BREAKING THE MUSHROOM CODE

            

   Carl de Borhegyi   

The following research presents visual evidence that both the hallucinogenic Amanita muscaria mushroom and the Psilocybin mushroom were worshiped and venerated as gods in ancient Mesoamerica. These sacred mushrooms were so cleverly encoded in the religious art of the New World, "Hidden in Plain Sight" that prior to this study they virtually escaped detection. 

 

Both the hallucinogenic Amanita muscaria mushroom, also known as the fly agaric, or toadstool, and the Psilocybin mushroom are discussed in relation to their veneration in Mesoamerica and their associations with underworld sacrifice and the planet Venus. The first mushrooms used were Amanita muscaria and, in later times, species of Psilocybe. Use of the former is a heritage from Siberia where this mushroom has an ancient history. Use of various species of Psilocybin became common in Mesoamerica during the Post Classic period due to the scarcity and limited range of the Amanita muscaria. Worship of both species of mushrooms is discussed in relation to their association with the planet Venus, the Sun, the god Quetzalcoatl his Mesoamerican counterparts, and their numerous avatars. Also discussed is the relation of divine mushrooms with the ballgame, warfare and human sacrifice. The parallelism between the use, veneration and depiction of sacred mushrooms in Mesoamerican culture and the worship of Soma in Asia is also discussed.

"The term Mesoamerica (Paul Kirchhoff, 1942) defines those areas of Mexico and Central America that witnessed the development of advanced pre-Columbian civilizations such as the Olmec, Zapotec, Maya, Teotihuacano, Toltec, Mixtec, and Aztec, all of which shared a number of interrelated cultural traits involving religious concepts, ritualism, architecture, arts, and crafts, hieroglyphic writing, and calendrics" (Charles Gallenkamp, 1959, revised 1985 p.3) 

 

My study, was inspired by a theory first proposed over fifty years ago by my father, the late Maya archaeologist Stephan F. de Borhegyi, better known simply as Borhegyi. His research had led him to believe that hallucinogenic mushroom rituals were a central aspect of Maya religion.

 

                  

                     

Borhegyi based his theory on his identification of a mushroom stone cult that came into existence in the Guatemala Highlands and Pacific coastal area around 1000 B.C. along with a trophy head cult associated with human sacrifice and the Mesoamerican ballgame. He supported this theory with a solid body of archaeological and historical evidence, much of it based on the discovery of a number of small carved stone figures in the form of mushrooms, as illustrated below...                        

                                         

         (Photograph of Maya mushroom stones by Dr. Richard Rose reproduced from Stamets, 1996)

 

              Dr. Stephan F. de Borhegyi.....

 "My assignment for the so-called mushroom cult, earliest 1,000 B.C., is based on the excavations of  Kidder and  Shook at the Verbena cemetery at Kaminaljuyu. The mushroom stone found in this Pre-Classic grave, discovered in Mound E-III-3, has a circular groove on the cap. There are also a number of yet unpublished mushroom stone specimens in the Guatemalan Museum from Highland Guatemala where the pottery association would indicate that they are Pre-Classic. In each case the mushroom stone fragments has a circular groove on the top. Mushroom stones found during the Classic and Post-Classic periods do not have circular grooves. This was the basis on which I prepared the chart on mushroom stones which was then subsequently published by the Wassons. Based on Carbon 14 dates and stratigraphy, some of these  Pre-Classic finds can be dated as early as 1,000 B.C. The reference is in the following".....(see Shook, E.M. & Kidder, A.V., 1952. Mound E-III-3, Kaminaljuyu, Guatemala; Contributions to American Anthropology & History No. 53 from Publ. 596, Carnegie Institution of Washington, D.C. letter from de Borhegyi to Dr. Robert Ravicz, MPM archives 1 December 1960 )

 

I am pleased that now, after more than a half century of virtual denial by the anthropological community, I can  present undeniable visual evidence of the existence "Hidden in Plain Sight" of the centrality of hallucinogenic substances, and in particular two varieties of hallucinogenic mushrooms, in Maya religion and iconography. The two mushrooms most illustrated were the  Amanita muscaria mushroom and the psilocybin mushroom.     

Above left, "hidden In plain sight,"  the ceramic Precolumbian mask depicts the transformation of a human into a "were-jaguar," a half-human, half-jaguar deity first described and named in 1955 by archaeologist Matthew W. Stirling. The were-jaguar appears in the art of the ancient Olmecs as early as 1200 B.C.  I believe this mask symbolizes the soul's journey into the underworld where it will undergo ritual decapitation, jaguar transformation, and spiritual resurrection.  An Amanita muscaria mushroom (actual specimen shown in the photo on the right) is encoded into the head and nose of the human side, while the left half of the mask depicts the effect of the Amanita mushroom as resulting in were-jaguar transformation. The were-jaguar eventually came to be worshiped and venerated throughout Central and South America.  Mexican art historian, Miguel Covarrubias, demonstrated that later images of Quetzalcoatl, feathered serpents, and rain gods like the Mexican god Tlaloc were all derived from the Olmec were-jaguar associated with sacrifice and the underworld (Miller and Taube, 1993:185)

(photo above by Prof. Gian Carlo Bojani Director of the International Museum of Ceramics in Faenza, Italy) (Photo of Amanita muscaria by Richard Fortey)   

 

I believe the key to this entire belief system lies, as proposed by the late ethno-mycologist, Robert Gordon Wasson, in early man's discovery of the mind-altering effects of various hallucinatory substances. The accidental ingestion of these hallucinogenic substances could very well have provided the spark that lifted the mind and imagination of these early humans above and beyond the mundane level of daily existence to contemplation of another reality.

 

I have found an abundance of archaeological evidence supporting the proposition that Mesoamerica, the high cultures of South America, and Easter Island shared, along with many other New World cultures, elements of a Pan American belief system so ancient that many of the ideas may have come from Asia to the New World with the first human settlers.

 

 

Quoting the late R. Gordon Wasson... 

"I believe the whole corpus of surviving pre-conquest artistic expression should?be reviewed on the chance that divine mushrooms figuring therein have hitherto escaped detection?.  (from Thomas, 1993 p.644 11-17n)     

     

This study is still undergoing editing and peer review. Scholars will find an extensive bibliography of works consulted and cited at the top of  the page.   

I strongly encourage all viewers seeking an overall idea of the subject matter to scroll quickly through the different images and pages, and then return to the subject matter of interest. 

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any copyrighted work on this page is distributed under fair use without profit or payment for non-profit research and educational purposes only.  

     

                      

                   

The ancient cultures of the Nahua and Maya developed similar ideologies and mythologies from the same Olmec roots. The sacred mushroom ritual shared by these cultures was intended,  I believe, to establish direct communication between Earth and Heaven (sky) in order to unite man with god. As told in the Popol Vuh, the sacred book of the ancient Quiche Maya, the sun-god of the Maya, Kinich Ajaw, and his Aztec equivalent, Huitzilopochtli, would be extinguished in the underworld if not nourished with the blood of human hearts. Quetzalcoatl's essence in the world as a culture hero was to establish this communication. Quetzalcoatl taught that mankind must eat the sacred mushroom and make blood sacrifices in order to achieve immortality.

 

                            BACKGROUND TO MUSHROOM STUDY    

My father, who I will now refer to simply as Borhegyi, emigrated to the United States from war-torn Hungary in 1948. Although he had recently graduated with a Ph.D. degree in Egyptology, Classical, and Early Christian archaeology from the Peter Pazmany University in Budapest, he chose to open new fields of endeavor for himself in New World archaeology.  To his very good fortune, he was taken under the wing of Dr. Alfred Vincent Kidder, one of the great pioneers in New World archaeology. Through Dr. Kidder, and the Carnegie Institution of Washington, with which Kidder was affiliated, Borhegyi secured a grant from the Viking Fund (later known as the Wenner-Gren Foundation) to catalog the extensive artifact collections stored in the basement of the Guatemalan National Museum.    

While at work on these collections he came across a number of small, unprovenanced carved stone effigy figures that resembled mushrooms to such a degree that they were called "mushroom stones."

 

At the time, however, no one seriously thought that they represented real mushrooms. Some of the small mushroom-shaped sculptures were plain and realistic, others were adorned with human and animal effigies.  While only a few had been found in the course of  archaeological investigation,  there was sufficient evidence on specimens excavated by archaeologists working with the Carnegie Institution of Washington  research team to enable Borhegyi to classify and date them typologically. The majority had been found in Guatemala in the highlands or on the Pacific Piedmont--Maya areas along the intercontinental mountain range which were heavily influenced in Preclassic times by the powerful Olmec culture (Borhegyi, 1957, 1959, 1961, 1963).
 

Borhegyi found the figures so intriguing that he prepared a monograph for submission to the C.I.W.s "Notes on Middle American Archaeology and Ethnology". Before submitting it, however, he sent it off to be critiqued by archaeologist Gordon Ekholm at the American Museum of Natural History.  Ekholm, in turn, showed it to his friend R. Gordon Wasson, an amateur mycologist who was looking for archaeological evidence of ancient hallucinogenic mushroom rites in Mesoamerica.  Wasson wrote to Borhegyi and within months the two embarked on what became an intense and fruitful collaboration that lasted until the end of Borhegyi's tragically short life.

In 1957 Wasson included Borhegyi's mushroom stone monograph as an addendum in his monumental book  Mushrooms, Russia and History. In the monograph Borhegyi identified the existence of an ancient mushroom stone cult that could have begun as early as 1000 B.C.E. and lasted as late as 900 C.E.  He noted that many of the mushroom stones, especially those dating between 1000 B.C.E. and 100 C.E. depicted images of toads, as well as snakes, birds, jaguars, monkeys, and humans. The majority of the images appeared to emerge from the stem of the mushroom (Wasson and Wasson, 1957, Borhegyi de, S.F., 1957b.)

 Quoting Ethno-Mycologist Robert Gordon Wasson...

"In examining these mushroomic artifacts we must keep in mind that they were not made for our enlightenment. They were iconic shorthand summarizing a whole bundle of associations ,--whatever those associations were. The Christian cross is to be found in endless shapes, including the "effigy cross" or crucifix, and all stem back to a complex of emotions, beliefs, and religious longings. The crucifix would reveal to an archaeologist eons hence more than, say, a Maltese cross. So with the mushroom stones, the subject matter of the effigies holds the secret".

 

 

 

 

Some of the earliest mushroom stones in Mesoamerica which date to Olmec times 1200 BCE to 400 BCE, bear toad or frog images carved on their base. The discovery of numerous toad bones in Olmec burials at San Lorenzo suggests that the Olmecs may have used other mind-altering substances, such as hallucinogenic toad toxin, in various ritual practices (Coe, 1994:69; Furst, 1990: 28; Grube, 2001:294). Certain toads discard a toxin from the skin when touched, that can be dried and can be smoked or taken orally (Eva Hopman, 2008).

Above is a Type C mushroom stone (Borhegyi de, S.F., 1957b.), depicting a mushroom (toadstool), emerging from the mouth of an upended toad. The late Maya art historian Tatiana Proskouriakoff demonstrated that in Mayan hieroglyphs the upended toad represents the symbol of rebirth (Coe, 1993:196)

Gordon Wasson was the first to call attention to the pervasiveness of the toad and it's association with the term toadstool, with the intoxicating or poisonous mushrooms in Europe. Wasson noted the recurrence throughout the northern hemisphere of a toad deity associated with the entheogenic mushroom (Wasson 1980, p.184-185).

          Ethno-Mycologist  R. Gordon Wasson...

"In the association of these ideas we strike a vein that must go back to the remotest times in Eurasia, to the Stone Age: the link between the toad, the female sex organs, and the mushroom, exemplified in the Mayan languages and the mushroom stones of the Maya Highlands. Man must have brought this association across the Bering Strait (or the land bridge that replaced it in the ice ages) as part of his intellectual luggage.?

 

Mushroom stones bearing toad images carved on their base have been found throughout Chiapas, Mexico, the Guatemala highlands, and along the Pacific slope as far south as El Salvador. (Borhegyi, 1957, 1961, 1963, 1965a, 1965b)

The historical evidence came to Borhegyi's attention through his extensive correspondence with  Wasson.  Wasson  pointed him toward reports of ritual use of hallucinogenic mushrooms among the Aztecs in a number of Spanish chronicles written shortly after the Spanish conquest. Wasson also directed him toward reports of the existence of modern-day ritual use of hallucinogenic mushrooms in various parts of Mexico and, in particular, among the Mazatec Indians of Oaxaca. Together, Borhegyi and Wasson surmised that: If the mushroom stones did, indeed, represent a mushroom cult, then the mushroom itself was an iconographic metaphor, and the mushroom stone effigies could supply the clues necessary to decipher their meaning.     

There is ample evidence that the mushroom stone cult lasted well into the Colonial Era. According to testimony recorded in 1554 in the Colonial document entitled El Titulo de Totonicapan, (Land Title of Totonicapan), the Quiché Maya revered mushroom stones as symbols of power and rulership, and before them they performed rituals (of blood sacrifice) to pierce and cut up their bodies. (Sachse, 2001, 186).

 

"  The lords used these symbols of rule, which came from where the sun rises, to pierce and cut up their bodies (for the blood sacrifice). There were nine mushroom stones for the Ajpop and the Ajpop Q'amja, and in each case four, three, two, and one staffs with the Quetzal's feathers and green feathers, together with garlands, the Chalchihuites precious stones, with the sagging lower jaw and the bundle of fire for the Temezcal steam bath." 

 

Borhegyi noted the significance of the number nine, with a cache offering of nine miniature mushroom stones, from the verbena cemetery at Kaminaljuyu Guatemala, and a group of nine deities who were the nine lords of the night, and gods of the underworld (de Borhegyi, S.F.  1961 p.501)
  

Describing the contents of the Kaminaljuyu cache, Borhegyi wrote...

"The cache of nine miniature mushroom stones {depicted below} demonstrates considerable antiquity for the "mushroom-stone cult," and suggests a possible association with the nine lords of the night and gods of the underworld, as well as the possible existence of a nine-day cycle and nocturnal count in Preclassic times. The association of the miniature mushroom stones with the miniature metates and manos greatly strengthens the possibility that at least in some areas in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica metates were used to grind the sacred hallucinatory mushrooms to prepare them for ceremonial consumption." (de Borhegyi 1961: 498-504)

 

 

The nine miniature mushroom stones in the Nottebohm collection, depicted above, all have a circular groove around the base of the cap, and are of Early and Late Preclassic period (1000 B.C.-A.D. 200). 

The late archaeologist and epigrapher David H. Kelley, noted the similarity between the Mesoamerican calendar and the Hindu lunar mansions. He saw the resemblance between the Mesoamerican cycle of the Nine Lords of the Night, to the Hindu planetary week of nine days, and noted the parallel belief of four previous world ages and their cataclysmic destruction (Susan Milbrath 1999, p.292).  Unfortunately for researchers Kelley's  work was often criticized and ignored for his insistence to carry on his studies of long range cultural contacts via trans-Pacific and trans-Atlantic voyages. Kelley also  noted the striking similarities between the Late Chow decorative styles of China of 700-200 B.C.E. and those of the El Tajin culture of Veracruz, Mexico, of A.D. 500-1000 (Stephen C. Jett 1971, p.44) (Heine-Geldern, 1959a).  

In Mesoamerica the Nine Lords of the Night, were responsible for guiding the Sun, into the underworld to be sacrificed by ritual decapitation and reborn again as baby jaguar, the new born Sun God. The word K'uh in Classic Mayan glyphs was assigned to the monkey god and in Mayan glyphs his monkey-like profile was used to describe "holy" or "sacred" a word referring to "divinity" or "god"  (Coe 2001:109).   

    

In Maya religion the monkey represents the first of the Nine Lords of the Night or Underworld. Called the Bolon Ti Ku, in Yucatec, the first god associated with re-birth was the Monkey (GI) and Quetzalcoatl (G9) was the last,  associated with death, decapitation and completion. The word K'uh in Classic Maya glyphs was assigned to the monkey god and in glyphs his monkey profile was used to describe "holy" or "sacred," referring to "divinity" or "god" (M.D. Coe 2001, p.109).

 

One of the most influential archaeologists of the time,  Sir J. Eric S. Thompson, was a major doubter of an ancient Maya mushroom cult. In a letter to de Borhegyi  Thompson scoffed at the proposition of a mushroom cult, arguing.....  

 

Quoting Archaeologist J. Eric S. Thompson.... 

"I had heard of the theory that these stones might represent a narcotic mushroom cult, but I would think it a difficult theory to prove or disprove... I know of no reference to their use among the Maya, ancient or modern" (Thompson to de Borhegyi, March 26,1953, MPM Archives).

 

 Quoting Archaeologist Stephan de Borhegyi

"mushroom stones follow the same pattern as the three-pronged incensarios, figurines, rimhead vessels etc. That is, they are abundant during the Pre-Classic, disappear from the archaeological scene completely during the Early Classic, and are revived in somewhat changed form in the Late Classic." (Letter from Borhegyi to Wasson April 8th, 1954)

According to Wasson, the term shaman  is not native to Mesoamerica or even to the New World but derives from the languages of Siberia.  Siberian shamanism incorporates ecstatic trances brought on by a ritual of dance and the inducement of hallucinations, most commonly through the consumption of some hallucinogenic substance. The intention was to open communication directly with the spirit world, often through a form of animal transformation. The worship of animal spirit companions and the concept of human-animal transformation is so ancient, that the origins of these beliefs appear to predate the development of agriculture. Since these beliefs are also present throughout North and South America that they may very well have been brought there by the first hunters and gatherers to reach the New World. We find the first evidences of these shamanistic rituals in Mesoamerica in the art of the ancient Olmecs along with the development of agriculture, food production, and settled village life.                       

 

The Preclassic Mayan mushroom stones pictured above are from the site of Kaminaljuyu in the Guatemala Highlands. Both depict a mushroom emerging from the back of a crouching jaguar. Mushroom stones with a double edge or groove on the underside of the cap, have been dated to the Late Pre-Classic period about 300-100 B.C. by Stephan F. de Borhegyi based on the few mushroom stones that have been excavated in context at Kaminaljuyu (BORHEGYI, STEPHAN DE: "The enigmatic mushroom stones of Mesoamérica," M. A. Research Records III. New Orleans, 1959).

The tall jaguar mushroom stone above on the right was excavated from E-III-3 tomb at Kaminaljuyu.

 

Quoting Michael D. Coe, today's unofficial  "Dean of Maya studies"....

 "These peculiar objects , one of which was found in an E-III-3 tomb, are of unknown use. Some see vaguely phallic association. Others, such as the late Stephan de Borhegyi, connect them with the cult of the hallucinogenic mushrooms still to this day prevalent in the Mexican highlands, and it is claimed that the mortars and pestles with which the stones are so often associated were used in the preparatory rites" (The Maya, 1993 fifth edition, by M.D. Coe, p. 60).

 

         I found this passage in the Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel.....

"It is most necessary to believe this. These are the precious stones which our Lord, the Father, has abandoned. This was his first repast, this balche, with which we, the ruling men revere him here. Very rightly they worshiped as true gods these precious stones, when the true God was established our Lord God, the Lord of Heaven and earth, the true God.Nevertheless, the first gods were perishable gods. Their worship came to its inevitable end. They lost their efficacy by the  benediction of the Lord of Heaven, after the redemption of the world was accomplished, after the resurrection of the true God, the true Dios, when he blessed heaven and earth. Then was your worship abolished, Maya men. Turn away your hearts from your old religion" (Inga Clendinnen, 1987 p.161)

 

In 1969 my father died in an automobile accident.  Wasson, no longer able to continue his fruitful collaboration with Borhegyi on Mesoamerica, continued his earlier studies of mushrooms in East Indian religion and mythology.  While by this time many anthropologists and archaeologists had accepted the  idea that mushrooms and other hallucinogens were used in ancient Mesoamerica, their use was, in most cases, dismissed as relatively incidental and devoid of deeper significance in the development of Mesoamerican religious ideas and mythology.  With a few exceptions, notably the research and writings of ethnoarchaeologist Peter Furst, further inquiry into the subject on the part of archaeologists came to a virtual halt.  Fortunately, a few mycologists, most notably Bernard Lowy and Gaston Guzmán, (2002:4; 2009) continued through the years to make important contributions to the scientific literature.To this day. the subject remains relatively little known and generally missing from the literature on Mesoamerican archaeology, art history, and iconography.

 

 In 1972  Wasson  declared the matter resolved:   

 "Some Middle American specialists may challenge my assumption of a connection between the "mushroom stones", which ceased to be made centuries before Columbus arrived on these shores, and today's surviving mushroom cult." .... "For years I had only an assumption to go on , but now, thanks to discoveries made by the late Stephan F. de Borhegyi  and us, I think we can tie the two together in a way that will satisfy any doubter"   (Wasson,1972:188n)  

 

Wasson may have provided an important explanation for this lack of interest. He and his wife, Valentina, had observed that, across the globe, cultures seemed to be divided into those who loved and revered mushrooms, and those who dismissed and feared them. The first group of cultures they  labeled "mycophiles," while the latter were "mycophobes."  In the New World, it appears that all of the native cultures were, and still are, unquestionably mycophilic.  In contrast, the great majority of archaeologists and ethnologists who studied and described them, and who traced their cultural origins to Western Europe, were decidedly mycophobic. This major difference in cultural background may be responsible for what I believe should be seen as a lamentable gap in our understanding of indigenous New World  magico-religious origins.   (Wasson: 1957)

 

Ethno-archaeologist Peter Furst, who supported  Borhegyi and Wasson's research added:

"The connection between these sculptures and the historic mushroom cults of Mesoamerica has not always been accepted. Though many mushroom stones are quite faithful to nature, they were, until recently, not even universally thought to represent mushrooms at all, and a few die-hards even now, in the face of all the evidence, reject this interpretation." (1972)

 

Fly agaric mushroom (Amanita muscaria). This colorful mushroom is a powerful hallucinogenic, containing the drugs ibotenic acid and muscimol. The effects are unpredictable, and a few deaths have been attributed to this mushroom. It takes its name from the medieval practice of breaking the caps into a saucer of milk in order to stupefy flies. It commonly grows in association with pine and birch trees in temperate regions in autumn. (caption and photo from www.sciencephoto.com) Credit: SIMON FRASER/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

        

It was not a surprise to find that in the ancient folklore of Mesoamerica, long before the arrival of Columbus in 1492, the bearded gnome appears in the art of  Mesoamerica,  linked with the Amanita muscaria mushroom, just as he is in the folklore of the Old World.  

           

                 Photograph © Justin Kerr:

Maya figurine  K2853 Late Classic Period (A.D. 600-900) from the Justin Kerr Data Base. The Maya figurine on the left, represents a  bearded gnome, wearing a hat that I believe is an upside down or inverted Amanita muscaria mushroom (Princeton Art Museum). In Mesoamerican mythology the dwarf is related to Quetzalcoatl and guides the dead in their descent into the underworld. On the right is a photograph of an Amanita muscaria mushroom. (photograph copyrighted and owned by the artist, Esther van de Belt ).

          

         

Above are male and female fertility figurines from the Zacatecas culture of Western Mexico dated to the 2nd century CE. I propose that the artist has  encoded the Amanita muscaria mushroom in the head of the male figurine on the left and in the breasts of the female figurine on the right. (The photograph on the left is from http://realhistoryww.com/ and the photograph on the right is from Flicker, photographed at the de Young Museum of Fine Arts, San Francisco, California.)

    

Three similar but distinct Zacatecas figurines from the 2nd century CE. All three are encoded with Amanita muscaria mushrooms as female breasts, signifying, I believe, the fount from which life flows.

 

             

 

The mushroom inspired god Tlaloc can be easily identified by his trademark goggled eyes, feline fangs, and handlebar mustache. Those who died for Tlaloc or were under his watchful eye, went directly to his divine paradise called Tlalocan. Also known as "The Master", Tlaloc a mushroom inspired god, shared the same temple as Quetzalcoatl at the great city of Teotihuacan, and as a Rain and Lightening God, Tlaloc provided the sustenance needed for everlasting life, (mushrooms) in return for the shedding of human blood on earth.

 

                    

          

The images above appear to depict mushroom veneration. The miniature grouping on the left is a Late Formative (300 B.C. to A.D. 200 ) ceramic model of a mushroom ceremony from the Ixtlan del Rio style of Nayarit, Western Mexico.

 

Above is a Late Classic figurine from Tenenexpan, Mexico in the State of Veracruz (Remojadas? A.D. 700-900). (Photo copyright Borhegyi). In 1651 the physician to the King of Spain, Dr. Francisco Hernandez, wrote a guide for missionaries in the Spanish colonies, Historia de las Plantas de Nueva Espana. In it he stated that there were three kinds of narcotic mushrooms that were worshiped. After describing a lethal species of mushroom, he stated that other species of mushrooms when eaten caused madness, the symptom of which was uncontrolled laughter. Other mushrooms, he continued " without inducing laughter, bring before the eyes all kinds of things, such as wars and the likeness of demons".   (Wasson, 1962: 36; see also Furst, 1990 rev. ed., 9)

         The Aztecs called their divine mushroom, teonanacatl, which means "God's flesh"

 Above are figurines from Nayarit, Western Mexico ca. 200 BC to 100 AD. of shamans holding what looks like an umbrella, but which were encoded sacred mushrooms.   (Photograph above left provided by Dr. Gaston Guzman <gaston.guzman@inecol.edu.mx>)

       

             Mushrooms encoded in pre-Columbian art, Hidden in Plain Sight.

    

Above are two figurines from western Mexico, Late Formative period  300 B.C. to A.D. 200.  In Mesoamerica, mushrooms and dogs were believed to lead the deified dead into the underworld for rebirth.      

 

   

Above from Western Mexico, Colima culture, is a ceramic figurine of a shaman eating from his left hand and holding what appears to be a pair of mushrooms in his right hand, 300 BC to 300 AD - PF.1367 from Antiques.com, photo subject to copyright. (Photo of Amanita muscaria mushroom from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanita_muscaria)

The figurine above is from the archaeological site of Cerro de Coamiles in Nayarit, Western Mexico, that clearly depicts mushroom veneration. 

 

                              SOMA IN THE AMERICAS                      

  "Hidden In Plain Sight"
  

Like the god plant Soma of ancient Hinduism, the ancient god myths of Mesoamerica contain a  sacramental food or beverage associated with sacrifice and immortality.  I  have found sufficient visual evidence in the art of Mesoamerica and South America to identify this sacramental food as an hallucinogenic substance, most notably,  Amanita muscaria or psicilocybin mushrooms. Like the Vedic god Soma , the Amanita muscaria mushroom of Mesoamerica assumes, from earliest times, the persona of the god itself. In Mesoamerica this god took the form of the Underworld "were jaguar".

Image of "Weeping God"  from VANKIRK, Jacques, and Parney Bassett-VanKirk,  Remarkable Remains of the Ancient Peoples of Guatemala,  Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1996.)  

   "...fanged anthropomorphic individuals with dangling eyeballs, are commonly associated with the god Quetzalcoatl in his form of Ehecatl the Wind God?. ( Borhegyi 1980:17)         

The stone carving shown above is a good example of the clever way in which the Precolumbian artist hid the sacred mushrooms of underworld jaguar transformation from the eyes of the uninitiated.   I believe that knowledge of the mushroom Venus resurrection ritual was considered so sacred that the artist deliberately obscured mushroom imagery. In this case the sculptor hid them behind the tears of the "Weeping God",  known in legend as Quetzalcoatl Ce Acatl, the bearded god-king of the Toltecs.  In order to distinguish this semi-historical Quetzalcoatl from Quetzalcoatl as the Feathered Serpent or Wind God deity,  the Toltecs prefixed his birth date to his name, Ce Acatl,  meaning "One Reed."

 While at first glance they give the illusion of dangling eye-balls, if you look closely at the mask you will see that the legendary tears of Quetzalcoatl are actually encoded Amanita mushrooms "hidden in plain sight." This bearded and fanged deity shared feline, serpentine, and bird-like features. Identified as a Feathered or Plumed Serpent by archaeologists in his earliest representations,  he took on many additional guises and attributes over the years, and became known by a great variety of names throughout the New World. I have elected to refer to him, as did the Toltecs and Aztecs, as Quetzalcoatl.  

        

 "It [the mushroom] permits you to see, more clearly than our perishing mortal eye can see, vistas beyond the horizons of this life, to travel backwards and forwards in time, to enter other planes of existence, even (as the Indians say) to know God."                               

        

                                        

There is plenty of evidence in Mesoamerican mythology linking the many avatars of Quetzalcoatl, Jaguar-Bird-Serpent, to the duality of the planet Venus.  Eduard Seler was the first to link feathered serpent imagery to the planet Venus and Quetzalcoatl and Seler believed that the jaguar-bird-serpent image was associated with war and the Morning Star ( Milbrath ).  In Aztec mythology the cosmos was intimately linked to the planet Venus in its form as the Evening Star, which guides the sun through the Underworld at night, as the skeletal god Xolotl, the twin of Quetzalcoatl.  As the Morning Star, Quetzalcoatl's avatar was the harpy eagle.  Among the Quiche Maya,  Venus in its form as the  Morning Star, was called iqok'ij,  meaning the "sunbringer" or "carrier of the sun or day." (Tedlock, 1993:236). 

                 

According to Spanish chronicler Fray Diego Duran, (The Aztecs,1964, p.149) it was written that before Quetzalcoatl departed  his beloved Tula, he left orders that his figure be carved in wood and in stone, to be adored by the common people. ?They will remain as a perpetual memorial to our greatness in the way that we remember Quetzalcoatl?.

     (jpg - 4.bp.blogspot.com/.../s320/Mexico+City+080.jpg)

  (Photo of Amanita muscaria, Fly Agaric Mushrooms from Salvia Space Ethnobotanicals)                 

Above, another Precolumbian incense burner (Toltec?) from Central Mexico encodes Amanita muscaria mushrooms as the "legendary tears of Quetzalcoatl."  Note as well that the scroll at the bottom of the censer repeats a hook-shape that I have come to believe is the symbol of a religion based on mushrooms and worship of the planet Venus.

 

              Photograph © Justin Kerr 

Above, on the left, is the Amanita muscaria mushroom, and on the right a Maya figurine (300-900 C.E.) photographed by Justin Kerr (K 656a).  The figurine wears a headdress inspired by the Amanita muscaria mushroom. Its contorted face depicts the "Olmec snarl", a common motif in Olmec art which I believe  represents the mushroom's effect of jaguar transformation and the soul's mythical underworld journey.  The figurine holds in its hands a concave mirror.  Mirrors were used by shamans to see into the past and future and communicate with ancestors and gods. I believe that in many, if not most cases, this communication was conducted under the influence of mushrooms.  According to Hugh Thomas (Conquest; 1993 p.14)

 

Above is a pre-Columbian mirror, Chimu culture 1100?1470 CE, Peru South America, that portrays a ruler, priest, or deity, holding mushrooms in both hands (the mirror is old but not original) David Bernstein Pre-Columbian Art NY.

                                            

                             

Above is a pre-Columbian vessel from Peru, South America that depicts a priest or shaman holding a mirror in one hand, and what appears to me to be an Amanita muscaria mushroom in the other.

 

For documentation of mirror gazing (captoptromacy) in Mesoamerica see T. Besterman, 1965,: 73-77; Museum of Primitive Art, 1965.

For documentation of mirror gazing in the Old World see J. Hastings, 1951: IV, 780-782)

The early Olmecs were likely the first to create concave mirrors from iron-ore minerals. Terrence Kaufman and Lyle Campbell , two linguists  studying the diffusion of languages in Mesoamerica, postulate that the language of the ancient Olmec,  the "mother culture" of civilization, was Mixe-Zoque.  Borhegyi  (1980)  suggested that the Olmec of La Venta likely spoke Mayan or Proto-Mayan, and that the words muxan and okox (mushroom) are two of several words borrowed or loaned by the ancient Maya, perhaps as early as 1000 B.C. (Furst, 1976, p. 79).

                   (Photo of Amanita muscaria mushroom from Royalty Free Stock Photos)                     
                       

Above is an Olmec figurine photgraphed by Higinio Gonzalez of Puebla, Mexico. It most likely comes from the San Lorenzo phase of Olmec culture, 1200-400 B.C.E.  These infantile baby-faced figurines, many of which depict the symbolism of a snarling jaguar, are a distinctive feature in Olmec art. This figure appears to represent an Olmec baby wearing an Amanita mushroom cap and holding a gigantic Amanita mushroom. According to ethno-mycologist Gastón Guzmán, one of the effects of the Amanita muscaria mushroom experience is to see objects as gigantic in size. (Guzman, 2010).

        

The rise of the Olmec, the first complex civilization in the New World in the swampy jungles of the Gulf Coast has puzzled archaeologists for some time. Archaeologists contend that Olmec culture appears to come from out of nowhere in full bloom at the site of San Lorenzo, in Chiapas, Mexico. Carbon 14 dates place Olmec civilization at San Lorenzo at 1200 B.C.E. (M. D.  Coe, 1970, p.21). 

The discovery of numerous toad bones in Olmec burials at San Lorenzo suggests that the Olmecs may have used other mind-altering substances, such as hallucinogenic toad toxin, in various ritual practices (Coe, 1994:69; Furst, 1990: 28; Grube, 2001:294).  Mushroom-shaped stones, many bearing toad images carved on their base, have been found throughout Chiapas, Mexico, the Guatemala highlands, and along the Pacific slope as far south as El Salvador.  (Borhegyi, 1957, 1961, 1963, 1965a, 1965b). Gordon Wasson was the first to call attention to the pervasiveness of the toad and it's association with the term toadstool, with the intoxicating or poisonous mushrooms in Europe. Tatiana Proskouriakoff demonstrated that in Mayan glyphs the toad is the divine symbol of rebirth (Coe, 1993:196).

 

         Quoting from ethno-archaeologist Peter T. Furst:

"It is tempting to suggest that the Olmecs might have been instrumental in the spread  of mushroom cults throughout Mesoamerica, as they seem to have been of other significant aspects of early Mexican civilization......" It is in fact a common phenomenon of South American shamanism  (reflected also in Mesoamerica) that shamans are closely identified with the jaguar, to the point where the jaguar is almost nowhere regarded as simply an animal, albeit an especially powerful one, but as supernatural, frequently as the avatar of living or deceased shamans, containing their souls and doing good or evil in accordance with the disposition of their human form" (Furst 1976, pp. 48, 79)."

Owner: Denver Art Museum Denver CO
Maya vase K6608 from the Justin Kerr Data Base of Maya vase paintings, depicts three underworld jaguars which may symbolize the three hearth stones of creation, a "trinity of gods" in Maya religion known at the archaeological site of Palenque as GI, GII, GIII.  The underworld jaguars all wear mushroom shaped ear plugs, and wear sacrificial scarves, symbolic of underworld decapitation. The scarves metaphorically bear the colors and spots of the Amanita muscaria mushroom.

           

Above is a female figurine with encoded mushroom in her head. Tlatilco culture, Puebla, Mexico, Early-Middle Preclassic periods, 1300-800 B.C. 

(photo http://sniteartmuseum.nd.edu/collection/aztlan/index_pages/aztlan_all.html)  

                              

Above is a closeup of a fanged figure holding what has been identified as mushrooms on page 24 of the Codex Vindobonensis Mexicanus, believed to be a 14th century Mixtec document.

           Photographs © Justin Kerr

Maya Vase K7289 from the Justin Kerr Data Base depicts a ruler or priest involved in a mushroom ritual of underworld jaguar transformation. The ruler is depicted holding a ceremonial bar from which emerges the divine vision serpent (bearded dragon) known to scholars as the Och Chan.  A deity wearing the ears of a deer and blowing upon a conch shell emerges from the jaws of the vision serpent.  The ruler or priest wears a mushroom inspired ceremonial cloak and the headdress of the underworld jaguar.

Pre-Columbian gold figurine with encoded mushroom imagery, from South America, Andean culture.

   BACKGROUND TO STUDY

Above is a replica mushroom stone, alongside a Preclassic stone toad receptacle from Highland Guatemala in the de Borhegyi family collection  (Photo by Cory de Borhegyi)

In 1996, about the time my own twin sons were born, I began to wonder what had happened to the interesting line of inquiry that my father had opened. I knew that great strides had been made in Maya studies but, to my considerable surprise I realized that there was almost no mention of mushrooms, or for that fact any other hallucinogenic substances, in the current literature.   Curious to discover what had happened, I decided to look into the matter myself. 

I began by reading his publications. Over the next few years, as I dug deeper into the subject,  I read through the scores of letters that he had exchanged with other Mesoamerican scholars that are housed in the Borhegyi Archives at the Milwaukee Public Museum (hereinafter Borhegyi, MPM), as well as the more than 500 letters that he exchanged with Gordon Wasson  (Wasson Archives at Harvard's Peabody Museum. (hereinafter Wasson HPM)  In time, I also read through my mother's extensive library of books and pamphlets on Mesoamerican archaeology and ethnology and began to acquire my own personal library in addition to using materials from local library collections.

Now thoroughly intrigued by this introduction to archaeological research (I had majored in physical education at the University of Wisconsin),  I Joined the Maya Society of Minnesota in order  to attend their lectures and workshops in Maya archaeology. Assisting with their lecture programs as a board member, I met with many of the visiting archaeologists and shared ideas with them. In the fall of 2004 I enrolled in a course entitled "Topics in Maya archaeology"  at Hamline University. My assignments in that class introduced me to the online research site  FAMSI  (Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc). Here I discovered Justin Kerr's remarkable compilation and data base of roll-out photographs of Mesoamerican ceramic figurines and Maya vase paintings. It was this site, above all, that permitted me to make the detailed study of Mesoamerican visual art. This task was  immensely facilitated by new photographic technology, the computer, and my ability to access the Kerr database on my home computer, all modern day miracles unavailable to earlier researchers. As a result of this study and solid evidence from other scholars,  I have been able to expand this subject far beyond my father's pioneering efforts.

 I found no mention of images of mushroom stones, pottery mushrooms, or images of actual mushrooms in Kerr?s extensive index. However, after hours of examining hundreds of Maya vase paintings, I discovered a significant amount of mushroom imagery, both realistic and abstract, of both the.Amanita muscaria or Fly Agaric mushroom, and the better known hallucinogenic Psilocybin mushroom.  It was easy to understand, however, why the imagery had not been noted earlier. On many vases the images of mushrooms, or images related to mushrooms, were so abstract, and so intricately interwoven with other complex and colorful elements of Mesoamerican mythology and iconography, that they were, I believe, quite deliberately  "hidden in plain sight," in an effort to conceal  this sacred information from the  eyes of the uninitiated.

Much of the mushroom imagery I discovered was associated with an artistic concept I refer to as jaguar transformation. Under the influence of the hallucinogen,  the "bemushroomed" acquires feline fangs and often other attributes of the jaguar, emulating the Sun God in the Underworld. This esoteric association of mushrooms and jaguar transformation was earlier noted by ethnoarchaeologist Peter Furst,  together with the fact that a dictionary of the Cakchiquel Maya language compiled circa1699 lists a mushroom called "jaguar ear" (1976:78, 80) .

Many of the images involved rituals of self-sacrifice and decapitation in the Underworld, alluding to the sun's nightly death and subsequent resurrection from the Underworld by a pair of deities associated with the planet Venus as both the Morning Star and Evening star. This dualistic aspect of Venus is why Venus was venerated as both a God of Life and Death.  It was said that (The Title of the Lords of Totonicapan, 1953 third printing 1974, p.184), they [the Quiche] gave thanks to the sun and moon and stars, but particularly to the star that proclaims the day, the day-bringer, referring to Venus as the Morning star. 

 Mushrooms were so closely associated with death and underworld jaguar transformation and Venus resurrection that I conclude that they must have been believed to be the vehicle through which both occurred. They are also so closely associated with ritual decapitation, that their ingestion may have been considered essential to the ritual itself, whether in real life or symbolically in the underworld. It is also important to note that in many cases the mushroom images appeared to be associated with period endings in the Maya calendar.  

One of the most renowned Spanish chroniclers, Fray Diego Duran, wrote in his Histories of New Spain (1537?1588) that his writings would likely go unpublished because many of his contemporaries feared that they would revive ancient customs and rites among the Indians. He added that  "(they) were quite good at secretly preserving their customs?.  Duran mentions that the word for sacrifice, nextlaoaliztli, in the Nahuatl language of the Aztecs, meant either "payment", or the act of payment. He writes that young children were taught that death by the obsidian knife was a most honorable way to die, as honorable as dying in battle or for a mother and child to die in childbirth. Those who were sacrificed by the obsidian knife were assured a place in Omeyocan, the paradise of the sun, the afterlife.     

My studies have also led me conclude that all variants of the Toltec/Aztec gods Quetzalcoatl and Tlaloc, and their Classic Maya counterparts, Kukulcan, K´awil and Chac, though they may have different names and be associated with somewhat different attributes in different culture areas, are linked to the planet Venus through divine rulership, lineage and descent.  In Mesoamerica they are also linked with warfare. Maya inscriptions tell us that the movement of the planet Venus and its position in the sky was a determining factor for waging a special kind of warfare known as Tlaloc warfare or Venus "Star Wars." These wars, waged against neighboring city-states for the express purpose of taking captives for sacrifice to the gods, thus constituted a form of divinely-sanctioned "holy" war.     

Spanish chronicler Fray Sahagun, who was the first to report mushroom rituals among the Aztecs, also suggested that the Chichimecs and Toltecs consumed the hallucinogen peyote before battle to enhance bravery and strength (Furst 1972, p.12).  Hallucinogens taken before battle likely eliminated all sense of fear, hunger, and thirst, and gave the combatant a sense of invincibility and courage to fight at the wildest levels. "This drunkenness lasted two or three days, then vanished"  (Thomas, 1993, p.508).

 

          Photographs © Justin Kerr

Above are two Late Classic (600-900 A.D.) Maya figurines, both representing warriors wearing what I would argue are mushroom inspired headdresses.

Above is a Post Classic gold figurine of an Aztec warrior wearing a mushroom inspired nose plug. 

Admittedly I have bypassed the traditional route of doctoral studies in New World archaeology, art history, and religion.  It should be noted, however,  that I am far from the first layman to make some significant contributions to Mesoamerican scholarship. The important contributions to our understanding of Maya glyphic writing by the late Soviet lay scholar, Yuri Knorosov, come immediately to mind. It is, in fact, in partial tribute to him and to his ?discoverer,? Maya archaeologist, Michael D. Coe, that I have titled my book ?Breaking the Mushroom Code.? (See Coe, Breaking the Maya Code, 1992)  With that said, I can now present what I consider to be indisputable visual evidence of the many metaphorical relationships to mushrooms that  I discovered  within the Mesoamerican religious iconography depicted on sculptures, murals, codices, and vase paintings.

While I may be the first to call attention to this encoded mushroom imagery, these images can be viewed and studied with ease on such internet sites as Justin Kerr's Maya Vase Data Base and F.A.M.S.I. ( Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc).  

  In summary, the mushroom inspired images I have presented to this point, most of which are cleverly encoded by the artist, are just a few of the many images I found that clearly  represent mushrooms and mushroom worship. Mushroom imagery occurred with such frequency and in such indisputably religious context that there can be no doubt as to their importance in the development and practice of indigenous religion.  In these pages, and those that follow,  I demonstrate how and why I reached these conclusions by leading my readers through many of the mushroom-related images, most notably of the Amanita muscaria mushroom,  that I  found encoded in Mesoamerican art.  By so doing I hope to correct a lamentable gap in our knowledge and understanding of the past.

While reading through one of Borhegyi´s letters I found that he had quoted two interesting passages from native chronicles written around 1554.  Both related to indigenous use of mushrooms in Guatemala.  One,  from The Annals of the Cakchiquels,  (1953:82-83), records:

"At that time, too, they began to worship the devil.  Each seven days, each 13 days, they offered him sacrifices, placing before him fresh resin, green branches, and fresh bark of the trees, and burning before him a small cat, image of the night.  They took him also the mushrooms, which grow at the foot of the trees, and they drew blood from their ears."

 Another passage from the legendary Popol Vuh, (Goetz,1950:192) one of the most important native written documents of the Guatemala highlands, reads:

 

 "And when they found the young of the birds and the deer, they went at once to place the blood of the deer and of the birds in the mouth of the stones that were Tohil, and Avilix.  As soon as the blood had been drunk by the gods, the stones spoke, when the priest and the sacrificers came, when they came to bring their offerings.  And they did the same before their symbols, burning pericon (?) and holom-ocox (the head of the mushroom, holom=head, and ocox= mushroom").

 

Still another passage from the Popol Vuh identifies Tohil, not as a stone god, but as the charismatic leader of the Quiche Maya and a variant of Quetzalcoatl...

"..Even though Tohil is his name he is the same as the god of the Yaqui people who is named Yolcuat and Quitzalcuat ".  (Tedlock, 1985:183)

 At the end of his letter, Borhegyi added: ?I think this section definitely indicates that the Quiche used mushrooms in connection with their religious ceremonies.  I even wonder what made the stones speak?"

In one of  Wasson letters, he refers  to the fact that  the Aztecs, at the time of the Spanish Conquest, revered three different kinds of narcotic mushrooms. This reference led me to a Wasson pamphlet in which he wrote that he had found this information in a guide for missionaries written before 1577 by Dr. Francisco Hernandez , physician to the king of Spain (Wasson, 1962: 36; see also Furst, 1990 ed., 9)

 Spanish chronicler Jacinto de la Serna, 1892 (The Manuscript of Serna) described the use of sacred mushrooms for divination:

 

"These mushrooms were small and yellowish and to collect them the priest and all men appointed as ministers went to the hills and remained almost the whole night in sermonizing and praying" (Quest for the Sacred Mushroom, Stephan F. de Borhegyi 1957).

 

            Photograph © Justin Kerr    Photograph on right Copyright magic-mushroom.com

Maya Polychrome ceramic container with diving god wearing bird headdress. ht. 11.4 cm. U.S. Library of Congress, J. Kislak Collection 

The Toltec /Maya vessel above is from Quintana Roo, Mexico, postclassic Maya, 1200-1400 C.E.  The vessel depicts the image of a diving god, wearing the familiar guise of the harpy eagle, attributes that link this diving deity to Quetzalcoatl as the Morning Star and god of Underworld resurrection.  I would argue strongly that the objects in the hands of the diving Quetzalcoatl (Kukulcan in Yucatec Mayan) above, are the severed caps of psilocybin mushrooms, and do not represent, as other scholars would argue, balls of incense. The removal of the head of the mushroom or mushroom cap is a symbolic reference to ritual decapitation in the Underworld. The idea that Quetzalcoatl was in direct opposition to human sacrifice is simply not true. He was the god of self-sacrifice. Wasson writes that the stems of sacred mushrooms were removed and the mushroom caps consumed ritually in pairs prior to self-sacrifice.

 Among the Khanty of Western Siberia only the cap or head of the Amanita muscaria mushroom is eaten.  

Wasson theorized  that the origin of ritual decapitation lay in the mushroom ritual itself, In a letter to Borhegyi in 1954 he writes:

"The cap of the mushroom in Mije (or Mixe) is called kobahk, the same word for head. In Kiche and Kakchiquel it is doubtless the same, and kolom ocox is not ?mushroom heads?, but mushroom caps, or in scientific terminology, the pileus of the mushroom. The Mije in their mushroom cult always sever the stem or stipe (in Mije tek is ?leg?) from the cap, and the cap alone is eaten. Great insistence is laid on this separation of cap from stem. This is in accordance with the offering of ?mushroom head? in the Annals and  the Popol Vuh.  The writers had in mind the removal of the stems".

  "The top of the cap is yellow and the rest is the color of coffee, with the gills of a color between yellow and coffee. They call this mushroom, pitpa "thread-like", the smallest, perhaps 2 horizontal fingers high, with a cap small for the height, growing everywhere in clean earth, often along the mountain trails with many in a single place. In Mije the cap of the mushroom is called the "head" "kobahk in the dialect of Mazatlan. When the "heads are consumed, they are not chewed, but swallowed fast one after the other,  in pairs." ( June 7, 1954, MPM archives)   

                                   

Above is a page from the Codex Ríos, a Spanish colonial-era manuscript, now in the Vatican library (also called Codex Telleriano-Remensis), attributed to Pedro de los Ríos, a Dominican friar working in Oaxaca and Puebla between 1547 and 1562. The codex itself was likely written and drawn in Italy after 1566. The "bearded" deity above who has been identified as the Aztec goddess Mayahuel, goddess of the maguey plant, probably represents an aspect of Quetzalcoatl, (note beard and mushroom headdress) as the god who bestowed sacred mushrooms and thus immortality to mankind.  

Metaphorically, then, the  mushrooms bestowed to mankind represent the soul and flesh of Quetzalcoatl. If human beings partake of him they acquire some of his divine essence. In the scene below from the Codex Vindobonensis, Quetzalcoatl holds in his left hand the head of the underworld god of death. I interpret this as symbolizing their belief that a ritual decapitation in the underworld would result in the deceased's resurrection and rebirth. I believe that this interpretation is strengthened by the two depictions of the V-shaped cleft symbolizing the portal to the underworld in the left panel of this scene. The upper scene depicts the deceased in the act of plunging through the portal into the underworld. In the lower scene, the portal is shown being opened by the outstretched arms of Quetzalcoatl.  It would not have been difficult for them to conclude that  mushrooms were indeed a gift to mankind from the gods.

In the Codex Vindobonensis Mexicanus  [below], believed to be a 14th century Mixtec document, the original of which is now held in the National Library of Vienna, Austria, page 24 shows the ceremonial use of mushrooms held in the hands of gods. Attention was first called to these figures by Alfonso Caso, who provisionally identified what he called "T-shaped" objects in the manuscript as mushrooms. Heim later published this page in color and accepted without hesitation its mushroomic interpretation. More recently, Furst has concurred in this opinion in his minute examination and analysis of the codex. Also summarizing the significance of this page, Wasson concludes that it shows "the major place occupied by mushrooms in the culture of the Mixtecs." The additional collateral evidence to be considered further supports the validity of these opinions, and extends the base upon which they rest (Lowy 1980 pp.94-103).

                    Page 24 of the Mixtec Codex Vindobonensis

Above is page 24 of the Mixtec Codex Vindobonensis, also known as the Codex Vienna. The codex is one of the few prehispanic native manuscripts which escaped Spanish destruction. It was produced in the Postclassic period for the priesthood and ruling elite.  A thousand years of history is recorded In the Mixtec Codices, and Quetzalcoatl (9-Wind), who is cited as the great founder of all the royal dynasties, is the pervasive character. 

In 1929 Walter Lehmann noted the resemblance to mushrooms of the objects portrayed in the hands of many of the characters depicted in this Codex.  Alfonso Caso later confirmed, although reluctantly, that they were indeed mushrooms. (Wasson 1980, p. 214).  In the second row from the top, the last figure on the right wearing a bird mask has been identified as the Wind God, Ehecatl. an avatar of Quetzalcoatl.  He is shown bestowing divine mushrooms to mankind.  

According to Aztec legend,  Ehecatl-Quetzalcoatl created mankind from the bones he stole from the Underworld Death God, whose decapitated head Quetzalcoatl holds in his hand.  Note the tears of gratitude on the individual sitting immediately opposite Quetzalcoatl.  This individual, and those who sit behind Quetzalcoatl on the left also hold sacred mushrooms and all appear to have fangs.  Fangs suggest that, under the magical influence of the mushroom, they have been transformed in the Underworld into the underworld jaguar. 

In the middle of the page on the right side Quetzalcoatl is depicted  gesturing to the god Tlaloc directly in front of him to open the portal to the underworld.  According to Peter Furst, who describes this  iconography, the scene depicts the divine establishment of the ritual consumption of sacred mushrooms" (1981, p.151).  He identifies the triangular or V-shaped cleft in the basin of water on the left as a cosmic passage through which deities, people, animals and plants pass from one cosmic plane to another. 

On the bottom left,  two figures stand beside another V--shape portal of Underworld resurrection. The figure on the left who points to the sky, also has fangs. He appears to be a human transformed at death into the Underworld Sun god, or mythical "were jaguar".  This gesture probably signifies resurrection from the Underworld. The two-faced deity in front of him holds what appear to be sacred psilocybin mushrooms similar in shape to the ones in the photograph below.

 This two-faced deity is,  in all likelihood,  the dualistic planet Venus and the god of Underworld sacrifice and resurrection. Note that the two-faced deity is painted black (signifying the Underworld) and wears a double-beaked harpy eagle headdress (signifying the sun's resurrection). The five plumes in the harpy eagle's headdress refer to the five synodic cycles of Venus. The three mushrooms in his hand refer to the Mesoamerican trinity:  the three hearthstones of creation. ie., the sun, the morning star and the evening star.

The circle below the feet of the figure on the left is divided into four parts, two of them dark and two light, each with a footprint.  The Fursts, Peter and Jill, have identified this symbol as representing the north-south axis or sacred center as the place of entry into the Underworld. (Furst, 1981: 155). This symbol also appears in the scene above in association with a figure plunging through the a V-shaped cleft into the Underworld.

 Ethno-mycoligest  Bernard Lowy, 

"Maya codices has revealed that the Maya and their contemporaries knew and utilized psychotropic mushrooms in the course of their magico-religious ceremonial observances" (Lowy:1981) .

          

 The two pages above are from the Madrid Codex (Maya Tro-Cortesianus Codex), and depicts what I believe are noticeable glyphs representing Amanita muscaria mushrooms, in the middle registry of both pages (pages of Madrid Codex from F.A.M.S.I).
 

The ancient myth of Quetzalcoatl?s creation was preserved for us by a Franciscan friar named Jeronimo de Mendieta in 1596. In his manuscript, Historia Eclesiastica Indiana, Mendieta writes that it was ?Quetzalcoatl, the Mexican Prometheus, the beneficent god of all mankind, descended to the world of the dead to gather up the bones of past generations, and, sprinkling them with his own blood, created a new humanity?. (Alfonso Caso, 1958; THE AZTECS, PEOPLE OF THE SUN)

A miniature stone hacha, the Spanish word for axe, from Veracruz, Mexico (Late Classic Period, 700-900 C.E.) ( photograph from Whittington, 2001)

Hachas, like the one depicted above, fit into the belt or yoke worn by ballplayers in the Mesoamerican ballgame. This hacha was probably used in ceremonies associated with the ballgame. The hacha represents a decapitated trophy head of a wrinkled faced and toothless old man wearing a cone-shaped hat. The wrinkled face and toothless mouth suggest the Old Fire God (Xiuhtecutli), while a closer look reveals the image of a sacred psilocybin mushroom encoded in the cheek and hat. The conical or cone-shaped hat, in this case mushroom-inspired, is a trademark attribute of the Mexican god-king Quetzalcoatl and of his priesthood.

                              (Photograph by Stephan de Borhegyi)

Another stone hacha from Veracruz with a  mushroom in profile encoded in the cheek.  Borhegyi believed that  stone hachas , as well as anthropomorphic and zoomorphic vertically and horizontally tenoned stone heads, were symbolic of the human (trophy) heads of earlier times. Stone hachas were worn on ceremonial ballgame yokes, while the tenoned stone heads were set into the walls of formal ball courts. (1980:17)  

Photographs © Justin Kerr

Maya vase K4932  depicts Maya merchants carrying large sacks over their shoulders filled with what appear to be mushrooms.

  Fray Sahagun (in book 9 of 12) refers to mushrooms with a group of traveling merchants known as the pochtecas, meaning merchants who lead, because they were followers of  Quetzalcoatl who they worshipped under the patron name Yiacatecuhtli or Yacateuctli, Lord of the Vanguard. The pochteca journeyed down from Central Mexico into the Gulf lands and into the Maya region carrying merchandise as well as spreading the religion of Quetzalcoatl.    

The complex iconography along the rim of this vessel depicts what I believe represent cross cut  mushrooms; a symbol similar in shape to glyphs representing the planet Venus. The X-icon, which is a common symbol found on Maya vase paintings, most likely represents a sacred portal to the underworld. The fact that the X-icon above is twisted may be a reference to the symbol olin, meaning movement or motion. If so it may refer to the mushroom-Venus portal's movement of up and down, down into the underworld as a death star, and up from the underworld, and into the heavens as a resurrection star.       

   
              Photographs  © Justin Kerr

Above left is an effigy censer lid from Copan, Honduras, A.D 600-700, depicting a Maya ruler wearing mushroom-inspired ear plugs like the jade ones depicted on the right. Jade jewelry was considered to be the best charm against evil influences, and protected the diciest on their long journey into the other world  (S.F. de Borhegyi 1967, p.24)

            Photograph  © Justin Kerr

The gold Aztec figurine above left (K2048, Justin Kerr Data Base) depicts a warrior wearing a  mushroom-inspired nose plug. Hallucinogenic mushrooms appear to be linked with what scholars have called "Tlaloc warfare" or "Venus star-wars".  Note that the warrior holds a shield depicting the "quincunx", a Mesoamerican Venus symbol identifying the four cardinal directions of the universe and its cosmic center, the sacred portal into the spirit world. On the right is a gold mushroom-inspired ear ornament.

                  Replica mushroom stone alongside a stone toad receptacle from the                                                  de Borhegyi family collection  (Photo by Cory de Borhegyi)

Ethno-Mycologist  R. Gordon Wasson...

"In the association of these ideas we strike a vein that must go back to the remotest times in Eurasia, to the Stone Age: the link between the toad, the female sex organs, and the mushroom, exemplified in the Mayan languages and the mushroom stones of the Maya Highlands. Man must have brought this association across the Bering Strait (or the land bridge that replaced it in the ice ages) as part of his intellectual luggage.?

 

In Mesoamerica mushrooms were also most likely consumed by priests before the holy act of penis perforation. In this ritual blood was drawn from the penis and sprinkled upon the exhumed bones or cremated ashes of deceased ancestors, thus emulating in myth the way of Quetzalcoatl.

 It was through blood sacrifice that Mesoamerican rulers and priests nurtured the gods who had been their ancestors.  I believe that the mushroom was consumed in rituals of human sacrifice and self sacrifice. Self sacrifice by means of ritual bloodletting was likely the most important ritual among the ancient Maya. The act of bloodletting was so sacred in fact that according to Michael D. Coe, today's unofficial  "Dean of Maya studies", that the perforator itself was worshiped as a god (from Olmec Bloodletting: An Iconographic Study 1991).  

  The carved relief panel above is one of a series of six carvings in the vertical side walls of the South Ball Court at El Tajin, in Veracruz, Mexico (drawing from Coe, 1994, p.117). The carved panel depicts an individual, a ruler or Underworld god, with were-jaguar fangs, in the sacred act of drawing blood from his penis. Note that the figure in the water below receiving the blood offering, wears a fish headdress, which may be a symbolic reference to a mythological ancestor from a previous world age, who survived a world ending flood by being changed into a fish. The bearded god above him, with two bodies, likely represents Quetzalcoatl in his twin aspects of the planet Venus representing both the Evening Star and Morning Star. Most importantly, note that there are tiny mushrooms depicted on the limb of a tree just left of center.

This tree, I believe, represents the world tree as the portal leading up and down at the center of the universe.  The bottom of the panel has an intricate scroll design which I  believe is more than mere decoration and likely represents a stylized cross-section of a mushroom. Stylized Venus symbols are also depicted on the panel at both of the sides. Each Venus symbol is associated with three circles, maybe representing the three hearth stones of creation.

  The drawing above is of carved relief panel from the vertical side walls of the South Ball Court at El Tajin, in Veracruz, Mexico. Note what I propose are encoded mushrooms sprouting from the Tree of Life in both creation scenes. (drawings from M.E. Kampen "Classic Veracruz Grotesques and Sacrifical Iconography")

Stephan de Borhegyi...

"When one world collapsed in flood, fire, or earthquake, they believed another was born only to come, in its turn, to a violent end". "This philosophy probably led religious specialists to divine by magical computations the sacred cycle of 52 years, at the end of which cosmic crisis threatened the survival of mankind and the universe". "Mesoamericans further believed that in order to avoid catastrophe at the end of each 52-year period man, through his priestly intermediaries, was required to enter into a new covenant with the supernatural, and in the meantime, he atoned for his sins and kept the precarious balance of the universe by offering uninterrupted sacrifices to the gods" (Borhegyi,1965a:29-30)..

 

The resurrection ritual was likely timed astronomically to the movements of Venus and possibly to the sacred period of inferior conjunction. At this time Venus sinks below the horizon and disappears into the "underworld" for eight days. It then rises from the underworld as the Morning Star. Bloodletting rituals were often performed in caves, which were believed to be entrances into the underworld. Cave ritualism on an elite level as apposed to a folk level is evident as early as 1000 B.C. at the Olmec influenced site of Chalcatzingo, near the Valley of Mexico (Pasztory, 1997:90).  Archaeologist  Brent Woodfil  found ceramic mushrooms in the Candelaria cave system in the highlands of Guatemala. There has been some speculation that these sacred caves may have been believed to be the legendary Chicomoztoc, the name given for the place of mythical origin of the ancient Mayas, Toltec and Aztecs--a place known as the "seven caves of emergence? (Woodfill,2002). According to Mary Miller and Karl Taube, (1993:136) the four founders of the Quiche lineages, who were formed of maize, "journeyed to Tulan Zuyua, the mountain of the seven caves, and there they received the gods, whom they then carried home in bundles on their backs. "Balam Quitze received Tohil, who gave humans fire, but only after human sacrifice to him had begun". 

                      MAYA VASE INTERNET STUDY   

 Classic Maya vase paintings are rife with imagery of sacrifice in the Underworld. Since hundreds of these vase paintings can now be viewed in roll out photographs on Justin Kerr's website,  I checked  carefully for mushroom imagery and discovered a significant amount of encoded mushroom-related symbolism. These vase paintings frequently depict images of self sacrifice which include images of were-jaguars and other characters from Maya mythology. 

The ritual use of intoxicating enemas for spiritual transformation has been described in the earliest Spanish accounts of native customs. This ritual use of enemas, although poorly understood, is commonly represented in Maya vase paintings. 

Below are Maya vase paintings showing the that clearly represent  that mushrooms were not only ingested orally but also by means of enemas.  

Photograph © Justin Kerr Kerr

Maya vase K5172, photographed in roll out form by Justin Kerr,  probably depicts an enema ritual associated with the ballgame.  On the left the ballplayer wears a deer headdress and a ballgame belt or yoke. The yoke takes the shape of a loop that believe identifies the mushroom religion. He crouches on one knee, and holds an Amanita muscaria mushroom in one hand and an enema apparatus in the other.  

 A mushroom infusion administered by means of an enema would have a much quicker and more powerful effect on the body than one ingested orally.

           Photographs © Justin Kerr 

Maya Vase painting K8662 depicts four separate scenes and should be read from left to right. Here a priest or shaman, prepares an enema for the sacred mushroom ceremony. Scene three depicts a large plate-size Amanita mushroom in the lap of the priest. Scene four depicts the priest holding the enema device.  On the far right, the device is filled with a mushroom infusion, possibly one that could be identified as the semi-mythical Soma,  to be injected into the colon. Such a device was used as a means to avoid vomiting and to achieve the altered state of consciousness required for self sacrifice. The priest holds a small vase containing the mushroom mixture which he has poured from a larger jar marked with a twisted X-icon which is a symbol of the portal to the Underworld.  The portal, identified with the planet Venus, carries the deified dead to the heavens by a divine bird symbolized by eagles or vultures as avatars of the Morning Star. This X-icon, like the sacred ballcourt in the underworld, Identifies the holy place of rebirth and deified resurrection.  Soma was prepared by extracting juice from the stalks of a plant which, according to Wasson, can be identified as the Amanita muscaria mushroom.

  Photographs © Justin Kerr                   

Above is an abstract scene from a Late Classic Maya vessel, depicting a Maya ruler or priest wearing a jaguar headdress and holding what appears to be a ceremonial plate with an Amanita muscaria mushroom.    

    

Photographs © Justin Kerr

Maya vase K8792, depicts a Maya ruler and wife in a hallucinogenic trance. The ruler in this scene is sitting on his thrown next to a drinking vessel (Maya vase). Based on the artist's use of mushroom inspired headdresses, the vessel would likely contain a mushroom beverage. The ruler appears to be hallucinating as he fixates on his transforming hand. Behind the ruler is his wife, who appears to be in a euphoric trance. She wears a symbolic mushroom headdress and a blouse with two of the loop symbols associated with the religion. Behind her on the ground is a ritual bundle which may contain the bones and skull of the deceased ancestor who will be summoned through the vision serpent god named  K'awil.  The sacrificial victim in this scene is depicted on the left in front of the ruler. His arms are crossed in front, suggesting that he is a willing participant.  By so doing he emulates the way in which Quetzalcoatl sacrificed himself to become immortal and deified at death.

        

             Photograph  © Justin Kerr    
  

Maya Vase painting K2797 from the Justin Kerr Data Base, represents a great example of mushroom-inspired art. The individual on the far left clearly holds what can only be a sacred mushroom in his hand. The Maya god just to the right of this individual being offered a mushroom has been identified by scholars as God K. Maya glyph expert David Stuart (1987) found a syllabic spelling for God K's name which reads K'awil, meaning "sustenance" in Yukatek Mayan, but also meaning "idol" or "embodiment" in the Poqom and Kaqchikel Mayan languages (Freidel, Schele, Parker: 1993 p.410 n). The Maya god K'awil is commonly recognizable by the smoking tube, (and obsidian mirror, or axehead) that penetrates his forehead. These attributes are metaphors of the power to penetrate, or enter, into the Underworld. In Maya mythology K'awil who is often depicted as a one legged god, symbolized a bolt of lightning which, by penetrating the ground and entering the underworld, could create new life in a place of death and decay. In both scenes the figure who has summoned the god K?awil to the underworld wears a mushroom-inspired headdress.

           Photographs © Justin Kerr
           Owner: Popol Vuh Museum, Guatemala

 Maya vase K3066, depicts a Late Classic version of the Preclassic bearded Olmec dragon (Och Chan?). This Quadripartite Maya god is known as Chac. I believe he represents a Maya counterpart, versions of the dualistic Mexican Venus gods Quetzalcoatl and Tlaloc, all being connected with Venus warfare during the Classic period, and with the four cardinal directions and it's sacred center. Chac is the God who wields the axe of Underworld decapitation, and who I believe is intimately associated with hallucinogenic mushrooms that act as divine portals to the Underworld. These portals to the Underworld are located at the four cardinal directions and it's sacred center, which can be seen depicted in Maya vase K3066.  Chac, like the Mexican god Tlaloc, is associated with rain, lightning and thunder. Both gods are depicted in art wielding lightening bolts, and the axe associated with Underworld decapitation. Although Chac is identified with the four cardinal directions, he was sometimes thought of as the "one" god who resided at the center of the universe. The Quiche Maya of the Guatemala Highlands describe the Amanita muscaria mushroom as supernatural and call it lightening mushroom or in Quiche Mayan  cakulja ikox, ikox meaning mushroom, and relate this supernatural mushroom with the Lord of Lightening, Rajaw Cakulja (Furst, 1976 p.82).  

Note that the artist has encoded a hook-shaped symbol to create what is called a serpentine eye. I believe this iconography code for Quetzalcoatl, like the Ik symbol depicted in Chac's eye in the Dresden Codex, also associated with Quetzalcoatl. Note the X-icon in the head symbolizing I believe decapitation as the sacred portal of Venus Underworld resurrection.  A page in the Dresden Codex portrays four Chacs seated in the trees located at the four cardinal directions of time and space. A fifth Chac is seated in a cave representing the cosmic center of the world. This configuration of five, identified as the quincunx, is a reference to the central portal of Venus resurrection, Quetzalcoatl, and the spirit world.

It should be noted "that the number 5 was specifically associated with the god Quetzalcoatl and his quincunx symbol, and also with Venus, one aspect of Quetzalcoatl". According to Eric Thompson the idealized Venus cycle always ended on the day 1-Ahau, (Milbrath p.170). The synodic revolution of Venus, from Morning Star to Morning Star is 584 days, and that these revolutions were grouped by the Nahuas in fives, (see Maya  Dresden Codex) so that 5x584 equaled 2,920 days, or exactly eight solar years (Nicholson, 1967 pp. 45-46).

            Photographs © Justin Kerr

 Above is Maya vase K502. I believe that the artist encoded abstract or stylized mushrooms conflating with the "hook symbol" which I will continue to demonstrate is code for the mushroom religion. The image I believe represents a bird encoded with the sacred symbol of three, referring to the three stones of Maya creation.  The mushroom bird image may  allude to avian resurrection, from the Underworld as the Morning Star aspect of Venus. The stylized mushrooms, would symbolize the sacred journey into the underworld,  the so called mushroom portal to the Underworld.  The image of the bird itself would symbolically represent the harpy eagle, who resurrects the newly born Sun God from the Underworld and is one of the avatars of the Feathered Serpent Quetzalcoatl as the Morning Star. The dual image of three dots may represent the three hearth stones of Maya creation, and the dualistic nature of the planet Venus as both an Evening Star, the Sun Gods executioner in the Underworld, and the harpy eagle who resurrects the Sun God from the Underworld.

 

          Photograph © Justin Kerr

Above, Maya vase K5534 depicts the journey of a ruler into the underworld. Note the partial loop encoded on the conch shell carried on the back of the second figure on the right. Note also that the individual at the far right of the procession carries a large sack encoded with a mushroom.

                 MUSHROOM RITUALS AND HUMAN SACRIFICE

  Spanish chronicler Fray Diego Duran ...(Duran, 1971)  

"The Indians made sacrifices in the mountains, and under shaded trees, in the caves and caverns of the dark and gloomy earth. They burned incense, killed their sons and daughters and sacrificed them and offered them as victims to their gods; they sacrificed children, ate human flesh, killed prisoners and captives of war....One thing in all this history: no mention is made of their drinking wine of any type, or of drunkenness. Only wild mushrooms are spoken of and they were eaten raw."

..."It was common to sacrifice men on feast days as it is for us to kill lambs or cattle in the slaughterhouses.... I am not exaggerating; there were days in which two thousand, three thousand or eight thousand men were sacrificed...Their flesh was eaten and a banquet was prepared with it after the hearts had been offered to the devil.... to make the feasts more solemn   all ate wild mushrooms which make a man lose his senses... the people became excited, filled with pleasure, and lost their senses to some extent."  

 

Anthropologist Dennis Tedlock writes that in the Maya Highlands a dance drama that takes place in the town of Rabinal in the department of Baja Verapaz, called the Rabinal Achí, is based on a sacred drink. In the dance a prisoner of war is captured and is granted one last drink, called ?the drink of lords,? before he is ritually decapitated. The characters in the Rabinal Achi, like the characters depicted on the Maya vessel below, carry shields and hold axes which are shaped to form the heads of deities. According to Tedlock there were repeated efforts by colonial authorities to ban the performances of the Rabinal Achi because it was considered a dramatization of Maya culture and Maya royalty. Was the sacred ?drink of lords? called Ki? also called ?twelve poisons?  a mushroom beverage which, according to Tedlock, brings dreams to the character in the Rabinal Achí? In fact, a similar vessel like the one depicted above and below could have been used to hold this ritual drink before the ritual of decapitation?  

    

        Photograph © Justin Kerr

          

             Photograph © Justin Kerr

The above Maya vase painting K2781, from the Justin Kerr Data Base, drawn below by Alexandre Tokovinine, strongly  supports my theory that a ritual intoxicating drink such as the beverage Soma, was consumed prior to sacrifice and ritual decapitation. It was believed that this beverage would transport the individual to the Underworld in which underworld decapitation was the portal to rebirth and divine resurrection.

            

Photographs © Justin Kerr

This Maya vase painting K638 from the Kimbell Art Museum, Ft. Worth Texas, depicts a prisoner stripped of his clothing, his arms bound behind his back, being led by priests into the underworld to undergo the ritual of underworld decapitation. The prisoner is followed by a priest holding an axe. He is dressed in the guise of the underworld jaguar. That the prisoner is an offering to a Venus God is indicated by the Venus glyphs in the cartouche at the lower right. The artist encodes the four cardinal directions and it's sacred center in the mushroom-inspired shields. The shields also encode three stems symbolic of the creator gods who represent the three hearth stones of Maya creation. The priest leading the way into the underworld wears a robe decorated with symbolic mushrooms. The portion of his headdress which is painted red is esoterically shaped to form a partial loop, the symbol of the religion.

The priest on the far right wears a red tunic with white  spots symbolic of the Amanita muscaria mushroom. The priest directly  behind the prisoner wears an Amanita-inspired hat with the same colors.  Dictionaries of Maya highland languages compiled after the Spanish Conquest mention several intoxicating mushroom varieties whose names clearly indicate their ritual use. One type was called xibalbaj okox, "underworld mushroom" in reference to the belief that the magic mushroom transported one to a supernatural realm known as the underworld  (Sharer, 1983: 484). The artist infers that  they all journey into the underworld as a group under the influence of Amanita mushrooms, including the prisoner who will be ritually decapitated by a priest dressed as the underworld jaguar.

Photographs © Justin Kerr

Maya Vase painting K7516 depicts a decapitation scene, in which the individuals involved standing in line appear to be willing participants. The individual on his knees above is about to lose his head. The victim on the left however may be a captive (note rope around arms?) being fed what I would argue are hallucinogenic mushrooms prior to decapitation. The arms-on-chest gesture of the standing victims depicted above has been associated with self sacrifice and submissiveness.  It is a gesture commonly depicted on monuments at sites in the Guatemala Highlands and the Guatemalan Pacific Piedmont, (the Soconusco) in the Cotzumalhuapa region at El Baul and Bilbao.    

In his right hand he holds a staff which bears an upside down ceremonial trophy head, symbolizing the mushroom ritual of decapitation in the Underworld. The warrior at center left on his knees receiving the sacred mushroom of underworld jaguar transformation wears what looks like a stylized mushroom inspired headdress along with symbolic jaguar attire. 

                         AMANITA MUSCARIA MUSHROOMS

                  ENCODED IN SOUTH AMERICAN ART

 Above is a Moche portrait vessel from Peru, portrayed wearing a headdress encoded with what I propose are Amanita muscaria mushrooms. The Moche culture reigned on the north coast of Peru during the years 100-600 A.D. (Photograph courtesy of Todd Braum)

          Ethno-archaeologist Peter Furst...

 "Little is known of the pre-Hispanic mushroom use in South America, with the single exception of an early Jesuit report from Peru that the Yurimagua Indeans, who have since become extinct, intoxicated themselves with a mushroom that was vaguely described as a "tree fungus" (Furst, 1976 p.82). 

In the course of my studies I not only found mushroom-related symbolism throughout Mesoamerica, but also in the art of the Inca, Mochica, Chavin, Chimu, and Paracas cultures of South America, and in the Rapa Nui civilization of Easter Island. 

        

Above are examples of mushroom-related symbolism among the Rapa Nui civilization of Easter Island.

 

                               Mushroom inspired Moche portrait vessels (200-700 A.D.)

              

Above are pre-Columbian ceramic Moche portrait vessels, from Peru wearing headdresses encoded with what I propose are Amanita muscaria mushrooms. The Moche culture reigned on the north coast of Peru during the years 100-600 A.D.

                                

Above is a Peruvian figurine from the Denver Museum, holding what appears to be an Amanita muscaria mushroom in his left hand.

            Gold figurines with mushroom imagery, Quimbaya culture Columbia, South America.

Gold mask with mushroom encoded headdress 200 BC-200 AD, Malagana culture Columbia, South America.

Above and below are mushroom inspired gold ornaments,  most likely was worn as an head ornament by an Andean ruler or priest. The ornament that bears the metaphorical shape of a half-sliced mushroom as well as a  ritual axe, is decorated with imagery reminiscent of the spotted caps of the Amanita muscaria mushroom.

 

                          

  There is also plenty of evidence of a trophy head cult in the archaeological record of South America. According to Andean researcher Christina Conlee (Texas State University) large numbers of decapitated heads or so-called trophy heads have been found in archaeological excavations in the area of Peru.  At the archaeological site of Tihaunaco not far from Lake Titicaca, several dozen decapitated bodies were found in a burial arranged in a geometric layout, buried alongside drinking vessels suggesting the act of ritual (Soma) sacrifice.     

Above is a woven textile from Peru, South America, Paracas culture 750 B.C. to A.D. 100. The textile incorporates what appears to be mushroom-Venus iconography associated with a bodyless human head. The axe in his hand is a metaphor denoting mushrooms+ decapitation=portal to Venus resurrection. The axe is purposely shaped to look like an Amanita muscaria mushroom.  I believe that the design below the figure's chin symbolizes Venus. Similar in design to Venus symbols from Mesoamerica and Easter Island, it represents the Evening Star aspect of Venus associated with the ritual of underworld decapitation.

      

 

  As in Mesoamerica and South America, we find plenty of evidence in India of human sacrifice, and the offering of trophy heads to the gods. One account of mass sacrifice took place in Assam in north-eastern India in 1565 A.D. at a ceremony celebrating the re dedication of a temple to Rajah Nara Narayana. The Rajah celebrating this event had one hundred and forty men decapitated, and then offered their severed heads on copper and gold plates to the goddess Kali, wife of the Hindu god Shiva (Davies 1981, p.76). 

   Photographs © Justin Kerr  K1490 

In the vase painting above, the Lord of the Underworld is depicted as the white skeletal god in the center of the scene. He holds a decapitated head in one hand and a  serpent-bird staff in the other. Known as Skeletal God A, his fleshless body represents death and decay,  but also the transformation at death from which life is regenerated.

Like many other Late Classic period carved and painted vessels, Maya Vase painting K1490 depicts the sacred (and improbable) ritual of self-decapitation. Note that the third individual from the right has no head. He holds in his left hand the obsidian knife with which he has decapitated himself. In his right hand he holds the cloth in which he will wrap the head. The fourth individual from the right is shown holding the decapitated head by the hair with his right hand, and a knife in his left hand.  After a close examination of this scene, it occurred to me that it might depict an early version of an episode related in the colonial period document known as the Popol Vuh.

Archaeologist Michael D. Coe was the first to recognize that many of the scenes depicted in Maya vase paintings are images of the Maya underworld, Xibalba, and versions of the creation story of the Quiché Maya of highland Guatemala. This myth, written in Quiche Maya using Spanish orthography, is known today as the Popol Vuh,  It involves two sets of divine twins.

The first set of twins, known as Hun Hunahpu and Vucub Hunahpu, play a ballgame in Xibalba with the Lords of Death and are defeated. The Popol Vuh  tells us that these twin Maya gods, were sacrificed by decapitation in the underworld after losing a ballgame against the Lords of the Death. Their bodies were buried under the ballcourt at the place of ballgame sacrifice. The sons of Hun Hunahpu, another set of twin gods known as the Hero Twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque, follow their father and uncle into the Underworld to avenge their deaths. They also play a ballgame against the Lords of Xibalba.  Hunahpu and Xbalanque, however,  were accomplished tricksters as well as ballplayers. They were  ready for any trap that might be set for them by the Lords of Death. (Coe,1973, 1975a). 

I believe that this complex scene illustrates the passage in the Popol Vuh in which the Hero Twins smoke cigars in the underworld. That they are smoking hallucinogenic cigars is suggested by the mushrooms that are clearly painted on their robes and in their mushroom-inspired headdresses. The two smokers are the first two individuals on the right. The two figures in front of them, since they wear the same clothing as the first pair,  may be the same set of twins. One of the twins, however, has  undergone sacrificial decapitation. Another interpretation could be that the two smokers, through their hallucinations, are seeing the fate of their father and uncle in their underworld struggle against the Xibalbans.

                 

In the scene depicted above, all four of the figures on the right wear sacrificial scarves around their necks. The figure in black wears what appears to be a helmet shaped like a mushroom.  As noted earlier, he holds an obsidian blade in one hand, and the decapitated head of the figure behind him in the other.  

 Dennis Tedlock has identified five episodes involving underworld decapitation and self decapitation in his translation of the Popol Vuh. He notes that, based on evidence discovered by Borhegyi and Wasson, he does not rule out the presence of an Amanita muscaria cult in the Popol Vuh (Tedlock,1985: 250).  In one episode the Hero Twins decapitate themselves in the underworld in order to come back to life. The two decapitated heads shown in this scene belong to the twins.   (Jay I. Kislak Collection, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress)

 Maya Archaeologist Stephan de Borhegyi...

"According to the Popol Vuh, (Thompson, 1967, pp.27-28), the twin heroes Hunahpu, and Xbalenque (the decapitated Maya culture heroes who played ballgames with the Lords of Xibalba), became the moon (or morning star?) and the sun after their death. That the moon, sun, and morning star, as well as their cult symbols, the jaguars "sun" -vulture, moon-rabbit, and deer, were intimately connected with the Late Classic period ballgame is amply witnessed by their frequent representations on stone hachas and ballgame stone reliefs." (1980:25)

           Photographs © Justin Kerr

Maya vase K8936, shown above, also depicts scenes associated with the Maya creation story.

According to the Popol Vuh, after the Xibalbans (the Lords of the Underworld) defeated Hun Hunahpu and Vucub Hunahpu in a ballgame, they sacrificed them and hung the severed head of Hun Hunahpu in a calabash tree. The head of Hun Hunahpu  impregnated a daughter of the Xibalbans, named Blood Woman, with the Hero Twins by spitting into her hand.

In the scene above, the jaguar god of the underworld, shown on the far left, holds a decapitated head (likely the head of Hun Hunahpu). Seated below the jaguar is the pregnant daughter of the Xibalbans known as Xquik "Blood Woman". She is painted blood red, and is shown stretching out her palm beneath the decapitated  head. The decapitated head of Hun Hunahpu spits semen onto her hands which fertilizes, giving birth to the legendary Hero Twins.  Her father, one of the Lords of death in the Maya underworld, is the skeletal god to the far right who also holds the bloody head of Hun Hunahpu.  

 In front of Blood Woman sits a character marked with cimi death signs (looks like a % sign) on his legs. He wears on his head what, I believe, is a mushroom-inspired headdress. In his hand he holds a drinking vessel which may contain a mushroom-based beverage which he will use to journey or portal into the underworld. The large jar or olla  that sits on his lap most likely contains cultivated mushrooms. The skeletal death god on the right  also carries a ceramic jar. It likely also contains a mushroom-based beverage to be taken at death for the ritual cross-over, or underworld journey. The large blood-stained  X-icon located on his skull cap represents the portal door to this journey of transformation.  

Directly behind Blood Woman, at the bottom of the scene, is a large transparent view of the inside of her womb. In it we see the unborn Hunahpu, the eldest of the Hero Twins. He is shown on his back with his knees pointed upwards. Hunahpu,  the first born of the Hero Twins,  personifies Venus. His daysign is One Ahau or Hun Ahau, the sacred date of the heliacal rising of Venus as Morning Star in the Venus Almanac of the Dresden Codex. To the left of the unborn Hunahpu is a coiled serpent in the shape of a ballgame hoop.The hoop bears symbols of the four cardinal directions. The inner circle denotes the goal of the hoop as well as the central portal of resurrection. It is associated with the color green, which is the green quetzal-feathered serpent aspect of Quetzalcoatl as the planet Venus.

In Mesoamerican mythology Quetzalcoatl represents the Lord of the Ballgame and Lord of decapitation.  It is likely his image that the Maya saw as a decapitated ballplayer in the constellation of Orion. Orion was believed to be the belt or ballgame yoke of Hun Ahau or Quetzalcoatl.  The three stars of his yoke represent the three hearth stones of creation. 

Behind the serpent is a rabbit, a symbol of the moon and fertility, holding a ball between its knees. The ball is marked by the symbol of three, referring again to the three hearth stones that were placed at the time of creation by the pair of twins depicted directly above. These are clearly the Hero Twins from the Popol Vuh. The twin on the left with jaguar features can be identified as Xbalanke. He holds what appears to be the three hearth stones of creation (the three thunderbolts in the Popol Vuh?). Two of the three stones appear under the right arm and he is  placing the third stone in his left hand into the sky at the place of ballgame sacrifice.  Xbalanke's trademark attributes are his jaguar spots, (note his spotted ear), symbolic of the Moon and underworld sun or Sun God.  He most likely represents the Evening Star aspect of the planet Venus. To the right of Xbalanke is his older twin brother Hunahpu. He can be identified by his blowgun, which he holds like a paddle, rerminiscent of the Paddler Twins.  He is likely an aspect of the planet Venus as Evening Star. Both twins wear the scarf of underworld  decapitation, and both are depicted above their unborn bodies. The womb of Hunahpu is directly behind Bloodwoman, while the womb of Xbalanke is in the shape of a curled up jaguar and is depicted directly behind the rabbit holding the ball.

 

Since the great majority of the images I have found appear to represent the Amanita muscaria mushroom,  I am ready to propose that the Amanita muscaria mushroom, like the Vedic god Soma in East Indian mythology, is the metaphorical  key to decoding the esoteric religions of the New World that prevailed from prehistoric times.   

                      Continued at top of page,

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