[5] They found that their diverging attitudes towards the plant had roots in the folkloric traditions of Europe, and theorized a deep historical divide between “mycophiles” like the Slavs and “mycophobes" like the Anglo-Saxon peoples.

In 1952 the poet Robert Graves sent the Wassons an article that mentioned the discovery by Richard Evans Schultes in 1938 of the modern-day survival of the ancient use of intoxicating mushrooms among the Indians in Mexico.

Valentina and Gordon Wasson organized yearly research expeditions to the remote mountain villages of the monolingual Mazatec Indians of Oaxaca, Mexico, and in 1955 were among the first outsiders in modern times to participate in the midnight rites of the cult of the sacred mushroom.

[8] They received especially valuable information from American missionary Eunice V. Pike of the Summer Linguistics Institute, and Robert Weitlaner, a Mexican anthropologist who had visited the Mazatec.

In this article, Valentina suggested that Psilocybe mushrooms might be used as a psychotherapeutic agent, placing her alongside psychiatrists like Humphrey Osmund in Saskatchewan who advocated for their use in therapy.

She also stated that as the drug would become better known, medical uses would be found for it, perhaps in the treatment of alcoholism, narcotic addiction, mental disorders, and terminal diseases associated with severe pain.