Mexico City’s Goddess Energy Lives in the Everyday
The goddess lives in Mexico City. She animates women in dark sunglasses, shoulders squared with Bolo bags against the morning rush. She flickers in candlelight at paint-peeling churches dressed in lavish devotion to the Virgin Mary. She hangs low in Plaza de la Conception, where cannabis smoke gathers and drifts like a nomad. She waits in fertility clinics, in quiet rooms where futures are negotiated with tenderness and expert science.
The goddess is me: African by origin, born in London, Southern California raised. I may as well be Nigerian Haze in flesh. I went to schools with names that kiss the edges of our Spanish-Mexican past: Las Positas, Las Lomas, Sonora High. Growing up, my mother shopped at Northgate, Superior, and downtown LA. We ate elote as a special treat.
I came to Mexico City with one of my best friends, whom I met in military school. He was there to begin a journey shaped by a kind of faith that asks you to believe in something before you can hold it. He wants to become a father. For queer families, this path is as holy as it is logistical. Surrogacy and IVF are mapped out in spreadsheets and consultations, in hormone schedules, genetic realities, and legal documents. In the United States, the cost alone can shut the door. In Mexico, that door opens a little wider, though still at a five to six-figure price that asks you to be sure.
Returning to Mexico City, Slower and More Open
I was in Mexico City to support my friend and also because I’ve wanted to visit this city since I was a slightly emo kid, crushing on Gael García Bernal in Y Tu Mamá También.
The first time I came to Mexico City, seven years ago, I was only there because of an eight-hour layover. I rushed from the airport to try and catch Casa Azul, Frida Kahlo’s home, and yes, I know: tourist trap. I arrived five minutes before closing and stood outside, held at the threshold. It felt oddly fitting at the time, even though I was, of course, disappointed. Some things are not meant to be entered on the first try. The goddess is interesting like that.
That time, I ended up walking around a busy market, buying a striped, bright blanket in blood orange, cerulean, and pink that still decorates my writing chair, and savoring one of the best dinners of my life (gorgonzola ice cream for dessert, dude.)
This time, I move more slowly, maybe it’s the indica edible I took before I boarded my flight, because this time, we walk. We linger. I go on a solo late-night jaunt to a jazz bar in Roma Norte and drink two heavy-poured cocktails with spice on the rim, walk around the blocks taking random pictures, happy and tipsy.
We visit the Museum of Anthropology and learn about the many facets of indigenous Mexico. We descend on a queer bar where men who look like demi-gods body roll like kings. I take a photo lounging forward on a gigantic plastic eggplant.
Cannabis in Mexico City: Culture, Limits, and What to Know
And still, threaded through it all, is cannabis, the green goddess loved by medicine women and shamans the world over. Cannabis is an entheogen, which is a name given to psychoactive substances (magic mushrooms, peyote, DMT) that are used to facilitate experiences that are holy, divine, and sacred.
Beyond cannabis, Mexico is a hub for other plant medicine experiences. There are ibogaine treatment centers near the Baja region working with addiction recovery and trauma resolution. There is a 5-MeO-DMT retreat center in Tepoztlán. The country holds a long, complex relationship with sacred plants, one that predates modern wellness trends by centuries.
I long to smoke in Mexico City, a city located in a country that birthed the word marijuana. (Lucky ducks.) It’s a city that carries that familiar scent in pockets, especially in public squares where people gather and pass jays. The smell finds you before you find it. There are unofficial zones where enforcement softens, where the culture quietly permits what the law has yet to fully legalize. I consider buying a baby pink joint from a hesitant vendor, small, playful, and soft in the hand. I don’t. I am a six-foot-three, dark-skinned Black woman in a foreign country, and it just doesn’t seem like my brightest idea in light of Trump America.
But, if I had to give you a goddess guide for how to imbibe in La Capital, like if you really twisted my arm wink wink, this is what I would say:
Know that possession of up to 5 grams has been decriminalized. (Know what decriminalized means and what it doesn’t.)
Know where the public consumption spaces are and know that yes, sometimes tourists f* around and find out. (Hang with the people who really know the weed laws.)
Be very intentional about who you buy from and what you’re taking in. (Ask the Goddess to lead you to what’s right for you.)
The Deeper Pull: The Goddess
The goddess lives in Mexico City as she lives everywhere, like she lives in me and you.
She is in the hands of doctors and donors, in the bodies of surrogate mothers who carry possibility forward. She is with the little girl visiting the National Museum of Anthropology with her favorite big cousin. She is in the restraint of not lighting a joint when your intuition says girl, no. She is in the quiet hope that travels across borders, looking for somewhere to land.
Mexico City does not hand itself over all at once. It reveals the goddess in layers. In barely there smoke, in prayer, in reproductive science, in slow appreciation.
And if you are paying attention, you will feel her moving through it all.
All photos courtesy of Hannah Eko.
This article is from an external, unpaid contributor. It does not represent High Times’ reporting and has not been edited for content or accuracy.
