p. 20 had said this: “The author was also informed by certain 
Brujos among the Chatino Indians (living in Southern Caraca) 
that they used the Amanita muscaria for hallucinogenic purposes. 
The proper dose is one-half of a mushroom. 
If true, this would be sensasional. It is not true. A. muscaria is 
the hallucinogenic mushroom of the Siberian tribesman in their 
rites. It is not used in Mexico. 
When we first began visiting the Indian country of southern Mexi- 
co, we were expecting to find that the hallucinogenic mushroom 
there was 4. muscaria. For ten years we have combed the various 
regions and we haveinvariably found that it played no role in the 
life of the Indians, though of course it is of common occurrence 
in the woods. We had visited the Chatino country, where we were 
accompanied by Bill Upson of the Instituto Linguistico de Verano, 
who speaks Chatino. Later he likewise helped Puharich, but he 
informs us that no brujo in his presence testified to the use of a 
mushroom answering to the description of 4. muscaria. After the 
Puharich statement had appeared, I gave Bill a photograph in 
color of A. muscaria, and he returned to Juquila and Yaitepec. 
An informant named Benigno recognized the mushroom at once 
and identified the stage of development that it had reached, as 
would be expected of a countryman intimately familiar with his 
environment. He said the people in his area do not take that kind 
of mushroom. Chico Ortega is a Zapotec Indian of mature years, 
keen intelligence, high sense of responsibility, and vast experi- 
ence throughout the villages of the State of Oaxaca. In the sum- 
mer of 1962 I sent him, with the color photo, to sound out Chatino 
villagers as to the use they made of it. Discreetly, he went from 
village to village. The results were uniformly and unanimously 
negative. 
Puharich in The Magic Mushroom as well as in his most recent 
book is unduly impressed with the occurrence of A. muscaria, 
Wherever the species of trees occur with which it lives in mycor- 
rhizal relationship, it is common. It is one of the commonest of 
fungi in North America and Eurasia. Puharich quotes at length 
as an authority Victor Reko, a notorious farceur, not to be con- 
fused with his cousin, Blas Pablo Reko. 
Puharich does not identify the spot where he met his bryos, 
though it seems probable that he did not get beyond the mestize 
town of Juquila. He does not identify his brujos. He does not 
explain how he put his question to them, how he explained over 
a double linguistic barrier what A. muscaria looked like. He does 
not explain what precautions he took to avoid a leading question 
that would almost certainly produce his desired answer. 
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