nanacatl (HJ276:79:pt3:242r)

The nanacatl was often a hallucinogenic mushroom, as attested in our Online Nahuatl Dictionary. Its consumption could be combined with singing and dancing. One source refers to estupifaction and another mentions losing oneself.

This iconographic image of a mushroom appears on a pictorial manuscript submitted by indigenous petitioners on or around October 24, 1549, as evidence during a land dispute between the Cuernavacan community of Tetela and the Marquesado del Valle over the alleged usurpation seventeen years previously of a parcel of community land by the Marqués. The pictorial is included in the group of manuscripts known as the Códice del Marquesado del Valle. For more information, consult Von Mentz, Cuauhnahuac, 2008, 472; Códices indígenas de algunos pueblos del Marquesado, 1933 and 1883, “Códice núm. 27; and Santiago Sánchez, Códices del Marquesado del Valle, 2003, 200-204.