meeting R. Gordon Wasson and her veladas being recorded in the mid-1950s, these ancient Mazatec ceremonies and rituals entered Western knowledge systems, although they existed within Mazatec culture, intentionally hidden, for centuries. Similar ceremonies were recorded in the late Post-Classic Mesoamerican Mixtec codex Yuta Tnoho or Vindobonensis Mexicanus I (Latin), written in the 16th century, and in the Three Stelae of Xochimilco, but until Wasson met María Sabina in the early 1950s there was almost no proof that the sacred mushroom healing and divination ceremonies and rituals actually existed. Academics note that before Wasson's account, there was "little to no evidence" of the medicinal properties of the psilocybin mushrooms in western scientific literature, thus confirming the pivotal role that Sabina and the Mazatec community had in all Western uses of the mushrooms. Use of synthetic entheogens In 1958, the French mycologist Roger Heim brought psilocybin tablets to María Sabina and the first velada using the active principle of the mushrooms rather than the raw mushrooms themselves took place. In 1962, R. Gordon Wasson and Albert Hofmann went to Mexico to visit her. They also brought a bottle of psilocybin pills. Sandoz was marketing them under the brand name Indocybin—"indo" for both Indian and indole (the nucleus of their chemical structures) and "cybin" for the main molecular constituent, psilocybin. Hofmann gave his synthesized entheogen to the curandera. "Of course, Wasson recalled, Albert Hofmann is so conservative he always gives too little a dose, and it didn't have any effect." Hofmann had a different interpretation: "activation of the pills, which must dissolve in the stomach, takes place after 30 to 45 minutes. In contrast, the mushrooms when chewed, work faster as the drug is absorbed immediately". To settle her doubts about the pills, more were distributed. María, her daughter, and the shaman, Don Aurelio, ingested up to 30 mg each, a moderately high dose by current standards but not perhaps by the more experienced practitioners. At dawn, their Mazatec interpreter reported that María Sabina felt there was little difference between the pills and the mushrooms. She thanked Hofmann for the bottle of pills, saying that she would now be able to serve people even when no mushrooms were available. Chemical compounds derived from the Psilocybe mushrooms Sabina introduced to Wasson now form part of pharmaceutical products which are patented and now worth billions of dollars. However, Mazatec indigenous communities who are responsible