by Greg Marley
Since the middle of the twentieth century, there has been a surge in the investigation of mind-altering natural products as the western world began to explore the application of these powerful traditional medicines. The early western adopters sought to develop a language to refer to the compounds and the experience they unleash as a first step in talking about their effects and applications to a wider audience. Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), a synthetic drug initially isolated from the fungus ergot, was one of the first mind-altering drugs systematically studied in the West. The first group of modern researchers that sought to understand and describe the effects of LSD coined the word “psychotomimetic” to refer to a drug that induces psychosis. Psychiatrists in Europe who began to experiment with the use of psychotomimetics in therapy used the term “psycholytic” (“mind-loosening”) in the 1950s to describe a form of therapy, the compounds used in the therapy, and the desired action of the compounds. Psycholytic therapists viewed LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, and other agents as having the potential to loosen the ego defenses, and used them as an aid to traditional psychoanalysis, especially with resistant clients.2 In 1957, the British psychiatrist Humphry Osmond devised the term “psychedelic” (“mind-manifesting”) in an effort to avoid the stigma of mental illness frequently associated with psychology. Osmond wanted to take “psyche” back to the word’s Greek root meaning “soul,” and therefore focused on the action of these drugs on the perception of self in the universe. The term “psychedelic therapy” was used in the same period in Europe and America and relied on higher doses of LSD, and later other hallucinogens, as a way to induce insight, acceptance, tolerance, and profound spirituality.3 In later years, the term psychedelic was broadly applied in pop culture to music, art, and lifestyle and thereby was tainted in the view of Osmond’s followers.
Because the use of mind-altering compounds produces an alteration in sensory perceptions, the drugs became widely known as hallucinogens. The word hallucinate is derived from the Latin “allucinari,” which means to wander mentally or talk nonsensically and is synonymous with verbs indicating insanity or delirium.4 Since we don’t refer to shamans in an altered state as crazed or psychotic, this term seems inadequate to describe the traditional role of these powerful soul releasers. Aldous Huxley, who described his journeys under the influence of mescaline in The Doors of Perception, suggested the name “phanerothyme”—which means to make intense emotions manifest— to capture the deep significance of his experience while under under mescaline’s influence. In a playful exchange of ideas with Osmond, Huxley wrote
“To make this trivial world sublime,
Take half a gramme of phanerothyme.”
To which Osmond replied, marketing his own ideas,
“To fathom Hell or soar angelic,
Just take a pinch of psychedelic.”
Since this is probably the first time you’ve come across the term “phanero-thyme,” you know whose ideas prevailed in the search for a language to name this unique class of compounds.
While psychedelic describes the psychoactive compounds, it also quickly came to refer to an entire lifestyle and movement. In 1979, a small group of respected ethnobotanists, ethnomycologists, and others widely respected for their work in the culture and use of hallucinogens coined the term “entheogen” to describe those psychoactive plants, mushrooms, and extracted compounds used by shamans and priests in traditional ceremonial settings or others seeking to create a similar ritualized setting. They desired to “propose a new term that would be appropriate for describing states of shamanic and ecstatic possession induced by the ingestion of mind-altering drugs.”5 Concerned about the rapid proliferation of popular use and abuse of a variety of psychoactive drugs including LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the group felt strongly that there be a method of referring to psychoactive compounds that referenced their ritualized use as gateways to the soul and enlightenment rather than simple recreational use. Entheogen comes from the Greek terms “etheos,” referring to the god within, and “gen,” which is the root of our English word “generative” and connotes the idea of accessing or becoming the god within. The influential thinker and writer Stanislav Grof, MD, wrote of his own fundamental experience following the use of entheogens, “I had a completely atheistic background when I encountered entheogens. For me it was not so that my first entheogenic experience confirmed or deepened something I already believed in; it was a 180-degree turn.”6
My intent in the research and writing of the following chapters is to underscore the history of, and potential for, the use of psilocybin-containing mushrooms as entheogens and to underscore the historic use of muscimol-containing Amanita mushrooms in the same light. The abuse of psychedelics in the 1960s and 1970s led to the end of legitimate clinical practice and research into their potential applications in a variety of psychological settings. The slow, deliberate steps toward rehabilitation of the reputation of these entheogens are under way, and the future holds great promise for their use in assisting people to make meaning and peace with their world.
In the process of adding chapters on mind-altering mushrooms to this book, I find myself feeling vulnerable to the charges leveled by the sober and earnest scientific community and by concerned parents of impressionable teenagers who populate the planet of my other professional life as a clinical social worker and suicide prevention specialist. The exploration and publication of information about psychedelic mushrooms, other than as clearly worded cautionary tales used to bolster the ‘just say no’ dogma of adolescent parenting, threatens to place me clearly in the crosshairs of teachers, substance abuse counselors, police, and other people whom we rely on to protect our children. As the parent of an adolescent, my intent is not to glorify or aggrandize the use of hallucinogenic drugs or to encourage their use in uncontrolled settings. At the same time, I don’t want to dismiss the potential for personal enlightenment and self-revelation simply because of the excesses of an ill-informed and irresponsible generation of recreational abusers. We have trivialized historic and ritualized use by indigenous peoples and the legitimate potential of clinical applications of compounds such as psilocybin because of our fear about the wildest excess of group LSD trips. The comparison between indigenous use and clinical applications and the uncontrolled excesses of partying is unfair and blunt. Coming of age in the early 1970s, my life was shaped by the tenor of the times and the people who questioned and challenged the cultural norms and, in so doing, brought about both widespread dissent and needed social change. To many parents and societal leaders, the uncontrolled and stormy turbulence of the late 1960s and early 1970s—and its associated excessive drug use—looked like a forest fire that threatened to consume the society they had spent their lifetimes building. The reaction of the so-called “establishment” was to attempt to quell the storm, and drug use was one of the most visible targets. Looking back, however, it seems that much of the idealism that colored the 1960s has been quelled, and drug abuse continues.
The abuse of drugs—including alcohol, marijuana, and nicotine, along with the increasingly powerful and destructive concentrated and synthetic drugs, including opiates such as oxycontin, amphetamines (including meth-amphetamine), cocaine, and others—remains a major and legitimate concern in the United States and around the world. The ceremonial use of entheogens by indigenous peoples did not include the uber-potent synthetic derivatives, such as LSD, that are available today. LSD presents an increased risk for a bad trip, in part due to its potency, and also because people often use it without the shelter of proscribed ceremony and support. There’s a good reason why powerful prescription drugs are prescribed under the care and supervision of a doctor or other professional. In an ideal world, our doctors act in the role of shaman, establishing the ceremonial “set and setting” by informing and preparing the patient in order to ensure that the medicine can do its work. Every explorer of unknown territory needs a knowledgeable and experienced guide. This is as true for the use
of psychoactive mushrooms as it is in the application of insulin for a diabetic.
12
AMANITA MUSCARIA
Soma, Religion, and Santa
Ein Männlein steht im Walde
Ganz still und stumm
Er hat von lauter Purpur
Ein Mäntelein um.
Sag’ wer mag das Männlein sein
Das da steht auf einem Bein?
Glückspilz!
Fliegenpilz!
Little man stands in the forest
very still and mute.
He has around him
a little coat of red.
Say, who may the little man be,
that stands there on one leg?
Happiness mushroom!
Fly mushroom!
TRADITIONAL GERMAN RIDDLE
T here are few mushrooms capable of triggering a broader set of associations or a wider range of reactions in people around the world than the fly agaric, Amanita muscaria. It is an enduring symbol of good luck and holiday cheer in parts of Europe and one of the most widely depicted mushrooms around the world—one you have surely seen in fairytale illustrations, nature photographs, plastic gewgaws, and sculptures. Whenever an author, illustrator, or artist seeks a colorful iconoclastic rendering of a mushroom, the fly agaric is most likely to lead the list of contenders. You are probably already envisioning the candy-apple red cap covered with an artfully concentric accumulation of white “warts” that is the most commonly rendered version of Amanita muscaria. (See #14 in the color insert.)
The fly agaric has a contradictory and confusing reputation. Amanita muscaria is a visionary hallucinogenic mushroom used in several cultures across the world, most notably in Siberia and other Baltic regions where people use it as an intoxicant and as an aid to shamanic healing and ritual. It has a long history of reported application as an attractant and killer of household flies. Some consider it a deadly poisonous species, though it has claimed few lives over the past 150 years. Others have learned how to prepare it safely as food and esteem it as an edible mushroom. Good luck charm, intoxicant, insecticide, food, poison—wow!
The many common names of the red or yellow amanita reflect its rich history around the world. Like Americans, the British know this mushrooms as the fly agaric. To the French, it is the tue-mouche (fly mushroom or fly killer) or crapaudin (toadstool). And it is known as the mukhomor, or fly killer, to the Russians. In Germany and adjacent Central and northern European countries, the fliegenpilz (fly mushroom) and glückspilz (happiness mushroom) is a common theme of the Christmas season and is used as tree decorations and part of the traditional advent plate along with forest greens, a red apple, and red candles.1 Beginning in the 1800s, printed holiday cards bearing prominent images of the fly agaric along with other symbols of good luck such as horseshoes, four-leaf clovers, and fairy folk were exchanged at Christmas or to mark the New Year. The bright red and white mushroom also has been linked with the Yule celebration.
As children, we believe that reindeer fly through the night sky hauling a sleigh bearing a red-garbed, white-trimmed Santa Claus who crosses the land spreading good cheer and gifts. Some believe the image of Santa in red and white is a representation of the fly mushroom. Others postulate that reindeer came to “fly” through our sugarplum-filled imaginations fueled by Amanita muscaria. Are the reindeer physically flying or are they high as kites?
Reindeer (Rangifer tarandus), as they’re called in Europe and Asia, are herd animals of the tundra and taiga of northern regions. (This is the same animal known as caribou in North America.) They have been domesticated for centuries and their husbandry forms the basis of the nomadic lifestyle of Laps in present day Norway and Finland, the Cukchi of Siberia, and other nomadic groups in Mongolia.2 Traditionally, for all the nomadic groups, reindeer skins provided the raw materials for the tents over their heads, the clothing on their backs, and the warm, tough boots on their feet. In many regions, they are still raised for their hides and meat, and their milk is used fresh and made into cheese and yogurt. Reindeer milk is perhaps the world’s richest in fats and solids. Fresh, it is the consistency of cow’s milk cream.
Reindeer are normally fairly docile and easily managed. In some regions, children as young as three learn to ride and handle the large beasts, and infants are carried in cradles on their backs as families travel to new grazing land. They are pack animals that can carry up to 100 pounds across tundra landscape and also are used to pull sleighs across the frozen landscape as the beast of burden in the far north.
The connection between reindeer and the fly mushroom has been reported many times, most famously from Gordon Wasson’s work Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality, which sums up a number of historic references. Reindeer are fond of mushrooms and actively seek them out as a preferred food during the short arctic season when mushrooms abound.3 They love the fly mushroom and have been observed selecting them preferentially over other types. Under the influence of the fly mushroom, the normally docile reindeer become quite frisky and difficult to manage and stories abound of their leaping and cavorting across the tundra after a meal of the bright red fruit. Reindeer not only seek out the mushrooms to eat, but also will seek out the urine of other reindeer or the urine of humans who relieve themselves after eating fly agaric. The mushroom’s psychoactive chemical is excreted in urine and the reindeer can smell it. Accounts have described assertive tactics of the herd leaders seeking mukhomor-tainted urine, and the journal of an eighteenth century Russian explorer, Gavril Sarychev, described reindeer herdsman using sealskin containers of tainted urine to lure wandering animals back into the herd.4 Men coming out of celebrations in which the fly mushroom was used as an intoxicant have reported being bowled over by reindeer seeking to share in the fun. So the leap (metaphorically) from reindeer “flying high” due to mushroom intoxication and flying reindeer harnessed to Santa’s sleigh may not be too unrealistic.
Our modern image of Santa is an amalgam of northern European forest-dwelling pagan traditions coupled with early Christian beliefs and stories, and all abundantly leavened with twentieth century commercial spin. Early images of Santa from the 1800s showed him in forest browns and natural colors and not wearing red until later Victorian-era images.5 Santa’s current garb was epitomized in a 1931 advertising campaign by Coca Cola depicting the jolly man dressed in red, as bright as a newly emerging fly agaric cap. Clement Moore first depicted Santa being carried in a flying sleigh pulled by tiny reindeer in his 1822 poem A Visit from St. Nicholas and it is thought his ideas came from reports of the Saami people’s use of reindeer to pull sleighs in northern Scandanavia. The red Amanita image has long been a symbol of good luck in the season of the longest night, a red light shining bright in the winter darkness.
Amanita muscaria as Intoxicant and as Visionary Vehicle
In 1730, a German-born Swedish colonel named Filip Johann von Strahlberg published a book about his experiences as a prisoner in Siberia that described his observations of the local village’s use of mukhomer in celebrations, “Those who are rich among them, lay up large Provisions of these Mushrooms, for the Winter. When they make feast, they pour water upon some of these Mushrooms and boil them. They then drink the Liquor, which intoxicates them.” He went on to relate the practice of those not able to secure their own mushrooms as standing by with vessels to collect and drink the urine of the fortunate ones, “as having still some virtue of the mushroom in it and by this way they also get drunk.”6 Strahlberg was one of several thousand Swedes sent to work in Siberia following their capture by the Russians during Swedish King Charles’ disastrous invasion of Russia. During his twelve years as a prisoner, Strahlberg was nevertheless able to travel widely and made detailed observations of the people and customs that remain a valuable glimpse into the lives of native Siberian groups pushed out or disrupted by Russian expansion. There are a number of other early observations of the use of mukhomor as an inebriant throughout Siberia, mostly from Russian explorers and traders. Par
t of later Russian domination of this region included the introduction of vodka, a more universal inebriant that, over time, has replaced most mukhomor use.
Gary Lincoff, the contemporary mycologist and author of the popular Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms, led a group of mushroomers to eastern Siberia on two occasions in 1994 and 1995 and spent time observing and interviewing residents of several native Koryak and Even villages on the Kamchatka Peninsula about their use of mushrooms in general and Amanita muscaria in particular. Their main informant was a seventh-generation Even shaman who reported on her use of A. muscaria as a medicinal mushroom to assist elders with sleep and as a wound poultice for its anti-inflammatory and analgesic effects. She also ate the mushrooms “as a device to allow her to visit the spirit world to seek, for example, the cure for an illness
Native Siberians Adapt Use of Mushrooms as Food
The observation that most Siberian native peoples traditionally avoid mushrooms as food is further supported by the fascinating work of Sveta Yamin-Pasternak,7 who studied and contrasted the mycological attitudes and eating habits of the native Yupiik and Inupiaq peoples along the shores of the Bering Straits in both Alaska and Russia. She noted that throughout the region and on both continents people shared common food preferences regarding meats, seafood, berries, and greens. However, she observed markedly different attitudes regarding mushrooms and each group’s use of them. The people on the Siberian side collected, ate, and stored for winter use many mushroom species, especially Lactarius and Leccinum species, while on the Alaskan shores they feared and actively avoided mushrooms, maintaining a traditional assumption of their evil and poisonous nature. She found that the Siberian natives had no extensive history of mushroom use, but had adopted their strong mycophilic habits only during the past two generations, beginning in the 1960s. They learned to embrace edible mushrooms through their association with ethnic Russians who moved into the area heavily following World War II. As these teachers and government officials living in a new environment collected and used the local mushrooms, their passionate love of all things mushroom began to rub off on the local Yupiiks, especially those who lived along the coast and derived their living from the sea. Currently, there is a large proportion of the local people who avidly seek out the rich harvest of mushrooms during the very brief summer and autumn and preserve them for use during the nine months of winter that follow. The regional reindeer herders living in the same region continue to avoid mushrooms, though their four-legged charges avidly seek them out as a preferred food. Unlike the Koryaks to the south, the native peoples of the Bering shores have no reported history of Amanita muscaria use; it does not grow in their tundra region.8 In contrast, the Alaska natives, without the recent Russian influence, continue to avoid all mushrooms, following long-held traditions.
