Lost Saints
Desacralization, Spiritual Abuse and Magic Mushrooms
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/firn.40554Keywords:
psilocybin, magic mushrooms, R. Gordon Wasson, María Sabina, desacralisation, spiritual abuseAbstract
Mushrooms containing psilocybin have been used in Indigenous healing ceremonies in Mesoamerica since at least the sixteenth century. However, the sacramental use of mushrooms was only discovered by Westerners in the early to mid-twentieth century. Most notably, the meeting between amateur mycologist Robert Gordon Wasson and Mazatec curandera María Sabina in 1955 resulted in the widespread popularization of ingesting “magic mushrooms” in the West. To Sabina and the Mazatec people, psilocybin mushrooms were sacred and only to be used for healing. However, Western “hippies” viewed mushrooms as psychedelic drugs which they consumed with little regard for cultural sensitivities, rendering the mushrooms desacralized. This article argues that the desacralization of psilocybin mushrooms constitutes a form of spiritual abuse that has had far-reaching and long-lasting consequences at individual, local and global levels. Further, acknowledging and understanding the desacralization of psilocybin mushrooms as spiritual abuse has important implications for restorative justice and the understanding of psilocybin as a sacred medicine.
Downloads
References
Aridjis, Homero 2003 María Sabina in Mexico City. In María Sabina: Selections, edited by Jerome Rothenberg, ix-xxi. Berkeley, LA: University of California Press.
Blue, Ken 1993 Healing Spiritual Abuse: How to Break Free from Bad Church Experiences. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
Cohen, Peter 2003 The Drug Prohibition Church and the Adventure of Reformation. International Journal of Drug Policy 14(2): 213-215.
Duke, Michael R. 1996 Gordon Wasson's Disembodied Eye: Genre, Representation and the Dialectics of Subjectivity in Huautla de Jiménez, Mexico. PhD. Diss. Texas: University of Texas.
Durkheim, Émile 1995 [1912] The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Edited and translated by Karen E. Fields. New York, NY: The Free Press.
Estrada, Álvaro 2003 María Sabina: Selections, edited by Jerome Rothenberg, 1-79. Berkeley, LA: University of California Press.
Faudree, Paja 2015 Tales from the Land of Magic Plants: Textual Ideologies and Fetishes of Indigeneity in Mexico’s Sierra Mazateca. Comparative Studies in Society and History 57(3): 838-869.
Feinberg, Benjamin 2003 The Devil’s Book of Culture: History, Mushrooms, and Caves in Southern Mexico. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Feinberg, Benjamin 2015 María Sabina. In Iconic Mexico: An Encyclopedia from Acapulco to Zócalo, edited by Eric Zolov. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.
García Carrera, Juan 1986 La Otra Vida de Marla Sabina (The Other Life of María Sabina). Mexico: Publisher Unknown.
Garcia-Romeu, Albert and William A. Richards 2018 Current Perspectives on Psychedelic Therapy: Use of Serotonergic Hallucinogens in Clinical Interventions. International Review of Psychiatry 30(4): 1-26.
Gray, Jacqueline S., Kathryn B. LaBore, and Paula Carter 2018 Protecting the Sacred Tree: Conceptualizing Spiritual Abuse Against Native American Elders. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. doi: 10.1037/rel0000195.
Gubi, Peter Madsen and Rachel Jacobs 2009 Exploring the Impact on Counsellors of Working with Spiritually Abused Clients. Mental Health, Religion & Culture 12(2): 191-204
Guzmán, Gastón 2008 Hallucinogenic Mushrooms in Mexico: An Overview. Economic Botany 62(3): 404-412.
LeResche, Diane 1993 The Reawakening of Sacred Justice. (Native American Issue). Clearinghouse Review 27(8): 893-899.
Letcher, Andy 2007 Mad Thoughts on Mushrooms: Discourse and Power in the Study of Psychedelic Consciousness. Anthropology of Consciousness 18(2): 74-97.
Letcher, Andy 2008 Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers.
Nutt, David J., Leslie A. King, and Lawrence D. Phillips 2010 Drug Harms in the UK: a Multicriteria Decision Analysis. The Lancet 376(9752): 1558-1565.
Oakley, Lisa and Kathryn Kinmond 2013 Breaking the Silence on Spiritual Abuse. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Riedlinger, Thomas 2005 The “Wondrous Mushroom” Legacy of R. Gordon Wasson. In Sacred Mushroom of Visions: Teonanácatl, edited by Ralph Metzner, 76-92. Rochester, VT: Park Street Press.
Rothenberg, Jerome 2003 Editor’s Preface. In María Sabina: Selections, edited by Jerome Rothenberg, ix-xxi. Berkeley, LA: University of California Press.
Stuart, R. 2002 Entheogenic Sects and Psychedelic Religions. MAPS 12(1): 17-24.
The Psychedologist 2018 On Maria Sabina and the Mazatec Heritage with Inti and Paula. Spotify, July. https://open.spotify.com/episode/20fpWqUAORmdmaS58sDsK4 (accessed 24 January, 2020).
Walsh, Charlotte 2011 Psychedelic Drugs and Human Rights: Sacramental Freedoms and Cognitive Liberty. YouTube, 7 May. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7jAxkaB0eY (accessed 24 January, 2020).
Walsh, Charlotte 2016 Psychedelics and Cognitive Liberty: Reimagining Drug Policy through the Prism of Human Rights. International Journal of Drug Policy 29: 80-87.
Ward, David, J. 2011 The Lived Experience of Spiritual Abuse. Mental Health, Religion & Culture 14(9): 899-915.
Wehr, Demaris S. 2000 Spiritual Abuse: When Good People Do Bad Things. In The Psychology of Mature Spirituality: Integrity, Wisdom, Transcendence, edited by Polly Young-Eisendrath and Melvin E. Miller, 37-48. New York, NY: Brunner-Routledge.
Zimbardo, Philip, G. 2007 The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. London: Rider and Co.
