Briana’s Quest to Read Persephone’s Quest

R. Gordon Wasson, an American who dabbled in banking and research but wasn’t proficient in any particular profession, became interested in ethnomycology on his honeymoon with Valentina Pavlovna, a Russian physician. The two were very affectionate towards each other, but had a fight just days after the wedding. Pavlovna found a ring of mushrooms, and ecstatically started harvesting them. Wasson, on the other hand, thought his wife had turned mad. He refused to eat the mushroom soup she prepared that night, and exchanged some harsh words. A few days later, when Wasson realized that his spouse was still alive, he wondered why his country taught him to fear mushrooms, while hers revered them. It was the beginning of forty years of study. Wasson worked (and smoked, I suspect) with chaps like Hoffman and Schultez, relearning lost secrets of the immense power of mushrooms.

After their slightly troubled honeymoon, Wasson and Pavlovna went to Mexico. There, they studied how indigenous people used the phyla mycota. They filmed Maria Sabina perform a velama, the first shamanic ritual ever known to be recorded. They also spoke with Aurelio Carreras, another shaman from Oaxaca. He received a vision of Wasson’s son in New York under great turmoil. Carreras could see the future, and warned that one of his family members would die within a year.

Wasson and his colleagues’ attitude was “kindly condescension.” They were professional, high-class men, and didn’t think much of fortune telling. Soon, however, they noticed how often the villagers came to the shaman for guidance. People came when a child was missing, or when someone stole their money. Somehow Carreras could see who was where and what they had done. As guessed, Wasson’s son was under stress in New York even though he was supposed to be in Boston. His second cousin passed away a few months later. There were more predictions, and even intellectual snobs like Wasson had to admit that the accuracy was uncanny.

Surprisingly, Wasson’s work in Mexico didn’t turn many heads. He and his collaborators did their best to minimize their repot on the prophetic angle of mushrooms, so people didn’t pay much attention. His next study, however, upset many religious followers.

Soma, like the “bread” in the Bible, is a metaphor for food in the Rig Veda. Wasson thought it was more than that, though. He thought soma was literally, not just symbolically, actual food. More specifically, he though it was (what else?) a mushroom. Amanita muscaria is a plant that grows all over the world. Not only did it influence the Hindu religion, it also shaped the Nahua, Algonkians, Paleosiberian, Ob Ugrian, Finnic, Lapps, Nivkhi, Samoyed, and perhaps more cultures we haven’t studied yet. He even claims that it was the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil!

Proving this would be rather difficult. In fact, I didn’t read any evidence in Persephone’s Quest that soma is the same thing as Amanita muscaria, not to mention the cause of humanity’s fall from Eden. Still, Wasson provides an interesting theory for why cows are considered sacred. Stropharia cubensis is a less powerful but still hypnotic mushroom that grows directly in cow manure. He reasons that the Santal and Ho might have thought that the animals gave birth to the mushroom, and thus praised them for it.

Wasson irritated even more people by declaring that Ancient Greeks religiously ingested ergot, the natural form of LSD. Before cultivated wine took over with its representative Dionysus, philosophers like Socrates were more than likely Eluesians. This religion, (or cult, depending on your definition,) had two rites of passage: the Lesser Mystery and the Greater Mystery. Wasson contacted my favorite chemist Mr. Albert Hoffman, and asked if Ancient Greeks had the ability to cultivate ergot. A few years later, Hoffman replied ‘yes.’ Wasson thinks that the Lesser Mystery was a pretty potent fungus, and the Greater Mystery was really potent ergot. Did Plato imagine the realm of ideas while under the influence of ‘shrooms? Quite possibly.

Wasson wouldn’t appreciate my lack of respect. He got upset when “the Timothy Learys and their ilk” classified mushrooms with words like ‘hallucinogen’ and ‘psychedelic.’ These terms, he felt, didn’t convey their sacredness. He’d rather call them ‘Mystery,’ but that phrase is so commonly used now, (“misused,” according to Wasson,) that it would be impractical. Entheogen, which loosely means ‘god generated within’, comes pretty close to describing their influence, so he tolerated it.

Wasson contributed a lot to ethnobotany, but that doesn’t stop me from not liking him. His book describes cultures from around the world, and yet every paragraph manages to be about himself. He blabs on and on about famous people he knows, respectfully referring to them as ‘doctor’ or ‘professor’, but barely mentions the shamans and indigenous tribes he’s studied. You’d think that it’d be hard to make drugs and orgies boring, but he succeeds admirably.

Another issue is the lack of proof. It’s all very speculative, with no hard evidence.
Despite this, Wasson has some intriguing theories on how plants have shaped human beliefs. Does that make religion less valid? I don’t think so. We’re so accustomed to imagining ourselves as the only creatures made in God’s image; the concept of plants having divine wisdom is intimidating. Personally, I think there are different stages of consciousness, and ingesting certain mushrooms might open our minds to them. However, I also believe that there are higher levels than the brain, and no amount of alkaloids or amines will ever take us there.