HIMALAYAN TRAVEL, INC Trekking expeditions in 
the Everest and Annapurna areas of Nepal Exotic 
cultures /spectacular mountain scenery Box 481-NH, 
Greenwich, CT 06830 Toll Free (800) 243-5330 
MAINE WINDJAMMER VACATION. August 16-22, 
1981, $360, reservation deadline 2/15/81 New Jer- 
sey Audubon Society, 790 Ewing Avenue, Dept NH, 
Franklin Lake, NJ 07417 
NATURALIST GUIDED FIELD SEMINARS and tours, 
West Texas and Mexico Rafting, hiking, backpacking, 
bus University or Continuing Education credit as ap- 
propriate Write Education Department. Chihuahuan 
Desert Research Institute, Box 1334, Alpine, TX 79830 
NEW MEXICO Guided tours— wildflowers, birds, pre- 
historic dwellings Bear Mountain Ranch. Silver City, 
NM 88061 (505) 538-2538 
NORTH SCOTLAND HIGHLAND WILDERNESS Ex- 
plore, study, interpret the wildlife, vegetation, terrains 
& impact of man on a surpassingly beautiful land 
Small group led by local Scot who knows surfaces 
& depths of his home place 7-14 day programs, 
Apr thru Oct. Details Albannach Ltd , Hamilton House, 
Ross & Cromarty, Strathpeffer, Scotland 
OAXACA, MEXICO Unique historical /cultural tour 
Mixtec, Zapotec pyramids /civilizations Fabulous cli- 
mate, villa, cuisine, festivals $350 week Oaxaca 
Club (415) 388-3503 
SAIL PRINCE WILLIAM SOUND: Guided flotilla cruises 
Lessons available. Whale observation Nature Study 
College credit Alaskan Wilderness Sailing Safaris, Box 
701N, Whittier, Alaska 99693 (907) 277-0160 
SCOTLAND. ORKNEY, SHETLAND AND ICELAND 
Comprehensive program of nature trips Write: Cal- 
edonian Wildlife at McGregor Travel, 33 Lewis Street, 
Greenwich, CT 06830, or toll-free (800) 243-5330 
32nd ARCHITECTURE AND GARDENS tour of Japan 
22 days in-depth tour, leave October 9, Membership 
limited Write Escort-lecturer, K M Nishimoto. AIA, 
30 North Raymond Avenue. Pasadena, CA 91103 
TRAVELEARN, SUMMER 1981 Cultural-natural his- 
torical tours to Africa, Hawaii, China, and Greece 
led by specialists in the fields of study encompassed 
within each program Office of International Studies, 
Kean College of NJ, Morris Avenue, Union, NJ 
07083— Phone (201) 527-2461 
WASHINGTON WILDFLOWER SAFARIS to Cascades 
and Olympics with professional naturalist Brad's 
Tours, 401 E Mercer #31D, Seattle, WA 98102 
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Divine Plants 
by Peter T. Furst 
The Wondrous Mushroom, by R. 
Gordon Wasson. McGraw-Hill Book 
Company, $14.95; 229 pp.. Ulus. 
Plants of the Gods, by Richard Ev- 
ans Schultes and Albert Hofmann. 
McGraw-Hill Book Company , 
$34.95; 192 pp., Ulus. 
Two books by leaders in the study 
of plant hallucinogens have appeared 
within a few months of each other. 
One, by R. Gordon Wasson, gives us 
the first in-depth treatment of the sa- 
cred mushrooms of Indian Mexico and 
their cultural ramifications; the other, 
by Richard Evans Schultes and Albert 
Hofmann, covers the botany, history, 
ethnology, and biochemistry of the 
world’s major psychoactive flora. All 
three writers have been associated for 
many years in common or parallel pur- 
suit of a cultural phenomenon that 
we now know has respectable antiq- 
uity, reaching back thousands of years 
into prehistory, with wide geographi- 
cal distribution (but centered on Mid- 
dle and South America) and important 
implications for contemporary West- 
ern science and society. 
Wasson is the pioneer ethnomycol- 
ogist whose painstaking search for the 
identity of the ancient Indo-European 
plant deity Soma led him to Amanita 
muscaria, the sacred, inebriating fly 
agaric mushroom of Siberian shaman- 
ism and European folklore, an iden- 
tification accepted by many, though 
not all, Vedic scholars. Schultes, Paul 
C. Mangelsdorf Professor of Natural 
Sciences at Harvard and long-time di- 
rector of the Harvard Botanical Mu- 
seum, forty years ago documented the 
divine Aztec hallucinogen ololiuqui 
as the seeds of the morning glory and 
has since made innumerable contri- 
butions to our knowledge and under- 
standing of the rich psychoactive flora 
of the New World. Hofmann, coauthor 
of this work, is best known as the 
discoverer of LSD-25. But we are also 
indebted to him for the identification 
of the active compounds in the Mexi- 
can sacred mushrooms, the morning 
glories, and some other plants that 
Mexican Indians are certain possess 
the attributes of divinity. Not surpris- 
ingly, Wasson and Schultes played im- 
portant roles in the direction of Hof- 
mann’s research in this area of chem- 
istry; indeed, it was Wasson who col- 
lected sufficient seeds from two spe- 
cies of Mexican morning glories to 
allow Hofmann to bring his work to 
a successful conclusion. In 1960 he 
announced his startling discovery that 
the principal psychoactive compounds 
in morning glory seeds were nothing 
other than lysergic acid alkaloids, 
closely allied to his own synthetic 
LSD-25. It was the first time that 
such compounds had been identified 
in one of the higher plants, having 
been previously found only in such 
lowly fungi as ergot. 
From morning glory seeds to the 
analysis of the magic fungi known to 
the Aztecs as teonanacatl, “flesh of 
the gods,” was but a small step. Was- 
son again was the catalyst, but it was 
the famous French scholar Roger 
Heim who in his Paris laboratory suc- 
ceeded in propagating specimens of 
Oaxacan mushrooms from which Hof- 
mann isolated, for the first time, the 
natural agents chiefly responsible for 
their extraordinary psychic effects. 
The Mexican “cult” of sacred 
mushrooms was first described by 
Spanish chroniclers in the sixteenth 
century. In the early twentieth cen- 
tury, William A. Safford, a leading 
U.S. botanist, rejected the story as 
implausible, suggesting that the Span- 
iards and their Aztec informants must 
have been talking of peyote, not mush- 
rooms. (He also doubted the existence 
of hallucinogenic morning glories.) 
But in the late 1930s, several eye- 
witness accounts by reliable observ- 
ers — the young Schultes among 
them — confirmed the veracity of the 
old reports that they were indeed 
mushrooms. The general public, how- 
ever, remained unaware of all this un- 
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