Category: amanita
September 21, 2011
September 18, 2011
June 11, 2011
Buddhism & Psychedelics
Below is a 10 minute video of Buddhist scholar and lama, Mike Crowley, discussing sacred elixirs in Buddhist and Hindu history, followed by an excellent, recent 1-hour interview with him going deeper into this fascinating topic, conducted by Jan Irvin of Gnostic Media.
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And click here for the Gnostic Media interview. This is must-listen for anyone interested in Buddhism or Hinduism.
[Right right-click the media player and select "save video as" to enable easier playback control from your own media player]
January 6, 2011
Radical Mycology – Spore Liberation Front Primer
A new zine from the Spore Liberation Front exploring the numerous uses for mushrooms and their implications for ecoactivists and other Earth friendly folk. From food to medicine to paper and dyes to the amazing new field of mycorememdiation (the use of mushrooms to clean up oil spills and restore damaged habitats), this zine gives a thorough overview of the greater fungi with a novel, radical perspective.”
December 24, 2010
Mushrooms, Santa & The Birth of a Sun
NPR Morning Edition speaks a couple minutes about Fly Agaric mushrooms and Christmas.
Some extension and commentary:
Fly Agaric mushrooms only grow under pine trees and birch, which is why we use birch branches as Christmas decorations, and why we put a pine tree in our home with brightly colored gifts underneath (the fly agarics are the brightest red you’ve ever seen). In Lapland Siberia, the village elder or shaman would go out and collect these intoxicating mushrooms to bring good cheer during the cold dark solstice season, like we enjoy a nice schnapps. He or she would find the bright red mushrooms under the pine trees (like presents), pluck them and place them on the boughs of the tree to dry a bit and go back and collect them all later in his satchel (drying made them lighter and easier to carry more). This is why we place ornaments on the boughs. In fact, before Coca Cola promoted the red and white theme, antique, turn-of-the-century Christmas ornaments from Germany and nearby were actually replicas of the amanita mushroom or the head of a man with a white beard and red hat with white polka dots. (140 examples)
Since the front door of the yurt was often snowed over the shaman would enter through the smoke hole / chimney to distribute the mushrooms. Because these mushrooms are less toxic and more psychoactive when dried, people would put them in stockings and hang them over the fireplace to dry overnight. If you burned them into black chunks of ‘coal’ you were probably naughty this year but if you were nice you got some happy treats. This is where the stocking tradition comes from.
As NPR pointed out, reindeer love these mushrooms for their psychoactivity too, and the Siberians have long refered to them as “flying reindeer” because shamanic flight, astral projection, out-of-body experiences go hand in hand with psychedelic plant traditions. (That guy at the end who dismisses all of this in favor of the Coca-Cola explanation is quite the nincompoop.)
The other aspects of Christmas are largely astrological (tree-top star = Polaris, Spiral of popcorn or candy around tree = Draco) but the great majority of America’s favorite, Christian, family friendly holiday, from red & white candy canes to Rudolf, is almost entirely based on a mushroom cult!
OH, THE DELICIOUS IRONY!!!! :D
♥ ♥ ♥ Merry Christmas!!! ♥ ♥ ♥
……………….★
…………….*✱ ♥
…………..*♥- ҈ -*※
………..*✱ *♥*❉**
………¨※ *♥*- ҈ -*✿*
……..*♥**✱ *✿*- ҈ -*♥*
..*8***♥**- ҈ -**✿*♥*※
**- ҈ -*♥**❉**♥**o*✱*♥*
……………__▒__
……………▓▓▓/
For more information of the astrological and shamanic origins of Christmas check out this excerpt from The Pharmacratic Inquisition:
October 25, 2010
Soma-shroom-enhanced art experience for sale in Berlin
via Clark Heinrich via Gawker:
Carsten Holler, the artist who made the hanging Amanita sculptures–
Is now offering the “soma” experience for a price:
Soon You Can Pay $1,400 To Eat Magic Mushrooms
A new installation at Berlin’s Museum for Contemporary Art, by Carsten Höller, will soon offer vistiors a chance to pay 1,000 euros to eat shrooms and sleep in a “floating hotel room on a platform shaped like a mushroom.”
Boy, what a deal! The Museum told Reuters that Höller’s installation offers people the “opportunity to dive into the world of soma” — by drinking a mixture containing fly agaric mushroom and tripping out for the night in the museum. It opens on November 5, and promises to provide plenty of great stories (we hope).
Still, $1,400 to spend a night on shrooms? That’s just a tad bit steep, no?
[Reuters]
October 4, 2010
Siberian Shaman Tatiana Explains The Mushrooms
After some drumming by the local women, Tatiana Urkachen, a 7th generation shaman of the Evan branch of the Tungas tribe of Siberia, talks about the various effects of Fly Agaric mushrooms. Notice the incredibly youthful energy coming from a woman who was probably in her 70′s when this was recorded.
August 14, 2010
Forthcoming: Mike Jay's High Society
I enjoy the work of science history writer Mike Jay and this book has been begging to be written so I am really looking forward to this one:
(Click image for Amazon link)
An illustrated cultural history of drug use from its roots in animal intoxication to its future in designer neurochemicals
• Featuring artwork from the upcoming High Society exhibition at the Wellcome Collection in London, one of the world’s greatest medical history collections
• Explores the roles drugs play in different cultures as medicines, religious sacraments, status symbols, and coveted trade goods
• Reveals how drugs drove the global trade and cultural exchange that made the modern world
• Examines the causes of drug prohibitions a century ago and the current “war on drugs”
Every society is a high society. Every day people drink coffee on European terraces and kava in Pacific villages; chew betel nut in Indonesian markets and coca leaf on Andean mountainsides; swallow ecstasy tablets in the clubs of Amsterdam and opium pills in the deserts of Rajastan; smoke hashish in Himalayan temples and tobacco and marijuana in every nation on earth.
Exploring the spectrum of drug use throughout history–from its roots in animal intoxication to its future in designer neurochemicals–High Society paints vivid portraits of the roles drugs play in different cultures as medicines, religious sacraments, status symbols, and coveted trade goods. From the botanicals of the classical world through the mind-bending self-experiments of 18th- and 19th-century scientists to the synthetic molecules that have transformed our understanding of the brain, Mike Jay reveals how drugs such as tobacco, tea, and opium drove the global trade and cultural exchange that created the modern world and examines the forces that led to the prohibition of opium and cocaine a century ago and the “war on drugs” that rages today.
April 14, 2010
Lightning Fuels Mushroom Growth
Mushrooms are associated with lightning in cultures across the globe, from Africa to Siberia, Europe, Arabia and New Zealand (not solely the Japanese as pointed out in the link). The Maya of Guatemala used the word kakulja, which means lightning, when referring to the sacred psilocybe mushrooms.
Recently, the cross-cultural folklore that mushrooms grow where lightning strikes has been confirmed:
Lightning-powered mushrooms could boost food yields
July 20, 2009
Know Your Mushrooms
From the director of Grass!
Trailer:
Description:
From the award-winning director of COMIC BOOK CONFIDENTIAL, GRASS, GO FURTHER and a host of paradigm-shifting films reappraising the backwaters of popular culture, Ron Mann investigates the miraculous, near-secret world of fungi with his newest piece of cinema, KNOW YOUR MUSHROOMS.
KNOW YOUR MUSHROOMS follows uber myco visionaries Gary Lincoff and Larry Evans (two of the more expert and unforgettably mercurial characters in the community) as they lead us on a hunt for the wild mushroom and the deeper cultural experiences attached to the mysterious fungi.
Combining material filmed at the Telluride Mushroom Fest with animation and archival footage along with a neo-psychedelic soundtrack by the Flaming Lips, KNOW YOUR MUSHROOMS opens the doors to perception, takes the audience on a longer, stranger trip and delivers them to a brave new world where the fungi might well guide humanity to a saner, safer place with extra cheese.
Here’s a 4 minute clip from the documentary:
