R. Gordon Wasson

Robert Gordon Wasson (* 22. September 1898 in Great Falls , Montana , USA ; † 23. December 1986 in Danbury , Connecticut , USA) was New York banker , who as a private scholar with his wife Valentina early 1950s the effect together psychoactive Research into fungi in various cultures in Siberia, India, Europe, and North and South America, established ethno mycology .

Life

R. Gordon Wasson attended school in Newark, New Jersey, and was raised in the Christian faith by his father, a pastor of the Episcopal Church . The child, along with his brother Thomas Campbell Wasson, was sent early on on educational trips to museums in New York City and other East Coast cities. At the beginning of the First World War , R. Gordon also went on a trip to Europe with his brother. In 1917 he served with the rank of private as a radio operator with the American troops in France.

After the war, R. Gordon Wasson learned Spanish and studied at the Columbia School of Journalism . He received the first Pulitzer Travel Fellowship with which he studied at the London School of Economics . After returning to America, Wasson studied English at Columbia University from 1921 to 1922 . After completing his studies, he worked as a journalist for various newspapers and magazines until 1928.

In 1926 Wasson married the Russian pediatrician Valentina Pavlovna Guercken (1901-1958) in London.

1928 Wasson was an employee at the Guaranty Company in New York City, for which he was in Argentina (1929-1931 in Buenos Aires ) and London . During this time Wasson became acquainted with the writings of William Henry Hudson . From 1934 until he left in 1963, Wasson worked for the JP Morgan bank . Since 1943 he has held the position of deputy chairman of the board.

Wasson left behind two children (Peter Wasson and Mary (Masha) Wasson Britten).

Research and publishing

Wasson and his wife Valentina spent their honeymoon in 1927 in the Catskill Mountains in New York . Valentina Pavlovna found the same mushrooms in the woods as in her childhood in Russia and opened the world of edible mushrooms to her husband. Up until this point, her husband was scared at the thought of eating mushrooms. It was here that she began her lifelong preoccupation with the subject of "Evidence of mushrooms and poison mushrooms in the cultures of the earth".

From then on, the couple collected data on mushrooms from various sciences and areas of knowledge: history , linguistics , comparative religious studies , mythology , art and archeology . They called the research area they founded ethnomycology . They went so far as to divide people into mycophiles and mycophobes. Her research took her to Mexico from 1953 , where she researched the magical-religious use of mushrooms.

On the night of June 29th to 30th, 1955, they took part for the first time and as the first western visitors to actively participate in a sacred mushroom ceremony (a velada , Spanish for "night watch") of the Mazatecs in the Mixeteco Mountains under the direction of the shaman María Sabinas. In 1957 the May issue of the US American Life magazine reported on it in detail: Seeking the Magic Mushroom, Indians of Mexico (Rites and ceremonies). This report had enormous consequences for science and international society, because for the first time the knowledge of the existence of psychoactive mushrooms reached a wide audience. Her first book Mushrooms, Russia and History was also published in 1957, it was a two-volume mushroom cookbook.

In the USA psychoactive mushrooms were made famous by Timothy Leary (1920-1996). The Wasson couple were often accompanied on their travels by Professor Roger Heim (1900–1979), a mycologist and director of the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris. Together with him, Sandoz in Switzerland began intensive research into mushrooms out of pharmaceutical interest. In Europe, these publications and lectures by Albert Hofmann (1906–2008) ensured the dissemination, especially after he was able to detect the same active ingredients ( psilocybin and psilocin ) in a native mushroom species in the Sandoz Laboratories in Basel .

In the years 1963 to 1966 R. Gordon Wasson tried to prove his thesis that the soma mentioned in the Indian Vedas was the fly agaric . For this purpose, he stayed almost continuously in the Pacific region during this period. His travels have included New Zealand, New Guinea, Japan, China, India, Korea, Iran, Afghanistan, Thailand and Nepal. His interpretations are not recognized in Indology. Regardless of this, the Soma hypothesis was and is still accepted uncritically and unchecked in the relevant specialist literature.

In the 1986 book Persephone's Quest: Entheogens and the Origins of Religion (about the mysteries of Eleusis and the cereal mushroom ergot ) it is expressed that R. Gordon Wasson wanted to break away from the mushroom drug euphoria that took place in the 1960s. With the term " entheogenic " created by him and his colleagues, the terms " hallucinogenic ", " psychedelic " and " drug " should be kept out of the context of mushrooms. Viewed from a distance of a few decades, however, this attempt has failed.

R. Gordon Wasson was a collector of beautiful and valuable books and placed particular emphasis on the appropriate equipment for his own books. A limited edition of his books was published by Stamperia Valdonega Press in Verona, Italy on handmade paper. The design was done by Giovanni Mardersteig .

There are numerous memberships in associations and societies as well as related lecturing activities.

Publications

• Mushrooms, Russia and History , 1957 (co-authors: Valentina Pavlovna Wasson and Florence James, the Russian chef).
• Maria Sabina and Her Mazatec Mushroom Velada , 1974.
• The Wondrous Mushroom: Mycolatry in Mesoamerica , 1980.
• Les Champignons Hallucinogenes du Mexique , 1958 (co-author with Roger Heim).
• Nouvelles Investigations sur les Champignons Hallucinogenes , 1967.
• Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality , 1969 (coauthored with Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty ).
• The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries , 1978 (as co-author).
  • The way to Eleusis , ISBN 3-458-14138-3 .
• Persephone's Quest: Entheogens and the Origins of Religion , 1986.
• That Gettysburg Address , 1965.
• The Hall Carbine Affair: An Essay in Historiography , 1946.
• American Journal of Philology: "The Etymology of Botargo," October 1947.
• Saturday Review of Literature: "WH Hudson's Lost Years," April 1947.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Seeking the Magic Mushroom. In: Life magazine. May 13, 1957. From Google Books. Retrieved December 13, 2019.
2. ↑ Wolfgang Schmidbauer, Jürgen vom Scheidt: Handbuch der Rauschdrogen. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-596-13980-5 , pp. 145-146.

Web links

• Tina and R. Gordon Wasson Ethnomycological Collection Archives