Leaves of a sage grown only in cultivation, chewed or rubbed into water and taken at night to divine the cause of a sickness or the whereabouts of stolen and lost things; the plantings are kept in hidden places.
Material type
Restricted oral knowledge
Restricted to
Mazatec families who keep the plant and the curanderos who use it
Restriction mechanism
social_sanction, oral_only
Stated reason
Not yet recorded from a Mazatec source
Tradition origins
pre-Columbian (mushroom rites); blended with Catholicism after the conquest
Recorded practice status
Practiced
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
Names, plant 'family', hidden plantings, dosage and an informant's account of the curing rite; Wasson's own session with a curandera
Botanical Museum Leaflets, Harvard University 20, no. 3 (1962), pp. 77–84. Linked copy is the bound volume 20 (1962–1964) digitised by the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Includes a paraphrased translation of R. J. Weitlaner's 1952 informant account. Read in the Internet Archive text on 2026-11-04.
Claims about this item
These claims may cite other sources for the same restricted item. Supporting and contradicting evidence remain separate.
CLM-0109 · Content
Many, perhaps most, Mazatec families keep a private supply of Salvia divinorum, planted from cuttings in remote ravines away from houses and trails where passers-by might see them, and they are loath to reveal the spots: no one in San José Tenango would take Wasson to the plants. Since the late 1950s, with a market for mushrooms, landowners have begun enforcing their rights to the plants.
Checked against the Internet Archive text on 2026-11-04.
SRC-0085: Source authenticity is unassessed; this is separate from the truth of its assertions.
SRC-0085: No source-level content_hash is recorded; linked artifact hashes may identify excerpts, derivatives or metadata instead.
ITEM-0039: The recorded practice status is provisional: no dated status claims are linked.
CLM-0110 · Content
Spanish-speaking Mazatecs call the plant hojas de la Pastora or hojas de María Pastora, 'leaves of (Mary) the Shepherdess', which translates the Mazatec ska Pastora. It is the female (la hembra) of a family of mints: the male (el macho) is Coleus pumila, and the child (el nene) and the godson (el ahijado) are forms of Coleus blumei. Ololiuqui (morning-glory seed) is called semilla de la Flor de la Virgen, but the Mazatecs prefer the leaves for divination. Leaves, like mushrooms, are counted in pairs, and the rites are always oriented to the east, never to the west, which is considered sinister.
Checked against the Internet Archive text on 2026-11-04. Wasson suggests 'Pastora' may cover a pre-Christian Lord of the animals; that is his conjecture.
SRC-0085: Source authenticity is unassessed; this is separate from the truth of its assertions.
SRC-0085: No source-level content_hash is recorded; linked artifact hashes may identify excerpts, derivatives or metadata instead.
ITEM-0039: The recorded practice status is provisional: no dated status claims are linked.
CLM-0111 · Content
A curandero who goes to cut the plant must first kneel and pray to it, and cuts leaves only when they are needed. To divine a sickness the leaves are rubbed in unboiled water, fifty for a patient who does not drink alcohol and a hundred for one who does. At midnight the patient drinks it in a quiet, isolated house; in the trance that follows he speaks as in a trance and names his illness and shakes his clothes as if to free himself of the small creatures causing it, and at dawn he is bathed in the same water. For a theft or a lost thing the curandero listens to what the drinker says. A curer at Jalapa de Díaz who tended the plant would not reveal what kind of plant it was.
An informant's account recorded by R. J. Weitlaner (1952) and given by Wasson in paraphrased translation; not independent of Weitlaner. Checked against the Internet Archive text on 2026-11-04.
SRC-0085: Source authenticity is unassessed; this is separate from the truth of its assertions.
SRC-0085: No source-level content_hash is recorded; linked artifact hashes may identify excerpts, derivatives or metadata instead.
ITEM-0039: The recorded practice status is provisional: no dated status claims are linked.
CLM-0112 · Change
By 1962 the Mazatecs discussed the leaves freely, being much less inhibited about this plant than they had been about the sacred mushrooms; the highway reached Huautla in 1958–1959 and the town had become the centre of a trade in the mushrooms.
Checked against the Internet Archive text on 2026-11-04.
SRC-0085: Source authenticity is unassessed; this is separate from the truth of its assertions.
SRC-0085: No source-level content_hash is recorded; linked artifact hashes may identify excerpts, derivatives or metadata instead.
ITEM-0039: The recorded practice status is provisional: no dated status claims are linked.
CLM-0113 · Stated reason
The curandera María Sebastiana Carrera gave Wasson details of the leaf rite and chanted its words, but refused to let outsiders attend a real ceremony, because her neighbours, and probably she herself, would have considered performing it before outsiders scandalous desecration. As the session ended she burst into tears, fell to her knees and begged forgiveness for what she had done.
Checked against the Internet Archive text on 2026-11-04. The same page describes another curandera, Consuelo García, performing a leaf-only rite for Wasson's party in October 1962, with the leaves passed through copal smoke and ground on a metate.
SRC-0085: Source authenticity is unassessed; this is separate from the truth of its assertions.
SRC-0085: No source-level content_hash is recorded; linked artifact hashes may identify excerpts, derivatives or metadata instead.
ITEM-0039: The recorded practice status is provisional: no dated status claims are linked.
Evidence qualifications
SRC-0085 · source_authenticity_unassessed: Source authenticity is unassessed; this is separate from the truth of its assertions.
SRC-0085 · source_without_content_hash: No source-level content_hash is recorded; linked artifact hashes may identify excerpts, derivatives or metadata instead.
ITEM-0039 · 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
Described to science by Wasson in 1962 (SRC-0085).
