Examining the Discursive Role of María Sabina in Modern Psychedelic Therapy
Traditional Indigenous healing lineages, such as those practiced by Mazatec curanderas like María Sabina, continue to shape the modern understanding of psilocybin and sacred ceremony
Introduction
María Sabina, the Mazatec curandera whose mushroom ceremonies shaped the world’s first exposure to psilocybin, remains one of the most cited—and misunderstood—figures in psychedelic history. In Western discourse she appears alternately as a saint, a symbol, or a footnote to scientific discovery. Yet behind these shifting portrayals is a deeper story about language, power, and lineage.
This essay summarizes some of my work recently published by the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines, titled "Examining the Discursive Role of María Sabina in Modern Psychedelic Therapy." The original essay was developed during their course Roots of Psychedelic Therapy: Shamanism, Ritual, and Traditional Uses of Sacred Plants. Participating in Chacruna’s program was transformative—its critical, cross-cultural lens reshaped how I understand the intersection of Indigenous practice and contemporary clinical frameworks.
Learning My Place in the Psychedelic Movement
As an American psychedelic guide and now above-ground psychedelic-assisted therapist, I often question my role in this complex ecosystem. How can I participate in a growing professional field without perpetuating colonial harm? My goal in attending Chacruna Institute’s course was to better understand these Indigenous roots and explore ways to practice more ethically within Western frameworks.
The Story of María Sabina
María Sabina was a Mazatec healer (Chjota Chijne) who worked with psilocybin-containing mushrooms as part of a holistic spiritual practice. She guided ceremonies—veladas—that used chant, prayer, and mushroom medicine to restore balance between the individual and the spirit world.
In the 1950s, ethnomycologist R. Gordon Wasson and his wife Valentina visited Sabina’s village. With the encouragement of local elders, she agreed to lead them in ceremony. The Wassons later publicized the event in Life Magazine, launching Western fascination with “magic mushrooms” and unintentionally altering her community forever.
The publicity brought an influx of spiritual tourists and researchers. Veladas that were once sacred acts of healing became spectacles. The Mazatec community grew resentful of the disruptions and the loss of privacy. Sabina herself endured persecution and eventual expulsion from her village.
As anthropologist Bragognolo (2023) notes, Sabina’s life exemplifies the collision between Indigenous practice and Western consumption—a collision that continues today.
Exploiting the “Original Sin” of Psychedelic Therapy
This history has become the origin myth—and the original sin—of modern psilocybin therapy. Western explorers extracted sacred knowledge and built careers upon it while leaving a trail of harm. Every clinical psilocybin study, retreat, or training program today exists in that shadow.
Many contemporary practitioners know this story and feel moral unease about it. To cope, we often ritualize remembrance: retelling Sabina’s story, placing her image on altars, or invoking her name to signal decolonial awareness. On the surface, this appears as respect. Yet symbolically, it often serves another purpose—to purify the Western conscience while continuing to profit from the same extractive structures.
The “Noble Savage” Archetype
Most Western retellings of Sabina’s life depict her as a timeless saint of the sacred mushroom—a vessel of “archaic knowledge.” This framing flattens her humanity. It traps her within the “noble savage” archetype: Indigenous, pure, mystical, and conveniently disconnected from the messy realities of history.
This essentializing gaze romanticizes and de-politicizes Indigenous identity. It presents Mazatec culture as an artifact rather than a living, evolving community. Rarely do these portrayals consider Sabina’s full life, the social upheavals she faced, or the ongoing survival of the Mazatec people.
Fetishizing the Mazatec Tradition
Even when Western guides speak admiringly of Mazatec practices, the admiration is often fetishistic. Their veladas are treated as folkloric curiosities—relics to be imitated for “authenticity.” Elements such as chants or ritual language may be copied into Western retreats to signal decolonization or depth, yet they are stripped from their communal and linguistic roots.
This aesthetic borrowing allows Western practitioners to benefit from the allure of Indigenous ceremony without enduring the marginalization that Indigenous people still experience. It’s a form of cultural extraction disguised as reverence.
Reducing a Living Tradition to a Single Icon
Sabina’s story also obscures the breadth of Mazatec healing culture. She was one of many respected curanderas, part of a lineage that spans centuries. The focus on her singular narrative creates the illusion that Indigenous knowledge entered Western awareness through one fateful meeting.
In reality, researchers had documented Mazatec mushroom ceremonies decades before Wasson’s visit. His contribution was not discovery but publicity—the transformation of private ceremony into global commodity. This myth of origin fuels the notion that the psychedelic renaissance began in the West, when in fact it began in the mountains of Oaxaca long before colonial contact.
The Western Desire for Purity
Underlying these dynamics is a distinct Western impulse: the pursuit of moral purity. Born from puritanical Christianity, it drives the search for absolution from colonial guilt. Once we acknowledge harm, we want to fix it—quickly. We look for a ritual, a donation, a training program that will cleanse us of complicity.
The telling of María Sabina’s story functions as that purification ritual. We repeat it, display her image, or cite her legacy as proof that we are “one of the good ones.” In doing so, we risk bypassing the uncomfortable truth: there may be no absolution that can undo the centuries of extraction and harm upon which the Western psychedelic industry stands.
What If There Is No Absolution?
If honoring Sabina is insufficient, what else can we do?
Contemporary proposals—profit-sharing, sustainable sourcing, inclusion of historical training modules—are necessary but incomplete. They can too easily become ethical checkboxes rather than transformations of power.
True accountability might begin with sitting in discomfort: recognizing that our healing professions are entangled with histories of dispossession. Indigenous communities live with these consequences daily; we cannot simply donate or dialogue our way free of them.
To practice ethically may mean embracing that tension—continuing to heal while knowing the lineage of harm we inherit. The work is not purification but participation in a long, uneasy reckoning.
Moving Toward Ethical Reciprocity
Even if absolution is impossible, reciprocity remains essential. Western practitioners can:
Support organizations like the Indigenous Reciprocity Initiative of the Americas.
Study with ethical training programs that center Indigenous perspectives.
Collaborate rather than copy—inviting Indigenous teachers to guide cultural-exchange dialogues.
Be transparent with clients about the history of psilocybin and its Mazatec roots.
Ethical practice means integrating this awareness into every level of therapy—from preparation to integration—not as guilt, but as humility.
Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines promotes psychedelic justice and cross-cultural understanding, bridging Indigenous wisdom with contemporary research and education.
About the Chacruna Institute
Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines is a global leader in psychedelic education and advocacy. They advance psychedelic justice by curating critical dialogues and uplifting the perspectives of women, queer, Indigenous, BIPOC, and Global South communities
Curious to learn more? You can explore Chacruna’s diverse online workshops and courses—including the one I completed—here: https://chacruna.net/
Conclusion
María Sabina’s legacy is both an inspiration and an indictment. Her courage brought psilocybin into global awareness, yet her suffering reveals the cost of Western extraction. For those of us practicing psychedelic therapy today, the challenge is not to romanticize her, but to honor her by changing the systems that harmed her.
We may never be absolved, but we can choose humility, transparency, and reciprocity as the ethical ground of our work. By facing this uncomfortable truth, perhaps we can begin to turn a history of exploitation into a future of respect.
Learn more about trying Psychedelic-assisted Therapy with me.
Book now to schedule a free consult call.
