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Volume 14 No 1 (2016)
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Mushroom Sacraments in the Cults of Early Europe
Carl Anton Paul Ruck
Abstract
In 1957, R. Gordon Wasson, a professional banker and amateur mycologist, inadvertently launched a profound
cultural change that has come to be called the Psychedelic Revolution, by publishing an account of his experience
with a Mazatec shaman in Hautla de Jiménez in the mountains of central Mexico. The article appeared in Life
magazine and was intended as publicity for his forthcoming Russia, Mushrooms, and History, in which he and his
Russian-born wife Valentina Pavlovna pursued their lifelong fascination with their dichotomous attitudes toward
fungi, which had led them to suspect a cultural taboo upon a sacred object
Keywords
mushroom, ergot, Dionysus, Apollo, Mithraism, Renaissance art, prehistoric rock art
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