Participating in a Mazatec ceremony — what it was and wasn't
I participated in a traditional Mazatec mushroom ceremony in Oaxaca. I want to describe it accurately and address the cultural appropriation question honestly.
I want to be precise about what I participated in and honest about the ethical questions around it, because I've seen accounts that either romanticize or dismiss Mazatec ceremony in ways that aren't useful.
Context: Oaxaca has had Western mushroom tourism since R. Gordon Wasson's 1957 Life magazine article. The Mazatec community has a complex and evolving relationship with this tourism — some see it as extractive and spiritually inappropriate, others participate actively in guiding ceremonies for outsiders as an economic and cultural practice. I worked with a curandera who has been guiding non-Mazatec people for 20 years. She was explicit that this was both a healing practice and her livelihood, and that she had chosen to extend the tradition outward.
The ceremony itself: Began at midnight. Darkness was complete — the room was black. The mushrooms (dried, approximately 20 pieces total) were blessed, prayed over in Mazatec, and consumed. The curandera sang veladas — ceremonial chants — throughout the night. These are not background music; they are considered the vehicle of healing. The language and the singing are integral to the experience.
The experience: More contained and directed than my Western sessions. The singing gave the experience structure. Difficult material came up but within a container that felt ancient and stable. I wept for about an hour. By 4 AM I was coherent. By morning I was clear and hungry.
What I think about the cultural question now: The curandera is not giving away something she doesn't own — she is extending a practice she holds. But the Western mushroom tourism industry as a whole has taken far more than it has given, including appropriating imagery, practices, and commercial branding without acknowledgment or benefit to Mazatec communities. If you participate in this, find practitioners who are actually Mazatec (or closely connected to those traditions), pay fairly, and don't package what you experienced as your own spiritual framework.
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