By Carl de Borhegyi

  Above is a photograph taken of a mural inside a Maya temple known as Structure 16, the Temple of the Frescoes. The mural is from the Late Post Classic ancient Maya city of Tulum, in Quintana Roo, Mexico. A close up view of the mural above and below depicts what I would argue are encoded Amanita muscaria mushrooms. 

                                             (Photograph of Tulum mural taken by Fadrique R. Diego)

                                          

                                  SOMA IN THE AMERICAS ?

The drawing above is from another Tulum mural (Mural 1) that may actually depict a Late Post Classic Maya version of the Vedic-Hindu-Buddhist myth, known as "The Churning of the Milk Ocean".  

 "The Churning of the Milk Ocean", is told in several ancient Vedic, Hindu and Buddhist texts.
According to Vedic literature, the Gods got together at the beginning of time and churned
the ocean to extract a substance which would offer them immortality.  In the myth the Gods agreed to share this mighty elixir, calling it Amrita, or Amrit which is a Sanskrit word for "nectar", a sacred drink that grants their gods immortality.

Over the years there has been a lot of speculation among scholars concerning the true identity of the mystery plant in the Rig Veda called Soma, the only plant and beverage known to have been deified in the history of human culture, (Furst, 1972:201). While the hymns about Soma have come down to us through time, the botanical identity of Soma remains a mystery. Theories abound as to Soma's forgotten identity, yet among Vedic and Hindu scholars Soma is believed not to be a mushroom but a species of Ephedra.   

 We know from the Rig Veda, (Veda is a Sanskrit word meaning "to see") that Soma was an intoxicating plant worshiped as both a god and holy beverage by a people who called themselves Aryans. We are told that drinking Soma produces immortality, and that the gods drank Soma to make them immortal.   

Rig Veda.....

"Flow on Soma as the great ocean, the Father of the Gods through all the laws (Rig Veda IX.109.2)".

"Flow on Soma as peace for us, draw out for our milk an ambrosial juice, increase the ocean of the hymn (Rig Veda IX.61.15)".   

                                              (Photograph of Amanita muscaria mushrooms taken by Alex Hyde)

Quoting  R.  Gordon Wasson….

 "What was this plant that was called “Soma”? No one knows. Apparently its identity was lost some 3,000 years ago, when its use was abandoned by the priests”.
” I believe that Soma was a mushroom, Amanita muscaria (Fries ex L.) Quel, the fly-agaric, the Fliegenpilz of the Germans, the fausse oronge or tue-mouche or crapaudin of the French, the mukhomor of the Russians. This flaming red mushroom with white spots flecking its cap is familiar throughout northern Europe and Siberia. It is often put down in mushroom manuals as deadly poisonous but this is false, as I myself can testify. Until lately it has been a central feature of the worship of numerous tribes in northern Siberia, where it has been consumed in the course of their shamanic sessions. Its reputation as a lethal plant in the West is, I contend, a splendid example of a tabu long outliving the religion that gave rise to it. Among the most conservative users of the fly-agaric in Siberia the belief prevailed until recent times that only the shaman and his apprentice could consume the fly-agaric with impunity: all others would surely die. This is, I am sure, the origin of the tabu that has survived among us down to our own day.”    (From Wasson’s, Soma of the Aryans: ttp://www.iamshaman.com/amanita/soma-aryans.htm)

Like the god Soma of ancient Hinduism, the ancient god myths of Mesoamerica contain a sacramental food or beverage associated with sacrifice and immortality.  I  have found sufficient visual evidence in the art of Mesoamerica and South America to identify this sacramental food as an hallucinogenic substance, most notably the Amanita muscaria mushroom and psicilocybin mushrooms. Like the Vedic god Soma , the Amanita muscaria mushroom of Mesoamerica assumes, from earliest times, the persona of the god itself. In Mesoamerica this god took the form of the Underworld "were jaguar".   

The ceramic Precolumbian mask above depicts the transformation of a human into a “were-jaguar,” a half-human, half-jaguar deity first described and named in 1955 by archaeologist Matthew W. Stirling.
The were-jaguar appears in the art of the ancient Olmecs as early as 1500 B.C.
An Amanita muscaria mushroom is encoded into the head and nose of the human side, while the left half of the mask depicts the effect of the Amanita mushroom thus resulting in a were-jaguar transformation.
The were-jaguar eventually came to be worshiped and venerated throughout Central and South America.
(photo by Prof. Gian Carlo Bojani Director of the International Museum of Ceramics in Faenza, Italy)

                                                                                                                                          (Photograph © Justin Kerr) 

Above, on the left, is the Amanita muscaria mushroom, and on the right a Maya figurine (300-900 C.E.) photographed by Justin Kerr (K 656a).  The figurine wears a headdress inspired by the Amanita muscaria mushroom. Its contorted face depicts the "Olmec snarl", a common motif in Olmec art which I believe  represents the mushroom's effect of jaguar transformation and the soul's mythical underworld journey.  The figurine holds in its hands a concave mirror.  Mirrors were used by shamans to see into the past and future and communicate with ancestors and gods. I believe that in many, if not most cases, this communication was conducted under the influence of mushrooms.  According to Hugh Thomas (1993 p.14) "The mushrooms of the Mexica (Aztecs), the most important of these plants, came from the pine-covered slopes of the mountains surrounding the valley."  Above left is an  Amanita muscaria mushroom commonly found in the pine-covered slopes of highland Guatemala.

Since the great majority of the images I have found appear to represent the Amanita muscaria mushroom,  I am ready to propose that the Amanita muscaria mushroom like the Vedic god Soma in East Indian mythology, is the metaphorical  key to decoding the esoteric religions of the New World that prevailed from prehistoric times.       

In the book Mushrooms, Russia and History, Robert Gordon Wassons reported on the ritual consumption of mushrooms (the Amanita muscaria) among Siberian and northern Asian peoples, suggesting the possible antiquity of the mushroom cult to Stone Age times. According to Wasson... 

 

  "It can of course be argued that the two great mushroom traditions, that of New World Indians and that of the peoples of Eurasia, are historically unconnected and autonomous, having arisen spontaneously in the two regions from similar requirements of the human psyche and similar environmental opportunities. But are they really unrelated?  
" There is little doubt that the substance called Soma in the Rig Veda has been identified as the fungus Amanita Muscaria."  
  "If it is indeed that ancient, it would also help explain why the same motif is found in strikingly similar form in Maya art as well as in shamanic tradition and ritual of other indigenous peoples of the New World".

 In the Tulum drawing above of Mural 1, note the intertwined serpents in the main section of the scene as well as a serpent swimming below in the primordial sea along with a fish and a turtle in the lower section. The serpent's intertwined body is the mechanism by which the gods churn the milk's ocean.  The turtle at the bottom of the scene, (an avatar in Hindu mythology of the god Vishnu) acts as the central pivot point, below the churning mechanism which is composed of an intertwined serpents, churned at both ends by sky deities. In the Tulum mural the turtle bears the so-called head of a god scholars have identified as God N.  The characters in the Tulum mural above likely depict the gods from the four cardinal directions representing both life and death, upper world and underworld. The four deities use hand gestures to churn the Milk ocean, and together with the serpent and turtle, (both are avatars of the planet Venus), create and resurrect the reborn sun god.   

In both Vedic (Hindu kalpas) and Mesoamerican cosmology (Popol Vuh) there was the belief in cyclical creations, a multi-tiered heaven and underworld, deities who reside at the four cardinal directions and its sacred center.  In Hindu mythology, the god Vishnu who represents the sea turtle in the Hindu myth, is the preserver and protector of creation in the so-called Hindu Trinity of Gods. Among the ancient Maya the Turtle has been identified with creation and rebirth, and the shell is identified with divinity. In the creation mythology of the ancient Maya the first created image was the turtle constellation Ac, identified as the three stars (hearthstones of creation?) of the belt of Orion (Brennan,1998 p.93).

In the late 1940s archaeologist Gordon F. Ekholm proposed multiple transpacific contacts with the New World beginning as early as 3000 B.C. He believed that this influence on New World civilization came from China, India or Southeast Asia (Ekholm, 1971). Ekholm speculated that the Chinese, during the Chou and Han dynasties undertook planned voyages to and from the western hemisphere as early as 700 B.C.

Quoting Ethno-archaeologist Gordon F Ekholm...

"There are, of course, many problems concerning the kinds of evidence that have been presented in the area of transpacific contacts, but the principal difficulty appears to be a kind of theoretical roadblock that stops short our thinking about questions of diffusion or culture contact. This is true in anthropological thought generally, but the obstruction seems to be particularly solid and resistant among American archaeologists." (From Man Across the Sea; Problems of Pre-Columbian Contacts, 1971, third printing 1976, Chapter 2, Diffusion and Archaeological Evidence, by Gordon Ekholm page 54)

Quoting Ethno-archaeologist Dr. Robert Heine Geldern...

"The influences of the Hindu-Buddhist culture of southeast Asia in Mexico and particularly, among the Maya, are incredibly strong, and they have already disturbed some Americanists who don't like to see them but cannot deny them....Ships that could cross the Indian Ocean were able to cross the Pacific too. Moreover, these ships were really larger and probably more sea-worthy than those of Columbus and Magellan".

Quoting Maya Archaeologist David H. Kelley...

"Much of Aztec religion looks like a modified Hinduism in which one important change was the deliberate abandonment of religious eroticism" (Man Across the Sea, 1971, p.62). 

My study presents visual evidence of encoded mushroom imagery never identified before, (Hidden In Plain Sight), that proves that the late ethno-mycologist Robert Gordon Wasson was in fact correct in surmising that the true identity of Soma was the hallucinogenic Amanita muscaria mushroom. Moreover, I also believe that both the Amanita muscaria mushroom and the Psilocybin mushroom were worshiped and venerated in Mesoamerica like the god Soma in ancient East India and Southeast Asia. These sacred mushrooms were so cleverly encoded in the religious art of both the New and Old Worlds, that prior to this study they virtually escaped detection. 

                                      (Photograph of Maya mushroom stones by Dr. Richard Rose)

  My study which began in 1996 was inspired by a theory first proposed over sixty years ago by my father, the late Maya archaeologist Dr. Stephan F. de Borhegyi, that hallucinogenic mushroom rituals were a central aspect of Maya religion. He based this theory on his identification of a mushroom stone cult that came into existence in the Guatemala Highlands and Pacific coastal area around 1000 B.C. along with a trophy head cult associated with human sacrifice and the Mesoamerican ballgame. He supported this theory with a solid body of archaeological and historical evidence.       

As a result of my studies, and solid evidence from other Mesoamerican scholars, I have been able to expand the subject of mushroom cults far beyond my father’s pioneering efforts. I have found an abundance of archaeological evidence supporting the proposition that Mesoamerica, the high cultures of South America, and Easter Island shared, along with many other New World cultures, elements of a Pan American belief system so ancient that many of the ideas may have come from Asia to the New World with the first human settlers. I believe the key to this entire belief system lies, as proposed by R. Gordon Wasson, in early man’s discovery of the mind-altering effects of various hallucinatory substances. The accidental ingestion of these hallucinogenic substances could very well have provided the spark that lifted the mind and imagination of these early humans above and beyond the mundane level of daily existence to contemplation of another reality.

While I may be the first to call attention to this encoded mushroom imagery in numerous publications, these images can be viewed and studied with ease on such internet sites as Justin Kerr's Maya Vase Data Base and F.A.M.S.I. ( Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc).  

For more on this subject read "BREAKING THE MUSHROOM CODE" and "SOMA IN THE AMERICAS"  by Carl de Borhegyi.... at http://www.mushroomstone.com/somaintheamericas.htm