Teonanácatl and the Codices: The Sacred Mushroom Sahagún Couldn't Name

When Friar Bernardino de Sahagún compiled the Florentine Codex in the 16th century, he recorded with surprise how Mexica merchants ate special mushrooms before the conch trumpets sounded, without eating anything else, only drinking chocolate throughout the night. He called these mushrooms teonanácatl — a Nahuatl word that translates as "flesh of the gods."

A name that survived without an owner

For centuries, the exact identity of teonanácatl remained in the dark. No contemporary indigenous group uses that specific word today. Initial confusion led to its erroneous identification with the genus Panaeolus, an error widely repeated in literature until Mexican mycologist Gastón Guzmán systematically corrected the record: Panaeolus was never traditionally used in Mexico. The strongest candidate species is Psilocybe caerulescens, known among current Nahuas as teotlaquilnanácatl.

Codices as visual evidence

Beyond Sahagún's text, Mixtec codices — a region with the greatest global diversity of Psilocybe species — preserve images of figures holding mushrooms in clearly ritualistic contexts. The Codex Vindobonensis and the Codex Magliabechiano include representations that subsequent studies interpret as iconographic evidence of the pre-Hispanic cult of these mushrooms, linked in some readings to the cult of Quetzalcóatl.

Fifty-three species, one persistent question

Today, 53 hallucinogenic species of Psilocybe are known in Mexico — the greatest diversity of this genus in the world — but documented ceremonial use survives only among certain indigenous peoples of Oaxaca. The exact identity of Sahagún's teonanácatl, as recognized by specialized literature itself, remains completely unresolved after almost five centuries.

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