A European shamanism that left little trace
When we talk about visionary plants, the conversation almost instinctively drifts toward the Amazon, the Andes, or the Mexican plateaus. 20th-century ethnobotany built its imagery looking toward the Americas, rarely toward Europe’s own backyard. However, the traditional societies of the Mediterranean and the Iberian Peninsula also possessed a wide repertoire of plant-based resources to modify states of consciousness, along with figures—meigas, bruixots, lamias, pythonesses—who performed functions equivalent to the shamanic specialists anthropologists seek in other continents today.
The problem for those attempting to reconstruct this history is that almost everything has been lost. Modernization, cultural standardization, and religious persecution swept away the oral traditions that identified these plants and described their preparations. Only alcoholic intoxicants weathered the storms of history well. Of the rest, only fragments remain: popular names, proverbs, ritual objects, a few classical references, and scattered testimonies that are only now beginning to be recovered. What follows is an inventory of those remnants, not a manual.
Amanita muscaria and the forest gnomes
The most recognizable of the European visionary fungi is Amanita muscaria, known in Catalonia as oriol foll or matamosques: a bright red cap speckled with white, with a snowy stem. In popular imagery, its trunk was inhabited by gnomes and wondrous beings. There is no firm evidence of systematic ritual use in the Mediterranean area, but there are persistent indications of consumption throughout history—tenacious enough to suggest a prehistoric root linked to animist beliefs dating back millennia before the Christian era.
It is suggestive how folklore aligns with pharmacology. Traditional descriptions of intoxication by this fungus—euphoria and talkativeness, followed by a distortion of object size, and finally a drowsiness populated by visions and “wise voices”—coincide point-for-point with the character attributed to follets: small, active, wise (from the Greek gnomon, “one who knows”), and sighted only in the Alpine and Pyrenean forests where, coincidentally, the mushroom grows. Even the Catalan expression estar tocat del bolet—”to be touched by the mushroom,” said without malice of someone acting a bit crazy—echoes this relationship. It is worth emphasizing, in the interest of harm reduction, that Amanita muscaria is a toxic mushroom with a narrow margin of safety: the boundary between the desired effect and severe intoxication is minimal and unpredictable, as the concentration of its alkaloids varies enormously from one specimen to another.
The mushroom of the Basque witches
Alongside Amanita, the Mediterranean basin is home to Psilocybe semilanceata, a mushroom containing psilocybin. Although data on ancient use is lacking, research by ethnomycologist A. Garí places it within the psychoactive pharmacopeia of medieval sorceresses. The most striking argument is linguistic: its popular name in Basque, sorguin zorrotz (“pointed witch”), refers both to the unmistakable nipple of the cap and, perhaps, to those who used it. Added to this are two 17th-century medallions, attributed to witchcraft tools, in which the mushroom appears clearly silhouetted. Other psilocybin species present in the area have no documented tradition, though they are consumed by contemporary enthusiasts.
Peganum harmala: Syrian rue
Syrian rue (Peganum harmala)—the Maghrebi hârmel—grows wild and abundantly in Spain and has been used since time immemorial throughout the southern Mediterranean strip. Its chemistry is notable: it contains harmine, an alkaloid that 20th-century medicine came to value for treating conditions like encephalitis lethargica. Popular tradition also attributed anthelmintic, sudorific, and tonic properties against exhaustion to it. It is important to note, without detailing preparations, that harmalas are monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs): this makes them pharmacologically active but also dangerous, as they interact with numerous foods and drugs and can trigger hypertensive crises or serotonin syndrome.
The devil’s tomato and Pliny’s warning
The “devil’s tomato” or black nightshade refers to Solanum villosum, a plant often confused with Solanum nigrum, which has sweeter fruits and belongs to the same genus as the cultivated tomato (S. lycopersicum). Of villosum, it is enough to say that it is significantly more potent than its relatives and that its effects already unsettled the classical world. Pliny the Elder, in the 1st century, declared he would say nothing of it because he “dealt with remedies and not poisons,” though he hinted, for those in the know, that very little was enough to “disturb the reason” and much to kill. Pliny’s ambiguity summarizes the status of these plants well: the same material that alters perception in small quantities is lethal in only slightly larger ones. There are testimonies of a late survival of its use in Mallorca.
Datura and the origin of the witches’ flight
Datura (Datura stramonium)—”hell’s fig,” “devil’s eggplant”—is one of the few plants that deserves the label of hallucinogen in the strict sense: it produces such an extreme alteration of consciousness that it can completely break contact with the environment. It grows effortlessly in neglected gardens, landfills, and even on beach sand, with its large white bell-shaped flowers, thorny fruits, and a pungent, medicinal odor. Its richness in alkaloids explains why medicine used it as a hypnotic and, for centuries, in cigarettes for asthma and persistent coughs.
From its high toxicity comes one of the most famous images in European culture. To avoid the risks of ingestion, sorceresses applied ointments made with nightshades to mucous membranes, using a stick as a route of administration; the rapid onset of intoxication produced the vivid sensation of “rising through the air.” The myth of the witch on a broomstick therefore has a concrete pharmacological basis. From a harm reduction perspective, it is necessary to be blunt: anticholinergic nightshades like datura are dangerous deliriants, with an extremely narrow margin between active and toxic doses, profoundly unpleasant effects, and a real history of severe poisonings and deaths.
Belladonna, plant of the Pyrenean shamans
Atropa belladonna was another great driver of visions in Iberian and European witchcraft, despite being rare on the Peninsula: it only thrives in the beech and oak forests of the Pyrenees and pre-Pyrenees, where ancient local specialists mastered its use. Dioscorides already described how a few drops of its root extract induced states of “madness” and pleasant reveries, experienced as dreams. Its sweet fruits, resembling black grapes, also caused accidental poisonings among adolescents. One detail reveals the extent to which it weighed on the traditional Spanish pharmacopeia: a Ministerial Order from 1949—long before any European ban on psychotropics—already restricted the harvesting of wild belladonna.
Opium, the “unique medicine”
Opium, the resin of Papaver somniferum (the cascall), has been known and used since antiquity and boasts an immense body of literature. It suffices to recall here that the multiple opiates described by pharmacology derive from this plant and that its therapeutic utility has been so extensive that it has been said that if one had to keep a single remedy on Earth, it should be this one. That same potency explains its other side: dependence, tolerance, and a risk of overdose that has marked the social history of the substance.
Henbane and the “Roscellus Tablets” formula
Henbane (Hyoscyamus niger) shares the alkaloids atropine and scopolamine with belladonna and datura, and with them, that peculiar sensation of lightness and flight that fueled the legends of flying sorceresses. It was likely the most used entheogen in medieval European witchcraft, and it left a trace even in proverbs: “he who eats henbane will not lack sleep.” Anecdotes even circulated about its use to drug unsuspecting travelers and bathers in public baths.
The end of this story is political. During the Middle Ages, witches and official apothecaries handled practically the same psychoactive compounds; the difference was not in the chemistry, but in the power. While the Inquisition sent thousands of women accused of witchcraft to the stake, apothecaries sold equivalent formulas with the endorsement of orthodoxy. The famous “Roscellus Tablets,” popularized throughout Europe at the beginning of the 17th century, combined mandrake, henbane, poppy, and opium: almost a complete catalog of the same entheogens whose use, in other hands, led to the gallows. We do not reproduce their formulation here—it is a historical document, not a usable recipe—but their mere existence says much about who could legitimately alter consciousness and who paid for it with their lives.
Critical reading
This overview relies on works of ethnopsychology and ethnomycology regarding Mediterranean shamanism—the original material cites, for example, A. Garí’s research on Psilocybe semilanceata in medieval witchcraft—and on classical sources like Pliny and Dioscorides. It should be read with caution. A good part of the reconstruction of “European shamanism” is based on indirect indications—popular names, proverbs, objects, etymologies—that allow for alternative interpretations; the coincidence between folklore and pharmacology is suggestive, but it does not equate to documentary proof. Some claims (the specific antiquity of certain uses, the reading of witchcraft medallions) belong to the realm of reasonable hypothesis rather than established fact.
On a practical level, the message is unequivocal: almost all the plants mentioned—anticholinergic nightshades, Amanita, harmalas, opium—are toxic, have narrow margins of safety, and several are profoundly unpleasant or lethal in quantities that are difficult to calibrate. The interest of this text is historical, anthropological, and cultural; it is not an invitation to consume nor a preparation guide. Reconstructing the memory of these lost forms of knowledge is valuable; reproducing their practices, without the context or the knowledge of those who sustained them, is simply dangerous.
