Sacred Mushrooms - Putting The Civility Back Into Civil Liberties

'The connection to The Friend ...
is secret,
and very fragile:
The Image of that Friendship,
is in how you love.'

For certain individuals, psychedelics seem only to indulge their sheer and temperamental deviance. Whether Charles Mason or Gordon Todd Skinner, the appeal seems to strictly lie in the social marginalization of psychedelic-phenomenon. It is not so much the content or the depth of the experience that is the area of focus, but the sheer eccentricity in pursuing something forbidden; it is not the vision so much as the taboo. As such, psychedelic culture often finds itself on uneven ground, a social millieu in which sociopathy, narcissism and pathological splitting dominate group dynamics. Too often in my experience have I observed the participation mystique of a group under the influence of psychedelic-drugs to eclipse each and every individuals own common sense and basic civility. It is as if--under the pretense of a shared participation in a marginal phenomenon, basic civility and conscionable concern take a back seat to simply acting weird ...

Yet in the Mazatec tradition, the mushroom very much occurs within the context of the most basic forms of civil grace. In fact, Gordon Wasson's very first velada was performed by Maria Sabina as a civil grace to the mayor at the time--Cayetano Garcia, an individual whom Sabina felt socially indebted to. The mushroom itself is afforded a special seat at the table, and treated as an honored guest. The poetry of the Aztec codices laud the mushrooms ability to strengthen bonds of friendship.

In my estimation, the Mazatec use of reverential diminutive in referring to the little precious ones, los santos ninos, los diocitos, is to place the subtle nuances of daily behavior into the forefront of human and humane perception. Not least amongst these precious little things, are the daily observations of basic human civility in greeting and treating each and every precious little other with nominal courtesy and respect. The way of the sacred mushroom is to ingratiate ourselves to one another on the levels of kindness and compassion. Outside of this basic level of civility, respect and compassion, what use are these psychedelics?

The civil liberty in psychedelicized epiphany and heirophany is not in simply doing anything and everything we would like, but in evolving enough disciplined courtesy and respect to honor the light shining through our most subtle interactions with this world. These are the 'precious little ones,' the luminous elves, the spirit in nature, that shines through the psychedelic cosmology. Without this basic sense of civil courtesy and respect, these might as well just be common drugs for the rats.