Huautla de Jimenez

Huautla de Jimenez is a remote village high in the mountains above Oaxaca, Mexico, where Gordon Wasson discovered the magic mushroom ritual in June 1955. Wasson and his companion Allan Richardson entered the town hall and found a young Indian who spoke Spanish. Wasson asked him to help learn the secrets of the divine mushroom, using the Indian name nti sheeto. "When he recovered from his surprise he said warmly that nothing could be easier." The Indian led them down into a deep ravine where mushrooms grew in abundance, then up the mountain to Maria Sabina, the curandera who performed the ancient mushroom rite.¹

That night, about 20 Indians and the two white men gathered in an adobe house. Maria Sabina sat on a mat before a simple altar adorned with images of the Child Jesus and the Baptism in Jordan, handed out mushrooms to all the adults, and kept 26 for herself. She put out the last candle about midnight and chanted haunting melodies. Both Wasson and Richardson experienced intense hallucinations until about 4:00 A.M. It was the first known mushroom trip by outsiders in recorded history.¹

Wasson returned in 1956 with James Moore, the CIA contractor, and French mycologist Roger Heim. In 1962, Albert Hofmann and Wasson traveled to Huautla on horseback, and Hofmann presented Maria Sabina with genuine Sandoz Psilocybin. She reported the drug was the "same" as the mushroom, though Wasson noted "I don't think she said it with very much enthusiasm."¹

After Wasson's 1957 Life magazine article, waves of American tourists descended on Huautla and other tiny Mexican villages, nearly trampling them in pursuit of their own curanderas. Wasson came to have mixed feelings about the response.¹