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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.