The Salvia divinorum Research and Information Center - Shroomery

insearch
expectation of a baby. He received the comforting information that mother and
child were well. Then again came singing and prayer and manipulations with the
candles on the "altar table" and on the floor, over the smoking basin.
When the ceremony was at an end, the curandera asked us to rest yet a while
longer in prayer on our bast mats. Suddenly a thunderstorm burst out. Through
the cracks of the beam walls, lightning flashed into the darkness of the hut,
accompanied by violent thunderbolts, while a tropical downpour raged, beating
on the roof. Consuela voiced apprehension that we would not be able to leave
her house unseen in the darkness. But the thunderstorm let up before daybreak,
and we went down the mountainside to our corrugated iron barracks, as
noiselessly as possible by the light of flashlights, unnoticed by the
villagers, but dogs again barked from all sides.
Participation in this ceremony was the climax of our expedition. It brought
confirmation that the hojas de la Pastora were used by the Indians for the
same purpose and in the same ceremonial milieu as teonanacatl, the sacred
mushrooms. Now we also had authentic plant material, not only sufficient for
botanical identification, but also for the planned chemical analysis. The
inebriated state that Gordon Wasson and my wife had experienced with the hojas
had been shallow and only of short duration, yet it had exhibited a distinctly
hallucinogenic character.
On the morning after this eventful night we took leave of San Jose Tenango.
The guide, Guadelupe, and the two fellows Teodosio and Pedro appeared before
our barracks with the mules at the appointed time. Soon packed up and mounted,
our little troop then moved uphill again, through the fertile landscape
glittering in the sunlight from the night's thunderstorm. Returning by way of
Santiago, toward evening we reached our last stop in Mazatec country, the
capital Huautla de Jimenez.
From here on, the return trip to Mexico City was made by automobile. With a
final supper in the Posada Rosaura, at the time the only inn in Huautla, we
took leave of our Indian guides and of the worthy mules that had carried us so
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