The 12th Day of Yuletide

Amanita Muscaria, or Fly Agaric mushrooms

How could something so beautiful be so deadly? Turns out, they aren’t.

Amanita Muscaria are widely reputed to be toxic. Poison. But the truth is that the very few reports of people dying after ingesting them are only cases where the people also had ingested huge amounts of alcohol. It seems that these perfectly legal mushrooms don’t deserve their villainous reputation.

Who doesn’t love the image of the magical red capped mushrooms? When I was a Waldorf homeschool mom I was always creating little dolls with mushroom cap hats, or using those old wooden salad bowls and paint to make fairy forests of red capped mushrooms. I had no idea what the Fly Agaric were then. I just knew they were cute and symbolic and I wanted to have them all around me.

These mushrooms, used as medicine, are reported to be incredibly helpful for anxiety. Life saving, even.

Folks often use tinctures or infusions to ingest the medicine. Something that many have reported doing when traveling with the Sami? …collecting the urine of reindeer who have eaten the hallucinogenic mushroom, the Fly Agaric, and then drinking the urine. Sometimes the urine is cooked down either to reduce the volume so it can be taken in a smaller, more potent dose.

The reindeer are said to show distinct signs of being off-kilter…high…after eating these mushrooms and their herders have figured out a way to enjoy the benefits without chancing the possibility of toxicity taken when directly consuming the Amanita Muscaria, or Fly Agaric mushrooms.

Many believe that this is the root of the legend about flying reindeer. What I know is this, we live in a world filled with beauty and magic and the two come together in this little mushroom that grows everywhere in the world. Our medicine lives in our own back yards and it’s time to welcome it in.

So do the reindeer really fly or does it just feel like it?

Some links to information about these magical, beautiful beings:

Erowid, loads of information on the plant, species, history, books, legality, and etc.
More info and, in the future, products here.
My favorite podcast and my favorite Patreon, check out Medicine Stories on the Amanita Muscaria by Amber Magnolia Hill.
You can find Amanita Dreamer, the woman interviewed on the podcast, here.

Magic

With the December holiday season coming to a close, I feel it important to talk about magic and the ways we can celebrate it in our everyday lives as we move out of the season of celebration and into the quieter moods of January and February.

I love the idea of magic as everyday activity. Magic is not only in working spells or saying prayers. Magic also shows up in everyday, mundane activities that our bodies are called to in this time of year.

Making soup. Baking. Feeding our neighbors. Medicine making: elderberry syrup and fire cider, for example. The things we tend such as family elders and also the seeds we will plant soon to fill our gardens in springtime.

If you make flower essences, this time of year is perfect to create flower essences from mistletoe, from holly, from pine. Possibly, too, create resin essences from frankincense, myrrh, and turmeric (aka: gold!). With the Capricorn New Moon ringing in 2022 on January 2nd, you can add the extra potent vibration of this grounded, present moon cycle to your essences.

Maybe your magic is in tipping 50% to your waitstaff or in being the happy face in the office. Maybe your magic is in fostering kittens or in anonymously donating money to businesses owned by Black women. Maybe your magic is in being the one your entire family orbits.

Think of the myriad small things you do and which bring you nourishment, contentment, or joy. These are the magics to bring with you into 2022. Whatever it is, now is the time to recognize it and presence it. For now, bless you and thank you for your magic, whatever it is.

Until 2022 sees you safely in, much love, Be.

Speaking of Magic Mushrooms…Psilocybin

In spite of its classification as a Schedule I drug in the USA, many researchers are studying the effects of psilocybin mushrooms. They are finding that the mushrooms are beneficial for depression, addiction, and the anxiety caused by struggling with chronic disease.

I’m no expert but am keeping an eye on the studies which appear to be showing that both Macro and Micro dosing this plant medicine has strong beneficial possibilities for myriad mental and emotional issues.

Michael Pollan’s book, ‘How to Change Your Mind,’ is excellent if you want to learn about psilocybin mushrooms (and LSD and other entheogens).

It would be easy, for me anyway, to dedicate years to studying this profoundly effective plant medicine. A gentle gift for those who seek them out.

Please note that, as stated above, psilocybin mushrooms are a Schedule I drug in the USA.

THE MUSHROOM HUNTERS
by Neil Gaiman

Science, as you know, my little one, is the study
of the nature and behaviour of the universe.
It’s based on observation, on experiment, and measurement,
and the formulation of laws to describe the facts revealed.

In the old times, they say, the men came already fitted with brains
designed to follow flesh-beasts at a run,
to hurdle blindly into the unknown,
and then to find their way back home when lost
with a slain antelope to carry between them.
Or, on bad hunting days, nothing.

The women, who did not need to run down prey,
had brains that spotted landmarks and made paths between them
left at the thorn bush and across the scree
and look down in the bole of the half-fallen tree,
because sometimes there are mushrooms.

Before the flint club, or flint butcher’s tools,
The first tool of all was a sling for the baby
to keep our hands free
and something to put the berries and the mushrooms in,
the roots and the good leaves, the seeds and the crawlers.
Then a flint pestle to smash, to crush, to grind or break.

And sometimes men chased the beasts
into the deep woods,
and never came back.

Some mushrooms will kill you,
while some will show you gods
and some will feed the hunger in our bellies. Identify.
Others will kill us if we eat them raw,
and kill us again if we cook them once,
but if we boil them up in spring water, and pour the water away,
and then boil them once more, and pour the water away,
only then can we eat them safely. Observe.

Observe childbirth, measure the swell of bellies and the shape of breasts,
and through experience discover how to bring babies safely into the world.

Observe everything.

And the mushroom hunters walk the ways they walk
and watch the world, and see what they observe.
And some of them would thrive and lick their lips,
While others clutched their stomachs and expired.
So laws are made and handed down on what is safe. Formulate.

The tools we make to build our lives:
our clothes, our food, our path home…
all these things we base on observation,
on experiment, on measurement, on truth.

And science, you remember, is the study
of the nature and behaviour of the universe,
based on observation, experiment, and measurement,
and the formulation of laws to describe these facts.

The race continues. An early scientist
drew beasts upon the walls of caves
to show her children, now all fat on mushrooms
and on berries, what would be safe to hunt.

The men go running on after beasts.

The scientists walk more slowly, over to the brow of the hill
and down to the water’s edge and past the place where the red clay runs.
They are carrying their babies in the slings they made,
freeing their hands to pick the mushrooms.