An all-night rite in which a healer and the participants eat psilocybin mushrooms in the dark, and the healer chants and consults the mushrooms about sickness, lost things and absent people.
Material type
Closed liturgy
Restricted to
Mazatec families and patients gathered by a healer; kept from outsiders until 1955
Restriction mechanism
social_sanction, oral_only
Stated reason
Outsiders who take the mushrooms without need spoil them: they lose their purity and force (CLM-0094)
Tradition origins
pre-Columbian (mushroom rites); blended with Catholicism after the conquest
Recorded practice status
Modified
Provisional: no dated status evidence is linked.
Status as of
Not recorded
Status claims
Not recorded
Disclosure dates, source publication dates, tradition origins and dates of practice are separate.
What this disclosure covers
One vigil (Huautla, 29–30 June 1955) described step by step, with photographs and the purposes for which the mushrooms are consulted; no chant texts
Read in the full-view scan of the issue on Google Books on 2026-11-04 (OCR of the page images); the issue, date, title and pages match the standard citation.
Life 42, no. 19 (13 May 1957), pp. 100–102, 109–120, in the series Great Adventures. Wasson's account of the vigil he attended at Huautla de Jiménez on 29–30 June 1955. Calls the curandera 'Eva Mendez' and the language 'Mixeteco' (CLM-0093).
Claims about this item
These claims may cite other sources for the same restricted item. Supporting and contradicting evidence remain separate.
CLM-0089 · Content
About twenty people gathered at night in the lower room of a house and were first served chocolate. At about 10:30 the curandera cleaned the mushrooms and, with prayers, passed them through the smoke of resin incense before an altar with Christian images. She shared them out among the adults, always counting them in pairs: thirteen pairs each for herself and her daughter, six pairs for each visitor; children were not given any. Before midnight she snuffed out the last candle with a flower from the altar, and the rite went on in total darkness until dawn, with the curandera and her daughter chanting in turn.
Wasson calls the curandera Eva Mendez (CLM-0093). SRC-0083 gives the same outline (copal smoke, pairs, darkness), but largely from Wasson, so it is not counted as independent. Read on Google Books on 2026-11-04.
SRC-0081: No source-level content_hash is recorded; linked artifact hashes may identify excerpts, derivatives or metadata instead.
ITEM-0038: The recorded practice status is provisional: no dated status claims are linked.
CLM-0090 · Content
The mushrooms are not treated as a cure in themselves: people 'consult' them in grave trouble. They are asked what caused an illness, whether the patient will live or die and what will help; who stole a donkey and where it will be found; and whether a son who has gone away is alive, in jail, married or prospering.
Wasson adds that when the verdict is death the patient and family resign themselves and begin preparing the wake. Read on Google Books on 2026-11-04.
SRC-0081: No source-level content_hash is recorded; linked artifact hashes may identify excerpts, derivatives or metadata instead.
ITEM-0038: The recorded practice status is provisional: no dated status claims are linked.
CLM-0091 · Historical practice
Before Wasson came, no Mazatec revealed what they knew about the mushrooms to outsiders. Mazatecs spoke of the vigils in a low voice and avoided saying the mushrooms' Mazatec name, 'nti xi tjo (also written 'nti-xi-tjo, or 'nti sheeto by Wasson: 'that which springs forth', with 'nti a particle of reverence and endearment), calling them instead the little things or the little saints, as their ancestors had.
Claim support
Single source
Record review
Reviewed
Period
before 1955
Locators
SRC-0082: p. 79; SRC-0081: p. 102 (the name); SRC-0083: section on childhood (the name and its meaning)
The secrecy and the avoidance of the name are María Sabina's own testimony (SRC-0082). SRC-0082 also prints the name, but with tone marks the search-inside text does not render legibly; the spellings given here are Wasson's, who says he used the name when first asking about the mushroom, and Allen's, who glosses it. Wasson also says (SRC-0081, p. 101) that the mushrooms had been a secret of certain Indian peoples for centuries and that no anthropologist had described the rite, which is consistent with her account but is his own judgement rather than evidence of the practice. Read on 2026-11-04.
SRC-0081: No source-level content_hash is recorded; linked artifact hashes may identify excerpts, derivatives or metadata instead.
SRC-0082: Source authenticity is unassessed; this is separate from the truth of its assertions.
SRC-0082: No source-level content_hash is recorded; linked artifact hashes may identify excerpts, derivatives or metadata instead.
SRC-0083: Source authenticity is unassessed; this is separate from the truth of its assertions.
SRC-0083: No source-level content_hash is recorded; linked artifact hashes may identify excerpts, derivatives or metadata instead.
ITEM-0038: The recorded practice status is provisional: no dated status claims are linked.
CLM-0092 · Other
Wasson was admitted through the town's síndico: he asked the official, Filemón, in confidence and using the Mazatec name of the mushroom, to help him learn its secrets, and Filemón led him to the curandera. María Sabina later said she had only obeyed the síndico.
Wasson's and María Sabina's accounts are independent of each other and agree on the síndico's role. SRC-0083 instead names her friend Cayetano as the go-between; María Sabina also mentions Cayetano bringing the foreigners (SRC-0082, p. 20). Read on 2026-11-04.
SRC-0081: No source-level content_hash is recorded; linked artifact hashes may identify excerpts, derivatives or metadata instead.
SRC-0082: Source authenticity is unassessed; this is separate from the truth of its assertions.
SRC-0082: No source-level content_hash is recorded; linked artifact hashes may identify excerpts, derivatives or metadata instead.
ITEM-0038: The recorded practice status is provisional: no dated status claims are linked.
CLM-0093 · Other
In Life Wasson called the curandera Eva Mendez and the language Mixeteco. The curandera was María Sabina of Huautla de Jiménez, and the language Mazatec; the names were changed to protect her from thrill-seekers.
The names as printed are in SRC-0081 (pp. 101–102). The identification and the stated motive rest on SRC-0083, which also says Valentina Wasson gave the language as Mixtec in This Week (1958) for the same reason. Read on 2026-11-04.
SRC-0083: Source authenticity is unassessed; this is separate from the truth of its assertions.
SRC-0083: No source-level content_hash is recorded; linked artifact hashes may identify excerpts, derivatives or metadata instead.
ITEM-0038: The recorded practice status is provisional: no dated status claims are linked.
CLM-0094 · Stated reason
María Sabina said that before Wasson the saint children lifted her up, but that from the moment the foreigners arrived they lost their purity and force: the foreigners spoiled them, and there was no remedy.
Claim support
Single source
Record review
Reviewed
Period
1970s
Locators
SRC-0082: p. 20 (quoted in Wasson's introduction), p. 91
Her own words, as recorded by Estrada. Elsewhere she says that showing her wisdom to foreigners was not in itself wrong, because the children are the blood of Christ (p. 79). SRC-0083 adds, citing Estrada, that the mushrooms had always been used to cure the sick and that the foreigners came only out of curiosity or to find God. Read in the Internet Archive search-inside text on 2026-11-04.
SRC-0082: Source authenticity is unassessed; this is separate from the truth of its assertions.
SRC-0082: No source-level content_hash is recorded; linked artifact hashes may identify excerpts, derivatives or metadata instead.
ITEM-0038: The recorded practice status is provisional: no dated status claims are linked.
CLM-0095 · Suppression
María Sabina's house was burned down. She did not know why, but some people thought it was because she had revealed the ancestral secret of Mazatec medicine to foreigners.
Claim support
Single source
Record review
Reviewed
Period
after 1955
Locators
SRC-0082: p. 79; SRC-0083: section The Coming of the Foreigners
SRC-0083 draws on SRC-0082 and is not independent. It adds that she was arrested and jailed several times by local officials over her vigils with foreigners; no page in Estrada has been found for this yet. The motive is reported as other people's belief, not established. Read on 2026-11-04.
SRC-0082: Source authenticity is unassessed; this is separate from the truth of its assertions.
SRC-0082: No source-level content_hash is recorded; linked artifact hashes may identify excerpts, derivatives or metadata instead.
SRC-0083: Source authenticity is unassessed; this is separate from the truth of its assertions.
SRC-0083: No source-level content_hash is recorded; linked artifact hashes may identify excerpts, derivatives or metadata instead.
ITEM-0038: The recorded practice status is provisional: no dated status claims are linked.
CLM-0096 · Change
Wasson himself concluded that a practice carried on in secret for centuries had been aired, and that the airing spelled its end.
Wasson's judgement, not a description of current practice. SRC-0083 describes the arrival of thousands of foreign seekers in the 1960s, the sale of mushrooms to tourists, a local ban on mushroom use and the expulsion of foreigners by federal authorities. Read on 2026-11-04.
SRC-0082: Source authenticity is unassessed; this is separate from the truth of its assertions.
SRC-0082: No source-level content_hash is recorded; linked artifact hashes may identify excerpts, derivatives or metadata instead.
ITEM-0038: The recorded practice status is provisional: no dated status claims are linked.
CLM-0108 · Content
The mushrooms for a vigil are usually gathered in the evening at full moon, sometimes by a young virgin, and taken to a church to be blessed on the altar before use. If the girl who picked them passes a dead animal on the way, she must throw them away, go back to where they grew, gather fresh ones and return by another path.
Allen gives no primary source for these rules. Read on 2026-11-04.
SRC-0083: Source authenticity is unassessed; this is separate from the truth of its assertions.
SRC-0083: No source-level content_hash is recorded; linked artifact hashes may identify excerpts, derivatives or metadata instead.
ITEM-0038: The recorded practice status is provisional: no dated status claims are linked.
Evidence qualifications
SRC-0081 · source_without_content_hash: No source-level content_hash is recorded; linked artifact hashes may identify excerpts, derivatives or metadata instead.
ITEM-0038 · status_without_dated_evidence: The recorded practice status is provisional: no dated status claims are linked.
Reviewed means checked against a source. It does not establish source authenticity, independent corroboration or present-day practice.
Item notes
Made public by R. Gordon Wasson's account in Life (1957) of a vigil led by María Sabina, whom he called Eva Mendez.
