The Salvia divinorum Research and Information Center - Shroomery

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We now possessed ample plants with flowers and roots, which were suitable for
botanical identification. It was apparently a representative of the genus
Salvia, a relative of the well-known meadow sage. The plants had blue flowers
crowned with a white dome, which are arranged on a panicle 20 to 30 cm long,
whose stem leaked blue.
Several days later, Natividad Rosa brought us a whole basket of leaves, for
which she was paid fifty pesos. The business seemed to have been discussed,
for two other women brought us further quantities of leaves. As it was known
that the expressed juice of the leaves is drunk in the ceremony, and this must
therefore contain the active principle, the fresh leaves were crushed on a
stone plate, squeezed out in a cloth, the juice diluted with alcohol as a
preservative, and decanted into flasks in order to be studied later in the
laboratory in Basel. I was assisted in this work by an Indian girl, who was
accustomed to dealing with the stone plate, the metate, on which the Indians
since ancient times have ground their corn by hand.
On the day before the journey was to continue, having given up all hope of
being able to attend a ceremony, we suddenly made another contact with a
curandera, one who was ready " to serve us ." A confidante of Herlinda's, who
had produced this contact, led us after nightfall along a secret path to the
hut of the curandera, lying solitary on the mountainside above the settlement.
No one from the village was to see us or discover that we were received there.
It was obviously considered a betrayal of sacred customs, worthy of
punishment, to allow strangers, whites, to take part in this. That indeed had
also been the real reason why the other healers whom we asked had refused to
admit us to a leaf ceremony. Strange birdcalls from the darkness accompanied
us on the ascent, and the barking of dogs was heard on all sides. The dogs had
detected the strangers. The curandera Consuela Garcia, a woman of some forty
years, barefoot like all Indian women in this region, timidly admitted us to
her hut and immediately closed up the doorway with a heavy bar. She bid us lie
down on the bast mats on the stamped mud floor. As Consuela spoke only
Mazatec, Herlinda translated her instructions into Spanish for us. The
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