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Religion and Psychoactive Sacraments:
An Entheogen Chrestomathy
Thomas B. Roberts, Ph.D. and Paula Jo Hruby, Ed.D.
Author Index | Title Index
Maria Sabina and Her Mazatec Mushroom Velada.
Wasson, R. Gordon; Cowan, George; Cowan, Florence; Rhodes, Willard. (1974).
New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
ISBN: 0-15-157202-X
Description: Deluxe first
edition, limited to 250 copies, xxxiv + 284 pages. Gilt page tops.
Ethno-mycological Studies No. 3 of the Botanical Museum of Harvard
University, A Helen and Kurt Wolff
Book. The deluxe edition consists of the following items in a
sturdy box covered by navy blue cloth: (1) the main book in a
protective clear plastic cover, (2) an inner box also covered
in navy blue cloth and stamped in gold Maria Sabina sings her
Mushroom Velada. The inner, phonograph record box contains
(a) a set of 4 double-sided phonograph records titled Maria
Sabina sings her Mazatec Mushroom Velada, (b) a book
included within the record box titled Maria Sabina and her
Mazatec Mushroom Velada * Musical Score to accompany the text
and records. Colophon page at the back of the book reads,
"Of this book 250 numbered copies have been printed by the
Stamperia Valdonega, Verona, in Dante type face, on Magnani mould
made paper, and bound by Giovanni De Stefanis in Milan, copies
bearing numbers 1 to 200 are offered for sale and 50 copies numbered
from I to L are for private circulation only. March MCMLXXIV."
[Colophon]. Photographs by Allen B. Richardson.
Contents: Prologue, phonetics,
transcript and translation of Velada by George M. and Florence
H. Cowan, photographic sequence, the Mazatec language, musicological
notes by Willard Rhodes, acknowledgements, analytic index to the
transcription, general index.
Note: The cover design
is taken from a huipul hand-woven on a backstrap loom in
Ayautla, in the Sierra Mazateca. First trade edition includes:
(1) a boxed set of 4 audiocassettes titled Four Cassettes recording
Maria Sabina's Mushroom Velada and (2) Maria Sabina and
her Mushroom Velada * Musical Score to accompany the text and
records. The ISBN of the trade edition is the same.
Excerpt(s): We here offer
to interested readers the text of a shamanic ceremony performed
on the night of 12-13 July 1958 by Maria Sabina in the Mazatec
village of Huautla de Jimenez, in the Sierra Madre Oriental, at
the northernmost corner of the State of Oxaxca, in Mexico. Maria
Sabina was supported on this occasion by her daughter Maria Carreras,
also an accomplished curandera but of a lower category,
and by Aurelio Carreras, who though a
genuine curandero was on a much humbler level. We call
the session a velada, a `night vigil', which
is how those Mazatecs who speak Spanish refer to it. We give the
complete text of the session in Mazatec language, the translation
into English and Spanish, linguistic and musicological commentaries,
the musical notation of the chanting and singing, the sound track
of the session, ethnographic notes prompted by the text, and a
photographic record of the events of that night. Except for us
who were busy with tape recorded and camera and two of the Indians,
all the adults including the officiants were under the potent
influence of the divine inebriant, a species of Psilocybe. In
our sound track nothing is deleted.
Never before has a shamanic performance in the New
World been presented with anything like the completeness of this
one. (page IX)
Compilation copyright © 1995 – 2001 CSP
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