Текст книги "LSD — My Problem Child"

Автор книги: Albert Gofmann

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Shortly before nightfall we arrived at the first settlement, La Providencia ranch. The patron, Don Joaquin Garcia, the head of a large family, welcomed us hospitably and full of dignity. It was impossible to determine how many children, in addition to the grown-ups and the domestic animals, were present in the large living room, feebly illuminated by the hearth fire alone.

Gordon and I placed our sleeping bags outdoors under the projecting roof. I awoke in the morning to find a pig grunting over my face.

After another day's journey on the backs of our worthy mules, we arrived at Ayautla, a Mazatec settlement spread across a hillside. En route, among the shrubbery, I had delighted in the blue calyxes of the magic morning glory Ipomoea violacea, the mother plant of the ololiuhqui seeds. It grew wild there, whereas among us it is only found in the Garden as an ornamental plant.

We remained in Ayautla for several days. We had lodging in the house of Doña Donata Sosa de García. Doña Donata was in charge of a large family, which included her ailing husband. In addition, she presided over the coffee cultivation of the region. The collection center for the freshly picked coffee beans was in an adjacent building. It was a lovely picture, the young Indian woman and girls returning home from the harvest toward evening, in their bright garments adorned with colored borders, the coffee sacks carried on their backs by headbands. Doña Donata also managed a type of grocery store, in which her husband, Don Eduardo, stood behind the counter.

In the evening by candlelight, Doña Donata, who besides Mazatec also spoke Spanish, told us about life in the village; one tragedy or another had already struck nearly every one of the seemingly peaceful huts that lay surrounded by this paradisiacal scenery. A man who had murdered his wife, and who now sits in prison for life, had lived in the house next door, which now stood empty. The husband of a daughter of Doña Donata, after an affair with another woman, was murdered out of jealousy. The president of Ayautla, a young bull of a mestizo, to whom we had made our formal visit in the afternoon, never made the short walk from his hut to his "office" in the village hall (with the corrugated iron roof) unless accompanied by two heavily armed men. Because he exacted illegal taxes, he was afraid of being shot to death. Since no higher authority sees to justice in this remote region, people have recourse to self-defense of this type.

Thanks to Doña Donata's good connections, we received the first sample of the sought-after plant, some leaves of hojas de la Pastora, from an old woman. Since the flowers and roots were missing, however, this plant material was not suitable for botanical identification. Our efforts to obtain more precise information about the habitat of the plant and its use were also fruitless.

The continuation of our journey from Ayautla was delayed, as we had to wait until our boys could again bring back the mules that they had taken to pasture on the other side of Rio Santo Domingo, over the river swollen by intense downpours.

After a two-day ride, on which we had passed the night in the high mountain village of San Miguel-Huautla, we arrived at Rio Santiago. Here we were joined by Doña Herlinda Martinez Cid, a teacher from Huautla de Jiménez. She had ridden over on the invitation of Gordon Wasson, who had known her since his mushroom expeditions, and was to serve as our Mazatec and Spanish-speaking interpreter. Moreover, she could help us, through her numerous relatives scattered in the region, to pave the way to contacts with curanderos and curandera s who used the hojas de la Pastora in their practice. Because of our delayed arrival in Rio Santiago, Doña Herlinda, who was acquainted with the dangers of the region, had been apprehensive about us, fearing we might have plunged down a rocky path or been attacked by robbers.

Our next stop was in San José Tenango, a settlement lying deep in a valley, in the midst of tropical vegetation with orange and lemon trees and banana plantations. Here again was the typical village picture: in the center, a marketplace with a half-ruined church from the colonial period, with two or three stands, a general store, and shelters for horses and mules. We found lodging in a corrugated iron barracks, with the special luxury of a cement floor, on which we could spread out our sleeping bags.

In the thick jungle on the mountainside we discovered a spring, whose magnificent fresh water in a natural rocky basin invited us to bathe. That was an unforgettable pleasure after days without opportunities to wash properly. In this grotto I saw a hummingbird for the first time in nature, a blue-green, metallic, iridescent gem, which whirred over great liana blossoms.

The desired contact with persons skilled in medicine came about thanks to the kindred connections of Doña Herlinda, beginning with the curandero Don Sabino. But he refused, for some reason, to receive us in a consultation and to question the leaves. From an old curandera, a venerable woman in a strikingly magnificent Mazatec garment, with the lovely name Natividad Rosa, we received a whole bundle of flowering specimens of the sought-after plant, but even she could not be prevailed upon to perform a ceremony with the leaves for us. Her excuse was that she was too old for the hardship of the magical trip; she could never cover the long distance to certain places: a spring where the wise women gather their powers, a lake on which the sparrows sing, and where objects get their names. Nor would Natividad Rosa tell us where she had gathered the leaves. They grew in a very, very distant forest valley. Wherever she dug up a plant, she put a coffee bean in the earth as thanks to the gods.

We now possessed ample plants with flowers and roots, which were suitable for botanical identification. It was apparently a representative of the genus Salvia, a relative of the well-known meadow sage. The plants had blue flowers crowned with a white dome, which are arranged on a panicle 20 to 30 cm long, whose stem leaked blue.

Several days later, Natividad Rosa brought us a whole basket of leaves, for which she was paid fifty pesos. The business seemed to have been discussed, for two other women brought us further quantities of leaves. As it was known that the expressed juice of the leaves is drunk in the ceremony, and this must therefore contain the active principle, the fresh leaves were crushed on a stone plate, squeezed out in a cloth, the juice diluted with alcohol as a preservative, and decanted into flasks in order to be studied later in the laboratory in Basel. I was assisted in this work by an Indian girl, who was accustomed to dealing with the stone plate, the metate, on which the Indians since ancient times have ground their corn by hand.

On the day before the journey was to continue, having given up all hope of being able to attend a ceremony, we suddenly made another contact with a curandera, one who was ready " to serve us ." A confidante of Herlinda's, who had produced this contact, led us after nightfall along a secret path to the hut of the curandera, lying solitary on the mountainside above the settlement. No one from the village was to see us or discover that we were received there. It was obviously considered a betrayal of sacred customs, worthy of punishment, to allow strangers, whites, to take part in this. That indeed had also been the real reason why the other healers whom we asked had refused to admit us to a leaf ceremony. Strange birdcalls from the darkness accompanied us on the ascent, and the barking of dogs was heard on all sides. The dogs had detected the strangers. The curandera Consuela García, a woman of some forty years, barefoot like all Indian women in this region, timidly admitted us to her hut and immediately closed up the doorway with a heavy bar. She bid us lie down on the bast mats on the stamped mud floor. As Consuela spoke only Mazatec, Herlinda translated her instructions into Spanish for us. The curandera lit a candle on a table covered with some images of saints, along with a variety of rubbish. Then she began to bustle about busily, but in silence. All at once we heard peculiar noises and a rummaging in the room-did the hut harbor some hidden person whose shape and proportions could not be made out in the candlelight?

Visibly disturbed, Consuela searched the room with the burning candle. It appeared to be merely rats, however, who were working their mischief. In a bowl the curandera now kindled copal, an incense-like resin, which soon filled the whole hut with its aroma. Then the magic potion was ceremoniously prepared. Consuela inquired which of us wished to drink of it with her. Gordon announced himself. Since I was suffering from a severe stomach upset at the time, I could not join in. My wife substituted for me. The curandera laid out six pairs of leaves for herself. She apportioned the same number to Gordon.

Anita received three pairs. Like the mushrooms, the leaves are always dosed in pairs, a practice that, of course, has a magical significance. The leaves were crushed with the metate, then squeezed out through a fine sieve into a cup, and the metate and the contents of the sieve were rinsed with water. Finally, the filled cups were incensed over the copal vessel with much ceremony. Consuela asked Anita and Gordon, before she handed them their cups, whether they believed in the truth and the holiness of the ceremony. After they answered in the affirmative and the very bitter-tasting potion was solemnly imbibed, the candles were extinguished and, lying in darkness on the bast masts, we awaited the effects.

After some twenty minutes Anita whispered to me that she saw striking, brightly bordered images. Gordon also perceived the effect of the drug. The voice of the curandera sounded from the darkness, half speaking, half singing. Herlinda translated: Did we believe in Christ's blood and the holiness of the rites? After our "creemos" ("We believe"), the ceremonial performance continued. The curandera lit the candles, moved them from the "altar table" onto the floor, sang and spoke prayers or magic formulas, placed the candles again under the images of the saints-then again silence and darkness.

Thereupon the true consultation began. Consuela asked for our request. Gordon inquired after the health of his daughter, who immediately before his departure from New York had to be admitted prematurely to the hospital in expectation of a baby. He received the comforting information that mother and child were well. Then again came singing and prayer and manipulations with the candles on the "altar table" and on the floor, over the smoking basin.

When the ceremony was at an end, the curandera asked us to rest yet a while longer in prayer on our bast mats. Suddenly a thunderstorm burst out. Through the cracks of the beam walls, lightning flashed into the darkness of the hut, accompanied by violent thunderbolts, while a tropical downpour raged, beating on the roof. Consuela voiced apprehension that we would not be able to leave her house unseen in the darkness. But the thunderstorm let up before daybreak, and we went down the mountainside to our corrugated iron barracks, as noiselessly as possible by the light of flashlights, unnoticed by the villagers, but dogs again barked from all sides.

Participation in this ceremony was the climax of our expedition. It brought confirmation that the hojas de la Pastora were used by the Indians for the same purpose and in the same ceremonial milieu as teonanácatl, the sacred mushrooms. Now we also had authentic plant material, not only sufficient for botanical identification, but also for the planned chemical analysis. The inebriated state that Gordon Wasson and my wife had experienced with the hojas had been shallow and only of short duration, yet it had exhibited a distinctly hallucinogenic character.

On the morning after this eventful night we took leave of San José Tenango. The guide, Guadelupe, and the two fellows Teodosio and Pedro appeared before our barracks with the mules at the appointed time. Soon packed up and mounted, our little troop then moved uphill again, through the fertile landscape glittering in the sunlight from the night's thunderstorm. Returning by way of Santiago, toward evening we reached our last stop in Mazatec country, the capital Huautla de Jiménez.

From here on, the return trip to Mexico City was made by automobile. With a final supper in the Posada Rosaura, at the time the only inn in Huautla, we took leave of our Indian guides and of the worthy mules that had carried us so surefootedly and in such a pleasant way through the Sierra Mazatec. The Indians were paid of, and Teodosio, who also accepted payment for his chief in Jalapa de Diaz (where the animals were to be returned afterward), gave a receipt with his thumbprint colored by a ballpoint pen. We took up quarters in Dona Herlinda's house.

A day later we made our formal visit to the curandera María Sabina, a woman made famous by the Wassons' publications. It had been in her hut that Gordon Wasson became the first white man to taste of the sacred mushrooms, in the course of a nocturnal ceremony in the summer of 1955. Gordon and María Sabina greeted each other cordially, as old friends. The curandera lived out of the way, on the mountainside above Huautla.

The house in which the historic session with Gordon Wasson had taken place had been burned, presumably by angered residents or an envious colleague, because she had divulged the secret of teonanácatl to strangers. In the new hut in which we found ourselves, an incredible disorder prevailed, as had probably also prevailed in the old hut, in which half-naked children, hens, and pigs bustled about. The old curandera had an intelligent face, exceptionally changeable in expression. She was obviously impressed when it was explained that we had managed to confine the spirit of the mushrooms in pills, and she at once declared herself ready to " serve us" with these, that is, to grant us a consultation. It was agreed that this should take place the coming night in the house of Doña Herlinda.

In the course of the day I took a stroll through Huautla de Jiménez, which led along a main street on the mountainside. Then I accompanied Gordon on his visit to the Instituto Nacional Indigenista. This governmental organization had the duty of studying and helping to solve the problems of the indigenous population, that is, the Indians. Its leader told us of the difficulties that the "coffee policy" had caused in the area at that time. The president of Huautla, in collaboration with the Instituto Nacional Indigenista had tried to eliminate middlemen in order to shape the coffee prices favorably for the producing Indians. His body was found, mutilated, the previous June.

Our stroll also took us past the cathedral, from which Gregorian chants resounded. Old Father Aragon, whom Gordon knew well from his earlier stays, invited us into the vestry for a glass of tequila.

A Mushroom Ceremony

As we returned home to Herlinda's house toward evening, María Sabina had already arrived there with a large company, her two lovely daughters, Apolonia and Aurora (two prospective curandera s), and a niece, all of whom brought children along with them.

Whenever her child began to cry, Apolonia would offer her breast to it. The old curandero Don Aurelio also appeared, a mighty man, one-eyed, in a black-and-white patterned serape (cloak). Cacao and sweet pastry were served on the veranda. I was reminded of the report from an ancient chronicle which described how chocolatl was drunk before the ingestion of teonanácatl.

After the fall of darkness, we all proceeded into the room in which the ceremony would take place. It was then locked up-that is, the door was obstructed with the only bed available. Only an emergency exit into the back garden remained unlatched for absolute necessity. It was nearly midnight when the ceremony began. Until that time the whole party lay, in darkness sleeping or awaiting the night's events, on the bast mats spread on the floor. María Sabina threw a piece of copal on the embers of a brazier from time to time, whereby the stuffy air in the crowded room became somewhat bearable. I had explained to the curandera through Herlinda, who was again with the party as interpreter, that one pill contained the spirit of two pairs of mushrooms. (The pills contained 5.0 mg synthetic psilocybin apiece.)

When all was ready, María Sabina apportioned the pills in pairs among the grown-ups present. After solemn smoking, she herself took two pairs (corresponding to 20 mg psilocybin). She gave the same dose to Don Aurelio and her daughter Apolonia, who would also serve as curandera. Aurora received one pair, as did Gordon, while my wife and Irmgard got only one pill each.

One of the children, a girl of about ten, under the guidance of María Sabina, had prepared for me the juice of five pairs of fresh leaves of hojas de la Pastora. I wanted to experience this drug that I had been unable to try in San José Tenango. The potion was said to be especially active when prepared by an innocent child. The cup with the expressed juice was likewise incensed and conjured by María Sabina and Don Aurelio, before it was delivered to me.

All of these preparations and the following ceremony progressed in much the same way as the consultation with the curandera Consuela Garcia in San José Tenango.

After the drug was apportioned and the candle on the "altar" was extinguished, we awaited the effects in the darkness.

Before a half hour had elapsed, the curandera murmured something; her daughter and Don Aurelio also became restless. Herlinda translated and explained to us what was wrong. María Sabina had said that the pills lacked the spirit of the mushrooms. I discussed the situation with Gordon, who lay beside me. For us it was clear that absorption of the active principle from the pills, which must first dissolve in the stomach, occurs more slowly than from the mushrooms, in which some of the active principle already becomes absorbed through the mucous membranes during chewing. But how could we give a scientific explanation under such conditions? Rather than try to explain, we decided to act. We distributed more pills. Both curandera s and the curandero each received another pair. They had now each taken a total dosage of 30 mg psilocybin.

After about another quarter of an hour, the spirit of the pills did begin to yield its effects, which lasted until the crack of dawn. The daughters, and Don Aurelio with his deep bass voice, fervently answered the prayers and singing of the curandera. Blissful, yearning moans of Apolonia and Aurora, between singing and prayer, gave the impression that the religious experience of the young women in the drug inebriation was combined with sensual-sexual feelings.

In the middle of the ceremony María Sabina asked for our request. Gordon inquired again after the health of his daughter and grandchild. He received the same good information as from the curandera Consuela. Mother and child were in fact well when he returned home to New York. Obviously, however, this still represents no proof of the prophetic abilities of both curandera s.

Evidently as an effect of the hojas, I found myself for some time in a state of mental sensitivity and intense experience, which, however, was not accompanied by hallucinations. Anita, Irmgard, and Gordon experienced a euphoric condition of inebriation that was influenced by the strange, mystical atmosphere. My wife was impressed by the vision of very distinct strange line patterns.

She was astonished and perplexed, later, on discovering precisely the same images in the rich ornamentation over the altar in an old church near Puebla. That was on the return trip to Mexico City, when we visited churches from colonial times. These admirable churches offer great cultural and historical interest because the Indian artists and workmen who assisted in their construction smuggled in elements of Indian style. Klaus Thomas, in his book Die kunstlich gesteuerte Seele [The artificially steered mind]

(Ferdinand Enke Verlag, Stuttgart, 1970), writes about the possible influence of visions from psilocybin inebriation on Meso-American Indian art: "Surely a cultural-historical comparison of the old and new creations of Indian art . . . must convince the unbiased spectator of the harmony with the images, forms and colors of a psilocybin inebriation."

The Mexican character of the visions seen in my first experience with dried Psilocybe mexicana mushrooms and the drawing of Li Gelpke after a psilocybin inebriation could also point to such an association.

As we took leave of María Sabina and her clan at the crack of dawn, the curandera said that the pills had the same power as the mushrooms, that there was no difference.

This was a confirmation from the most competent authority, that the synthetic psilocybin is identical with the natural product. As a parting gift I let María Sabina have a vial of psilocybin pills. She radiantly explained to our interpreter Herlinda that she could now give consultations even in the season when no mushrooms grow.

How should we judge the conduct of María Sabina, the fact that she allowed strangers, white people, access to the secret ceremony, and let them try the sacred mushroom?

To her credit it can be said that she had thereby opened the door to the exploration of the Mexican mushroom cult in its present form, and to the scientific, botanical, and chemical investigation of the sacred mushrooms. Valuable active substances, psilocybin and psilocin, resulted. Without this assistance, the ancient knowledge and experience that was concealed in these secret practices would possibly, even probably, have disappeared without a trace, without having borne fruit, in the advancement of Western civilization.

From another standpoint, the conduct of this curandera can be regarded as a profanation of a sacred custom-even as a betrayal. Some of her countrymen were of this opinion, which was expressed in acts of revenge, including the burning of her house.

The profanation of the mushroom cult did not stop with the scientific investigations.

The publication about the magic mushrooms unleashed an invasion of hippies and drug seekers into the Mazatec country, many of whom behaved badly, some even criminally.

Another undesirable consequence was the beginning of true tourism in Huautla de Jiménez, whereby the originality of the place was eradicated.

Such statements and considerations are, for the most part, the concern of ethnographical research. Wherever researchers and scientists trace and elucidate the remains of ancient customs that are becoming rarer, their primitiveness is lost. This loss is only more or less counterbalanced when the outcome of the research represents a lasting cultural gain.

From Huautla de Jiménez we proceeded first to Teotitlán, in a breakneck truck ride along a half-paved road, and from there went on a comfortable car trip back to Mexico City, the starting point of our expedition. I had lost several kilograms in body weight, but was overwhelmingly compensated in enchanting experiences.

The herbarium samples of hojas de la Pastora, which we had brought with us, were subjected to botanical identification by Carl Epling and Carlos D. Jativa at the Botanical Institute of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They found that this plant was a hitherto undescribed species of Salvia, which was named Salvia divinorum by these authors.

The chemical investigation of the juice of the magic sage in the laboratory in Basel was unsuccessful. The psychoactive principle of this drug seems to be a rather unstable substance, since the juice prepared in Mexico and preserved with alcohol proved in self-experiments to be no longer active. Where the chemical nature of the active principle is concerned, the problem of the magic plant ska María Pastora still awaits solution.

So far in this book I have mainly described my scientific work and matters relating to my professional activity. But this work, by its very nature, had repercussions on my own life and personality, not least because it brought me into contact with interesting and important contemporaries. I have already mentioned some of them—Timothy Leary, Rudolf Gelpke, Gordon Wasson. Now, in the pages that follow, I would like to emerge from the natural scientist's reserve, in order to portray encounters which were personally meaningful to me and which helped me solve questions posed by the substances I had discovered.

7. Radiance from Ernst Jünger

Radiance is the perfect term to express the influence that Ernst Jünger's literary work and personality have had on me. In the light of his perspective, which stereoscopically comprises the surfaces and depths of things, the world I knew took on a new, translucent splendor. That happened a long time before the discovery of LSD and before I came into personal contact with this author in connection with hallucinogenic drugs.

My enchantment with Ernst Jünger began with his book Das Abenteuerliche Herz [The adventurous heart]. Again and again in the last forty years I have taken up this book. Here more than ever, in themes that weigh more lightly and lie closer to me than war and a new type of human being (subjects of Jünger's earlier books), the beauty and magic of Jünger's prose was opened to me-descriptions of flowers, of dreams, of solitary walks; thoughts about chance, the future, colors, and about other themes that have direct relation to our personal lives. Everywhere in his prose the miracle of creation became evident, in the precise description of the surfaces and, in translucence, of the depths; and the uniqueness and the imperishable in every human being was touched upon. No other writer has thus opened my eyes.

Drugs were also mentioned in Das Abenteuerliche Herz. Many years passed, however, before I myself began to be especially interested in this subject, after the discovery of the psychic effects of LSD.

My first correspondence with Ernst Jünger had nothing to do with the context of drugs; rather I once wrote to him on his birthday, as a thankful reader.

Bottmingen, 29 March 1947

Dear Mr. Jünger,

As one richly endowed by you for years, I wished to send a jar of honey to you for your birthday. But I did not have this pleasure, because my export license has been refused in Bern.

The gift was intended less as a greeting from a country in which milk and honey still flow, than as a reminiscence of the enchanting sentences in your book Auf den Marmorklippen (On the Marble Cliffs), where you speak of the "golden bees."

The book mentioned here had appeared in 1939, just shortly before the outbreak of World War II. Auf den Marmorklippen is not only a masterpiece of German prose, but also a work of great significance because in this book the characteristics of tyrants and the horror of war and nocturnal bombardment are described prophetically, in poetic vision.

In the course of our correspondence, Ernst Jünger also inquired about my LSD studies, of which he had learned through a friend. Thereupon I sent him the pertinent publications, which he acknowledged with the following comments:

Kirchhorst, 3/3/1948

. . . together with both enclosures concerning your new phantasticum. It seems indeed that you have entered a field that contains so many tempting mysteries.

Your consignment came together with the Confessions of an English Opium Eater, that has just been published in a new translation. The translator writes me that his reading of Das Abenteuerliche Herz stimulated him to do his work.

As far as I am concerned, my practical studies in this field are far behind me. These are experiments in which one sooner or later embarks on truly dangerous paths, and may be considered lucky to escape with only a black eye.

What interested me above all was the relationship of these substances to productivity.

It has been my experience, however, that creative achievement requires an alert consciousness, and that it diminishes under the spell of drugs. On the other hand, conceptualization is important, and one gains insights under the influence of drugs that indeed are not possible otherwise. I consider the beautiful essay that Maupassant has written about ether to be such an insight. Moreover, I had the impression that in fever one also discovers new landscapes, new archipelagos, and a new music, that becomes completely distinct when the "customs station" ["An der Zollstation" [At the custom station], the title heading of a section in Das Abenteuerliche Herz (2d ed.) that concerns the transition from life to death.] appears. For geographic description, on the other hand, one must be fully conscious. What productivity means to the artist, healing means to the physician. Accordingly, it also may suffice for him that he sometimes enters the regions through the tapestries that our senses have woven. Moreover, I seem to perceive in our time less of a taste for the phantastica than for the energetica—amphetamine, which has even been furnished to fliers and other soldiers by the armies, belongs to this group. Tea is in my opinion a phantasticum, coffee an energeticum—tea therefore possesses a disproportionately higher artistic rank. I notice that coffee disrupts the delicate lattice of light and shadows, the fruitful doubts that emerge during the writing of a sentence. One exceeds his inhibitions. With tea, on the other hand, the thoughts climb genuinely upward.

So far as my "studies" are concerned, I had a manuscript on that topic, but have since burned it. My excursions terminated with hashish, that led to very pleasant, but also to manic states, to oriental tyranny....

Soon afterward, in a letter from Ernst Jünger I learned that he had inserted a discourse about drugs in the novel Heliopolis, on which he was then working. He wrote to me about the drug researcher who figures in the novel: