North America—may represent one of the oldest of the hallu- 
cinogens used by man, and only very recently has a clarification 
of the chemistry of its active principles begun to take shape 
(Eugster 1967; Heim 1963b). 
The Aryan invaders ot India 3500 years ago worshipped a 
plant, the god-narcotic soma, centre of an elaborate cult in 
which the inebriating juice was ceremonially drunk (Wasson 
1968). More than 1000 hymns to soma have survived in the Rig 
Veda, describing the plant and its significance in detail. The use 
of soma died out 2000 years ago. Botanists have proposed more 
than 100 species in attempts to identify soma, but none have 
been satisfactory. The most recent identification of soma as 
Amanita muscaria appears, from the indirect evidence at hand, 
to be highly probable. 
In the 18th Century, Europeans discovered the narcotic use of 
Amanita muscaria among primitive tribesmen of Siberia. Until 
very recently, it was employed as an orgiastic or shamanistic 
inebriant by the Ostyak and Vogul, Finno-Ugrian peoples in 
western Siberia, and the Chukchi, Koryak and Kamchadal of 
northeastern Siberia. Tradition has established its use amongst 
other peoples (Wasson 1967, 1968). 
In Siberia, several mushrooms sufficed to induce intoxica- 
tion—taken as extracts in water or milk, alone or with the juice 
of Vaccinium uliginosum L. or Epilobium angustifolium L. A 
dried mushroom may be held moistened in the mouth, or 
women may chew the mushrooms and roll them into pellets for 
the men to ingest. Since the mushrooms often were expensive, 
the Siberians practiced ritualistic drinking of the urine of an 
intoxicated person, having discovered that the inebriating prin- 
ciples were excreted unaltered by the kidneys. Urine-drinking is 
mentioned in the Rig Veda hymns to soma (Wasson 1968). 
There is indirect evidence suggesting that Amanita muscaria 
may have been used in Middle America. The ceremonial use of 
the fly agaric has been recently discovered amongst the Ojibway 
Indians of the United States (Wasson, pers. commun.), and 
unconfirmed indications of its use in northwestern Canada have 
recently been indicated (Halifax, pers. comm.). 
154 
