a human face or an animal, and allof them were very 
like mushrooms. Like the child in the Emperor’s New 
Clothes, we spoke up, declaring that the so-called ‘mush- 
room stones’ really represented mushrooms, and that 
they were the symbol of a religion, like the Cross in the 
Christian religion, or the Star of Judea, or the Crescent 
of the Moslems. If we are right—and little by little the 
accumulating evidence seems to be in our favor—then 
this Middle American cult of a divine mushroom, this 
cult of ‘God’s flesh’ as the Indians in pre-Columbian 
times called it, can be traced back to about B.C. 1500, 
in what we call the Karly Pre-classic period, the earliest 
period in which man was in sufficient command of his 
technique to be able to carve stone. Thus we find a 
mushroom in the center of the cult with perhaps the 
oldest continuous history in the world. These oldest 
mushroom stones are technically and stylistically among 
the finest that we have, evidence of a flourishing rite at 
the time they were made. Earlier still, it is tempting to 
imagine countless generations of wooden effigies, mush- 
roomic symbols of the cult, that have long since turned 
to dust. Is not mycology, which someone has called the 
step-child of the sciences, acquiring a wholly new and 
unexpected dimension? Religion has always been at the 
core of man’s highest faculties and cultural achievements, 
and therefore I ask you now to contemplate our lowly 
mushroom—what patents of ancient lineage and nobility 
are coming its way! 
It remained for us to find out what kinds of mush- 
rooms had been worshipped in Middle America, and 
why. Fortunately, we could build on the experience of 
a few predecessors in the field: Blas Pablo Reko, Robert 
J. Weitlaner, Jean Bassett Johnson, Richard Evans 
Schultes, and Eunice V. Pike. They all reported that 
the cult still existed in the Sierra Mazateca in Oaxaca. 
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