Amanita muscaria, fly agaric or fly amanita is the most widely recognized of the magical plants and fungi. The use, folklore and magic of this charming mushroom goes back thousands of years. Its use in history includes as a pesticide and a magical entity with psychoactive properties.
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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. The mushroom's entheogenic properties are well known. Toxic members of the Amanita family include the destroying angel and death cap mushrooms.
This beauty comes other color variations too, including pale yellow, bronze and peach. Although they share the family name Amanita and the psychoactive substances ibotenic acid and muscimol, not all are the same species.
The telltale white spots on the cap can wash off with rain, giving the mushroom a smooth look with solid color cap. The mystique of the fly agaric mushroom has fascinated scientists, herbalists, shamans, practitioners of magic, toads and shroom fanciers for centuries.
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Toadstools and Fairy Rings
Fly agarics are favorite toadstools. They're also found as fairy rings in the forest surrounding a tree. Many forest shrooms grow tethered to a tree with underground filaments, receiving nutrients from the tree. In spirituality mushrooms are feminine or yin.
They're a symbol of good health, luck and beginnings. Circular in form, the fairy ring also relates to female energy.
Fairy rings form an expanding ring as the fruiting bodies live, die and live again. Many are harmless but more than one fairy ring shroom is toxic, including the infamous death cap mushroom. In folklore, fairy rings might be protected by bug-eyed toads. Toads themselves are associated with money, prosperity, witchcraft, good or bad luck, healing and poison.
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Amanita as Fly Poison
Dominican Friar Albertus Magnus of Cologne, Germany, was the first to record the fly agaric in his work De vegetabilibus, not later than 1256. Magnus had an interest in visionary vegetation and psychoactive flora. He also describes the toxic 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 continued for hundreds of years, as noted in writings of the 16th and 17th centuries. The contemporary name fly agaric came about in the 18th century when Carl Linnaeus (aka Father of Taxonomy) set agaric as the term for 'gilled mushrooms.'
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Fly Baby Fly: Amanita muscaria Transcendental Properties
As a hallucinogenic and transcendent the 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 for people who try to get high and end up in hospital. Most cases of Amanita muscaria poisoning are either by accident or idiocy.
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.
Here it is again in the Amanita muscaria var. inzengae (orange) variety, who has similar properties to the bright red species. Color isn't always the best indicator as mushrooms can change color as they age.
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Hallucinogenic and mind-altering or consciousness altering properties of this fungus are brought to you by ibotenic acid and muscimol. These psychoactive ingredients occur in all Amanita muscaria species.
Ibotenic acid, a neurotoxicant, causes hallucinations in people but 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.
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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
awareness of needs and desires
insight to negative feelings
dysphoria, depression
time or space shift; retrograde amnesia
spirit communication or supernatural awareness
transcendence
This psychoactive mushroom can be used in trance work, spiritual journeying, connecting with animal spirits or other spirit guides, awareness within, energy balance, transcending boundaries in mortal or magical worlds. It can also cause severe accidents to due sensory or motor disturbance.
Feminine Nature of Mushrooms
Mushrooms have yin or feminine tendencies. They can emerge from the ground in the shape of a phallus, signifying life force, vitality and fertility. As they grow many become umbrella shaped. Curves, arcs, domes, softness of shroom gills and other parts, and activities related to nurturing and sheltering connect the mushroom to mystic realm of feminine power.
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Mushrooms relate to number 8 or the infinity symbol, and magic number 3. They vibrate to Elemental Earth with a Water influence. They're attached to elements of Wood, and instrumental in working this natural organic resource into nutritional soil. In Chinese philosophy the color of wood is green and the element represents creativity, growth, nature and nurture. Toxic or red mushrooms correspond to life, death, the Sun and fire.
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.
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Mushroom spores have reawakened after thousands of years being frozen in ice. Especially in the East mushrooms are linked to longevity and immortality.
Fly agaric is a mutualistic mushroom. With long thin filaments it attaches itself to a tree or nutrient source and benefits from the nourishment of the tree. In return it breaks down soil, freeing minerals for the tree, and when the fleshy organism dies it suffuses the soil with nutrients.
In the Lora Ley Fantasy Fiction series, vegan Norwegian Brook Horse Skoldt has a mushroom garden he tends with loving care.
**Please note this article is for information and elucidation purposes only, and doesn't condone use of any mind altering substance. Do not play with drugs.