Together, Wasson and botanist Roger Heim collected and identified various species of family Strophariaceae and genus Psilocybe, while Albert Hofmann,[23] using material grown by Heim from specimens collected by the Wassons, identified the chemical structure of the active compounds, psilocybin and psilocin. Hofmann and Wasson were also among the first Westerners to collect specimens of the Mazatec hallucinogen Salvia divinorum, though these specimens were later deemed not suitable for rigorous scientific study or taxonomic classification.[24] Two species of mushroom, Psilocybe wassonii R.Heim and Psilocybe wassoniorum Guzman & S.H.Pollock, were named in honor of Wasson by Heim and Gastón Guzmán, the latter of whom Wasson met during an expedition to Huautla de Jiménez in 1957.
Gordon Wasson Soma Divine Mushroom Of Immortality Pdf 17
Wasson's next major contribution was a study of the ancient Vedic intoxicant soma, which he hypothesized was based on the psychoactive fly agaric (Amanita muscaria) mushroom. This hypothesis was published in 1967 under the title Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality. His attention then turned to the Eleusinian Mysteries, the initiation ceremony of the ancient Greek cult of Demeter and Persephone. In The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries (1978), co-authored with Albert Hofmann and Carl A. P. Ruck, it was proposed that the special potion "kykeon", a pivotal component of the ceremony, contained psychoactive ergoline alkaloids from the fungus Ergot (Claviceps spp.).
In 1968, Robert Gordon Wasson, a banker with JP Morgan with an interest in ethnomycology, was the first to propose that soma was an entheogen in his book, Soma Divine Mushroom Of Immortality (4), with Amanita muscaria, or the fly agaric mushroom as the main component.
He also suggests that the since Amanita has a urinary metabolite, the priests that drank soma urinated soma could only point to the mushroom, ignoring the fact that the consumption of mushrooms was prohibited for Vedic Brahmins.
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