April 2018^ DISCOVER^63FARMER DODDS/SHUTTERSTOCK
The village was small, dusty and sunstruck, its
streets eerily empty. At an altitude of 5,500 feet,
it was remote, and the past so well preserved, that
most native inhabitants still spoke no Spanish. In
the town hall, Wasson found a young indigenous
man — a síndico, the local official in charge — sit-
ting in a large, empty room. Wasson leaned down
and asked if the síndico could help him “learn the
secrets of the divine mushroom.” Nothing could
be easier, the síndico replied.
Thus Wasson and Richardson found themselves,
that evening, as the first known white men ever to
partake in the local’s ancient mushroom ceremony.
It took place in the lower chamber of the síndico’s
house after 8 p.m. The room was filled with locals sit-
ting on mats, waiting to be served. Before midnight,
the mother and daughter shamans passed out the
mushrooms, giving each adult a portion and keep-
ing most for themselves. Richardson had promised
his wife he would not ingest any mushrooms, but he
found himself swept into the ceremony, as was Was-
son, for whom this was the culminating moment in
a long pursuit.
Both men bit into the fresh fungi and chewed
them slowly. After half an hour had passed, spec-
tacular visions began appearing to Wasson — a
steady stream of gorgeous geometrics, then palaces
of pearl, gardens, chariots pulled by mythological
beasts. Each image was perfectly etched, clearer
than clear, so that Wasson felt that for the first time
he was really seeing reality.
Wasson and Richardson were utterly awed by
their experience. On successive trips, they brought
along world-renowned mushroom expert Roger
Heim in an effort to identify all the types of hal-
lucinogenic mushrooms and to procure enough
of a supply that it could be used for laboratory
study. Eventually, mushrooms were sent to Albert
Hofmann, the first man to synthesize LSD, at the
laboratory of the pharmaceutical firm Sandoz
in Basel, Switzerland. Hofmann ate a few and
recorded his experience — “everything took on a
Mexican character” — and later discovered their
active ingredient, psilocybin.
Back in Boston, Timothy Leary, a psychologist
and professor at Harvard University who would
become famous for the admonition to “turn on,
tune in and drop out,” learned about the magic
mushrooms. He then ate them in Cuernavaca,
Mexico, leading him to conceive of and implement
the Harvard Psilocybin Project, whose goal was to
study the effects of hallucinogens on a wide range
of subjects: prisoners, parishioners, divinity stu-
dents and the dying.PSYCHEDELICS AND SPIRITUALITY
The Good Friday Experiment is perhaps the most