Beyond Science - Mushrooms As a Pan-Ideological Folk Tradition

Recent research confirms what we've known all along: psilocybin can occasion both mystical experience and increases in the personality domain of openness. And while we celebrate and welcome the return of the prodigal son that is science to the fray of psychedelia, much remains unexplained about the mystery that is the sacred mushroom. Curiously absent from the current dialogue in science, the roles of cosmology, technique and tradition as represented by the Mazatec approach to mushroom divination remains largely unrecognized and certainly misunderstood. Adding to the confusion, ad hominem mis-representations of both the works of Gordon Wasson and the Mazatec tradition--as typified by Maria Sabina, proliferate in the shock-jockey tabloid-stylings of Andy Letcher and Jan Irvin. And while scientific field-research continues in the exploration of the traditional uses of ayahuasca in the Amazon, no such contemporary research has looked with any depth at the Mazatec tradition. Why has it taken so long for the mushroom to re-emerge as a capstone of psychedelic research, and what special challenges does the mushroom pose in terms of the method of science?

In consideration of these question, it is interesting to note that the very first preliminary bio-medial research into psilocybin--since the late-60s FDA/DEA moratorium, was NOT particularly successful. Rick Strassman's account in the latter part of 'DMT: The Spirit Molecule,' details a rather harrowing psilocybin session in which researchers completely lost control of the session and so prematurely ended the study. Subsequent research into the use of psilocybin for the treatment of OCD left something to be desired. Not until the recent Griffiths studies at Johns Hopkins has anything of real moment emerged as to the potential value of psilocybin. In what ways did the Griffiths study facilitate the emergence of this value-potential in psilocybin, a value those of us who have systematically used psilocybin as part of a disciplined spiritual practice naturally understand?

Of relevance to this question and discussion, it is worth noting that while both ayahuasca and peyote have both readily lent themselves to institutionalized forms of religion in UDV/Santo Daime and NAC traditions respectively, this pattern of institutionalization is curiously absent when it comes to the mushroom tradition. To the Mazatec, the mushroom is not something to be discussed at church, but something intimately shared in small-private circles of family and friends. Under this consideration, perhaps the mushroom poses a special challenge--above and beyond those of peyote/ayahuasca, in being treated by the institutionalized settings of both religion and academic research.

This taken into account, let us first and foremost treat the mushroom for what it is within the context of it's own endemic setting: a folk tradition, craft and artform. The question is not, 'what can we do with this mushroom,' the question is: what is this mushroom unto-itself? I believe the real insight of the Griffiths study was not in the suggestion that psilocybin occasions mystical experience--which is obvious to anyone who has explored psilocybin thoroughly, but in recognizing the pre-eminence of ethics in so far as the well-being and health of the patient is concerned. The Griffiths study was not a bio-medical study strictly speaking, but a clinical view into the natural beneficence of  mysticism in a research setting. As such, I believe the orientation of the researchers allowed deeper information about the mushroom to emerge.

But let us treat the mushroom for what it truly is: a folk tradition, an artform and a personal heirophany. Let us return the mushroom to it's root in the soul, and study it from the very place of it's origin.