First, the person who is to take the seeds must solemnly commit 
himself to take them, and to go out and cut the branches with the 
seed. There must also be a vow to the Virgen in favor of the sick per- 
son, so that the seed will take effect with him. If there is no such vow, 
there will be no effect. The sick person must seek out a child of seven 
or eight years, a little girl if the patient is a man, a little boy if the 
patient is a woman. The child should be freshly bathed and in clean 
clothes, all fresh and clean. The seed is then measured out, the 
amount that fills the cup of the hand, or about a thimble full. The 
time should be Friday, but at night, about eight or nine o'clock, and 
there must be no noise, no noise at all, As for grinding the seed, in 
the beginning you say, ‘In the name of God and of the Virgencita, 
be gracious and grant the remedy, and tell us, Virgencita, what is 
wrong with the patient. Our hopes are in thee.’ To strain the ground 
seed, you should use a clean cloth—a new cloth, if possible. When 
giving the drink to the patient, you must say three Pater Nosters and 
three Ave Marias. A child must carry the bowl in his hands, along 
with a censer. After having drunk the liquor, the patient lies down. 
The bowl with the censer is placed underneath, at the head of the 
bed. The child must remain with the other person, waiting to take 
care of the patient and to hear what he will say. If there is improve- 
ment, then the patient does not get up; he remains in bed. If there 
is no improvement, the patient gets up and lies down again in front 
of the altar. He stays there a while, and then rises and goes to bed 
again, and he should not talk until the next day. And so everything 
is revealed. You are told whether the trouble is an act of malice or 
whether it is illness. 
The photographs illustrate the cuwrandera’s account of 
a ceremony invoking the divine power of the morning 
glory seeds. A feature of this recital is the child who 
serves the beverage. He (or she) is ritually cleansed, a 
symbol of purity. I encountered this practice for the first 
time in 1960, in the Mixteca, in the Valley of Juxtla- 
huaca, when Robert Ravicz and I were looking for sur- 
vivals of the mushroom cult. The mushrooms were to be 
gathered by a virgen, they were ground on the metate 
by a virgen.” In 1962, in Ayautla and also in San José 
Tenango, in the Sierra Mazateca, again a maiden ground 
the leaves of the Salvia divinorum. Here then is a general 
pattern, whether in the Sierra Mazateca, or among the 
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