"Mushrooms, Shamanism & Lore Among the Indigenous Mazatecs of Mexico" - An Intimate Talk with Kathleen Harrison

Hey everyone! Last week I attended a talk with Kathleen Harrison called "Mushrooms, Shamanism & Lore Among the Indigenous Mazatecs of Mexico". Kathleen told stories of her journey with the Mazatec people and their culture of shamanism surrounding different plant medicines such as psilocybin mushrooms. "The Mazatec people of Oaxaca, in the mountains of southern Mexico, are renowned for their shamanism, which is inspired in part by various Psilocybe mushroom species, Salvia divinorum, and other plant species." Kathleen described "their animist perception of psilocybin mushrooms, and their inherent roles, in this ancient, spiritual, healing tradition." Source

In this post I've summarized some of Kathleen Harrison's key thoughts that stood out to me. The photos in this post were taken by Jesse Thompson at a festival I attended called Tribal Gathering, which drew together over 60 different indigenous tribes, each sharing their shamanic practices to outsiders.

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• The "underground" is a place where we hide things that we think current culture would destroy, which is why the Mazatec shamans kept mushroom knowledge underground
• The shamans passed along the knowledge to their offsprings and apprentices but were very careful about sharing with outsiders
• For a very long time, shamanic knowledge of psilocybin mushrooms was kept secret because they thought, "we've got something so precious that we are just going to sink it underground and hide it"
• Maria Sabina was the Mazatec healer who introduced shamanism and psilocybin mushrooms to the West
• The West began to shine light into the underground, and that was when the transition from secret knowledge to exposed knowledge occurred, however this knowledge was used without training and experience
• The knowledge of plant medicines and the practice of shamanism began to "sporulate"
• Then there was the hippie invasion in the 60's and 70's that flooded the area of the Mazatec people and exploited and commoditized the cubensis mushroom
• The West didn't have a sense of ceremony surrounding the mushrooms, it was still riding the LSD revolution of "everything goes"

• There are 8-10 shamanic plant species in a region, and each shaman specializes in 1 to 3 species
• For example, morning glory seeds are psychoactive through fungus and are used to find and see loved ones who are lost
• Salvia is another plant medicine that the shamans work with
• No 2 species of mushrooms have the same amount of alkaloids, and the alkaloids affect human reactions to the mushrooms
• Disrespect leads to illness and violence
• In Mazatec culture, when illness and violence occur a society is out of balance
• In order to return to balance, they go back to the medicine of psilocybin mushrooms, which is their healing process
• Mushrooms give them access to the knowledge that is whole and the knowing of the universe that is unseen
• Mushrooms open the door to talk to the divine

• The Pajaritos mushroom of the Oaxaca region cannot be cultivated, rather it pops up where lightening has struck
• The mushrooms carry the wisdom of the flash of energy making contact with the ground, and it is this energy that one takes in when injesting this mushroom
• If you find the pajaritos mushroom you are meant to take it in ceremony that very night with other community members
• The ceremony includes communal gratitude and communal grieving, and sometimes there are collective visions

• Tobacco is one of the main gateways to the spirit world for the Mazatec people
• They do not smoke it
• Mostly, they pray to the tobacco plant and grind it up and put it in altars
• The plant holds a protective energy that the shamans pray for so that they can create a safe space
• They create this safe space for people in ceremony taking mushrooms, because these people are putting themselves in a vulnerable space when ingesting psilocybin mushrooms
• A Mazatec shaman specializing in mushroom ceremonies said that he could not do his work if it were not for the tobacco plant

• Seeing the world as animated and interconnected was a worldview held by many cultures that has been forgotten by us through the industrial revolution
• We should come into ceremony of plant medicine in order to be a good member in this huge network of beings
• Can we change our worldview through ingesting another species such as mushrooms?
• Those of us who have ingested psilocybin mushrooms are becoming like the mycelium network by sharing, expanding, and communicating information
• A Mazatec shaman believes that destiny is the potential of our life that the universe offers to us, but it is our choice to walk this path or not, and psilocybin mushrooms can help us tune into what our paths offer and can remind us to stay on these paths

• We have built a road to the Mazatec culture, but roads flow both ways
• We want mushrooms, we want help and healing, and they wanted other things such as education for their kids
• The parts of our culture that we have allowed to flow into their culture have been harming - the industrial revolution, diaspora of the young generation, a loss of culture, and a changing of values
• Does gnosis (knowledge) travel and evolve as it moves?
• How will this tradition of Mazatec shamanism and plant work continue to evolve?
• Every village has a knoweldge holder, but these knoweldge holders no longer have anyone from the younger generation to pass knowledge to
• Instead, they pass the knowledge onto foreigners like Kathleen
• What can we do with this gift of knowledge and what can we gift back?

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This is an amazing video with Kathleen Harrison for those of you who want to dive more in depth into her work and theories!