Robert Gordon Wasson (September 22, 1898 – December 23, 1986) was an author, amateur researcher and banker. In the course of independent research, he made significant contributions to the field of ethnobotany, botany and anthropology.Wasson's studies in ethnomycology began during his 1927 honeymoon trip to the Catskill Mountains when his bride, Valentina Pavlovna Guercken, a pediatrician, chanced upon some edible wild mushrooms. Fascinated by the marked difference in cultural attitudes towards the fungus in Russia compared to the United States, the couple began field research which led to the writing of Mushrooms, Russia and History published in 1957. In the course of their investigations, they mounted expeditions to Mexico to study the religious use of mushrooms by the native population. They became the first westerners to participate in a Mazatec sacred mushroom ritual. In 1957, they published a Life magazine article (Seeking the Magic Mushroom), bringing knowledge of the existence of psychoactive mushrooms to a wide audience for the first time. Through his collaboration with Roger Heim, the mushrooms were subjected to scientific study, and Albert Hofmann, using material grown by Heim from specimens collected by the Wassons, identified the chemical structure of the active compounds, psilocybin and psilocin. Two species of mushroom, Psilocybe wassonii Heim and Psilocybe wassonorum Guzman were named in honor of R. Gordon Wasson. Hoffman and Wasson were also the first westerners to collect specimens of the Mazatec hallucinogen Salvia divinorum, leading to its description as a new species, and bringing it into cultivation outside of Mexico.Experiences with the magic mushrooms apparently had a profound effect on Wasson, and fungi remained a persistent theme in his work. His next major contribution was a study of the ancient Vedic intoxicant Soma, which he proposed was based on the psychoactive Fly Agaric (Amanita muscaria) mushroom. This was published in 1967 under the title Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality. His attention then turned to the Eleusinian Mysteries, the initiation ceremony of the ancient Greek cult of Demeter and Persephone. In The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries (1978), co-authored with Albert Hofmann and Carl A. P. Ruck, it was proposed that the special potion "kykeon", a pivotal component of the ceremony, contained psychoactive ergoline alkaloids from the fungus Ergot (Claviceps spp.).Wasson's work revolutionized the understanding of the origin of religion. Prior to his work on Soma, theologians had interpreted the Vedic and Magian practices to have been based on alcoholic beverages that produced inebriation. Wasson was the first researcher to realize that the form of Vedic intoxication was "entheogenic," a term that he coined in order to avoid the more popular "psychedelic." His discoveries were celebrated by a generation of human scientists as well as botanists and chemists. The impact of Wasson is still reverberating throughout a range of disciplines including anthropology, history, theology and psychology.
RECEIVING his mushrooms, Wasson takes his night's ration from the hand of Curandera Eva Mendez. In right background Guy Stresser-Péan, French anthropologist who accompanied Wasson, has begun to chew his own supply.
EATING his mushrooms, Wasson takes them from cup holding his night's quota as the curandera prays at the household altar. He chewed them slowly, as is the custom, and his six pair took about a half hour to eat.On his latest expedition to seek out and study the hallucinogenic mushrooms, Wasson was accompained by Professor Roger Heim, an old friend, one of the world's leading mycologists and head of France's Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle. Wasson had sent Heim specimens form three of his previous trips. Now Heim was able to study the mushrooms in the field, eat them with the Indians and work out techniques for growing some of them in the laboratory. LIFE here publishes Professor Heim's life-size water-color paintings of the seven kinds of hallucinogenic mushrooms so far discovered. Four of these are species new to science and two others are new varieties of a known species, Psilocybe caerulescens Murrill.
At the present time no one knows what drug it is in these mushrooms that causes the eater to see visions, and until its properties are clearly defined the hallucinogenic mushrooms must be treated with extreme caution. Among the Indians, their use is hedged about with restrictions of many kinds. Unlike ordinary edible mushrooms, these are never sold in the market place, and no Indian dares to eat them frivolously, for excitement. The Indians themselves speak of their use as muy delicado, that is, perilous.
With professor Heim, Wasson (right) searches a mountainside near the village for specimens of the sacred mushrooms. They found two species here.
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