Rivea corymbosa (common synonym: Turbina corymbosa), is a species of morning glory plants, native throughout Latin America from Mexico in the North to Peru in the South and widely naturalised elsewhere. It is a perennial climbing vine with white flowers, often planted as an ornamental.
Known to natives of Mexico as Ololiuhqui (also spelled ololiuqui), its seeds, while little known outside of Mexico, were perhaps the most common hallucinogenic drug used by the natives.
The Nahuatl word ololiuhqui means "round thing," and refers to the small, brown, oval seeds of the morning glory, not the plant itself, which is called coaxihuitl, "snake-plant," in Nahuatl, and hiedra or bejicco in the Spanish language. The seeds, in Spanish, are sometimes called semilla de la Virgen (little seeds of the Virgin Mary).
The seeds are also used by Native curers in order to gain knowledge in curing practices and ritual, aswell as the causes for the illness.
Ololiuqui is the Aztec name for the seeds of certain convolvulaceous plants which have been used since prehispanic times by the Aztecs and related tribes, just as the sacred mushrooms and the cactus peyotl have been used in their religious ceremonies for magic and religious purposes.
Ololiuqui is still used in our day by certain tribes, such as the Zapotecs, Chinantecs, Mazatecs, and Mixtecs, who live in the remote mountains of southern Mexico in comparative isolation, little or not at all influenced by Christianity.
Ololiuqui was used by the ancient Aztecs not only as a potion but also as an ingredient of magical ointments.
The chemical investigations in the Sandoz laboratories led to the surprising result that the psychotomimetic principle of ololiuqui are ergot alkaloids ([43], [44], [45]).
The occurrence of lysergic acid amides in ololiuqui means that the synthetic compound lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) ([62]) has also to be included in the group of magic drugs of Mexico.
Whereas the hallucinogens have for some time been generally recognised to be valuable tools in experimental neurology and psychiatry, especially for the production of "model psychoses" ([64]) which permit the study of the biochemical and electrophysiological processes involved in mental disorders, their use in psychotherapy is still controversial.
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