Amanita muscaria, fly agaric or fly amanita is the most widely recognized of the psychoactive plants and fungi. The use, folklore and magic of this charming mushroom goes back thousands of years as a pesticide and inducer of altered perception.
Fly Agaric Colors
Bright red with white spots, the most common variety, it's a cheerful splash of color amid fallen brown leaves. Red is a color of fire and passion. This beauty comes other color variations too, including pale yellow, bronze and peach.
The telltale white spots on the cap can wash off with rain, giving the mushroom a smooth look with solid color cap. Although they share the family name Amanita and the psychoactive substances ibotenic acid and muscimol, not all are the same species.
Deadly toxic members of the Amanita family include the destroying angel (Amanita bisporigera et al) and death cap mushrooms (Amanita phalloides).
They are nature's gift, but in German, gift means poison. Death cap is considered to be the mushroom used to eliminate Roman Emperor Claudius, served to him by Empress Agrippina, so Nero, her son by another marriage, can take the throne.
Toadstools and Fairy Rings
Fly agarics are favorite toadstools. They're one of the mushroom species found as fairy rings in the forest surrounding a tree. Forest fungi can grow tethered to a tree with underground filaments.
Fairy rings of mushrooms create an expanding ring around a tree or in a meadow as the fruiting bodies live, die and nurture new life. Lifespan of a fly agaric mushroom is one to three weeks.
The mushroom receives nutrients from the tree and nurtures the tree in return. In times of drought trees can use mushrooms as a drinking source as the fungi are over 90% water.
Each new mushroom starts at the edge of the expired one. This causes the phenomenon of an expanding circle. Mushrooms are symbols of good health, luck, ancient wisdom, beginnings and happy coincidences. Due to underground connections they're a link to the chthonic realm.
In folklore, fairy rings might be protected by bug-eye toads. Toads in lore are associated with money, prosperity, witchcraft, good or bad luck, healing and poison. In Chinese mythology, Chan Chu the three-legged toad is considered to attract money.
Amanita as Fly Poison
Dominican Friar Albertus Magnus of Cologne, Germany, is the first to record the fly agaric in his work De vegetabilibus, not later than 1256. Magnus has a keen interest in visionary vegetation. He also describes stinking nightshade or henbane in his writings.
Of Amanita muscaria he says: "it is called the fly mushroom because it is powdered in milk to kill flies." This tradition continues for hundreds of years, as noted in writings of the 16th and 17th centuries.
The contemporary name fly agaric comes about in the 18th century when Carl Linnaeus (aka Father of Taxonomy) sets agaric as the term for 'gilled mushrooms.'
Fly Baby Fly: Amanita muscaria Transcendental Properties
As a hallucinogenic and transcendent fly agaric has been used for centuries by shamans, herbalists, spirit workers and practitioners of magic in ritual ceremonies. It's also used for entertainment purposes, but Amanita muscaria poisoning can send a person to the hospital.
The most popular Amanita for magic and spiritual use is Amanita muscaria var. muscaria, the red and white Euro-Asian fly agaric familiar from fairy tales and nature lore. Orange varieties have similar properties.
Color isn't always the best indicator of species as mushroom hues can change color as the fungi age. Fruiting bodies last for 1 to 3 weeks. The cap can fade to lighter red or even yellow before the mushroom decays.
Hallucinogenic and mind-altering or consciousness altering properties of this fungus are created by ibotenic acid and muscimol. These psychoactive ingredients occur in all Amanita muscaria species.
Ibotenic acid, a neurotoxicant, causes hallucinations in people and is deadly to dogs and other animals as it destroys the physical matter of the brain. Muscimol is a mutation of ibotenic acid when the shroom is ingested or dried.
Magical and spiritual qualities of Amanita muscaria include:
visions; hallucinations
enhanced awareness of spiritual and unseen dimensions; synesthesia
euphoria; extreme joy, happiness or blissful state of being
dysphoria, depression
time or space shift; retrograde amnesia
The mushroom is used by practitioners in trance work, spiritual journeying, connecting with the numinous, awareness within, and transcending boundaries in mortal or other realms of perception. It can disrupt sensory or motor disturbance causing lack of coordination.
Mushrooms of all kinds relate to night magic, Faerie magic, the moon, the metal silver and the inward seeking energy. Animals associated with mushrooms often have connections to the realm of Faerie, including deer and toads.
Mushroom spores have reawakened after thousands of years frozen in ice. Especially in the East mushrooms like Reishi are linked to longevity and immortality.
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