The 'shroom of the shaman

Yesterday's blip of Casey in Wonderland drew an enthusiastic response and today's serves as a sequel, although without the dog, just an ornamental hedgehog who plays no part in the story. (Casey has regained his normal size, thank you.)

I dived (almost literally given the amount of rain coming down) into Fishguard this morning and noticed this cafe window display of Amanita muscaria, fly agaric, the familiar spotted red toadstool that has rooted itself into the iconography of Western culture.

Although the original Tenniel illustrations for Alice in Wonderland depict a spot-less mushroom, it was the mind-altering properties this warty species that were encountered by early travellers to Siberia where the fungus was consumed by shamans to induce hallucinations. In 1860 a mycologist called Mordecai Cubitt Cooke brought the facts before a wider public in his gloriously-named book about narcotics: The Seven Sisters of Sleep. Still in print and very readable, it deals with tobacco, opium, cannabis, betel nut, coca, datura and fly agaric. Regarding the latter, Cooke speculates that the toxic element is removed by salting the flesh of the mushroom before consumption and explains that the effects include alteration to the perception of scale: a straw lying in the road becomes a formidable object, to overcome which a leap is taken sufficient to clear a barrel of ale, or the prostrate trunk of a British oak. It's not hard to see where Lewis Carroll got the idea for Alice's macropsia, as the phenomenon is now termed.

But, continues Cooke, this is not the only extraordinary circumstance connected therewith. There is the property imparted to the fluid excretions , of rendering it intoxicating, which property is retained for a considerable time. A man having been intoxicated on one day and slept himself sober by the next, will, by drinking this liquor...become as intoxicated as he was before. Confirmed drunkards in Siberia preserve their excretionary fluid as a precious liquor to be used in case a scarcity of the fungus should occur. This intoxicating property may again be communicated to every person who partakes of the disgusting draught, and thus also with the third, and fourth, and even fifth distillation. By this means, with a few boluses to commence with, a party may shut themselves in their room and indulge in a week's debauch at a very economical rate.

I don't normally patronize this cafe but I fantasized that the bill of fare might offer these various distillations of fly agaric ranked in price according to how many individuals the active ingredient had been passed through (or by). On the other hand if I went in and asked for a cup of hallucinogenic piss I might not recieve a very warm welcome.


A couple of comments yesterday mentioned this blast from the past: White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane.