The story of how psilocybin mushrooms came to the attention of the modern world is, in significant part, the story of one man and one trip to Oaxaca. In June 1955, R. Gordon Wasson — an amateur ethnobotanist and vice president of J.P. Morgan — became the first outsider to participate in a Mazatec mushroom ceremony. The events of that night, and what followed, set in motion the modern history of psilocybin.
The story is more complicated than the heroic-discovery framing it usually receives. It involves real ethnographic work, a famous Life magazine article that altered the trajectory of an indigenous tradition, and consequences for the people whose ceremony Wasson documented that he did not anticipate.
Before Wasson: What the West Knew
By the mid-twentieth century, virtually nothing about Mesoamerican mushroom use was widely known in the West. Sixteenth-century Spanish chroniclers had documented the existence of teonanácatl, “the flesh of the gods” — mushrooms used by the Aztecs in religious contexts. The Spanish suppressed the practice as part of broader religious persecution. By the time anthropologists in the early twentieth century began to take an interest in the topic, most assumed the tradition had been entirely lost.
A series of botanical and anthropological reports beginning in the 1930s suggested otherwise. Robert Weitlaner, an Austrian-Mexican engineer with ethnographic interests, witnessed mushroom use in Oaxaca in 1936. The Harvard botanist Richard Evans Schultes traveled to the region in 1938 and identified some of the species being used. But these reports remained largely within specialist circles and did not reach a broader audience.
The Wassons’ Project
Robert Gordon Wasson and his wife Valentina, a pediatrician of Russian origin, had developed a deep interest in the cultural history of mushrooms — what they called “ethnomycology.” Their interest was driven partly by Valentina’s observation that Russians and other Slavic peoples seemed to have a markedly different relationship with mushrooms than English-speakers did. Where the English-speaking world tended toward “mycophobia” — suspicion and distaste — Slavic cultures had a long affectionate engagement with fungi.
The Wassons spent years investigating this divide and, in the process, became aware of the Mesoamerican reports. They began traveling to Oaxaca in the early 1950s, attempting to make contact with people who might still practice the old ceremonies.
The Velada with María Sabina
In June 1955, Wasson and his colleague Allan Richardson were in the Mazatec town of Huautla de Jiménez, in the Sierra Mazateca of Oaxaca. Through local contacts, they were introduced to María Sabina, a curandera — a traditional healer — who held all-night healing ceremonies, called veladas, in which she and the participants consumed mushrooms.
On the night of June 29-30, 1955, Sabina conducted a velada in which she allowed Wasson and Richardson to consume the mushrooms alongside her. The ceremony took place in her home, in the dark, accompanied by her chants and prayers. Wasson later described the experience as among the most profound of his life. He believed he was the first outsider — at least in modern times — to have participated in such a ceremony as a full participant rather than as a passive observer.
The accuracy of “first” is debatable; other Westerners had certainly observed Mesoamerican mushroom use before, and the question of who was first to participate as opposed to observe depends on how the criteria are defined. What is not debatable is what Wasson did next.
”Seeking the Magic Mushroom”
In May 1957, Life magazine published Wasson’s first-person account of the Huautla velada under the title “Seeking the Magic Mushroom.” The article, illustrated with photographs by Richardson, ran across seventeen pages and reached a mass American audience. It was, by the standards of mid-century journalism, an extraordinary piece of writing — vivid, respectful in tone, and focused on the spiritual dimensions of the experience.
The article also did something Sabina and her community had not anticipated. It made Huautla a destination. Within months of publication, foreigners began arriving in the village seeking the mushrooms. The trickle became a flood through the 1960s as the counterculture expanded. Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and Mick Jagger were rumored to have visited; many of the rumors were probably untrue, but the presence of large numbers of seekers was real.
For Sabina and the Mazatec community, the consequences were profound and largely negative. The ceremony Sabina practiced was not designed for tourists; it was a healing tradition embedded in a specific cultural and religious context. The arrival of outsiders in large numbers, often with little understanding or respect, disrupted the practice and exposed Sabina herself to social and economic pressures.
She was eventually arrested by Mexican authorities, her house was burned by some in her community who blamed her for the disruption, and she lived her later years in poverty. She told subsequent visitors that, after the foreigners came, the mushrooms had lost their power.
Wasson’s Legacy
Wasson continued his ethnomycological work for decades, publishing extensively on the cultural history of psychoactive mushrooms and other plants. He was instrumental in introducing Western researchers — including Albert Hofmann, who synthesized psilocybin from samples Wasson provided — to the chemistry and pharmacology of the substance.
His scholarly contributions were substantial. His ethnomycological method, treating cultural attitudes toward fungi as a serious object of study, was influential. His introduction of psilocybin to Western science enabled an entire field of research.
His role in the disruption of the tradition he documented is also part of his legacy, and one he came to regret. He acknowledged in later writings that he had not anticipated the consequences of the Life article, and that he wished he had handled some aspects of the disclosure differently.
What This History Asks of Us
The Wasson story is an early case of a question that the modern psychedelic field continues to grapple with: how to engage with traditions that originated outside the West without distorting or destroying them in the process. The honest assessment is that Wasson’s project — well-intentioned, carefully executed, and undeniably scholarly — nevertheless contributed to the disruption of an indigenous practice. The intentions and the outcomes were not aligned.
Reading the Wasson record now, it is possible to admire his work and his sincerity while also recognizing the limits of his foresight. The lessons of that history remain relevant to anyone working at the intersection of indigenous knowledge and outside research interest.