A short life of the author
Robert Gordon Wasson (22 September 1898 – 23 December 1986) was an American banker, amateur mycologist, and ethnobotanist who founded the field of ethnomycology — the study of the cultural and religious uses of mushrooms — and whose work profoundly altered both academic understanding of ancient religions and the trajectory of the twentieth-century counterculture. A vice president of J.P. Morgan & Co. by day, Wasson spent decades investigating the role of psychoactive mushrooms in human civilisation, producing a body of scholarship that remains essential and controversial.
Life
Wasson was born in Great Falls, Montana, and educated at Columbia University. He became a journalist, then entered banking, rising to become a vice president of J.P. Morgan & Co. — an establishment position that gave his later, deeply unconventional research a credibility it might otherwise have lacked.
His interest in mushrooms began on his honeymoon in 1927 with his Russian-born wife, Valentina Pavlovna. Walking in the Catskill Mountains, Valentina ran excitedly toward a cluster of wild mushrooms; Wasson recoiled in disgust. The contrast fascinated them both: why did Russians embrace mushrooms (mycophilia) while Anglo-Saxons feared them (mycophobia)? This question — seemingly trivial — became the organising principle of their shared intellectual life.
For the next three decades, the Wassons investigated the cultural attitudes toward mushrooms across civilisations, travelling, corresponding with scholars worldwide, and building an enormous body of research. Valentina died in 1958, but Wasson continued the work until his death in 1986.
”Seeking the Magic Mushroom” (1957)
In 1955, Wasson and the photographer Allan Richardson travelled to the Mazatec village of Huautla de Jiménez in the mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico, where the curandera María Sabina conducted a velada — a nocturnal mushroom ceremony — for them. Wasson became one of the first outsiders to participate in the ritual consumption of psilocybin mushrooms.
His account, published as “Seeking the Magic Mushroom” in Life magazine on 13 May 1957, is one of the most consequential magazine articles of the twentieth century. It introduced psilocybin mushrooms to the American public and directly inspired Timothy Leary, who read the article and travelled to Mexico to try the mushrooms himself — an experience that launched his career as the apostle of psychedelic drugs.
Wasson was deeply ambivalent about the cultural explosion he had triggered. He regarded the recreational use of psychedelics as a desecration of a sacred tradition and came to regret the publicity. María Sabina herself was ostracised by her community after the flood of Western seekers that followed Wasson’s article.
Mushrooms, Russia and History (1957)
The Wassons’ monumental two-volume work, published in a limited edition of 512 copies by Pantheon Books, is a masterpiece of interdisciplinary scholarship. It examines the cultural role of mushrooms across civilisations — from Russian mushroom folklore and fairy tales to the fly agaric (Amanita muscaria) in Siberian shamanism, from mushroom-shaped stones in Mesoamerica to the possible role of mushrooms in the origins of religion.
The book is lavishly illustrated, beautifully produced, and enormously ambitious in scope. It was printed in a limited run and is now one of the most sought-after books in the mycological and ethnobotanical collecting worlds.
Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality (1968)
Wasson’s most provocative scholarly argument. He proposed that soma — the sacred intoxicant of the ancient Vedic hymns, the identity of which had been debated for centuries — was the fly agaric mushroom (Amanita muscaria). He marshalled evidence from the Rig Veda’s descriptions of soma (its colour, its growth without roots, its association with rain and mountains), from Siberian shamanic practices, and from comparative mythology.
The hypothesis was received with intense interest by scholars of religion and Indo-European studies. It has been criticised on several grounds — the Vedic descriptions do not perfectly match Amanita muscaria, and some scholars have proposed alternative candidates (ephedra, cannabis, a now-extinct plant). But the hypothesis, even where disputed, opened serious academic investigation into the role of psychoactive substances in the origins of religion.
The Road to Eleusis (1978)
Written with Albert Hofmann (the discoverer of LSD) and Carl A. P. Ruck, this book proposed that the kykeon — the sacred drink consumed at the Eleusinian Mysteries, the most important religious ritual of ancient Greece — contained an ergot-derived psychoactive compound similar to LSD. The hypothesis remains debated but has been increasingly supported by recent archaeological evidence.
Critical Standing
Wasson is the founder of ethnomycology as a field of study. His central insight — that psychoactive mushrooms played a fundamental role in the development of human religion and culture — has been enormously influential in religious studies, anthropology, and ethnobotany. His specific hypotheses about soma and Eleusis remain debated, but the larger programme of investigation he launched is now a thriving academic discipline.
His cultural impact is equally significant and more ambivalent. The Life article set in motion the psychedelic revolution of the 1960s — an outcome Wasson neither intended nor welcomed. He is one of those figures who opened a door and then spent the rest of his life trying to explain that most of the people walking through it were doing it wrong.
Collecting Wasson
Mushrooms, Russia and History (1957, Pantheon, limited edition of 512 copies) is one of the great book-collecting prizes, bringing $5,000–$15,000 or more depending on condition. Soma (1968, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich) first editions bring $100–$300. The Road to Eleusis (1978, Harcourt) is available for $50–$150. The Life magazine issue of 13 May 1957 is collected independently.