These statues are some of the remaining examples of “mushroom stones” from the Ancient Maya people. They testify to the usage of psilocybin by indigenous Central Americans that goes back hundreds of years. The second photo shows a real-life example, called Psilocybe Mexicana.
The Central American consumption of hallucinogenic mushrooms for ritual purposes was brought to the attention of a Western audience when Gordan Wasson and his wife Valentina (neé Pavlovna) traveled to Oaxaca, Mexico in the 1950s and partook in a local ritual. They were the most prominent ethnomycologists of the 20th century. They spent their lives collecting records of how humans have interacted with mushrooms in the past, coming up with the idea that historically, societies have tended to be either mycophobic or mycophilic.
The Wassons’ publications eventually made the region of Oaxaca a destination for hedonistic American hippies, threatening to ruin the local peoples and their practices. Eventually, the Mexican army closed the village to all but locals.
Sources: “Teonanacatl mushrooms: flesh of the gods,” USDA forest service: photos Cactu and Richard Rose, respectively. Pp 45-46 _The Magic of Mushrooms: Fungi in Folklore, Superstition, and Traditional Medicine_ 2022, Sandra Lawrence, Welbeck publisher
