Talk:Seeking the Magic Mushroom

Background

 * Journalist turned banker; shared ethnomycology interest with his wife
 * Giovanni Mardersteig, mushroom stones
 * Travel to Mexico in 1953
 * June 29-30, 1955 trip becomes basis for article
 * Wasson, wife, and daughter
 * Society photographer Allan Richardson, teacher at the Brearley School
 * Essay is only one small part of Wasson's overarching thesis: "the surmise that our own remote ancestors, perhaps 4,000 years ago, worshipped a divine mushroom". (Wasson 1961)
 * Essay represents ""the rediscovery of the religious role of the hallucinogenic mushrooms of Mexico". (Wasson 1961)
 * "It was in Mexico that our pursuit of a hypothetical sacred mushroom first achieved its goal." (Wasson 1978)

Publication

 * Historical context: Huxley's Doors of Perception (1954) and Heaven and Hell (1956)
 * Luce and Life, development of the essay
 * The full title of the essay was "Seeking the magic mushroom: a New York Banker goes to Mexico's mountains to participate in the age-old rituals of Indians who chew strange growths that produce visions."
 * Editorial disagreement with use of "magic mushrooms"
 * Related book and interview with wife
 * French pubs

Synopsis

 * Add CIA chemist James Moore who was on assignment

Reception

 * Public response
 * Academic response
 * Mushroom tourism
 * Influenced Timothy Leary
 * Before the essay was published, Leary had never used drugs. The essay led him to use psychedelics for the first time.
 * Celebrities
 * Acclaim and fallout