María Sabina Magdalena García was a Mazatec sabia, shaman and poet who lived in Huautla de Jiménez, a town in the Sierra Mazateca area of the Mexican state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico. Her healing sacred mushroom ceremonies, called veladas, were based on the use of psilocybin mushrooms, particularly Psilocybe caerulescens, a sacred mushroom important to the Mazatecs. María Sabina's veladas contributed to the popularization of indigenous Mexican ritual use of entheogenic mushrooms among westerners, though this was not her intent.

"Seeking the Magic Mushroom" is a 1957 photo essay by amateur mycologist Robert Gordon Wasson describing his experience taking psilocybin mushrooms in 1955 during a Mazatec ritual in Oaxaca, Mexico. Wasson was one of the first Westerners to participate in a Mazatec ceremony and to describe the psychoactive effects of the Psilocybe species. The essay contains photographs by Allan Richardson and illustrations of several mushroom species of Psilocybe collected and identified by French botanist Roger Heim, then director of the French National Museum of Natural History. Wasson's essay, written in a first person narrative, appeared in the May 13 issue of Life magazine as part three of the "Great Adventures" series.