Hallucinogenic Healing and The Art of Ritual Dosing

Hallucinogenic Healing and The Art of Ritual Dosing, is a book about the social impact of hallucinogenic mushrooms. The book focuses on featuring expanded coverage about the widespread discovery of psilocybin mushrooms, their sacred healing ceremonies, and both its positive and negative impacts post-discovery through curated articles, essays, images and documentary film stills from the 1950s–1970s. Their sacred use was virtually unknown to the outside world until the late 1950s when R. Gordon Wasson, an American banker turned ethnomycologist and his wife Valentina Wasson, a Russian-American pediatrician, ethnomycologist and author traveled to the Sierra Mazateca area of the Mexican state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico. That’s where they were introduced to María Sabina, an indigenous Mazatec woman who allowed them to explore the use of the mushroom and to participate in a “velada” (an all night sacred healing mushroom ceremony).

This project was designed for Communication Design 5: Publications at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California for the Fall 2022 term. The book finish size is 5”x8”; Cover is printed on Uncoated Text Lynx #100 Text with scratch-proof lamination and raised digital foil (holographic); Pages are printed on Mohawk Via Vellum I-Tone Cream #80 Text. This book was set in Mokoko, a typeface designed by Dalton Maag. It was printed in Los Angeles, California by Nonstop Printing Inc. and hardbound in Los Angeles, California by For the Birds Trapped in Airports.

Special thanks to Tracey Shiffman / ArtCenter College of Design, Leiman / Nonstop Printing, and Mathew / For the Birds Trapped in Airports.

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