“Seeking the Magic Mushroom” is the article by R. Gordon Wasson that Life published on 13 May 1957, volume 42, number 19, as part three of its “Great Adventures” series (Life, 1957). It described a night vigil on 29–30 June 1955 and claimed Wasson and the photographer Allan Richardson were “the first white men in recorded history to eat the divine mushrooms” (Life, 1957). Scholars say earlier outsiders had already reached the Mazatec highlands (Spiers et al., 2024).
Life gave the healer the pseudonym “Eva Mendez”, called the language “Mixeteco”, left the town unnamed and said names and places had been altered (Life, 1957). It also printed Roger Heim’s paintings of the mushrooms. A 2022 review credits the article with popularising psilocybin mushrooms in Western culture (Hayes et al., 2022).
Visitors still found Huautla de Jiménez. A study of the local mushroom trade reports dozens of foreigners arriving soon afterwards, and deportations of 32 Americans in 1967 (García de Teresa, 2022). The article is now read both as a turning point and as the start of harm to María Sabina and her town.
Sources
- Life, vol. 42, no. 19, 13 May 1957 (Internet Archive)
- Spiers et al., 2024
- García de Teresa, 2022
- Hayes, Wahba and Watson, 2022
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