|
love plants? lol wear one!
Meet Wolffia globosa, the smallest flowering plant in the world. The plant measures less than 0.2 mm in diameter, and can be found in streams and ponds in Australia, Asia and some regions of the Americas.
Image: Christian Fischer/Wikipedia Herbalism / wild fooding / bushcraft
Daniel Vitalis Interviews Wild Food Expert Arthur Haines ~ 1/6
Daniel Vitalis Interviews Stephen Buhner ~ Part 1/4 Wild Food Y/Channel Ray Mears - Summer Harvest - Wild Food (Full Episode) Survival Y/Channel Ray Mears Y/Channel The Plantain -/ Nature's Miracle Healer Plantago Plantains in Australia http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1347277208/foraging-and-feasting-a-field-guide-and-wild-food Mugwort
the leaves of the plant i was given looked longer broader and different to this picture this looks like the wormwood. i couldnt find a picture sorry. This stuff helsp with lucid dreaming and is not dis-similar to cannabis effects, yet legal :D. relaxed, pasties' mouth bita munchies, highish feeling kind of like bush cannabis not hydro not strong high feeling, pretty similar feeling to a mild stoned feeling on cannabis when smoked..taste terrible in tea but i mixed it with my 7 root/ hibiscus/ brahmi tea.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemisia_vulgaris Therapeutic Uses, Benefits and Claims of Mugwort: Mugwort contains the constituents volatile oil, flavonoids, a sesquiterpene lactone, coumarin derivatives, and triterpenes. The Herb Barberry The Herb Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris ) Kohler's Medicinal Plants - 1887 Mugwort is most commonly used to treat disorders of the digestive tract and aid in all digestive functions and has been said to have properties which are antifungal, antibacterial, expectorant, and antiasthmatic. It is considered to be good herb for gastric disorder, stomach pain and bowel complains. It has been used for poor appetite, indigestion, travel sickness and stomach acidity. Mugwort is thought to be effective in treating a wide range of parasitic infections, such as tapeworm, roundworm, and threadworm. It is also considered effective against parasites that infect the skin like ringworm. Traditionally this herb has been use to stimulate irregular or suppressed menstruation. It is believed that it stimulates the uterus and that it is useful for menstrual pain and cramps. Furthermore it has been used to induce miscarriage probably due to the herbs ability to interfere with menstruation. Additionally mugwort has been used as a folk and herbal remedy for various ailments including colds, epilepsy, colic, fevers, asthma, bronchitis, sciatica, kidney problems and there is some scientific indication that it can lower blood sugar levels. Mugwort has also been used as an herbal remedy for nervousness, exhaustion, gout, bruises, chilblain and depression especially when it is associated with loss of appetite . This herb is said have mild narcotic and sedative properties which explain its uses to promote sleep in cases of insomnia. Because of its diuretic properties it is thought to have medicinal benefits for the liver, spleen, and kidney. It is also considered an excellent insect repellant. This herb has mild purgative abilities and might therefore be helpful for constipation. In folklore it is mostly famous for being considered a “dream” herb, enhancing remembrance of dreams, both during sleep and in trances, and precognitive dreaming or dreaming of future events. http://www.herbal-supplement-resource.com/mugwort-herb.html Dosage and Administration: There is no established, proven safe or effective dose for mugwort. Traditionally it is mainly used as tea. 2 cups of mugwort tea using fresh leafs infused for 5-10 minutes in boiling water daily for six days has been recommended by herbalists. ASLO: A dreamy Mugwort http://home.teleport.com/~howieb/treats/mugwort.html http://www.acupuncturebrooklyn.com/alternative-health/spring-mugwort Fresh leaves can be applied to warts as a poultice, changing at least twice a day. "The devaluation of the human world grows in direct proportion to the value of the world of things."
|
**WARNNG CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGERY** (ED_chyeh if you were sleeping? this is real life) Earthlings is an essential documentary on the treatment of animals by humans.
I watched this and bawled. Could not even make it through the whole doc... Anyways here is the link if interested... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19eBAfUFK3E ☮NathaN❤ (mmmm who will face their doings, or who will walk away (Erroneously) thinking that they are not connected to the animal holocaust) Wormwood
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Artemisia_absinthium A 1931 book about medicinal herbs alleges the use of wormwood as a stomachic, antiseptic, antispasmodic, carminative, cholagogue, febrifuge and anthelmintic.[5] Extracts of the plant have shown to exhibit strong antimicrobial activity, especially against Gram-positive pathogenic bacteria Some people apply wormwood directly to the skin for healing wounds and insect bites. Wormwood oil is used as a counterirritant to reduce pain. How does it work?Wormwood oil contains the chemical thujone, which excites the central nervous system. However, it can also cause seizures and other adverse effects. http://www.erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_ Wormwood.shtml#First_Times Wormwood (alsem) is a bitter tasting stem-like plant with green-grey leaves and little yellow flowers. Wormwood has both a psychoactive and medicinal function. It has been used against rheumatism, gout and tapeworm. This is where the English name comes from. Wormwood is the main ingredient of the legendary drink absinthe, which was invented in 1792 by a French doctor. Intended as a medicine, it became very popular as a recreational drink. Effects Wormwood is a mental stimulant. The effect of wormwood is narcotic, lightly anaesthetic, giving a peaceful and relaxing feeling. In combination with alcohol or in larger dosages hallucinations might occur. Wormwood is suitable for making tea, which has a positive effect during post-flu or post-infectious periods. In small doses wormwood is a remedy against common cold, rheumatism and tapeworm. It also increases the appetite. Usage A common way to use wormwood is to make tea of it. Soak 1 teaspoon in a cup of hot (non-boiling) water. The tea has a bitter taste, which is hard to avoid. You can mix it with peppermint leaves or anise. To make absinthe, soak 40 grams (1½ oz.) of wormwood for a couple of weeks in ½ liter of liquor (for instance Pernod). After sifting it, the drink is ready for use. Try a little glass first to make sure of the dosage. ~http://azarius.net/smartshop/psychedelics/psychedelic_herbs /wormwood_herb_alsem/ Sagebrush is a common name applied generally to species of plants in the genus Artemisia. The best known sagebrush is the shrub Artemisia tridentata. Common names for herbaceous plants in the genus Artemisia (which may each be applied to multiple species) include tarragon, mugwort, sagewort, and wormwood. lexikon/beifuss. Foxnut
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euryale_ferox
http://makan-mania.blogspot.com.au/2008/09/fox-nut-shi-hu-soup.html http://www.ayurhelp.com/plants/foxnut.htm Growing plants can be simple
Garden in a bottle, anyone?
This miniature ecosystem has been thriving in an almost completely isolated state for more than forty years. It has been watered just once in that time. The original single spiderwort plant has grown and multiplied, putting out seedlings. As it has access to light, it continues to photosynthesize. The water builds up on the inside of the bottle and then rains back down on the plants in a miniature version of the water cycle. As leaves die, they fall off and rot at the bottom producing the carbon dioxide and nutrients required for more plants to grow. (ED-just make sure you porpotion how much water your plant gets as compared to how much sun each leaf gets) |
|
Mycology
|
Cultivation Links:
Just a few helpful links. Feel free to add any that you feel may also be helpful.
https://www.erowid.org/plants/mushrooms/mushrooms_cultivation.shtml http://www.erowid.org/plants/mushrooms/mushrooms_mmgg.shtml http://www.shroomery.org/4/Grow-Mushrooms http://substratecalculator.info/ http://mushroompalace.com/grow-your-own/liquid-culture Morel Madness
Here's a few links to get your 2012 Morel season started off right!
Morel sitings maps & Current finds photos & locations Morel Fesitvals
Delicious
These look delicious!
The Complete Mushroom Hunter: http://amzn.to/VJmzbh Mycological terminologies
http://www.shroomery.org/9423/Mycological-and-OMC-abbreviations
The Inuit Tribe and Amanitas
Inuit people are the most widely dispersed group in the world still leading a partly aboriginal way of life. They live in a region that spans more than 3,500 miles. This region includes Greenland, the northern fringe of North America, as well as a sector of eastern Siberia. Inuit are racially distinct from the North American Indians. In fact, the Inuit are closely related to the Mongolian peoples of eastern Asia. The Inuit - Aleut languages are unrelated to any American Indian language groups.
At no time did the Inuit possess a national or well - defined tribal sense. The Inuit emphasis was always on the local and familial group rather than on associations based on land and territory. The terms Inuit Indians, the Inuit Indians, Inuit tribe and Eskimo are not the correct names for these kind and gentle people. Inuit simply means 'The People' in Inuktitut, the language of the Inuit and Inuit is the name they wish to be known by. Inuit - their rightful name, replaces 'Eskimo' a term based on a Algonkian word meaning 'eaters of raw flesh.' The Inuit tribes have a deeply-rooted Shamanistic culture, and had highly developed methods for initiating new shamans, such as various forms of isolation and self-denial, such as fasting, solitary confinement, celibacy, dietary and purity restrictions, and protracted prayer. Igjugarjuk, a Caribou Inuit shaman, claims to have been isolated by his mentor in a small snow hut where he fasted and meditated in the cold, drinking only a little water twice, for thirty days. After his initiatory vision, which was brought on by the consumption of the Amanita muscaria mushroom, he continued a rigorous regime involving a special diet and celibacy: "Frequently a candidate will gain shamanic powers during a visionary experience in which he or she undergoes some form of death or personal destruction and disintegration at the hands of divine beings, followed by a corresponding resurrection or reintegration that purges and gives a qualitatively different life to the initiate. For example, a Caribou Inuit initiate named Igjugarjuk, in his long and arduous initiatory vision, was at one point reduced to a skeleton and then was 'forged' with a hammer and anvil. Autdaruta, another Inuit initiate, had a vision in which he was eaten by a bear and then was vomited up, having gained power over the spirits." - James R. Davila, "Hekhalot Literature and Mysticism" Amanita muscaria (named after Mt. Amanus, the first known habitat for this fungus) was used by ancient people to control fly populations by mixing it with milk to stupefy flies. The concoction did not kill the flies but once they were asleep, they could be easily disposed of. The Inuit tribes, including the Eskimos and individuals of Russian descent, have close relationship with reindeer, and were aware that the reindeer also had an affinity for the Amanita mushroom. The reindeer had such a great taste for the mushroom that they would be seen consuming the urine of other reindeer who had recently eaten a mushroom. If you wanted to catch a reindeer, all you had to do was to urinate and they would come running. The shaman would urinate and the followers would consume the urine. The consumption of the urine was a common practice for several reasons: 1. The mushroom was highly valued and expensive 2. The chemicals responsible for severe cramping were filtered out during the first metabolism (which made the drinking of urine popular). 3. Consumption of the urine also allowed the next person to experience a greater intoxication and permitted up to five people, each one drinking the lasts urine, to become inebriated with just one mushroom. Eventually the Soma ritual was gradually forgotten, although the Soma deity still exists in the Hindu religion. As the population spread and was variously subsumed by other cultures, they began to substitute other plants, and the identity of Soma was lost for 2000 years. Mushroom stones dated as far back as 6,000 years ago indicate the existence of a mushroom religion in Mesoamerica at least that far back. http://www.iamshaman.com/amanita/inuit.htm Which psilocybin mushrooms grow wild in my area?North America - United States
Alabama; Gymnopilus junonius Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus cyanescens Psilocybe caerulescens (very rare) Psilocybe cubensis Alaska; Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus fimicola Psilocybe cyanescens Arizona; Gymnopilus junonius Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe mescaleroensis Psilocybe strictipes Arkansas; Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe cubensis California (San Francisco to the Oregon border) Gymnopilus aeruginosus Gymnopilus luteofolius Panaeolopsis sp. Panaeolus castaneifolius Panaeolus cinctulus Pluteus salicinus Psilocybe azurescens Psilocybe baeocystis Psilocybe cyanescens Psilocybe "cyanofriscosa" Psilocybe ovoideocystidiata Psilocybe pelliculosa Psilocybe semilanceata Psilocybe stuntzii California (Southern); Inocybe corydalina Galeropsis sp. Gymnopilus luteofolius Panaeolopsis sp. Copelandia bispora Panaeolus castaneifolius Panaeolus cinctulus Pluteus salicinus Psilocybe "cyanofriscosa" Psilocybe ovoideocystidiata Psilocybe "meridianus" Colorado; Conocybe cyanopus Gymnopilus junonius Panaeolus castaneifolius Panaeolus cinctulus Pluteus salicinus Connecticut; Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe baeocystis Psilocybe ovoideocystidiata Florida; Panaeolus cambodginiensis Panaeolus chlorocystis Panaeolus cyanescens Gymnopilus luteofolius Gymnopilus luteoviridis Gymnopilus luteus Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus fimicola Psilocybe caerulescens (very rare) Psilocybe cubensis Psilocybe mammilata Psilocybe tampanensis (Found only once in recorded history) Georgia; Gymnopilus junonius Gymnopilus luteofolius Gymnopilus luteus Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus cyanescens Panaeolus olivaceus Psilocybe atlantis Psilocybe caerulescens (very rare) Psilocybe caerulipes (very rare) Psilocybe cubensis Psilocybe galindoi Psilocybe naematoliformis Psilocybe weilii Hawaii; Copelandia bispora Panaeolus anomalus Panaeolus cambodginiensis Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus cyanescens Panaeolus tropicalis Idaho; Gymnopilus aeruginosus Gymnopilus junonius Gymnopilus luteofolius Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe fimetaria Psilocybe pelliculosa Psilocybe silvatica Illinois; Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Pluteus salicinus Indiana; Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Pluteus salicinus Iowa; Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Kansas; Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Kentucky; Gymnopilus junonius Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe caerulipes Psilocybe ovoideocystidiata Louisiana; Gymnopilus junonius Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus cyanescens Psilocybe caerulescens (very rare) Psilocybe cubensis Maine; Gymnopilus junonius Gymnopilus luteus Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe baeocystis Psilocybe caerulipes Maryland; Gymnopilus junonius Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe ovoideocystidiata Massachusetts Gymnopilus junonius Panaeolopsis sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Michigan; Conocybe smithii Gymnopilus aeruginosus Gymnopilus junonius Gymnopilus luteofolius Gymnopilus luteus Panaeolus cinctulus Pluteus salicinus Psilocybe caerulipes Psilocybe liniformans var. americana Psilocybe ovoideocystidiata Psilocybe quebecensis Psilocybe silvatica Minnesota; Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe semilanceata Mississippi; Gymnopilus junonius Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus cyanescens Psilocybe caerulescens (very rare) Psilocybe cubensis Psilocybe tampanensis (very rare) Missouri; Gymnopilus braendlei Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Montana; Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Nebraska; Gymnopilus luteofolius Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Nevada; Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus New Hampshire; Gymnopilus junonius Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe caerulipes Psilocybe semilanceata New Jersey; Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe caerulipes Psilocybe graveolens Psilocybe naematoliformis Psilocybe ovoideocystidiata New Mexico; Gymnopilus junonius Gymnopilus luteofolius Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe mescaleroensis New York; Conocybe cyanopus Gymnopilus junonius Gymnopilus luteofolius Gymnopilus luteus Panaeolus castaneifolius Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe caerulipes Panaeolus fimicola Psilocybe liniformans Psilocybe ovoideocystidiata Psilocybe semilanceata Psilocybe silvatica North Carolina; Gymnopilus aeruginosus Gymnopilus junonius Gymnopilus luteofolius Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe cubensis Psilocybe caerulipes Psilocybe plutonia Oregon; Conocybe cyanopus Conocybe smithii Gymnopilus aeruginosus Gymnopilus junonius Gymnopilus viridans Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus olivaceus Psilocybe azurescens Psilocybe baeocystis Psilocybe cyanofibrillosa Psilocybe cyanescens Psilocybe fimetaria Psilocybe liniformans var. americana Psilocybe ovoideocystidiata Psilocybe pelliculosa Psilocybe semilanceata Psilocybe sierrae Psilocybe silvatica Psilocybe strictipes Psilocybe stuntzii Ohio; Gymnopilus aeruginosus Gymnopilus junonius Gymnopilus luteofolius Gymnopilus luteus Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe caerulipes Psilocybe ovoideocystidiata Oklahoma; Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe cubensis (southern part of the state) Pennsylvania; Gymnopilus aeruginosus Gymnopilus junonius Gymnopilus luteofolius Gymnopilus luteus Panaeolus cinctulus Pluteus salicinus Psilocybe caerulipes Psilocybe ovoideocystidiata Psilocybe semilanceata (very rare) Rhode Island; Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe ovoideocystidiata Psilocybe stuntzii South Carolina; Gymnopilus junonius Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe cubensis Psilocybe caerulipes Psilocybe caerulescens (rare) Tennessee; Gymnopilus aeruginosus Gymnopilus luteofolius Gymnopilus luteus Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus fimicola Psilocybe cubensis Psilocybe caerulipes Texas; Gymnopilus aeruginosus Gymnopilus junonius Gymnopilus luteofolius Gymnopilus luteoviridis Panaeolus cyanescens Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe cubensis Utah; Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Vermont; Gymnopilus junonius Gymnopilus luteofolius Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe semilanceata Virginia; Gymnopilus junonius Gymnopilus luteofolius Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe caerulipes Psilocybe cubensis (rare, only near the coast) Psilocybe ovoideocystidiata Psilocybe semilanceata Washington; Conocybe cyanopus Conocybe smithii Gymnopilus aeruginosus Gymnopilus braendlei Gymnopilus junonius Gymnopilus luteofolius Gymnopilus viridans Panaeolus bispora Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus fimicola Panaeolus olivaceus Pluteus brunneidiscus (= Pluteus washingtonensis) Pluteus salicinus Psilocybe azurescens Psilocybe baeocystis Psilocybe cyanescens Psilocybe cyanofibrillosa Psilocybe cyanofriscosa Psilocybe fimetaria Psilocybe liniformans var. americana Psilocybe ovoideocystidiata Psilocybe pelliculosa Psilocybe semiinconspicua Psilocybe semilanceata Psilocybe silvatica Psilocybe strictipes Psilocybe stuntzii Washington DC, (District of Columbia) Gymnopilus braendlei Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus West Virginia; Gymnopilus junonius Gymnopilus luteus Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe caerulipes Psilocybe cubensis (rare) Psilocybe ovoideocystidiata Wisconsin; Conocybe smithii Gymnopilus sp. Gymnopilus luteofolius Gymnopilus luteus Panaeolus cinctulus Pluteus salicinus Wyoming; Gymnopilus junonius Panaeolus cinctulus CANADA Conocybe smithii Gymnopilus aeruginosus Gymnopilus luteofolius Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus castaneifolius Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus sp. Psilocybe semilanceata Alberta; Conocybe kuehneriana Gymnopilus junonius Gymnopilus luteofolius Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus sp. British Columbia; Conocybe cyanopus Gymnopilus luteofolius Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe baeocystis Psilocybe cyanofibrillosa Psilocybe cyanescens Psilocybe fimetaria Psilocybe pelliculosa Psilocybe semilanceata Psilocybe sierrae Psilocybe silvatica Psilocybe strictipes Psilocybe stuntzii Psilocybe subfimetaria New Brunswick; Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe fimetaria Psilocybe semilanceata Newfoundland; Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe semilanceata Nova Scotia; Gymnopilus junonius Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe caerulipes Psilocybe semilanceata Ontario; Gymnopilus junonius Gymnopilus viridans Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus sp. Psilocybe caerulipes Psilocybe silvatica Prince Edward Island Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe semilanceata Quebec; Gymnopilus sp. Gymnopilus viridans Panaeolus castaneifolius Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe caerulipes Psilocybe quebecensis Psilocybe semilanceata Cuba Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe cubensis Psilocybe plutonia Dominican Republic Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe cubensis Granada Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus cyanescens Greenland Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus fimicola Haiti Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus cyanescens Jamaica Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus cyanescens Psilocybe cubensis Psilocybe fimicola Psilocybe fuliginosa Psilocybe mammillata Mexico Conocybe siligineoides Psilocybe naematoliformis Inocybe corydalina Gymnopilus aeruginosus Gymnopilus lateritius Gymnopilus sp. Gymnopilus subpurpuratus Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus cyanescens Panaeolus fimicola Panaeolus sp. Panaeolus tropicalis Panaeolus venezolanus Psilocybe angustipleurocystidiata Psilocybe armandii Psilocybe aztecorum var. aztecorum Psilocybe aztecorum var. bonetii Psilocybe banderillensis Psilocybe barrerae Psilocybe caerulescens var. caerulescens Psilocybe caerulescens var. ombrophila Psilocybe caerulipes Psilocybe caribaea Psilocybe chaconii Psilocybe chiapanensis Psilocybe cordispora Psilocybe cubensis Psilocybe fagicola var. fagicola Psilocybe fagicola var. mesocystidata Psilocybe fuliginosa Psilocybe galindoi Psilocybe heimii Psilocybe herrerae Psilocybe hoogshagenii var. hoogshagenii Psilocybe hoogshagenii var. convexa Psilocybe isabelae Psilocybe jacobsi Psilocybe jaliscana Psilocybe laurae Psilocybe mammillata Psilocybe meridionalis Psilocybe mexicana Psilocybe mesophylla Psilocybe moseri Psilocybe muliercula Psilocybe novoxalapensis Psilocybe pileocystidiata Psilocybe pleurocystidiosa Psilocybe oaxacana Psilocybe rzedowskii Psilocybe sanctorum Psilocybe schultesii Psilocybe singeri Psilocybe singularis Psilocybe subcubensis Psilocybe subtropicalis Psilocybe subyungensis Psilocybe subzapotecorum Psilocybe teofilae Psilocybe uxpanapensis Psilocybe verae-crucis Psilocybe villarrealiae Psilocybe wassoniorum Psilocybe weldenii Psilocybe xalapensis Psilocybe yungensis Psilocybe zapotecorum Puerto Rico Copelandia cyanescens Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus fimicola Panaeolus sp. Psilocybe caribaea Psilocybe cubensis Psilocybe guilartensis Psilocybe portoricensis Psilocybe subpsilocybioides Psilocybe zapotecoantillarum Trinidad Copelandia cyanescens Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe cubensis AFRICA Copelandia bispora Gymnopilus junonius Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus africanus Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus fimicola Panaeolus microsporus Panaeolus retirugis Panaeolus sp. Panaeolus tropicalis Pluteus salicinus Psilocybe cubensis Psilocybe cyanescens Psilocybe goniospora Psilocybe mairei Psilocybe natalensis Psilocybe semilanceata Algeria Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe mairei Chad Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus africanus Panaeolus cinctulus Kenya Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe aquamarina Psilocybe cubensis Madagascar Copelandia cyanescens Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Morocco Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe mairei Sudan Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus africanus Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe mairei South Africa Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe natalensis Psilocybe semilanceata ASIA Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus sp. Panaeolus cambodginiensis Panaeolus cyanescens Psilocybe cubensis Cambodia Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cambodginiensis Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus cyanescens Panaeolus tropicalis Psilocybe cubensis China Gymnopilus junonius Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus cyanescens Panaeolus sp. Psilocybe cubensis Psilocybe venenata Hong Kong Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus sp. Pluteus salicinus India Copelandia bispora Copelandia cyanescens Copelandia tirunelveliensis Copelandia tropica Gymnopilus sp. Inocybe corydalina Panaeolus africanus Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus venezolanus Psilocybe aztecorum var. bonetii Psilocybe cubensis Psilocybe goniospora Psilocybe indica Psilocybe natarajanii Psilocybe keralensis Psilocybe pseudoaztecorum Psilocybe semilanceata Psilocybe subaeruginascens Psilocybe wayanadensis Indonesia Copelandia cyanescens Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe cubensis Psilocybe subaeruginascens Japan Gymnopilus aeruginosus Gymnopilus junonius Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus cyanescens Psilocybe argentipes Psilocybe septentrionalis var. septentrionalis Psilocybe subaeruginascens Psilocybe subcaerulipes Psilocybe venenata Philippines Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cyanescens Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe cubensis Russia Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe semilanceata Psilocybe strictipes Sri Lanka Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe cubensis Psilocybe rostrata Thailand Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe cubensis Psilocybe samuiensis Psilocybe thailandensis Vietnam Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cyanescens Panaeolus rubricaulis Psilocybe cubensis Australia Australian Capital Territory; Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe subaeruginosa New Guinea; Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus rubricaulis Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe kumaenorum New South Wales; Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus cyanescens Psilocybe australiana Psilocybe cubensis Psilocybe eucalypta Psilocybe subaeruginosa Psilocybe tasmaniana Northern Territory; Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus cyanescens Queensland ; Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus cyanescens Psilocybe cubensis Psilocybe subaeruginosa South Australia; Gymnopilus sp. Gymnopilus purpuratus Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus fimicola Psilocybe subaeruginosa Tasmania; Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe alutacea Psilocybe australiana Psilocybe semilanceata Psilocybe subaeruginosa Psilocybe tasmaniana Victoria; Gymnopilus sp. Gymnopilus purpuratus Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe semilanceata Psilocybe subaeruginosa Western Australia; Gymnopilus sp. Gymnopilus purpuratus Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus fimicola Psilocybe subaeruginosa New Zealand; Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus cyanescens Psilocybe aucklandii Psilocybe australiana Psilocybe eucalypta Psilocybe makarorae Psilocybe semilanceata Psilocybe tasmaniana Psilocybe subaeruginosa Weraroa novae-zelandiae Europe Gymnopilus aeruginosus Gymnopilus junonius Gymnopilus purpuratus Gymnopilus sp. Inocybe aeruginascens Inocybe corydalina Inocybe corydalina var. erinaceomorpha Inocybe haemacta Inocybe tricolor Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus fimicola Panaeolus olivaceus Panaeolus retirugis Panaeolus sp. Pluteus cyanopus Pluteus glaucus Pluteus nigroviridis Pluteus salicinus Pluteus villosus Psilocybe bohemica Psilocybe cyanescens Psilocybe fimetaria Psilocybe liniformans var. liniformans Psilocybe mairei Psilocybe semilanceata Psilocybe serbica Psilocybe silvatica Psilocybe strictipes Psilocybe pelliculosa Austria Copelandia cyanescens Gymnopilus sp. Inocybe coelestium Inocybe corydalina var. corydalina Inocybe haemacta Inocybe tricolor Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus fimicola Psilocybe bohemica Psilocybe cyanescens Psilocybe semilanceata Psilocybe serbica Belgium Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe cyanescens Psilocybe semilanceata Bulgaria Gymnopilus sp. Inocybe corydalina Inocybe corydalina var. erinaceomorpha Inocybe haemacta Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe cyanescens Psilocybe semilanceata Czech Republic Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus olivaceus Pluteus salicinus Psilocybe arcana Psilocybe bohemica Psilocybe cyanescens Psilocybe moravica Psilocybe moravica var. sternberkiana Psilocybe fimetaria Psilocybe mairei Psilocybe serbica Psilocybe strictipes Denmark Gymnopilus sp. Inocybe haemacta Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus fimicola Panaeolus olivaceus Psilocybe fimetaria Psilocybe semilanceata England (United Kingdom) Conocybe kuehneriana Copelandia cyanescens Gymnopilus junonius Gymnopilus purpuratus Gymnopilus sp. Inocybe corydalina var. corydalina Inocybe haemacta Panaeolus castaneifolius Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus fimicola Panaeolus olivaceus Panaeolus retirugis Panaeolus sp. Pluteus salicinus Psilocybe cyanescens Psilocybe fimetaria Psilocybe semilanceata Psilocybe strictipes Estonia Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe semilanceata Faeroes Islands Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus moellerianus Psilocybe semilanceata Finland Conocybe cyanopus Conocybe kuehneriana Gymnopilus sp. Pluteus salicinus Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus olivaceus Psilocybe fimetaria Psilocybe pelliculosa Psilocybe semilanceata Psilocybe silvatica Psilocybe strictipes France Copelandia anomala Copelandia cyanescens (southern mediterranean coast) Gymnopilus sp. Inocybe aeruginascens Inocybe corydalina var. corydalina Inocybe haemacta Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe cyanescens Psilocybe semilanceata Psilocybe strictipes Germany Conocybe cyanopus Galerina steglichii Gymnopilus junonius Gymnopilus purpuratus Gymnopilus sp. Inocybe aeruginascens Inocybe coelestium Inocybe corydalina var. corydalina Inocybe corydalina var. erinaceomorpha Inocybe haemacta Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus fimicola Panaeolus retirugis Panaeolus sp. Pluteus cyanopus Pluteus salicinus Pluteus villosus Psilocybe bohemica Psilocybe cyanescens Psilocybe mairei Psilocybe moravica var. sternberkiana Psilocybe semilanceata Psilocybe serbica Psilocybe strictipes Greece Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus retirugis Panaeolus sp. Holland (The Netherlands) Gymnopilus junonius Gymnopilus purpuratus Inocybe aeruginascens Inocybe corydalina var. corydalina Inocybe corydalina var. erinaceomorpha Inocybe haemacta Panaeolus cinctulus Pluteus salicinus Psilocybe cyanescens Psilocybe liniformans var. liniformans Psilocybe puberula Psilocybe semilanceata Psilocybe serbica Psilocybe strictipes Hungary Gymnopilus sp. Inocybe aeruginascens Panaeolus cinctulus Pluteus nigroviridis Psilocybe sp. (maybe P. serbice or P. bohemica, kocos find) Italy Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus cyanescens Psilocybe semilanceata Ireland Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe cyanescens Psilocybe semilanceata Lithuania Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe semilanceata Norway Conocybe cyanopus Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe semilanceata Scotland Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe semilanceata Serbia Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe serbica Psilocybe semilanceata Psilocybe cyanescens Psilocybe bohemica Slovakia Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe serbica Psilocybe strictipes Spain Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus cyanescens Psilocybe gallaeciae Psilocybe hispanica Sweden Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe fimetaria Psilocybe semilanceata Psilocybe strictipes Switzerland Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus cyanescens (in the south) Panaeolus fimicola Panaeolus olivaceus Pluteus salicinus Psilocybe cyanescens Psilocybe semilanceata South America Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus castaneifolius Panaeolus cinctulus Argentina Conocybe kuehneriana Gymnopilus junonius Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus fimicola Panaeolus retirugis Panaeolus sp. Psilocybe collybioides Psilocybe cubensis Psilocybe hoogshagenii Psilocybe wrightii Psilocybe zapotecorum Bahamas Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Bermuda Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus cyanescens Belize Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus cyanescens Psilocybe cordispora Psilocybe cubensis Bolivia Copelandia anomala Copelandia cyanescens Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe cubensis Psilocybe mammillata Psilocybe yungensis Brazil Copelandia anomala Copelandia cyanescens Gymnopilus junonius Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus fimicola Panaeolus sp. Pluteus glaucus Psilocybe acutipilea Psilocybe blattariopsis Psilocybe banderillensis var. paulensis Psilocybe brasiliensis Psilocybe caeruleoannulata Psilocybe caerulescens Psilocybe cubensis Psilocybe farinacea Psilocybe furtadoana Psilocybe hoogshagenii var. hoogshagenii Psilocybe microcystidiata Psilocybe paulensis Psilocybe paupera Psilocybe pericystis Psilocybe plutonia Psilocybe ramulosa Psilocybe rickii Psilocybe subbrunneocystidiata Psilocybe subyungensis Psilocybe uruguayensis Psilocybe zapotecorum Chile Conocybe kuehneriana Gymnopilus junonius Gymnopilus purpuratus Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus retirugis Panaeolus sp. Pluteus glaucus Psilocybe carbonaria Psilocybe fimetaria Psilocybe liniformans Psilocybe semilanceata Psilocybe sierrae Psilocybe strictipes Psilocybe subfimetaria Psilocybe zapotecorum Colombia Copelandia cambodginiensis Copelandia cyanescens Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus sp. Psilocybe angustipleurocystidiata Psilocybe antioquiensis Psilocybe cabiensis Psilocybe columbiana Psilocybe cubensis Psilocybe guatapensis Psilocybe heliconiae Psilocybe hoogshagenii Psilocybe pintonii Psilocybe plutonia Psilocybe semiangustipleurocystidiata Psilocybe subacutipilea Psilocybe subhoogshagenii Psilocybe yungensis Psilocybe zapotecorum Costa Rica Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus cyanescens Psilocybe aztecorum Psilocybe mexicana Psilocybe cubensis Ecuador Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe subcubensis Psilocybe yungensis El Salvador Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe cubensis Guatemala Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe caerulescens Psilocybe cubensis Psilocybe mexicana Honduras Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus cyanescens Psilocybe cubensis Panama Gymnopilus sp. Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe caerulescens var. caerulescens Psilocybe dumontii Peru Gymnopilus junonius Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe cubensis Psilocybe yungensis Psilocybe zapotecorum Uruguay Gymnopilus junonius Panaeolus cinctulus Psilocybe caeruleoannulata Psilocybe uruguayensis Venezuela Copelandia cyanescens Panaeolus cinctulus Panaeolus campanulatus Panaeolus sp. Panaeolus venezolanus Psilocybe caerulescens Psilocybe cubensis Psilocybe meridensis Psilocybe plutonia Psilocybe pseudobullacea Psilocybe subyungensis https://mycotopia.net/forums/forum-international/55595-hunting-japan.html The oldest Representations of Hallucinogenic Mushrooms in the WorldThe idea that the use of hallucinogens should be a source of inspiration for some forms of prehistoric rock art is not a new one. This article intends to focus its attention on a group of rock paintings in the Sahara Desert, the works of pre-neolithic Early Gatherers, in which mushrooms effigies are represented repeatedly.
The oldest Representations of Hallucinogenic Mushrooms in the World (Sahara Desert, 9000-7000 B.P.) Giorgio Samorini Integration, vol. 2/3, pp. 69-78, 1992 originally appeared in: Integration no. 2&3, 1992, 69-78 Copyright by author and org. publishers. The original copy of this document can be found at http://www.samorini.net/doc/sam/sah_int.htm Abstract — The idea that the use of hallucinogens should be a source of inspiration for some forms of prehistoric rock art is not a new one. After a brief examination of instances of such art, this article intends to focus its attention on a group of rock paintings in the Sahara Desert, the works of pre-neolithic Early Gatherers, in which mushrooms effigies are represented repeatedly. The polychromic scenes of harvest, adoration and the offering of mushrooms, and large masked "gods" covered with mushrooms, not to mention other significant details, lead us to suppose we are dealing with an ancient hallucinogenic mushroom cult. What is remarkable about these ethnomycological works, produced 7.000 – 9.000 years ago, is that they could indeed reflect the most ancient human culture as yet documented in which the ritual use of hallucinogenic mushrooms is explicitly represented. As the fathers of modern ethno-mycology and in particular R. Gordon Wasson imagined, this Saharan testimony shows that the use of hallucinogens goes back to the Paleolithic Period and that their use always takes place within contexts and rituals of a mystico-religious nature. Rock paintings and incisions of the prehistoric periods are to be found all over the world, and serve as a testimony to the pre-literate history of human cultures. Rock art, the first permanent form of visual communication known to man, the same art which led to the invention of writing, goes back almost to the origins of mankind. In fact, in Tanzania, as in Australia, there are rock paintings which it would appear go back 40,000 years and more (Anati,1 989). Since most of the works of rock art were, or were related to, initiation rites, or were part of religious practice and its context, the idea that these works should be associated with the use of hallucinogenic vegetals (as has already been put forward for some specific cases on the basis of ethnographic and ethnobotanical data) comes as no surprise. This use, where it arises, is historically associated with controlled rituals involving social groups of varying dimensions. It is perhaps not a chance occurrence that the areas where examples of rock art are to be found — areas in which it is most often asserted that the use of hallucinogens might have taken place, on the basis of the scenes represented or on the basis of the consideration that this practice might have served as a source of inspiration — are also the areas where the most famous examples are to be found in, terms of imagination, mythological significance and polychromy. We might consider, for example, the works of archeological (or rather "archeo-ethno-botanical") interest in the easternmost areas of Siberia, within the Arctic Circle, on the banks of the Pegtymel River. An extensive petroglyphic area was found there dating back to the local neolithic period. Among these works, we find mushroom gatherers (Dikov, 1971). In some cases we find females wearing long and ornate "ear-rings" and an enormous mushroom on their heads, figures with the stance of people trying to keep their balance. The stocky form and the decoration on the mushroom lead one to suppose these mushrooms are Amanita muscaria (Fly-Agaric), the hallucinogenic mushroom most often associated with shaman practices in Euro—Asia and N. America (Wasson, 1979). Mushroom motifs have also been found in the petroglyphs of the prehistoric settlements of the Kamchatka peninsula on the banks of Lake Ushokovo (Dikov, 1979). The paleolithic culture of Ushokovo (protoeskimoleuts) belongs to the group of peoples who gave birth to the various paleo-eskimo cultures of N. America (2nd Millenium B. C.). It is to be imagined that these protoeskimoleuts belong to the peoples who contained within their culture, in embryo form, "protoshaman" religious practices. In California, the rock art of the regions inhabited by the Chumash and Yokut, a polychromic manner of painting — particularly evident during the stylistic phase known as the "Santa Barbara Painted Style" — has been associated with the "toloache" cult centered around "Jimsonweed" (a hallucinogenic plant of the Datura genus) known to have been used by a number of Californian and Mexican Indian tribes (Campbell, 1965:63-64; Wellmann, 1978 and 1981). Apparently, the first examples of Chumash rock art date back to 5.000 years ago (Hyder & Oliver, 1983). The impressive Pecos River paintings in Texas have also been associated with the "mescal" cult (Sophora secundiflora, hallucinogenic beans of which were used during rites of initiation on the part of the Indian tribes of the region) (Howard, 1957). Furst (1986) affirms that the mescal cult goes back 10.000 years, which is to say back to the Paleo-Indian Hunters Period at the end of the Pleistocene period. Archeological excavations carried out in the areas where paintings are to be found reveal mescal seeds which go back to 8.000 B. C, when Carbon-14 dated. Peyote (Lophophora williamsii) has also been found during some of these excavations (Campbell, 1958). An interesting and quite explicit use of "cohoba", a hallucinogenic snuff taken from the Anadenanthera peregrina tree has been documented among the peoples of the Borbon Caves art in the Dominican Republic (Pagan Perdomo, 1978). This art is probably an example of the Late Antillian Culture of the Tainos and goes back to a period shortly before the arrival of the Spaniards. In this painting, the subject of inhalation of cohoba — by means of cane pipes — is repeatedly represented (Franch, 1982). The use of hallucinogens as a significant source of inspiration has also been associated with Peruvian rock art. The rock art in this case is based on incisions on rocks, as can be seen in the Rio Chinchipe works in the north of Peru, probably influenced by the use of ayahuasca (Banisteriopsis spp. & allies) (Andritzky, 1989: 55-57). That this is an ancient practice is confirmed by archeological findings (Naranjo, 1986). Also in the rock art of Samanga, the mountainous region of the province of Ayabaca (Piura), among the petroglyphs, we will find figures which have been interpreted as images of San Pedro (Trichocereus pachanoi), the hallucinogenic cactus still used today in the north of Peru and in Ecuador during shaman healing rites (Polia, 1987 and 1988). Indeed, archeological indications as to the use of hallucinogens are to be found within many Precolumbian cultures (Dobkin de Rios, 1974; Furst, 1974). Recently it has even been put forward that even the more ancient paleolithic art of the Franco-Canthabric cave-sanctuaries were influenced by altered states of consciousness procured by various methods, among which the use of hallucinogens (Lewis-Williams & Dowson, 1988). The "psychograms" of the paleolithic period, a series of aniconic graphemes (points, vertical lines, circles, zig-zags, lozenges etc.) which, together with zoomorphic images, cover the walls of the European paleolithic caves, could be considered as the fruit of entoptic, phosphenic or hallucinatory states, typical sensorial phenomena pertaining to the field of altered states of consciousness, as might be gathered from Reichel-Dolmatoff’s well-known research into the Tukano of the Amazon (1978: 43-47). Furthermore, natural changes in consciousness due to prolonged sensorial isolation have already been noted. These conditions can be determined in the deep paleolithic caves. Even though the "neuropsychological model" put forward by Lewis-Williams & Dowson is not sufficient on its own to interpret that complex phenomenom which is paleolithic art, this model at least paves the way to supposing that mind-altering factors may have contributed to a prehistoric will-to-art. At this point, we should remember Kaplan’s (1975) theory that mushrooms are represented in the Swedish cave art of the long Scandinavian Bronze Age. It should also be pointed out that the explicit representation of psychotropic vegetals, as sacred objects (and therefore subject to taboo), is rare and the few cases of explicit representation make up but a small part of prehistoric art, as sacred art, associated with the use of hallucinogens. We must consider that, generally speaking, sacred cult objects will not be represented and that it is more than likely that these will be hidden behind symbolic devices, also of a graphic nature, whose meaning is indeed beyond us. Further evidence in support of the idea that the relationship between Man and hallucinogens — in this case mushrooms is indeed an ancient one comes from the ancient populations of the Sahara desert who inhabited this vast area when it was still covered with an extensive layer of vegetation (Samorini, 1989). The archeological findings consist in prehistoric paintings which the author personally had the opportunity to observe during two visits to Tassilli in Algeria. This could be the most ancient ethno-mycological finding up to the present day, which goes back to the so-called "Round Heads" Period (i.e. 9.000 – 7.000 years ago). The centre of this style is Tassili, but examples are also to be found at Tadrart Acacus (Libya), Ennedi (Chad) and, to a lesser extent, at Jebel Uweinat (Egypt) (Muzzolini, 1986:173-175). Central Saharan rock art, apart from extensive concentrations of incisions, near the sites of ancient rivers, and rock-shelter paintings among the large promontories or high plateau which reach an altitude of some 2,000 metres, cover a period of 12,000 years, generally divided in 5 periods: the "Bubalus antiquus" Period, the works of which were produced by the Early Hunters at the end of the Pleistocene period (10.000 – 7.000 years B. C.) — characterized by representations of large wild animals (Mori, 1974); the "Round Heads" Period, in turn divided into various phases and styles, associated with the epipaleolithic populations of the Early Gatherers (7.000 – 5.000 years B. C.), whose works of fantasy have quite rightly become world famous; the "Bovidian" or "Pastoral" Period (starting 5.000 years B. C.), a population of animal herders and breeders whose art is predominantly concentrated on these activities and, after these, the "Horse" Period and, lastly, the "Camel" Period, the art works of which are stereotyped and of a lower quality. Some rock art experts have already produced evidence supporting the idea that the art of the Round Head Period could be influenced by ecstatic or hallucinogenic states. According to Anati (1989: 187), this art is produced by the Early Gatherers during the end of Pleistocene and the beginning of Holecene periods. Analogous works dating back nearly to the same period are to be found in various sites around the world (Sahara Desert, Tanzania, Texas, Mexico etc.). These areas were later to become arid or semi-arid when the lakes and rivers dried up. From the many works of art these peoples have left us we learn what were gatherers of wild vegetal foods: "people who lived in a sort of garden of Eden and who used mind-altering substances". Sansoni too (1980) is of the opinion that "it might be that (the works of art of the Round Heads Period) are the works of normal consciousness or the results of particular ecstatic states associated with dance or the use of hallucinogenic substances -The context, or rather the "motivations" behind Round Heads art, just as with all the other periods of Sahara rock art, are generally of a religious and, perhaps, initiatory nature. Fabrizio Mori, discussing Acacus, stressed "the close relationship which there must have been between the painter and that figure so typical in all prehistoric societies whose main role is that of mediator between earth and sky: the wizard-priest" (Mori, 1975). According to Henri Lohte, the discoverer of the Tassili frescoes, "it seems evident that these painted cavities were secret sanctuaries" (Lhote, 1968). Images of enormous mythological beings of human or animal form, side by side with a host of small horned and feathered beings in dancing stance cover the rock shelters of which there are very many on the high plateau of the Sahara which in some areas are so interconnected as to form true "citadels" with streets, squares and terraces. One of the most important scenes is to be found in the Tin-Tazarift rock art site, at Tassili, in which we find a series of masked figures in line and hieratically dressed or dressed as dancers surrounded by long and lively festoons of geometrical designs of different kinds. Each dancer holds a mushroom-like object in the right hand and, even more surprising, two parallel lines come out of this object to reach the central part of the head of the dancer, the area of the roots of the two horns. This double line could signify an indirect association or non-material fluid passing from the object held in the right hand and the mind. This interpretation would coincide with the mushroom interpretation if we bear in mind the universal mental value induced by hallucinogenic mushrooms and vegetals, which is often of a mystical and spiritual nature (Dobkin de Rios, 1984:194). It would seem that these lines — in themselves an ideogram which represents something non-material in ancient art — represent the effect that the mushroom has on the human mind. The whole scene is steeped in deep symbolic meanings and is a representation of a cultural event which actually happened and which was periodically repeated. Perhaps we are witnessing one of the most important moments in the social, religious and emotional lives of these peoples. The constant nature of the physical nature of the dancers and their stances reveals a coordinated will towards scenic representation for collective contexts. The dance represented here has all the indications of a ritual dance and perhaps, at a certain stage, this rite became ecstatic. In the various scenes presented, a series of figurative constants lead us to imagine an accompanying conceptual structure associated with the ethno-mycological cult described here. Matalem-Amazar In-Aouanrhat Evident examples of such constants are the two remarkable southern Tassili figures (sites: Aouanrhat and Matalem-Amazar). Both are approximately 0.8 metres tall, they wear the typical mask of this pictorial phase and a typical gait (legs bent inwards and arms bent downwards). Another common feature is the presence of mushroom symbols starting from the fore-arms and thighs; others are hand held. In the case of the Matalem-Amazar figure, these objects are scattered over the entire area surrounding the body. This mushroom symbol was first interpreted by researchers as an arrowhead, an oar (Mori 1975), a vegetal, probably a flower (Lhote, 1973: 210 and 251), or as an undefined enigmatic symbol. The form which most closely corresponds to this cult-abject is that of a mushroom, most probably of a psychotropic kind the sacramental and socialized use of which is represented in gathering and offering scenes and in the expressive ritual dances, in phosphenic geometrical patterns and in Tassili visionary works. Thus, these two figures could be interpreted as images of the "spirit of the mushroom", known to exist in other cultures characterized by the use of a mushroom or other psychotropic vegetals. In a shelter in Tin-Abouteka, in Tassili, there is a motif appearing at least twice which associates mushrooms and fish; a unique association of symbols among ethno-mycological cultures. Two mushrooms are depicted opposite each other, in a perpendicular position with regard to the fish motif and near the tail. Not far from here, above, we find other fish which are similar to the aforementioned but without the side-mushrooms. In the same Tin-Abouteka scene, yet another remarkable image could be explained in the light of ethno-mycological enquiry. In the middle we find an anthropomorphous figure traced only by an outline. The image is not complete and the body is bending; it probably also has a bow. Behind this figure, we find two mushrooms which seem to be positioned as though they were coming out from behind the anthropomorphs. If the mushrooms in question are those which grow in dung, the association between these mushrooms and the rear of the figure may not be purely casual. It is known that many psychotropic mushrooms (above all, Psilocybe and Panaeolus genera) live in dung of certain quadrupeds and in particular bovines, cervides and equines. This specific ecological phenomenom cannot but have been taken into account with regard to the sacramental use of psychotropic mushrooms, leading to the creation of mystico-religious relations between the mushroom and the animal which produces its natural habitat. Furthermore, the dung left by herds of quadrupeds were important clues for prehistoric hunters on the lookout for game, and the deepening of such skatological knowledge probably goes back to the paleolithic period (the long period of the hunter of large game). Thus we have a further argument in favour of the version of events that would have it that there have been mythical associations, with religious interpretations, on different occasions, between the (sacred) animal and the hallucinogenic mushroom. The sacred deer in the Mesoamerican cultures and the cow in Indian Hindu culture (the dung of which provides a habitat for Psilocybe cubensis, a powerful hallucinogen still used today) could be interpreted in this zoo-skatological manner (Wasson, 1986:44; Furst, 1974; Samorini, 1988). In a painting at Jabbaren — one of the most richly endowed Tassili sites — there are at least 5 people portrayed in a row kneeling with their arms held up before them in front of three figures two of which are clearly anthropomorphous. It could be a scene of adoration in which the three figures would represent divinities or mythological figures. The two anthropomorphous figures have large horns while the upper portion of the third figure, behind them, is shaped like a large mushroom. If the scene is indeed a scene of adoration, it is an important testimonial as to Round Heads mystico-religious beliefs. This scene would thus be the representation of a "Holy Trinity" illustrated by a precise iconography. It is worth bearing in mind the fact that the upper part of one of the "trinity" figures in the adoration scene is mushroom-shaped. It could be related to the iconographic figure at Aouanrhat and Matalem-Amazar described above. But the more or less anthropomorphous figures with mushroom-shaped heads are to be found repeatedly in Round Head art, some with "hat-heads" of umboned or papillate form which on two occasions are of a bluish colour while others carry a leaf or a small branch. The occurrence of various data suggests the presence of a very ancient hallucinogenic mushroom cult with a complex differentiation between botanical species and related mythological representations. Indeed it would be remarkable to find out that, as part of the culture of the Late Stone Age which 7.000 to 9.000 years ago produced Round Heads rock art, we were in the presence of the oldest human culture yet discovered in which explicit representations of the ritual use of psychotropic mushrooms are to be found. Therefore, as the founders of modern ethno-mycology had already put forward — and this is especially true of Wasson (1986) — this Saharan testimony would demonstrate that the use of hallucinogens originates in the Paleolithic period and is invariably include within mystico-religious contexts and rituals. It is not easy to identify the mushrooms represented in Round Heads art. The biochemical characteristics of these mushrooms determine the action on the human mind and it either belongs to a flora which has disappeared or, retreated to the Saharan basin which later became desert. From the paintings it would seem there are at least two species one of which is small and topped with a "papilla" (a characteristic it would share with most known hallucinogenic Psilocybe) and the other of which is larger (like Boletus or Amanita). The colours used are white and probably the result of oxidation of the original colour). The Sahara Desert area has undergone periodic and significant climatic variations. At least three long humid periods have been identified since 20.000 BC, interrupted by three periods of drought, and it appears that the drought we know today is less severe than the two which preceded it. The semi-quantitative graph drawn up by Muzzolini (1982) presents the "Great Humid Holocemic Period" characterized by the presence of enormous lakes all over the Saharan basin (10.000 BC — 5.500 BC). The generally accepted chronology of Round Heads art fits comfortably into this period. Pollen examination carried out at Tassili reveals that, during the Round Heads period, this area was vegetated by highland flora (2.000 m height) with the presence of coniferous trees and oaks (AA.VV., 1986: 97). It can be presumed that some of the mushrooms represented (the large ones) were indigenous to this wooded area in that they are intimately associated with these species of tree. Mushrooms are not the only vegetals to be found in Round Heads art. We often find figures in typical costume and in hieratic positions, dancing, and holding in their hands small branches or leaves (and in one instance roots). At least two species occur fairly frequently in the images found at Tassili and nearby Acacus. In fact, the interest which surrounds the hallucinogens is always represented within a context of general interest in vegetals and it is most likely that it is within these contexts, related to religious activity and initiation, that we find the origins of individual specializations within the communities of these people concerning the magical, therapeutic and culinary aspects of vegetals. This new piece in the ethno-mycological puzzle is even more significant if we consider it from the point of view of research into the use of hallucinogens in the immense African continent. Some progress has been made over the last few years as regards the study of this problem (see the work of e.g., Emboden, 1989; Hargreaves, 1986; Lehman & Mihalyi, 1982; Monfouga-Brousta, 1976; Wagner, 1991; Winkelman & Dobkin de Rios, 1989). Africa — both because of an ignorance of the facts which has continued up to the present day and because of the wealth and extreme old age of the indigenous "animist" religions — has still much to tell us concerning the human use of hallucinogens and the origins of such practice. References AA.VV., 1986, Arte preistorica del Sahara, Roma & Milano: De Luca & Mondadori. Anati E., 1989, Origini dell’arte e della concettualità, Milano: Jaca Book. Andritzky W., 1989, Schamanismus und rituelles Heilen im Alten Peru. Band 1: Die Menschen des Jaguar, Berlin: Clemens Zerling. Campbell C., 1958, Origin of the mescal bean cult, American Anthropology, vol. 60: 156-160. Campbell C., 1965, The Rock Paintings of the Chumash, Berkeley: University of California. Dikov N. N., 1971, Naskalnuie Sagadki Drevniei Ciukotki (Pietroglifui Pegtimelia), Moscow: Nauka. Dikov N. N., 1979, Origini della cultura paleoeschimese, Boll.Camuno St.Preist., vol. 17: 89-98. Dobkin de Rios M., 1974, The Influence of Psychotropic Flora and Fauna on Maya Religion. Current Anthropology, vol. 15: 147-164. Emboden W., 1989, The Sacred Journey in Dynastic Egypt: Shamanistic Trance in the Context of the Narcotic Water Lily and the Mandrake, J. Psychoact. Drugs, vol. 21: 61-75. Franch J. A., 1982, Religiosidad, alucinogenos y patrone artisticos Tainos, Bol. Mus. Hombre Dominicano, vol. X/1 7: 103-1 17. Furst P., 1974, Hallucinogens in Precolumbian Art, in M. E. King & I. R. Traylor (Eds.), Art and Enviroment in Native America, Lubbock, Texas: Texas Tech., :55-101. Furst P., 1986, Shamanism, The Ecstatic Experience, and Lower Pecos Art, in H. J. Shafer & J. Zintgraff, Ancient Texas. Rock Art and Lifeways Along the Lower Pecos, San Antonio: Texas Monthly, :210-225. Hargreaves B. J., 1986, Plant Induced "Spirit Possession" in Malawi, Soc. Malawi J., vol. 39(1): 26-35. HowardJ. H., 1957, The Mescal Bean Cult of the Central and Southern Plains: An Ancestor of the Peyote Cult?, Amer. Anthropol., vol. 59: 75-87. Hyder D. & Oliver M., 1983, Style and chronology in Chumash Rock Art, American Indian Rock Art, vol. 10: 86-101. Kaplan R. W., 1975, The sacred mushroom in Scandinavia, Man, vol 10(1 ): 72-79. LajouxJ. D., 1964, Le meraviglie del Tassili, Bergamo (Instituto Arti Grafiche). Lehmann A. C. & L. J. Mihalyi, 1982, Aggression, Bravery, Endurance, and Drugs: A Radical ReEvaluation and Analysis of the Masai Warrior Complex, Ethnology, vol. 21 (4): 335-347. Lewis-Williams J. D. & T. A. Dowson, 1988, The Signs of All Times. Entoptic Phenomena in Upper Palaeolithic Art, Current Anthropology, vol. 29(2): 201-245. Lhote H., 1968, Données récentes sur es gravures et es peintures rupestres du Sahara, in E. Ripoll Perellô (Ed.), Simposio de Arte Rupestre, Barcelona :273 :290. Lhote H., 1973, A la découverte des fresques du Tassili, Paris: Arthaud. Mckenna T., 1988, Hallucinogenic Mushrooms and Evolution, Re Vision, vol. 10: 51-57. Monfouga-Broustra J., 1976, Phenomène de possession et plante hallucinogêne, Psychopat. Afric., vol. 12 (3): 317-348. Mori F., 1965, Tadrart Acacus: Arte rupestre del Sahara preistorico, Torino: Einaudi. Mori F., 1974, The earliest Saharian rock-engravings, Antiquity, Vol. 48: 87-92. Mori F., 1975, Contributo al pensiero magico-religioso attraverso l’esame di alcune raffigurazioni rupestri preistoriche del Sahara, Valcamonica Symposium ‘72, :344-366. Muzzolini A., 1982, Les climats sahariens durant l’Olocene et Ia fin du Pleistocene, Travaux du L.A.P.M.O., Aix-En-Provence :1-38 Muzzolini A., 1986, L’art rupestre préhistorique des massifs centraux sahariens, Oxford: BAR. Naranjo P., 1986, El ayahuasca en Ia arqueologia Ecuatoriana, America Indigena, vol. 46: 117-127 Pagan Perdomo D., 1978, Nuevas pictografias en Ia isla de Santo Domingo. Las Cuevas de Borbon, Santo Domingo: Museo del Hombre Dominicano. Polia M., 1987, Los petroglifos de Samanga, Ayabaca, Piura, Rev. Mus. Nac. Lima, vol. 48: 119-137. Polia M., 1988, Las lagunas de los encantos. Medicina tradicional andina del Peru septentrional, Piura, PerU: Cepeser. Reichel-Dolmatoff C., 1978, Beyond the Milky Way. Hallucinatory Imagery of the Tukano Indians, Los Angeles: Univ. Calif. Samorini C., 1988, Sulla presenza di piante e funghi allucinogeni in Valcamonica, Boll. Camuno St. Preist., vol. 24:132-136. Samorini C., 1989, Etnomicologia nell’arte rupestre Sahariana (Periodo delle "Teste Rotonde"), Boll. Camuno Notizie, vol. 6(2): 18-22. Samorini C., 1990, Sciamanismo, funghi psicotropi e stati alterati di coscienza: un rapporto da chianine, Boll. Camuno St. Preist., vol. 25/26:147-150. Sansoni U., 1980, Quando il deserto era verde. Ricerche sull’arte rupestre del Sahara, L’Umana Avventura, N. 11:65-85. Wagner J., 1991, Das ,,dawa" den mamiwata. Em möglicherweise phanmakologischen Aspekt des westafnikanischen Claubens an Wassengeisten, Integration, vol. 1: 61-63. Wasson R. C., 1979, Fly aganic and man, in Efnon D. H. (Ed.), Ethnophanmocologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs, New York: Raven Press, :405-414. Wasson R. C. et al., 1986, Pensephone’s Quest. Entheogens and the Origins of Religion, New Haven & London: Yale University. Wellmann K. F., 1978, North American Indian Rock Art and Hallucinogenic Drugs, J. Amen. Med. Ass., vol. 239: 1524-1527. Wellmann K. F., 1981, Rock art, shamans, phosphenes and hallucinogens in North America, Boll. Camuno St. Preist., vol. 18: 89-103. Winkelman M. & Dobkin de Rios M., 1989, Psychoactive Properties of !Kung Bushman Medicine Plants, J. Psychoact. Drugs, vol. 21:51-59. Psilocybin cubensis V panaeolus cyansI remembered friends from when i was younger saying thier older brothers had "blue meenies" and i wanted to finally now since i am getting into researching magic mushrooms figure out where these what i thought were (and was told) totally blue mushrooms, because i wondered always after my first mushroom experience in byron bay an noticing the gold tops (psyilocybin cubensis right?) staining blue. SO i thought hm i never saw any blue mushrooms, yet these gold tops stain blue due to the acid context- so maybe there is no mythical blue meenie mushroom.
SO i googled and got this forum and turns out they for sure are two different things Cubensis and pannaelus; the latter revealing its name upon my "blue meenie" google search. https://www.dmt-nexus.me/forum/default.aspx?g=posts&t=31674 So it appears they look and grow the same ? I am still confused. after watching this. Identifying the "Blue meanie", Panaeolus cyanescens or comon magic mushroom of Australia. It appears in the photo the bulbus topped ones are the "gold tops" and the flat topped ones are the panaeolus "blue meenies". Both look like they are in my North New South Wales region :D. Magic Mushroom Strains & Species (2/3) |
Identify bacterial and mold contaminationsNo Money Mushroom CultivationBy Joe Mulraney and Toon Van Kets in Magic Mycology (Files)
Some of you guys have shown an interest in my low budget mushroom cultivation techniques. That's why I decided to write this tek down. I ingeniously called it the "No Money Tek". Anyone who has a kitchen with a basic set of utilities will be able to grow mushrooms using this tek. I found all the ingredients and instruments for this tek inside my home, without having to buy anything. Step 1 Acquiring your mushroom culture to start with is very easy. All you need to do is grab a mushroom next time you're cooking a mushroom recipe. Step 2 Now we're going to use this mushroom to make a liquid culture. This means we're going to add mushroom tissue to a nutritious solution which will make the mushroom cells form mycelium. This solution with mycelium dissolved within it, is called a liquid culture (LC). LC's are easier to work with, because they form mycelium much quicker once exposed to a substrate, compared to spores or just mushroom tissue. I explained how to make LC's in a picture tutorial in my website (http://mushroompalace.com/grow-your-own/liquid-culture). I'll explain it again very briefly here, but do check my website if you want a more thorough explanation. Ingredients
Puncture a hole in the middle of the metal lid with hammer and nail. Make sure the jar is spotless. If it isn't, boil it in water for half an hour to make sure its clean and free of bacteria and molds. Then add 250ml (8.5oz) of demineralized water to the jar and add 2 and a half table spoons of honey (or 1tblsp per 100ml of demineralized water). Screw the lid on. Next you'll want to cover the top half of the jar with aluminium foil. This prevents water from entering the jar via the hole in the lid when we'll be sterilizing the jar. Place the jar in a cooking pot and add 3 to 4 inches of water. Put the lid on the cooking pot and let it boil for at least an hour. 2 hours is preferred. The water has to boil, but don't add too much heat, or the jar will crack. Make sure your cooking pot always has water in it. After sterilizing the jars, let them cool inside the cooking pot for a couple of hours (I usually let them cool overnight).Once cool, put the jars next to you, because the following will have to be done as quickly as possible, to minimize the chance of contaminating our liquid culture.Take a scalpel (or sharp knife) and sterilize it by holding it in a flame until red hot. Let it cool down for about 10 seconds (using rubbing alcohol to sterilize works as well, if you don't want to ruin your mom's expensive chef knives). Then cut the mushroom in half. Take some of the mushroom tissue out of the middle of the mushroom stem, using the tip of your knife/scalpel. Now take of the aluminum foil, unscrew the metal lid and drop the mushroom tissue in the jar. Quickly put the lid back on the jar. Now you have to mask the hole with micropore tape (which can be found in any first aid kit). Now swirl the liquid daily until you notice mycelium in the jar (usually within 5 days). Step 3 Take a large freezer bag (I use 3 liter bags) and fill them with the substrate of choice (wood chips, straw, coco coir, etc.). Rinse the substrate before adding it the the bag, if it's dirty (like straw for example).Then add water until you notice that the substrate is moist. You want a well hydrated substrate but it can't be wet. Too much moisture will kill your grow operation. This is the most tricky part of this entire tek and it might take you some practice to get it right. Close the bag with a knot. Put the bag in a cooking pot and boil for 2 hours just like we did with the LC.After the bag has cooled down, take a syringe with needle (you can sometimes find them in first aid kits, if not, buy them in a pharmacy. They cost 1 or 2$) and suck up some of the LC out of your jar. Then flame sterilize the needle and inject the LC into the plastic bag. Then seal the hole you just made with micropore tape.Store the bag in a warm dark place for a month or so. Then you'll see that the substrate is completely colonized by the mycelium. Any green/yellow discolloration is a contamination. You'll have to toss the bag immediatly. DO NOT OPEN IT! Step 4 Make a fruiting chamber (as described here: http://mushroompalace.com/grow-your-own/build-a-fruiting-chamber). If you can't build one, an empty aquirium will work as well. Remove the plastc bag from your substrate and place the substrate in the fruiting chamber/aquarium. Mist and fan 1 or twice a day if needed and you'll notice the mushrooms popping up within 2 weeks. I advice you to read the articles I linked to before you start growing, so you know what I'm talking about. P.S. I advice straw to any first time growers. It works for almost every mushroom species and is pretty easy to find and work with. Corpophilous fungi (Dung Loving Fungi)
Agaricus bisporus
agaricus bitorquisagaricus blazei panaeolus acuminatu panaeolus antillarum Panaeolus cyanescens Psilocybe atlantis Psilocybe cubensis panaeolus africanus panaeolus bisporus panaeolus fimicola panaeolus subbalteatus panaeolus tropicalis psilocybe azurescens psilocybe semilanceata coprinus atramentarius Bolbitius vitellinus Deconica coprophilis Conocybe pubescens Conocybe rickenii Coprinus niveus Coprinus narcoticus Coprinus patouillardii Coprinus radiatus Crucibulum laeve Cyathus stercoreus Panaeolus campanulatus Panaeolus sphinctrinus Panaeolus semiovatus Psilocybe merdaria Stropharia semiglobata Psilocybin awareness A document describing various aspects of magic mushrooms
Every two years the Student Drug Use Survey, sponsored by the Addiction Research Foundation of Ontario, conducts surveys of students enrolled in grades seven through thirteen to obtain statistics on the prevalence of drug use. In the previous years the prevalence of drug use increased for all drugs; however, the surveys from 1995 to 1997 showed only one significant increase-the use of the hallucinogen psilocybin (Adlaf 1998).
According to the survey there was an approximate 10.1 percent increase in the use of psilocybin while the trend for all other drugs was a significant drop (Adlaf 1998). Educators or administrators, who are developing drug education, prevention or intervention programs for youth, should incorporate information on hallucinogenic drugs. Because of the increased popularity of psilocybin among recreational drug users, knowledge and understanding of this hallucinogen is critical. The chemical psilocybin occurs naturally in many mushrooms but it is best known from Psilocybe mushrooms commonly called "magic" or sacred mushrooms. In this paper, I will present a historical, clinical and psychological analysis of psilocybin by presenting recent research, information, and reports concerning the study of this hallucinogen. History: Psilocybe mushrooms or hallucinogenic mushrooms have probably existed longer than humanity. Throughout history, ancient pictures of mushroom-like humans have been prevalently reported. In Central and Southern America, use of psilocybian mushrooms was a common religious practice until the arrival of Spaniards who spread the Catholic faith with sword and fire and forbade the use. For Indians the mushroom is known as a sacred mushroom and historically, it is considered a religious path to the spirit world (Wasson 1980). Mushroom art and sculptures that depicted motifs under the cap of a mushroom were found even from an earlier era of 1000-500 BC. The purpose of these sculptures and artifacts was not certain, but it is speculated that the stones had religious meaning (Allegro 1970). The Codex Vienna Mixtec manuscript that dated back to thirteen century depicted the ritual use of the sacred mushrooms by the Mixtec Gods. The God known as Seven Flowers was the Mixtec God for hallucinatory plants, especially the secret mushroom, and he was depicted carrying a pair of mushrooms in his hands (Wasson 1898). In addition, the Aztecs believed that they were capable of moving back and forth between the earthly and supernatural realms (Schwartz 1988). This travel between realms was often associated with hallucinatory trances guided by their god for the entheogens-the Prince of Flowers. The Aztecs called this ritual "the flowery dream;" this was induced by sacred mushrooms (WWW 1). The appeal of mushrooms in the "modern world" originated when Gordon Wasson came to the Mazatec village of Huatla de Jimenez, and experienced a session of "velada" held by curandera Maria Sabina. Velada included a religious ritual under a heavy influence of Psilocybe mushrooms (Wasson 1898). Information about the mushrooms spread and experimentation began. In 1958 the active ingredients of the mushroom, Psilocybin and psilocin, were found and their analogues were synthesized by Dr. Albert Hoffman, who also discovered lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) (Schwartz 1988). Experimentation with the mushrooms historically increased, leading to their significant influence in the part of the "60's psychedelic movement" (WWW 1). And even these days, psilocybin mushrooms are one of the most common hallucinogenic substances for recreational use (Adlaf 1998). Biochemistry Hallucinogenic mushrooms grow naturally in fields and in cow pastures mainly in northwest and southeast of the United States. The most common psilocybin mushroom in the United States is Psilocybe cubenis (Schwartz 1988). The primary active ingredients of Psilocybe mushrooms are psilocybin and psilocin. Individual mushrooms contain approximately up to two percent of the psychoactive ingredient psilocybin, while psilocin is only found in trace amounts (Pedersen-Bjergaard 1998). Between 4 to 10 mgs of psilocybin is considered to be an average content for psilocybin per grams of mushroom, and that is also the usual dose ingested (Schwartz 1988). The primary difference between psilocybin and psilocin is that psilocin is unstable, and it breaks down when the mushroom is dried (Pedersen-Bjergaard 1998). Psilocybin is highly stable, and it has been reported that psilocybin can last for an extremely long amount time and was even detected in a hundred fifteen year old mushroom sample (WWW 1). Both of the two compounds are equally psychoactive, since one molecule of psilocybin (O-phosphoryl-4-hydroxy-N) can be broken down into one molecule of psilocin (4-hydroxy-N,N-dimethyl-tryptamine). The breakdown occurs when the mushroom is orally ingested. In the digestive track, psilocybin dephosphorylates to psilocin; the dephosphorlytaion process is accomplished by a readily present digestive track enzyme, alkaline phosphatase (Vollenweider 1998). Psilocybin and psilocin belong to the tryptamine (indoleamine) family of psychedelics. They occur naturally in many mushrooms. The species of Psilocybe mushrooms have high a capacity to transform fed tryptamine into a psychoactive ingredient psilocybin by a methylation and hydroxylation reaction. Studies of psilocybin biosynthesis in mushrooms show that the amino acid tryptophan and tryptamine are precursors to the indole alkaloids (Gartz 1989). Although psilocybin can also be chemically synthesized, it is very difficult and expensive. (Cuomo 1994). Psilocybin and psilocin are closely related to the neurotransmitter serotonin. Psilocin, especially, is structurally related to a neurotransmitter serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine or 5-HT) (Vollenweider 1998). The structural resemblance to serotonin also parallels with psilocybin's activity. The primary effect of psilocybin seems to be the inhibition of the neurotransmitter serotonin, because the indole binds to 5-HT receptors. More specifically, the effect of psilocybin is to act as an agonist to the 5-HT2 receptor. The potency of the hallucinogens in humans is related to the binding affinity for the 5-HT2 receptor in animals. In addition, animal studies have demonstrated that the action of the hallucinogenic drug can be blocked by 5-HT2 antagonists, thus supporting psilocybin as a 5-HT analog (Vollenweider 1998). Although animal studies conclusively prove the involvement of 5-HT2 receptor systems in hallucinogenic drug action, animal hallucinogenic drug action might not be reliable when applied to the human model. For instance, many scientists question if psilocybin has an effect on the dopamine receptors in humans because of psychotic-like symptoms of the drug. Psychosis is correlated with over-stimulation of the dopamine pathways in the central nervous system, thus leading to the hypothesis that the dopamine system is not modulated through interactions of serotonin and dopamine in humans (Vollenweider 1998). In order to prove lack of involvement of the dopamine system in humans for the psilocybin mechanism, the Psychiatric University Hospital in Zurich, Switzerland, conducted psychological research on human subjects. They investigated the current animal hypothesis of the psilocybin mechanism to test weather 5-HT2 and/or dopamine receptors are effected through psilocybin. Their results support that the effects induced by psilocybin results from the activation of a 5-HT2 subtype of serotonin receptor in human subjects as well as in animals. The conclusions were drawn from the study of influence to pretreatment with 5-HT2 antagonist (ketanserin), dopamine receptor D2 antagonist (haloperidol) and mixed 5-HT2/D2 antagonists (risperidone) on psychological effects of psilocybin on healthy human subjects (Vollenweider 1998). The study concluded that "psilocybin-induced psychosis could be completely prevented by either the atypical neuroleptic and mixed 5-HT2/D2 antagonist risperidone or by the 5-HT2 antagonist ketanserin, but not by the typical neuroleptic and D2 antagonist haloperdol" (Vollenweider 1998). This study added substantial evidence to the hypothesis of the 5-HT2 agonist is responsible for the psychological effects of psilocybin. The 5-HT2 post-synaptic agonist appears to mimics the effects to 5-HT and cause psychological changes in the central nervous system (Vollenweider 1998). The hallucinogenic psilocybin and psilocin found in mushrooms have low toxicity. Studies in mice showed that doses up to 200 mg of psilocybin/kg of body can injected without lethal effects. That implies that an average human with body weight of 65 kg can be injected 13 grams of the psychoactive mushroom ingredient without experiencing any lethal effects (WWW 1). The most traditional measurement of toxicity of a drug is a therapeutic index that is a ratio of the lethal dose (LD50) to the effective dose (ED50) (Gable 1993). According to the Registry of Toxic Effects, the therapeutic index for psilocybin is 641. In comparison to other substances it is relative non-toxic. For example the therapeutic index for vitamin A is 9637, 4816 for LSD, 199 for aspirin and 21 for nicotine, thus psilocybin appears to have a relatively low toxicity (WWW 1). In addition, literature states that the oral intake of psilocybin appears to be the lowest risk out of all other drugs for both acute lethality and dependence (Gable 1993). Although much of the literature supports psilocybin as having relatively low toxicity, dependence and lethality, in the last two years, cases of serious physiological intoxication by natural hallucinogenic substances have surfaces around the world. A frequent use of hallucinogenic mushrooms have demonstrated to have effects not previously classified by the use of psilocybin. Currently, clinical case and overdose studies of patients showed that psilocybin use results from arrhythmia and myocardial infarction. The indole concentrations of hallucinogenic mushrooms do not present risks of adverse central nervous system effects but also cardiac toxicity (Borowiak 1998). The myocardial infarction in the frequent users and in cases of sever intoxication suggest the possibility of cardiac damage related to psilocybin. According to recent studies, indole alkaloids are agonists at the 5-HT receptor in the central nervous system. However, peripherally they induce a sympathomimetic stimulation that leads to tachycardia and hypertension. In the past, the use of 5-HT agonists in migraine headaches was linked to myocardial infarction due to coronary vasoconstriction. In addition, serotonin receptor agonists can cause platelet hyperaggregation and occlusion of small coronary arteries. Because psilocybin is also an agonist of 5-HT receptors, it is conclusive from these observations that the use of this drug can lead to cardiac toxicity (Borowiak 1998). Psychological effects: The historical mind-altering effects of psilocybin are described as a voyage to the spirit world. These hallucinogenic effects are similar to those of LSD; however, psilocybin is two hundred times less potent and also has a shorter duration time (Schwartz 1988). Common physiological reactions include muscular relaxation, coldness of the limbs and abdomen, and dilation of the pupils. A stronger dose includes vision and mental hallucinations and other sensory distortions. Use of the mushroom causes a feeling of disconnection from reality and an altered state of consciousness (Cumno 1994). As with all major hallucinogens, psilocybin can precipitate psychotic episodes and bring up previous mental illnesses. Therefor, individuals that are prompt to being stressed, depressed, or have schizophrenia in their history should not take mushrooms or other psychedelics. Mushrooms, similar to LSD, can significantly change a person's perception and cause a "bad trip" or an experience that can have a significant impact on someone's life. For this reason they are more then a purely recreational drug; they can be extremely psychologically impacting (Schwartz 1988; WWW 1). The physiological and psychological effects of mushrooms are influenced by the dose and the individual's sensitivity to psilocybin. For some people, as small amount as 0.25 grams of Psilocybe mushroom can be enough for a full visionary experience, unpleasant stomach cramps or gas, and other effects usually present at high doses. In other users, the same amount might not cause any noticeable effects. Thus, it is very critical that a user understands his individual reaction, and to be safe during the first use. It is "recommended" to start with only a small amount of psilocybin. The minimal dose for any notable effect is often referred to as the threshold effect. This effect can be induced by amounts ranging from 0.25 grams to 0.75 grams of Psilocybe mushroom (Schwartz 1988; WWW 1). A more profound effect can be induced with an amount that ranges from 0.75 grams to 2.5 grams of mushroom. Similarly to a small dose, the feeling of reduced temperature, gas and/or stomach discomfort, nausea occurs, but they might be more profound. However, this dose might induce powerful distortion of space, increased ability to visualize creatively, spontaneous detailed images, feelings of time distortion. These effects of psilocybin are often more pronounced in users who have used mushrooms before. Emotional sensitivity and an increased ability to focus on emotional problems can raise the probability of thinking or dwelling on a single feeling that usually has a negative content--a content that can lead to psychological crises come out (Schwartz 1988; WWW 1). At a dose ranging from 2.5 grams to 10 grams, all of the effects of the medium dose should be expected, usually with significantly more uncomfortable side effects. These side effects include pronounced nausea that can result in vomiting and significant mental discomfort associated with feelings of fear and often times accompanying a "what have I done to myself." These effects usually lessen as the experience becomes familiar to the person and knowledge about the characteristics and side effects of mushrooms becomes more apparent. The effects of high doses can lead to acute adverse effects and intoxication that might lead to extreme fears, panic and even intense psychosis. These psychological effects are almost indistinguishable from true schizophrenia. After acute intoxication, the user is usually extremely exhausted and mentally depressed (Schwartz 1988). The behavioral effects induced by psilocybin are often complicated by the fact that users mix different substances. For example, the effects of psilocybin can be made stronger by taking them with a monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI). The best known MAOIs are harmine and harmaline from the plant Peganum harmala. Combining MAOIs and other substances with tryptamines is an unsafe activity because it increases amounts of monoamides in the body (WWW 1). This might cause a hypertensive crisis that is due to elevated tyramines in the body. Clinical Implication: The field of psychedelic research extends beyond the investigation of biochemistry and recreational use. There have been great promises for medical use of psychedelics. Studies focused on the role of psychedelics in religious experience and behavior change. Psilocybin experiments were conducted in the early 1960's under the direction of Timothy Leary, Ph.D. Dr. Leary had obtained permission from the Massachusetts Department of Corrections to administer psilocybin to volunteers in Concord Prison (WWW 2). The hope for the experiment was to test if psilocybin experiences can change the prisoner's cycle of antisocial behavior and reduce their recidivism. The action of psilocybin was used to help the prisoners recognize the impact of their past behavior. Such realization was hoped to connect them to their spirit and consciousness, leading to resistance of desire to commit future crimes. The final results showed that psilocybin experience alone were not sufficient to reduce recidivism. However, the failure of the research originated from the lack of group support meetings for the prisoners. However, similar studies disclosed that psilocybin could cause a behavioral change in people with strong religiously conviction. People who took psilocybin with a religious context experienced deeper spiritual connection (WWW 2). In conclusion, the prevalence of psilocybin throughout history and its current use has lead to intensive studies and research. The studies on human and animal models both demonstrated that psilocybin produces psychosis-like symptoms primarily through serotonin-2 receptor stimulation. Although many of the psilocybin effects are understood and well documented, we keep learning more about this substance as more data is collected through research of psilocybin users. As the understanding continues, the field of psychedelic research will likely extend beyond its current use because of the great promise for medical use in the treatment of various psychological conditions. References Adlaf, Edward M. et al. Recent findings from Ontario Student Drug Use Survey. Canadian Medical Association 5. 451-455 (1998). Borowiak, Krzysztof S. et al. Psilocybin Mushroom Intoxication with Myocardial Infarction. Clinical Toxicology 36. 47-49 (1998). Vollenwieder, Franz X. et al. Psilocybin induces schizophrenia-like psychosis in humans via a serotonis-2 agonist action. NeuroReport 9. 3897-3902 (1998). Pedersen-Bjergaard, Stig. et al. Strategies for capillary electrophoretic separation of indole alkaloids in Psilocybe semilanceata. Electrophoresis 19. 27-30 (1998). Cuomo, Micheal J. et al. Increasing Use of "Ecstasy" (MDMA) and Other Hallucinogens on College Campus. College Health 42. 271-274 (1994). Gable, Robert S. Toward a Comparative Overview of Dependence Potential and Acute Toxicity of Psychoactive Substance Used Nonmedically. Drug Alcohol Abuse 19. 263-281 (1993). Gratz, Jochen. Extraction and analysis of indole derivatives from fungal biomass Basic Microbiology 29. 347-352 (1988). Schwartz, Richart H. and Smith, Deborah. Hallucinogenic Mushrooms. Clinical Pediatrics 27. 70-73 (1988). Wasson, Robert G. The Wondrous Mushroom. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data (1898). Wasson, Robert G. Maria Sabina and her Mazetec Mushroom Velada. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data (1974). Allegro, John M. The Sacred Mushroom & The Cross. National General Company (1970). WWW 1. The Vault of Erowid: Sacred mushrooms. WWW 2. Psilocybin: Concord Prison Follow-up from the Newsletter of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies MAPS- Volume 6 Number 2 Winter 1995-96 Hunting Fly Agarics in North America A guide to the mushroom, its varieties, and its look-alikesBy Vlad Tepes in Magic Mycology (Files)
A Guide to the Mushroom and Its Look-alikes Note: Throughout this guide, I will tend to refer to the mushroom in question as the fly agaric, rather than as Amanita muscaria. This is due to the fact that North American fly agarics are coming to be considered a distinct species from the Eurasian Amanita muscaria. Already the western American Amanita muscaria var. flavivolvata has been renamed to Amanita amerimuscaria by Tuloss and Geml. Proper identification is critical if one is picking this mushroom with the intent to consume it; in addition to our friendly fly agarics, the genus Amanita contains some deadly poisonous mushrooms such as the death cap (A phalloides) and the destroying angel (A bisporigera, A ocreata, A virosa, A verna). Fortunately for us, these deadly poisonous Amanitas are white-capped,and I'm unaware of any red-capped variety of Amanita that contains these lethal hepatotoxic (liver-destroying) amatoxins. Still, it's always best to be safe and informed when picking mushrooms from the genus Amanita, or indeed any mushroom. For that reason, I'll detail in this article not only the key features by which you can recognize the fly agaric mushroom, but also how to distinguish it from the common look-alikes. This guide is specific to the North American varieties and their look-alike species; there may be look-alikes on other continents which I do not address here. Distinguishing Features of the Fly Agaric The Cap and Warts The most popularly recognized feature of the fly agaric is its distinctive bright and spotted cap. It can range in color from a deep crimson red to lighter shades of orange, or yellow-orange. There are even varieties of A muscaria which are white-capped (A muscaria var. alba), though these are probably best avoided to prevent mistaking them for a poisonous Amanita. The cap is spherical or oval on very young specimens, opening out to a convex shape. With age, they become broadly convex, planar, or plano-depressed. The margin of the cap is often lined, particularly in more mature specimens. Here is a picture of a patch of Amanita muscaria with specimens exhibiting all of the possible cap shapes: The spots or warts range from white to whitish-yellow; these are remnants of the mushroom's universal veil. On North American fly agarics, the universal veil is typically yellowish white. Here's a picture of a very young specimen almost entirely enclosed in its universal veil: While the distinctive cap is the most popularly recognized trait of the species, being featured in fairy tale illustrations (as in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland) and in folk art, it is by no means a definitive means of identification. There are other red- or orange-capped species of Amanita with white or whitish-yellow spots.The best means of identifying the fly agaric is a careful examination of the stipe, particularly the base of the stipe. The Stipe The stipe, or stem of the mushroom, is marked by a characteristic pendant annulus (that is, a drooping skirt-like ring), which is a remnant of the partial veil. Younger specimens will not bear an annulus unless their partial veil has broken. Here's a picture of a specimen in which the partial veil has just begun to break (it's still attached on the right, and beginning to separate on the left): The base of the stipe is bulbous, substantially wider than the rest of stipe, and either spherical or egg-shaped. Just above the bulbous base of the stipe, there are concentric zones of shagginess. These fuzzy concentric rings are the most critical feature in identifying A muscaria, and one should look for this characteristic feature in every collected specimen. Here's a photo where this feature can be clearly seen: Other Features The spore print is white. This is not by any means a distinguishing feature, as virtually all Amanita species have a white spore print. The gills are white, and may be attached or free from the stem. In terms of spacing, they may be either close or crowded. Again, these traits are common amongst Amanita species. Microscopic Features The spores are smooth, non-amyloid, and broadly ovate. They typically measure around 10 x 7 ?m. Clamps are often present at the bases of basidia. The North American Look-alikes In general, all three of the following species are mycorrhizal with the same sorts of trees as the fly agaric. That means that if any area looks like a perfect spot to find your fly agarics, then it's also a perfect spot to find these look-alikes. Also, these species all occur in eastern parts of North America. I'm not aware of any convincing look-alikes on the west coast. But that doesn't mean west coast fly agaric hunters should let their guard down. Always inspect the base of the stipe on every mushroom to confirm your finds. Amanita crenulata Region: Eastern North America Considering its appearance and location, this mushroom could easily be mistaken fora pale fly agaric. One source indicates that it often groups with Amanita muscaria var. guessowii, which is a very good reason to closely inspect every mushroom in a patch of fly agarics Key differences from the fly agaric:
Region: Eastern North America Key differences from the fly agaric:
Region: Eastern North America, less common but present in western North America Key differences from the fly agaric:
Region: Eastern North America This species can be a very convincing look-alike for the yellow-orange varieties of A muscaria! While it's not known to contain amatoxins, the dangers of eating are not really known. This is a great reason to take great care in identification while picking. Key differences from the fly agaric:
Region: Throughout eastern North America, from Canada to Mexico Image Credit: Alan Cressler This mushroom is easily distinguishable from the fly agaric, but might be mistaken by novices. It is a North American form of the European edible Caesar's mushroom (Amanita caesarea); the edibility of this North American version is dubious, and it should not be consumed. Key differences from the fly agaric:
Region: Eastern, and particularly southeastern North America Key differences from the fly agaric:
Region: Throughout North America, Europe, and western Asia This is not a mushroom that would be easily mistaken for a fly agaric (except perhaps Amanita muscaria var. regalis),but it deserves some degree of discussion here. It is frequently lumped together with fly agarics when discussing their use as psychoactive mushrooms, which makes a degree of sense considering both contain ibotenic acid and muscimol. When planning this guide, consideration was given to whether it should also include information on identifying Amanita pantherina as well as fly agarics. Ultimately I decided against it for a variety of reasons. For one thing, there's a great deal of ambiguity surrounding A. pantherina. While everyone seems to agree it's more potent than fly agarics by weight, some people strongly recommend against its use, citing a much heavier load of muscarinic side-effects; others wholeheartedly encourage it as an alternative to fly agarics, citing the absence of muscarinic side-effects. It's difficult to make sense of these starkly contrasting accounts. There are also some who speculate that A. pantherina may contain some other toxic or psychoactive chemicals, though I'm not aware of what these other chemicals might be. The biggest factor in restricting this guide to fly agarics is that I can personally endorse their use. Properly identified fly agarics consumed in appropriate dosages (with pursuant appropriate precautions) are a wonderful mushroom. In North America, they're virtually never fatal (though there have been some near-misses when a reckless overdose is consumed as a result of misidentification, or through ignorance of their active chemicals). A. pantherina on the other hand is associated with fatalities in North America. When this fact is combined with all the ambiguity surrounding the mushroom, I simply do not feel right including it in this guide to the fly agarics. Perhaps I malign it unfairly, and it too is safe when consumed in appropriate dosage with appropriate precautions. But this guide is a guide to mushrooms which I know to be safe when consumed properly; I don't feel comfortable discussing a similar but potentially unsafe mushroom alongside it. Anyone thinking of consuming A. pantherinais is strongly encouraged to do their own research and draw their own conclusions. The look-alikes that are to be avoided when consuming this mushroom are different than the fly agaric look-alikes, and anyone hunting it should familiarize themselves with those look-alikes. Key differences from the fly agaric:
There are quite a number of different varieties of fly agaric out there. All of them fit the identification guidelines outlined above, and all can be eaten for their psychoactive properties (or parboiled and cooked for their exquisite culinary properties), but there are differences between them. The subject of nomenclature is a bit muddled at the moment, as the currently accepted system of nomenclature doesn't accurately reflect the phylogenetic relationships of the different varieties of fly agaric (phylogenetics is the study of the evolutionary inter-relatedness of different organisms). This is supposed to be rectified in the reasonably near future by Rob Tuloss renaming the muscaria group. I'll try to be as clear as possible in discussing this issues and anticipating the new nomenclature. Currently, all varieties of fly agaric are considered to be subspecies of Amanita muscaria. However, recent phylogenetic analysis from 2006 by Geml, et al. reveals that what we currently consider to be Amanita muscariais actually composed of three separate clades (clades are separate groups of organisms which share a common ancestor in their evolutionary history). There are two Eurasian clades, one general and the other subalpine, and a North American clade. The Eurasian clades are typified by the brightly capped subspecies currently known as Amanita muscaria var. muscaria,and are present only in Alaska and the most northwestern portions of North America (their precise range has not yet been determined). It is anticipated that the Eurasian varieties will be split into two species (subalpine and general). The North American clade is typified by the reddish-orange subspecies currently known as Amanita muscaria var. flavivolvata. It is anticipated that all North American fly agarics (with the exception of the above-mentioned Eurasian specimens, and the PNW Yellow which I'll address later) will be renamed to Amanita flavivolvata, or a subspecies thereof. The other significant result coming from this phylogenetic study is that cap color is actually a polymorphic trait! That means that the color of the cap is variable within a single species (for a more detailed explanation of the term, see the Wikipedia entry on polymorphism). The study looked at both Eurasian and North American samples of A muscaria var. formosa (including var. guessowii), A muscaria var. flavivolvata, A muscaria var. alba, and A muscaria var. regalis,and discovered that all four subspecies were found both in the Eurasian and North American clades. This indicates that these color variations are not distinct subspecies, but simply variations in form that are found throughout each species. It should be noted that using phylogenetics as the sole factor in organizing taxonomies is not always advisable when based only on a few preliminary DNA studies. Phylogenetic trees can be subject to revision or reinterpretation with the incorporation of new data. Also, for some of the varieties described below, phylogenetic analysis has not been able to demonstrate that they branched from their parent species at a single common ancestor. This would mean that the distinguishing features are just polymorphic traits that are biased within geographically separated populations, but are not truly distinct subspecies. Since the renaming of the muscaria group has not yet occurred, it's useful to treat the various subspecies under the currently accepted nomenclature. Amanita muscaria var. flavivolvata (= Amanita amerimuscaria Tuloss & Geml Region: Western North America. From southwest Canada, down through the Sierra Nevadas and the Rocky Mountains of the desert of southwest America, and at least as far south as Andean Columbia. There may be significant gulf coast populations, with isolated occurrences as far up the Atlantic coast as Massachusetts, but it's also possible that these collections were actually A muscaria var. persicina. Consequently, the eastern limit on the region of A muscaria var. flavivolvata is currently ambiguous. Habitat: Mychorrhizal with oaks, conifers, and a handful of deciduous trees. Characteristic Features
Recently this variety was renamed as Amanita amerimuscaria.The precise relationship of this variety to the yellower eastern American varieties of the fly agaric is currently under investigation. Amanita muscaria var. guessowii Region: Eastern/northeastern North America. From northeast Canada, as far south as the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee, and as far west as the great plains (Michigan is the furthest west point where the subspecies has been collected). Habitat: Mycorrhizal primarily with conifers, but can also occur with some deciduous trees. Characteristic Features
DNA studies have not yet shown that all guessowii are descended from a single ancestor, and its possible that the yellow cap is simply a common polymorhism in eastern fly agarics. Therefor it's possible that the term var. guessowii will become obsolete, and the mushroom will simply be known as the yellow form of Amanita amerimuscaria. If it can be demonstrated that this variety is monophyletic (descends from a single ancestor), then it would likely be renamed to Amanita amerimuscaria var. guessowii. Amanita muscaria var. persicina Region: Eastern/southeastern North America. Ranges from the gulf coast states up to New Jersey or southern New York. Habitat: Mycorrhizal predominantly with oak and pine Characteristic Features
DNAstudies have not yet shown that all persicina are descended from a single ancestor, and its possible that the peach-colored cap is simply a common polymorhism in eastern fly agarics. Therefor it's possible that the term var. persicina will become obsolete, and the mushroom will simply be known as the peach-colored form of Amanita amerimuscaria. If it can be demonstrated that this variety is monophyletic (descends from a single ancestor), then it would likely be renamed to Amanita amerimuscaria var. persicina. Amanita muscaria var. muscaria Region: Europe, north Asia, and western Alaska. Habitat: Mycorrhizal with birch, diverse conifers, and a few deciduous trees such as dwarf willow and eucalyptus. Characteristic Features
Amanita muscaria var. alba Region: Scattered throughout North America and parts of Eurasia Habitat: Mycorrhizal with coniferous and some deciduous trees. Characteristic Features
This white-capped variation seems to have arisen independently in several different regions, in both the Eurasian and the North American clades. It is clearly not monophyletic (decended from a single ancestor), and thus referring to it as a distinct subspecies is not really accurate. It's possible the term var. alba will become obsolete, and the mushroom will simply be known as the white-capped form of Amanita muscaria or Amanita amerimuscaria depending on where it occurs. Amanita muscaria var. regalis (= Amanita muscaria var. umbrina Fr. = Amanita regalis (Fr.) Michael) Region: Alaska and Scandinavia Habitat: Mycorrhizal with pine and spruce, as well as birch and some other deciduous trees. Characteristic Features
Because it has traditionally been considered a separate species, I'm unaware of anyone consuming it for the psychoactive effects typical of the fly agaric, but it presumably has a similar chemical composition. To the untrained eye, it may be mistaken for an Amanita pantherina mushroom, but a careful examination of the base of the stipe should differentiate the two. The PNW Yellow: Amanita muscaria var. unknown Region: Pacific Northwest Habitat: Unknown. Mycorrhizal, presumably with conifers, possibly some deciduous trees as well. Characteristic Features
Amanita muscaria var. formosa Region: Eurasia (considered to be widely distributed throughout North America by some sources; see below) Habitat: Mycorrhizal with hardwoods and conifers. Characteristic Features
In fact, the term var. formosais really an ambiguous term that is rapidly becoming obsolete, since it refers to a polymorphic form. Since it has arisen several times independently among Amanita muscaria populations, it is not monophyletic and it's therefor improper to refer to it as an explicit subspecies. It will likely come to be known as the yellow-capped formof Amanita muscaria. Liquid culture basics
By Vlad Tepes in Magic Mycology (Files)
Liquid tissue cultures are used to expand mycelium into a liquid solution to inoculate your chosen substrate. Liquid (tissue) cultures are used to expand mycelium into a liquid solution to inoculate your chosen substrate. Like a multi-spore syringe, except the spores have germinated into a network. Since the spores are already germinated; colonization times are substantially faster and inoculated substrates have an edge over contamination with speed. In addition to the significant speed boost over MS (multi spore) inoculation, mycelium is not harmed by hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), so this can be added to your substrate to help reduce contamination. Normally you can not do this until the mycelium has started growing, because H2O2 kills the spores. One spore syringe can be made into gallons of liquid culture. One spore print, agar culture and mushroom tissue can also make gallons. Liquid cultures are economical, as 1cc from a spore syringe can supply you with a large volume of liquid inoculant which can be used on many jars/bags. Also if the liquid inoculant is a clone (generated from sectored agar or mushroom tissue), then each jar should show similar growth speeds and maturity. Liquid cultures are normally at a 4% dilute solution of various sugars and other nutrients in water.This would be 4 grams of sugars per 96 ml/cc water. (Water weighs 1 gram per ml/cc.) Medium Some nutrient sources are:
Dextrose alone is usually not recommended, but will work, due to the lack of additional nutrients its growth may be slower but due to its clarity it may be easier to spot contamination. Light malt extract and honey can be used alone. Additional nutrients can be added such as peptone, various flours could be used but it is much harder to determine the stage of mycelium growth due to cloudiness. 1 tablespoon of light malt extract and 1 tablespoon dextrose were weighed out. These are the weights; 1 tablespoon light malt extract = 10.3g 1 tablespoon dextrose = 10.1g Give or take a point of a gram. Malt and Dextrose One member uses -- 1 tablespoon dry malt extract or dextrose to 250ml (1 cup) water. Another -- 2% dextrose and 2% light malt extract. This would equal close to 1/2 tablespoon dextrose and 1/2 tablespoon light malt extract per 250ml (1 cup) water. Nanook from Nan's Nook uses -- 1 level teaspoon dextrose (or light malt extract) to 75ml water. -OR- 1 1/4 teaspoon dextrose (or light malt extract) to 100ml water. Honey 4 cc/ml is the exact 4% ratio wanted. A syringe without the needle inserted is good to use as a measuring device. 1 teaspoon organic yellow honey to 100ml water is fairly close. Note on ratio of solution If your solution is a little off (3%-5%), don't worry. It'll still put out viable mycelium in most situations. It is better to be too weak a solution than too strong, too strong a sugar solution (around 10%) is toxic for the mycelium, and will not let anything grow in it (why jam is called preserve!) Mixing Once you have picked your method (which ever suits you best or is easiest to get) then its time to do some mixing. Optionally, water can be hot or warm before adding sugars to allow for quicker dissolving. Wrap top with aluminum foil and place jar in pressure cooker and slowly bring it up to 15 psi. for 15-20 min. Longer with Karo/Honey can cause carmelization. Allow pressure cooker to cool before removing. Vacu-tainers You can bore a small hole big enough for a syringe needle in the top of a jar. (Half pints work best for this) Now put a blob of silicone sealant on it (preferable transparent) on both sides. Swirl it around to make sure it is a centimeter thick around the hole on each side. This is a self healing inoculation point so you can add spores and suck up inoculant without having to open the jar after sterilization. If you band the jar tight before pressure cooking, it will form a vacuum and suck in spores, so you must only prick the injection spot quickly. If you leave the band loose, you should tighten it right after the pressure cooker has cooled down, as it will not have a vacuum seal. You should always wipe your silicone injection spot and needle (flame sterilize before) with alcohol before inoculation. Agitation Some people add a piece of broken glass, a glass marble or a pebble to the jar before sterilization. Agitating allows you to cut up the mycellium which can form into an unsuckable clump in the jar. This is why wide (18 gauge or lower) needles are preferable. A slightly more advanced method is adding a stir rod (or just a 1" piece of non-insulated wire) to the jar and using a magnetic stirring plate to agitate the mycelium. This is the preferred method of agitation because it doesn't have the potential to get your lid filter (polyfil for example) wet when you shake the jar, which can lead to contamination. Do it yourself (DIY) magnetic stirrers are pretty easy to make and there are a ton of guides available both on the Shroomery.org forums, and the Internet. (TODO) Add links Microwave sterilization It is possible to sterilize honey/Karo in the microwave. Be sure to add more water to the mixture as it will boil off during heating leaving you with a more concentrated sugar solution (this does not occur in a pressure cooker). Do not use metal bands in the microwave. Plastic lids are sold next to the metal ones. Never put thin metal like tinfoil or syringe needles in the microwave. Bring the liquid to a boil, then turn to low/defrost for about 15 minutes. KEEP THE CAP LOOSE! Allow it to cool completely in the microwave for a few hours. Sediments Once removed, some sediments may be present. To fix this, open up the jar and filter liquid through 2 coffee filters, stick liquid back in jar, cap with filter lid, and pressure cook again. If you have a lot of liquid you can decant it carefully into another jar leaving the sediment behind. (The sediments are not harmful but can be mistaken for mycelium growth, it is nicer to see clear growth) This should not be done with Karo/honey. After a few days with honey proteins may sink to the bottom or float around. After shaking these will re-mix. Aeration During sterilization/heating most of the oxygen will be driven out of the liquid. Shaking will help the network grow faster, but things like hooking up air flow to jars are not necessary. Be careful not to wet the filter patch (if using one) as this can cause contaminants to grow from the outside inwards through the filter. Growth Once inoculated by whatever means (spores, clone, agar), stick in a DARK place with a temp of 82-86F optimally, and room temperature if there is no incubator available. Signs of growth after one week max, and fully done at week 3 max. Some see growth in under a day and fully done in 3. Once growth has slowed down (done), either use immediately or store in a fridge. Storage Liquid cultures can be stored in a fridge for 6-8 months (or longer). Some add a little H2O2 (approx 1-3cc) at this point since the mycelium is able to handle it, this can help prevent contamination. Sugar carmelization With Karo and Honey, if you PC for too long your solution may turn yellowed. This is called caramelization and is over-baking of the sugars which may result in little or no growth at all. If this happens you can still try and grow a culture in the caramelized sugar jar, but if you are pressed for spores it is best to just start over. This is something you want to avoid. Liquids don't take very long to sterilize so you don't get any benefit from PCing for longer than 15-20 minutes max. Boil sterilization If you do not own a pressure cooker, boiling can also be used. Bring to a high rolling boil and boil your containers with water at least halfway up the jars for 20 minutes. Notes 1 ml water weighs 1 gram. 1 tablespoon dextrose weighs ~10 grams. (may vary slightly) 1 tablespoon light malt extract weighs ~10 grams. (may vary slightly) 10 ml honey weighs 14 grams. 1 tsp (5 ml) honey = 7 g 1 tbsp (15 ml) honey = 21 g Drying and Preservation of the MushroomsBy Vlad Tepes in Magic Mycology (Files)
Once you have grown and harvested some mushrooms, you need to think about preserving them. They will only keep for a short time in their fresh state. Sometimes a single mushroom needs to be harvested and it isn't enough for a dose. Other times, too many mushrooms will be fully grown for a single dose. Either way, you will be in a situation where you want to preserve them for later. And, even if this didn't happen, you may find your self in a situation where you simply don't have the time or inclination to trip. The good news is that if they are dried correctly, nearly all of the psycho-active compounds can be preserved for many months. There are several ways to dry them, but we will only cover the best way. What ever you do, don't use heat to dry them. Heat is very harmful to the psycho-active compounds. You will drastically reduce the mushroom's potency if you use heat to dry them. Materials needed:
The drying chamber needs to have a space at the bottom for water to collect. This allows the calcium chloride to function well for extended periods of time. As it pulls moisture from the air, it drips to the bottom of the chamber. The calcium chloride is held above the water by a circular section of the 1/4 inch wire mesh with a wash cloth spread out on it. See the following diagram for details. The wash cloth keeps the calcium chloride from falling through the wire mesh but any water that forms can drip through it to the bottom of the chamber. The calcium chloride should be spread out evenly. If you use too large of a Tupperware bowl, you may have to add some structural strength to the screen in order for it to support the calcium chloride. You can simply lay a stick or ruler underneath the mesh and use tie wraps to secure the mesh to it. Cut another circular section of mesh so that it fits above the calcium chloride and leaves a nice air gap. The mushrooms will be placed on this mesh in order to dry them. Make sure the calcium chloride is not touching the bottom of this screen. There should be an air gap between the top of the desiccant and the bottom of the screen. You do not want your mushrooms to touch the calcium chloride while they are drying because some of it will dissolve into the mushroom if this happens. That is the entire preparation for preserving your mushrooms with minimal loss of potency. In order to dry your mushrooms, simply harvest them and place them on the wire screen. Close the Tupperware container so it is air tight. The mushrooms will shrink and shrivel over the next couple of days. After about three days, they will be fairly hard and contain very little moisture. If you are not pushed for space inside the drying chamber, you may was well leave them there for five or six days to thoroughly dry them. After the mushrooms have been in the drying chamber for three days, they can be moved to a zip-lock bag for long term storage. Remember that the dryer the mushrooms are, the longer they will keep. Adaptation-18 The reason this system works so well to dry the mushrooms is the calcium chloride is a good desiccant. It has a very strong affinity for moisture and can pull almost all the moisture out of the air. Eventually however, liquid will start to collect in the bottom of the drying chamber. Mushrooms are 92% water by weight. This moisture has to go somewhere when the mushrooms are dried, and it will eventually find its way to the bottom of the container. When moisture starts to collect in the drying chamber you can simply drain it out and continue to use the old desiccant. The chamber will continue to work as long as there is sufficient calcium chloride in it. You should be careful not to contaminate the sides of the container or the top screen with residue from the desiccant. You do not want your mushrooms to touch the residue. For one thing, it tastes terrible, but in addition to this, the mushrooms will not dry completely. The residue will attract moisture. Whenever you empty the moisture, it is best to wash the Tupperware container completely. bemushröömedI do not recall which of us, my wife or I, first dared to put into words back in the forties the surmise that our own remote ancestors, perhaps 4000 years ago, worshipped a divine mushroom.
In the fall of 1952 we learned that the 16th century writers, describing the Indian cultures of Mexico, had recorded that certain mushrooms played a divine role in the religion of the natives. The so-called mushroom stones really represented mushrooms, and that they were the symbol of a religion, like the cross in the Christian religion or the star of Judea or the crescent of the Moslems. Thus we find a mushroom in the center of the cult with perhaps the longest continuous history in the world. We have found this cult of the divine mushroom a revelation, in the true meaning of that abused word, though for the Indians it is an everyday feature, albeit a holy mystery, of their lives. There are no apt words to characterize your state when you are, shall we say, "Bemushroomed." Whåt wë ñèéd î§ å vøçåßµlãr¥ tø d맩ríþê ªll thë mºdålïtïê§ ðf å dïvïñë ïñéþrïåñt. What we need is a vocabulary to describe all the modalities of a divine inebriant. These difficulties in communicating have played their part in certain amusing situations. Two psychiatrists who have taken the mushroom and known the experience in its full dimensions have been criticized in professional circles as being no longer "objective." Thus we are all divided into two classes: those who have taken the mushroom and are disqualified by our subjective experience and those who have not taken the mushroom and are disqualified by their total ignorance of the subject. I am profoundly grateful to my Indian friends for having initiated me into the tremendous mystery of the mushroom. Of alcohol they speak with the same jocular vulgarity that we do. But about mushrooms they prefer not to speak at all, at least when they are in company and especially when strangers, white strangers, are present. Then, when evening and darkness come and you are alone with a wise old man or woman whose confidence you have won, by the light of a candle held in the hand and talking in a whisper, you may bring up the subject. They are never exposed in the marketplace but pass from hand to hand by prearrangement. The Aztecs before the Spanish arrived called them Teonanacatl, God's flesh. I need hardly remind you of a disquieting parallel, the designation of the elements in our Eucharist: "Take, eat, this is my body ...", and again, "Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of Thy dear son..." The orthodox Christian must accept by faith the miracle of the conversion of the bread into God's flesh: That is what is meant by the Doctrine of Transubstantiation. By contrast, the mushroom of the Aztecs, carries its own conviction; every communicant will testify to the miracle that he has experienced. In the language of the Mazatecs the sacred mushrooms are called 'nti si tho. The first word, 'nti, is a particle expressing reverence and endearment. The second element means "that which springs forth." "The little mushroom comes of itself, no one knows whence, like the wind that comes we know not whence nor why." For more than four centuries the Indians have kept the divine mushroom close to their hearts, sheltered from desecration by white men, a precious secret. We know that today there are many curanderos who carry on the cult, each according to his lights, some of them consummate artists, performing the ancient liturgy in remote huts before miniscule congregations. They are hard to reach, these curanderos. Do not think that it is a question of money. Perhaps you will learn the names of a number of reknown curanderos, and your emissaries will even promise to deliver them to you, but then you wait and wait and they never come. You will brush past them in the marketplace, they will know you, but you will not know them. The judge in the town hall may be the very man you are seekng: And you may pass the time of day with him, yet never learn that he is your curandero. After all, would you have it any different? What priest of the Catholic Church will perform mass to satisfy an unbeliever's curiosity? Religion in primitive society was an awesome reality, "terrible" in the original meaning of the word, pervading all life and culminating in ceremonies that were forbidden to the profane. Let me point out certain parallels between our Mexican rite and the mystery performed at Eleusis. At the heart of the mystery of Eleusis lay a secret. In the surviving texts there are numerous references to the secret, but in none is it revealed. From the writings of the Greeks, from a fresco in Pompeii, we know that the initiate drank a potion. Then, in the depths of the night, he beheld a great vision, and the next day he was still so awestruck that he felt he would never be the same man as before. What the initiate experienced was "new, astonishing, inaccessible to rational cognition." It also seems significant that the Greeks were wont to refer to mushrooms as "the food of the gods," broma theon, and that Porphyrius is quoted as having called them "nurslings of the gods," Theotrophos. They were not for mortal man to eat, at least not every day. We might be dealing with what was in origin a religious tabu... I do not suggest that St. John of Patmos ate mushrooms in order to write the book of Revelation. Yet the succession of images in his vision, so clearly seen but such a phantasmagoria, means for me that he was in the same state as one bemushroomed. The advantage of the mushroom is that it puts many (if not everyone) within reach of this state without having to suffer the mortifications of Blake and St. John. It permits you to see, more clearly than our perishing mortal eye can see, vistas beyond the horizons of this life, to travel backwards and forwards in time. To enter other planes of existence, even (as the Indians say) to know God. All that you see during this night has a prisine quality: the landscape, the edifices, the carvings, the animals - they look as though they had come straight from the Maker's workshop. This newness of everything - it is as if the world had just dawned - overwhelms you and melts you with its beauty. All these things you see with an immediacy of vision that leads you to say to yourself, "Now I am seeing for the first time, seeing direct, without the intervention of mortal eyes." It is clear to me where Plato found his ideas. It was clear to his contemporaries too. Plato had drunk of the potion in the Temple of Eleusis and had spent the night seeing the great vision. And all the time you are seeing these things, the priestess sings, not loud but with authority. Your body lies in the darkness, heavy as lead, but your spirit seems to soar and leave the hut, and with the speed of thought to travel where it wishes in time and space, accompanied by the shaman's singing and by the ejaculations of her percussive chant. What you are seeing and what you are hearing appears as one: The music assumes harmonious shapes, giving visual form to its harmonies, and what you are seeing takes on the modalities of music - the music of the spheres. All your senses are similarly affected: The cigarette with which you occasionally break the tension of the night smells as no other cigarette before had ever smelled. The glass of water is infinitely better than champagne. The bemushroomed person is poised in space, a disembodied eye, invisible, incorporeal, seeing but not seen. In truth, he is the five senses disembodied, all of them keyed to the height of sensitivity and awareness, all of them blending into one another most strangely, until the person, utterly passive, becomes a pure receptor, infinitely delicate, of sensations. As your body lies there in its sleeping bag, your soul is free, loses all sense of time, alert as it never was before, living an eternity in a night, seeing infinity in a grain of sand. What you have seen and heard is cut as with a burin into your memory, never to be effaced. At last you know what the ineffable is and what ecstasy means. The mind harks back to the origin of that word. For the Greeks ekstasis meant the flight of the soul from the body. I can find no better word to describe the bemushroomed state. In common parlance, among the many who have not experienced ecstasy, ecstasy is fun, and I am frequently asked why I do not reach for mushrooms every night. But ecstasy is not fun. Your very soul is seized and shaken until it tingles. After all, who will chose to feel undiluted awe, or to float through that door yonder into the divine presence? The unknowing abuse the word, but we must recapture its full and terrifying sense. As man emerged from his brutish past, thousands of years ago, there was a stage in the evolution of his awareness when the discovery of a mushroom (or perhaps a higher plant) with miraculous properties was a revelation to him, a veritable detonator to his soul, arousing in him sentiments of awe and reverence, and gentleness and love, to the greatest pitch of which mankind is capable, all those sentiments and virtues that mankind has ever since regarded as the highest attributes of his kind. It made him see what the perishing mortal eye cannot see. The Greeks were right to hedge about the mystery, this imbibing of the potion, with secrecy and surveillance. What today is resolved into the effects of a mere drug, a tryptamine or lysergic acid derivative, was for them a prodigious miracle, inspiring in them poetry and philosophy and religion. Perhaps with all our modern knowledge we do not need the divine mushroom any more. Perhaps we need them more than ever. Some are shocked that the key to religion might be reduced to a drug. On the other hand, the drug is as mysterious as it ever was: Like the wind it cometh we know not whence nor why. If our classical scholars were given the opportunity to attend the rite at Eleusis, to talk with the priestess, they would exchange anything for that chance. They would approach the precincts, enter the hallowed chamber with the reverence born of the texts venerated by scholars for millennia. And what would be their frame of mind if they were invited to partake of the potion? Well, those rites take place now, unbeknownst to the classical scholars, in scattered dwellings, humble, thatched, without windows, far from the beaten track. If it is the rainy season, perhaps the mystery is accomplished by torrental rains and punctuated by terrifying thunderbolts. Then, indeed, as you lie there bemushroomed, listening to the music and seeing visions, you know a soul-shattering experience, recalling as you do the belief of some primitive peoples that mushrooms, the sacred mushrooms, are divinely engendered by Jupiter Fulminans, the god of the lightning bolt, in the soft mother earth. bemushröömed From Hallucinogenic Fungi of Mexico by Robert Gordon Wasson hypertexture=dimitri - audio©redits The History of Magic Mushrooms
Mushrooms
History Of Magic Mushrooms Prehistoric Psychedelic Mushrooms The oldest representations of hallucinogenic mushrooms in the world are in The Sahara Desert. They were produced 7000-9000 years ago. The idea that the use of hallucinogens should be a source of inspiration for some forms of prehistoric rock art is not a new one. After a brief examination of instances of such art, this article intends to focus its attention on a group of rock paintings in the Sahara Desert, the works of pre-neolithic Early Gatherers, in which mushrooms effigies are represented repeatedly. The polychromic scenes of harvest, adoration and the offering of mushrooms, and large masked gods covered with mushrooms, not to mention other significant details, lead us to suppose we are dealing with an ancient hallucinogenic mushroom cult. What is remarkable about these ethnomycological works, produced 7,000 - 9,000 years ago, is that they could indeed reflect the most ancient human culture as yet documented in which the ritual use of hallucinogenic mushrooms is explicitly represented. As the Fathers of modern ethno-mycology (and in particular R. Gordon Wasson) imagined, this Saharian testimony shows that the use of hallucinogens goes back to the Paleolithic Period and that their use always takes place within contexts and rituals of a mysfico-religious nature. Rock paintings and incisions of the prehistoric periods are to be found all over the world, and serve as a testimony to the preliterate history of human cultures. Rock art, the first permanent form of visual communication known to man, the same art which led to the invention of writing, goes back almost to the origins of mankind. In fact, in Tanzania, as in Australia, there are rock paintings which it would appear go back 40,000 years and more (Anati, 1989). Since most of the works of rock art were, or were related to, initiation rites, or were part of religious practice and its context, the idea that these works should be associated with the use of hallucinogenic vegetals (as has already been put forward for some specific cases on the basis of ethnographic and ethnobotanical data) comes as no surprise. This use, where it arises, is historically associated with controlled rituals involving social groups of varying dimensions. It is perhaps not a chance occurrence that the areas where examples of rock art are to be found - areas in which it is most often asserted that the use of hallucinogens might have taken place, on the basis of the scenes represented or on the basis of the consideration that this practice might have served as a source of inspiration - are also the areas where the most famous examples are to be found in terms of imagination, mythological significance and polychromy. In California, the rock art of the regions inhabited by the Chumash and Yokut, a polychromic manner of painting - particularly evident during the stylistic phase known as the Santa Barbara Painted Style' has been associated with the toloache cult centered around Jimsonweed (a hallucinogenic plant of the Datura genus) known to have been used by a number of Californian and Mexican Indian tribes (Compbell, 1965:63-64; Wellmann, 1978 and 1981). Apparently, the first examples of Chumash rock art date back to 5,000 years ago (Hyder & Oliver, 1983). The impressive Pecos River paintings in Texas have also been associated with the mescal' cult (Sophora secundiflora, hallucinogenic beans of which were used during rites of initiation on the part of the Indian tribes of the region) (Howard, 1957). Furst (1986) affirms that the mescal cult goes back 10,000 years, which is to say back to the Paleo-Indian Hunters Period at the end of the Pleistocene period. Archeological excavations carried out in the areas where paintings are to be found reveal mescal seeds which go back to 8,000 B.C, when Carbon-14 dated. Peyote (Lophophora williamsii) has also been found during some of these excavations (Campbell, 1958) An interesting and quite explicit use of cohoba, a hallucinogenic snuff taken from the Anadenanthera peregrina tree has been documented among the peoples of the Borbon Caves art in the Dominican Republic (Pagan Perdomo, 1978). This art is probably an example of the Late Antillian Culture of the Tainos and goes back to a period shortly before the arrival of the Spaniards. In this painting, the subject of inhalation of cohoba - by means of cane pipes - is repeatedly represented (Franch, 1982). Man And Mushrooms Further evidence in support of the idea that the relationship between Man and hallucinogens - in this case mushrooms - is indeed an ancient one comes from the ancient populations of the Sahara desert who inhabited this vast area when it was still covered with an extensive layer of vegetation (Samorini, 1989). The archeological findings consist in prehistoric paintings which the author personally had the opportunity to observe during two visits to Tassilli in Algeria. This could be the most ancient ethno-mycological finding up to the present day, which goes back to the so-called Round Heads Period (i.e. 9,000 - 7,000 years ago). The center of this style is Tassili, but examples are also to be found at Tadrart Acacus {Libya), Ennedi (Chad) and, to a lesser extent, at Jebel Uweinat (Egypt) (Muzzolini, 1986:173-175). Images of enormous mythological beings of human or animal form, side by side with a host of small horned and feathered beings in dancing stance cover the rock shelters of which there are very many on the high plateau of the Sahara which in some areas are so interconnected as to form true citadels with streets, squares and terraces. One of the most important scenes is to be found in the Tin-Tazarift rock art site, at Tassili, in which we find a series of masked figures in line and hieratically dressed or dressed as dancers surrounded by long and lively festoons of geometrical designs of different kinds. Each dancer holds a mushroom-like object in the right hand and, even more surprising, two parallel lines come out of this object to reach the central part of the head of the dancer, the area of the roots of the two horns. This double line could signify an indirect association or non-material fluid passing from the object held in the right hand and the mind. This interpretation would coincide with the mushroom interpretation if we bear in mind the universal mental value induced by hallucinogenic mushrooms and vegetals, which is often of a mystical and spiritual nature (Dobkin de Rios, 1984:194). It would seem that these lines - in themselves an ideogram which represents something non-material in ancient art - represent the effect that the mushroom has on the human mind. Mushrooms And Dung In a shelter in Tin Abouteka, in Tassili, there is a picture appearing at least twice which associates mushrooms and fish, a unique association of symbols among some cultures. Two mushrooms are depicted opposite each other, in a perpendicular position with regard to the fish motif and near the tail. Not far from here, above, we find other fish which are similar to the aforementioned but without the side-mushrooms. In the same Tin Abouteka scene, yet another remarkable image could be explained in the light of ethno-mycological enquiry. In the middle we find an anthropomorphous figure traced only by an outline. The image is not complete and the body is bending; it probably also has a bow behind this figure, we find two mushrooms which seem to be positioned as though they were coming out from behind the beings. If the mushrooms in question are those which grow in dung, the association between these mushrooms and the rear of the figure may not be purely casual. It is known that many psychotropic mushrooms (above all, Psilocybe and Panaeolus genera) live in dung of certain quadrupeds and in particular cows and horses. This specific ecological phenomenon cannot but have been taken into account with regard to the sacramental use of psychotropic mushrooms, leading to the creation of mystical religious relations between the mushroom and the animal which produces its natural habitat. The dung left by herds of quadrupeds were important clues for prehistoric hunters on the lookout for game, and the deepening of such schatological knowledge probably goes back to the Paleolithic period (the long period of the hunter of large game). Thus we have a further argument in favor of the version of events that would have it that there have been mythical associations, with religious interpretations, on different occasions, between the (sacred) animal and the hallucinogenic mushroom. The sacred deer in the Mesoamerican cultures and the cow in Indian Hindu culture (the dung of which provides a habitat for Psilocybe cubensis, a powerful hallucinogen still used today) could be interpreted in this zooschatological manner (Wasson, 1986:44; Furst, 1974; Samorini, 1988). In a painting at Jabbaren - one of the most richly endowed Tassili sites - there are at least 5 people portrayed in a row kneeling with their arms held up before them in front of three figures two of which are clearly anthropomorphous. It could be a scene of adoration in which the three figures would represent divinities or mythological figures. The two anthropomorphous figures have large horns while the upper portion of the third figure, behind them, is shaped like a large mushroom. If the scene is indeed a scene of adoration, it is an important testimonial as to Round Heads mystico-religious beliefs. This scene would thus be the representation of a Holy Trinity illustrated by a precise iconography. It is worth bearing in mind the fact that the upper part of one of the three figures in the adoration scene is mushroom-shaped. It could be related to the iconographic figure at Aouonrhat and Motaiem-Amazar described above. But the more or less anthropomorphous figures with mushroom.shaped heads are to be found repeatedly in Round Head art, some with hat-heads of unboned or papillate form which on two occasions are of a bluish color while others carry a leaf or a small branch. The occurrence of various data suggests the presence of a very ancient hallucinogenic mushroom cult with a complex differentiation between botanical species and related mythological representations. Indeed it would be remarkable to find out that, as part of the culture of the late Stone Age which 7,000 to 9,000 years ago produced Round Heads rock art, we were in the presence of the oldest human culture yet discovered in which explicit representations of the ritual use of psychotropic mushrooms are to be found. Therefore, as the founders of modern ethno-mycology had already put forward - and this is especially true of Wasson (1986) - this Saharian testimony would demonstrate that the use of hallucinogens originates in the Paleolithic period and is invariably include within mystico-religious contexts and rituals. The following text is taken from Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms Humanity's use of mushrooms extends back to Paleolithic times. Few peope-even anthropologists-comprehend how influential mushrooms have been in affecting the course of human evolution. Mushrooms have played pivotal roles in ancient Greece, India and Mesoamerica. Try to their beguiling nature, fungi have always elicited deep emotional responses: from adulation by those who understand them to outright fear by those who do not. Historical record reveals that mushrooms have been used for less than benign purposes. Claudius II and Pope Clement VII were both killed by enemies who poisoned them with deadly Amanitas. Buddha died, according to legend, from a mushroom that grew underground. Buddha was given the mushroom by a peasant who believed it to be a delicacy. In ancient verse, that mushroom was linked to the phrase pig's foot but has never been identified. (Although truffles grow underground and pigs are used to find them, no deadly poisonous species are known.) In the winter of 1991, hikers in the Italian Alps came across the well preserved remains of a man who died over 5,300 years ago, approximately 200 years later than the Tassili cave artist. Dubbed the Iceman by the news media, he was well equipped with a knapsack, flint ax, a string of dried Birch Polypores (Piptoporus betulinus) and another yet unidentified mushroom. The polypores can be used as tinder for starting fires and as medicine for treating wounds. Further, a rich tea with immuno-enhancing properties can be prepared by boiling these mushrooms. Equipped for traversing the wilderness, this intrepid adventurer had discovered the value of the noble polypores. Even today, this knowledge can be life-saving for anyone astray in the wilderness. Fear of mushroom poisoning pervades every culture, sometimes reaching phobic extremes. The term mycophobic describes those individuals and cultures where fungi are looked upon with fear and loathing. Mycophobic cultures are epitomized by the English and Irish. In contrast, mycophilic societies can be found throughout Asia and eastern Europe, especially amongst Polish, Russian and Italian peoples. These societies have enjoyed a long history of mushroom use, with as many as a hundred common names to describe the mushroom varieties they loved. The use of mushrooms by diverse cultures was intensively studied by an investment banker named R. Gordon Wasson. The Spanish persecutors, under the aegis of the Catholic Church, made every effort to totally stamp out Peyote use, subjecting the Indians to floggings, beatings, cruel tortures and even death if they persisted. One account states that as a continuation of three days of torture, a disobedient Indian had his eyes gouged out. The self-righteous Spanish then cut a crucifix into the flesh of his chest, and turned loose starving dogs to dine on his innards. They then went to church because they were devout christians. One of Wasson's most provocative findings can be found in Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality (1976) where he postulated that the mysterious SOMA in the Vedic literature, a red fruit leading to spontaneous enlightenment for those who ingested it, was actually a mushroom. Amanita Muscaria, The Hallucinogenic Fly Agaric Mushrooms Many cultures portray Amanita muscaria as the archetypal mushroom. Although some Vedic scholars disagree with his interpretation. Aristotle, Plato, and Sophocles all participated in religious ceremonies at Eleusis where an unusual temple honored Demeter, the Goddess of Earth. For over two millennia, thousands of pilgrims journeyed fourteen miles from Athens to Eleusis, paying the equivalent of a month's wage for the privilege of attending the annual ceremony. The pilgrims were ritually harassed on their journey to the temple, apparently in good humor. Upon arriving at the temple, the gathered in the initiation hall, a great telestrion. Inside the temple, pilgrims sat in rows that descended to a hidden, central chamber from which fungal concoction was served. The pilgrims spend the night together and reportedly came away forever changed. In this pavilion crowded with pillars, ceremonies occurred, known by historians as the Eleusian Mysteris. No revelation of the ceremony's secrets could be mentioned under the punishment of imprisonment or death. These ceremonies continued until repressed in the early centuries of the Christian era. Aristotle And Mushrooms That Aristotle and other founders of western philosophy undertook such intellectual adventures, and that this secret ceremony persisted for nearly 2,000 years, underscores the profound impact that fungal rites have had on the evolution of western consciousness. Note Amanitas in general are poisonous. Fly Agaric kills the constant user in approximately 20 years. If you take the responsibility of religious quests with psychoactive mushrooms and not recreational use Stropharia cubensis is what you must seek. A.G.A. [email protected] or qed!aga The QED BBS (310)420-9327 Suggestions And Precautions For The Use Of Hallucinogenic Drugs. 1. Know your sources. Many fake and adulterated versions of psychedelics are sold on the streets. 2. Do not attempt to pick wild psilocybin mushrooms without knowing what you are doing. 3. Cultivated psilocybin mushrooms vary greatly in potency. Get advice about dose before eating any. 4. Do not take psychedelics unless you are in good physical and psychological shape. 5. If you are trying one of the hallucinogenic drugs for the first time, take it with an experienced companion. 6. Take psychedelics only in comfortable settings on occasions when you have no responsibilities for at least the next twelve hours. 7. Remember that you may feel tired or drained of energy the following day. 8. Do not take psychedelics on a full stomach; you are less likely to feel nausea or other discomfort if your stomach is relatively empty. 9. Do not combine psychedelics with other drugs. However, the interesting effects of psychedelics sometimes wear off while their stimulation continues. If you feel agitated, restless, and unable to sleep at the end of an experience with one of these drugs, it may be appropriate to take a hypnotic dose of a sleeping pill or a minor tranquilizer. 10. Remember that hallucinogenic drugs can affect perception and thinking. Do not drive, operate machinery, or engage in hazardous activities while under their influence. 11. Take psychedelics by mouth. They are more likely to cause bad reactions by other routes of administration. 12. The best experiences with these drugs result from saving them for special occasions and the right circumstances. Like waking up, or celebrating a bowel movement. :) Taking them to get yourself out of bad moods may intensify these moods. Taking them frequently and carelessly reduces their potential to show you interesting aspects of yourself and the world around you. From chapter eight of "From Chocolate to Morphine" by Andrew Weil, M.D. and Winifred Rosen. The Mushrooms of Language Henry Munn from: Hallucinogens and Shamanism, Michael J. Harner, ed., ©1973, Oxford University PressThe Mazatec Indians, who have a long tradition of using the mushrooms, inhabit a range of mountains called the Sierra Mazateca in the northeastern corner of the Mexican state of Oaxaca. The shamans in this essay are all natives of the town of Huautla de Jimenez. Properly speaking they are Huautecans; but since the language they speak has been called Mazatec and they have been referred to in the previous anthropological literature as Mazatecs, I have retained that name, though strictly speaking, Mazatecs are the inhabitants of the village of Mazatlan in the same mountains. (1) HENRY MUNN has investigated the use of hallucinogenic plants among the Conibo Indians of eastern Peru and the Mazatec Indians of the mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico. Although not a professional anthropologist, he has resided for extended periods of time among the Mazatecs and is married to the niece of the shaman and shamaness referred to in this essay.
The Mazatec Indians eat the mushrooms only at night in absolute darkness. It is their belief that if you eat them in the daylight you will go mad. The depths of the night are recognized as the time most conducive to visionary insights into the obscurities, the mysteries, the perplexities of existence. Usually several members of a family eat the mushrooms together: it is not uncommon for a father, mother, children, uncles, and aunts to all participate in these transformations of the mind that elevate consciousness onto a higher plan. The kinship relation is thus the basis of the transcendental subjectivity that Husserl said is intersubjectivity. The mushrooms themselves are eaten in pairs, a couple representing man and woman that symbolizes the dual principle of procreation and creation. Then they sit together in their inner light, dream and realize and converse with each other, presences seated there together, their bodies immaterialized by the blackness, voices from without their communality. In a general sense, for everyone present the purpose of the session is a therapeutic catharsis. The chemicals of transformation of revelation that open the circuits of light, vision, and communication, called by us mind-manifesting, were known to the American Indians as medicines: the means given to men to know and to heal, to see and to say the truth. Among the Mazatecs, many, one time or another during their lives, have eaten the mushrooms, whether to cure themselves of an ailment or to resolve a problem; but it is not everyone who has a predilection for such extreme and arduous experiences of the creative imagination or who would want to repeat such journeys into the strange, unknown depths of the brain very frequently: those who do are the shamans, the masters, whose vocation it is to eat the mushrooms because they are the men of the spirit, the men of language, the men of wisdom. They are individuals recognized by their people to be expert in such psychological adventures, and when the others eat the mushrooms they always call to be with them, as a guide, one of those who is considered to be particularly acquainted with these modalities of the spirit. The medicine man presides over the session, for just as the Mazatec family is paternal and authoritarian, the liberating experience unfolds in the authoritarian context of a situation in which, rather than being allowed to speak or encouraged to express themselves, everyone is enjoined to keep silent and listen while the shaman speaks for each of those who are present. As one of the early Spanish chroniclers of the New World said: "They pay a sorcerer who eats them [the mushrooms] and tells them what they have taught him. He does so by means of a rhythmic chant in full voice." The Mazatecs say that the mushrooms speak. If you ask a shaman where his imagery comes from, he is likely to reply: I didn't say it, the mushrooms did. No mushroom speaks, that is a primitive anthropomorphization of the natural, only man speaks, but he who eats these mushrooms, if he is a man of language, becomes endowed with an inspired capacity to speak. The shamans who eat them, their function is to speak, they are the speakers who chant and sing the truth, they are the oral poets of their people, the doctors of the word, they who tell what is wrong and how to remedy it, the seers and oracles, the ones possessed by the voice. "It is not I who speak," said Heraclitus, "it is the logos." Language is an ecstatic activity of signification. Intoxicated by the mushrooms, the fluency, the ease, the aptness of expression one becomes capable of are such that one is astounded by the words that issue forth from the contact of the intention of articulation with the matter of experience. At times it is as if one were being told what to say, for the words leap to mind, one after another, of themselves without having to be searched for: a phenomenon similar to the automatic dictation of the surrealists except that here the flow of consciousness, rather than being disconnected, tends to be coherent: a rational enunciation of meanings. Message fields of communication with the world, others, and one's self are disclosed by the mush rooms The spontaneity they liberate is not only perceptual, but linguistic, the spontaneity of speech, of fervent, lucid discourse, of the logos in activity. For the shaman, it is as if existence were uttering itself through him. From the beginning, once what they have eaten has modified their consciousness, they begin to speak and at the end of each phrase they say tzo-"says" in their language-like a rhythmic punctuation of the said. Says, says, says. It is said. I say. Who says? We say, man says, language says, being and existence say. (2) Cross-legged on the floor in the darkness of huts, close to the fire, breathing the incense of copal, the shaman sits with the furrowed brow and the marked mouth of speech. Chanting his words, clapping his hands, rocking to and fro, he speaks in the night of chirping crickets. What is said is more concrete than ephemeral phantasmagoric lights: words are materializations of consciousness; language is a privileged vehicle of our relation to reality. Let us go looking for the tracks of the spirit, the shamans say. Let us go to the cornfield looking for the tracks of the spirits' feet in the warm ground. So then let us go walking ourselves along the path in search of significance, following the words of two discourses enregistered like tracks on magnetic tapes, then translated from the native tonal language, to discover and explicitate what is said by an Indian medicine man and medicine woman during such ecstatic experiences of the human voice speaking with rhythmic force the realities of life and society. The short, stout, elderly woman with her laughing moon face, dressed in a huipil, the long dress, embroidered with flowers and birds, of the Mazatec women, a dark shawl wrapped around her shoulders, her gray hair parted down the middle and drawn into two pigtails, golden crescents hanging from her ears, bent forward from where she knelt on the earthen floor of the hut and held a handful of mushrooms in the fragrant, purifying smoke of copal rising from the glowing coals of the fire, to bless them: known to the ancient Meso-Americans as the Flesh of God, called by her people the Blood of Christ. Through their miraculous mountains of light and rain, the Indians say that Christ once walked-it is a transformation of the legend of Quetzalcoatl-and from where dropped his blood, the essence of his life, from there the holy mushrooms grew, the awakeners of the spirit, the food of the luminous one. Flesh of the world. Flesh of language. In the beginning was the word and the word became flesh. In the beginning there was flesh and the flesh became linguistic. Food of intuition. Food of wisdom. She ate them, munched them up, swallowed them and burped; rubbed ground-up tobacco along her wrists and forearms as a tonic for the body; extinguished the candle; and sat waiting in the darkness where the incense rose from the embers like glowing white mist. Then after a while came the enlightenment and the enlivenment and all at once, out of the silence, the woman began to speak, to chant, to pray, to sing, to utter her existence: (3) My God, you who are the master of the whole world, what we want is to search for and encounter from where comes sickness, from where comes pain and affliction. We are the ones who speak and cure and use medicine. So without mishap, without difficulty, lift us into the heights and exalt us. From the beginning, the problem is to discover what the sickness is the sick one is suffering from and prognosticate the remedy. Medicine woman, she eats the mushrooms to see into the spirit of the sick, to disclose the hidden, to intuit how to resolve the unsolved: for an experience of revelations. The transformation of her everyday self is transcendental and gives her the power to move in the two relevant spheres of transcendence in order to achieve understanding: that of the other consciousness where the symptoms of illness can be discerned; and that of the divine, the source of the events in the world. Together with visionary empathy, her principal means of realization is articulation, discourse, as if by saying she will say the answer and announce the truth. It is necessary to look and think in her spirit where it hurts. I must think and search in your presence where your glory is, My Father, who art the Master of the World. Where does this sickness come from? Was it a whirlwind or bad air that fell in the door or in the doorway? So are we going to search and to ask, from the head to the feet, what the matter is. Let's go searching for the tracks of her feet to encounter the sickness that she is suffering from. Animals in her heart? Let's go searching for the tracks of her feet, the tracks of her nails. That it be alleviated and healed where it hurts. What are we going to do to get rid of this sickness? For the Mazatecs, the psychedelic experience produced by the mushrooms is inseparably associated with the cure of illness. The idea of malady should be understood to mean not only physical illness, but mental troubles and ethical problems. It is when something is wrong that the mushrooms are eaten. If there is nothing the matter with you there is no reason to eat them. Until recent times, the mushrooms were the only medicine the Indians had recourse to in times of sickness. 'I heir medicinal value is by no means merely magical, but chemical. According to the Indians, syphilis, cancer, and epilepsy have been alleviated by their use; tumors cured. They have empirically been found by the Indians to be particularly effective for the treatment of stomach disorders and irritations of the skin. The woman whose words we are listening to, like many, discovered her shamanistic vocation when she was cured by the mushrooms of an illness: after the death of her husband she broke out all over with pimples; she was given the mushrooms to see whether they would "help" her and the malady disappeared. Since then she has eaten them on her own and given them to others. If someone is sick, the medicine man is called. The treatment he employs is chemical and spiritual. Unlike most shamanistic methods, the Mazatec shaman actually gives medicine to his patients: by means of the mushrooms he administers to them physiologically, at the same time as he alters their consciousness. It is probably for psychosomatic complaints and psychological troubles that the liberation of spontaneous activity provoked by the mushrooms is most remedial: given to the depressed, they awaken a catharsis of the spirit; to those with problems, a vision of their existential way. If he hasn't come to the conclusion that the illness is incurable, the medicine man repeats the therapeutic sessions three times at intervals. He also works over the sick, for his intoxicated condition of intense, vibrant energy gives him a strength to heal that he exercises by massage and suction. His most important function, however, is to speak for the sick one. The Mazatec shamans eat the mushrooms that liberate the fountains of language to be able to speak beautifully and with eloquence so that their words, spoken for the sick one and those present, will arrive and be heard in the spirit world from which comes benediction or grief. The function of the speaker, nevertheless, is much more than simply to implore. The shaman has a conception of poesis (4) in its original sense as an action: words themselves are medicine. To enunciate and give meaning to the events and situations of existence is life giving in itself. "The psychoanalyst listens, whereas the shaman speaks," points out Levi-Strauss: When a transference is established, the patient puts words into the mouth of the psychoanalyst by attributing to him alleged feelings and intentions; in the incantation, on the contrary, the shaman speaks for his patient. He questions her and puts into her mouth answers that correspond to the interpretation of her condition. A pre-requisite role-that of listener for the psychoanalyst and of orator for the shaman-establishes a direct relationship with the patient's conscious and an indirect relationship with his unconscious. This is the function of the incantation proper. The shaman provides the sick woman with a language by means of which unexpressed and otherwise inexpressible psychic states can be immediately expressed. And it is the transition to this verbal expression-at the same time making it possible to undergo in an ordered and intelligible form a real experience that would otherwise be chaotic and inexpressible-which induces the release of the physiological process, that is, the reorganization, in a favorable direction, of the process to which the sick woman is subjected. (5) These remarks of the French anthropologist become particularly relevant to Mazatec shamanistic practice when one considers that the effect of the mushrooms, used to make one capable of curing, is to inspire the shaman with language and transform him into an oracle. "That come all the saints, that come all the virgins," chants the medicine woman in her sing-song voice, invoking the beneficent forces of the universe, calling to her the goddesses of fertility, the virgins: fertile ones because they have not been sowed and are fresh for the seed of men to beget children in their wombs. The Virgin of Conception and the Virgin of the Nativity. That Christ come and the Holy Spirit. Fifty-three Saints. Fifty-three Saintesses. That they sit down at her side, on her mat, on her bed, to free her from sickness. The wife of the man in whose house she was speaking was pregnant and throughout the session of creation, from the midst of genesis, her language as spontaneous as her being that has begun to vibrate, she concerns herself with the emergence of life, with the birth of an existence into that everyday social world that. her developing discourse expresses: With the baby that is going to come there is no suffering, says. It's a matter of a moment, there isn't going to be any suffering, says. From one moment to another it will fall into the world, says. From one moment to another, we are going to save her from her woe, says. That her innocent creature come without mishap, says. Her elf. That is what it is called when it is still in the womb of its mother. From one moment to another, that her innocent creature, her elf come, says. "We are going to search and question," she says, "untie and disentangle." She is on a journey, for there is distanciation and going there, somewhere, without her even moving from the spot where she sits and speaks. Her consciousness is roaming throughout existential space. Sibyl, seer, and oracle, she is on the track of significance and the pulsation of her being is like the rhythm of walking. "Let us go searching for the path, the tracks of her feet, the tracks of her nails. From the right side to the left side, let us look." To arrive at the truth, to solve problems and to act with wisdom, it is necessary to find the way in which to go. Meaning is intentional. Possibilities are paths to be chosen between. For the Indian woman, footprints are images of meaning, traces of a going to and from, sedimented clues of significance to be looked for from one side to the other and followed to where they lead: indicators of directionality; signs of existence. The hunt for meaning is a temporal one, carried into the past and projected into the future; what happened? she inquires, what will happen? leaving behind for what is ahead go the footprints between departure and arrival: manifestations of human, existential ecstasis. And the method of looking, from the right side to the left side, is the articulation of now this intuition, fact, feeling or wish, now that, the intention of speaking bringing to light meanings whose associations and further elucidations are like the discovery of a path where the contents to be uttered are tracks to be followed into the unexplored, the unknown and unsaid into which she adventures by language, the seeker of significance, the questioner of significance, the articulator of significance: the significance of existence that signifies with signs by the action of speaking the experience of existence. "Woman of medicines and curer, who walks with her appearance and her soul," sings the woman, bending down to the ground and straightening up, rocking back and forth as she chants, dividing the truth in time to her words: emitter of signs. "She is the woman of the remedy and the medicine. She is the woman who speaks. The woman who puts everything together. Doctor woman. Woman of words. Wise woman of problems." She is not speaking, most of the time, for any particular person, but for everyone: all who are afflicted, troubled, unhappy, puzzled by the predicaments of their condition. Now, in the course of her discourse, uttering realities, not hallucinations, talking of existence in a communal world where the we is more frequent than the I, she comes to a more general sickness and aggravation than physical illness: the economic condition of poverty in which her people live. "Let us go to the cornfield searching for the tracks of the feet, for her poorness and humility. That gold and silver come," she prays. "Why are we poor? Why are we humble in this town of Huautla?" That is the paradox: why in the midst of such great natural wealth as their fertile, plentiful mountains where waterfalls cascade through the green foliage of leaves and ferns, should they be miserable from poverty, she wants to know. The daily diet of the Indians consists of black beans and tortillas covered with red chili sauce; only infrequently, at festivals, do they eat meat. White spots caused by malnutrition splotch their red faces. Babies are often sick. It is wealth she pleads for to solve the problem of want. The mushrooms, which grow only during the season of torrential rains, awaken the forces of creation and produce an experience of spiritual abundance, of an astonishing, inexhaustible constitutionof forms that identifies them with fertility and makes them a mediation, a means of communion, of communication between man and the natural world of which they are the metaphysical flesh. The theme of the shamaness, mother and grandmother, woman of fertility, bending over as she chants and gathering the earth to her as if she were collecting with her hands the harvest of her experience, is that of giving birth, is that of growth. Agriculturalists, they are people of close family interrelationships and many children: the clusters of neolithic thatch-roofed houses on the mountain peaks are of extended family groups. The woman's world is that of the household, her concern is for her children and all the children of her people. "All the family, the babies and the children, that happiness come to them, that they grow and mature without anything befalling them. Free them from all classes of sickness that there are here in the earth. Without complaint and with good will," she says, "so will come well-being, will come gold. Then we will have food. Our beans, our gourds, our coffee, that is what we want. That come a good harvest. That come richness, that come well-being for all of our children. All my shoots, my children, my seeds," she sings. But the world of her children is not to be her world, nor that of their grandfathers. Their indigenous society is being transformed by the forces of history. Until only recently, isolated from the modern world, the Indians lived in their mountains as people lived in the neolithic. There were only paths and they walked everywhere they went. Trains of burros carried out the principal crop-coffee-to the markets in the plain. Now roads have been built, blasted out of rock and constructed along the edges of the mountains over precipices! to connect the community with the society beyond. The children are people of opposites: just as they speak two languages, Mazatec and Spanish, they live between two times: the timeless, cyclical time of recurrence of the People of the Deer and the time of progress, change and development of modern Mexico. In her discourse, no stereotyped rite or traditional ceremony with prescribed words and actions, speaking of everything, of the ancient and the modern, of what is happening to her people, the woman of problems, peering into the future, recognizes the inevitable process of transition, of disintegration and integration, that confronts her children: the younger generation destined to live the crisis and make the leap from the past into the future. For them it is necessary to learn to read and to write and to speak the language of this new world and in order to advance themselves, to be educated and gain knowledge, contained in books, radically different from the traditions of their own society whose language is oral and unwritten, whose implements are the hoe, the axe, and the machete. Also a book is needed, says. Good book. Book of good reading in Spanish, says. In Spanish. All your children, your creatures, that their thought and their custom change, says. For me there is no time. Without difficulty, let us go, says. With tenderness. With freshness. With sweetness. With good will. "Don't leave us in darkness or blind us," she begs the origins of light, for in these supernatural modalities of consciousness there are dangers on every hand of aberration and disturbance. "Let us go along the good path. The path of the veins of our blood. The path of the Master of the World. Let us go in a path of happiness." The existential way, the conduct of one's life, is an idea to which she returns again and again. The paths she mentions are the moral, physical, mental, emotional qualities typical of the experience of animated conscious activity from the midst of which spring her words: goodness, vitality, reason, transcendence, and joy. Seated on the ground in the darkness, seeing with her eyes closed, her thought travels within along the branching arteries of the bloodstream and without across the fields of existence. There is a very definite physiological quality about the mushroom experience which leads the Indians to say that by a kind of visceral introspection they teach one the workings of the organism: it is as if the system were projected before one into a vision of the heart, the liver, lungs, genitals, and stomach. In the course of the medicine woman's discourse, it is understandable that she should, from astonishment, from gratitude, from the knowledge of experience, say something about the mushrooms that have provoked her condition of inspiration. In a sense, to speak of "the mushroom experience" is a reification as absurd as the anthropomorphization of the mushrooms when it is said that they talk: the mushrooms are merely the means, in interaction with the organism, the nervous system, and the brain, of producing an experience grounded in the ontological-existential possibilities of the human, irreducible to the properties of a mushroom. The experience is psychological and social. What is spoken of by the shamaness is her communal world; even the visions of her imagination must have their origin in the context of her existence and the myths of her culture. The subject of another society will have other visions and express a different content in his discourse. It would seem probable, however, that apart from emotional similarities, colored illuminations, and the purely abstract patterns of a universal conscious activity, between the experiences of individuals with differing social inherences, the common characteristic would be discourse, for judging by their effect the chemical constituents of the mushrooms have some connection with the linguistic centers of the brain. "So says the teacher of words," says the woman, "so says the teacher of matters." It is paradoxical that the rediscovery of such chemicals should have related their effects to madness and pejoratively called them drugs, when the shamans who used them spoke of them as medicines and said from their experience that the metamorphosis they produced put one into communication with the spirit. It is precisely the value of studying the use in so-called primitive societies of such chemicals that the way be found beyond the superficial to a more essential understanding of phenomena which we, with our limited conception of the rational, have too quickly, perhaps mistakenly, termed irrational, instead of comprehending that such experiences are revelations of a primordial existential activity, of "a power of signification, a birth of sense or a savage sense." (6) What are we confronted with by the shamanistic discourse of the mushroom eaters? A modality of reason in which the logos of existence enunciates itself, or by the delirium and incoherence of derangement? "They are doing nothing but talk," says the medicine woman, "those who say that these matters are matters of the past. They are doing nothing but talk, the people who call them crazy mushrooms." They claim to have knowledge of what they do not have any experience of; consequently their contentions are nonsense: nothing but expressions of the conventionality the mushrooms explode by their disclosure of the extraordinary; mere chatter if it weren't for the fact that the omnipotent They forms the force of repression which, by legislation and the implementation of authority, has come to denominate infractions of the law and the code of health, the means of liberation that once were called medicines. In a time of pills and shots, of scientific medicine, the wise woman is saying, the use of the mushrooms is not an anachronistic and obsolete vestige of magical practices: their power to awaken consciousness and cure existential ills is not any the less relevant now than it was in the past. She insists that it is ignorance of our dimension of mystery, of the wellsprings of meaning, to think that their effect is insanity. "Good and happiness," she says, naming the emotions of her activized, perceptualized being. "They are not crazy mushrooms. They are a remedy, says. A remedy for decent people. For the foreigners," she says, speaking of us, wayfarers from advanced industrial society, who had begun to arrive in the high plazas of her people to experiment with the psychedelic mushrooms that grew in the mountains of the Mazatecs. She has an inkling of the truth, that what we look for is a cure of our alienations, to be put back in touch, by violent means if necessary, with that original, creative self that has been alienated from us by our middle-class families, education, and corporate world of employment. "There in their land, it is taken account of, that there is something in these mushrooms, that they are good, of use," she says. "The doctor that is here in our earth. The plant that grows in this place. With this we are going to put together, we are going to alleviate ourselves. It is our remedy. He that suffers from pain and illness, with this it is possible to alleviate him. They aren't called mushrooms. They are called prayer. They are called well-being. They are called wisdom. They are there with the Virgin, Our Mother, the Nativity." The Indians do not call the mushrooms of light mushrooms, they call them the holy ones. For the shamaness, the experience they produce is synonymous with language, with communication, on behalf of her people, with the supernatural forces of the universe; with plenitude and joyfulness; with perception, insight, and knowledge. It is as if one were born again; therefore their patroness is the Goddess of Birth, the Goddess of Creation. With prayers we will get rid of it all. With the prayers of the ancients. We will clean ourselves, we will purify ourselves with clear water, we will wash our intestines where they are infected. That sicknesses of the body be gotten rid of. Sicknesses of the atmosphere. Bad air. That they be gotten rid of, that they be removed. That the wind carry them away. For this is the doctor. For this is the plant. For this is the sorcerer of the light of day. For this is the remedy. For this is the medicine woman, the woman doctor who resolves all classes of problems in order to rid us of them with her prayers. We are going with well-being, without difficulty, to implore, to beg, to supplicate. Well being for all the babies and the creatures. We are going to beg, to implore for them, to beseech for their well-being and their studies, that they live, that they grow, that they sprout. That freshness come, tenderness, shoots, joy. That we be blessed, all of us. She goes on talking and talking, non-stop; there are lulls when her voice slows down, fades out almost to a whisper; then come rushes of inspiration, moments of intense speech; she yawns great yawns, laughs with jubilation, claps her hands in time to her interminable singsong; but after the setting out, the heights of ecstasy are reached, the intoxication begins to ebb away, and she sounds the theme of going back to normal, everyday conscious existence again after this excursion into the beyond, of rejoining the ego she has transcended: We are going to return without mishap, along a fresh path, a good path, a path of good air; in a path through the cornfield, in a path through the stubble, without complaint or any difficulty, we return without mishap. Already the cock has begun to crow. Rich cock that reminds us that we live in this life. The day that dawns is that of a new world in which there is no longer any need to walk to where you go. "With tenderness and freshness, let us go in a plane, in a machine, in a car. Let us go from one side to another, searching for the tracks of the fists, the tracks of the feet, the tracks of the nails." It seemed that she had been speaking for eight hours. The seconds of time were expanded, not from boredom, but from the intensity of the lived experience. In terms of the temporality of clocks, she had only been speaking for four hours when she concluded with a vision of the transcendence that had become immanent and had now withdrawn from her. "There is the flesh of God. There is the flesh of Jesus Christ. There with the Virgin." The most frequently repeated words of the woman are freshness and tenderness; those of the shaman, whose discourse we will now consider, are fear and terror: what one might call the emotional poles of these experiences. There is an illness that the Mazatecs speak of that they name fright. We say traumatism. They walk through their mountains along their arduous paths on the different levels of being, climbing and descending, in the sunlight and through the clouds; all around there are grottos and abysses, mysterious groves, places where live the laa, the little people, mischievous dwarfs and gnomes. Rivers and wells are inhabited by spirits with powers of enchantment. At night in these altitudes, winds whirl up from the depths, rush out of the distance like monsters, and pass, tearing everything in their path with their fierce claws. Phantoms appear in the mists. There are persons with the evil eye. Existence in the world and with others is treacherous, perilous: unexpectedly something may happen to you and that event, unless it is exorcised, can mark you for life. The Indians say following the beliefs of their ancestors, the Siberians, that the soul is sometimes frightened from one, the spirit goes, you are alienated from yourself or possessed by another: you lose yourself. It is for this neurosis that the shamans, the questioners of enigmas, are the great doctors and the mushrooms the medicine. It is the task of the Mazatec shaman to look for the extravagated spirit, find it, bring it back, and reintegrate the personality of the sick one. If necessary, he pays the powers that have appropriated the spirit by burying cacao, beans of exchange, wrapped in the bark cloth of offerings, at the place of fright which he has divined by vision. The mushrooms, the shamans say, show: you see, in the sense that you realize, it is disclosed to you. "Bring her spirit, her soul," implores the medicine woman to whom we have just been listening. "Let her spirit come back from where it got lost, from where it stayed, from where it was left behind, from wherever it is that her spirit is wandering lost." With just such a traumatic experience, began the shamanistic vocation of the man we will now study. In his late fifties, he has been eating the mushrooms for nine years. Why did he begin? "I began to eat them because I was sick," he said when asked.(7) No matter how much the doctors treated me, I didn't get well. I went to the Latin American Hospital. I went to Cordoba as well. I went to Mexico. I went to Tehuacan and wasn't alleviated. Only with the mushrooms was I cured. I had to eat the mushrooms three times and the man from San Lucas, who gave them to me, proposed his work as a medicine man to me, telling me: now you are going to receive my study. I asked him why he thought I was going to receive it when I didn't want to learn anything about his wisdom, I only wanted to get better and be cured of my illness. Then he answered me: now it is no longer you who command. It is already the middle of the night. I am going to leave you a table with ground tobacco on it and a cross underneath it so that you learn this work. Tell me which of these things you choose and like the best of all, he said, when everything was ready. Which of these works do you want? I answered that I didn't want what he offered me. Here you don't give the orders, he replied; I am he who is going to say whether you receive this work or not because I am he who is going to give you your diploma in the presence of God. Then I heard the voice of my father. He had been dead for forty-three years when he spoke to me the first time that I ate the mushrooms: This work that is being given to you, he said, I am he who tells you to accept it. Whether you can see me or not, I don't know. I couldn't imagine from where this voice came that was speaking to me. Then it was that the shaman of San Lucas told me that the voice I was hearing was that of my father. The sickness from which I was suffering was alleviated by eating the mushrooms. So I told the old man, I am disposed to receive what it is that you offer me, but I want to learn everything. Then it was that he taught me how to suck through space with a hollow tube of cane. To suck through space means that you who are seated there, I can draw the sickness out of you by suction from a distance. What had begun as a physical illness, appendicitis, became a traumatic neurosis. The doctors wheeled him into an operating room-he who had never been in a hospital in his life-and suffocated him with an ether mask. And he gave up the ghost while they cut the appendix out of him. When he came to, he lay frightened and depressed, without any will to live, he'd had enough. Instead of recuperating, he lay like a dead man with his eyes wide open, not saying anything to anyone, what was the use, his life had been a failure, he had never become the important man he had aspired all his life to be, now it was too late; his life was over and he had done nothing that his children might remember with respect and awe. The doctors couldn't help him because there was nothing wrong with him physically; contrary to what he believed, he had survived the operation; the slash into his stomach had been sewn up and had healed; nevertheless, he remained apathetic and unresponsive, for he had been terrified by death and his spirit had flown away like a bird or a fleet-footed deer. He needed someone to go out and hunt it for him, to bring back his spirit and resuscitate him. The medicine man, from the nearby village of San Lucas, whom he called to him when the modern doctors failed to cure him of the strange malady he suffered from, was renowned throughout the mountains as a great shaman, a diviner of destiny. The short, slight, wizened old man was 105 years old. He gave to his patient, who was suffering from depression, the mushrooms of vitality, and the therapy worked. He vividly relived the operation in his imagination. According to him, the mushrooms cut him open, arranged his insides, and sewed him up again. One of the reasons he hadn't recovered was his conviction that materialistic medicine was incapable of really curing since it was divorced from all cooperation with the spirits and dependence upon the supernatural. In his imagination, the mushrooms performed another surgical intervention and corrected the mistakes of the profane doctor which he considered responsible for his lingering lethargy. He went through the whole process in his mind. It was as if he were operating upon himself, undoing what had been done to him, and doing it over again himself. The trauma was exorcised. By intensely envisioning with a heightened, expanded consciousness what had happened to him under anesthesia, he assumed at last the frightening event he had previously been unable to integrate into his experience. His physiological cure was completed psychologically; he was finally healed by virtue of the assimilative, creative powers of the imagination. The dead man came back to life, he wanted to live because he felt once again that he was alive and had the force to go on living: once exhausted and despondent, he was now invigorated and rejuvenated. The cure is successful because not only is his spirit awakened, but he is offered another future: a new profession that is a compensation for his humble one as a storekeeper. The ancient wise man, on the brink of death, wants to transmit to the man in his prime, his knowledge. What he encounters is resistance. The other doesn't want to assume the vocation of shaman, he only wants to be cured, without realizing that the cure is inseparable from the acceptance of the vocation which will release him from the repression of his creative forces that has caused the neurosis with which he is afflicted. It is no longer you who command, he is told, for his impulse to die is stronger than his desire to live; therefore the counterforce, if it is to be effective, cannot be his: it must be the will of the other transferred to him. You are too far gone to have any say in the matter, the medicine man tells him, it is already the middle of the night. By negating the will of his patient, he arouses it and prepares him to accept what is being suggested to him. He shows him the table, the tobacco, the cross: signs of the shaman's work. The table is an altar at which to officiate.. When the Mazatecs eat the mushrooms they speak of the sessions as masses. The shaman, even though a secular figure unordained by the Church, assumes a sacerdotal role as the leader of these ceremonies. In a similar way, for the Indians each father of a family is the religious priest of his household. The tobacco, San Pedro, is believed to have powerful magical and remedial values. The cross indicates a crossing of the ways, an intersection of existential paths, a change, as well as being the religious symbol of crucifixion and resurrection. The shaman tells him to choose. Still the man refuses. You don't give the orders, says the medicine man intent upon evoking the patient's other self in order to bring him back to life, the I who is another. Whether you want to or not, you are going to receive your diploma, he says, to incite him with the prospect of award and reputation. Living in an oral culture without writing, where the acquisition of skills is traditional, handed down from father to son, mother to daughters rather than contained in books, for the Mazatecs wisdom is gained during the experiences produced by the mushrooms: they are experiences of vision and communication that impart knowledge. Now he is spoken to. The inner voice is suddenly audible. He hears the call. He is told to accept the vocation of medicine man that he has hitherto adamantly. refused. He cannot recognize this voice as his own, it must be another's; and the shaman, intent upon giving him a new destiny, sure of the talent he has divined, interprets for him from what region of himself springs the command he has heard. It is your father who is telling you to accept this work. A characteristic of such transcendental experiences is that family relationships, in the nexus of which personality is formed, become present to one with intense vividness. His superego, in conjunction with the liberation of his vitality, has spoken to him and his resistance is liquidated; he decides to live and accepts the new vocation around which his personality is reintegrated: he becomes an adept of the dimensions of consciousness where live the spirits; a speaker of mighty words. In his house, we entered a room with bare concrete walls and a high roof of corrugated iron. His wife, wrapped in shawls, was sitting on a mat. His children were there; his family had assembled to eat the mushrooms with their father; one or two were given to the children of ten and twelve. The window was closed and with the door shut, the room was sealed off from the outside world; nobody would be permitted to leave until the effect of what they had eaten had passed away as a precaution against the peril of derangement. He was a short, burly man, dressed in a reefer jacket over a tee shirt, old brown bell-bottomed pants down to his short feet, an empty cartridge belt around his waist. In daily life, he is the owner of a little store stocked meagerly with canned goods, boxes of crackers, beer, soda, candy, bread, and soap. He sits behind the counter throughout the day looking out upon the muddy street of the town where dogs prowl in the garbage between the legs of the passers-by. From time to time he pours out a shot glass of cane liquor for a customer. He himself neither smokes nor drinks. He is a hunter in whom the instincts of his people survive from the time when they were chasers of game as well as agriculturalists: inhabitants of the Land of the Deer. Now it is night-time and he prepares to exercise his shamanistic function. His great-grandfather was one of the counselors of the town and a medicine man. With the advent of modern medicine and the invasion of the foreigners in search of mushrooms, the shamanistic customs of the Mazatecs have almost completely vanished. He himself no longer believes many of the beliefs of his ancestors, but as one of the last oral poets of his people, he consciously keeps alive their traditions. "How good it is," he says, "to talk as the ancients did." He hardly speaks Spanish and is fluent only in his native language. Spreading out the mushrooms in front of him, he selected and handed a bunch of them to each of those present after blessing them in the smoke of the copal. Once they had been eaten, the lights were extinguished and everyone sat in silence. Then he began to speak, seated in a chair from which he got up to dance about, whirling and scuffling as he spoke in the darkness. It was pouring, the rain thundering on the roof of corrugated iron. There were claps of thunder. Flashes of lightning at the window. Christ, Our Lord, illuminate me with the light of day, illuminate my mind. Christ, Our Lord, don't leave me in darkness or blind me, you who know how to give the light of day, you who illuminate the night and give the light. So did the Holy Trinity that made and put together the world of Christ, Our Lord, illuminated the Moon, says; illuminated the Big Star, says; illuminated the Cross Star, says; illuminated the Hook Star, says; illuminated the Sandal, says; illuminated the Horse, says. One who eats the mushroom sinks into somnolence during the transition from one modality of consciousness to another, into a deep absorption, a reverie. Gradually colors begin to well up behind closed eyes. Consciousness becomes consciousness of irradiations and effulgences, of a flux of light patterns forming and unforming, of electric currents beaming forth from within the brain. At this initial moment of awakenment, experiencing the dawn of light in the midst of the night, the shaman evokes the illumination of the constellations at the genesis of the world. Mythopoetical descriptions of the creation of the world are constant themes of these creative experiences. From the beginning, the vision his words create is cosmological. Subjective phenomena are given correlates in the elemental, natural world. One is not inside, but outside. "This old hawk. This white hawk that Saint John the Evangelist holds. That whistles in the dawn. Whistles in the light of day. Whistles over the water." Wings spread wide, the annunciatory bird, image of ascent, circles in the sky of the morning, drifting on the wind of the spirit above the primordial terrain the speaker has begun to explore and delineate, his breathing, his inhalations and exhalations, as amplified as his expanded being: an explanation for the sudden expulsion of air, the whooshes and high-pitched, eerie whistles of the shamans on their transcendental flights into the beyond. "Straight path, says. Path of the dawn, says. Path of the light of day, says." Through the fields of being there are many directions in which to go, existences are different ways to live life. The idea of paths, that appears so frequently in the shamanistic discourses of the Mazatecs comes from the fact that these originary experiences are creative of intentions. To be in movement, going along a path, is an expressive vision of the ecstatic condition. The path the speaker is following is thatwhich leads directly to his destination, to the accomplishment of his purpose; the path of the beginning disclosed by the rising sun at the time of setting out; the path of truth, of clarity, of that revealed in its being there by the light of day. "Where the tenderness of San Francisco Huehuetlan is, says. Where the Holy Virgin of San Lucas is, says. Where San Francisco Tecoatl is, says. San Geronimo Tecoatl, says." He begins to name the towns of his mountainous environment, to call the landscape into being by language and transform the real into signs. It is no imaginary world of fantasy he is creating, as those one has become accustomed to hearing of from the accounts of dreamers under the effects of such psychoactive chemicals, fabled lands of nostalgia, palaces, and jeweled perspectives, but the real world in which he lives and works transfigured by his visionary journey and its linguistic expression into a surreal realm where the physical and the mental fuse to produce the glow of an enigmatic significance. "I am he who speaks with the father mountain. I am he who speaks with danger, I am going to sweep in the mountains of fear, in the mountains of nerves." The other I announces itself, the transcendental ego, the I of the voice, the I of force in communication with force. His existence intensified, he posits himself by his assertions: I am he who. The simultaneous reference to himself in the first and third person as subject and object indicates the impersonal personality of his utterances, uttered by him and by the phenomena themselves that express themselves through him. Arrogantly he affirms his shamanistic function as the mediator between man and the powers that determine his fate; he is the one who converses with all connoted by father: power, authority, and origin. He is the one who is on familiar terms with the sources of fright. The conception of existence manifested by his words is one of peril, anxiety, and terror: experiences of which he has become knowledgeable by virtue of his own traumas, his life as a hunter, and his adventures into the weird, secret regions of the psyche. Where there is foreboding and trembling, the medicine man tranquilizes by exorcising the causes of disturbance. His work lies among the nerves, not in the underworld, but on the heights, places of as much anguish as the depths, where the elation of elevation is accompanied by the fear of falling into the void of chasms. This is perhaps why, throughout Central and South America, the conception of illness in the jungle areas is the paranoic one of witchcraft, whereas in the mountainous areas is prevalent the vertiginous idea of fright and loss of self. (8) "There in Bell Mountain, says. There is the dirty fright. There is the garbage, says. There is the claw, says. There is the terror, says. Where the day is, says. Where the clown is, says. The Lord Clown, says." In vision he sees, throughout his being he senses a repulsive place of filth and contamination, a stinking site of pustulence, of rottenness and nausea, where lies a claw that might have dealt with cruel viciousness an infected wound. His words, emanating evil, seem to insinuate some horrible deed that left an aftermath of guilt. The sinister hovers in the air. Where? Where the clown is, he says. Concern and carefreeness are linked together, dread and laughter, from which we catch an insight into the meaning of the matter: during such experiences of liberation, there are likely to be encountered disturbances of consciousness by conscience, when reflection comes into conflict with spontaneity, guilt with innocence. It is as if the self drew back in fright from its ebullience, from its forgetfulness, unable to endure its carefreeness for long without anxiety. But the exuberant welling up of forms is ceaseless, in this flux, this fountain, this energetic springing forth of life, the past is left behind for the future, all is renewed. Beyond good and evil is the playfulness of the creative spirit incarnated by the clown, character of fortuity, the laughing one with his gay science. Thirteen superior whirlwinds. Thirteen whirlwinds of the atmosphere. Thirteen clowns, says. Thirteen personalities, says. Thirteen white lights, says. Thirteen mountains of points, says. Thirteen old hawks, says. Thirteen white hawks, says. Thirteen personalities, says. Thirteen mountains, says. Thirteen clowns, says. Thirteen peaks, says. Thirteen stars of the morning. The enumeration, by what seems to be a process of free association, of whirlwinds, clowns, personalities, lights, mountains, birds, and stars, is an expression of his ecstatic inventiveness. Whether he says what he sees or sees what he says, his activized consciousness is a whirlwind of imaginings and colored lights. Why always thirteen? Because twelve is many, but an even number, whereas thirteen is too many, an exaggeration, and signifies a multitude. What's more, he probably likes the sound of the word thirteen. The mushroom session of language creates language, creates the words for phenomena without name. The white lights that sometimes appear in the sky at night, nobody knows what to call them. The mind activated by the mushrooms, from out of the center of the mystery, from the profoundest semantic sources of the human, invents a word to designate them by. The ancient wise men, to describe the kaleidoscopic illuminations of their shamanistic nights, drew an analogy between the inside and the outside and formed a word that related the spectrum colors created by the sunshine in the spray of waterfalls and the mists of the morning to their conscious experiences of ecstatic enlightenment: these are the whirlwinds he speaks of, gyrating configurations of iridescent lights that appear to him as he speaks, turned round and round and round himself by the turbulent winds of the spirit. Clowns are frequent personae of his discourse, the impish mushrooms come to life, embodiments of merriment, tumbling figments of the spontaneous performing incredible acrobatic feats, funny imaginations of joyfulness. Personalities are more serious. Others. Society. The faces of the people he knows appear to him, then disappear to be succeeded by the apparition of more people. The plurality of incarnated consciousnesses becomes present to him. Multitude. His is an elemental world where cruel, predatory birds wheel in the sky; where the star of the morning shines in the firmament. Outside the dark room where he is speaking, the mountains stand all around in the night. I am he who speaks with the dangerous mountain, says. I am he who speaks with the Mountain of Ridges, says. I am he who speaks with the Father, says. I am he who speaks with the Mother, says. Where plays the spirit of the day, says. Cold Water Mountain, says. Big River Mountain, says. Mountain of Harvest and Richness, says. Where the terror of the day is, says. Where is the way of the dawn, the way of the day, says. It is significant that though the psychedelic experience produced by the mushrooms is of heightened perceptivity, the I say is of privileged importance to the I see. The utter darkness of the room, sealed off from the outside, makes any direct perception of the world impossible: the condition of interiorization for its visionary rebirth in images. In such darkness, to open the eyes is the same as leaving them closed. The blackness is alive with impalpable designs in the miraculous air. Even the appearances of the other presences, out of modesty, are protected by the obscurity from the too penetrating, revealing gaze of transcendental perception. Freed from the factuality of the given, the constitutive activity of consciousness produces visions. It is this aspect of such experiences, to the exclusion of all others, that has led them to be called hallucinogenic, without any attempt having been made to distinguish fantasy from intuition. The Mazatec shaman, however, instead of keeping silent and dreaming, as one would expect him to do if the experience were merely imaginative, talks. There are times when in the midst of his ecstasy, whistling and whirling about, he exclaims: "Look at how beautiful we're seeing!"-astonished by the illuminations and patterns he is perceiving-"Look at how beautiful we're seeing. Look at how many good things of God there are. What beautiful colors I see." Nevertheless, the I am the one who speaks enunciates an action and a function, weighted with an importance and efficacity which I am the one who sees, hardly more than an interjection of amazement, totally lacks. "I am he who speaks. I am he who speaks. I am he who speaks with the mountains, with the largest mountains. Speaks with the mountains, says. Speaks with the stones, says. Speaks with the atmosphere, says. Speaks with the spirit of the day." For the Mazatecs, the mountains are where the powers are, their summits, their ranges, radiating with electricity in the night, their peaks and their edges oscillating on the horizons of lightning. To speak with is to be in contact with, in communication with, in conversation with the animate spirit of the inanimate, with the material and the immaterial. To speak with is to be spoken to. By a conversion of his being, the shaman has become a transmitter and receiver of messages. "I am the dry lightning, says. I am the lightning of the comet, says. I am the dangerous lightning, says. I am the big lightning, says. I am the lightning of rocky places, says. I am the light of the dawn, the light of day, says." He identifies himself with the elements, with the crackle of electricity; superhuman and elemental himself, his words flash from him like lightning. Sparks fly between the synaptic connections of the nerves. He is illuminated with light. He is luminous. He is force, light, and rhythmic, dynamic speech. The world created by the woman's words, articulating her experience, was a feminine, maternal, domestic one; the masculine discourse of the shaman evokes the natural, ontological world. "She is beseeching for you, this poor and humble woman," said the to the exclusion of all others, that has led them to be called hallucinogenic, without any attempt having been made to distinguish fantasy from intuition. The Mazatec shaman, however, instead of keeping silent and dreaming, as one would expect him to do if the experience were merely imaginative, talks. There are times when in the midst of his ecstasy, whistling and whirling about, he exclaims: "Look at how beautiful we're seeing!"-astonished by the illuminations and patterns he is perceiving-"Look at how beautiful we're seeing. Look at how many good things of God there are. What beautiful colors I see." Nevertheless, the I am the one who speaks enunciates an action and a function, weighted with an importance and efficacity which I am the one who sees, hardly more than an interjection of amazement, totally lacks. "I am he who speaks. I am he who speaks. I am he who speaks with the mountains, with the largest mountains. Speaks with the mountains, says. Speaks with the stones, says. Speaks with the atmosphere, says. Speaks with the spirit of the day." For the Mazatecs, the mountains are where the powers are, their summits, their ranges, radiating with electricity in the night, their peaks and their edges oscillating on the horizons of lightning. To speak with is to be in contact with, in communication with, in conversation with the animate spirit of the inanimate, with the material and the immaterial. To speak with is to be spoken to. By a conversion of his being, the shaman has become a transmitter and receiver of messages. "I am the dry lightning, says. I am the lightning of the comet, says. I am the dangerous lightning, says. J am the big lightning, says. I am the lightning of rocky places, says. I am the light of the dawn, the light of day, says." He identifies himself with the elements, with the crackle of electricity; superhuman and elemental himself, his words flash from him like lightning. Sparks fly between the synaptic connections of the nerves. He is illuminated with light. He is luminous. He is force, light, and rhythmic, dynamic speech. The world created by the woman's words, articulating her experience, was a feminine, maternal, domestic one; the masculine discourse of the shaman evokes the natural, ontological world. "She is beseeching for you, this poor and humble woman," said the shamaness. "Woman of huipile, says. Simple woman, says. Woman who doesn't have anything, says." The man, conscious of his virility, announces: "I am he who lightnings forth." "Where the dirty gulch is, says. Where the dangerous gulch is, says. Where the big gulch is, says. Where the fear and the terror are, says. Where runs the muddy water, says. Where runs the cold water, says." It is a landscape of ravines, mountains, and streams, he charts with his words, of physical qualities with emotional values: a terrain of being in its variations. He evokes the creation, the genesis of all things out of the times of mist; he praises, marvels, wonders at the world. "God the Holy Spirit, as he made and put together the world. Made great lakes. Made mountains. Look at the light of day. Look at how many animals. Look at the dawn. Look at space. Great earths. Earth of God the Holy Spirit." He whistles. The soul was originally conceived of as breath. The wind, he says, is passing through the trees of the forest. His spirit goes flying from place to place throughout the territory of his existence, situating the various locations of the world by naming them, calling them into being by visiting them with his words: where is, he says, where is, to create the geography of his reality. I am, where is. He unfolds the extensions of space around himself, points out and makes present as if he were there himself. "Where the blood of Christ is, says. Where the blood of the diviner is, says. Where the terror and the fright of day are, says. Where the superior lake is, says. Where the big lake is, says. There where large birds fly, says. Where fly dangerous birds." The world is not only paradisiacal in its being there, but frightening, with perils lurking everywhere. "Mountains of great whirlwinds. Where is the fountain of terror. Where is the fountain of fright." And the different places are inhabited by presences, by indwelling spirits, the gnomes, the little people. "Gnome of Cold Water, says. Gnome of Clear Water, says. Gnome of Big River, says. Big Gnome. Gnome of Burned Mountain. Gnome of the spirit of the day. Gnome of Tlocalco Mountain. Gnome of the Marking Post. White Gnome. Delicate Gnome." The shaman, says Alfred Metraux, is "an individual who, in the interest of the community, sustains by profession an intermittent commerce with the spirits or is possessed by them." (9) According to the classical conception, derived from the ecstatic visionaries of Siberia, the shaman is a person who, by a change of his everyday consciousness, enters the metaphysical realms of the transcendental in order to parley with the supernatural powers and gain an understanding of the hidden reasons of events, of sickness and all manner of difficulty. The Mazatec medicine men are therefore shamans in every sense of the word: their means of inspiration, of opening the circuits of communication between themselves, others, the world, and the spirits, are the mushrooms that disclose, by their psychoactive power, another modality of conscious activity than the ordinary one. The mere eating of the mushrooms, however, does not make a shaman. The Indians recognize that it is not to everyone that they speak; instead there are some who have a longing for awakenment, a disposition for exploring the surrealistic dimensions of existence, a poet's need to express themselves in a higher language than the average language of everyday life: for them in a very particular sense the mushrooms are the medicine of their genius. Nonetheless, there is a very definite idea among the Mazatecs of what the medicine man does, and since the mushrooms are his means of converting himself into the shamanistic condition, the essential characteristics of this particular variety of psychedelic experience must be manifested by his activities. "I am he who puts together," says the medicine man to define his shamanistic function: he who speaks, he who searches, says. I am he who looks for the spirit of the day, says. I search where there is fright and terror. I am he who fixes, he who cures the person that is sick. Herbal medicine. Remedy of the spirit. Remedy of the atmosphere of the day, says. I am he who resolves all, says. Truly you are man enough to resolve the truth. You are he who puts together and resolves. You are he who puts together the personality. You are he who speaks with the light of day. You are he who speaks with terror. It is immediately obvious that a discrepancy exists between the Indian conception of the mushrooms' effect and the ideas of modern psychology: whereas in experimental research reports they are said to produce depersonalization, schizophrenia, and derangement, the Mazatec shaman, inspired by them, considers himself endowed with the power of bringing together what is separated: he can heal the divided personality by releasing the springs of existence from repression to reveal the ecstatic life of the integral self; and from disparate clues, by the sudden synthesis of intuition, realize the solution to problems. The words with which he states what his work is indicate a creative activity neither outside of the realm of reason or out of contact with reality. The center of convergent message fields, sensitive to the meaning of all around him, he expresses and communicates, in direct contact with others through speech, an articulator of the unsaid who liberates by language and makes understood. His intuitions penetrate appearances to the essence of matters. Reality reveals itself through him in words as if it had found a voice to utter itself. The shaman is a signifier in pursuit of significance, intent upon bringing forth the hidden, the obscure into the light of day, the lucid one, intrepid enough to realize that the greatest secrets lie in regions of danger. He is the doctor, not only of the body, but of the self, the one who inquires into the origins of trauma, the interrogator of the familiar and mysterious. It is indeed as if that which he has eaten, by virtue of the possibilities it discovers to him, were of the spirit, for perception becomes more acute, speech more fluent, and the consciousness of significance is quickened. The mushrooms are a remedy to which one has recourse in order to resolve perplexities because the experience is creative of intentions. The way forth from the problematic is conceived of, the meaning of resolved. The shaman, he is the one in communication with the light and with the darkness, who knows of anxiety and how to dispel it: the man of truth, psychologist of the troubled soul. Where is the fear, says. Where is the terror, says. Where stayed the spirit of this child, says. I have to search for it, says. I have to locate it, says. I have to detain it, says. I have to grab it, says. I have to call it, says. I have to whistle for it in the midst of terror, says. I have to whistle for it through the cumulus clouds. I have to whistle for it with the spirit of the day. Once more there appears the notion of alienation, the malady of fright, the loss of the self. The task of the shaman, hunter of extravagated spirits, is to reassociate the disassociated. He explains his method himself in these words: Under the effect of the mushrooms, the lost spirit is whistled for through space for the spirit is alienated, but by means of the mushrooms one can call for it with a whistle. If the person is frightened, the mushrooms know where his spirit is. They are the ones who indicate and teach where the spirit is. Thereby one can speak to it. The sick person then sees the place where his spirit stayed. He feels as if he were tied in that place. The spirit is like a trapped butterfly. When it is whistled for it arrives where one is calling it. When the spirit arrives in the person, the sick one sighs and afterwards is cleaned. It becomes evident from the words used to describe the condition of fright-the spirit is said to have been left behind, to have stayed somewhere, to be tied up, and as we will see later, to be imprisoned-that just as in the etiology of the neuroses, the sickness is a fixation upon a traumatic past event which the individual is incapable of transcending and from which he must be liberated to be cured. It is not by chance that the mushrooms, which cause a flight of the spirit, should be considered the means of chasing what has flown away. The shaman goes in search; by empathic imagination, sometimes even by dialogue with the disturbed one, he gains an insight into the reasons for the state of shock, which allows him to make his invocations relevant to the individual case. The patient, by the mnemonic power of the mushrooms, freed from inhibitions and repressions, recalls the traumatic event, surmounts the repetition syndrome that perpetuates it by virtue of the ecstatic spontaneity that has been released from him, suffers a catharsis, and is brought back to life, integrated again. Another method of regaining the lost spirit, used as well as invocation, is to barter for it. Merchants, the Mazatecs conceive of all transactions in terms of commerce, of trading one value for another. Throughout his discourse, the shamans a storekeeper in daily life, dreams of money, of richness, of freedom from poverty. "Father Bank. Big Bank. Where the light of day is. Cordoba. Orizaba." He names the cities where the merchants of Huautla sell their principal commercial crop-coffee-in the market. "Where the Superior Bank is, says. Where the Big Bank is, says. Where the Good Bank is, says. Where there is money of gold, says. Where there is money of silver, says. Where there are big notes, says. Where the bank of gold is, says. Where the bank of well-being is, says." It is not surprising that among such mercantile people it should be considered possible to buy back the lost spirit, to retrieve it in exchange for another value. "Where the fright of the spirit is. Going to pay for it to the spirit. Going to pay the day. Going to pay the mountains. Going to pay the corners." The shaman becomes a transcendental bargainer. He is told by the supernatural powers how much they demand as a ransom for the spirit they have expropriated, then he undertakes to transact the deal. He explains it himself in this way: Cacao is used to pay the mountain and to pay for the life of the sick one. The Lord of the Mountain asks for a chicken. This is an important matter because it is the Masters of the Mountains who speak. That is the belief of the ancients. The chicken is the one who has to carry the cacao. Loaded with cacao it has to go and leave the offering in the mountain. Once it is on the mountain, seeing it loaded no one bothers to catch it because already it belongs to the Masters of the Mountain where it is lost forever. The cacao that it carries is money for the Master of the Mountain. The bark paper is used to wrap the bundle and the parrot feather that goes with it. The signification of the parrot feather is that it is as if the parrot himself arrived on the mountain. It is he who arrives announcing with his songs the arrival of the chicken loaded with cacao, the arrival of the money to pay what was asked for, as if the liberty of a prisoner were being paid for. It is as if an authority said to you, "This prisoner will be set free for a fine of one hundred pesos and if it isn't paid, he won't go free." The transaction probably has the psychological effect of assuaging anxiety with the assurance that the powers angered by a transgression have been appeased. As we have seen, though these shamanistic chants are creations of language created by the individual creativity of the speakers, the structure of the discourses, short phrases articulated in succession terminated by the punctuation of the word says, tend to be similar from person to person, determined to a large extent by culture and tradition as is much of what is said. An instance is the invocatory reiteration of names, a characteristic common to all the Mazatec shamanistic sessions of speech. The names repeated by the Indian medicine men, devout Catholics, are those of the Virgin and the saints. In ancient times, other divinities must have been named, but without any doubt, to name and make present has always played a role in such chants. "Holy Virgin of the Sanctuary. Holy Virgin. Saint Bartholomew. Saint Christopher. Saint Manuel. Holy Father. Saint Vincent. Saint Mark. Saint Manuel. Virgin Guadalupe, Queen of Mexico." To sing out the holy names serves the function for the oral poet, like the stereotyped phrases of Homeric song, of keeping the chant going during the interludes of inspiration; at the same time, the rhythmic enunciation is a telling over of identities, an expression of the interpersonality of consciousness. To recall again the affirmation of Husserl: Transcendental subjectivity is intersubjectivity. The name is the word for the person. In the mind of the speaker one identity after another becomes present, names call up people, the vision of people calls up names. Instead of naming his own acquaintances, which might occur in a desacralized discourse, the shaman invokes the holy ones. The sacred nomenclature is a sublimation of the nomenclature of family and social relationships. It is now his everyday self, his wife and his family whom he speaks about. "Our children are going to grow up and live. I see. I see my wife, my little working woman. I love her. I speak to her through space. I speak to her through the cumulus clouds. I call to her spirit. Nothing will befall us." Man and woman, the couple and their children, that is his theme now that love for his family wells up in his heart. Nothing can happen to us. We will go on living. We will go on living in the company of my wife, of my people. We should not make our wife irritable. We went to receive her before God, in the sight of God, in the Sacred Sacrament, in sight of the altar. There was a great mass, there was a mass of union. We were able to respect each other forty-three days and therefore God disposed that our children should be born and live. Because of that our seeds bore fruit, our offspring grew, offspring and seed that God Our Lord gave us. He who speaks and says, perhaps it is rumored that the work he is doing, this person, is great, that his ranch is large. He is not presumptuous. He is a humble person. He is a laborious person. He is a person of problems. He is a person who has al ready loaned his service as an authority. He has realized himself, his gifts are inherited, he is of important people: Justo Pastor, Juan Nazareno. He is of a great root, an important root. Large trees, old trees. All our children will live, says. Will have a good harvest. Will rear their animals. Well-being and pleasure in their sugar cane, in their coffee groves. I will live much time yet. I will become an old man with gray hair, I will continue living with my offspring and with my people. My children will have education and well-being. Education must be given to my sons. He says the changes through which he passes, the transformations and permutations of his ecstatic consciousness in the course of its temporalization-the sense of gamble, the risks, the moments of fright, the presence of light and vigor. "It turns into a game of chance, says. It turns into terror, says. It turns into spirit, says." He whistles and sings and dances about. "That which sounds is a harp in the presence of God and the Angel of the Guard. Plays space, plays the rocks, plays the mountains, plays the corners, plays fear, plays terror, plays the day." He plays the facets of the world as if they were musical instruments. Things and emotions, at the contact of his singing and touch are magically resolved into ringing vibrating tonalities, into music-music of mountains and rocks, of space and fear. "Where sound the trees, says. Where sound the rocks, says. Where sound baskets. Where sounds the spirit of the day." He is hearing the ringing and the buzzing and the humming of his effervescent consciousness and finding analogies for the sounds he hears in the echo chambers of his eardrums: the soughing of the wind through the trees, the clinking of stones, the creaking of baskets. He whistles and sings. His words issue forth from the melodic articulation of inarticulate sounds, from the physical movement of his rhythmic whirling about and scuffling in the darkness. "How beautiful I sing," he exclaims. "How beautiful I sing. How many good pleasures concedes to us the Lord of the World." He dances about working himself up to a further pitch of exaltation. "How beautiful I dance. How beautiful I dance." Repetition is one of the aspects of the discourse as it is of the pulsation of energy waves. "This person is valiant," he says of himself. "He is of the people of Huautla, he is a Huautecan. With great speed he calls and whistles for the spirits among the mountains; whistles the fright of the spirit." Then he flips out. He throws himself into the shamanistic fit, his voice changes, becomes that of another, rougher, more guttural, and beginning to speak in the speech of San Lucas from where came his old master, a town in the midst of the corn on a high windswept peak, he recalls his spiritual ancestor, the ancient wise man who taught him the use of the gnomic mushrooms. "He is a person of jars. He is of San Lucas. A person of plates. He is a person of jars and bowls. He is an old one." San Lucas is the place where all the black, unadorned, neolithic pottery used throughout the region is made. Men go from town to town carrying the jars, padded with ferns, on their backs to sell them in the marketplaces of the mountain villages. "Old man of pots, dishes, bowls. These are the people of the center. They speak with the mountains arrogantly. He is from San Lucas. He speaks with the whirlwind, with the whirlwind of the interior." From what he himself tells of this old shaman, appear vestiges of the days when the shaman of the People of the Deer, intermediary between man, nature, and the divine was a thaumaturge who presided over fertility and the hunt. "I had to visit the same medicine man," he recounts, "when we went to the hunt. I had to prepare for him an egg, an egg to be offered to the mountain. It all depends on the value of the animal that one wants. It is as if you were going to buy an animal," he said. He is the one who says what one is to pay. He goes to leave the egg. Afterwards the dogs go into the woods and begin to work. It is necessary to rub tobacco on the crown of the dogs' heads. But with the egg and twenty-five beans of cacao, the master is sure that the deer is already bought. I have paid for the game, says the true shaman. And every time we went to hunt, we were therefore sure to encounter deer because a good shaman from San Lucas can transform a tree or a stone into a deer once he has exchanged its value for it with the Lord of the Mountain. We were sure to come upon deer because they had been paid for. "Here come the Huautecans. Here come the Huautecans." Dancing about in the darkness, flapping his coat against his sides to imitate the bounding of a startled deer through the underbrush, he, the hunter of spirits and of game, barking like the dogs closing in around the cornered animal, tells a hunting story, talking rapidly with intense excitement in the gruff voice of one from San Lucas who sees from his vantage point the hunters of Huautla in the distance: Listen to how their dogs bark. It's an old dog. Here they come by way of the Sad Mountain. They are bringing their kill. There is barking in the mountain. Here they come. Listen to how their arms sound. Already they have shot a colored deer. They pay the mountains. They pay the corners. The deer was killed because the Huautecans pay the price. They paid the spirit. Paid the Bald Mountain. Paid the Hollow Mountain. Paid the Mountain of the Spirit of the Day. Paid fifty pesos. You can't do just as you like. It is necessary to pay the White Gnome. The Huautecans are like clowns. They are carrying the deer off along the path. The rifles of the Huautecans are very fine. These people are important people. They know what they are doing. They know how to call the spirit. The Huautecans call their dogs by blowing a horn. Already the dogs are coming close. The story comes almost at the conclusion of his discourse. The effect of the mushrooms lasts approximately six hours; usually it is impossible to sleep until dawn. In all such adventures, at the end, comes the idea of a return from where it is one has gone, the return to everyday consciousness. "I return to collect these holy children that served as a remedy," the shaman says, calling back his spirits from their flight into the beyond in order to become his ordinary self again. "Aged clowns. White clowns." The mushrooms he calls sainted children and clowns, relating them by his personifications to beings who are young and joyful, playful, creative, and wise. "The aurora of the dawn is coming and the light of day. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, by the sign of the Holy Cross, free us Our Lord from our enemies and all evil. Amen." What began in the depths of the night with the illumination of interior constellations in the spaces of consciousness ends with the arrival of the daylight after a night of continuous, animated speech. "I am he who speaks," says the Mazatec shaman. I am he who speaks. I am he who speaks with the mountains. I am he who speaks with the corners. I am the doctor. I am the man of medicines. I am. I am he who cures. I am he who speaks with the Lord of the World. I am happy. I speak with the mountains. I am he who speaks with the mountains of peaks. I am he who speaks with the Bald Mountain. I am the remedy and the medicine man. I am the mushroom. I am the fresh mushroom. I am the large mushroom. I am the fragrant mushroom. I am the mushroom of the spirit. The Mazatecs say that the mushrooms speak. Now the investigators (10) from without should have listened better to the Indian wise men who had experience of what they, white ones of reason, had not. If the mushrooms are hallucinogenic, why do the Indians associate them with communication, with truth and the enunciation of meaning? An hallucination is a false perception, either visual or audible, that does not have any relation at all to reality, a fantastical illusion or delusion: what appears, but has no existence except in the mind. The vivid dreams of the psychedelic experience suggested hallucinations: such imaginations do occur in these visionary conditions, but they are marginal, not essential phenomena of a general liberation of the spontaneous, ecstatic, creative activity of conscious existence. Hallucinations predominated in the experiences of the investigators because they were passive experimenters of the transformative effect of the mushrooms. The Indian shamans are not contemplative, they are workers who actively express themselves by speaking, creators engaged in an endeavor of ontological, existential disclosure. For them, the shamanistic condition provoked by the mushrooms is intuitionary, not hallucinatory. What one envisions has an ethical relation to reality, is indeed often the path to be followed. To see is to realize, to understand. But even more important than visions for the Mazatec shaman are words as real as the realities of the real they utter. It is as if the mushrooms revealed a primordial activity of signification, for once the shaman has eaten them, he begins to speak and continues to speak throughout the shamanistic session of ecstatic language. The phenomenon most distinctive of the mushrooms' effect is the inspired capacity to speak. Those who eat them are men of language, illuminated with the spirit, who call themselves the ones who speak, those who say. The shaman, chanting in a melodic singsong, saying says at the end of each phrase of saying, is in communication with the origins of creation, the sources of the voice, and the fountains of the word, related to reality from the heart of his existential ecstasy by the active mediation of language: the articulation of meaning and experience. To call such transcendental experiences of light, vision, and speech hallucinatory is to deny that they are revelatory of reality. In the ancient codices, the colored books, the figures sit, hieroglyphs of words, holding the mushrooms of language in pairs in their hands: signs of signification. (2). The inspiration produced by the mushrooms is very much like that described by Nietzsche in Ecce Homo. Since the statement of Rimbaud, "I is another," spontaneous language, speaking or writing as if from dictation (to use the common expression for an activity very difficult to describe in its truth) has been of paramount interest to philosophers and poets. Sap the Mexican, Octavio Paz, in an essay on Breton, "The inspired one, the man who in truth speaks, does not say anything that is his: from his mouth speaks language." Octavio Paz, "Andre Breton o La Busqueda del Comienzo," Corriente Alterna (Mexico: Siglo Veintiuno, 1967), p. 53. (Back) (3). The shamanistic discourses studied in this essay, were tape-recorded. I am indebted for the translations to a bilingual woman of Huautla, Mrs. Eloina Estrada de Gonzalez, who listened to the recordings and told me, phrase by phrase, in Spanish, what the shaman and shamaness were saying in their native language. As far as I know, the words of neither of these oral poets have hitherto been published. They are Mrs. Irene Pineda de Figueroa and Mr. Roman Estrada. The complete text of each discourse takes up ninety-two pages. For the purposes of this essay, I have merely selected the most representative passages. (Back) (4). "... the Greek word which signifies poetry was employed by the writer of an alchemical papyrus to designate the operation of 'transmutation' itself. What a ray of light! One knows that the word 'poetry' comes from the Greek verb which signifies 'make.' But that does not designate an ordinary fabrication except for those who reduce it to verbal nonsense. For those who have conserved the sense of the poetic mystery, poetry is a sacred action. That is to say, one which exceeds the ordinary level of human action. Like alchemy, its intention is to associate itself with the mystery of the 'primordial creation'..." Michel Carrouges, Andre Breton et les donnees fondamentales du surrealisme (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 195O). (Back) (5). Claude Levi-Strauss, "The Effectiveness of Symbols," Structural Anthropology (Doubleday Anchor, 1967), pp. 193-95. (Back) (6). "In a sense, as Husserl says, philosophy consists of the restitution of a power of signification, a birth of sense or a savage sense, an expression of experience by experience which particularly clarifies the special domain of language." Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Le Visible et l'invisible (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1964). (Back) (7). The story of how he began his shamanistic career, together with the information to follow about fright, payments to the mountains, and practices in relation to the hunt, are quotations from an interview with Mr. Roman Estrada whom I questioned through an interpreter: the conversation was tape-recorded and then translated from the native language by Mrs. Eloina Estrada de Gonzalez, the niece of the shaman, who served as questioner in the interview itself. (Back) (8). "Finally, the illness can be the consequence of a loss of the soul, gone astray or carried off by a spirit or a revenant. This conception, widely spread throughout the region of the Andes and the Gran Chaco, appears rare in tropical America." Alfred Metraux, "Le Chaman des Guyane et de l'Amazonie," Religions et magies indiennes d'Amerique du Sud (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1967). (Back) (9). Ibid. (Back) (10). It is necessary to express one's debt to R. Gordon Wasson, whose writings, the most authoritative work on the mushrooms, informed me of their existence and told me much about them. "We suspect," he wrote, "that, in its integral sense, the creative power, the most serious quality distinctive of man and one of the clearest participations in the Divine... is in some sort connected with an area of the spirit that the mushrooms are capable of opening." R. Gordon Wasson and Roger Heim, Les Champignons halhlcinogenes du Mexique (Paris: Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle, 1958). From my own experience, I have found that contention to be particularly true. (Back) |