One of the most remarkable pieces of evidence testifying to the exalted status conferred upon the psilocybin mushroom by the Aztecs is in the form of an early sixteenth-century statue of the god Xochipilli, or the “Prince of Flowers.” The significance of this magnificent piece of art was first recognized by Wasson, and thereafter the real message that it conveyed became glaringly apparent.
The statue represents a cross-legged male figure—the god Xochipilli—caught up in an ecstatic trance. There can be no mistake. The very essence of ecstasy has been captured in stone. The arms, legs, and base of this stone-carved ecstatic prince carry stylized engravings of flowers, and on each of the four sides of the base of the statue are carved mushroom motifs. These mushroom motifs also appear upon the subject so enraptured.
Until these carvings came under the attentive gaze of Wasson, they had never been botanically identified. Wasson realized that the stylized flowers were the key to deciphering the true meaning of the Aztec statue and, moreover, the very meaning of “flowers” in classic Aztec literature. As soon as Wasson intimated the statue’s full raison d’A?tre, he immediately contacted noted ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes at Harvard’s Botanical Museum, who was the obvious man to consult regarding a botanical analysis of the motifs.
Schultes was subsequently confident enough to identify the carved “flowers” as
Wasson believed that previous ignorance of the statue’s true nature reflected the aforementioned widespread failing of historians to acknowledge the important role that psilocybin mushrooms and other sacred flora played in Mesoamerican history. In
It appears then that the Spanish clergy were ultimately unsuccessful in silencing the claims made by their subdued and conquered subjects; messages in stone speak far louder than words. Xochipilli provides rock-hard testimony for the Aztecs’ sacred bond with the natural environment and its array of potent botanical resources. What exactly the Aztecs experienced through psilocybin remains debatable, although we can be sure that their visions were vivid and convincing enough for them to regard the mushroom as a link to divine realms of being, no less than the manifestation of God’s Flesh on the Earth.
Wasson also went on to study pre-Conquest Aztec poetry written in the native Nahuatl language. When this poetry first became accessible to the West, it had been noted that “flowers” were referred to often. Peculiarly often in fact. Moreover, the oft-mentioned “flowers” were seldom, if ever, distinguished from one another. Like the statue of Xochipilli, Wasson realized that the “flowers” referred to visionary agents, most notably the psilocybin mushroom.
For instance, the poetry speaks of “the flowers that inebriate,” “the joyous flowers,” “the flowers without roots,” “the precious flowers,” and so on. Careful study shows that Nahuatl poetry is teeming with embellished references to “flowers.” This only makes sense if we accept that the Aztecs worshipped the mushroom and other psychedelic agents because of their transcendental psychological effects and set their praises to poetry. As in the sculpting of the “Prince of Flowers,” the Aztec poets who wrote of “flowers” were producing their art from direct experience, their works channeling their deific respect.
As a final testimony to the Aztecs’ use of psilocybin, mushroom motifs are also found in pre-Conquest codices (these codices are the pictorial records of the Aztecs themselves and not those made by Spanish historians), in particular within the pages of the Vienna Codex, a historical document rich in pictographic information, including a section on ancient myths, aptly named the “Origin of Things.” One page of this codex depicts the famous Mesoamerican god Quetzalcoatl being tutored in the use of mushrooms. There is no ambiguity in the depictions—an entire page clearly portrays ritual mushroom use.
Psychedelic Temples
Prior to the Aztecs’ rise to dominance and before the time of the Toltecs’ reign, the religious core of pre- Columbian Mesoamerica was the prosperous city of Teotihuacan, located in the Valley of Mexico, near modern-day Mexico City. The city dates from 150 B.C. to 750 A.D., but little is known about the Teotihuacans, although Aztec legends equate this location with the birthplace of their deities. Its very name was given by the Aztecs who had discovered it six hundred years after its mysterious collapse and means “Place of the Gods” in Nahuatl.
Due to the immense scale of Teotihuacan’s religious architecture, which includes the spectacular Pyramids of the Sun and Moon and highly sophisticated wall paintings rife with ornate serpent motifs, it can be reasonably assumed that it was the center of an important religious cult. The overt presence of serpent motifs on the architecture is a strong indication of religious worship, since the pantheon of almost all Mesoamerican cultures includes mythical serpentine entities, such as the feathered serpent god Quetzalcoatl. Elaborately stylized serpents were used both to represent gods and to symbolize divine power penetrating the mundane world. Their fearsome presence on and around temples signified that the temple was a sacred place to be guarded from profane intrusion.
Of most concern here are the style and content of the numerous mural paintings that adorn most of Teotihuacan’s temples and shrines. In these murals we once more find depictions of various flowers, one of which is the morning glory (either
Whether mushrooms are depicted in the temple murals is a somewhat contentious issue. While Wasson affirmed this and pointed out what he considered to be mushroom symbols, these same motifs have been identified by other Mesoamerican scholars as representing the water lily. Although various related African species of water lily are thought to be psychoactive, it has not been firmly established whether the New World variety are equally as potent. Either way, Wasson conjectured that the various temples of Teotihuacan, decorated as they are with depictions of psychedelic plants (the morning glory at least), were sacred sites where the ritual ingestion of entheogens took place.
Secret Psychedelic Legacies
The concept that indigenous visionary agents have been ritually consumed by ancient cultures in order to induce theophany and religious solidarity should come as no surprise. In ancient Greece the classic Eleusinian Mystery cult echoes the inferred scenario occurring at Teotihuacan. Mystery rites took place each year at Eleusis, near Athens, centered on the drinking of some secret potion that granted a transcendental vision to initiates. The entire sacred ceremony was held within the guarded confines of a hallowed temple. Recent theories have proposed that this Eleusinian drink was made from barley exposed to ergot. This would mean that it contained entheogenic substances because ergot, a tiny plant fungus that grows on wheat and barley, contains a number of LSD-related compounds. Although this psychedelic scenario has not been confirmed and remains merely an engaging hypothesis (ergot is also potentially toxic), the point is that the potion was almost certain to have contained some form of psychedelic alkaloid with the capacity to engender the type of mystical experience attested to in Greek historical literature. Wasson assumed that Teotihuacan was a Mesoamerican equivalent to Eleusis, that is, that both were sacred places where visionary agents were ritually administered.
