María Sabina

Curandera

It was the Mazatec shaman María Sabina, a curandera sin mancha, a "shaman without blemish", who on June 29, 1955, in the village of Huautla de Jiménez in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, invited R. Gordon Wasson to participate in a velada, the modern vestige of the ancient sacred use of teonanácatl. It was the experience of shamanic ecstasy by Wasson during this ritual that initiated the rebirth of the sacred mushroom cult in modern times.

The more you go inside the world of Teonanácatl, the more things are seen. And you also see our past and our future, which are there as a single thing already achieved, already happened....Millions of things I saw and knew. I knew and saw God: an immense clock that ticks, the spheres that go slowly around, and inside the stars, the earth, the entire universe, the day and the night, the cry and the smile, the happiness and the pain. He who knows to the end the secret of Teonanácatl can even see that infinite clockwork.
María Sabina

An excerpt from María Sabina's chant during a velada translated from the Mazatec language:

Woman who thunders am I, woman who sounds am I.
Spiderwoman am I, hummingbird woman am I....
Eagle woman am I, important eagle woman am I.
Whirling woman of the whirlwind am I, woman of a
sacred, enchanted place am I,
Woman of the shooting stars am I.