maguey, or century plant from which pulque is made, 
which, when distilled, yields mezcal. Mezcal has nothing 
to do with ‘mescal buttons’ or ‘mescaline’. This contfu- 
sion is the lexicographers’ nightmare, as can be seen in 
many English-language dictionaries where erroneous 
citations are given under the respective meanings of the 
word. 
On the other hand there is an important meyeanismo 
that has largely escaped the lexicographers: piule, a 
generic name in Mexico for the hallucinogens. J. J. 
Santamaria traces it to Zapotec, in my opinion on in- 
sufficient grounds. I have heard it applied to hallucino- 
genic mushrooms among the Zapotec-speakers of the 
Sierra Costera, at San Augustin Loxicha: pile de barda, 
piule de cheris, these being distinct species of such mush- 
rooms, or simply piule.” Does it not stem from peyotl, 
thus: péyotl/péyutl>> peyile>> pile? As Dr. Aguirre 
Beltran has shown us, in early colonial times peyot/ was 
in use in Oaxaca. The present-day currency of the word 
among some monolingual Zapotecs might come down 
from that period. 
Teonanacatl — ‘God's flesh’ 
At least twenty-five of our early sources, many of them 
among our most important, speak of feonanacatl, ‘God's 
flesh’”, the sacred mushrooms of Middle America. Ber- 
nardino de Sahagun refers to them repeatedly and at 
some length. He givesin Nahuatl the text of his native 
informants. Of the Nahuatl poems preserved for us, one 
mentions them, and probably others refer to them meta- 
phorically. There are miniatures of them in two of the 
arly codices. We in the 20th Century would have ex- 
pected the Kuropean in colonial Mexico to try them out, 
to satisfy his curiosity as to their properties. There is no 
record of any such experiment. The Spaniards (if we may 
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