonensis Mexicanus 1 is a fifteenth- or sixteenth-century pictographic manuscript created by Mixtec people—from contemporary Oaxaca, Guerrero, and Puebla regions of Mexico—that portrays an ancient, pre-colonial mushroom ritual probably referring to a calendrical adjustment during the sacred times before the first dawn. Plate 24, depicted below, details gods and sacred entities associated with mushroom rituals, but also place names—recognized by Mixtec glyphs for “town”—and dates—sets of colorful dots attached to a symbol by a line. That pictographic language can be read starting from the lower right side, gradually ascending counterclockwise to the upper corner, and continuing to the left side of the plate.

On the right side center, the God of Wind carries on his back a deity named Lady Eleven Lizard, who holds four mushrooms on her headdress. Behind the two is Lady Four Lizard, who also has four mushrooms on her headdress. Both figures represent the female spirit of the sacred mushrooms, and both display their totemic animal, the Lizard, who is closely associated with rain and fertility. Mushrooms grow during the rainy season, connecting aspects of the totem Lizard to mushrooms.

The God of Wind, Lady Eleven Lizard, and Lady Four Lizard are moving to the left, towards the God of Rain and Thunderbolts, who wears a turquoise mask with snake fangs and is depicted in front of a maize plant. The Snake, whose shape and movements resemble a lightning bolt, is his totemic animal. He is closely associated with sacred mushrooms because the most powerful grow where lightning has struck. Rain, water, maize, and mushrooms are linked with fertility.

Above them, the god Nine-Wind sings while making music using an instrument that scrapes a bone against a skull. Lord Seven-Flower is in front of Nine-Wind, tears in his eyes; the Lord holds two mushrooms. To their left, deities participating in the ritual each carry two mushrooms in their hands, reflecting Mesoamericans’ sacred view about duality.

The Nahua culture from Central Mexico—best known among them are the Aztecs—presents abundant sources for psilocybe mushrooms’ ritual, therapeutic, divinatory, and ludic functions in Mesoamerica. Precious information about the Nahua people and cultures is preserved in Spanish colonial records.

Teonanacatl is the best-known Nahua word for psilocybin mushrooms. One translation for this word is “flesh of the gods.” Written in Nahuatl and Spanish languages, The Florentine Codex is a sixteenth-century colonial text that preserves Aztec sources containing a mushroom ceremony performed by traders to give thanks for a successful expedition.

At the beginning of the ritual, psilocybin mushrooms were served. Participants ate them with honey as shell trumpets were blown. They only drank chocolate the night preceding the ceremony. When the mushrooms took effect, the participants danced and wept. Participants who were still in command of their senses entered or sat by the house, sharing their visionary experiences with other participants.

This source documents musical instruments, foods, and dances distinctive to the ritual, but they also describe the visionary experience of psilocybe mushrooms and their social function.  “When the effects of the mushrooms had left them, they consulted among themselves and told one another what they had seen in vision. They saw in vision what would befall those who had eaten no mushrooms and what they went about doing.”

Analysis of these rituals provides meaningful insights not only about the visionary experience but also about psilocybe mushrooms’ role in society and culture, including their roles in pantheons and their functions in social ceremonies. Far from mere “drugs,” psilocybe mushroom rituals and Indigenous knowledge about them are an indispensable part of world cultural heritage.