"From now on any comprehensive study of Ancient Mexican civilization must start from (and with) your discoveries."—Octavio Paz"The late Mr. Wasson is the Abraham of the reborn awareness in Western civilization of the presence of the shamanically empowering mushroom."—Terence McKennaIn 1957 Life magazine created a sensation by publishing an article about the experiences of a JP Morgan executive who took mind-altering mushrooms with a shaman woman in Mexico. The story captured the imagination of a generation, inspiring waves of intellectuals, artists, and seekers to travel in search of the mushrooms and the indigenous healer, Maria Sabina. Today, Gordon Wasson is credited with having triggered the psychedelic revolution and his influence lives on through the growing community of people who study indigenous spirituality, sacred plants, and their role in personal transformation. In celebration of Wasson's pioneering work, we present a reprint of his classic The Wondrous Mushroom, an in-depth study of shamanic realities, mushrooms, and traditions connecting contemporary practices to pre-Conquest art, architecture, and culture. The book begins with Wasson's first experiences taking mushrooms, going into a wealth of details about sacred indigenous ceremonies, culture, and practices. The Wondrous Mushroom reflects a lifetime of studies, personal experiences, and reflections on shamanism, culture, community well-being, healing, and spiritual strength. Long out of print, this new edition is a must-have for anyone interested in the history of psychedelics.Gordon R. Wasson (1898–1986) founded the field of "enthnomycology" and was considered the preeminent authority on the use of psychoactive mushrooms.

The wondrous mushroom: Mycolatry in Mesoamerica

History

Wasson, R. Gordon

Historical Study & Educational Resources

McGraw=Hill

"From now on any comprehensive study of Ancient Mexican civilization must start from (and with) your discoveries."—Octavio Paz
"The late Mr. Wasson is the Abraham of the reborn awareness in Western civilization of the presence of the shamanically empowering mushroom."—Terrence McKenna
In 1957 Life magazine created a sensation by publishing an article about the experiences of a JP Morgan executive who took mind-altering mushrooms with a shaman woman in Mexico. The story captured the imagination of a generation, inspiring waves of intellectuals, artists, and seekers to travel in search of the mushrooms and the indigenous healer, Maria Sabina. Today, Gordon Wasson is credited with having triggered the psychedelic revolution and his influence lives on through the growing community of people who study indigenous spirituality, sacred plants, and their role in personal transformation. In celebration of Wasson's pioneering work, we present a reprint of his classic The Wondrous Mushroom, an in-depth study of shamanic realities, mushrooms, and traditions connecting contemporary practices to pre-Conquest art, architecture, and culture. The book begins with Wasson's first experiences taking mushrooms, going into a wealth of details about sacred indigenous ceremonies, culture, and practices. The Wondrous Mushroom reflects a lifetime of studies, personal experiences, and reflections on shamanism, culture, community well-being, healing, and spiritual strength. Long out of print, this new edition is a must-have for anyone interested in the history of psychedelics.
Gordon R. Wasson (1898-1986) founded the field of "enthnomycology" and was considered the preeminent authority on the use of psychoactive mushrooms.

The Wondrous Mushroom: Mycolatry in Mesoamerica

McGraw-Hill Book Co.

María Sabina and her Mazatec mushroom velada (Ethno-mycological studies)

Religion & Spirituality

Cowan, George and Florence and Rhodes, Willard

Occult & Paranormal

Harcourt, Brace. Jovanovich

The secretive Mysteries conducted at Eleusis in Greece for nearly two millennia have long puzzled scholars with strange accounts of initiates experiencing otherworldly journeys. In this groundbreaking work, three expertsâ€”a mycologist, a chemist, and a historianâ€”argue persuasively that the sacred potion given to participants in the course of the ritual contained a psychoactive entheogen. The authors then expand the discussion to show that natural psychedelic agents have been used in spiritual rituals across history and cultures. Although controversial when first published in 1978, the bookâ€™s hypothesis has become more widely accepted in recent years, as knowledge of ethnobotany has deepened. The authors have played critical roles in the modern rediscovery of entheogens, and The Road to Eleusis presents an authoritative exposition of their views. The bookâ€™s themes of the universality of experiential religion, the suppression of that knowledge by exploitative forces, and the use of psychedelics to reconcile the human and natural worlds make it a fascinating and timely read. This 30th anniversary edition includes an appreciative preface by religious scholar Huston Smith and an updated exploration of the chemical evidence by Peter Webster.

The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries (Ethno-mycological Studies)

Hofmann, Albert

RUCK, CARL A.P.

Harcourt

Persephone's Quest: Entheogens and the Origins of Religion

Ott, Jonathan

Kramrisch, Stella

Ruck, Dr. Carl

Religious Studies

Yale University Press

This fascinating book discusses the role played by psychoactive mushrooms in the religious rituals of ancient Greece, Eurasia, and Mesoamerica. R. Gordon Wasson, an internationally known ethnomycologist who was one of the first to investigate how these mushrooms were venerated and employed by different native peoples, here joins with three other scholars to discuss the evidence for his discoveries about these fungi, which he has called entheogens, or "god generated within."

Ruck, Carl

World

Review\n"City Lights can be congratulated on their re-issue of Wasson’s classic of cultural history and ethnomycology. Through his contact with Maria Sabina, the Mazatec mushroom curandera, Wasson brought about the cultural transfusion of an ancient entheogenic ritual into the modern world. In this beautiful and generously illustrated monograph, written with his customary scholarly acumen and literary elegance, Wasson established forever the central role of the visionary teonanácatl mushroom in the religion, art and culture of the Aztecs. A book filled with wondrous details about the meaning and significance of our relationship with these fabulous fungi." -- Ralph Metzner, Ph.D., Editor/Author of Sacred Mushroom of Visions\n"Before Timothy Leary, Carlos Castaneda or Terrence McKenna tasted 'the flesh of the gods,' the mysterious R. Gordon Wasson turned 1950s America on to the wonders of the magic mushroom, beginning our long, strange trip into extraordinary states of consciousness." --Don Lattin, author of Distilled Spirits: Getting High, then Sober, with a Famous Writer, a Forgotten Philosopher and a Hopeless Drunk\n"The great gift of Wasson's explorations & writings in The Wondrous Mushroom was their revelation for many of us of one of the deep sources of poetry as a visionary quest & spiritual resource. The central figure here was the Mazatec shaman María Sabina, whose poetic practice, rooted in ancient Mexican traditions, Wasson first brought to light, & with it an unprecedented insight, contemporary & historical, into the poetry & the traditions themselves. That City Lights Books, with its own history as a major poetic resource, should now restore this work for us is both totally appropriate & incredibly welcome."--Jerome Rothenberg, poet and author of Technicians of the Sacred and Shaking the Pumpkin\n"Inspired by his legendary mushroom experiences with Marina Sabina--described thoroughly herein--Gordon Wasson unfurls a rich, poetic, and seductive journey through ancient Central American mushroom lore. Like many fungal visionaries, Wasson tends to see the 'little children' popping up everywhere, but his exuberant mycophilic vision of Mexican civilization is bolstered with rich historical arcana and extraordinary images that seemingly tell more than the strict record will ever show."--Erik Davis, author of Nomad Codes: Adventures in Modern Esoterica\n"R. Gordon Wasson’s The Wondrous Mushroom is at once the most accessible, comprehensive and factually grounded of his many excellent books on the history and cultural uses of psychoactive mushrooms. It focuses especially on so-called magic or sacred mushrooms that have been used in secret religious rites by indigenous peoples in Mexico and parts of Central America since ancient times. Anyone not yet familiar with the history and practice of these rites, which were 'discovered' and then widely publicized by Wasson and his wife Tina in the mid-1950s, will find reading this richly detailed account of their groundbreaking research both informative and an adventure. They’ll also find Wasson’s prose not only elegant and erudite but also clear and engaging, often striking a tone best described as conspiratorial. City Lights Books deserves praise for reviving this classic work of literary science for a new generation of sacred mushroom book seekers." --Thomas J. Riedlinger, Editor, The Sacred Mushroom Seeker: Essays for R. Gordon Wasson\n"The fact that 'magic mushrooms' are now being shown to have great value in medicine and psychology owes much to the pioneering work of Gordon Wasson in Mexico over fifty years ago. The Wondrous Mushroom, long out of print, tells the fascinating story of Wasson's adventures taking the psychedelic mushroom himself and the many remarkable discoveries that followed. Now a whole new generation of readers will get to see why these mushrooms are considered not only magical but spiritual, and why many consider Wasson to be the father of ethnomycology."--Cla

The wondrous mushroom: Mycolatry in Mesoamerica: Ethnomycological studies

Sungazer Press

The secretive Mysteries conducted at Eleusis in Greece for nearly two millennia have long puzzled scholars with strange accounts of initiates experiencing otherworldly journeys. In this groundbreaking work, three experts—a mycologist, a chemist, and a historian—argue persuasively that the sacred potion given to participants in the course of the ritual contained a psychoactive entheogen. The authors then expand the discussion to show that natural psychedelic agents have been used in spiritual rituals across history and cultures. Although controversial when first published in 1978, the book’s hypothesis has become more widely accepted in recent years, as knowledge of ethnobotany has deepened. The authors have played critical roles in the modern rediscovery of entheogens, and The Road to Eleusis presents an authoritative exposition of their views. The book’s themes of the universality of experiential religion, the suppression of that knowledge by exploitative forces, and the use of psychedelics to reconcile the human and natural worlds make it a fascinating and timely read. This 30th anniversary edition includes an appreciative preface by religious scholar Huston Smith and an updated exploration of the chemical evidence by Peter Webster.

The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries

Ancient Civilizations

North Atlantic Books

One of the key enigmas of cultural history has been the identity of a sacred plant called Soma in the ancient Rig Veda of India. Mr. Wasson has aroused considerable attention in learned circles and beyond by advancing and documenting the thesis that Soma was a hallucinogenic mushroom - none other than the Amanita muscaria, the fly-agaric that until recent times was the centre of shamanic rites among the Siberian and Uralic tribesmen. In his presentation he throws fascinating light on the role of mushrooms in religious ritual. A section on the post-Vedic history of Soma is contributed by the Sanskrit scholar Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty. Brian C. Muraresku in his best selling book, The Immortality Key: The Secret History Of The Religion With No Name, used Robert Gordon Wassons work: Soma The Divine Mushroom Of Immortality as one of his research tools. Brian C. Muraresku's book features a brilliant Foreword by Graham Hancock, the New York Times bestselling author of America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization. Amanita muscaria or the Fly Agaric is not a well-known mushroom based on its scientific name or common name. Yet, the picture on the left, of this mushroom, will probably be familiar to the reader. In recent time, it is the mushroom that has been adopted as the "prototype" mushroom in western cultures. Its image can be seen in Christmas and greeting cards, children's stories, science fiction and fantasy illustrations, and in mushroom models. There has even been a great deal made of its connections with Christmas, but probably too much has been made of this connection and different interpretations of this theory is available. However, it is more than just a "pretty mushroom". It is a species that is thought to have had tremendous impact on some of today's cultures for at least four thousand years and has been thought by some to be at the root of the origin of some of today's religions. In 1968, Gordon Wasson put forth the concept that this mushroom was the "plant" that was referred to as Soma, in his now much cited "Soma, Divine Mushroom of Immortality". Wasson believed Soma was the mushroom that was utilized in religious ceremonies, over 4000 years ago, before the beginning of our Christian era, by the people who called themselves "Aryans". Wasson also believed the hallucinogenic properties of the A. muscaria to be the cause of the "ecstasy" described in the Rig Veda, the holy book of the Hindu.

Soma Divine Mushroom of Immortality: Ethno Mycological Studies

New Age & Spirituality

lulu.com

Entheogens and the Future of Religion

McKenna, Terence

KORNFIELD, JACK

Roberts, Thomas

Steindl-Rast, Brother David

Pendell, Dale

Forte, Robert

Strassman, Rick

Sterling, Eric

Riedlinger, Thomas

Jesse, Robert

Shulgin, Ann and Alexander

Promind Services

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