The Nahuatl word for the mushrooms—flesh of the gods—must have sounded to Spanish ears like a direct challenge to the Christian Sacrament, which of course was also understood to be the flesh of the gods, or rather of the one God. Yet the mushroom sacrament enjoyed an undeniable advantage over the Christian version. It took an act of faith to believe that eating the bread and wine of the Eucharist gave the worshipper access to the divine, an access that had to be mediated by a priest and the church liturgy. Compare that with the Aztec sacrament, a psychoactive mushroom that granted anyone who
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