ANOTHER LOOK AT THE MAGIC MUSHROOM

Carey Linde stated that hallucinogenic mushrooms were "unknown" outside
the "care and control" of Mexican shamans until a UBC student found them
in a cow pasture in 1964 [Letters, May 31-June 7]. This statement may be
misleading without the following background: 16thcentury Spaniards noted
that Aztec mystics ate teonanacatl ("divine mushroom"), but the substance's
identity was thought to have been lost.

In 1919 Austrian doctor Plasius Paul Reko reported that Mexican shamans
still used a narcotic mushroom that grew on dung heaps.

Researchers tried for decades to track down the mysterious fungus.

Gordon Wasson, mushroom enthusiast and vice-president of the J.P. Morgan
Bank, attended an indigenous ceremony in Oaxaca, Mexico, in 1955. As part
of the rite he ate a dozen Psilocybe mushrooms and plunged into a
resplendent world of shimmering geometries, gardens, and palaces.

The following year he led an expedition to collect the mushrooms for
analysis, which were then cultivated by several laboratories in North
America and Europe. One of Wasson's assistants was covertly working for the
CIA, which had caught wind of the discovery and wished to test its
potential as a secret weapon, truth serum, and torture instrument. But the
CIA was beaten to the punch by chemists at Sandoz Pharmaceuticals, who
extracted the hallucinogen psilocybin from the mushroom and published their
findings.

In May 1957, Life magazine included a 17-page article, read by millions:
"Seeking the Magic Mushrooms: A New York Banker Goes to Mexico's Mountains
to Participate in the Age-Old Ritual of Indians who Chew Strange Growths
for Visions". This piece introduced the term magic mushrooms.

Leonard George
North Vancouver