Mushrooms in Huautla de Jimenez

About 9 years ago I kept having visions of a woman in the mountains somewhere in Mexico who would teach me something important. For a long time, I kept that to myself. Maybe I was being delirious.

But one day - I was getting an astrology reading with a friend and for some reason I don’t remember I told her about this vision. She said “I know who that woman is. I feel like you’re supposed to meet Eugenia”.

Eugenia is the daughter of Abuela Julieta, a powerful Mazatec healer/curandera with extensive experience in veladas (traditional psilocybin ceremonies). She was also part of the “13 Grandmothers” - a council of indigenous elders fro around the world dedicated to preserve Earth and ancestral wisdom.

Mushrooms have been used ceremonially and medicinally by the Mazatec people most likely since before the Spaniards came to America - so I knew this would be a powerful and healing experience - but I wasn’t looking to sit with the mushrooms. Not consciously, anyways. In all honesty, I feel like the mushrooms called me, because I had zero hesitation to go visit Eugenia in Huautla de Jimenez and see what God was trying to tell me (you may have heard about Huautla because a woman who became very famous - Maria Sabina - was from there).

I didn’t go see her immediately. It was about 2 years later after our first call that I took a bus from Mexico City with 3 friends towards her village in the Sierra Norte. The ride was… an experience. It was overnight, it stopped multiple times until we arrived in Huautla at about 6/7 AM. I was exhausted - but my spirit knew I was there for something big.

Huautla is a beautiful, mystical town with very interesting energy. It’s a simple place. The pace of everything is slow, and there is nothing absolutely fancy about it - but don’t underestimate it’s potency, or its beauty. The village is snuggled in the mountains that are home to a huge variety of mushrooms (including psilocybin) - making this land powerful and wise.

We spent 3 days there, and did 2 ceremonies. The accomodations we were in were not comfortable at all: there was no hot water, and the room was extremely cold - but I knew it was part of the initiation I felt I was going through. My experience in ceremony was beautiful and calm - and it opened up a very long process of helping me reconnect to my roots; for years they kept calling me back home, telling me to return to Mexico so I could grow into and expand into what I am really supposed to do here (and 4 years later, here I am, back in the mountains of Oaxaca). I’m now living in the Sierra Sur - another beautiful village surrounded by mushrooms.

I do recommend that if anyone is to go to Huautla: please be really careful with who you do this with. Sitting in a velada is deep, important, spiritual work that is very often underestimated. If you sit with someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing, it could be dangerous.

Here are some photos of this magical place.