The Salvia divinorum Research and Information Center - Shroomery

The Mushrooms of Language
of the nerves. He is illuminated with light. He is luminous. He is force, light, and rhythmic, dynamic
speech.
The world created by the woman's words, articulating her experience, was a feminine, maternal, domestic
one; the masculine discourse of the shaman evokes the natural, ontological world. "She is beseeching for
you, this poor and humble woman," said the shamaness. "Woman of huipile, says. Simple woman, says.
Woman who doesn't have anything, says." The man, conscious of his virility, announces: "I am he who
lightnings forth."
"Where the dirty gulch is, says. Where the dangerous gulch is, says. Where the big gulch is, says. Where
the fear and the terror are, says. Where runs the muddy water, says. Where runs the cold water, says." It is
a landscape of ravines, mountains, and streams, he charts with his words, of physical qualities with
emotional values: a terrain of being in its variations. He evokes the creation, the genesis of all things out
of the times of mist; he praises, marvels, wonders at the world. "God the Holy Spirit, as he made and put
together the world. Made great lakes. Made mountains. Look at the light of day. Look at how many
animals. Look at the dawn. Look at space. Great earths. Earth of God the Holy Spirit." He whistles. The
soul was originally conceived of as breath. The wind, he says, is passing through the trees of the forest.
His spirit goes flying from place to place throughout the territory of his existence, situating the various
locations of the world by naming them, calling them into being by visiting them with his words: where is,
he says, where is, to create the geography of his reality. I am, where is. He unfolds the extensions of space
around himself, points out and makes present as if he were there himself. "Where the blood of Christ is,
says. Where the blood of the diviner is, says. Where the terror and the fright of day are, says. Where the
superior lake is, says. Where the big lake is, says. There where large birds fly, says. Where fly dangerous
birds." The world is not only paradisiacal in its being there, but frightening, with perils lurking
everywhere. "Mountains of great whirlwinds. Where is the fountain of terror. Where is the fountain of
fright." And the different places are inhabited by presences, by indwelling spirits, the gnomes, the little
people. "Gnome of Cold Water, says. Gnome of Clear Water, says. Gnome of Big River, says. Big
Gnome. Gnome of Burned Mountain. Gnome of the spirit of the day. Gnome of Tlocalco Mountain.
Gnome of the Marking Post. White Gnome. Delicate Gnome."
The shaman, says Alfred Metraux, is "an individual who, in the interest of the community, sustains by
profession an intermittent commerce with the spirits or is possessed by them." (9) According to the
classical conception, derived from the ecstatic visionaries of Siberia, the shaman is a person who, by a
change of his everyday consciousness, enters the metaphysical realms of the transcendental in order to
parley with the supernatural powers and gain an understanding of the hidden reasons of events, of
sickness and all manner of difficulty. The Mazatec medicine men are therefore shamans in every sense of
the word: their means of inspiration, of opening the circuits of communication between themselves,
others, the world, and the spirits, are the mushrooms that disclose, by their psychoactive power, another
modality of conscious activity than the ordinary one. The mere eating of the mushrooms, however, does
not make a shaman. The Indians recognize that it is not to everyone that they speak; instead there are
some who have a longing for awakenment, a disposition for exploring the surrealistic dimensions of
existence, a poet's need to express themselves in a higher language than the average language of everyday
life: for them in a very particular sense the mushrooms are the medicine of their genius. Nonetheless,
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