Hallucinogenic Plants of the New World (1963)

Mescal Beans

One of the characteristic plants of the drier areas of Texas, the Southwest, and adjacent Mexico is the shrubby legume Sophora secundiflora, the dark red seeds of which are known as mescal beans or; in Mexico, as. frijolitos. The seeds of Sophora secundiflora contain cytisine, a highly poisonous alkaloid of the nicotine group. Its toxic action is characterized by nausea, convulsions and eventual death from respiratory failure.

Indian groups of Texas and northern Mexico formerly took these narcotic seeds in the ceremonial Red Bean Dance. Various Plains Indians likewise employed mescal beans in distinct patterns of use: as an oracular or divinatory medium, to induce visions in Initiation rites and as a ceremonial emetic and stimulant. The Kiowa and Comanche employ it today only as part of the ornamental dress of the leader of the peyote ritual, pointing to its earlier use as a narcotic, a role which it lost with the arrival of the much safer and much more spectacularly hallucinogenic peyote.

Our earliest reference to the mescal beans goes back to 1539 when Cabeza de Vaca mentioned them as articles of trade amongst the Texas Indians. The Stephen Long Expedition in 1820 reported the Arapaho and Iowa tribes using large red beans as a medicine and narcotic.

Ololiuqui

The early chroniclers of Mexico wrote on numerous occasions of ololiuqui, the sacred vision-producing, lentil-like seed of a vine with cordate leaves. It was illustrated by several writers: the best drawing is that found in the voluminous study of the medicinal plants, animals and stones of New Spain by Hernandez, personal physician to the King of Spain who carried out his field work in Mexico from 1570 to 1575. Hernandez clearly sketched a morning-glory.

Most of the chroniclers were men of the church who railed violently against this "diabolic seed" valued by the pagan Indian as a divine messenger capable of taking man’s mind to spirit realms. The true identity of ololiuqui, nevertheless, was in doubt for almost four centuries. No morning-glory had been found in use as a sacred narcotic, since persecution had driven the use of ololiuqui into hiding. Furthermore, intoxicating principals were unknown in the Convolvulaceae or Morning-Glory Family. In 1915, Safford categorically denied that ololiuqui was a morning-glory, assuming that the natives misled the Spaniards, wishing to protect their sacred plant from discovery by the foreign invader. Safford went so far as to identify ololiuqui as a species of Datura, although he had no tangible evidence upon which to base his conclusion.

Several Mexican writers had expressed their belief that ololiuqui was, in truth, a morning-glory, but it was only in the late 1930’s that actual botanical material was collected, when I found the narcotic Rivea corvmbosa growing in the dooryard of a Mazatec curandero in northeastern Oaxaca. This modern field work seemed to vindicate the accuracy of the early reports. Furthermore, a psychiatrist experimenting with the seeds of Rivea was able to induce an intoxication typical of a phantastica drug. Chemists, however, long were unable to isolate any active principles until, in 1960, Hofmann demonstrated the presence in seeds of Rivea corymbosa of amides of lysergic acid and of d-Lysergic acid, chanoclavine and elymoclavine, substances hitherto known only from the fungus, ergot (Claviceps purpurea).

Most recently, Wasson has established that the seeds of another morning-glory, Ipomoea violacea are employed in Oaxaca for the same purpose and in the same way as those of Rivea .corymbosa. Hofmann has found in it the same active principles as III Rivea corymbosa.

Peyote

Peyote is a small cactus – Lophophora Williamsii – growing in sandy stretches of northern Mexico and the Rio Grande area of Texas. The spineless, grey-green heads, growing on a long carrot like root are sliced off and dried to form the so-called mescal buttons.

The intoxication induced by ingesting mescal buttons is one of the most highly complex known and has been often and e:-:pertly described in the literature. It is most spectacularly characterized by the kaleidoscopic play of richly colored visions. This phase of the narcosis has convinced Mexican and North American Indians that the plant is a divine messenger enabling the partaker to communicate with the gods; it has also occupied the serious attention of psychologists now for some years.

Peyote goes far back in Aztec history. The chronicles of the conquerors of Mexico are replete with vituperative condemnation. of peyote as a diabolic root, primarily because it was held in such high religious esteem by pagans. Peyote survived, persecution notwithstanding. In 1892, the explorer Carl Lumholtz discovered its ceremonial use in the Huichol and Tarahumare country and sent back to Harvard University several mescal buttons upon which a definitive botanical determination was made.

Since about 1880, peyote has been taken up by many Indian tribes north of the Rio Grande, and the peyote religion has been incorporated in the United States into the Native American Church partly for protection against fierce persecution by missionary groups in this country. In 1922, 13,300 adherents were claimed but the number must be far greater now, since the use of peyote has spread to many more tribes and is used as far north as Saskatchewan in Canada.

The dried mescal buttons are shipped to Indians far from the areas where peyote is native. The plant contains eight closely related isoquinoline alkaloids, one of which – mescaline – is responsible for the visual hallucinations, although all of them undoubtedly play a physiological role in the whole intoxication.

Rape dos Indios

In the central part of the Brazilian Amazon, an hallucinogenic snuff has recently been discovered. It is known in Portuguese only by the name rape dos indios ("Indian snuff").

No definitive study of this snuff has as yet appeared. My source of information was the late Dr. George A. Black, botanical explorer of the Amazon, where he was drowned in an accident in rapids. Black informed me in a letter that the snuff is made from the fruit of the gigantic forest tree Olmedioperbea sclerophylla, a member of the Mulberry Family. Unfortunately, we have no data concerning its manner of use, and we do not know what the active principle maybe.

Salvia and Other Mints

A species of Salvia, of the Labiatae or Mint Family, has very recently been discovered by Wasson as an hallucinogenic narcotic in use in northeastern Oaxaca, Mexico. The species, Salvia divinatorum, new to science, has the vernacular names hojas de la pastora or hojas de Maria Pastora in Spanish and ska-Pastora among the Mazatec Indians.

Although the plant and its properties are familiar to virtually all Mazatecs, there seem to have been no very early reports of the use of Salvia divinatorum in magico-religious rites. Its area of diffusion comprises only the Mazatec country and possibly adjacent regions inhabited by Cuicatec and Chinantec Indians. The leaves are consumed, usually by chewing them directly, but the effects may be induced when the leaves are drunk in water after having been crushed. Salvia leaves are taken when the mushrooms are not available, their narcotic effects coming on quicker, but, while these are similar to the effects of the mushrooms, they are "less sweeping" and of shorter duration. The psychotomimetic properties have been adequately experienced in the field by Wasson and others in his party.

The chemical constituent or constituents responsible for the narcotic effects of Salvia divinatorum have not yet been determined. As a mint, of course, the plant would normally be rich in essential oils.

Coleus pumila and two "forms" of C. Blumei, both of the Mint family and both species of Old World origin, have been pointed out by natives in the Mazatec country to be likewise psychotropic, but these lack field corroboration by critical researchers. As Wasson has stated, "it would seem . . . that we are on the threshold of the discovery of a complex of psychotropic plants in the Labiatae or Mint Family."

Teonanacatl

The early chroniclers who wrote about Mexico after the conquest reported the religious use among the Indians of narcotic mushrooms called teonanacatl or "flesh of the gods" in Nahuatl. Most of the chroniclers were clerics who railed against such loathsome pagan customs, and ecclesiastical persecution drove this interesting cult into hiding in inaccessible mountainous regions.

Sahagun, a Spanish friar, referred to mushrooms "which are harmful and intoxiable like wine" so that those who eat of them "see visions, feel a faintness of heart and are provoked to lust." He detailed the effects of the mushrooms in another reference, describing minutely the characteristic intoxication, and gave several crude illustrations of the kinds of mushrooms employed.

There are a number of other references to the sacred narcotic mushrooms, but that of the physician Hernandez, who studied the medicinal lore of Mexican Indians for some seven years, is by far the most authoritative. Hernandez spoke of three kinds of hallucinogenic mushrooms worshipped by the natives, and he appended a detailed and accurate description of the intoxication: some "cause not death but madness that on occasion is lasting, of which one symptom is a kind of uncontrollable laughter. . . these are deep yellow, acrid and of a not displeasing freshness. There are others again which, without inducing laughter, bring before the eyes all kinds of things such as wars and the likeness of demons. Yet others there are not less desired by princes for their festivals and banquets, and fetch a high price. With night-long vigils are they sought, awesome and terrifying. This kind is tawny and somewhat acrid."

Even with numerous detailed reports, nothing was known about these mushrooms until recently. Actually, the American botanist Safford, in 1915, asserted that the early chroniclers must have been misled by the Indians who were confusing dried peyote buttons with dried mushrooms, for he was at a loss to explain why, in some 350 years, no sacred narcotic use of mushrooms had been uncovered in Mexico. Safford’s great reputation stamped his conclusions with authority, and they were widely accepted.

There were, however, voices of protest: one that of B. P. Reko, a physician who had done extensive botanical collecting in Mexico and who, as early as 1919 and 1923, wrote that the sacred mushroom was a dung-fungus still employed religiously in Oaxaca. In 1936, Weitlaner, an engineer of Mexico City, sent a few mushrooms, said to be used narcotically in Oaxaca, to the Harvard Botanical Museum, but their poor state of preservation made it impossible to identify them beyond the genus Panaeolus. Then in 1938 and 1939, I collected the dung-fungus Panaeolus sphinctrinus as one of the mushrooms used by the Mazatec Indians in northeastern Oaxaca. A poor specimen of Stropharia cubensis was likewise collected during this ethnobotanical field trip to Oaxaca. I published two papers indicating my belief that the teonanacatl of the Aztecs was Panaeolus sphinctrinus and stated that other mushrooms might be involved as well. My work then took me to the Amazon for twelve years, and I never returned to Oaxaca to pursue my researches.

Fifteen years later, R. Gordon Wasson and his wife, amateur ethnomycologists, read my papers and immediately decided to pursue this fascinating problem. They first went to Oaxaca in 1953; later they carried out field studies together on several occasions and then, after the death of Mrs. Wasson, a New York physician, Mr. Wasson continued on his own – making a total of ten trips to study the hallucinogenic mushrooms. On almost every trip he took along specialists in botany, chemistry, ethnology and other fields. Their researches have resulted in a most outstanding model of interdisciplinary investigation. With the French mycologist, Heim, Wasson has published an impressive list of some 20 species of mushrooms in four genera which are used in religious rites and for their hallucinogenic properties in Mexico. The most important of these are; Psilocybe mexicana, a small, tawny inhabitant of wet pastures, apparently the most highly prized of the hallucinogenic mushrooms; P. aztecorum, called "child of the waters" by the Aztecs; P;, zapoteorum of marshy ground and known by the Zapotecs as crown of thorns mushroom"; P. caerulescens var. mazatecorum, the so called “landslide mushroom" which grows on decaying sugar cane bagasse; P. caerulescens var. nigripes, the vernacular name of which means "mushroom of superior reasoning"; and Stropharia cubensis. In 1957, the mycologists Singer and Guzman found several additional species of Psilocybe in this use. Undoubtedly ?other species and genera remain to be discovered by future investigations.

At the present time, the sacred mushrooms are known to be employed by the Mazatecs, Chinantecs, Chatinos, Zapatecs, Mixtecs and Mijes of Oaxaca; the Nahoas of Mexico; and possibly the Tarascans of Michoacán and the Otomis of Pueb1a. Wasson believes that this use of hallucinogenic mushrooms was very much more widespread in ancient times than at the, present. His principal reasons are found in the curious archaeological artifacts now called, “mushroom stones" from the highland Maya of Guatemala and dating back to 1000 B.C. Consisting of an upright stem with a man-like figure crowned with an umbrella-shaped top, these stone carvings have long baffled archaeologists, some of whom supposed them to be phallic symbols. It seems clear now that they were a kind of icon connected with mushroom worship.

Symptoms of the intoxication are: a kaleidoscopic play of visual hallucinations in color, muscular relaxation, flaccidity, mydriasis; later followed by a period of emotional disturbance such as extreme hilarity and difficulty in concentrating, The visual and auditory hallucinations begin usually at this point, eventually to be followed by lassitude and mental and physical depression, with serious alteration of ,time and space perception. One peculiarity of Psilocybe narcosis which promises to be of interest in experimental psychiatry is the isolation of the subject from the world around him – that is, without loss of consciousness, he is rendered completely indifferent to his environment, which becomes unreal to him as his dream-like state becomes real.

The Swiss chemist, Hofmann, working with growing cultures of Psilocybe mexicana, isolated a substance of unusual chemical structure an acidic phosphoric acid ester of 4-hydroxydimethyltryptamine, allied to other naturally occurring compounds such as bufotenin and serotonin: this substance is called psilocybin. It is the first known naturally occurring indole derivative containing phosphorus. Another indolic compound was found in minute amounts, but it is apparently very unstable and has not been crystallized: it is called psilocin. Hofmann subsequently isolated psilocybin from other hallucinogenic species of Psilocybe and from Stropharia cubensis, and other workers have found it in members of the genus Panaeolus.

Vinho de Jurumena

A beverage called in Portuguese vinha de Jurumena is a narcotic prepared from seeds of the legume Mimosa hastilis and used by the Pancaru Indians of Pernambuco, Brazil. Enjoying a magico~religious role among these natives, it is an hallucinogen believed to transport the soul to the spirit world. The active principle has recently been identified as N,N-dimethyltryptamine, the same constituent found in species of the closely allied genus Piptadenia.

Yakee or Parica

After eight years of search for the source of the narcotic yakee or parica, a brownish grey snuff employed in the northwest Amazon, I learned that the drug was prepared from the red resin found in the inner bark of several species of Virola: V. calaphylla, V. callophyllaidea and, perhaps, V. elongata. This is a genus of the Myristicaceae, the family to which the nutmeg tree belongs.

The bark is stripped from the trunks of the Virola trees; the resin is scrapped off with a knife and boiled in an earthenware pot until a thick paste is left. This paste is sun-dried, pulverized, and the powder is mixed with inert ashes of the bark of a wild cacao tree.

The snuff is then ready for use.

The active principle has not yet been determined, but there is every reason to believe it to be the same essential oil – myristicine which occurs commonly throughout the family and which is the narcotic principle in household nutmeg.

It was probably this hallucinogen to which the German ethnologist, Kosh-Grunberg, had reference earlier in the century in reporting an intoxicating snuff prepared from a tree by the Yekwana Indians of the headwaters of the Orinoco in Venezuela.

There is no doubt about the narcotic effects of yakee snuff. (I have experimented with it myself.) Medicine-men, for diagnosis of disease and for prophesying or divining, take large doses (up to one heaping teaspoonful) and eventually fall into a delirious stupor or sleep, during which the shouts they emit are “interpreted” by assistants. That the intoxication can be dangerous IS .admitted by the medicine-men themselves, and the death of one medicine-man of the Puinave tribe 15 years ago is laid to the use of yakee snuff.

Yakee is used rather generally in much of the Amazon region of Colombia and adjacent northwestern most Brazil as well as m the Orinoco drainage-area of Colombia and Venezuela. It has often been confused in the anthropological literature with the very different hallucinogenic snuff known as yopo.

Yopo and Huilca

The first scientific report concerning yopo – a snuff prepared from seeds of the legume Piptadenia peregrina – is apparently. that of Humboldt who in 1801, saw the Otomacs along the Orinoco pulverize the beans of this tree, mix the powder with quicklime and use it like tobacco snuff. Spruce gave us the earliest detailed report, however, when he wrote about niopo amongst the Guahlbos of the Orinoco of Colombia.

The principal area of use of Piptadenia peregrina seems to be the Orinoco basin and Trinidad. Safford Identified the cahoba snuff of ancient Hispaniola as this drug and he seems to have good, albeit indirect, evidence for his determination.

As practiced today in the Orinoco basin of Colombia and Venezuela, yopo-snuffing is a dangerous habit carried on not by witch-doctors alone but by the entire populace – men, women and even children. The frightening intoxication first produces convulsive movements and distortions of the face and body muscles, then a desire to dance which is overwhelmed by an inability to control the limbs; at this point, a violent madness or a deep sleep disturbed by a nightmare of frightful sights takes over. The narcosis ends usually in a long stupor.

Recent chemical work on carefully identified material of Piptadenia peregrina has shown that the major alkaloid is bufotenin. Another hallucinogenic alkaloid, N,N -dimethyltryptamine, may also be present.

In the Amazonian regions of Peru, Piptadenia macrocarpa is the source of a snuff known locally as huilca. Little of a definite nature seems to be known about huilca and its uses, but it is believed to have been the source of the strong, divinatory snuff of early Peru.

Although this is admittedly a very superficial treatment of one of the most fascinating chapters in modem ethnobotany, it does, I hope, illustrate how much of an unfolding panorama the future of ethnobotany offers those who are searching for new substances of use in modem medicine. Certainly none of us could have been ready to accept some of the fantastic reports of the early writers on the unearthly effects produced by the sacred mushrooms of Mexico, peyote, ololiuqui and sundry other hallucinogenic drugs. Now we know that they were true. We can no longer afford to ignore reports of any aboriginal use of a plant merely because they seem to fall beyond the limit of our credence. To do so would be tantamount to the closing of a door, forever to entomb a peculiar kind of native knowledge which might lead us along paths of immeasurable progress.