Robert Gordon Wasson (September 22, 1898 – December 23, 1986) was an American author, ethnomycologist, and a Vice President for Public Relations at J.P. Morgan & Co. Wasson spent most of his career in banking in his position at J.P. Morgan. Later in his life, despite having little formal training in the field, he turned his interests to the study of hallucinogenic mushrooms, religion, and ethnomycology, publishing papers that received attention and acclaim. In the course of work funded by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Wasson made contributions to the fields of ethnobotany, botany, and anthropology. In his 1968 published study on the botanical identity of soma–haoma, Wasson suggested that "soma" described in the Rigveda was the fly agaric mushroom, and "haoma" in the Avesta was a hallucinogen.
Career
Banking industry Wasson began his banking career at Guaranty Trust Company in 1928, and moved to J.P. Morgan & Co. in 1934. That same year, he published a book on the Hall Carbine Affair, in which he attempted to exonerate John Pierpont Morgan from guilt with respect to the incident, which had been viewed as an example of wartime profiteering. As early as 1937, Wasson had been attempting to influence historians Allan Nevins and Charles McLean Andrews regarding Morgan's role in the affair; he used Nevins' report as a reference for his own book on the topic. The matter of Morgan's responsibility for the Hall Carbine Incident remains controversial. On July 16, 1941, the directors of Morgan & Co. appointed Wasson to the position of assistant secretary, and by 1943 he was vice president for public relations.
Ethnomycology Wasson's studies in ethnomycology began during his 1927 honeymoon trip to the Catskill Mountains when his wife, Valentina Pavlovna Guercken, a pediatrician, chanced upon some edible wild mushrooms. Fascinated by the marked difference in cultural attitudes towards fungi in Russia compared to the United States, the couple began field research that led to the publication of Mushrooms, Russia and History in 1957. In the course of their investigations they mounted expeditions to Mexico to study the religious use of mushrooms by the native population, and claimed to have been the first Westerners to participate in a Mazatec mushroom ritual. It was the curandera María Sabina who both allowed the Wassons to participate in the ritual and who taught them about the uses and effects of the mushroom in 1955. In 1957 Wasson published a 10-page spread in TIME LIFE magazine about his mushroom ceremony with Sabina and stating he had "found God." This led to hundreds of Americans traveling to Sabina's village to take mushrooms themselves. As a result Sabina was ostracised from her community, and her house was burned down after she was briefly jailed. At the 1951 annual meeting of the American Council of Learned Societies, held in Rye, New York, on January 24–26, Wasson was appointed a member of the Executive Committee for a period of one year. Some of Wasson's colleagues, such as Ethel Dunn, disagreed with Wasson's conclusions regarding Amanita muscaria.
CIA funding Wasson's 1956 expedition was funded by the CIA's MK-Ultra subproject 58, as was revealed by documents obtained by John Marks under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents state that Wasson was an "unwitting" participant in the project. The funding was provided under the cover name of the Geschickter Fund for Medical Research (credited by Wasson at the end of his subsequent Life piece about the expedition).
Role in popularizing psilocybin mushrooms In May 1957, Life magazine published an article titled "Seeking the Magic Mushroom," which introduced psychedelic mushrooms to a wide audience for the first time. Six days later, his wife Valentina's first-person account of their research expedition in Mexico was published on the cover of This Week, a Sunday magazine inserted in 37 newspapers that reach almost 12 million total readers. In his memoir, author Tom Robbins talks about the impact of this article on "turning on" Americans himself included. The article sparked immense interest in the Mazatec ritual practice among beatniks and hippies, an interest that proved disastrous for the Mazatec community and for María Sabina in particular. As the community was besieged by Westerners wanting to experience the mushroom-induced hallucinations, Sabina attracted attention by the Mexican police who thought that she sold drugs to the foreigners. The unwanted attention completely altered the social dynamics of the Mazatec community and threatened to terminate the Mazatec custom. The community blamed Sabina, and she was ostracized in the community and had her house burned down. Sabina later regretted having introduced Wasson to the practice, but Wasson contended that his only intention was to contribute to the sum of human knowledge.
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