Psychedelic Soma: R. Gordon Wasson’s Interpretation of Soma and its Impact on both Modern Yoga and Psychedelic Research

This paper critically examines R. Gordon Wasson’s 1968 book, Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality, and traces its influence on both modern yoga and psychedelic research. A banker by trade, Wasson became fascinated with fungi and published a hugely influential article on the ritual use of psychedelic mushrooms in Life magazine in 1957. In 1968, he turned his attention to the enigmatic plant of the Vedas, Soma, arguing that it too was a hallucinogenic mushroom, Amanita muscaria. Although largely discredited by Indologists today, Wasson’s identification of Soma with psychedelics helped solidify in the popular imagination an idea that was already present in Aldous Huxley’s work – namely, that psychedelics can occasion the same mystical states described in South Asian religious texts. With the recent renaissance of psychedelic research in the 21st century, this idea has resurfaced both in popular yoga literature and in many scientific studies of psilocybin, with some problematic implications.