30 May 2025 / 10 House
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Find out moreThe Aztec (Mexica) and Sacred Plant Substances: Peyote and Mushrooms
16th Aug 2024
Mexicolore contributor Rebecca Stone
We are most grateful to Dr. Rebecca Stone, Professor and Curator Emerita, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, for writing specially for us this valuable introductory article on sacred substances. Her 5 books are: Threads of Time: Tradition and Change in Indigenous American Textiles, 2017 (online catalogue); Art of the Andes from Chavín to Inca (3rd edition 2012); The Jaguar Within: Shamanic Trance in Ancient Central and South American Art, 2011/2024; Seeing with New Eyes: Highlights of the Michael C. Carlos Museum Collection of Art of the Ancient Americas, 2002 [Winner of the Association for Latin American Art, 2002 International Book of the Year]; To Weave for the Sun: Andean Textiles in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1994.
What did the Aztecs call these sacred plants?
Even if we do not realize it, some of the names we use today for plants and animals come from Nahuatl (the Aztec language, still spoken today by millions of people in central Mexico). The word for the cactus, peyotl (pronounced pay OH tuh with the “l” almost entirely swallowed), became peyote (Spanish pronunciation being pay OH tay, English pay OH tee). This probably happened because the invading and colonizing Spanish had never seen a peyotl cactus where they came from and so did not have their own name for it. Nowadays Westerners also use the scientific names, based on Latin, for very specific identifications of plants: peyotl is also known as Lophophora williamsii (pronounced Low foh FOR ah well ee AMH say). Its bitter juices protect it from predators, as well as cause people who drink or chew parts of it to see strange and potentially happy or scary things.
On the other hand, some Nahuatl words are so long and difficult for others to pronounce or spell, that they never enter the Spanish or English languages the way the Aztecs said them. Another important plant to them (and earlier Mesoamerican peoples) were types of mushrooms they called teonanácatl (pronounced tay oh nah NAH caht l-swallowed), meaning “food of the gods.” In Spanish, mushrooms in general are called hongos (certain mushrooms being native to Europe as well). In scientific naming teonanácatl probably encompasses species of Psilocybin, Stropharia, and Amanita Muscaria (pronounced sill ah SIGH ben, stroh FAR ee ah, and ah mah NEE tah moo SCAR ee yah, respectively). There are many types of mushrooms: edible, poisonous, and some that help push the human brain into dream-like trances in which fantastical things may take place.
Why would the ancient peoples want to have those kind of trance experiences?
For them, and for their modern descendants who still follow the old traditions, dreams and related phenomena tell the truth that is beyond everyday comprehension and guides shamans (the spiritual leaders) to find answers to problems here on earth. Shamans today explain that the spirits of such plants open them up to figure out what the solution is to a given problem – perhaps the location of a lost item, the reason for and treatment of an illness, when to plant the corn, and so on.
How do we know they were so important in ancient times?
Over a thousand years before the Aztecs, from around 200 BC to 200 AD, people in the western part of Mexico made art that celebrated both of these sacred plants. The subjects that artists chose gives a good indication of what was important to them and their culture. This black ceramic vessel (picture 3) imitates the way peyote grows: a series of bulbs arranged in a circle. That is the way the artist has arranged the protruding circles around the opening of the pot. Each one is decorated with lines drawn into the clay to represent the lobes of each bulb. The radiating lines can also show how the flower emerges from the center of each. The artist chose to let the lines stand for two things that are both equally true of the plant itself.
In this same area and time, images of mushrooms were created, too. Picture 4 shows a woman in a fancy dress and large holes for earrings, both of which are signs of high social status. What may look to us like an umbrella, is in fact an oversized mushroom. Its stalk melds into her head as if they are one being and its cap is shown protecting and dominating her by its size and position. She is quite literally under its influence. All these messages suggest how shamans understand and interact with the sacred plants that put them into trance states: the plant takes over and as it is ingested the person submits to its power, becoming one with the plant and its spirit. Her slit eyes show her as withdrawn from this world; indeed shamans report they can see their visions more clearly with eyes almost or completely shut. Trances are often descrbed as journeys, the shaman’s being understood to be elsewhere, traversing cosmic realms.
It is no accident that this figure is a woman. While most shamans over time have been men, women who answer the calling have been considered more powerful. This is probably due to the fact that women have babies, one of their special abilities, and if she also has spiritual skills to heal and see the future, etc., then she is doubly impressive. (In modern times most women become shamans after their child-bearing and -rearing days are over, however.)
Moving forward in time and back to central Mexico, a very important Aztec sculpture tells again of the importance of sacred plants, especially mushrooms. This (picture 5) is Xochipilli (pronounced show she PEEL ee), the patron of the arts, sacred plants, and spring (with his female counterpart Xochiquetzal [pronounced show she KET zahl]). All over his body you can see raised images of flowers, all of which represent different sacred plants. In the center of the stand below him there is a pattern that looks like a giant flower but, on closer consideration, it is made up of cross-sections of mushrooms as its petals. Modern shamans often call mushrooms “florecitos,” little flowers, among other names. Of course, flowers come with spring and are colorful, like visions. Spring is a time when what seemed dead in winter shows itself to be full of life, a transformation of the highest order. And here Xochipilli wears a death mask with its evocative hollow, shadowed eye sockets. Sacred plants give visionaries the experience of going magically to the Land of the Dead and back again, often to rescue the soul of a living person that has gotten stuck there. Many use the term “susto” or fright (trauma, terrifying experience of some kind) and cure the person in this way.
What happened when the Spanish encountered the shamans and their sacred plants?
Europeans had difficulties understanding how the Indigenous peoples of the Americas thought and did things, especially in the realm of religion. Catholicism, the dominant Christian sect at the time in Europe, told followers to only let the priests interpret the “word of God.” A person’s own experience of the things that were larger than humans, beyond their understanding, was not valued; in fact, it was even punished. So, from a Catholic point of view at the time, a person having their own dream or vision of the Beyond was considered bad. When Spaniards discovered how important peyote and mushrooms and other plants were, and how different from their own religious practices, they condemned them as “the work of the Devil.” In fact, peyote was first banned by the Spanish Inquisition in 1620, and much later made illegal in 1965 in the U.S. (Follow the link below to learn more).
The Spanish held sway in most of the Americas for over four hundred years (the “Colonial times,” late1400s to early 1900s). One of the first of the Spanish friars (“fathers”) to come from Spain to the conquered Aztec area was Bernardino de Sahagún [bear nahr DEEN oh day sah hah GOON]. Although his main purpose was to record the Indigenous religion in order to change it over to Catholicism, Sahagún did a pioneering thing: he asked the Nahuatl-speaking descendants questions in their own language about their culture before the Europeans invaded. This was, in a way, the first “ethnography” (a branch of anthropology that tries to understand a different people from the inside out, from their words and actions). His eleven books documented beliefs, practices, religion, plants, and animals, and so have a lot to tell us about the Aztec past. However, the Spanish biases (prejudices, pre-conceptions) mean that sacred plants are described and illustrated almost entirely in negative terms.
Perhaps even more tellingly than Sahagún’s words, he had artists -- of Aztec heritage but now being forced to practice European ideas and artistic rules -- draw mushrooms, among many other things. The drawings are an interesting blend of the two cultures, which held almost opposite beliefs.
What did Sahagún record about peyotl?
”On him who drinks it [peyote] or eats it, it takes effect like mushrooms. Also he sees many things which frighten one, or make one laugh. It affects him perhaps one day, perhaps two days, but likewise it abates. However, it harms one, troubles one, makes one besotted, takes effect on one. I take peyote; I am troubled.” (Sahagún, Vol. 11, p. 129)
The friar and/or his informants saw the similarities with the effects of mushrooms, and how both induce strong emotional swings. But you can easily see that the text emphasizes that it mostly harms and “troubles” the taker. Perhaps he is referring to the fact that some trances are enjoyable (“make one laugh”), but not necessarily (“frighten one”).
The illustration (picture 7) is definitely a strange mix. On the viewer’s left, a man holds a giant goblet from which he is drinking. This presumably shows that peyote (as a tea) can be drunk, though the Aztec did not form such goblet shapes, that is European. He is dressed in the Aztec man’s tied mantle, but it is shown worn over gathered sleeves, a belted garment, and fitted pants, not to mention he holds a bowler hat in his other hand – all of which are European in origin as well. It is important to remember that these drawings were done in Colonial times when Spanish customs were deeply influencing art and culture; although they supposedly record the prior times, they are in reality a mixture of cultures.
On the right, three odd shapes are included. The two toward the center represent peyote, although seen turned perpendicular to the ground, rather than parallel as in Nature (peyote grows very low to the ground and a Western perceptual view of it might not capture its overall shape and parts). Such an “essential” perspective is much more of ancient way to make images – not the human’s way of seeing something in space, but rather to convey what is true of the image’s subject. The radiating parts and the lobes are highlighted, though the purple and orange overall colors are wholly made up (unless the artist was referring to the bright colors seen during peyote trances).
Since peyote grows further north of Tenochtitlan/Mexico City, it is possible that the Native artist was not personally familiar with it. The rightmost columnar shape with a long root might be what “cactus” meant to the artist (upright cacti are more common). The scratch-like pattern might be related to the spines on cacti (the ones on peyote are like dots, barely there). Sahagún’s drawings are complicated to unravel with all the influences from Indigenous and outsider cultures, which are often at odds with one another.
What did Sahagún record about sacred mushrooms?
“Teonanácatl…grows on the plains in the grass. The head is small and round, the stem long and slender. It is bitter and burns; it burns the throat. It makes one besotted; it deranges one, troubles one. It saddens, depresses, troubles one; it makes one flee, frightens one, makes one hide. He who eats many of them sees many things which make him afraid, or make him laugh.” (Sahagún, Vol. 11, p. 130).
Once again, the friar describes it in negative terms, only one grudging “make him laugh.” (However, many report a great deal of laughing while taking mushrooms. But, as before, the experience can go two ways.) Sahagún clearly wants to discourage and condemn taking sacred mushrooms as part of the “extirpation of idolatry” (the Spanish campaign to destroy the Indigenous religion).
In the painting, you can easily see the basic mushroom shapes arrayed on a hill: three large and two small ones with the recognizable tall, vertical stalks and wider caps on top. But you can also see the little figure floating above the series of caps: he has a bird head instead of a human one, its down-curving beak suggestive of a raptor (flesh-eating bird, the beak designed to tear off flesh). The sensation of floating (as the figure is doing) and flying (as a shaman would experience during trance while in a bird self) is very common in visions (Stone, 2024: 44-45). Mushrooms are well-known for producing this effect: “Many [people who eat sacred mushrooms during special ceremonies] feel as though they are rushing through the air, riding a great bird with wide wings, whirling high in the sky … looking down on the earth far below” (Wasson 1980: 47). The ferocious-looking claws depicted on his hands and feet could represent talons of a bird, which on raptors are very large and pronounced so they can snatch and kill their prey effectively. The characteristic three digits to the front and one to the back are delineated clearly in the painting.
By the same token, they could also be the paws of a cat, with the back claw (known as the “dew claw”) across from the front ones. The spots all over his body and lighter areas on the head and belly are characteristic of a jaguar’s markings, the apex predator of the lowlands and the undisputed top animal shamans seek to turn into during trance. With both bird and cat references, the Indigenous artist points toward the shamanic value placed on having multiple animal selves, increasing one’s powers with those of various different wild animals. Animal-human dual states of being brought on by these plants were understood to the Native audience in a positive way, as animals were valued on a par or superior to humans (who are, after all, animals!). Foreign and frightening to the Spanish, the predators of the Americas as part of religious experience did not go hand in hand to them.
How do sacred plants continue to be important in modern times?
Yet, despite having to hide their ongoing beliefs in plain sight, the descendants of the Aztecs (and other Indigenous peoples) continued to practice their beliefs. Peyotl and nanahuácatl were still used by shamans who had to keep their practices secret or be punished severely. One of the most interesting ways that Indigenous peoples preserve their own cultures in the face of persecution (being hurt, killed, and suppressed by others) is to appear to have submitted and changed, but not really doing so. There is a fancy word for this: syncretism. Two very different things may take place at the same time, one set of sanctioned beliefs alongside ones that are condemned by the people in power.
After the Spanish were ousted from the Americas in the 1820s and modern countries such as Peru and Mexico were formed, some of the long-held ideas could begin to come out of hiding and be practiced again. Even today, a Catholic mass may be attended by a shaman performing his own cure quietly at the back of the church using a pisbah kotsih or cloth that is the “holder of prayers” (Rodas et al, 1940: 132). The use of the word “prayers” is syncretic. In addition, a Christian cross may appear as part of a shaman’s power items (natural items such as stones and human-made ones such as carvings, used during rituals to help the shaman concentrate on the problem and find a solution), a good example of syncretism. This (picture 11) is a recreation of the mesa (Spanish for table, meaning portable altar) of a very famous Peruvian shaman, the late Don Eduardo Calderón. Notice the cross toward the viewer’s right.
Another interesting way that ancient traditions continue -- of course with new elements thrown in after all this time -- includes the Native American Church, whose sacred beverage is made from peyotl. This work of art (picture 12) displays an artistic blend of a Christian cross in front of a stylized cactus, complete with its recognizable lobes and dots for spines. The fact that it calls itself a “church” is already an indication that the Indigenous and the Western points of view have been blended from the outset. Though founded in 1918, it took many years for the Indigenous people who consider peyotl sacred to persuade the U.S. government to allow them to consume it in a spiritual context. On one side are U.S. laws limiting the use of what it calls “dangerous drugs,” yet it upholds the concept of freedom of religion (you can be a Muslim, Christian, Jew, Buddhist, Hindu, etc. without being punished). Peyotl is still classified as a dangerous “drug,” but Native Americans went to court arguing that the freedom of religion laws took precedence. The U.S. government finally and reluctantly chose freedom over condemning “drugs” in the Native American Religious Freedom Acts of 1994 and 1996. There is an important difference between “drugs” and sacred substances, although it is mainly in how the takers view their actions (recreational or sacred). There is a sort of a parallel in Catholicism today: minors can drink small amounts of wine during a Mass, also covered under the Freedom of Religion Act, although it would be illegal for them to do so outside of church.
In another example of how religions can creatively mix together, this photograph (picture 13) of a Catholic santo (saint figure displayed in a church) from Mexico represents “El Niño” (the Christ child). With a fancy red robe, lace collar, and lots of gold all around him, plus an angelic face, if you didn’t know better he would look just like the other saints worshipped in Catholicism. However, notice the white hat that looks a lot like a mushroom cap. Plus, modern shamans call sacred mushrooms not only “flowers,” as we have already seen, but “niños,” or little ones. Once again, a traditional, shamanic person would see the saintly personification of the mushroom, while someone else just sees the child Jesus.
There was a very influential modern shaman, Doña María Sabina (Madam Mary of Wisdom, 1884-1985) (picture 14), who lived in a little town in Oaxaca, south and east of central Mexico. She healed using psilocybin mushrooms to guide her. Her words also show the combination of ways of thinking: “There is a world beyond ours, a world that is far away, near, and invisible. And there is where God lives, where the dead live, the spirits and the saints, a world where everything has already happened, and everything is known. The sacred mushroom takes me by the hand and brings me to the world where everything is known.” (https://www.stansill.com). To her, the Catholic God and saints are in the Beyond with spirits and the sacred mushroom and Doña María Sabina’s trance experiences showed her everything that is known, past, and future. She was indeed one of the long line of women shamans whose powers were legendary.
How do sacred plants now figure in Western healing?
Finally, in the last few years scientists and psychologists have been exploring their own kind of healing with sacred plants, mainly mushrooms (they are more predictable than others). Some people who are terminally ill and others that are badly depressed have been treated with mushrooms administered under controlled circumstances. They can help those suffering from fear of death because something that often happens in trances is seeing the whole life and death cycle differently, as natural and positive, not death as an ending. Death can be understood not as the terrifying unknown, but something that has been experienced. We might liken a lost soul due to “susto” to what we call depression. Not only chemical effects, and the plants transformative powers, the support of a shaman willing to go to great lengths to save the suffering person helps him or her psychologically.
There has been some good success in the early days of this current therapeutic practice and hopes for much more in the future. (Follow the link below to learn more).
It is one of the many ways in which respectful Westerners can benefit from eons of Indigenous peoples’ wisdom.
References:-
• Rodas N., Flavio, Ovidio Rodas Corzo, and Laurence F. Hawkins (1940) Chichicastenango: The Kiche Indians: Their History and Culture: Sacred Symbols of Their Dress and Textiles. Guatemala: Unión Tipografica
• Sahagún quotes: from Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain by Fray Bernardino de Sahagún: Book 11 - Earthly Things, trans. Charles E. Dibble & Arthur J.O. Anderson, School of American Research and University of Utah, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1963
• Stone, Rebecca (2024 [2011]), The Jaguar Within: Shamanic Trance in Ancient Central and South American Art, University of Texas Press
• Wasson, R. G. (1980) The wondrous mushroom: Mycolatry in Mesoamerica, New York, McGraw-Hill
Picture sources:-
• Pic 1: photo by Keeper Trout, downloaded from https://www.wildflower.org/gallery/result.php?id_image=76257
• Pic 2: photo by Mädi, downloaded from Wikipedia https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Golden_teacher_kookoskuidussa_3.jpg
• Pic 3: photo downloaded from https://collections.carlos.emory.edu/objects/16085/vessel-in-the-form-of-a-peyote-cactus?ctx=acf103d11006ebf24e410e66fc194729610f0b81&idx=0
• Pic 4: photo courtesy of the Department of Image Resources and Copyright Management of The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
• Pic 5: main photo downloaded from https://masaamerica.com/2024/02/08/xochipilli-the-symbolism-of-enrique-vela/
• Pic 6: image downloaded from Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernardino_de_Sahagún
• Pix 7, 8 (top) & 9: images from the Florentine Codex scanned from our own copy of the Club Internacional del Libro 3-volume facsimile edition, Madrid, 1994
• Pic 8 (bottom): photo downloaded from Wikimedia https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lophophorawilliamsii.jpg
• Pic 10: photo downloaded from https://www.reddit.com/r/Paws/comments/ag2a2z/huge_jaguar_paws_featuring_soft_fur_and_matching/?rdt=64151
• Pic 11: photo downloaded from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Bernhard-Woerrle/publication/351559087/figure/fig1/AS:1023005283057664@1620914874131/Die-mesa-von-Eduardo-Calderon-Zustand-von-1996-Museum-fuer-Voelkerkunde-Wien-InvNr.png
• Pic 12: image scanned from print purchased from Society6.com - https://society6.com/product/native-american-church_print
• Pic 13: image scanned from Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing and Hallucinogenic Powers by Richard Evans Schultes, Albert Hofmann & Christian Rätsch, Healing Arts Press, Rochester, Vermont, 2001
• Pic 14: photo downloaded from https://www.alchimiaweb.com/blogen/maria-sabina/
• Pic 15: image downloaded (via Pinterest.com) from https://psychcentral.com/health/all-about-psychedelic-therapy.
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Mexicolore contributor Rebecca Stone
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