María Sabina Magdalena García (July 22, 1894- November 22, 1985) was a shaman and poet from Oaxaca, Mexico, home to the Mazatec people. Sabina was known for her writings and works with psilocybin mushrooms, which were considered sacred to the Mazatec people and central in their shamanistic practices.

Sabina was famous for healing ceremonies called veladas that used the psilocynin mushrooms to commune with God and experience enlightenment. Healing- while it was important within these ceremonies, especially when one considers “The Mushrooms of Language,” and the healing of Sabina's sister, Maria Ana it is not the sole goal- the encounter with the Divine is. Due to Sabina's interactions with R. Gordon Wasson, an American author and ethnomycologist, who participated in one of the ceremonies (in fact he was the first outsider with Sabina's help), Sabina was shunned by her tribe due to the unwanted attention to the Mazatec spiritual practice that were meant to be secret.

Wasson would go on to say that that was never his intention, but the damage was done. Sabina's life was never truly the same as people came to experience mushroom-induced hallucinations, not for divine enlightenment. Sabina would end her life in poverty as the “saint children” (the name for the mushrooms) would be used for other processes. You can read R. Gordon Wasson's photo essay here: "Seeking the Magic Mushroom"

Álvaro Estrada wrote her biography, Vida de María Sabina: La sabia de los hongos | The Life of María Sabina: The Wisdom of the Mushrooms //(1977) that was translated into English by her husband, Henry Munn. Estarda and Munn also wrote and translated Sabina's works, poetry, and chants into English. They noted that much of Sabina's writings primarily focus on language and the transmission of language. In fact, Sabina argued that she cured people with Language, “the Language of the //saint children” (Sabina 191). Sabina details (or at least Estarda and Munn do) that “The Mushroom of Language” is where Sabina found her calling in life, to commit herself to the Language of the divine given by the mushrooms.

However, as Giuliana Furci, founder of The Fungi Foundation notes, “It is important to clarify that the life of María Sabina is reported and recorded by others. Her story, what she lived and what she knew, belongs to a language that we do not understand or speak.” Even with this hurdle to consider, Sabina's writing is profoundly poetic and philosophical, exploring the connections between language, nature, and the subconscious“ (citation).

Jerome and Diane Rothenberg sample an except from Alvaro Estrada's María Sabina: Her Life & Chants (translated by Henry Munn, pp. 46-50) in Part 3: Meanings of their anthology Symposium of the Whole.

“With words we live and grow” (188) is the phrase that begins this essay. In “The Mushroom of Language,” Sabina details the healing of her sister Maria Ana. It is unclear what was wrong with Maria Ava, but Sabina refused to believe that her sister could not be healed. After taking “at least thirty pairs of the “landslide” variety” (Sabina 188), Sabina, guided by the saint children moved to heal her sister through words, songs, and prayers. Sabina was also directed to press on her sister's afflicted areas while she sang and prayed. Eventually, the sister is healing, but Sabina is still experiencing the effects of the mushrooms, which begins a whole new journey in the center of the mind.

Sabina makes several references to language, words, and books- something that is unusual as historically, Sabina cannot read or write, but she understands the language that is detailed to her in this spiritual journey. In addition to images of natural landscapes that guide her during her journey beyond the world of the humans— mountains, and horses—, human made artifacts, like tables, “important papers”, books, and beer compose her visionary experience. Sabina does not study the texts that appear in her vision, rather she records learning wisdom, that is the Language of God, through instruction by the saint children.

Sabina's ritual consumption of psilocybe mushrooms invites readers to consider the possibility of inter-species communication between plants and humans. On one hand, a socio-cultural model of language explains the origins and functions of language as a human construction to create meaningful communication between humans, ie, creatures with lenguas, or tongues, and parallel communicative norms that bring the abstractions of the mind face to face with anther similar creature. Although language may be written into abstraction through concentrated expressions of symbolic meaning,—writing this wiki page for example— the mystical experience might transform our understanding of the power and purpose of language as a transcendent property that connects humans with other non-human beings. Spoken language and non-verbal communication cultivate the atmosphere for Sabina to receive the immense power from the mushrooms:

In a brazier I burned the copal and with the smoke incense the saint children that I held in my hands. Before eating them, I spoke to them. I asked them for favor. That they bless us, that they teach us the way, the truth, the cure. That they give us the power to follow the tracks of evil in order to be done with it. I said to the mushrooms: “I will take your heart. Because my conscience is pure, it is clean like yours. Give me truth. May Saint Peter and Saint Paul be with me.”

This moment before the visionary experience oozes with syncretic respect for Mazatec ceremonial practices and catholic invocation of the saints. One can never be to cautious before going on a trip of this intensity. Her invocation expresses a sense of tenderness for the organic forms of non-human life and reverence for the litany of saints, more-than-human people who elevated their bodies and souls through their particular experiences with Divinity. Likewise, after Sabina's mystical experience, her transformative encounter with wisdom turns her into a conduit for healing (her sister and the sick who travel to her for healing) elevates her from a an apprentice to being one of the Principal Ones.

Sabina's reported encounter with the “language of God” (190) puts her into contact with the one of the Principal Ones, Chicon Nindó, the Supreme Lord of the Mountains. Sabina does not record his speech because the visionary experience of Cicon Nindó relies on a depiction of the movements and expressive landscapes of the psychedelic experience to transmits the power to enchant spirits and to cure the sick. “Language makes the dying return to life. The sick recover their health when they hear the words taught by the saint children. There is no mortal that can teach this Language” (191).

https://www.ffungi.org/blog/the-earthly-journeys-of-maria-sabina
https://www.jornada.com.mx/2002/05/05/08an1esp.php?printver=1
https://www.perlego.com/es/book/3847029/vida-de-mara-sabina-la-sabia-de-los-hongos-pdf
Henry Munn “Writing in the Imagination of an Oral Poet” (Rothenberg //Symposium // 474-79)