Turbina corymbosa and Ipomoea spp.

According to Wade Davis, Albert Hofmann, the inventor of LSD, discovered that “the active principles of ololiuque [Turbina corymbosa] were two indole alkaloids, lysergic acid amide and lysergic acid hydroxyethylamide, compounds that he already had sitting on the shelves of his lab.”

About this and other members of the Convolvulaceae family, Schultes and Hofmann write in their indispensable work Plants of the Gods (1998): “As with the sacred mushrooms, the use of the hallucinogenic Morning Glories, so significant in the life of pre-Hispanic Mexico, hid in the hinterlands until the present century.”

Fagetti’s research on the combined ground seeds of Ipomoea violacea (Semillas de la Virgen) and Datura stramonium (San José) used in healing ceremonies in Huajuapan de León, Oaxaca, Mexico is based on fieldwork she carried out there in 2010. The results, which include raw and genuine transcriptions of dialogues between an octogenarian Mixtec preparer of potions and people with illnesses, definitively confirm the persistence of ancestral Indigenous plant-knowledge (even if it is syncretized with certain Christian elements, as was the case in the 1950s with María Sabina and her healing mushrooms).

Fagetti makes it clear that the preparer of the ground seed mixture (ingested as a drink and applied topically) is not so much a healer as a listener who tries to understand what the plants have ordered.  The trance produced by the seeds along with other powerful applied vegetal materials such as the leaves of Brugmansia allows the sick person to understand the origins of the illness and engage in self-healing. The seeds are considered to speak and make the patient speak as well, these two voices coming together as a first person plural (“We”) with divine visionary powers.

Although the Amerindian ritual use of Turbina corymbosa remains shrouded in mystery and the subject of much speculation, García Quintanilla and Eastmond Spencer make significant contributions to understanding the properties of this plant among contemporary Maya midwives in Pixoy, Yucatán who use this plant (that they call X-táabentun) containing ergonovine with its oxytocic characteristics to induce childbirth. Their ancestral knowledge allows them to administer exactly the right dose at exactly the right time.

In this same exemplary article, the authors link the mythic narrative associated with Turbina corymbosa to death and rebirth, a fitting origin for this plant used to bring new life into the world. As Mayan oral tradition has it, there were once two sisters: Uts Colel was considered good, and Xkeban who was viewed as a sinner due to the way she freely lived her sexual life, though her close and loving relationship with all plants and animals was widely known. Xkeban died and when she was found days later, people discovered that her body exuded a marvelous perfume and that the animals defended her even from the flies. Those who walked with Xkeban’s body to bury her also took on her pervasive fragrance. Soon, springing from her grave were the flowers of the first X-táabentun plant, Turbina corymbosa. Xkeban had escaped from the Lords of Death in the underworld and was reborn as an emblem of fertility in the form of the plant that helps women as they give birth. The supposedly good sister Uts Colel is said to have died a virgin and was famous for the pestilent smell that surrounded her always in life.

The commercially-available honey liqueur from Casa D’Aristi, Xtabentún, is advertised as “inspired” in an original Mayan drink, but it is no longer made from honey produced  by stingless Melipona bees nourishing themselves exclusively on the flowers of Turbina corymbosa.  Is it possible that this honey had psychoactive properties and had ceremonial uses as the basis of an ancient beverage? Were the seeds of T. corymbosa added to the fermented drink of the Lacandon Maya baalche’? For now, these questions remain unanswered.

Jan Elferink, a Dutch medical biochemist and researcher of ancient Amerindian ethnobotany, discusses how the Aztecs prepared a potent psychoactive bitumen called teotlaqualli, whose main ingredients included ololiuqui, tobacco and the ashes of different types of charred poisonous animals. The Nahuatl name of this thick black unguent means “divine food” and was used to cover the skin of the priests or even the emperor himself to facilitate the strengthening of the spirit and communication with the gods before performing human sacrifices according to the prevailing religious rites.

Fagetti’s work on Ipomoea violacea and Datura stramonium as well as the research on Turbina corymbosa by Alejandra García Quintanilla and Amarella Eastmond Spencer appear in an impressive dossier published by Cuicuilco: Revista de ciencias antropológicas on the ritual use of entheogens among a variety of Indigenous groups in Mexico. This issue (53) is a must-read for Spanish-speakers.

In Mitla: Town of the Souls and Other Zapoteco-Speaking Pueblos of Oaxaca, Mexico, published in 1936, U.S. anthropologist Elsie Clews Parsons (1875-1941) offers an ethnographic portrait of a Zapotecan town that is truly remarkable for the author’s empathic and meticulously recounted experiences of the economic, political and religious lives of the families in a predominantly Indigenous community, where the author spent time from 1929 to 1933. In her introduction, Parsons says that “Mitla was undoubtedly an important center among the ancient Zapotecan peoples” since “its sense of order and organization, its character of self-possession, its ceremonial elaboration, its style, are no short-term developments.” The nearly 600-page tome contains a plethora of references to plants used in Mitla for medicinal and ritual purposes, including a plant that Parsons calls bador, doubtless a reference to Ipomoea violacea, which Zapotec and Mazatec healers refer to as badoh negro. Parsons writes of an invitation she received from a woman in Mitla that, in an enigmatically beautiful way, relates the divinatory morning glory to marking the passage of time, natural cycles of this plant’s growth and its links to people: “’Come to my house!’ says Ana on her way home from the mill, her gourd-covered bowl of meal on her head. ‘The bador which was dry when you were here before is growing now.’”  Parsons says that Ana´s husband is the town’s keeper of the potent medicinal plant: “In the yard of Marino Santiago grows a clematis-like vine which is called “spirit children,” bador; its little boy and little girl appear in the trance produced by eating it and help the sleeper to find what he has lost. They may also tell a sick person whether or not he is to recover.” Parsons learns that this is the only plant of its kind growing in Mitla and that the caretaker “sells its leaves or seeds to two or three of the curanderos to administer to patients,” meaning, according to Parsons, that the plant represents “a small capital for the family.”  How is the plant used? Parsons writes that the two curanderos, Agustina and Urbano, “put a leaf on the forehead of one who has lost something and give him thirteen seeds to take in water.” The author learned that “after drinking the infusion, the patient, who must be alone with the curer if not in a solitary place where he cannot hear even a cock’s crow, falls into a sleep during which the two little ones, male and female, the plant children (bador), come and talk.” Parsons also relates the following story about divination in relation to Ipomoea violacea: “Don Félix Quero had a herder called José Maria. He lost two cows, and Félix charged him with selling them. That grieved José Maria, so he went to the curandera who gave him the bador drink and told him not to be afraid, no matter what came to him, that midnight. The little plant boy came and took him by the hand, saying, ‘One of the cows is already meat, the other is about to be killed. Come with me!’ He led him in his trance to Tlacolula, to the house of the butcher. The house was closed, but the little plant boy imitated the voice of a compadre, and the butcher let them in. ‘There are your animals, hanging on the wall,’ said the little plant boy. The next morning the curandera sucked José Maria, for it was dangerous to keep the medicine in him.” In her extensive work as anthropologist and ethnographer among Amerindian groups throughout the Americas, Parsons documented the widespread practice of traditional healers sucking illnesses from their patients. She also links the Zapotecan spirit children associated with Ipomoea violacea to the brother and sister in the origin narrative of Datura among the Zuñi in the U.S. Southwest.