Mazatec shamanism

Mazatec shamanism

The Mazatec Shamans are known for their ritual use of psilocybe mushrooms. Some shamans on occasion use other plants, such as Salvia divinorum and morning glory seeds. María Sabina was one of the best known of the Mazatec Shamans.

There is little information concerning the Mazatec people generally before the arrival of the Spanish and less concerning their spiritual practices.

Several researchers have commented on the difficulty in obtaining information, as the Mazatec shamans tend to be secretive and protective of their practices.

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  • Mazatec —    People of southern Mexico in Central America. The Mazatec’s shamanic healing use of mushrooms aided Richard Schultes in isolating a curative agent useful in the development of a new heart drug. Their blend of indigenous animism and Catholic… …   Historical dictionary of shamanism

  • Sabina, Maria — (1888–1985)    Mazatec Indian curandera who was “discovered” in the 1950s by the ethnomycologist Gordon Wasson. Wasson held Sabina’s veledas (healing ceremonies involving the ingestion of psilocybin mushrooms) to be the archetypical residue of a… …   Historical dictionary of shamanism

  • Halifax, Joan —    According to her website, Joan Halifax Roshi is “a Buddhist teacher, Shaman and anthropologist,” having been a faculty member of Columbia University, the University of Miami School of Medicine, the New School for Social Research, the Naropa… …   Historical dictionary of shamanism

  • Mushrooms —    While entheogen use is often perceived to be prevalent in shamanism worldwide, few indigenous shamans have made mushroom use an important part of their practice. Most of these are located in Central America and South America. Ob Ugrian and… …   Historical dictionary of shamanism

  • Wasson, R. Gordon — (1898–1996)    American banker and amateur mycologist whose study of “ethnomycology” with his wife Valentina began on a delayed honeymoon in the Catskill Mountains of New York. The Wassons became convinced that the human religious impulse began… …   Historical dictionary of shamanism

  • Psilocybin —    A hallucinogenic or entheogenic alkaloid (4 phosphoryloxyN, N dimethyltryptamine) of the tryptamine family present in many species of fungi, the best known being the genus Psilocybe, including Psilocybe cubensis and Psilocybe semilanceata… …   Historical dictionary of shamanism

  • Tourism —    Shamanic performances and shamanic use of visioninducing plant derivatives have attracted both scholars and enthusiasts seeking initiation, education, and entertainment. While shamanism tourism and hallucinogen tourism have seriously disrupted …   Historical dictionary of shamanism

  • Schultes, Richard Evans — (1915–2001)    The founder of ethnobotany as a scientific discipline. Much of Schultes’s work was devoted to the discovery of the active ingredients in plants used by shamans. He was initially interested in Amazonia as part of a quest for sources …   Historical dictionary of shamanism

  • Salvia divinorum — Salvia divinorum …   Wikipedia

  • Andrew Calimach — (1953 ) is a Romanian American author. He is a matrilineal descendant of the Callimachi noble family of Moldavia and is known for his writings on the subject of same sex relations in Greek mythologyWorksCalimach researched and compiled the… …   Wikipedia

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