Maria Sabina

Maria Sabina was a Mazatec curandera, or shaman, in Huautla de Jimenez, Oaxaca, Mexico, described by Gordon Wasson as being of "the highest quality" and a señora sin mancha, a woman without stain. Wasson described her as middle-aged and short, "with a spirituality in her expression that struck us at once. She had a presence." When Wasson and Allan Richardson showed her their freshly picked mushrooms in June 1955, she and her daughter "cried out in rapture over the firmness, the fresh beauty and abundance of our young specimens."¹

The First Ceremony

That night, Maria Sabina conducted the mushroom ceremony for Wasson, Richardson, and about 20 Indians in an adobe house. She sat on a mat before a simple altar table adorned with images of the Child Jesus and the Baptism in Jordan. After cleaning the mushrooms, she handed them out to all adults present, keeping 26 for herself and giving the two white men 12 each. She put out the last candle about midnight and chanted haunting, tightly measured melodies. The Indian celebrants responded with deep feeling. Both Wasson and Richardson experienced intense hallucinations until about 4:00 A.M. This was the first known mushroom ceremony shared with outsiders in recorded history.¹

Later Visits

Wasson returned to Maria Sabina the following summer with James Moore and Roger Heim. In 1962, Albert Hofmann himself traveled to Huautla with Wasson and presented Maria Sabina with genuine Sandoz Psilocybin pills. Hofmann, ever conservative, gave too small a dose at first and it had no effect. He doubled the dose, and Maria Sabina reported the drug was the "same" as the mushroom, though Wasson noted "I don't think she said it with very much enthusiasm."¹