THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

There is a striking similarity in the imaginative world of the Mexican Indians and the tribesmen of Siberia: both have created a community of dwarfs who take over.  In Mexico the mushrooms command.  They speak through the curandero or shaman.  He is as though not present. The mushrooms answer the questions put to them about the sick patient, about the future, about the stolen money or the missing donkey. The mushrooms take the form of duendes, to use the Spanish term; dwarfs in English.  Similarly the eater of fly agarics comes under the command of the mushrooms, and they are personified as amanita girls or amanita men, the size of the fly amanita.

Wasson/Soma, 1968