by Greg Marley
(physical, mental, or spiritual), or the place where a successful hunt could occur.”9 Interestingly, Lincoff reported that the Koryaks in the area used only two mushrooms, the fly agaric and chaga (Inonotus obliquus). Both were used medicinally; none of the local mushrooms were used as food. The ethnic Russian people now living in the area, in contrast, collected and ate many species of mushrooms, as is their custom, but did not collect or use the fly agaric. According to some researchers, Amanita muscaria has had a significant impact on world cultures for at least 4,000 years and may be at the root of several of our major religions.10 Gordon Wasson brought broad western attention to Amanita muscaria with the publication of his 1968 work Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality in which he postulated that A. muscaria was the substance, organism, and deified portal into insight and wisdom known as Soma. Soma is the plant/God described in written texts transcribing more than one thousand oral hymns of the Aryan peoples who migrated from northern lands of Eurasia, settled in an area now known as Iran, and became known as the Vedic people. An inebriant that produced visions, Soma was described as a liquid that could be squeezed out of a reddish plant and then drunk by priests in highly proscribed ceremonies. Unfortunately, Soma use in the Vedic descendents ended many centuries before Christianity, and written accounts of teachings passed down in an oral tradition without a clear description of the plant of origin are all that remain. Along with other hints, the description of Soma as a red plant without mention of roots, leaves, or trunk brought Wasson to the conclusion that Soma must be A. muscaria. This idea was met with strongly mixed reactions from Vedic scholars and the general public. It has been widely refuted by some scholars though it is still actively debated within the field. Many different plants have been proposed as Soma, though no broad consensus has been reached on the origin of this powerful religious symbol.
Following Wasson’s work, John Marco Allegro, a British scholar of Oriental studies, published The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross in 1970. In 1953, Allegro had become the first British professional invited to join an international cadre of scholars to examine and translate the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were discovered between 1947 and 1956 in a series of caves along the ancient shores of the Dead Sea in what is now the West Bank of Israel.11 Over the years, Allegro’s studies and work with the scrolls led him to become one of the most public and outspoken members of a normally restrained field of scholars. He carried out his personal belief that the information on religion and culture contained in the scrolls should be made public for people to see and interpret on their own and that the scrolls contain information that would help us understand the shared origin of the three major religions, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Allegro was a specialist in the origins and derivation of language, a philologist, and worked to trace biblical language back to its roots. He developed a complex and involved argument that the roots of Christianity are connected to the development of myths, religion, and cult practices in a number of cultures. He further asserted that the roots of Christianity and other religions are intertwined with those of fertility cults that practiced the ritualized use of psychoactive mushrooms including Amanita muscaria to perceive the mind of God. Met with a strongly negative and skeptical reaction from the church and a variety of religious scholars, Allegro’s work has been questioned and refuted by many and yet stands as a fascinating thesis into the origin of religion with a mycological twist.
The Fly Agaric in the 1960s
Following the publication of Gordon Wasson’s Soma, the broader popular culture began to look more closely at Amanita muscaria as a source of enlightenment and psychic exploration. The hope that the fly mushroom could bring intense, sublime, soul-transporting experiences led a generation of seekers to try it. In the late 1960s and through the 1970s, thousands of people experimented with the effects of the fly mushroom as they experimented with and used other hallucinogens such as mescaline, psilocybin, and LSD. There are many accounts of these experiences, including one from Tom Robbins entitled “Superfly: The Toadstool that Conquered the Universe,” published in High Times in 1976:
I have eaten the fly agaric three times. On the second of those occasions I experienced nothing but a slight nausea. The other times I got gloriously, colossally drunk.
I say “drunk” rather than “high” because I was illuminated by none of the sweet oceanic electricity that it has been my privilege to conduct after swallowing mescaline or LSD-25. On acid, I felt that I was an integral part of the universe. On muscaria I felt that I was the universe. There was no sense of ego loss. Quite the contrary: I was a superhero who could lick any archangel in town and the rusty boxcar it hoboed in on.
I wasn’t hostile, understand, but I felt invincibly strong and fully capable of dealing with the furniture, which was breaking apart and melting into creeks of color at my feet. Although my biceps are more like lemons than grapefruit, I would have readily accepted a challenge from Muhammad Ali.12
By many other accounts, the reality often experienced by fly agaric users has often not lived up to the advertised hype. The concentrations of the active ingredients of the mushroom vary widely with location, season, age of mushroom, and numerous other variables. People who imbibe it are often assured of becoming nauseous without the assurance of becoming high.
Gordon Wasson described his own experience of self-administered A. muscaria along with the experiences of his co-workers in the mid 1960s. They ate the mushrooms in a number of forms, including raw with and without food and the juice of the mushroom plain or with milk. The members felt universally nauseous and several became ill. They fell into deep slumbers and could not be aroused easily. According to Wasson, “When in this state, I once had vivid dreams, but nothing like what happened when I took Psilocybe mushrooms in Mexico, where I did not sleep at all.”13
The author Frits Staal offers another description of Soma use, based on written accounts from oral Rigveda hymns. “The effect of drinking Soma is generally described by forms and derivatives of the verb mad, which has nothing to do with English ‘mad.’ It has a range of meanings including delight, intoxication, and inspiration. It also refers to the heavenly bliss of gods and ancestors and is, in the context of Soma, best translated and interpreted as rapture or elation.”14 Clearly, the historic record and the more recent, firsthand accounts differ markedly in both the tenor and content of the experience.
The Fly Agaric in Literature
When Lewis Carroll (Charles L. Dodgson) penned Alice in Wonderland in 1865, there is little doubt that he modeled the mushroom of amazing abilities after the attributes of the fly agaric. He likely read about the candy apple red-capped mushroom in contemporary mushroom literature such as Cooke’s manual on British fungi that contained an account of the properties of Amanita muscaria. These were translated into the experiences of Alice when she encountered a prophetic caterpillar. The concept took on another, more pop flair in the mid-1960s release of Jefferson Airplane’s “Go Ask Alice” with Grace Slick’s haunting voice chanting about a mind moving slowly following having some kind of mushroom and the antics of a hookah-smoking caterpillar.
Other well-known popular uses of images of the fly agaric include the video game Super Mario Brothers and, for an older generation, the dance of the mushrooms in Walt Disney’s production Fantasia to the accompaniment of Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker Suite.” In Fantasia, the mushrooms shake off their distinctive white warts within the first few seconds of the dance.
Amanita muscaria as a Poisonous Mushroom
Amanita muscaria is a poisonous mushroom and a few mushroom experts call it deadly poisonous. It is also an edible mushroom if properly prepared, regularly consumed in different parts of the world, and considered to be quite tasty. The simple act of writing these two conflicting statements in succession about the same mushroom makes me quite uncomfortable and sets the fellow mushroom poisoning experts in my head clamoring for rebuttal time. How can both of the previous two sentences be true—that the fly agaric is edible and
poisonous? Even if they are both true, we risk giving a dangerous mixed message to the general public. Be that as it may, both statements are accurate, and A. muscaria is not the only example of such dichotomy. The tropical staples cassava, the source of tapioca, and the starchy taro root both require long specific preparations to render them edible.
Closer to home, pokeweed is a common wild plant with a long tradition as a spring green in parts of the southern United States. This deep green plant with red stems and enticingly purple sprays of berries contains a seriously toxic tuber, poisonous stems and older leaves, and edible, even esteemed new shoots. The deep red juice of the pokeberry has been used to make ink and, in fact, the Declaration of Independence was written using pokeberry ink. The roots of the plant are the most toxic, but even the shoots must be carefully boiled in two changes of water to leach out the low levels of alkaloid toxins they contain.
Charles McIlvaine (1902), famous in the mushrooming world for his cast iron stomach and effusive praise on the edibility of marginal mushrooms, considered the fly agaric “poisonous to a high degree.” Though not very specific, he was right in that consumption of Amanita muscaria or the related species A. pantherina, A. crenulata, or A. frostiana generally results in onset of nausea and vomiting within ninety minutes, followed by confused thinking, loss of coordination or staggered gait, and, in some cases, euphoria, agitation, or both. This is often followed by a period of deep, coma-like sleep from which the individual may not be roused for some hours. During this sleep, the person might experience intense dreams or visions. The whole experience might also include tremors, muscle spasms, and cramps (perhaps from muscarine) and is generally fully resolved within twenty-four hours.15
Most authors acknowledge the toxic nature of this mushroom and qualify it as generally non-fatal. A very few will acknowledge that this mushroom is consumed as food in certain regions. In the Mushroom Hunter’s Field Guide, the noted American mycologist Alexander Smith reports that “some people extract the poison and then eat the mushroom, apparently with no ill effects. They claim it is a most delicious species.” He goes on to give general directions for the safe preparation including boiling in salted water. Smith finishes by giving the universal caveat emptor: Do so at your own risk.16
The food author William Rubel of Santa Cruz, California, began experimenting with preparing and eating Amanita muscaria after learning of a number of regions in Europe and Asia with a history of use of these mushrooms as food. He suggests boiling the mushrooms in salted water (1 teaspoon of salt per quart of water) and to discard the water before continuing to prepare the mushroom dish.17
That said, there also have been a couple of well-publicized historic deaths attributed to the consumption of the fly agaric, the most sensational of which was the 1897 death of the Italian diplomat, Count Achilles de Vecchj, in Washington, DC. De Vecchj considered himself an authority on all things fungi and, after talking with a vender at the K Street market, convinced the man to bring in some mushrooms found around his property. De Vecchj reportedly conducted some tests with chemicals and also cut the stem of the mushrooms with a knife, noting none of the blackening that would indicate (to him) poisonous properties. According to the vendor, the count considered these tests infallible estimations of wholesomeness. The count cooked up a large quantity of the mushrooms and served them for breakfast. De Vecchj himself ate several full plates, an estimated two-dozen caps. His friend, a Dr. Kelly, who consumed about half as many mushrooms, went on to work, fell ill, was briefly treated at a local hospital, and recovered fully. Count de Vecchj, who was known to be in poor health and weighed more than 300 pounds, fell ill shortly after his meal, collapsed and, after refusing an emetic, fell into a coma-like stupor. He developed violent convulsions and died the following day.18 De Vecchj’s death came at a time of Americans’ growing interest in wild mushrooms and shortly after the establishment of the country’s first mycological societies, and authorities used the publicity to sound the note of caution to would-be amateur mushroom eaters.
As in the nineteenth century, today severe illnesses and deaths from Amanita muscaria are exceedingly rare with perhaps three cases documented worldwide over the past fifty years.19 In Beug’s thirty-year review of mushroom poisoning cases in North America, 211 cases of toxic reactions were ascribed to the fly mushroom with one death attributed to freezing to death in a tent following A. muscaria ingestion. Other reported deaths worldwide have generally involved vulnerable people with already compromised health.
Dogs as well as reindeer find the muscimol-containing mushrooms attractive, and every year there are cases of pet intoxication and occasional death. Even cats, which normally have better sense about these things than dogs, are attracted to the fly agaric and panther cap and have become ill.20
Though the range of potential reactions from eating A. muscaria are broad and generally not severe, it is hoped that their recitation sounds the deep gong of warning to anyone considering their use as food or intoxicant. People generally get sick, and a very few dangerously so. A few people get high, and generally not wonderfully so. I recommend using them as good luck charms and avoiding them as food or recreation.
DESCRIPTION AND TAXONOMY
Amanita muscaria is one of the more striking members of the genus Amanita, an illustrious group of fungi notable for beauty and grace. The genus is home to both fantastically poisonous and famously edible members, including one of the better-regarded edible amanitas, Caesar’s mushroom. Especially in Europe, Caesar’s mushroom (A. caesarea) with its shiny orange cap and stem, is prized as an edible and known as a favorite food of the Romans as well their emperors, hence the name. The amanitas are even more famous as killers—the death cap (Amanita phalloides) reputedly killed Emperor Claudius. The truly dangerous nature of the amatoxin-containing species of amanitas has given rise to the common practice among mushroom field guide authors of recommending that no members of Amanita be considered as food. Others take a more nuanced approach but warn of the risks of misidentification.
The amanitas as a group have several features in common. All are upright classic-looking mushrooms with a central rounded cap that starts out almost spherical and matures into a flat or slightly convex shape. All have white or whitish gills free from the stalk and a white spore print. The cap sits atop a stem or stalk generally sporting a ring or annulus around the midsection that is the remnant of tissue covering the gills in a young mushroom. The base of the stalk is generally swollen and shows either scars or remnants of tissue that comprised a sac-like universal veil enclosing the entire mushroom in button stage. In several species, the cap of the mushroom is covered with scattered wart-like patches of tissue, the remaining bits of the universal veil. In other species, this universal veil splits open to allow expansion of the stem and cap and then remains cupped around the base as a sac-like volva.
After emerging from an egg-shaped button completely enclosed by the universal veil, Amanita muscaria assumes a traditional mushroom demeanor with a central stalk 4–8 inches high with a pendulous ring midway down and becoming bulbous at the base. This broadened stem base shows a series of concentric ring-like scars from the universal veil. The cap is perfectly round and central on the stalk, initially rounded and gradually becoming flat on maturity, generally up to 8 inches in diameter and covered with pyramidal whitish patches (warts) that are the broken remnants of the universal veil. The gills beneath the cap are whitish, closely packed, and free from the stalk. The spore print is white. In the northeast United States, we primarily see A. muscaria var. formosa with an orange to yellow cap and occasionally var. alba with a pale, off-white cap. (#14) West of the Mississippi River and in Europe, the classic red-capped form of the fly mushroom dominates.
The Fungal Invasion
Amanita muscaria is extending its range around the world due to man’s intervention. Though its ancestral range is confined to the Northern Hemisphere, the movement of cultivated trees and shrubs as nursery stock into new environments and o
nto new continents has led to the introduction of mushrooms to new regions. Mycorrhizal mushrooms like amanitas, growing with desirable timber and landscaping plants, and saprobic mushrooms associated with livestock dung, have been especially mobile. The fly mushroom is now found introduced and naturalized on the continents of South America, Australia, New Zealand, and Africa.21 In New Zealand, where conifers have been imported and planted in large numbers as a basis for their timber industry, there is concern regarding the presence and increasingly common occurrence of Amanita muscaria. The colorful mushroom thrives in plantations of imported Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) and reportedly has adapted to live on some native species as well. There is some concern that this highly adaptable fungus poses a threat to native mycorrhizal mushroom species, and it is now considered invasive.22 It is a new paradigm to consider mushroom-producing fungi as invasive along with plants such as kudzu, insects like the emerald ash borer, birds like the starling and pigeon, and mammals such as the Norway rat. Within the fungal kingdom, we are more accustomed to learning of invasive fungal pathogens of plants, memorable examples being Dutch elm disease and chestnut blight, which were transported to North America and are responsible for the death of millions of trees. Their swath of destruction has changed the forest and community landscape in fundamental ways across much of the United States. The idea that a mushroom is invasive has not yet settled into the public consciousness.
