Salon Wanderlust | High on Huautla

[Salon Wanderlust: Travel with a passion]

T A B L E_T A L K
You've won the lottery, quit your job and updated your passport. Where are you headed? Fantasize in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk

R E C E N T L Y
Why I hate B&Bs
By Julie Garagliano
On the depravities of teddy bears, claw-foot bathtubs, breakfast quiches and shared bonhomie
(10/02/98)
A desert affair
By Tehila Lieberman
An eerie and magical encounter in the Sinai
(10/01/98)
Iowa heartland
By Jennifer New
The joys and dilemmas of being a traveler from Iowa
(09/30/98)
An Italian romance: Chapter Two
By Laura Fraser
The first time, he had helped heal her heartbreak. Could their second fling be as good as the first?
(09/29/98)
Running with the Hadza
By Eric Seyfarth
Tanzania's Stone Age tribe represents a living link to our earliest ancestors
(09/27/98)

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HIGH ON HUAUTLA | PAGE 1, 2
- - - - - - - - - -
The history of the mushroom tradition, of course, goes back much further than María Sabina, at least to about 1000 B.C., according to archaeologists. This date is based on pre-Columbian stone artifacts that have been discovered in the Mayan highland zone, stretching from the grassy highlands of western Guatemala to the piney mountains of Mexico, in southern Chiapas state. Roughly hewn and generally measuring about a foot high, the stones, which resemble mushrooms and have been dubbed "the mushroom stones" by archaeologists, are thought to be linked to religious mushroom cults that were found in Mexico at the time of the Spanish conquest.
Sixteenth-century chroniclers wrote extensively of the Aztecs' religious practices, which included sacred mushroom-taking for the purposes of divination, receiving visions, meeting the divine and expelling evil spirits. The most important of these chroniclers was the Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagun, whose famous codex, "A General History of the Things of New Spain," written between 1529 and 1590, contains this description: "And they ate mushrooms with honey ... There was dancing, there was weeping. Some saw in a vision that they would die in war. Some saw ... that they would be devoured by wild beasts. Some saw in a vision that they would become rich ... buy slaves ... Some saw ... that they would perish in the water. Some saw ... that they would pass to tranquillity in death ... All such things they saw."
Of course, this posed a problem for the Catholic Church, for there were remarkable parallels between the Indians' teonanacatl and the Christian sacrament of Holy Communion. Both the mushrooms and the Eucharist were believed to be the symbolic body of God. But whereas in the Catholic tradition one's communion with God is largely a matter of faith and affiliation with the established religious order, for the Indians who ate teonanacatl it was a real, immediate and direct communication with God. Accordingly, every measure was taken to extinguish the cult.
To a large degree these measures were successful -- but in pockets the teonanacatl practice did survive, due mainly to the remoteness of the regions where it was practiced, the blending of Christian beliefs into the cult and the efforts of some practitioners to make the rites secret.
Sabina was the woman who finally revealed those rites. It's said she saw in a vision that outsiders would come to her asking about the mushrooms and that she was to share their sacrament with them. But she paid for this: Her family home of several generations was burned to the ground and she was banished from the town.
Relocating to El Fortin -- which would become nearly synonymous with Huautla and Sabina herself; as Donovan sang in his song "Mellow Yellow," "I'm just mad about Fortin/Fortin's mad about me" -- Sabina finished her life redeemed in the village's eyes. Today she is regarded as something of a saint, and in home shrines throughout the town, I saw photographs of her simultaneously dark and luminous face hanging alongside that of the Holy Virgin.
Sabina began her relationship with the sacred mushrooms at the age of 12. Her father, grandfather and great-grandfather were all shamans, yet she was considered by the Mazatecs to possess extraordinary powers even beyond her favorable pedigree. She once explained her gift in these words: "There is a world beyond ours, and that is where God lives ... a world where everything has already happened and everything is known. That world talks. It has a language of its own. I report what it says. The sacred mushroom takes me by the hands and brings me to the world where everything is known."
The next night we arrive at El Fortin about 10 minutes before the witching hour. Filogonio greets us and asks, "Your hearts are open?" After we tell him they are, he takes us inside the temple, a small adobe room set back behind his house, containing a prominent altar with bountiful images of Jesus and the Virgin and alight with burning candles. The room is filled with the scent of sweet copal incense. We take off our shoes and sit down on two straw mats that have been laid on the smooth, patted clay floor.
Filogonio now stands at the altar, which is also adorned with statuettes of pre-Columbian gods and bouquets of fresh flowers, and recites a prayer blessing the mushrooms, which I see are arranged on banana leaves. Then he turns and walks toward us, putting down two small clay bowls on each mat. One is filled with the fresh mushrooms, the other half-filled with honey. He blesses us, blowing copal from the coals over our faces and bodies, and encourages us to eat.
I dip the mushrooms in the honey and plop them into my mouth. I'm pleased by the sweetness of the honey, which mellows the natural bitterness of the mushrooms.
Filogonio, who has blown out all the candles except for one that he sets now on the floor, sits cross-legged facing us and begins eating his portion, which looks about twice the size of ours. Carlos looks at me as if to say, Oh, man, we're definitely not in Kansas anymore. It's the last sober communication between us for the next six hours.
Once we've all finished eating, Filogonio blows out the last candle, leaving us in complete darkness. He instructs us to lie down on our backs, then starts chanting and singing, brushing our faces with an eagle feather and flowers. The chants are beautiful and eerie; I'm not lulled by them, and am honest-to-god wondering at this point if it's still not too late to run.
But the effects of the mushrooms soon begin, and I'm washed over by an intense euphoria that makes me lose the concept that there's any other place than here. Next I'm overcome by extreme giddiness and laugh uncontrollably. Carlos is too. I can hear him, but can't see him in the dark. Perhaps because of the serious spiritual atmosphere, that stage passes quickly and next I feel enclosed in a complex labyrinth of colorful, geometrically shaped patterns. I marvel at their intricacy and beauty and think for a moment that I must be brilliant. Then I pass through this and find myself in an ancient city, a place that feels familiar. I realize that I've visited this place often in my dreams and have never been able to hold onto it -- and now here I am walking freely amid the classical architecture, huge pillars and arches and pink marble corridors. I have the distinct impression that I'm traveling, going through layers of -- what? consciousness? memory? reality? And even more astounding, Filogonio is right there, leading me.
By now I'm completely inert, but traveling faster than I ever imagined possible. Fabulous scene after fabulous scene appears before me, one melting into the other like the patterns of a kaleidoscope that form and transform from the same raw material. At times I'm aware of Filogonio's singing (and when I am it seems like I can understand it), though mostly I just soar inward through these various magical worlds.
Later, once we have started to descend, we get up and dance around the room together as Filogonio still chants, Carlos and I seemingly inhabited by Mazatec spirits. To end the ceremony we all sit in a circle holding hands in silence. Then Filogonio tells us what he saw, about our life, our character, our future, our past.
As we leave, Filogonio shakes our hands and says, "We are all now brothers of God as known through teonanacatl." Holding onto his hand, I look into his eyes, dark and lucent still. The corners of his mouth crack in smile, and I feel he is looking through me, with more wisdom than I will ever know.
First there was a mountain, then there was no mountain. Soft gray clouds fill the valley once again and we are silent, walking down the trail in purple morning light.
The next day, back on earth, I'm sitting in the Cafeteria María Sabina, a small comedor located next door to the Hotel Olympico above the market. The proprietor, an old Mazatec woman named Josephina Diaz, after serving Carlos and me, sits down at the long banquet-style table with us. She moves slowly, like a woman who has spent too much time on her feet, for too many years. But although she looks physically tired, there is a certain lively sparkle in her eyes and I can tell that she's enjoying this opportunity to sit and chat with a couple of travelers from far away. After telling her where we're from, the conversation turns to mushrooms.
I try to follow her with my rough Spanish, Spanish that I'd believed myself fluent in the night before, as she meanders on, zigzagging like the road that runs down these mountains.
Carlos leans back lazily with his beer, only asking for occasional translations. I tell him bits as I can fit them in, because the words keep flowing from her mouth even as I talk to him, in a steady, unexcitable flow. I imagine that I'm listening to Gabriel Garcia Marquez's grandmother tell the most fabulous stories without ever changing her voice.
She describes men going into the earth, flying down through it on wings. And speaks of shamans so powerful they can sit down comfortably with the gods, as if they were chatting over coffee.
She says that Sabina was the most powerful shaman Huautla has had in many generations, and that no one is her equal today -- not even Filogonio.
Carlos wants to know if she thinks there is anyone in Mexico, not just Huautla, who might be as powerful as Sabina once was. It's an unanswerable question, I know, but I assume he wants to ask it just to see her response, and so I translate. She shrugs her shoulders and then, without changing her voice, answers me with unassailable logic: "If there is," she says, "they know who they are."
SALON | Oct. 4, 1998
Derek Peck is currently living in San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico, where he is working on a novel.


	T A B L E_T A L K You've won the lottery, quit your job and updated your passport. Where are you headed? Fantasize in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk R E C E N T L Y Why I hate B&Bs By Julie Garagliano On the depravities of teddy bears, claw-foot bathtubs, breakfast quiches and shared bonhomie (10/02/98) A desert affair By Tehila Lieberman An eerie and magical encounter in the Sinai (10/01/98) Iowa heartland By Jennifer New The joys and dilemmas of being a traveler from Iowa (09/30/98) An Italian romance: Chapter Two By Laura Fraser The first time, he had helped heal her heartbreak. Could their second fling be as good as the first? (09/29/98) Running with the Hadza By Eric Seyfarth Tanzania's Stone Age tribe represents a living link to our earliest ancestors (09/27/98) Browse the Wanderlust Feature archives Wanderlust's Official Travel Book Partner S A L O N E M P O R I U M FREE! 12-ounce bag of Salon Blend with a purchase of $30 or more. While supplies last.		HIGH ON HUAUTLA \| PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - The history of the mushroom tradition, of course, goes back much further than María Sabina, at least to about 1000 B.C., according to archaeologists. This date is based on pre-Columbian stone artifacts that have been discovered in the Mayan highland zone, stretching from the grassy highlands of western Guatemala to the piney mountains of Mexico, in southern Chiapas state. Roughly hewn and generally measuring about a foot high, the stones, which resemble mushrooms and have been dubbed "the mushroom stones" by archaeologists, are thought to be linked to religious mushroom cults that were found in Mexico at the time of the Spanish conquest. Sixteenth-century chroniclers wrote extensively of the Aztecs' religious practices, which included sacred mushroom-taking for the purposes of divination, receiving visions, meeting the divine and expelling evil spirits. The most important of these chroniclers was the Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagun, whose famous codex, "A General History of the Things of New Spain," written between 1529 and 1590, contains this description: "And they ate mushrooms with honey ... There was dancing, there was weeping. Some saw in a vision that they would die in war. Some saw ... that they would be devoured by wild beasts. Some saw in a vision that they would become rich ... buy slaves ... Some saw ... that they would perish in the water. Some saw ... that they would pass to tranquillity in death ... All such things they saw." Of course, this posed a problem for the Catholic Church, for there were remarkable parallels between the Indians' teonanacatl and the Christian sacrament of Holy Communion. Both the mushrooms and the Eucharist were believed to be the symbolic body of God. But whereas in the Catholic tradition one's communion with God is largely a matter of faith and affiliation with the established religious order, for the Indians who ate teonanacatl it was a real, immediate and direct communication with God. Accordingly, every measure was taken to extinguish the cult. To a large degree these measures were successful -- but in pockets the teonanacatl practice did survive, due mainly to the remoteness of the regions where it was practiced, the blending of Christian beliefs into the cult and the efforts of some practitioners to make the rites secret. Sabina was the woman who finally revealed those rites. It's said she saw in a vision that outsiders would come to her asking about the mushrooms and that she was to share their sacrament with them. But she paid for this: Her family home of several generations was burned to the ground and she was banished from the town. Relocating to El Fortin -- which would become nearly synonymous with Huautla and Sabina herself; as Donovan sang in his song "Mellow Yellow," "I'm just mad about Fortin/Fortin's mad about me" -- Sabina finished her life redeemed in the village's eyes. Today she is regarded as something of a saint, and in home shrines throughout the town, I saw photographs of her simultaneously dark and luminous face hanging alongside that of the Holy Virgin. Sabina began her relationship with the sacred mushrooms at the age of 12. Her father, grandfather and great-grandfather were all shamans, yet she was considered by the Mazatecs to possess extraordinary powers even beyond her favorable pedigree. She once explained her gift in these words: "There is a world beyond ours, and that is where God lives ... a world where everything has already happened and everything is known. That world talks. It has a language of its own. I report what it says. The sacred mushroom takes me by the hands and brings me to the world where everything is known." The next night we arrive at El Fortin about 10 minutes before the witching hour. Filogonio greets us and asks, "Your hearts are open?" After we tell him they are, he takes us inside the temple, a small adobe room set back behind his house, containing a prominent altar with bountiful images of Jesus and the Virgin and alight with burning candles. The room is filled with the scent of sweet copal incense. We take off our shoes and sit down on two straw mats that have been laid on the smooth, patted clay floor. Filogonio now stands at the altar, which is also adorned with statuettes of pre-Columbian gods and bouquets of fresh flowers, and recites a prayer blessing the mushrooms, which I see are arranged on banana leaves. Then he turns and walks toward us, putting down two small clay bowls on each mat. One is filled with the fresh mushrooms, the other half-filled with honey. He blesses us, blowing copal from the coals over our faces and bodies, and encourages us to eat. I dip the mushrooms in the honey and plop them into my mouth. I'm pleased by the sweetness of the honey, which mellows the natural bitterness of the mushrooms. Filogonio, who has blown out all the candles except for one that he sets now on the floor, sits cross-legged facing us and begins eating his portion, which looks about twice the size of ours. Carlos looks at me as if to say, Oh, man, we're definitely not in Kansas anymore. It's the last sober communication between us for the next six hours. Once we've all finished eating, Filogonio blows out the last candle, leaving us in complete darkness. He instructs us to lie down on our backs, then starts chanting and singing, brushing our faces with an eagle feather and flowers. The chants are beautiful and eerie; I'm not lulled by them, and am honest-to-god wondering at this point if it's still not too late to run. But the effects of the mushrooms soon begin, and I'm washed over by an intense euphoria that makes me lose the concept that there's any other place than here. Next I'm overcome by extreme giddiness and laugh uncontrollably. Carlos is too. I can hear him, but can't see him in the dark. Perhaps because of the serious spiritual atmosphere, that stage passes quickly and next I feel enclosed in a complex labyrinth of colorful, geometrically shaped patterns. I marvel at their intricacy and beauty and think for a moment that I must be brilliant. Then I pass through this and find myself in an ancient city, a place that feels familiar. I realize that I've visited this place often in my dreams and have never been able to hold onto it -- and now here I am walking freely amid the classical architecture, huge pillars and arches and pink marble corridors. I have the distinct impression that I'm traveling, going through layers of -- what? consciousness? memory? reality? And even more astounding, Filogonio is right there, leading me. By now I'm completely inert, but traveling faster than I ever imagined possible. Fabulous scene after fabulous scene appears before me, one melting into the other like the patterns of a kaleidoscope that form and transform from the same raw material. At times I'm aware of Filogonio's singing (and when I am it seems like I can understand it), though mostly I just soar inward through these various magical worlds. Later, once we have started to descend, we get up and dance around the room together as Filogonio still chants, Carlos and I seemingly inhabited by Mazatec spirits. To end the ceremony we all sit in a circle holding hands in silence. Then Filogonio tells us what he saw, about our life, our character, our future, our past. As we leave, Filogonio shakes our hands and says, "We are all now brothers of God as known through teonanacatl." Holding onto his hand, I look into his eyes, dark and lucent still. The corners of his mouth crack in smile, and I feel he is looking through me, with more wisdom than I will ever know. First there was a mountain, then there was no mountain. Soft gray clouds fill the valley once again and we are silent, walking down the trail in purple morning light. The next day, back on earth, I'm sitting in the Cafeteria María Sabina, a small comedor located next door to the Hotel Olympico above the market. The proprietor, an old Mazatec woman named Josephina Diaz, after serving Carlos and me, sits down at the long banquet-style table with us. She moves slowly, like a woman who has spent too much time on her feet, for too many years. But although she looks physically tired, there is a certain lively sparkle in her eyes and I can tell that she's enjoying this opportunity to sit and chat with a couple of travelers from far away. After telling her where we're from, the conversation turns to mushrooms. I try to follow her with my rough Spanish, Spanish that I'd believed myself fluent in the night before, as she meanders on, zigzagging like the road that runs down these mountains. Carlos leans back lazily with his beer, only asking for occasional translations. I tell him bits as I can fit them in, because the words keep flowing from her mouth even as I talk to him, in a steady, unexcitable flow. I imagine that I'm listening to Gabriel Garcia Marquez's grandmother tell the most fabulous stories without ever changing her voice. She describes men going into the earth, flying down through it on wings. And speaks of shamans so powerful they can sit down comfortably with the gods, as if they were chatting over coffee. She says that Sabina was the most powerful shaman Huautla has had in many generations, and that no one is her equal today -- not even Filogonio. Carlos wants to know if she thinks there is anyone in Mexico, not just Huautla, who might be as powerful as Sabina once was. It's an unanswerable question, I know, but I assume he wants to ask it just to see her response, and so I translate. She shrugs her shoulders and then, without changing her voice, answers me with unassailable logic: "If there is," she says, "they know who they are." SALON \| Oct. 4, 1998 Derek Peck is currently living in San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico, where he is working on a novel.