teca, Mexico, 1945, p. 17) a sentence that, translated, 
says: 
We cannot fai] to mention here another magic plant whose leaves 
produce visions and which the Cuicatees and Mazatecs (in the districts 
of Cuicatlin and Teotitlin) call “divination leaf.’’ The loose leaves 
that I have received do not permit their scientific identification. 
This refers probably to the Salvia divinorum of the 
Mazatecs. There is a longer reference in a paper by Ing. 
Robert J. Weitlaner (‘‘Curaciones Mazatecas’’ in An. 
Inst. Nac. Anthrop. Hist. 4, No. 82 (1952) 283). While 
Weitlaner was in QOjitlin, a Chinantec village, he en- 
countered a native of Jalapa de Diaz, a neighboring 
Mazatec town, who told him of the use among his fellow- 
townsmen of a plant known as Yerba de Maria. This 
informant’s account, in a shortened paraphrased transla- 
tion, follows: 
Yerba Maria resembles somewhat the yerba mora, but it has slightly 
wider leaves. Only the leaves are used, putting them in water. First 
the leaves are rubbed together in the hands, the water is not boiled, 
and they are used for very specific purposes. When the curandero goes 
to the forest in search of this plant, before cutting it he must kneel 
and pray to it. They are not witch-doctors; but the leaves are cut 
only when they are needed, after praying. 
For example, if someone is suffering from a sickness, and the doc- 
tors do not know what is the matter, then with this plant they divine 
the disease. The curandero who brings the leaves first asks the sick 
person if he is addicted to taking alcohol, because, when a man does 
not take alcohol, fifty leaves are prescribed; when he takes alcohol, 
then 100 leaves are prescribed. The sick person drinks the water in 
which the leaves have been rubbed. At midnight, the curandero goes 
with him and another person to a place where there is no noise, as 
for example an isolated house, where the patient takes the potion. 
They wait 15 minutes for the drug to take effect, and the patient him- 
self begins to state the kind of sickness from which he suffers. The 
patient finds himself in a semi-delirious state, he speaks as in a trance, 
and the others listen attentively to what he says. He shakes his 
clothes, as though with the aid of the plant he would free himself from 
the little beasties | presumed cause, in the Indian mind, of the illness |. 
At dawn the curandero bathes the patient with the water of which he 
has drunk, and thereupon the patient is cured. 
[ 80 ] 
