magic mushrooms around the world

[...]... approach to the study of these substances The label "fool's mushroom" first appeared during the 1930s, along with "Mexican mushroom of insanity" In the 1950s, the Central American mushroom cults were discovered and the mushrooms themselves were renamed "Mexican magic mushrooms" , in recognition of their psychotropic effects and to emphasize the significance of the mushrooms' early integration into the social... spirits The mushrooms' ritualistic destruction by fire thus destroyed the powers of evil and mischievous spirits The assumption that some mushrooms are physical links to the intangible powers of the spirit world may have evolved from ancient fragments of knowledge about the psychoactivity of specific types of mushrooms There are a number of written reports about psychotropic mushrooms that date back to the. .. S gathered early in the morning of the third of October, in the Green Park, what he Supposed to be small mushrooms; there he stewed with the common additions in a tinned iron saucepan.* The whole did not exceed a tea saucerful, which he and four of his children ate the first thing, about eight o'clock in the morning, as they frequently had done without any bad consequence; they afterwards took their... inspection of the gills and the crooked stems enabled us to differentiate the wet mushrooms from the Panaeolus species (see Chapter 3.3) Like many other psychotropic mushroom species, a crucial characteristic of Psilocybe semilanceata is the blue discoloration of parts of the cap and the lower half of the stem, While the degree of discoloration is relatively minor, it is particularly noticeable when the mushrooms. .. remarkable that these historic portrayals revolve around just one aspect of the mushrooms' overall effects: the occasional semi-schizophrenic reaction which can at times be quite dramatic None of these accounts reflect a distinct appreciation of mushrooms in the tradition of the Mexican Indians ("teonanacatl" = flesh of the Gods) Between Reverence and Fear By contrast, in Europe we find that the symptoms... Mansfeld in the Vorharz Mountains, in the marshlands of Duben as well as in other eastern German marshland areas In addition, friends who are also mycologists have told me about finding the mushrooms in other parts of the country A book published in 1952 is among the rare sources that includes details about specimens discovered in the southeastern state of Saxony (see Figure 16, p 23) The Psilocybe... some of the fruiting bodies could be spotted easily on the grassy soil (see Figure 17) the vast majority of the specimens were usually concealed inside clumps of grass (see Figure 18) When the weather is dry, Psilocybe semilanceata is an easily recognizable species The fruiting bodies are extremely hygrophanous, which is why the color of the caps changes to a dark olive black-brown when the mushrooms. .. fabric of the cultures that cherished them Later on, the relatively neutral label "hallucinogenic mushroom" came into use in the mycological literature Other designations that gained and lost popularity over time include the somewhat derogatory term "intoxicating mushrooms" and the essentially meaningless "drug mushrooms" Scientifically Unbiased Hallucinations? Following his experiments with magic mushrooms. .. mushrooms growing on plant debris were found in the Saarland region of Germany Other collections came from the Southern regions of the Black Forest (MTB 7515, 1959, 1963), as well as the Vogtland area (1979) and the Rheinland area (MTB 4706, 1982) Similar mushrooms were also discovered near Hamburg (MTB 2428, 1983) and Bremen (1982, 1983) The latter collections are especially interesting, because the. .. in the course of his selfexperiment on June 29, 1955 Very little is known about the chemical composition of the collections cited above I analysed a few mushrooms from collections found in the Rheinland area of Germany in 1989 The results were as follows: Psilocybin: 0.51 % of dried mushrooms Psilocin: 0.08 % of dried mushrooms Baeocystin: 0.04% of dried mushrooms A few other analyses of German mushrooms . "flesh of the Gods." These sacred mushrooms were eaten during the course of rituals intended to contact the Gods in order to learn about the world and the realm of the divine. These magic mushroom rituals. knew that magic mushrooms were the children of the gods. WHO WAS THE FIRST MAGICIAN? A quasi-cannibalistic ritual, the act of eating the children of the gods unlocked one's power to experience the. "fool's mushrooms& quot; - which were gene ; considered inedible - had to be recognized as closely related to the magic mushrooms of Mexico, the flesh of the Aztec Gods. The souls of magic mushrooms