In short: Maria Sabina was a Mazatec healer from Oaxaca, Mexico, whose ceremonies with sacred mushrooms were documented by an outsider in 1957. That article introduced many people in the West to the mushrooms, and the attention changed her life and her community in ways she later regretted.
A long tradition
Mushroom use in Mesoamerica is far older than any modern research. Spanish colonial writers in the 1500s described the Aztecs’ use of a substance called teonanácatl, often translated as “flesh of the gods.” Colonial authorities suppressed these practices, and for centuries they survived quietly in remote communities, including among the Mazatec people of the Sierra Mazateca in southern Mexico.
Maria Sabina
María Sabina (born around 1894, died 1985) lived in Huautla de Jiménez, a mountain town in Oaxaca. Outsiders often called her a curandera, a traditional healer, although she described herself as a sabia, a wise woman. She led night-long ceremonies known as veladas. Participants were brought together to seek guidance or healing, and the mushrooms were treated as sacred. She referred to them as los niños santos, “the holy children.”
The 1955 visit and the 1957 article
In 1955, R. Gordon Wasson, a New York banker and amateur mycologist, travelled to Huautla with his wife, Valentina, and took part in a velada led by Sabina. According to accounts of his visit, he gained her trust by saying he was worried about his son, and he later admitted this was not the full truth. In May 1957, Life magazine published his first-person account, “Seeking the Magic Mushroom.” It reached a mass American audience.
The article did not name Sabina or the town. Her identity and location became public later, through Wasson’s own multi-volume book. Critics have since argued this violated her consent and the hospitality she had shown him.
Samples Wasson collected were studied by the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann, who had earlier discovered LSD. In 1958, Hofmann isolated and identified psilocybin and psilocin as the active compounds.
The cost to a community
After the article, foreigners began arriving in Huautla looking for the mushrooms, including curious tourists and counterculture figures. Sabina later said she regretted introducing the practice to outsiders. She was ostracized by neighbours who blamed her. Accounts of her life say her house was burned down, her son was murdered, and she was briefly jailed because police suspected her of being a drug dealer. The sources do not agree on dates or details. She died in poverty on 23 November 1985. In the late 1960s and 1970s, the Mexican army reportedly kept hippies and other visitors from entering the town. Historians and Indigenous advocates often point to her story as a lesson about how outsiders can harm the traditions they admire.
Why her story matters today
- It shows that sacred plant and fungus use has deep Indigenous roots and a cultural context.
- It reminds readers that the current wave of interest in psilocybin builds on traditions whose keepers were rarely credited or compensated.
- It is part of a wider conversation about respectful, ethical engagement with Indigenous knowledge.
This article is for education and historical interest only. Details of Sabina’s life come from interviews and secondary accounts, and some are debated by historians. Psilocybin is illegal in many places; legal status varies by country.