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-
- Reprinted without permission from the "Canadian Whole Earth Almanac" Vol #3
- no. 1 1972.
-
-
- Divine Mushroom of Immortality
- (Fly Agaric Kamachadal)
- by
- Georg Heinrich von Langsdorf
- Frankfurt 1809
-
- The plant kingdom is of immeasurable influence and usefulness for
- mankind, since it supplies most of our clothing, food, drink, and shelter.
- The medical science of primitive people consists entirely in their knowledge
- of the more or less efficacious plants, and everyday experiance confirms
- the fact that even a number of plants native ot our own regions are known to
- many uneducated nations almost more thouroighly than they are to us.
-
- To demonstrate this assertion, I should like to say at this point
- something about the fly-agaric, which we regard as extremely poisionous but
- which is used by various inhabitants of northeastern Asia as an intoxicant
- just as wine, brandy, arrack, opium, kava, and the like are used by other
- nations.
-
- ...The Kamchacals gather them usually during the hottest months of
- July and August; they maintain that those that dry themselfs in the earth,
- on the stalk, and that are somewhat furry and velvety to the touch on the
- underside of the cap have a far stronger narcotic effect than those picked
- fresh and strung up to dry in the air...
-
- ...The smaller mushrooms, which are bright red and covered with
- many white warty protuberances, are said to be far stronger in narcotic
- power than the larger ones, which are pale red and have few white spots.
-
- ...The usual way to consume fly-agarics is to dry them and then
- to swallow them at one gulp, rolled up into a ball, without chewing them;
- chewing fly-agarics is considered harmful, since it is said to cause
- digestive disturbances.
-
- ...The body's predisposition or susceptability to the intoxcicating
- effect of fly-agarics apperently is not the same at all times, since the
- same person may sometimes be strongly affected by a single mushroom and at
- other times remaining completely unaffected after twelve to twenty of them.
- Ordinarily, however, one large fly-agaric or two small ones are enough to
- make an enjoyable day.
-
- The narcotic effect begins to manifest itself about a half hour
- after eating, in a pulling and jerking of the muscles or a so-called tendon
- jump (although sometimes these effects appear only after an hour or two);
- this is gradually followed by a sense of swimming befoer the eyes,
- dizziness, and sleep. During this time, people who have eaten large
- quantity of mushrooms often suffer an attack of vomiting. The rolled-up
- mushrooms previously swallowed whole are then vomited out in a swollen,
- large, and gelatinous form, but even though not a single mushroom remains
- in the stomach, the fly-agaric eating are, in fact, intensified. Many other
- persons never vomit, even after eating copiously of the mushrooms.
-
- ...The nerves are highly stimulated, and in this state the slightest
- effort of will produces very powerful effects. Consequently, if one wishes
- to step over a small stick or straw, he steps and jumps as if the obstacles
- were tree trunks. If a man is ordinarily talkative, his speech nerves are
- now in constant activity, and he involuntarily blurts out secrets, fully
- consious of his actions and aware of his secret but unable to hold his
- nerves in check. In this condition a man who is fond of dancing dances and
- a music-lover sings incessantly. Others run or walk quite involuntarily,
- without any intention of moving, to places where they do not wish to go at
- all.
-
- ...Equally remarkable and strange is the extremely subtle and
- elusive narcotic substance contained in fly-agarics, which retains its
- effectiveness permenantly and can be transmitted to other persons: the
- effect of the urine form eating one of the same mushrooms can be transmitted
- to a second person, the urine affects a third, and similarly, unchanged by
- the organs of this animal secretion, the effect appears in a fourth and a
- fifth person.
-
-
-
- Fly agaric is also the kind of mushroom that Vikings took to enter the
- "beserker" state for battle. The Icelandic name for the fly agaric
- contains the word 'berserk' in it.
-
-
-