"There is a world beyond ours, a world that is far away, nearby, and invisible. And there is where God lives, where the dead live, the spirits and the saints, a world where everything has already happened and everything is known.

That world talks. It has a language of its own. I report what it says. The sacred mushroom takes me by the hand and brings me to the world where everything is known. It is they, the sacred mushrooms, that speak in a way I can understand. I ask them and they answer me.

When I return from the journey that I have taken with them, I tell what they have told me and what they have shown me."

- Maria Sabina

Here is one of Maria Sabina's shamanic chants during her veladas (mushroom healing ceremonies)...

"Woman who thunders am I, woman who sounds am I.

Spiderwoman am I, hummingbird woman am I...

Eagle woman am I, important eagle woman am I.

Whirling woman of the whirlwind am I,

Woman of a sacred, enchanted place am I,

Woman of the shooting stars am I."

"The more you go inside the world of Teonanácatl, the more things are seen.  And you also see our past and our future, which are there together as a single thing already achieved, already happened...I saw stolen horses and buried cities, the existence of which was unknown, and they are going to be brought to light.

 
Millions of things I saw and knew.  I knew and saw God: an immense clock that ticks, the spheres that go slowly around, and inside the stars, the earth, the entire universe, the day and the night, the cry and the smile, the happiness and the pain.  He who knows to the end the secret of Teonanácatl can even see that infinite clockwork."

- Maria Sabina

 "The little mushroom comes of itself, no one knows whence, like the wind that comes we know not whence nor why."

                                                 - an anonymous Mazatec devotee

The Cultural History of Teonanácatl

Gallery I
 Mesoamerican stone and ceramic mushroom artifacts circa 1000 b.c. to 500 a.d.
- from Plants of the Gods, Schultes and Hoffman

back to the Teonanácatl home page...
 

All rights reserved, © Teonanacatl Journeys, 2000-2012

website design by
Teonanacatl
revised 01/31/02