Dispatches from the archive
Field Notes
New research, forgotten archives, and the strange, unfolding stories of the sacred mushroom — the discoveries, the mysteries, and the legends behind them.
Mexico's other mushroom peoples
The Mazatec are famous, but the ethnomycological record counts sacred mushroom use among at least a dozen Indigenous Mexican peoples. A short guide to who they are — and why some have full pages here while others get only a line.
MushroomTribes editorial
The Mushroom That Speaks
Across peoples with nothing in common, peoples who never met, the same uncanny thing is reported: those who eat these mushrooms are not only shown visions but spoken to. Something addresses them — names the illness, answers the unasked question, teaches. What is the voice?
MushroomTribes editorial
Teonanácatl: ‘flesh of the gods’?
The word behind the whole Mesoamerican story — what teonanácatl named, and why its famous translation is a scholarly choice rather than a settled fact.
MushroomTribes editorial
How the Mushroom Becomes Myth
Across every culture that has met it, the sacred mushroom does the same astonishing thing — it makes myth. A look at the recurring stories the fungus keeps generating, and why they refuse to die.
MushroomTribes editorial
Newly documented: a psilocybin mushroom in the Maloti
A 2024 species description and a 2026 preprint have put southern Africa onto the map of documented ritual mushroom use. Here is what is actually new — and why we label it 'newly documented,' not 'newly discovered.'
MushroomTribes editorial