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Pissed Off Warriors
Throughout history, all over the world, groups of warriors have used hallucinogenic mushrooms in their rituals. Those Vikings known as the berserkers, the aryans, the aztecs and others have left ample evidence of this. We know something about the hormones and chemicals involved and can piece together a scenario that might explain the strong emotional hold that these plants have over so many cultures. They were prized by the warriors and feared by the common folk. This is terrorism to the max. What kind of neighborhood would exist under these conditions?
The sun has set and the last rays of light are flickering out in the West. Already the drums have started to pound and the chants seem to fill the air. The last daylight gives way to the light of the bonfire. Mingled with the rhythmic sounds of the music are the cries of terror from the pens. The torture has begun. A fine bull, one who has shown great courage is chosen for the sacrifice. He has been tied securely, unable to fight his tormentors. The bull is slashed brutally for hours while the warriors attack him as if he were the enemy. All the while, they are sharing earthen mugs, foaming with urine.
Meanwhile, the bull is finally slaughtered and his blood added to the warrior's mugs. The torture of the bull has added more drugs to their murderous brew. For several hours the bull's body has been manufacturing all kinds of "body drugs" like adrenalin and the pain blockers that resemble opiates. Other highly prized parts of the bull are his adrenal glands, heart and testicles.
They don't do this every night. Tonight is special; they are going into battle at dawn. Worked into a wild frenzy by the consumption of their "magic potion", they were ready to strike mortal fear into the hearts of their enemies. It was alleged that they sometimes replaced their bull with human victims, although it probably wasn't the mainstay of their diet. Even the mere possibility was enough to terrify the common people.
Now, you can see why nobody wants to admit that this Amanita has anything to do with their history. Our worst fears personified; drug crazed cannibals with superhuman strength, that feel no pain and show no mercy. Yet the warrior societies have been very successsful. They have refined their act over the centuries, but in essence, they rule the world today.
The eating of flesh was a vital part of the warrior's culture as it gave these tribes mobility that could not even be attempted if they had to depend on vegetable foods. The warriors could hunt for game or drive their herds with them, always providing them with something to eat, even in the Winter. The farming cultures were tied to their land during the growing season and forced to stay near their storehouses in the cold months. To move and feed a large army of vegetarians would have been very difficult. For the flesh eaters, conquering became, and still is, a way of life.
There was a young lad in our neighborhood who went to the big city to seek his fortune. He had never seemed mean or aggressive when I knew him, he was almost shy. In the big city he took to hanging around with body builders. He was a strong, good looking country boy who was already well muscled. He started working out and taking steroids and putting on some weight. He had some problems down there, and although I never found out exactly what they were, his buddies told him that he had better go back up in the mountains and cool off. He came home and everyone was shocked by the changes in his personality.
The first time that I met him after his return he told me a story of how he and a friend of his were out rabbit hunting a couple of days before. He said they shot a rabbit and cut out its heart and ate it, still beating. He said he got, "one hell of a rush off of it."
I have heard of some ice fishermen who cut the heart out of their catch and eat it. "Helps keep you warm out on the ice," one fellow told me.
We had a cat, a Manx, that was an efficient hunter. When he caught something, he would take it out into the courtyard behind the house and turn it loose. He would chase the poor creature and catch it again and again, tossing it in the air. If it was a rodent, he would bite off a leg, so that it couldn't escape. He would play with it until it was totally exhausted. If it was a bird, he plucked it as he went, until it is both featherless and exhausted. When there was no more fun to be had, he would finally eat the poor creature alive.
In each of these cases the physiological benefits are real. It is the adrenalin and other body drugs produced by the tortured victim that the killer seeks.
"From Brazil to the Great Plains, American Indian societies ritually dispatched human victims in order to achieve certain kinds of benefits. The Iroquois, for example, vied with each other for the privilege of eating the heart of a brave prisoner so that they could acquire some of his courage. Everywhere, male prisoners were the chief victims. Before being killed, they were made to run a gauntlet, or were beaten, stoned, burned, mutilated, or subjected to other forms of torture and abuse. The ritual sacrifice of prisoners of war among band and village peoples was usually followed by the eating of all or part of the victim's body."
There were certain benefits involved. The short term benefits were the stimulants and pain killers present in the victim's bloodstream. There may be other long term advantages. Like the flatworms, there is some sort of information being passed on to the eater on the genetic level. In some cases, the value of protein added to the diet might be considered. This seems to be the case in Central Mexico at the time of Cortez's conquest. The Aztecs had taken this "torture and sacrifice" behavior complex to its limits. They weren't blessed with the great plains, teeming with herding animals to eat; they did raise dogs and turkeys and guinea pigs for meat, but their primary source of protein was human flesh. The Spaniards who counted the racks of skulls in front of the main pyramid in Mexico city estimated 6 million on display. It is estimated that, at the peak of their empire, the Aztecs were sacrificing 250,000 victims a year.5 Borah There were many pyramids and they all had their racks of skulls.
When Cortez and his followers arrived in the warrior cities of Mexico, they were appalled by the barbaric practices they encountered. The Spaniards of the day were not squeamish and torture was still a regular part of the treatment of prisoners, but cannibalism was not to be tolerated. To save the savages from their murderous ways, Cortez and his men slaughtered thousands of them.
Apparently, the main reason that such a relatively small band of Spaniards could conquer such a large number of Aztecs was that the Aztecs were not trying to kill the Spaniards, but capture them alive so that they could be sacrificed to their gods and eaten.6 Harris Their most bloodthirsty gods were, of course, named after hallucinogenic fungi. Mexico and Guatemala share a long history of mushroom gods, evidenced by artifacts as well as written records. The same general warrior ethic existed in the Aztec culture as we find in the Aryan and Viking tradition, although the mushrooms that gave them their impetus was of a totally different variety. The Amanita muscaria's found in North America have almost no hallucinogenic properties and seem to have played no role in the history of the area, but the psilocybians found in Mexico and Guatemala have had a profound influence on the people of the region.
Known as "teonanacatl" or simply "nanacatl", the god of their sacred mushroom, offered its "flesh" to the people in exchange for the blood of their sacrifices. The term "bloodthirsty" certainly applied to the god of the Aztecs. Neither the Aztecs nor Native Americans can be singled out for having cannibalism in their past; all races have a bit in their history. We cannot even banish such behavior to history. There are many tales of such practices still taking place in our modern times.
These fungi go one step farther than a symbiotic partnership, they form "federations" that involve more than one symbiot. They organize a herding animal for food supply, a predator for doing the "projects", and they run the show from a safe, underground headquarters. This is the deal they have worked out with the ants. They herd their aphids, and feed their fungus. In the case of Stropharia cubensis, one of the psilocybians, they have formed their relationship around cattle, bison, antelope, deer, donkeys... and human beings. They tend to organize humans into "classes" much like the caste system of ants, to perform various functions.
In the case of the Aztecs, the mushrooms had no available herding animals to feed their workers, so they used the Mayans and other local farming populations. Actually, it seems like the warrior class used each other's peasants as a food source. The countryside was broken up into many little "kingdoms" that routinely traded and warred with each other. They each had their Pyramids for sacrifice and their priests for passing out the portions. These city/states each had their own armies and they would raid each other periodically, capturing civilians to be sacrificed and eaten. These warriors were certainly fierce enough to herd local farmers, but they were no match for Cortez's small band. Apparently the Mexican armies did very little actual fighting with each other. Their confrontations were probably more of a ceremonial nature, with very few deaths or even wounds on the battle field. After all, for armor these fierce fighters used cotton vests and lots of feathers.
If we trace the lineage of our own military tradition, we find a path straight to these warrior cults of old. The rules have change; the terrorist threats are certainly more refined, but the aristocracy still uses the berserkers to keep the rest of us in line.
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Sources
4 Harris, Cannibals and Kings, Random House, New York, 1977, p 151
5 Borah, The Cannibal Kingdom, Science, Nov. 1980, p 70
6 Harris, Cannibals and Kings, Random House, New York,
1977, p 160
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