| Robert Gordon Wasson | |
|---|---|
| Born | 22 September 1898 Great Falls, Montana |
| Died | 26 December 1986 (aged 88) Danbury, Connecticut |
| Residence | Danbury, Connecticut |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | Ethnomycology |
| Alma mater | Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism London School of Economics |
| Notable awards | Pultzer Travelling Scholarship |
Robert Gordon Wasson (September 22, 1898 – December 23, 1986) was an author, ethnomycologist, and vice president of J.P. Morgan & Co.[1][2][3] In the course of independent research, he made contributions to the fields of ethnobotany, botany, and anthropology. Several of his books were self-published in illustrated, limited editions and have never been reprinted.
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Wasson's studies in ethnomycology began during his 1927 honeymoon trip to the Catskill Mountains when his bride, Valentina Pavlovna Guercken (1901–1958), a paediatrician, chanced upon some edible wild mushrooms. Fascinated by the marked difference in cultural attitudes towards the fungus in Russia compared to the United States, the couple began field research that led to the publication of Mushrooms, Russia and History in 1957. In the course of their investigations they mounted expeditions to Mexico to study the religious use of mushrooms by the native population, and became the first Westerners to participate in a Mazatec mushroom ritual. In May 1957 they published a Life magazine article titled Seeking the Magic Mushroom, which brought knowledge of the existence of psychoactive mushrooms to a wide audience for the first time. Together, Wasson and botanist Roger Heim collected and identified various species of family Strophariaceae and genus Psilocybe, while Albert Hofmann,[4] 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.[5] Two species of mushroom, Psilocybe wassonii heim and Psilocybe wassonorum guzman, were named in honor of Wasson along with Heim and Gastón Guzmán, the latter of whom Wasson met during an expedition to Huautla de Jiménez in 1957.
Wasson's next major contribution was a study of the ancient Vedic intoxicant soma, which he proposed 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.).
Prior to his work on soma, theologians had interpreted the Vedic and Magian practices to have been based on alcoholic beverages that produced inebriation. Wasson was the first researcher to propose that the actual form of Vedic intoxication was entheogenic.