In 1957, an article in Life magazine featured a lengthy article on - TopicsExpress



          

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In 1957, an article in Life magazine featured a lengthy article on a New York banker and amateur mycologist called R. Gordon Wasson. This article revealed that Wasson and his wife Valentina had been introduced to a cult using psychedelic mushrooms in Oaxaca, Mexico by a Mazatec curandera called Maria Sabina. Although the use of psychoactive mushrooms was reported by Father Sahagun in the 16th century, the existence of such a cult was previously unsuspected. Sahaguns account had been disregarded by modern scholars until the Wassons’ account. Their discovery spurred the Wassons to inquire into the possibility of other mushroom-based religious cults in other parts of the world, culminating in his seminal work SOMA: The Divine Mushroom of Immortality in 1966. This work was the first to identify soma with the Amanita muscaria mushroom. Among the various Siberian peoples who use Amanita muscaria as a cultural norm, there exists a curious practice whereby the urine of one who has consumed the mushroom is drunk by another who consequently becomes inebriated. The urine of this person may then be drunk by another and so on, the procedure being repeated up to five or six times. The reason for this practice is that A. muscaria contains ibotenic acid which, when the carboxyl radical is removed from the molecule, yields the psychoactive molecule muscimole [Ott, p. 327]. The metabolic process of decarboxylation which effects this transformation within the users liver is very inefficient. In fact, it is so inefficient that approximately 85% of the ibotenic acid ingested (more than enough to inebriate further users) passes through the body unchanged and is excreted in the urine [Ott, p. 328]. To put it another way, the urine contains more than five times as much of the drug as the body can assimilate. This unsavory yet economical practice is well-documented among certain Siberian tribes where A. muscaria is widely used in both shamanic and ludibund contexts [von Bibra, p. 75]. Of all known traditions of drug use this practice of recycling the urine is unique to A. muscaria consumption and should be considered a highly significant indicator of this mushroom. The Rig Veda contains one passage in which urine and soma are mentioned together. Wasson seized upon this to support his hypothesis: Acting in concert, those charged with the office, richly gifted, do full homage to Soma. The swollen men piss the flowing (soma). [OFlaherty, p. 123]
Posted on: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 01:42:38 +0000

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