R. Gordon Wasson by Pat Hardy

n this episode, we descend from the orderly temples of organized religion into the wild, fungal undergrowth of human consciousness, where the sacred is not a matter of faith but of direct, chemical encounter with the divine. We explore how R. Gordon Wasson—the J.P. Morgan banker turned ethnomycologist, the Swiss-American outsider who married a Russian mycophile, the unlikely pioneer of a field that barely had a name—seized the anthropological inheritance of his time and dragged it into the muddy, mushroom-strewn reality of preindustrial ritual, declaring that the engine of religion is not the abstract perfection of doctrine but the dynamic interplay of plant, brain, and culture. In a world that still craves direct spiritual experience, still fears the wild things that grow in the earth, and still debates the relationship between consciousness and the divine, do we have the courage to eat the mushroom, or will we retreat into the comfortable authority of the priest who tells us faith is enough?🎧 ABOUT THE RUBY TABLETThe Ruby Tablet Podcast is a philosophical and spiritual journey through the essays of the Temple of Set, exploring the great traditions of human thought—from ancient Egypt to the present day. Each episode is a deep dive into the ideas that help shape the Self and fan the Black Flame.🔗 SOURCES & READING LIST:Essay #29: R. Gordon Wasson and the Mushroom CultsAuthor: Pat Hardy II° Date: October 1, XIX Revision: January 1, XXIV HTML Revision: January 25, 1998 CE Subject: Psychology, Sociology, Drugs Reading List: 3L, 16A, 16L, 16M📚 RECOMMENDED READING:Wasson, Valentina Pavlovna, and R. Gordon Wasson. Mushrooms, Russia and History, 2 vol. Pantheon Books, NY, 1957. (Out of print and quite rare—try large university libraries.)Wasson, R. Gordon. Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality. NY: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc. The Hague: Moutan, 1968.Wasson, R. Gordon, George and Florence Cowan, and Willard Rhodes. María Sabina and Her Mazatec Mushroom Velada. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, NY & London, 1974.Wasson, R. Gordon, and Carl A.P. Ruck. The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, NY & London, 1978.Allegro, John. The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross. Hodder & Stoughton, 1970. (Regarded as crank scholarship—unlike Wasson's work, which is treated respectfully by the academic community.)Schultes, Richard Evans, and Albert Hofmann. Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers. McGraw-Hill, 1979.Furst, Peter T. Flesh of the Gods: The Ritual Use of Hallucinogens. Praeger, 1972.La Barre, Weston. The Peyote Cult. Yale University Press, 1938.Harner, Michael J., ed. Hallucinogens and Shamanism. Oxford University Press, 1973.Ott, Jonathan. Pharmacotheon: Entheogenic Drugs, Their Plant Sources and History. Natural Products Co., 1993.Ruck, Carl A.P. The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries (with R. Gordon Wasson and Albert Hofmann). Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978.Dobkin de Rios, Marlene. Hallucinogens: Cross-Cultural Perspectives. University of New Mexico Press, 1984.McKenna, Terence. Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge. Bantam Books, 1992.🏷️ HASHTAGS#Wasson #Ethnomycology #Ethnobotany #Ethnopharmacology #Psychedelics #Entheogens #Mushrooms #MagicMushrooms #Psilocybin #AmanitaMuscaria #FlyAgaric #Soma #RigVeda #EleusinianMysteries #MaríaSabina #Mazatec #Huautla #Velada