Nexus - 1805 - New Times Magazine-pages

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it was enough to provoke them into a three-decade-long uncovered a wealth of literature testifying to this fact. bout of invaluable research. The Wassons married in _ The fly agaric mushroom proved to be a link to primitive 1927, and one day during their honeymoon they decided __ religion, just as the Wassons had originally foreseen, to take a casual stroll in the Catskill Mountains of New and it soon became clear to them that psychoactive York. At some stage, Valentina, who was Russian by fungi were no small feature of cultural history. birth, stopped to pick wild mushrooms, delighting in such a fortuitous find. Her husband, on the other hand, _ Echoes of a Shamanic Beat being true to his Anglo-Saxon heritage, was appalled at Since the time of Tsar Peter the Great (1672-1725), the his wife's avid interest in lethal fungal abominations, | Kamchatka Peninsula, the most easterly part of Russian especially since she planned to cook and eat them later. Siberia, was visited by travellers, political exiles, After all, were not all fungal growths poisonous — explorers, fur traders and anthropologists. All were to toadstools to be avoided like the plague? With growing bear witness to the nomadic reindeer herders who dismay, R. Gordon Wasson imagined himself waking up __ ritually ingested fly agaric mushrooms (their only the next morning with a corpse intoxicant) in order to obtain contact instead of a wife. with the spiritual dimension. The This pronounced and deep-rooted word "shaman" itself derives from the difference in attitude between the two Siberian Tungus saman, which means of them over the culinary virtues of All were to bear “diviner", "magician", "doctor", fungi led them to suspect a cultural witness to the “creator of ecstasy", "the mediator rift: that there were mycophobic , between the human world and the peoples (sensible mushroom-haters nomadic reindeer supernatural world". like the Anglo-Saxons) and mycophilic The Siberian user of fly agaric would peoples (reckless mushroom-aficionados herders who sun-dry the mushrooms and later like the Russians). Furthermore, the ritually ingested ingest them either alone or mixed Wassons reasoned that there must be with milk or water. If taken alone, the an historical reason for these fly agaric mushroom would first be moistened diametrically opposed traditions, due mushrooms (their in the mouths of women, who would not to something like food . . produce a kind of pellet for the availability but rather to cultural only intoxicant) shaman to swallow. mepecetesia peor ts TM in order to obtain MM feo consuming hs quest to explore this strange contact with delirium, visual hallucinations, cultural anomaly. From the start, ri perceptual distortions of size, both figured at religion the spiritual eelings of superhuman strength somehow played a causal role. dimension. and a perceived contact with a numinous dimension, this last effect being the most important or the practising shaman, whose Their intuition proved correct. Research soon unearthed the Siberian cultural history of the Amanita muscaria mushroom, also predominant function was to nown as fly agaric, that access the spiritual realm to extraordinary, bright red and white-spotted autumnal attain supramundane knowledge for the good health of ungus found throughout the northern hemisphere and __his or her tribe. often charmingly depicted in illustrations adorning the The most bizarre aspect of this shamanic tradition, pages of children's books. Indeed, it has been however, was the habit of urine drinking. Somehow, the suggested that Lewis Carroll was influenced by — Siberians discovered that the active ingredient of the nowledge of the Siberian use of the fly agaric and used mushroom passed through the body without being he information to great effect in his book Alice's metabolised and that drinking fly-agaric-spiked urine Adventures in Wonderland, in which, you might recall, Alice could prolong intoxication. Possibly the Siberians nibbles on a mushroom that subsequently alters her _ learned of this odd fact by observing reindeer, which not size. only reputedly eat the fly agaric themselves with much Compared with the psilocybin mushroom, the fly gusto but also have an equal passion for human urine— agaric’s psychoactivity rates a poor second, though it is | so much so that Siberian reindeer herders considered it potentially entheogenic due to the presence of an _ dangerous to pee out in the open! alkaloid named muscimol. Despite muscimol's The rather disturbing and unpalatable practice of entheogenic inferiority to psilocybin, the cultural role drinking psychoactive urine attained great significance and use of the fly agaric mushroom among Siberian __in Wasson's later work in the 1960s, as urine drinking is shamans is beyond dispute, and the Wassons mentioned in the Rig-Veda, the ancient religious uncovered a wealth of literature testifying to this fact. The fly agaric mushroom proved to be a link to primitive religion, just as the Wassons had originally foreseen, and it soon became clear to them that psychoactive fungi were no small feature of cultural history. ritually ingested fly agaric mushrooms (their only intoxicant) in order to obtain the spiritual dimension. NEXUS ¢ 19 All were to bear witness to the nomadic reindeer herders who contact with AUGUST - SEPTEMBER 2011 www.nexusmagazine.com