Sabina Sabe August 28, 2022
“Cure yourself with the light of the sun and the rays of the moon.
With the sound of the river and the waterfall.
With the swaying of the sea and the fluttering of birds.
Heal yourself with mint, with neem and eucalyptus.
Sweeten yourself with lavender, rosemary, and chamomile.
Hug yourself with the cocoa bean and a touch of cinnamon.
Put love in tea instead of sugar, and take it looking at the stars.
Heal yourself with the kisses that the wind gives you and the hugs of the rain.
Get strong with bare feet on the ground and with everything that is born from it.
Get smarter every day by listening to your intuition, looking at the world with the eye of your forehead.
Jump, dance, sing, so that you live happier.
Heal yourself, with beautiful love, and always remember: you are the medicine.”
Maria Sabina, 1957
Maria Sabina Magdalena, a Mazateca born in Huautla de Jimenez, northern Oaxaca, in 1894, was first recorded on tape in the 1950’s. Her prayerful monologues were promptly translated and published as poems. She denied writing any of them; rather, she claimed, the authors were “Los Niños Santos,” the Child-Saints, who spoke through her. Maria was merely the conduit, the translator, the doctor and healer, the psychic traveler wandering from point of origin to point of origin. Her sole purpose was to cure her people of their maladies, but in the 1950’s word spread to the outside world that she could lead the willing to some enlightened state of being. So the outsiders came to find her in Huautla de Jimenez.
The first to visit was an academic, Robert Wasson, who came under some ethnological pretense, but his real pursuit was a study of consciousness, particularly through its alteration. Wasson’s early studies of psilocybins continue to influence an exploding field—curing the incurable, treating depression and anxiety, post-traumatic and even pre-traumatic stress. Patients testified to a transcendent level of sustained wellbeing. Maria seemed to have the elixir for whatever ailed.
“They vomit the sickness because the mushrooms want them to,” Maria Sabina said. “If they don’t vomit, I vomit for them.”
Aldous Huxley apparently visited Maria Sabina. So did Carlos Castaneda, a curious character, fresh from his Sonoran quest to become a warrior for knowledge, under the tutelage of an apocryphal Yaqui Brujo he named Don Juan. “Why do you want to learn about Mescalito (peyote)?” the teacher asked him, warning his student that intent was everything. You will know the “spot” you belong when you “see” it, lied the Brujo.
Castaneda published his thesis in anthropology to earn a doctorate from UCLA, but many experts suspected it was imaginative fiction. The New York Times set a precedent when it declined to print its first review of Castaneda’s book, written by a recognized expert in Amerindian psychotropic rituals, who was highly critical of the writer’s scholarship. A second review was commissioned to an anthropologist, Paul Reisman, who was more generous, saying, “Castaneda makes clear that the teachings of ‘Don Juan’ do tell us something of how the world really is.” This was a far kinder assessment than that of a fellow shaman, who described Castaneda’s work as “pseudo-profound deeply vulgar pseudo-ethnography.”
When Joyce Carol Oates echoed these unfavorable reviews of dishonesty, the world took notice. It was discovered that Castasteda was not Brazilian, as he claimed, but born in Peru, nor had he ever served in the military, as he maintained. As a result of the scrutiny, the author removed himself from the public. His book sales nevertheless were sufficient to finance a somewhat secret institute devoted to ancient Toltec witchcraft. The women who studied with Castaneda (and shared his bed) were so committed to the man that three of them committed suicide when he died. Simon and Schuster still sells his Don Juan books as nonfiction, because in the world of magic one never knows. No Sabe.
It makes sense that Castaneda would want to connect with the authentic Maria Sabina. It is less clear if Sabina would want to know the literati and other collectors of experiences that sought her guidance. Like the apocryphal Don Juan, Maria Sabina always questioned the motives of the outsiders:
“‘We come in search of God,’ they said…But from the moment the foreigners came, the Saint-Children, Los Niños Santos, lost their purity, they lost their force. The foreigners spoiled them. From this moment on, they will be no good, there is no remedy.”
Nevertheless, by the late ’60’s, it was a considered an elite experience to attend one of María Sabina’s retreats in Huautla de Jimenez, in the northern mountains of Oaxaca. Bob Dylan was alleged to have gone there. Similar rumors place the Beatles there, as well as the Rolling Stones, Leonard Cohen, and others. But the Shaman refused photos or any other record of the mushroom trips, such is the sacred significance of the medicine. Therefore, there is no physical evidence that any of these artists visited Oaxaca. Stranger still, it is also alleged that Walt Disney visited Maria Sabina, for reasons utterly unknowable. Solo Los Chismes.
Just north of our neighborhood, Sabina Sabe is an upscale restaurant and bar, on Calle 5 de Mayo, between Morelos and Governor Murgia Street. Sabina literally means “one who knows.” Maria Sabina Knows. The restaurant caters to foreigners, which Maria never did, nor was she paid for her witchcraft. Even after she died, at the sagely age of 91, resentments persisted in Huautla de Jimenez toward the “princess of mushrooms,” who exposed the sacred rituals to the outsiders.
“Maria Sabina? She was the real deal, a true Shaman, but then came all the commercialism. It became fashionable, tainted.” [anonymous source]
I step inside the door of the old colonial home to peruse the menu, considering whether to declare loudly to the staff and diners, in words clear to all: “I am a shooting-star woman. I am a trumpet woman. I am a drum woman.” Despite my stated credentials, I would not be permitted to enter. Reservations are required. I doubt I will find a trace of the old woman.