Mushrooms and Mysticism in Highland Oaxaca
An interview with anthropologist Dr Ben Feinberg, expert on Mazatec culture and author of The Devil’s Book of Culture: History, Mushrooms, and Caves in Southern Mexico
1. Language and mushrooms seem to be connected on several levels. Maria Sabina talked about a language that the mushrooms spoke. Healers chant sacred words or songs while under the effects of mushrooms. Terrance McKenna went as far to suggest that mushrooms interact with the brain’s language centres and are actually responsible – in an evolutionary sense – for the formation of language in humans. What, in your professional opinion, is the nature of the relationship between mushrooms and language?
I am not sure that I have a professional opinion about this link, as far as it is discussed by authors like McKenna. I can answer it in two ways. First, from my personal experience, the experience of being under the influence of mushrooms is manifested through an increased awareness of the way my own thought process is made up of different “voices.” These voices become objectified, and one becomes aware of them as distinct entities with, to some extent, lives of their own. This is nothing original, but reminds me of the work of the Russian linguist V.N. Volosinov, who viewed consciousness as constructed out of socially created voices that circulate between individuals. The mushroom experience is an interesting tool for contemplating metalinguistic ideas – where are the borders located between “language” and other phenomena? Are these borders permeable or fixed?
Secondly, as an anthropologist would be focused on how people in the Sierra Mazateca construct the relationship between mushrooms and language. For Maria Sabina, the mushrooms were language. We could call them the voice of God (this was what the missionary linguist Eunice Pike thought Huautecos thought back in the 30s) as an incarnate living thing. Or we could call them something else. Henry Munn wrote a wonderful essay on this subject, published in 1973, called “The Mushrooms of Language.” In either case, it represents continuity with a core Mesoamerican idea (as described by Gary Gossen) language is a sacred entity in and of itself, not just a neutral vehicle for conveying meaning.
2. What is the ‘language of the mushrooms’, as described by Maria Sabina, and how does one learn it?
I certainly don’t know. I would try to understand this by reading Munn’s article, but also by reading Maria Sabina’s words herself and listening to the tapes (apparently, some of Wasson’s recordings are now available online). There doesn’t seem to be any formal training involved in becoming a wise one, but Maria Sabina grew up in a family with another Curer, and was exposed to this special language from a young age; then figured it out for herself, or her version of it, through experimentation.
3. Outsiders have transformed Huautla de Jimenez irrevocably. More than this, Maria Sabina reported that the outsiders have caused the saint children to lose their power. She also said that the mushrooms had begun to speak a new language. To what extent have mushrooms lost their efficacy? To what extent can outsiders be implicated in any loss of ‘power’?
This one quote from Maria Sabina has probably gotten too much play. I would argue (and do, in my book) that outsiders have always played a role in Mazatec religion and spirituality. The mushrooms represent, among other things, a kind of magical travel between inside and outside through which the curer communicates with powerful beings (like Benito Juarez, Chikon Tokoxo, the saints, and John Lennon) in order to be an effective mediator for her/his clients and community. We should not fall into the trap of constructing a disappearing authenticity. The Mazatec mushroom tradiiton is and never has been static; it adapts to changing times.
That being said, the interest in outsiders, along with the general emergence of a cash economy and the decline of the subsistence economy, certainly participated in the transformation of mushrooms into a commodity that people buy and sell.
I don’t know if mushrooms have lost their power. I doubt it. I do know that they are said to be much less common than they were 30-40 years ago, much harder to find.
4. Have Westerners, due to their cultural and psychological background, transformed the overall experience that mushrooms provide? In other words, does the trip permanently change according to who takes it?
As an anthropologist, I assume that, while drugs have real pharmacological effects on the brain, the ways that we experience those effects are framed by the preconceptions and words we bring to them, which in turn come from our own experience–personal and cultural. So, of course, to some extent, different people will have different experiences. Wasson saw them through the lens of a kind of cultural evolutionism, and felt that he was going back into a kind of primeval shared human past. This is not the sort of thing that a “local” would likely experience. From my conversations, many in the Sierra Mazateca have been able to “see” the identities of people who are working against them. “They” tend to see social truths, first and foremost, while Westerners, in my experience, tend to emphasize the idea of truth as stemming from within the individual.
But we should guard against too much emphasis on cultural difference. We are not totally removed from “their” experience, and share many commonalities. Many of our experiences are probably quite similar.
5. The Mazatec have had a relationship with the mushroom for centuries. I have had trouble connecting my Oaxaca mushroom experiences with everyday life. Magical experiences and western culture seem almost irreconcilable. Ultimately, somewhat sadly, I find myself accounting for my experiences as mere chemical intoxication. How much can an outsider, that is a godless white-skinned westerner – with no knowledge of Mazatec myth, language or symbolism – be reasonably expected to understand about mushroom trips?
Difference is real, but so are the many threads and patterns that connect us. There is no single “authentic” meaning to the mushroom experience, no magic bullet that we only “get” sitting in a thatched-roof house with a dirt floor. Outsiders can achieve some understanding of how the mushroom ritual works for Insiders by talking with them over long periods of time, and learning their language. This has not been my focus, and I haven’t done this. But understanding is not a substance that can be measured on a single scale. We all come to our own contextualized, situated, different yet overlapping experiences. I, personally, go back and forth between Scullyish Cynicism and Mulderish enthusiasm. I do not attempt to contain the experience within a single frame like “knowledge,” “recreation,” “spiruality,” or whatever. I have had some extraordinarily wonderful times with the child saints, and some tedious times, and times when I just felt annoying stomach cramps.
6. And finally: Are magic mushrooms sentient beings? If so, what is their intention towards the human race?
I wouldn’t know. I think they dream about eating us.
Thank you Dr Feinberg for your excellent answers and continuing good work on this fascinating cultural phenomenon. If you would like to learn more about mushrooms and their use among the Mazatec of Huautla de Jimenez, please see Dr Feinberg’s article on Planeta.com.
Thu, Aug 20, 2009
Mexico, Oaxaca State, Religion & Spirituality