by Alex Letcher
er with their lab assistant Hans Tscherter) wondered whether any European species might not also prove psychoactive. Chromatographic techniques allowed them to test for the presence of psilocybin in a variety of species (without having to eat the mushrooms personally this time), but only the Liberty Cap, Psilocybe semilanceata, turned up trumps. Rather satisfyingly, however, it proved to be the closest taxonomical relative to the Mexican species.'4 The finding was replicated in 1969 at London's Imperial College by a young biochemist, Peter Mantle, whose dry paper concluded that 'ingestion of more than about 3g of air-dry sporophores of P. semilanceata might be expected to be hallucinogenic'.11
Had such a portentous line appeared in an American journal it would, almost certainly, have triggered an immediate response, especially if the research had been conducted in a city that was, like London, in the grip of psychedelia. But a greater gulf between academia and the underground existed in Britain than in the States, at least within this subject area. Mantle's interest in psilocybin was purely biochemical; he was not a hippy, nor did he ever try the mushrooms himself.16 He obtained specimens from the experimental station at Rothamsted in Hertfordshire, and undertook the assay alone. The final sentence of the paper was mind-expanding only in the sense that it was intended to further scientific knowledge, while the journal in which it appeared, Transactions of the British Mycological Society, was obscure enough to ensure that no one stumbled across it accidentally. As for Heim and Hofmann's paper, its publication in the voluminous, multidisciplinary French journal Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaires des Seances de VAcadmie des Sciences meant that it too went undiscovered in Britain.
If members of the London underground can be excused for overlooking the latest scientific findings, the accusation that they were slow off the mark nevertheless still holds. For one man a prodigious and charismatic writer and ultimately Professor of Poetry at Oxford had been volubly proselytising about magic mushrooms since the late i95°s, and not just in high-brow books and essays, but face to face with hippies at his home in Mallorca. He was a friend and correspondent of Gordon Wasson, and he played a vital, if largely forgotten, role in the story of the discovery of the magic mushroom. His name was Robert Graves.
The eccentric poet and champion of the magic mushroom, Robert Graves. During his first mushroom trip he felt transported to paradise. © Hulton I, Archive / Getty Image.
Robert Graves (1895-1985) occupies an idiosyncratic position within twentieth-century English literature. Primarily a poet, he was also a prolific writer of essays and historical novels, the most famous of which is probably /, Claudius (1934). Educated at Charterhouse and then Oxford, and a veteran of the First World War, he had a lifelong passion for the ancient world. Always destined, perhaps, to become an establishment figure, he nevertheless lived what was by any standards a bohemian lifestyle. He spent most of his adult days in a sort of selfimposed exile amongst the olive groves of his beloved Deia in Mallorca, where he adhered to an eccentric personal mythology. For Graves, poetic inspiration was a gift from the Muse, a once ubiquitous, matriarchal moon goddess long abandoned by patriarchy because of its deification of reason. His ceaseless quest for the Muse usually in the form of beautiful but cold and domineering women led him to have a complex and often fraught emotional life (not least his tempestuous liaison with the American poet Laura Riding (1901-1991)). This creative tension, or as he phrased it, the dilemma of 'how to live by intuition and always keep on the beam',17 suffused his work, while his search for inspiration, in whatever guise, made him receptive to unusual ideas. When he encountered Gordon Wasson's speculative notions about the role of mushrooms in ancient religion he was delighted, for they chimed absolutely with his own way of thinking.
On paper, the two men appeared to have very little in common, the one a measured and exact banker, the other an extravagant and impulsive poet. But they were both amateurs, operating outside the confines of academia, and were equally enthused by the enigmas of the ancient past. They shared the belief that myths were attenuated memories of actual historical events, not psychological processes, and agreed that the comparative method was the means by which to reconstitute these origins. They were enthralled by the idea of trance, whether the poetic frenzy granted by the Muse, or the divinely sanctioned grace of the mystic. And both, publicly at least, expressed an unshakeable selfbelief in their oft-times bizarre ideas.
It was Valentina Wasson who first wrote to Graves in January 1949 concerning the murder of the Roman Emperor Claudius, poisoned by mushrooms, but this initiated a long and lively correspondence between the two men. Graves relished their 'queer exchange of letters'" and thought Wasson 'one of the very few people whose mind works along the same channels as mine'. Wasson likened their sparky relationship to that of a flint and steel.19 The banker was a little in awe of the great poet at first, but enjoyed the fact that their friendship helped secure his own reputation.10 Grateful for this, he even helped the profligate and impecunious poet manage his financial affairs towards a position of solvency.1' But as Wasson's own reputation grew independently of Graves, there began a definite cooling of the relationship, initiated from the American's side. The exact reason is not clear from their correspondence, but may have had something to do with Graves's wilful habit of misreading, misquoting and embroidering Wasson's discoveries. For the grammarian so obsessed with accuracy that he wrote to Graves pointing out all the typographical errors in his most famous work of non-fiction, The White Goddess such a sloppy attitude may have proved intolerable.13
But then, though Graves was an immensely careful poet, he had little time for scholarly accuracy in the orthodox sense. His personal mythology meant that he privileged 'poetic' over 'scholarly' truth, even when his intuitively reached conclusions were unsupported by the facts. In poetic trance, he wrote, 'words come to life, and combine under the poet's supra-conscious guidance, into inevitably true rhythmic statements'.14 They were the gift of the goddess, after all.
Take, for example, The White Goddess, published in 1948 and again in paperback in 1961. It was a work entirely of his poetic imagination, but his imperative style meant that the book was widely and eagerly accepted by an uncritical public as an accurate portrayal of ancient Druidic religion and bardic practice. It became one of the foundational texts of the revived Pagan religions of the twentieth century, many of which diligently worship Graves's invented triple goddess, and beseech her for poetic inspiration, with every passing moon.15
Wasson's notions seem to have been particularly potent stimulants for Graves's imagination, and he entered into feverish speculation about the supposed use of hallucinogenic mushrooms in the ancient world. He became increasingly convinced, on the basis of 'poetic* leaps of faith dizzying even by Wasson's standards that the flyagaric had been used as a sacrament in the cult of Dionysus, in early Judaeo-Christian faiths, and by the Iron Age Druids. He regularly bombarded Wasson with his increasingly tenuous connections, once writing 'isn't it strange how I seem to act like a lightning-conductor for these things on your behalf?'16 But, by the end, Wasson was less than underground, overground
thunderstruck by these flights of fancy that threatened to overshadow his own.
Nevertheless, back in the early, halcyon days of their friendship, Graves had played his part in the Wasson saga and the rediscovery of the Mexican mushrooms. His enthusiastic encouragement, for example, undoubtedly gave Wasson the conviction to pursue and develop the theory of the ancient mushroom taboo, while his unqualified support of the thesis counted towards its uptake on both sides of the Atlantic: Graves championed it at every opportunity.17 But even more importantly, it was Graves who alerted Wasson to the existence of the Mexican mushroom rituals. In September 1952, he forwarded Wasson an article from a pharmaceutical journal, Ciba Symposia, detailing Schultes's identification of teonanacatl * with the result that the delighted ethnomycologist immediately set about organising his first trip to Oaxaca.
Though
he has received little recognition for his part in the story, Graves did at least get to try the mushrooms himself in January i960, while a guest at Wasson's New York apartment (Wasson had previously visited Graves in Mallorca in October 1953, and received him in New York in 1957).19 As we have seen, Wasson hosted a few of these mushroom soirees for invited friends during the years of his Mexican travels, at which he acted as hierophant, served up pills of dried mushrooms (in this instance, Psilocybe hoogshagenii) and directed the experience with slides of Sabina and recordings of her bemushroomed chanting. Solemnly, he began each session by advising his congregation to achieve a state of grace.JO
Graves entered into the experience not only in a state of grace but fully in the expectation that he might be granted a vision of paradise. He had become convinced that the reason why there were so many 'similarities' between the various ancient descriptions of Elysium was that a common hallucinogenic experience lay behind them. It is not necessary to reiterate the reasons why this is unlikely to be true but, armed with this expectation, Graves had exactly the paradisiacal encounter he craved. Writing to thank Wasson afterwards, he brightly exclaimed that it 'was not merely a red-letter day but a day marked with all the colours of a celestial rainbow'.*1
Graves's account of his experience is not well known, buried as it is amongst his Oxford Addresses on Poetry, delivered during his time as Professor of Poetry; but it stands alongside those of De Quincey.
Huxley and, indeed, Wasson as one of the finest pieces of trip-lit in the English canon. His visions were vivid, for he found himself passing through a marble grotto replete with jewels, grimacing demons, and nakedly dancing caryatids. At one point, he grasped the knowledge of good and evil: 'my mind suddenly became so agile and unfettered that I felt capable of solving any problem in the world; it was as if 1 had immediate access to all knowledge everywhere. But the sensation of wisdom sufficed why should I trouble to exploit it?'*1
He was enraptured by the words of the curandera Maria Sabina who, unsurprisingly, became for him the embodiment of the Muse. 'Each song was followed by a pause,' he wrote of her chanting, 'and always I waited in a lover's agony for her to begin again, tears pricking at my eyelids.'55 He watched, spellbound, as her words appeared to flow out as an intricate, golden-linked chain. 'Towards the end came a quick, breathless, cheerful song of creation and growth. The notes fell to earth but rose once more in green shoots which soared swiftly up, putting on branches, leaves, flowers until it dominated the sky like the beanstalk in the fairy tale/54
Graves's evident delight at finding paradise was, however, tempered by sentiments of guilt. He was terrified that the mushroom short cut might somehow jeopardise his ordinary day-to-day connection with the Muse. Poetic inspiration, though often more subtle and far less intense, was his raison d'etre and, he concluded, was more lastingly worthwhile. He only ever took 'mushrooms', or rather pure psilocybin pills, one further time at a Wasson soiree, but the evening was unpleasant and anticlimactic. None of those present55 enjoyed the experience and, perhaps tellingly, Graves watched as his wife Beryl's face became 'grotesquely distorted': she swore never to repeat the experience.1 Blame was attributed to the chemistry of the drug, not that of the group, and the evening's horrors were sufficient to convince Graves that thereafter he should seek inspiration unassisted.
Nevertheless, he went on to argue, and in all seriousness, that the mushroom should be restored to its 'original (presumed) position in religion',57 administered at puberty by way of initiation, at marriage to deepen the lovers' bond, and in old age to prepare the way for dying'Not that I should care to enrol myself in any such cult,' he adde haughtily, 'which would imply ecclesiastical discipline and theologic dogma, and force me into friendship with co-religionists not chosen N myself.'58
The co-religionists he did eventually elect to befriend, however, were nothing if not unusual, for during the 1960s Deia became a haven for hippies, freaks and other assorted members of the underground. Many were made welcome in the Graves household, young and attractive 'hippy-chicks' especially so, for they would be whisked hurriedly away to assist Graves with his musings.,9 The musicians Robert Wyatt, from free-jazz outfit Soft Machine, and Daevid Allen, later visionary leader of the kber-hippy psychedelic band Gong, were two of the more famous visitors received at Dei.4° The question that arises is whether Graves succeeded in inspiring anyone to go looking for magic mushrooms back home. That he was always happy to talk about magic mushrooms is clear, but whether anyone acted directly upon his words remains to be discovered.
Graves, however, was so enthused by magic mushrooms that he could not resist placing them into the revised, paperback editions of The White Goddess (1961) and The Greek Myths (i960). True to form, he put forward wildly inaccurate speculations as fact, stating, for example, that the fly-agaric, together with Panaeolus papilionaceus (at best, a capriciously active species), had been employed in classical times. Happily and erroneously, he declared that his own experiences with psilocybe mushrooms had mirrored the 'ancient toadstool mysteries' of the Celtic bards.4'
Here, then, was all the information anyone needed to uncover the hallucinogenic properties of the Liberty Cap, bound up within a supposed tradition invented, but delivered from an apparently reliable source that proclaimed psilocybe mushrooms to have been safely used throughout antiquity. Both these books were widely read, and within the underground The White Goddess was regarded as something of a crucial text. It therefore seems probable that Graves did inspire someone to go foraging, either directly or through these printed works. One final accolade must be added, therefore, to those already heaped upon this brilliant but eccentric English poet: not only did he help Wasson discover the Mexican magic mushroom, but he led people to the British one as well. It seems he got his mushroom religion in the end.
It is not possible to say with any certainty whether the momentous mushroom article in Oz really does detail the very first intentional British mushroom trip it is definitely the earliest on record – nor whether the experiences were the author's own. But written by a young hippy immersed in the underground and with a passionate interest in herbalism and the occult, it seems safe to presume that the article was autobiographical. Though it has not proved possible to trace him, documents show that the author, Lynn Damton, spent much of 1967 living in North London with members of The Exploding Galaxy, 'a particularly Goonish dance-troupe'41 run by kinetic artist David Medalla. Darnton was evicted from the house for transgressing the group's atypically stringent anti-drugs policy he smoked dope on the premises45 but thereafter formed his own group called, appropriately enough, The Tribe of the Sacred Mushroom (most probably named after Andrija Puharich's book). The Tribe made news in 1968 by upping sticks from London's squats and bedsits, and setting up what IT called 'the first rural hippy commune' in Suffolk.44 There they eked out a living making jewellery and psychedelic posters, and experimenting with macrobiotic diets.
The group were, in the spirit of the times, overtly spiritual. They adhered to their own particular blend of psychedelic mysticism, which mixed Druids, pyramids and Atlantis into its heady, patchouli-scented bricolage. Darnton was very much their high priest,45 and during 1968 he led the group in a series of psychedelic rituals around the country, designed to answer the portentous appearance of the asteroid Icarus by 'raising vibrations'. In scenes worthy of Henry Livings, a ritual in London's famous club Middle Earth only succeeded in invoking the police.46 When The Times caught up with the Tribe later that year to interview them for its series on the 'restless generation', it found them back in Notting Hill, waiting for a sign, a telepathic communication perhaps, that they should go and live in the more spiritual atmosphere afforded by the Peruvian Andes.47 Presumably the call never came, their destiny lying at home, but thereafter the Tribe earned its title by devoting itself to fungal experimentation.
Somewhat anticlimactically, the main focus of Darnton's Oz article was not the Liberty Cap at all, but rather, as we sa
w in Chapter Eight, his fly-agaric-fuelled encounter with a parliament of gnomes. Psilocybin mushrooms appear almost as an afterthought, tacked onto the now familiar tales of bemushroomed Siberian shamans and Koryak tribesmen struggling to leap over cracks in the road. Even so. the mushrooms presumably Liberty Caps were picked in or around an unnamed English village, dried in front of a fire, and eaten with jam. Very few of their effects are described Darnton is more concerned with his bemushroomed insights into the supposed kabbalistic origins of the village church except the peculiar thought that flashed through his mind as the mushrooms took effect: 'my eyeballs have just been cleaned and see how new the world looks!'48
The effects of the article were similarly muted, for far from unleashing a mushrooming pandemic, the piece seems to have been met largely with indifference. This ambivalence was possibly due to Darnton's favouring the fly-agaric a drug never destined to catch on or to the drug snobbery of the day. For if cannabis served as a conspicuous marker of alterity, one and only one other drug conferred membership of the underground's inner sanctum: LSD.49 To be experienced, in the Jimi Hendrix sense, was to have dropped Acid. In the underground, where status was measured in part by what drugs you took, mushrooms came a poor second to the real thing.
Darnton's article was eventually followed, four years later, by the first guidebook to the British psycho-mycoflora, Richard Cooper's A Guide to British Psilocybin Mushrooms (1974).50 Just wh° Cooper was, and what his involvement with the underground might have been, remains unclear. The fact that he offered rudimentary descriptions of fungal biology and cultivation techniques, however, suggests that he had at least some mycological training. His somewhat patchily accurate publication, which is still in print, nevertheless very clearly identified the Liberty Cap, and suggested a dose, twenty mushrooms, as a safe starting point for psychedelic experimentation. The booklet was first advertised in the pages of /T, and over the years must have sold many thousands of copies, but its initial impact was underwhelming. A year after its publication, poet and author George Andrews bemoaned the fact that hardly anyone knew about or was making use of the psychedelic treasure growing freely in the Hills.51
