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--- omnipoetics:munn [2025/04/23 20:27] – ["The Mushrooms of Language" (Munn 1973)] mahrukh
+++ omnipoetics:munn [2025/04/24 01:00] (current) – [References] mahrukh
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-"Writing in the Imagination of an Oral Poet" by Henry Munn in //Symposium of the Whole// (475-479)
+"Writing in the Imagination of an Oral Poet" //Symposium of the Whole// (475-479)
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+==== Author ====
 {{ :omnipoetics:munn.png?direct&400|Taken from Rothenberg's article online}}
-Henry Munn was an independent scholar, writer, and translator whose deep intellectual curiosity and quiet dedication left a lasting impact on the study of indigenous poetry and religious traditions, particularly in Mexico. Best known for his groundbreaking translations of the chants and oral autobiography of Mazatec healer María Sabina—done alongside his brother-in-law Álvaro Estrada—Munn brought attention and reverence to voices often unheard in Western literary circles. A gentle and passionate thinker, he spent much of his life immersed in books, art, and the pursuit of knowledge. His work, though largely carried out away from the spotlight, was instrumental in the development of ethnopoetics and continues to influence writers and scholars today.
+Henry Munn was an independent scholar, writer, and translator whose deep intellectual curiosity and quiet dedication left a lasting impact on the study of indigenous poetry and religious traditions, particularly in Mexico. Best known for his groundbreaking translations of the chants and oral autobiography of Mazatec healer María Sabina—done alongside his brother-in-law Álvaro Estrada—Munn brought attention and reverence to voices often unheard in Western literary circles. A gentle and passionate thinker, he spent much of his life immersed in books, art, and the pursuit of knowledge. His work, though largely carried out away from the spotlight, was instrumental in the development of ethnopoetics and continues to influence writers and scholars today. ((Rothenberg, Jerome. “Henry Munn: From 'The Uniqueness of María Sabina' (In Memoriam).” María Sabina: Selections, edited by Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris, University of California Press, 2003.))
+===== Context =====
+==== "The Mushrooms of Language" (Munn 1973) ====
-===== "The Mushrooms of Language" (Munn 1973) =====
 Henry Munn "investigated the use of hallucinogenic plants among the Conibo Indians of eastern Peru and the Mazatec Indians of the mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico. Although not a professional anthropologist, he has resided for extended periods of time among the Mazatecs and is married to the niece of the shaman and shamaness referred to in this essay." He also emphasized at the beginning that the shamans in this essay are referred to as Mazatecs because they reside in the same mountains ("Sierra Mazateca in the northeastern corner of the Mexican state of Oaxaca") and the language they speak has been ascribed Mazatec, however, strictly speaking they are Huautecans, "natives of the town of Huautla de Jimenez."
 This essay is incredibly interesting as Munn explains the tradition of eating mushrooms and the sacred practices of Mazatec shamans in altered states of consciousness. It can be seen as a communal affair, in which it is common for multiple members of family to participate together, with the purpose of "therapeutic catharsis." Many, once or more, have eaten mushrooms among the Mazatecs, and not all have had profound and extremely passionate experiences that stretch the folds of their creative imagination- disinclined to try again. But there are some, who take the journeys into the strange depths of their minds, again and again, they are shamans - the masters and guides - who take these psychological trips as a vocation. Munn calls them "the men of the spirit", language, wisdom, and medicine in different instances. They are called during mushroom rituals by families to act as guides, they chant rhythmically with ecstatic expression the teachings gained under the psychoactive influence while others listen, as the shamans are more acquainted with its language and terrain.
-{{:omnipoetics:ab67616d0000b273ea4ba91dd1686d9a48de51fb.jpeg?400|Spotify image}}
+<blockquote> The Mazatecs say that the mushrooms speak. If you ask a shaman where his imagery comes from, he is likely to reply: I didn't say it, the mushrooms did. No mushroom speaks, that is a primitive anthropomorphization of the natural, only man speaks, but he who eats these mushrooms, if he is a man of language, becomes endowed with an inspired capacity to speak. The shamans who eat them, their function is to speak, they are the speakers who chant and sing the truth, they are the oral poets of their people, the doctors of the word, they who tell what is wrong and how to remedy it, the seers and oracles, the ones possessed by the voice. "It is not I who speak," said Heraclitus, "it is the logos." Language is an ecstatic activity of signification. Intoxicated by the mushrooms, the fluency, the ease, the aptness of expression one becomes capable of are such that one is astounded by the words that issue forth from the contact of the intention of articulation with the matter of experience. At times it is as if one were being told what to say, for the words leap to mind, one after another, of themselves without having to be searched for: a phenomenon similar to the automatic dictation of the surrealists except that here the flow of consciousness, rather than being disconnected, tends to be coherent: a rational enunciation of meanings. Message fields of communication with the world, others, and one's self are disclosed by the mushrooms. The spontaneity they liberate is not only perceptual, but linguistic, the spontaneity of speech, of fervent, lucid discourse, of the logos in activity. For the shaman, it is as if existence were uttering itself through him. From the beginning, once what they have eaten has modified their consciousness, they begin to speak and at the end of each phrase they say tzo-"says" in their language-like a rhythmic punctuation of the said. Says, says, says. It is said. I say. Who says? We say, man says, language says, being and existence say. ((Munn, Henry. “The Mushrooms of Language.” The Psychedelic Library, www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/lsd/munn.htm Accessed 23 Apr. 2025.))
-<blockquote> The Mazatecs say that the mushrooms speak. If you ask a shaman where his imagery comes from, he is likely to reply: I didn't say it, the mushrooms did. No mushroom speaks, that is a primitive anthropomorphization of the natural, only man speaks, but he who eats these mushrooms, if he is a man of language, becomes endowed with an inspired capacity to speak. The shamans who eat them, their function is to speak, they are the speakers who chant and sing the truth, they are the oral poets of their people, the doctors of the word, they who tell what is wrong and how to remedy it, the seers and oracles, the ones possessed by the voice. "It is not I who speak," said Heraclitus, "it is the logos." Language is an ecstatic activity of signification. Intoxicated by the mushrooms, the fluency, the ease, the aptness of expression one becomes capable of are such that one is astounded by the words that issue forth from the contact of the intention of articulation with the matter of experience. At times it is as if one were being told what to say, for the words leap to mind, one after another, of themselves without having to be searched for: a phenomenon similar to the automatic dictation of the surrealists except that here the flow of consciousness, rather than being disconnected, tends to be coherent: a rational enunciation of meanings. Message fields of communication with the world, others, and one's self are disclosed by the mushrooms. The spontaneity they liberate is not only perceptual, but linguistic, the spontaneity of speech, of fervent, lucid discourse, of the logos in activity. For the shaman, it is as if existence were uttering itself through him. From the beginning, once what they have eaten has modified their consciousness, they begin to speak and at the end of each phrase they say tzo-"says" in their language-like a rhythmic punctuation of the said. Says, says, says. It is said. I say. Who says? We say, man says, language says, being and existence say.
+<fs small>**Taken from Notes on the paragraph above:** The inspiration produced by the mushrooms is very much like that described by Nietzsche in //Ecce Homo//. Since the statement of Rimbaud, "I is another," spontaneous language, speaking or writing as if from dictation (to use the common expression for an activity very difficult to describe in its truth) has been of paramount interest to philosophers and poets. Sap the Mexican, Octavio Paz, in an essay on Breton, "The inspired one, the man who in truth speaks, does not say anything that is his: from his mouth speaks language." Octavio Paz, "Andre Breton o La Busqueda del Comienzo," Corriente Alterna (Mexico: Siglo Veintiuno, 1967), p. 53.</fs> </blockquote>
-**Taken from Notes on the paragraph above:** The inspiration produced by the mushrooms is very much like that described by Nietzsche in //Ecce Homo//. Since the statement of Rimbaud, "I is another," spontaneous language, speaking or writing as if from dictation (to use the common expression for an activity very difficult to describe in its truth) has been of paramount interest to philosophers and poets. Sap the Mexican, Octavio Paz, in an essay on Breton, "The inspired one, the man who in truth speaks, does not say anything that is his: from his mouth speaks language." Octavio Paz, "Andre Breton o La Busqueda del Comienzo," Corriente Alterna (Mexico: Siglo Veintiuno, 1967), p. 53. </blockquote>
 === The Ritual Process and Mystical Experience of Mazatec Mushroom Ceremonies (AI) ===
 ChatGPT listed down the step-by-step process of consuming mushrooms in rituals to understand the significance of mystical experiences that Munn shares of the Mazatec traditional healers grappling with modernity, and runs it through a modern academic lens. Following is the response AI provided after a long back-and-forth:
+{{:omnipoetics:ab67616d0000b273ea4ba91dd1686d9a48de51fb.jpeg?400 |On Spotify}}
 <fs small>
@@ Line 36: / Line 40: @@
 To be clear, I am not condoning or condemning the use of psychoactive substances (as AI thought initially and refused to work with me), but merely pointing out the significance of this psychological journey within a proper setting, guide, intent, and creative expression (with words, songs, or movement).
 ====== Writing in the Imagination of an Oral Poet (Munn 2016) ======
-In his pre-commentary to this essay, Rothenberg points out how Munn's work on the Mazatec shamaness and oral poet, Maria Sabina, complicates the issue of orality in ethnopoetics. His work informs "the location of a concept of the 'book' and 'writing' at the center of the genuine ethnopoetics of a major oral poet." He also mentions the notion of "'archecriture' (or primal writing)" being "coequal with speech" - as seen in [[omnipoetics:antin|David Antin's]] work. (474)
+In his pre-commentary to this essay, Rothenberg points out how Munn's work on the Mazatec shamaness and oral poet, Maria Sabina, complicates the issue of orality in ethnopoetics. His work informs "the location of a concept of the 'book' and 'writing' at the center of the genuine ethnopoetics of a major oral poet." He also mentions the notion of "'archecriture' (or primal writing)" being "coequal with speech" - as seen in [[omnipoetics:antin|David Antin's]] work. ((Symposium of the Whole: A Range of Discourse Toward an Ethnopoetics, edited by Jerome Rothenberg, University of California Press, 2016, p.474))
-The reason for this complication comes from an oral poet who performs and transmits incredible works of poetry, along with her other shamanistic duties such as healing and guidance, //without knowing how to read and write//. The society she belongs to does not read and write, at least not in the popular literary sense. Yet, one of the core "themes of her chants is the book." Sabina reads "‘The path of your hands, the path of your fists, the path of your feet.’ In other words: what one does, where one goes. 'I am she who questions and sees,’ says the shamaness. 'I am she who examines the tracks of the feet and of the hands.'” This brings back the image of hunters reading signs on the track of prey, "the idea of reading in the more primordial sense than reading words." She reads the tracks on the body for signs of illness. (475) "This woman of words, who is completely illiterate, is fascinated, haunted, obsessed by the idea of writing" (476) and repeatedly brings forth the image of the book of wisdom, the book of language, passed down to her by the 'Principal Ones' to use in a psychedelic vision. Munn traces a blurring of modern elements under a "celestial bureaucracy" as well as ancestral precedence in her vision.
+The reason for this complication comes from an oral poet who performs and transmits incredible works of poetry, along with her other shamanistic duties such as healing and guidance, //without knowing how to read and write//. The society she belongs to does not read and write, at least not in the popular literary sense. Yet, one of the core "themes of her chants is the book." Sabina reads "‘The path of your hands, the path of your fists, the path of your feet.’ In other words: what one does, where one goes. 'I am she who questions and sees,’ says the shamaness. 'I am she who examines the tracks of the feet and of the hands.'” This brings back the image of hunters reading signs on the track of prey, "the idea of reading in the more primordial sense than reading words." She reads the tracks on the body for signs of illness. ((Symposium of the Whole: A Range of Discourse Toward an Ethnopoetics, edited by Jerome Rothenberg, University of California Press, 2016, p.475)) "This woman of words, who is completely illiterate, is fascinated, haunted, obsessed by the idea of writing" ((Symposium of the Whole: A Range of Discourse Toward an Ethnopoetics, edited by Jerome Rothenberg, University of California Press, 2016, p.476)) and repeatedly brings forth the image of the book of wisdom, the book of language, passed down to her by the 'Principal Ones' to use in a psychedelic vision. Munn traces a blurring of modern elements under a "celestial bureaucracy" as well as ancestral precedence in her vision.
 The ancient Mexicans didn’t just use mushrooms— they //saw// with them. Under their influence, visions turned into written forms: the night alive with glyphs, the hand moved by something beyond will. Writing was painting, and painting was the act of life itself speaking. Their poets—like Nezahualcoyotl—wrote songs with flowers, words that lived in color and breath. María Sabina stands in that same lineage, merging Christian and Mesoamerican signs. Language here isn’t just spoken— it’s //seen//, //sung//, and //revealed//.
 <blockquote>A universe in expansion, where events are the outcome of chance as much as necessity, can’t be contained between the covers of a
-book; a reality which is not created once and for all but in course of realization is not written in advance but being written, it demands a text, an open-ended, unlimited play of signifiers in accord with the combinatory play of life itself. (479)</blockquote>
+book; a reality which is not created once and for all but in course of realization is not written in advance but being written, it demands a text, an open-ended, unlimited play of signifiers in accord with the combinatory play of life itself. ((Munn, Henry. “Writing in the Imagination of an Oral Poet.” ((Symposium of the Whole: A Range of Discourse Toward an Ethnopoetics, edited by Jerome Rothenberg, University of California Press, 2016, p.479))</blockquote>
-==== References ====
-  - Munn, Henry. "The Mushrooms of Language." //The Psychedelic Library//, [[www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/lsd/munn.htm]] Accessed 23 Apr. 2025.
-  - Rothenberg, Jerome. "Henry Munn: From 'The Uniqueness of María Sabina' (In Memoriam)." //María Sabina: Selections//, edited by Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris, University of California Press, 2003.
-  - Munn, Henry. "Writing in the Imagination of an Oral Poet." //Symposium of the Whole: A Range of Discourse Toward an Ethnopoetics//, edited by Jerome Rothenberg, University of California Press, 2016.

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