MAGIC MUSHROOMS - Magic Mushrooms: what are they?
1. Magic Mushrooms: what are they?
To buy a bag of dried paddos, a dose of Shrooms, dried or fresh little Mexicans, thin Hawaiians, Liberty Caps or some exotic varieties from Bali or Thailand is relatively easy, but why on earth do we do this? Why do we now ingest something that was rumored to be poisonous before? Why this fascination for what officially is deemed an `illicit drug’.
The image of the mushroom has changed since the Western world became aware of its hidden and exotic qualities, notably the very special and fantastic `trips’ that can be experienced ingesting them. This is a fairly recent development. It was only in the sixties that anything was published about them and although there undoubtedly existed traditions and rituals that were passed on, the magic mushroom was virtually unknown in the `rational and modern’ West.
After their (re-)discovery in Mexico during the fifties by Gordon Wasson, the use spread over the world at large. Everywhere mushrooms with psychoactive qualities were discovered. Nowadays they are quite well known and very common. While on holidays you can find them in England, and in Thailand and on the Balinese beaches they are for sale. In many European countries, the Liberty caps grow freely in the fields, but also in Mexico the locals will willingly but secretly sell you a handful if you go visit the Maya-temples. The innocent visitor or tourist might try them, but often such a small dose is taken that the effect is not very different from a marihuana `joint’ and you might just feel a bit more relaxed and more sensitive. This has led to the notion, that magic mushrooms are fairly harmless. In medical circles and from the government one sometimes hears this as an argument not to be too harsh about the paddos. Even though that leads to a benevolent stance, it is not entirely true. Psilocybin and psilocin, the active components, are potentially strong psychedelics. The ingestion of a normal dose of mushrooms clearly leads to a whole different experience of reality, to a different scale of sensory perception and often to hallucinations, open and closed-eye visions of colors and patterns, the hearing of sounds and a greater sensitivity to light, forms, magnetism, electricity and touch. Such an experience can be quite a shock if for example you don’t know that you have ingested or eaten something.
The health-risks are not very big and certainly less than those of heroin, cocaine or even tobacco or alcohol. But too much of anything can be dangerous and there are mushroom-species that are quite poisonous too. So be careful, better use magic mushrooms from a reliable source than going out into the fields to pick them without being very sure you can recognize the right kind.
The reaction to too much of the psychoactive ingredient psilocybin and other alkaloids in mushrooms is such, that usually the body reacts and gets spontaneously rid of the content of the stomach by throwing up. Psilocybin is a psychedelic, but apart from some muscle cramps, some protest from the stomach and the bowels it is physically not very dangerous. One has to ingest really large portions to become seriously ill.
Real addiction has not been proven, although there is certainly a kind of socio-psychological addiction; subconsciously you remember the nice feeling, the feeling of belonging, of friendship and unity and this makes you long for your next dose. Recreational addiction, a little bit of magic mushrooms every day can have the effect of habitual marihuana use; as a result you could remain continuously in a dreamy mood; not really ideal for study or work. For that matter it is in some respects a pity that these substances became so `publicly’ known, there is a lot to say in favor of an institutional ritual in a more esoteric setting.
On these pages we find illustrations of the most common varieties, which are the bigger Psilocybe cubensis and the small Psilocybe semilanceata (Liberty caps). The denomination is not very clear; one throws beautiful names around, but of the psychoactive varieties that come into consideration (Psilocybe, Conocybe, Panaeolus and Amanita) the cubensis and semilanceata are the ones that are easily available. The name Stropharia was used for Psilocybe, but is taxonomically incorrect, all Stropharia have been reclassified as Psilocybe.
These magic mushrooms come in bigger and smaller sizes. That depends a bit on the source and the season. Now they are often grown inside, so no longer there are only magic mushrooms in autumn.
We will not elaborate too much on the different species and varieties. That we will leave to the specialists, this book deals mainly with the experience of the inward journey, which since the sixties has been called `the trip’.
Maybe it is good to mention that mushrooms are not plants, they don’t contain chlorophyll (the substance that gives leaves their green color). In this they are quite different from plants, as they don’t need any direct sunshine. Although the most active ingredients are listed as prohibited classified substances (illegal drugs), in many countries mushrooms containing these ingredients have an unclear legal status.
A number of species can be found in nature and are in fact indigenous. That makes it difficult to label people as druggies, who - of course by accident - have gotten hold of a few mushrooms in a field or in the woods or in the park. In some countries therefore the possession of fresh mushrooms is not illegal, only when they are processed (preparation including drying) they become an illicit drug.
2. The history
The use of hallucinogenic mushrooms is probably as old as humanity. We find traces of them in many cultures and times. In the Tassili caves and in the Sahara pictures have been found of humanoids with their heads in the form of mushrooms. Shamen in Siberia would use Fly Agarics to find their path to the spirit world and in Central and South America the use of mushrooms was quite common.
This means until the `discovery’ of America by the Conquistadores in the 15th century, who inflicted all kinds of prohibitions on the indigenous population. But fortunately part of this was being recorded by the priests of those days and one even had some esteem for the `codexes’ of the Pre-Columbian civilizations, which were partly saved. A lot of information about those strange `Indians’ was written down in those times and was preserved in libraries in Europe.
Through the first colonists it is known that the Aztecs knew several hallucinogenic drugs like tlapatl and peyote, the use of which went back to 300 BC in the North of Mexico. There was a certain acceptance of the use of hallucinogenic substances in these times, while the use of alcohol was subject to strict regulations. Drinking was restricted to older people (over 52), and youngsters who were drinking in public were severely punished.
MAGIC MUSHROOMS - The history - Teo-nanacatl: Flesh of the Gods
Teo-nanacatl: Flesh of the Gods
The first clear (written) record comes from the Spanish priest Bernardo de Sahagun who around 1500 gives an account of Aztec `mushroom rituals’: “After a night of fasting where only a bit of cacao was taken, they ate, still before sunrise, mushrooms with honey. When the first signs showed (which can be compared to drunkenness with hallucinations) everyone started dancing and singing, while others were weeping. At the end of the ritual everyone gathered to share their visions.”
The Aztecs even had a kind of Drug’s God, who was called Xochipilli, Prince of Flowers. He was the sacred protector of the `flowery-dream’ as the Aztecs called their hallucinatory trance. The mushrooms they used were probably the Psilocybe mexicana or the Psilocybe caerulescens. The Psilocybe (previously Stropharia) cubensis, momentarily one of the more popular mushrooms, was introduced by the Europeans and their cattle in South-America. The Indian regard this variety as inferior to the indigenous Psilocybe’s because they grow in dung.
But not only in America, also in Siberia and in other countries magic mushrooms were used. Not always recognizable, it remained part of the `secret’ rites; they appeared on special occasions and not everybody was told what was in the `sacred’ soup.
The Vikings - as told in Norway - used magic mushrooms (Amanita) before they went ashore and while intoxicated were stronger and wilder then usual. It is not always so easy to recognize the mushroom-influence. Pictures and cave-drawings of small people with mushroom-heads can also be interpreted as space travelers! But the archetypal picture exist in more cultures, we noted that the Turkish Sufis, particularly the dervishes, in their - zikhr - whirling meditation, with their dances and clothing (white hats) very much look like a dancing `Brotherhood of Shrooms’.
MAGIC MUSHROOMS - The history - The First
The First
In the Western World it was only in this century that some interest was stirred in psychoactive mushrooms. Ethnologist Richard Evans Schultes and biologist Blasius Paul Reko traveled as far as Mexico in their search for mushrooms. There they discovered that the so-called Veladas, Indian mushroom-ceremonies, were still held in certain areas.
In the fifties it was particularly the American R. Gordon Wasson who `freed the mushrooms from the dark’. This banker and his wife Valentina were fascinated by the differences in cultural appreciation of the mushroom in general, but only in 1954 did they come into contact with their use as psychedelic substance.
R. Gordon Wasson and his wife, accompanied by Alan Richardson, went to a small village called Huatla de Jimenez, in Oaxaca in the South of Mexico, the territory of the Mazatecs, where they participated in a so-called Velada with the famous curandera (healer/sorceress) Maria Sabina. There they experienced, as the first Westerners, a psychedelic mushroom-trip, in an impressive ritual with Christian as well as Indian influences. Their story hit the world at large, Gordon Wasson published an article in Life magazine that stirred up a huge response.
The timing was probably right because the popularity of mushrooms rocketed sky-high in the Western world in the sixties, in particular amongst hippies and other alternative groups, using mushrooms partly as a `natural’ alternative for LSD.
Scientific investigations were launched; the active substances were analyzed (and synthesized), whereby Albert Hoffman - the discoverer of LSD - played an important role and soon became a part of the psychedelic movement of the sixties.
Hippies and sensation-seekers went en masse to Mexico, where poor Maria Sabina nearly collapsed under the attention. Her inspiration by the `holy children’ got endangered: she became quite famous to the mushroom-tourists but as a result more isolated from her own people. Afterwards she was possibly not so happy to have shared the secret of the Velada.
3. Sacred or fun
Did people ten thousands years ago pick mushrooms only for certain ceremonies or were they a kind of candy? Human history is not very clear on this subject. There are nevertheless enough indications that many religions used one form or another of psychedelic trance; like wine at the Dionysian mysteries, tobacco at the ceremonies of the Native Americans, the mysterious Soma of ancient India and possibly psychoactive fungi in wheat (ergot, from which later LSD got extracted) at the Greek Elysian mysteries.
The use of `drugs’, special herbs or potions to attain a religious peak-experience seems to have been widely spread. Thus the Hindu philosopher Patanjali mentions in the Yoga-sutra that magical plants are useful for the development of siddhis (special powers) like flying, and maybe the name `fly agaric’ has something to do with the `flying’ of witches.
R. Gordon Wasson stated that religions are the result of psychedelic mystical experiences under the influence of mushrooms and psychedelic writer and researcher Terence McKenna assumes that our consciousness started developing with apes eating hallucinogenic mushroom in the African savanna.
Nowadays magic mushrooms are used in rituals in Meso-america, for instance at the classical Maya ceremonial center Palenque and along the border between Chiapas in Mexico and Guatemala. However, it is not clear how many of these rituals really descend from ancient practices and how much was created later.
Although a lot is known and proof does exist about the use of psychoactive mushrooms in South-America in the past, it is momentarily not known if these ceremonies are still happening. Several Indian tribes in the Amazon jungle use natural psychoactive plants and brews containing D.M.T. (Dimetyltryptamine). Ayahuasca is worth mentioning, which is used in a kind of mixed religion of Catholicism and Indian jungle rituals during the services of the Brazilian Sante Daime church and the UDV.
Myths
Many traditional stories contain, sometimes as a metaphor, indications of substances with the magical quality to shape shift, to enter another world or to go through a transformation. A potion here, a magical spell or a jump in a magical pond there, the crossing of a river, falling asleep and awaking in a strange country; the well informed recognizes the indications. Would Eve’s apple not also be a metaphor for the psychedelic experience? Snakes show up quite frequently in trips. And kissing frogs? It is known that certain toads (Bufo species) discharge a substance (bufotenine), which is also psychoactive. It has been told that it can be ingested by licking a toad. If we care to look at the deeper meaning of gnomes living in their toadstools, then there also must be something to the story of the princess and the frog she had to kiss. Actually, a better-recorded use of bufotenine is to dry the toad-venom and smoke it. It is, as many DMT-containing indoles, not orally active without MAO-inhibitors.
The themes of the myths don’t seem to change much throughout the centuries: the transformation of villain to hero, from frog to prince, from beggar to king, from child to adult, from wild to wise, it seems a universal scenario.
Somewhere deep inside everyone resides the fascination that accompanies the stories we listened to as kids, the fairy-tales and the myths. Nowadays comics, Science Fiction adventures and computer games are filled with the same heroes, wizards, kings, fairies and gnomes, devilish opponents, quests, magical charms and bewitched brews. All these are archetypal images, scenarios, forms and figures, which according to Carl G. Jung are projections of our subconscious and the collective unconscious.
These images not only appear in the Gilgamesh epos, the Icelandic Edda and the Bible, but also in the legends around King Arthur, in The Lord of the Ring by J. Tolkien and even in Star Wars. And what was it the druid put into the soup in the Asterix-comics that made the Gauls so immensely strong that they became invincible?
Could it be that the psychedelic experience is at the root of many of these stories and myths?
The author Aldous Huxley pointed, in `Doors of Perception’ at the similarities between art, architecture, tapestry and jewelry and the visions one experiences during a trip. And it is a trip indeed, a fantastic voyage. Under the spell of the psychedelic one floats through doors and tunnels into enormous spaces with decorations and color-patterns, which look like temples or churches. The question is now what came first, the inner world or what was made and built in `reality’.
A trip to the mythic world of heraldic lore or ancient imagery with palaces, temples and strange surroundings is quite normal, but one also commonly reports a kind of mystic unity, a feeling of oneness.
Many users experience the trip as a mystical, spiritual experience; they make contact with the Godhead, the unmentionable. This is often accompanied with a feeling of union with all, the `unio mystica’. In this context one started calling certain substances as MDMA (XTC or ecstasy) and psilocybin `entheogens’; a means to come closer to the experience of the “Divine”.
The step from divine miracle to a ritual using a psychedelic substance is not that far-fetched. The psychedelic can easily be seen as a teacher, a sacrament of transformation. Myths, legends, holy books - fantasy or reality - maybe they all contain a meta-message, a message that may be more easily perceived if one has had some experience of traveling the shadow-regions of the mind.
Are we really certain that Jesus and his disciples were drinking ordinary wine and were eating ordinary bread? We use beautiful words, like transsubstantiation, for what believers see as the `Body and the Blood of Christ’ in the Communion. It all depends on the viewpoint; the psychedelic brew is a sacrament for the disciples of Santo Daime, but it is an illegal and dangerous potion for others.
Many feel the magic mushroom experience, as a somewhat guided tour to the magic wonderland inside. That’s why we call the magic mushrooms `our little brothers’ in this book. This is a strong image, which pictures the magic mushrooms as benevolent, friendly and also suggests that they can be helpful, that we are in a union with them to explore the real as well as the unreal.
It is certainly true that all this can be experienced by other means than psychedelics. Deep meditation, fasting, yoga practice, a vision quest in the desert, a lonely experience on a mountaintop, the challenging of dangers or the encounter with a totem-animal can also bring you into contact with this `other’ world, which is so deep inside, but also weaves and shines through all if one cares to look for it or better, open up to it.
Carlos Castaneda wrote about this in an impressive way. His books about the sorcerer Don Juan provide a lot of information about the borderline between inner and outer reality.
The reality
It is a scary moment, when you realize, that you float into another state of being, a state of consciousness where you have a different experience of yourself.
Suddenly the world is no longer solid, known, stable; up and down, left and right, these divisions have no longer any significance.
Inner and outer merge. You think about something and there you see it, you focus your attention on a detail and in turn that takes the whole scope of your vision and then suddenly you are it. Confusing, scaring at times, but also fascinating for the psychonaut, the inner space cadet. You become aware of an ever-changing landscape where you, in a strange way, are both ruler and subject. You play a game and take a role, you know that it is a role, but you couldn’t care less, as a young kitten chasing the tail of your own twisted thoughts.
And afterwards, when you look back, with both feet safely back on mother earth, then you may start doubting the solidity, the permanence, of what we perceive as the `ordinary’ reality.
Are there indeed more colors, and what about the energy-patterns you saw, the glimpse of consciousness that smiled at you out of a leaf or a flower; what about these endless repetitive, but oh so well known, patterns? And what is reality? Is there - and that is something you experience during a trip - apart from this limited reality another, or infinite other realities? Or are all of them pieces of a total, ultimate reality? Does this really exist, or is it just another illusion?
These of course are questions that have intrigued people of all times and we can assume that we will not now or ever find the answers. We are human beings trapped in this reality, only with a lot of practice we may be able to lift this veil a bit, and then only to discover another cosmic egg to crack. During a trip we can have a glimpse of other worlds, an oceanic feeling comes up, where you actually see things different, but what actually is true remains very personal. You may believe in UFOs, angels, gnomes or fairies or have some real exchanges with strange entities, but hopefully you realize that you superimposed your own filter over those perceptions.
You see what you want to see, what you already know. You easily cover the truly unknown and unusual with your own personal interpretation and projection. It is not without reason that nowadays many people have encounters with extra-terrestrial and UFOs, while in the past they met with Gods, saints, holy men and religious figures and in a further past with fairies and nature-spirits. Maybe these are the same contacts with an unknown, unfathomable and strange energy, and we give just them or it a fashionable color or projection so we can more easily assimilate and integrate it.
The wise old men from the East already knew this; according to them nothing can be learned that is not already known. That sounds unrealistic, but has to do with the distinction between data and information. There is a lot of data out there, but only what truly reaches you and moves you can be seen as information.
The Internet is a very good example of this; there you will only find what you are looking for and what you more or less know.
The whole process of how information comes to us, how it is invited and filtered by our perception, how sometimes essential bits of info pop up magically, this is largely uncharted. The lack of deep understanding of how we internally make sense of this strange relationship between the inner and outer world is the true limit to `information technology’ as it now exists. It could be, that in the psychedelic experience the secrets of this essential link are revealed, but as long as science and the Law regard this as a dangerous aberration, we will not really progress.
True aha-erlebnissen, new insights, not colored by our own projection are like mercy, a gift from heaven. In this respect one could call all real innovation, all expansion of perceived reality, (divine) art. It’s the artist who pushes the boundaries of reality, not the scientist.
Reverend Horton Heat 
Elvis’ musical influences were the pop and country music of the time, the gospel music he heard in church and at the all-night gospel sings he frequently attended, and the black R&B he absorbed on historic Beale Street as a Memphis teenager. In 1954, he began his singing career with the legendary Sun Records label in Memphis. In late 1955, his recording contract was sold to RCA Victor. By 1956, he was an international sensation. With a sound and style that uniquely combined his diverse musical influences and blurred and challenged the social and racial barriers of the time, he ushered in a whole new era of American music and popular culture.
