The Holy Mushroom Read online

  Allegro reference—Gordon Wasson (1×) et al., Albert Hofmann:

  Ch. V, Pg. 229, endnote #15:

  In southern Mexico recent study of the religious use of hallucinogenic mushrooms has identified at least 20 species, belonging to Conocybe, Panaeolus, Psilocybe, Stropharia, and most important, Psilocybe mexicana; see R. Heim and R. G. Wasson, Les Champignons Hallucinogenes du Mexique (Editions, Museum d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris, 1958); for the drugs involved, see A. Hofmann in Chemical Constitution and Pharmacodynamic Action, ed. A. Burger, New York, 1968, pg. 169.

  Commentary

  R. Heim and R. G. Wasson, Les Champignons Hallucinogenes du Mexique, 1958—omitted. This reference is not important to our discussion because it refers to Psilocybe, and not an Amanita species.

  A. Hofmann in Chemical Constitution and Pharmacodynamic Action, ed. A. Burger, New York, 1968, pg. 169.—omitted. This reference is not important to our discussion because it refers to Psilocybe, and not an Amanita species.

  From The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross

  Ch. V, Pg. 39:

  […] it is not surprising that the mushroom should have become the centre of a mystery cult in the Near East which persisted for thousands of years. There seems good evidence that from there it swept into India in the cult of the Soma some 3,500 years ago; it certainly flourished in Siberia until quite recent times, and is found even today in certain parts of South America. (16)

  Allegro reference—Gordon Wasson (3×), R. E. Schultes (1×):

  Ch. V, Pg. 229, endnote #16:

  […] In Guatemala, ‘mushroom stones’ may perhaps point to the existence of a sacred fungus cult some 3,500 years ago. In more recent times the use of the mushroom as an inebriant has centred in two main centres: extreme western Siberia, among the Finno-Ugrian peoples, the Ostyak and Vogul; and extreme northeastern Siberia, among the Chukchi, Koryak and Kamchadal. Among the Lapps of Inari in Europe and the Yakagir of northernmost Siberia, Amanita muscaria was used by the medicine-men. It has been suggested that it was the drug that gave the ancient Norsemen that maniacal fury on the battlefield called ‘berserker’ rage: see V.P. and R. G. Wasson, Mushrooms, Russia and History, New York, 1957; R. G. Wasson Ethnopharmalogic Search for Psychoactive Drugs ed. D. Efron (USPHS Publication No. 1654) Washington DC (1967), p. 405; Soma, Divine Mushroom of Immortality, New York, 1969; R. E. Schultes “Hallucinogens of Plant Origin” in Science Vol. 163, No. 3864, 17 Jan. 1969, pp. 245–54.

  Mushrooms, Russia and History by V.P. Wasson & R.G. Wasson

  Pg. 192–3:

  Before the 18th century was out, in 1784, von Strahlengberg’s compatriot, the scientist Samuel Ödman, advanced the thesis that ‘going berserk’ in early Norse times had been a state of excitement produced by the fly amanita. The Ödman suggestion was taken up and elaborated more than a century later, in 1886, by the Norwegian botanist Fredrik Christian Schübeler in his Viridarium Novegicum I. The Ödman-Schübeler theory took popular hold in parts of Scandinavia and even gained acceptance there among writers of scientific and popular handbooks, school textbooks, and encyclopedias. Indeed, many educated Swedes and Norwegians seem to take the theory as accepted fact.

  In 1929, a specialist in the medical history of Norway, Dr. Fredrik Grön, undertook to challenge Ödman and Schübeler. He dismissed the fly-amanita explanation for ‘berserk-raging’ as weakly founded and improbable, pointing out that nowhere in sagas or other early Nordic sources is there a reference to the fly amanita. In this he has been recently sustained by Professor Magnus Olsen, the outstanding authority today on Norse literature and traditions. Futhermore, the ancient writings of the Mediterranean basin make no allusion to fungal hallucinogens nor is there a single mention of inebriating mushrooms in the voluminous source materials available to us concerning the witchcraft cult. Ödman and Schübeler had relied solely on the analogy of modern practices observed among the Siberian tribes.

  But their side of the argument has not lacked champions. On November 1, 1918, the famous Swedish meteorologist H. Hildebrandsson read a paper before the Royal Scientific Society in Upsala in which he recounted an extraordinary episode. It seems that in the war between Sweden and Norway in 1814, some soldiers of the Swedish Värmland regiment were observed by their officer to be seized by a raging madness, foaming at the mouth. On inquiry, it was learned that the soldiers had eaten of the fly amanita, to whip up their courage to a fighting pitch. We have not seen the Hilderbrandsson paper, nor discovered the evidence contemporary with the alleged episode on which he relied, but both he and the society before which he appeared enjoy the highest standing in scientific circles, and his paper was quoted by Professor Carl Th. Mörner, a distinguished Swedish physiologist, whose avocation was the study of botany and the higher fungi, in two of his publications on mushrooms. The Ödman-Schübeler thesis received further endorsement from Professor Rolf Nordhagen, the Norwegian botanist; in an article in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten of January 11, 1930.

  Pg. 274–5:

  We have now brought to a close our account of the divinatory mushroom cult in Mexico, insofar as it is known to exist today and is recorded in the annals. Here we would stop, were it not for evidence of an order different from anything so far mentioned, evidence that, if relevant, vastly extends the former range of the Middle American mushroom cult both in time and space. If this enigmatic evidence really relates to mushrooms, as we believe it does, a cult of the sacred mushroom goes back among the highland Maya of Guatemala at least to B.C. 1000, and in that area persisted for close to 2,000 years, until the archeological evidence fades out in what is known as the late classic period, around A.D. 900.

  Commentary

  In the above text, Wasson takes a more neutral stance regarding the berserker rage theme. However, later, in Soma (below), Wasson takes the position that there is no evidence linking the fly agaric to the berserkers or violence. This will be discussed more in a moment.

  “Fly Agaric and Man” in Ethnopharmacologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs

  By R. Gordon Wasson

  Pg. 406:

  We possess reliable testimony permitting us to say that in recent centuries there have been two foci where the fly agaric has been used as an inebriant.

  1 IN the Ob Valley, in the extreme west of Siberia, and along the Ob’s eastern tributaries until they interlock with the tributaries of the upper Yenisei, and along the upper Yenisei. In this region tribes belonging to the Euralic family of languages have been historically dominant, and these are the ones that have been addicted to the fly agaric. Along the Ob and its tributaries dwell the Ostyak and the Vogul, called in the Soviet Union the Khanty and the Mansi, respectively. They are the Ugrians, linguistically the nearest of kin to the Hungarians, who together with the Finnic peoples constitute the Finno-Ugrian linguistic group. The Ostyak and Vogul historically have been great consumers of the fly agaric. Their next of linguistic kin, the Hungarians, have no recollection of the practice, but bolond gomba, a familiar expression or cliché in the Hungarian language, means “mad mushroom,” as when one says to a person behaving foolishly, “Have you eaten of the bolond gomba?”, and this may well be a linguistic fossil dating from a time when the Magyar people still shared in the eating of the fly agaric. Among the Finnic peoples, as distinct from the Ugrian, none take the fly agaric today. However, it is of the highest interest that T.I. Itkonen, a reliable investigator, has reported that according to a tradition of the reindeer Lapps of Inari, their shamans formerly ate it, and that it had to have seven white spots. This places the practice well within Europe’s borders, on the assumption that the Inari Lapps have not migrated to the West since they abandoned the practice. In the upper Yenisei the Selkup (a Samoyed people), called in the West the Ostyak-Samoyed, and in addition the southern-most of the Yurak-Samoyed, until recent times still used the fly agaric as an inebriant. […]

  Pg. 413:

  The Indo-Aryans and Soma

  An Indo-European people who called themselves Aryans conque
red the valley of the Indus in the middle of the second millennium B.C. Their priests deified a plant that they called Soma, which has never been identified: scholars have almost despaired of finding it. The hymns that these priests composed have come down to use intact in the RgVeda, and many of them concern themselves with Soma. Lately there have been a number of fresh translations of the RgVeda, better than any of their predecessors.

  This plant, Soma, was an hallucinogen. The juice was extracted from it in the course of the liturgy and forthwith drunk by the priests, who regarded it as a divine inebriant. It could not have been alcoholic, for various reasons; for one thing, fermentation is a slow process which the Vedic priests would not hurry.

  I have studied these recent translations and it is apparent, I think, that Soma was the fly agaric. There are many touches in the lyric poems that fit the fly agaric as a glove, and I believe there are none that contradict it. To detail them here today would take too long, and I must ask you to wait for my book for the full dress presentation of my thesis.

  […] If I am right, the adoration of the fly agaric was at a high level of sophistication 3,500 years ago (and who can say how much further back?) among the Indo-Europeans, and we are witnessing in our own generation the final disappearance of a practice that has held the peoples of northern Eurasia enthralled for thousands of years.

  Commentary

  This is the largest citation we find that Allegro made to Wasson. It has provided some of the more interesting details of our discussion, though not only for its contents or Wasson’s contributions.

  Directly following Wasson’s short ten pages in the book Ethnopharmacologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs, pg. 405–414, are three articles entitled: 1) Ethnopharmacological Investigation of Some Psychoactive Drugs Used by Siberian and Far-Eastern Minor Nationalties [sic] of U.S.S.R.* by Brekhman and Sam; 2) Isolation, Structure and Syntheses of Central-Active Compounds from Amanita Muscaria (L. ex Fr.) Hooker by Eugster; 3) The Pharmacology of Amanita Muscaria by Waser.

  Section 2 of Peter Waser’s article, pg. 426, begins:

  Centrally Acting Compounds

  Atropine and tryptophane derivatives

  As we have seen, the oral ingestion of muscarine cannot be responsible for the colourful amanita-intoxication of asian [sic] people described by travelers touring Siberia. Different explanations were given and additional central active ingredients were proposed. The unknown active principle was unfortunately given the name Pilzatropin or muscaridine by Kobert in 1891. The search for an atropine-like alkaloid in amanita muscaria has continued since then. Lewis (1955) reported the isolation of hyoscyamine from amanita muscaria and amanita pantherina in South Africa. Later, Polish chemists made a similar statement concerning their local mushrooms. Regardless of the very small concentration found in the mushrooms (< 0.0001%), the symptoms of the intoxication do not fit the central effect of the 10-30 mg of orally ingested atropine or belladonna-alkaloids, as scopolamine. Profuse salivation and perspiration, nausea, vomiting, bradycardy, mydriasis, are found, together with central excitation and delirious intoxication. Even small doses of atropine with hallucinations would immediately block the peripheral actions of muscarine (salivation, perspiration etc.) It would be prejudicial to treat here the pharmacology of atropine and similar bases before the presence of these alkaloids in the mushroom is demonstrated with certainty by chemical methods. Until now this evidence has not been substantiated or repeated by other research groups.

  Another dubious proposal as a psychotropic principle in amanita muscaria is bufotenine (Table 1). This amine was isolated in considerable quantities from Amanita mappa, and detected in small amounts by paper chromatography in Amanita muscaria and Amanita pantherina (Wieland et al., 1953). When injected intravenously, bufotenine may have some hallucinogenic activity in man. This is denied by other research groups using oral administration of 50 mg bufotenine and intravenous injections of 20 mg. Eugster and Muller (1961) were not able to find bufotenine in Amanita muscaria.

  The article continues with a full chemical analysis of Amanita muscaria. But Allegro hadn’t utilized these three publications regarding the chemical composition of the mushroom. If he had a full copy of Ethnopharmacologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs, then it would seem unreasonable for him to have overlooked the latest research into the mushroom’s chemical makeup. But by reading these earlier sources, we see that Allegro’s position was supported by Ramsbottom (above), Robert Graves (below), and Puharich (below). Not being a chemist, and seeing how the chemistry of the Amanita had been debated for decades, it is possible that Allegro felt the safer stance was to take the older position reinforced by Puharich and supported by the accounts of berserker violence. I recognize that this may appear to be conjecture; however, Allegro’s next citation to Wasson further supports my hypothesis.

  Soma, Divine Mushroom of Immortality by R. Gordon Wasson

  Part Three, Ch. 1: The Fly-agaric in Siberia: the Testimony of Explorers, Travelers, and Anthropologists [Omitted]

  Commentary

  This chapter reviews the numerous pages of exhibits in the back of Soma (Wasson, 1968) that detail Western and Russian accounts of fly-agaric using peoples of Siberia.

  Allegro states: “It has been suggested that it was the drug that gave the ancient Norsemen that maniacal fury on the battlefield called ‘berserker’ rage.” He borrowed this idea from Wasson in Mushrooms, Russia and History (above), Ramsbottom (above), Graves (below), and Richard Evans Schultes (below). However, Wasson later states: “In these comments of various observers there is nothing that suggests the berserk-raging of the Vikings. Murderous ferocity marked the Viking seizures almost always, whereas murderous ferocity is conspicuously absent from our eye-witness accounts of fly-agaric eating in Siberia. […] The ardent advocate of the link between the fly-agaric and berserk-raging must content himself as best he can with the testimony of Krasheninnikov [4]: ‘The Kamtschadales and the Koreki eat of it when they resolve to murder anybody.’ This generalisation is hearsay: had he known about a particular episode, he would have reported it. ” (Wasson, 1968, pg. 157).

  Wasson is incorrect here. There is evidence to link the Amanita with violence. However, it should be recognized that this issue is still hotly debated today (see also Lewis, 2001):

  The fly agaric is most certainly not the drug of the berserkers. The only psychoactive that is able to produce real aggression, raving madness, and rage is alcohol. The berserker madness was also induced by a beer to which Ledum palustre had been added.

  ~ Christian Rätsch, 1998/2005, pg. 634

  Against the view that A. muscaria has a pacifying effect, we might cite the report in the Victoria Times-Colonist, British Columbia, Canada, dated Saturday 10th of July, 2004, of a young student who mistakenly ingested the mushroom, instead of a Psilocybe species, and experienced “a brief, but ferocious rampage through the neighborhood; he sexually assaulted a 77-year old woman, jumped onto a roof and hung naked from the eaves, terrorized another woman by trying to smash through the patio door with a flowerpot, and tore apart the interior of a van he broke into.” Police had to use pepper spray to subdue him. The next day in court, he was very embarrassed and didn’t remember any of it.

  Although much research has been published during the past two decades that disproves Wasson’s views about the berserkers, Wasson himself had collected in his files a surprising amount of detailed research (much of it presented here) that might have satisfied other scholars that Ödman’s original conclusion was actually tenable.

  ~ Carl Ruck et al, 2007, pg. 288–90

  It is possible that Allegro hadn’t read Wasson’s Soma thoroughly, but only referenced it because of the book’s previous mention from Wasson himself in Fly Agaric and Man (above). I suggest this only because Allegro does not cite a specific page or chapter in Soma, and ignores Wasson’s ideas that Amanita is not related to berserker violence. Or this could be more evidence to support the idea that Allegro was dismissive of Wasson all along.


  It is also important to note that Wasson in Soma, pg. 162, states: “We do not know what the drug is in the fly agaric, or perhaps drugs.” This is interesting because Soma was published in 1968, one year after Ethnopharmacologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs, 1967, in which the constituents of Amanita, as previously stated, are detailed in the articles directly following Wasson’s. In fact, Wasson even references two of these studies (Wasson, 1968, pg. 201).

  Without the context of these contradictory statements on Amanita muscaria chemistry and berserker violence, including Wasson’s own, Allegro’s position would seem utterly perplexing. But if Wasson himself is seen contradicting the 1967 research on Amanita, then how could Allegro possibly figure out the truth of the matter? Schultes later printed his article in Science in January 1969 (below), but he also ignored Wasson’s 1968 “corrections” on berserker rage. Wasson’s attacks on Allegro in regard to the chemical composition and berserker rage of the Amanita, as I’ll further detail, are completely unjustified.

  Allegro addresses the Wasson-Panofsky interpretation of the mushroom tree:

  Ch. IX, Pg. 253, endnote #20: (cited above)

  From The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross

  Ch. IX, pg. 80:

  (cited above)

  Ch. IX, Pg. 253, endnote #20:

  (cited above)

  Ramsbottom, Mushrooms & Toadstools, 1954 2nd ed., p. 48:

  (Letter: Wasson to Ramsbottom, Dec. 21, 1953, cited in Ramsbottom, above)