The Holy Inquisition and the Genesis of Seventeenth-Century Peyote Banning

 Edited by Aaron Michael Ullrey

The following Research Reflection is part of an ongoing series spotlighting the academic study of religions.

In 2022, a previously unknown European-style manuscript came to light at an auction held in Bogotá, Colombia: “Don Juan de Salcedo´s opinion on Peyote: . . . the effect it causes and its action on those who take and drink it, both Indians and Spaniards and Blacks.” Containing no marks or stamps from former owners, we have no idea how this Spanish-language document, dated April 28, 1619, came to be in Bogotá. We do know that this internal report, at the request of the Holy Inquisition, would shape and support a peyote prohibition edict published just over a year later in 1620. I contend that these edicts drove Indigenous and Mestizo practitioners to adopt Catholic terminology as a protective cover, creating strategic adaptations that persist alongside prohibitionist “drug” policies to this day.

Juan A. de Salcedo was rector of the Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico and a consultant to the Tribunal of the Holy Office. Though not an expert on botanical matters, in his report written in New Spain (now Mexico), he reflects on the cultural uses of peyote cacti and the effects of their consumption by various sectors of the population. He documents symbolic, ritual, and cultural uses of peyote cacti: therapeutic, divinatory, and sacramental. 

Salcedo’s report was publicly displayed in a special exhibition—titled Psychedelics, Collections and Codices in November 2023—in the Memorial Library at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Special Collections, where it is currently hosted. Librarians provided me with high-quality images for publication. I studied and translated Salcedo’s “Opinion” for an upcoming article.

The Inquisition played a pivotal role in organizing and controlling societal structures under Colonial rule. Ecclesiastical authorities and the Court of the Holy Inquisition, established in New Spain in 1571, consulted specialists in theology and canon law such as Salcedo, whose 1619 report builds on the General Edict of Faith promulgated in 1571. That edict morally condemns sacramental and divinatory uses of peyote; it also records the cacti’s visionary properties and mentions that, in the sixteenth century, peyote was also known by the name Santa María. Evidently, Indigenous people had given the cacti this Catholic name. Subsequent to Salcedo’s report, an Inquisitorial edict issued on June 9, 1620, prohibited the use of peyote lawfully. 

The 1620 edict avowedly aimed to prevent heresy, idolatry, and superstition; it was also the culmination of a process to stigmatize peyote. The clergy feared that peyote use represented an obstacle to evangelization, especially if it spread from Indigenous people to Mestizos, Blacks, and Spaniards. The edict was released for display on the doors of churches and convents in the provinces of New Spain, New Galicia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Yucatán, Verapaz, Honduras, and the Philippines. Notably, it was sent to places where peyote does not grow naturally, inspiring worldwide prohibitionist policies that endure today.

The pressures applied to peyote users and healers by the Inquisition forced them into a sort of protective syncretism. In 1617, the cactus was associated with the Baby Jesus, and soon the Holy Trinity was overlaid. Peyote is essential to the Indigenous Wixárika people’s worldview, which recognizes a three-fold symbolic complex of maize-deer-peyote, a three-fold deity, making trinitarian symbology an understandable adaptation. 

From 1626 to 1665, according to the Inquisitorial Archives at the National Archive of Mexico City, residents of the Colonial city of Zacatecas identified peyote with Nuestra Señora, Our Lady, who is none other than Santa María; this is also the name given to peyote in the city of Morelia since 1625. Another name given to peyote was Santa Rosa, a generic Catholic term given to a range of Indigenous psychoactive plants.

Alongside the feminine syncretism, a masculine syncretism emerged that identified the peyote cacti with Saint Peter and Saint Nicholas. Saint Peter holds the keys to Heaven’s doors, resonating with peyote’s visionary properties. An image of Saint Nicholas was found in a peyote altar in 1629. In the municipality of Guadalcázar, it was recorded in 1716 that peyote cacti were named Rosa San Nicolás. So-called folk Catholicism continues such trends to this day; for example, Otomi people refer to cannabis as Santa Rosa in Spanish and Xünfö dëni or Lady Flower in the Otomi language.

Peyote cacti have always been considered a deity by Indigenous peoples of the Americas, and symbolic adaptations enabled them to use and revere these cacti while hiding in plain sight. Starting during the Inquisition, this strategy of applying religious terminology and imagery to peyote cacti allowed these peoples to avoid attention and punishment by religious authorities. And peyote is not an isolated case: other plants and fungi with psychedelic properties are also being renamed. For instance, contemporary Indigenous peoples refer to Psilocybe cubensis mushroom as San Isidro, and Morning Glory as Seeds of the Virgin. The cultural impact of the 1620 Inquisition edict, grounded in Juan A. de Salcedo’s report, is evident in these deliberate and protective syncretic strategies. 

The digital exhibition Sacred Plants and Fungi of the Americas provides more information about the cultural uses of these cacti.