Description:
In our lecture we will concentrate on the historical and archeological data collected by historians, anthropologists and other specialists about the psychoactive mushrooms of the genus Psilocybe in Central America.
A long time span from Aztec culture to the XX century will show us the everlasting, but different, use of those mushrooms in religious to shamanistic or private use.
A feature of great interest is the use of psychoactive mushrooms in collective ceremonies as for the ancient spanish chronicles, for example, as the one illustrated by Diego Durán for the coronation of the king Montezuma II.
Also outstanding are the images of the mixtec "Codex Vindobonensis", an illustrated manuscript copied from a now lost original texts, showing complex narratives, of difficult interpretation, involving mysterious places and entities crowned by mushrooms, seemingly spirits or deities of the mushroom itself.
A wealth of objects and statues showing mushrooms and other psychoactive plants will be shown and discussed: it will also give us the sense of an ancient wide integration of the psychedelic experience in a community and cultural setting, a feature developed in such a degree only in central and south america.
Of particular interest is the modern documentation, taken by Gordon Wasson and other scholars, of the shamanic setting and use of the mushrooms by perhaps the most famous shaman of the modern era, Maria Sabina from Huautla de Jimenez, (Oaxaca) Mexico. The most relevant details of the "veladas", the mushroom ceremonies, will be given.
Link to Modem Page: Massimo Izzo at Modem website
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