Let me tell you a story about the Flesh of the Gods

My journey into the research of teonanacatl began during a day of leafing through my own maternal ancestral paper trail.

Let me tell you a story about the Flesh of the Gods. What is that? Well, it’s a thin-stemmed, conical-capped mushroom that is sacred to the Indigenous peoples of ol’ Mexico. In Nahuatl, the language of the Aztec, it’s called teonanacatl. Its Latin name is Psilocybe mexicana.

The Aztec, Maya, Olmec, Rarámuri, Mixtec, and oodles of other Indigenous groups used, and still ceremonially use, the fungi as a spiritual sacrament as they have for centuries, not just in Mexico, but in the U.S. as well.

My journey into the research of teonanacatl began during a day of leafing through my own maternal ancestral paper trail. My mother, who identifies as Chicana, is indeed Aztec, but what’s more is, according to said paper trail, she is the 13^th great granddaughter of Moctezuma II, the last Aztec emperor who ruled during the first contact with Europeans and was killed by conquistadors. This, of course, would make me the 14^th great grandson of Emperor Moctezuma II.

In my research, I happened upon a few words regarding the Flesh of the Gods, but not much more. I dug deeper and I found some fascinating facts. Let’s start with the more recent history surrounding tourism and fetishizing of Indigenous ways. That’s a theme in the story of Psilocybe mexicana, one that became particularly strong in the 1950s with a pair of articles in Life and This Week magazines.

The first, in This Week, was titled, “I Ate the Sacred Mushrooms,” authored by Dr. Valentina P. Wasson, a physician. In May 1957, she wrote that she, her husband, daughter, and a photographer had eaten the “supposed sacred mushroom” while practicing “the ancient cult of the Mixeteco.” She wrote that her fellow fun-seekers had “enjoyed the feeling of supreme happiness and well-being” and that her mind “floated blissfully … as if my very soul had been scooped out and moved to a point of heavenly space, leaving my empty physical husk behind in the mud hut.” 

The second article, published in Life magazine just a few days after the first, titled, “Seeking the Magic Mushroom” – and written by R. Gordon Wasson, Dr. Wasson’s husband and a banker – recalled that his “visions were not blurred or uncertain … they were sharply focused, the lines and colors being so sharp that they seemed more real to me than anything I had ever seen with my own eyes.”

The articles were written by a highly educated and well-to-do white couple. Both described the “acrid” flavor of the mushroom. Both wrote somewhat glowingly of the Oaxacan people, including the female holy person, María Sabina, who led the ceremony. Some of the writing about the Indigenous people and their spirituality was clearly distasteful and dated at best, but both authors described having experienced an immense, singular euphoria they had never known before.

Now, 67 years later, folks still flock to Oaxaca on the trail of the Wassons to consume these magic mushrooms. Tourism by mostly white people in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca has threatened the sacred medicine practices. Many who travel to consume God’s Flesh don’t grok the sanctity of the mushroom or its pre-colonial history, says Kimberly Melgoza, a second-year doctoral student in religion at the Iliff School of Theology at the University of Denver. Melgoza’s focus of study, among other topics, is the history of the Psilocybe mexicana mushroom. She says that after the Wassons wrote their articles and all the tourism that followed, the mushroom became “just another hallucinogenic drug.” But Psilocybe mexicana was traditionally used in a holy context. “It is literally a sacrament,” says Melgoza. “You can talk to spirits with it in different realms and find your answers, and it helps with mental health.” 

Melgoza has a master’s degree in religion from the Yale Divinity School and a bachelor’s degree, also in religion, from the University of Southern California. She’s only 25 but she’s spent years studying plant medicines and she says there are right ways to consume God’s Flesh and profane, offensive ways. For Indigenous people in Mexico, to eat the mushroom is to consume a piece of God here on earth. That's a pretty serious undertaking and many practices and rules were created around the ritualistic use of the fungi.

“I noticed a lot of hippies coming to take it and they would disrespect it because they would not take it correctly,” she told me. “They would take in the day instead of the night or they would take it alongside other drugs or they wouldn’t fast or not even take it with an elder.” Melgoza has even heard of fake shamans selling blessings as a result of tourism. 

Melgoza’s academic journey into Psilocybe mexicana didn’t begin with an interest in the Indigenous plant medicine. In fact, she wanted to be a physician. “In undergrad, I actually wanted to be a doctor and study addiction and rehab and basically work in the ER with people who come in with overdoses,” she said. “But that changed in my third year because I fell in love with religion.” Soon, she found herself studying all manner of Indigenous practices and ceremonies. 

She first started off studying alcohol in Mexico, specifically a milky white drink called pulque, which is made from the fermented sap of agave plants. Pulque too was used in religious practices during the Aztec reign. After her foray into pulque, Melgoza began researching ayahuasca, and then peyote. “Finally, I came across mushrooms, which I didn't even know were religiously used before – so I wrote my research thesis on mushrooms in Mexico,” she said. 

During her research, she learned that Moctezuma II (my relative) would ceremonially partake in Psilocybe mexicana. Melgoza found this information in a text titled, ‘History of the Indies of New Spain and the Islands of Tierra Firme,’ first published in Spanish in 1867 by author Diego Durán. Melgoza also learned of the ceremony called a velada, which typically happens in the evening. “You do it after fasting. You don’t take any other drugs with it. You’re guided by a person who has the power to guide someone to talk to God,” Melgoza said. The velada lasts about five hours because that’s about how long the mushroom lasts. The ceremony often involves some Christian prayers. “A balance between the old way and the new religion, Christianity,” Melgoza explained. 

Melgoza is particularly interested in what happened to these pre-colonial ceremonies after colonialism. How did they change? How did they meet Christianity? “That’s another thing I’m studying now – which aspects of the velada changed before, during, and after colonialism,” she said. Why is the ceremony often in Spanish now? But sometimes it is still in Nahuatl, the Uto-Aztecan language. Why are there crosses in some of the veladas and not in others?

“That’s why I’m doing this work. I want people to know that this is more than a hallucinogenic drug. It’s more than that. People took this for centuries,” Melgoza told me. Melgoza wants people to understand the origin of God’s Flesh and its place within the cultures of the first peoples of the North American continent. She hopes the medicine will, one day, receive the respect it deserves.

“Don’t just take it and be like, ‘Oh, it’s going to make me see God!’” she said. “Know where it all started from.” 

(Correction: In an earlier version the names of the magazines were inadvertently swapped. Dr. Valentina P. Wasson published in This Week, and R. Gordon Wasson published in Life magazine, not vice versa. We regret the error.)