Mushroom Ceremony Mazatec RARE Folkways LP Psych

$

305

 MUSHROOM CEREMONY OF THE MAZATEC INDIANS OF MEXICO

FOLKWAYS FR 8975

VERY RARE and sought after! Folkways Records and Service Corporation along with the US Library of Congress presents the Mushroom Ceremony of the Mazatec Indians of Mexico, released in 1957 (Folkways FR 8975). Recorded by R. Gordon Wasson in 1956, Oaxaca, Mexico. Nocturnal mushroom rite performed by Maria Sabina. This recording is one of the first attempts of westerners to experience and record a religious ceremony involving the use of psychedelic mushrooms by the Mazatec. Certainly the first recordings of a psychedelic experience released on LP. Some of the chanting is translated in the booklet.

Vinyl is VG++ and cover is Near Mint, amazing for an record which is over 60 years old. There are a couple tiny spots of light cover wear and two corners are not as sharp as they once were. The record has a few light surface marks. Comes with original booklet of notes which is in nearly perfect shape but is missing the staple that held the pages together. NO RESERVE! We ship FED-EX.

FROM WIKIPEDIA:

R. Gordon Wasson and his wife Valentina Pavlovna Guercken, mounted expeditions to Mexico to study the religious use of mushrooms by the native population. They became the first westerners to participate in a Mazatec sacred mushroom ritual. In 1957, they published a Life magazine article (Seeking the Magic Mushroom), bringing knowledge of the existence of psychoactive mushrooms to a wide audience for the first time. Through his collaboration with Roger Heim, the mushrooms were subjected to scientific study, and Albert Hofmann[2], using material grown by Heim from specimens collected by the Wassons, identified the chemical structure of the active compounds, psilocybin and psilocin. Two species of mushroom, Psilocybe wassonii Heim and Psilocybe wassonorum Guzman were named in honor of R. Gordon Wasson. Hofmann and Wasson were also the first westerners to collect specimens of the Mazatec hallucinogen Salvia divinorum[citation needed], leading to its description as a new species, and bringing it into cultivation outside of Mexico.

Experiences with the magic mushrooms apparently had a profound effect on Wasson, and fungi remained a persistent theme in his work. His next major contribution was a study of the ancient Vedic intoxicant Soma, which he proposed was based on the psychoactive Fly Agaric (Amanita muscaria) mushroom. This was published in 1967 under the title Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality. His attention then turned to the Eleusinian Mysteries, the initiation ceremony of the ancient Greek cult of Demeter and Persephone. In The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries (1978), co-authored with Albert Hofmann and Carl A. P. Ruck, it was proposed that the special potion "kykeon", a pivotal component of the ceremony, contained psychoactive ergoline alkaloids from the fungus Ergot (Claviceps spp.).