Mushrooms description

The following chapters are meant to illustrate this diversify of attitudes towards psychotropic mushrooms. Descriptions of planned and involuntary experiments with specific mushroom species offer convincing evidence that the effects of psychoactive mushrooms are open to many possible interpretations. 

Firstly, I believe that any of the above descriptions of minimal life should permit one to discriminate between the living and the non-living. All forms of life we empirically know about should be covered by such a dehnition - and conversely one should not be able to hnd forms of life that are contradictory to such a definition. Secondly, there is the intellectual challenge to capture in an explicit formulation the quality of life how can one express the common denominator of micro-organisms, plants, animals, mushrooms, and mammals which set them apart from the inanimate world of rocks and machines Clearly, even if we do not arrive at an unique definition of life, the two above conditions are capable of fostering useful discussion and progress in the field. 

Chatino country, where we were accompanied by Bill Upson of the Instituto Linguistico de Verano, who speaks Chatino. Later he likewise helped Puharich, but he informs us that no brujo in his presence testified to the use of a mushroom answering to the description of Amanita muscaria.5... 

The description of the Aztec mushroom celebration goes on in a more somber key as the participants apparently become involved in visions of the manner of their death. Whether these were genuine clairvoyant experiences or shared hallucinations induced by the high suggestibility of the be-mushroomed state, it is impossible to tell at this remove. 

An excellent description of encounters with Salvia divinorum can be found in a tape by Bret Blosser. While on a cave hunting expedition in the Sierra Mazateca in the late 70 s, Blosser quite accidentally came upon Mazatecs who use this plant, and was able to participate in several sessions with native shamans. He had the opportunity to receive instruction and learn about the plant s use over a span of several years, during which he periodically revisited the area. In his tape, Blosser discusses the uses for Salvia divinorum within the Mazatec culture, which includes medicinally - to treat both physical and "psychic" illnesses, and in divining - the future, the cause or cure for an illness, and information about friends, family, and enemies. He provides insightful descriptions of his journeys, and of the preparation and guidance of his sessions. The curandero who administered Blosser s journeys works with psilocybe mushrooms more frequently than Salvia divinorum, and indicated that Salvia divinorum is "too fast" for most people. 

Shortly after Maria Sabina s 1955 velada, a botanist informant for the CIA in Mexico City sent along a description of R. Gordon Wasson s discovery. The report was brief, mainly indicating that the banker had envisioned "a multitude of architectural forms after he had ingested the mushrooms. That was enough for the CIA to be interested in the Wassons. 

This short description of the main North American species illustrates how varied psilocybian mushrooms are. People intending to gather or cultivate them should consult experts, particularly when identification of any mushroom is in question. Even clear photographs may be only somewhat helpful. It should be kept in mind that mushrooms change appearance as they age and often have different coloration in different regions. 

When Abram Hoffer and Humphry Osmond took up the matter of mental effects in their book The Hallucinogens, they remarked that "the major difference between the mushroom effect and pure psilocybin seems to be the dryness of the scientific accounts and the richness of the accounts of self-experimentation. Probably no finer example of "richness" exists than in the descriptions of R. Gordon Wasson. 

Four experiences, catalyzed by the same mushroom, yielded four considerably different results. Two years later, Wasson amalgamated these into his generalized description of the effects of psilocybian consumption ... 

Mushrooms are the most important natural psychedelics of southern Mexico, used in ceremonies so sacred that Indians carefully concealed them from Europeans until the present century. It wasn t until the 1950s that descriptions of Mexican mushrooms came to the attention of the world. Soon after, botanists began to identify the mushrooms in use, and chemists found that their psychoactive properties came from psilocybin, an indole hallucinogen similar to LSD but with a shorter duration of action four to six hours. 

Jonathan Ott includes Amanita muscana and Amanita pan-therina in his Hallucinogenic Plants of North America [Berkeley, California Wingbow Press, 1976 revised edition 1979). Descriptions of uses of Amanita muscaria will be found in Narcotic Plants of the Old World, Used in Rituals and Everyday Life An Anthology of Texts from Ancient Times tO the Present, edited by Hedwig Schleiiier (Monticello, New York Lubrecht Cramer, 1979). In SOnia Mushroom of Immortality (New York ... 

In the seven years since eating seven mushrooms in a garden in Mexico I have devoted all of my time and energy to the exploration and description of these strange deep realms. 

There are a number of written reports about psychotropic mushrooms that date back to the late Middle Ages. While this collection of documents includes a variety of different sources from several countries, they provide remarkably similar descriptions of psychoactive mushrooms and the general nature of their effects. 

For the most part it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to assemble complete and accurate details on many aspects of magic mushroom history Ifom source materials available today. Thus, it is an instance of rare good fortune and a boon to mushroom historians that E. Brande s description of a typical psilocybin syndrome was augmented by J. Sowerby, author of "Coloured Figures of English Fungi or Mushrooms" (London, 1803). Sowerby s book included a rendition and description of the... 

While Psilocybe semilanceata is common throughout Germany, the species does not appear to favor specific areas where it occurs in marked abundance or density. One obvious limitation on the growth of the species is the limited presence of fertilizer in areas that would otherwise be excellent locations for the mushroom to thrive in. Most likely that is why the species has not expanded into new habitats in Germany over the last few decades. Descriptions of frequency of occurrence in the older literature are comparable to contemporary observations. 

Psilocybe semilanceata is quite likely the most potently psychoactive mushroom among the European species. The impressive nature and rapid onset of the effects are reflected in the description of an intoxication from England cited above. These elements are also part of the following account, which details a mycologist s first self-experiment ... 

The classification of these synonyms is particularly difficult, because the mycologists involved provided detailed descriptions for isolated collections of fruiting bodies only, followed by comparisons with mushrooms found at other locations, using dates provided in the literature. Under the best of circumstances, an analysis was performed on dried samples from... 

A description of any mushroom species becomes valid only after a Latin diagnosis of the collected sample has been published in a mycological journal, along with distinctive characteristics in relation to other species. 

Figure 27 describes the mushroom s characteristics as accurately as Figure 3 (p. 6) depicts its habitus. More recent descriptions are usually less detailed and thorough than Michael Schulz s from 1927. 

In 1970, another poisoning case with Panaeolus subbalteatus occurred in Leipzig. Similar to the 1915 incident in New York, the mushrooms spontaneously emerged among a culture of artificially cultivated mushrooms (Stropharia rugoso-annulata Farlow, in this case) and then were eaten by mistake. The description of its effects is somewhat peculiar. 

In his description of a Scottish case of intoxication in 1977, Watling mentions marked blue colorations along the caps of stems of Panaeolus subbalteatus, which also developed in reaction to pressure. According to my observations, the formation of blue stains is very rare. Reports from the Pacific Northwest United States also state that only one in a hundred mushrooms actually turns blue. 

More recent studies of carefully identified mushroom material from the European Panaeolus species did not document substantial amounts of psilocin in these samples. Also, "chemical races" associated with specific species could not be established. I believe that almost all accidental intoxications can be traced to ingestion of Panaeolus subbalteatus, with the possible exception of one case caused by an imported tropical species. Very little is said in the literature about Panaeolus retimes, its area of distribution and chemical composition. The intoxication case from Bremen, however, indicates that this species is psychoactive (see Figure 28). In 1985,1 found two fruiting bodies in a pasture, whose dried weight contained 0.03 - 0.05 % psilocybin, as well as serotonin. All of the mushrooms features, such as wrinkled, fleshcolored caps, corresponded to descriptions of Panaeolus retirugis. 

The first description providing qualitative evidence for the presence of psilocybin and psilocin was provided by Saupe in 1981, who examined extracts of Pluteus salicinus (Pers. Fr.) Kumm. from Illinois. Surprisingly, psilocin turned out to be the alkaloid with the highest levels of concentration in the samples tested. This mushroom species had previously been described in Europe about 200 years ago. Since then, however, it has rarely been mentioned in the literature, and only briefly, if at all (see Figure 37, p. 59). 

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