Teonanacatl, the Narcotic Mushroom
B. Pablo Reko
American Anthropologist, vol. 42, pp. 368-369, 1940
[368] After years of patient search the teonanacatl, a
narcotic mushroom used in religious rites, has been located and identified.
I have been able to trace the still persistent use of this and other narcotic
fungi to the southern part of Mexico (Veracruz, Oaxaca) where in the summer
of 1937 I obtained the first specimens of a slender, black mushroom which corresponded
exactly to the description of Sahagún and which is still used to induce a state
of great, hilarity among the Mazatecs of Oaxaca, who regarded it as a holy arcanum,
not to be divulged to outsiders. The plant was identified by the Harvard Botanical
Museum as Panaeolus campanulalus L. var. sphinctrinus (Fr.) Bresadola.
Prof. C. G. Santesson of Stockholm stated to me that in the scanty material
sent to him he could not detect the presence of an alkaloid.
In a botanical trip I made to the Mazatec country in 1938, in
company with R. E. Schultes of the Harvard Botanical Museum, sufficient material
was secured by [369] me to enable Prof Santesson to demonstrate the presence of a
gluco-alkaloid similar in its actions to the one he bad previously found in
the narcotic seeds of Piule (Rivea corymbosa), which I had forwarded
to him. The intoxicating effect lasts for hours but does not form a habit. Its
Mazatec name To-shka (fuddle mushroom) has the same meaning as the Zapotcc
name Beya-zoo (honga borracho).
Tacuabaya, Mexico