| Robert Gordon Wasson | |
| Birth Date: | September 22, 1898 |
| Nationality: | American |
| Death Place: | Danbury, Connecticut |
| Field: | Ethnomycology |
| Alma Mater: | Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism London School of Economics |
| Prizes: | Pulitzer Travelling Scholarship |
Robert Gordon Wasson (September 22, 1898 – December 23, 1986) was an American author, ethnomycologist, and a Vice President for Public Relations at J.P. Morgan & Co.[1] [2] [3] [4]
In the course of work funded by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Wasson made contributions to the fields of ethnobotany, botany, and anthropology.
Wasson began his banking career at Guaranty Trust Company in 1928, and moved to J.P. Morgan & Co. in 1934. That same year, he published a book[5] on the Hall Carbine Affair, in which he attempted to exonerate John Pierpont Morgan from guilt with respect to the incident, which had been viewed as an example of wartime profiteering. As early as 1937, Wasson had been attempting to influence historians Allan Nevins and Charles McLean Andrews regarding Morgan's role in the affair; he used Nevins' report[6] as a reference for his own book on the topic. The matter of Morgan's responsibility for the Hall Carbine Incident remains controversial.[7]
On July 16, 1941, the directors of Morgan & Co. appointed Wasson to the position of assistant secretary, and by 1943 he was vice president for public relations.[8] [9]
Wasson's studies in ethnomycology began during his 1927 honeymoon trip to the Catskill Mountains when his wife, Valentina Pavlovna Guercken, a pediatrician, chanced upon some edible wild mushrooms. Fascinated by the marked difference in cultural attitudes towards fungi 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 claimed to have been the first Westerners to participate in a Mazatec mushroom ritual.
It was the curandera María Sabina who both allowed the Wassons to participate in the ritual and who taught them about the uses and effects of the mushroom, after Wasson lied to her about being worried about the whereabouts and wellbeing of his son, as the ritual was traditionally used to locate missing people and important items.[10] Sabina let him take her picture on the condition that he keep it private, but Wasson nonetheless published the photo along with Sabina's name and the name of the community where she lived. Though he faced no consequences for his deceptions, and indeed, profited greatly from the knowledge he gained from her, Sabina was subsequently ostracised from her community as a result of his actions, and her house was burned down after she was briefly jailed, her son murdered, and she eventually died in poverty.[10]
At the 1951 annual meeting of the American Council of Learned Societies, held in Rye, New York, on January 24-26, Wasson was appointed a member of the Executive Committee for a period of one year.[11]
Some of Wasson's colleagues, such as Ethel Dunn, disagreed with Wasson's conclusions regarding Amanita muscaria.[12]
Wasson's 1956 expedition was funded[13] by the CIA's MK-Ultra subproject 58, as was revealed by documents[14] obtained by John Marks[15] under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents state that Wasson was an "unwitting" participant in the project.[14]
The funding was provided under the cover name of the Geschickter Fund for Medical Research (credited by Wasson at the end of his subsequent Life piece about the expedition).
In May 1957, Life magazine published an article titled "Seeking the Magic Mushroom," which introduced psychoactive mushrooms to a wide audience for the first time. Six days later, his wife Valentina's first-person account of their research expedition in Mexico was published on the cover of This Week, a Sunday magazine inserted in 37 newspapers that reach almost 12 million total readers.[16] [17] [18]
In his memoir, author Tom Robbins talks about the impact of this article on "turning on" Americans himself included.[19] The article sparked immense interest in the Mazatec ritual practice among beatniks and hippies, an interest that proved disastrous for the Mazatec community and for María Sabina in particular. As the community was besieged by Westerners wanting to experience the mushroom-induced hallucinations, Sabina attracted attention by the Mexican police who thought that she sold drugs to the foreigners. The unwanted attention completely altered the social dynamics of the Mazatec community and threatened to terminate the Mazatec custom. The community blamed Sabina, and she was ostracized in the community and had her house burned down. Sabina later regretted having introduced Wasson to the practice, but Wasson contended that his only intention was to contribute to the sum of human knowledge.[20] [21] [22]
Together, Wasson and botanist Roger Heim collected and identified various species of family Strophariaceae and genus Psilocybe, while Albert Hofmann,[23] 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.[24] Two species of mushroom, Psilocybe wassonii R.Heim and Psilocybe wassoniorum Guzman & S.H.Pollock, were named in honor of Wasson by 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 hypothesized 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.).
Several of his books were self-published in illustrated, limited editions, using handmade paper and printed in Italy, that have never been reprinted, with one exception.[25] His last completed work, The Wondrous Mushroom, initially part of the self-published works, was republished by City Lights Publishers in 2014.
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.[26]
Wasson donated his personal papers as a gift to the Harvard University Botanical Museum, as part of the "Tina and Gordon Wasson Ethnomycological Collection." The thoroughly curated array of books, papers, and artifacts contained in the collection was fully settled into its new adoptive home by April 1982.[27]
Wasson's obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle stated that together with his wife and co-author, Valentina P. Wasson, he had "illuminated the sanctity of psychotropic mushrooms, not only in Russia and Siberia, but also in the most ancient of Hindu scriptures, in the mystery cults of ancient Greece and among the native peoples of Mexico and Guatemala, both ancient and modern."[28]
In 2015, the Mycological Society of America (MSA) created a new award named for both Gordon and Valentina in order to recognize non-professionals and people with non-traditional academic backgrounds who have made outstanding contributions to mycology.[29] The first "Gordon and Tina Wasson Award" was presented to Paul Stamets on July 29, 2015, by the organization's former president, D. Jean Lodge, during the MSA meeting in Edmonton, Canada.[29]
Recorded (on July 21/22, 1956) and produced with Valentina Pavlovna Wasson.[30] Liner notes by R. Gordon Wasson. Folkways is now the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution.[31]