Maria Sabina: Selections (Poets for the Millennium, 2)
Jerome Rothenberg, Editor.
Paperback

Jerome Rothenberg presents a wonderful introduction to the life, visions, and works of this illiterate healer who cured with her words in the midst of mushroom-induced trances. She lived most of her life in grinding poverty in the Oaxacan village of Huautla de Jimenez in Mexico, comforted only by the visions of the “little ones”–hallucinogenic mushrooms. In the midst of one of her visionary encounters, she was invited to read a holy book and the words she saw there gave her the power to create long chants about herself as the healing woman/the sun woman/the silk scarf woman/the doll woman/the bruised woman/the tungsten woman, and on and on in a manner similar to the great “Thunder the Perfect Mind” text in the Nag Hammadi Library. In fact, some of the similarities are uncanny between this anonymous, gnostic-like text, and the words of this poor woman from the Mexican countryside. Both the story of her life, and the translation offered here of her words, are so powerful that you will never forget Maria Sabina. This humble woman has long been a member of my Pantheon of Makers.