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INTRODUCTION

It seems characteristic of our condition that human beings, in whatever environmental or existential milieu they find themselves, experience an urge to seek contact with the essential mystery underlying the fact of being. Indeed, the entire odyssey of our species, both phylogenetic and historical, can be seen as a groping toward some sensed transcendent fulfillment. The story of the human race—our art, science, philosophies, civilizations and religions—is largely the story of this quest for contact with the holy, numinous, and self-transcending. It is a quest at least as old as our species; evidence indicating that early humans possessed religious consciousness has been found dating back to the Middle Paleolithic. The archeological evidence shows clearly: Human beings were at home with the concept of the sacred long before the advent of writing, agriculture, civilization, or science; it is a concept that has abided in the human imagination guiding us forward since the earliest infanthood of humanity, contemporary with and possibly preceding the earliest use of tools, fire, even language itself.

The life of pre-literate people is one in which nature exists as the primary condition of existence; one is surrounded by it, one is immersed in it, one depends upon it for one’s very survival. The quest for food and for the material necessities of life must be a constant and unending one for human beings in nature, a quest in which every plant and animal that one encounters comes under the scrutiny of a restless curiosity. Given this situation, it was inevitable that sooner or later in the search for food women and men would accidentally ingest certain plants containing compounds affecting the central nervous system—and find themselves suddenly transported to a realm of the profoundest rapture and strangeness. Indeed, the ethno-mycologist R. Gordon Wasson (1958, 1961) has suggested that the accidental ingestion of an hallucinogenic plant, probably a mushroom, constituted human beings’ earliest encounter with the numinosum, and led directly to the formation of the concept of deity and the supernatural. This notion is not without a certain logical appeal: it stands to reason that the restless, roving eyes of human beings, scanning nature for potential sources of food, would quickly single out the lowly mushroom, so odd in appearance and so unlike the rest of the vegetation with which they were familiar. Given a few thousand years for random experimentation (a relatively short time in the scale of prehistory), they would eventually discover and ingest fungi containing centrally-active compounds, undergo the hallucinogenic experience and the connection with the numinosum would be established.

The scenario described is, of course, imaginary. We cannot know the exact circumstances under which humans first confronted the psychedelic experience. We do know, thanks to the work of Wasson and his colleagues in the 1950s (see V. P. & R.G. Wasson, 1957, R.G. Wasson & R. Heim, 1958, & Wasson, 1957), that a religious cult centered around the ritual ingestion of hallucinogenic mushrooms has existed in the highlands of central Mexico at least since before the Conquest, and is very likely much more ancient than that, its real origins having been lost in the mists of prehistoric time. But the fact remains that, whether encountered through the ingestion of a fungus or some other plant, or through some spontaneously triggered altered state of consciousness, the direct experience of the transcendent has had and is having a profound impact on human history, perhaps even on human evolution. The urge toward the transcendent—and the dynamic tension that exists between the drive to transcend and the mundane necessities which impose themselves on the primary fact of biological being—is in a sense what all history, all religion, art, philosophy, discovery and science—in short, all of human thought and civilization—is about. The urge to reach beyond the known to what is unknown and unplumbed is irredeemably woven into the fabric of human history. It is this urge which built the pyramids, Stonehenge and the Gothic cathedrals. The same urge drove frail ships across the trackless oceans to the shores of a new world, and the same urge in our own time has driven us to fling a tiny bubble of light and air across the vast and howling abysses of space (that cosmic milli-micron) that separates our earth from its moon. It is the same urge that stirs the shiver along our spines when we gaze with wonder and longing at the star-dusted sky on a clear winter’s evening.

Today, we stand on the threshold of the stars. Slowly it is emerging in mass consciousness that the next evolutionary step forward will so transform humanity that all that has gone before will seem but a prelude. We stand at the edge of history ready to accelerate our human experience out into the vast chasm of night which engulfs our planet, the lessons of our historical career still echoing down the corridors of time. We are about to embark on the greatest adventure we have ever known, one that will change our very notion of what it is to be human; yet we should not forget that between ourselves as we ascend the ramp of the starship and our mushroom munching ancestor gazing into his Paleolithic fire lie only seconds of cosmic time.

This book is essentially a how-to manual for those who have the interest, time, and patience required for cultivating “the magic mushroom” in their own homes. It is for people who feel that they still may be able to learn something by experiencing the primordial visions of their ancestors, and feel it strongly enough that they are willing to invest a little time, money and effort in order to realize that vision. By “magic mushroom” is meant those mushrooms which are members of the genus Psilocybe, and the closely related genera Stropharia, Conocybe, Panaeolus, and Copelandia. Certain members of these genera contain the compounds psilocybin (4-phosphoryloxy-N,N-di-methyltryptamine) and psilocin (4-hydroxy-N,N-dimethyl-tryptamine) as the active hallucinogenic agents (fig. 1). These compounds contain the basic indole structure characteristic of most hallucinogens found in nature (see Schultes, 1973, p. 17 ff.), including various amides of lysergic acid (of which LSD is a semisynthetic representative), N,N-dimethyltryptamine, harmine and its analogues, and ibogaine. The most notable exception to this basic structure is mescaline, which chemically is 3,4,5-trimeth-oxyphenylethylamine, and hence is in the same class as amphetamine (a-methylphenyl-ethylamine).

fig. 1: Structural formulas for psilocybin and psilocin.

The cultivation information in this book pertains only to one species of magic mushroom, Stropharia cubensis Earle. (The mycologist Rolf Singer has recently reclassified this species into the genus Psilocybe. Hence in some references it is referred to as Psilocybe cubensis Earle ex. Singer.) It is probable that with appropriate adaptations the methods outlined here could be applied successfully to the cultivation of other species. Our experience has shown, however, that Stropharia cubensis is the easiest to cultivate. Those interested in the cultivation of other mushroom species should consult The Mushroom Cultivator by Stamets and Chilton, published by Agarikon Press, Olympia, Washington, 1983. Our limiting the discussion to one species, however, is not as unfortunate as it may seem since Stropharia cubensis is not only one of the strongest of the hallucinogenic mushrooms, but also one of the most widespread and readily obtainable. In nature, its habitat is cow-dung, and it can be found in pastures during rainy, warm parts of the year in regions as diverse as the Southeastern U.S, and Cambodia, Australia and Colombia. Unlike other psilocybin-containing genera, which with few exceptions are fairly restricted endemics, the distribution of the Stropharia cubensis is world-wide (Pollock, 1975). In fact, since its preferred habitat is cow-dung, its circumtropical distribution has doubtless been encouraged, if not caused, by the world cattle industry. Amusingly enough, the Stropharia could be said to exist as a “weed” on high-technology cattle-raising cultures. This intimate association with humans via domesticated cattle has probably existed for as long as humanity has possessed pastoral technology.

The procedures outlined in this book, if followed with care and persistence, will work for Stropharia cubensis. The procedures can be carried out by anyone in their own home, with just a minimum of equipment and a few supplies and common chemicals that are no more than moderately difficult to obtain. No special training in mycology or microbiology is necessary. What is necessary is to follow the instructions closely and carefully.

The procedure described herein consists essentially of four major steps. It begins with spores and describes step-by-step instructions for growing full-size mushrooms from spores within six weeks. The first step involves locating the fungus, collecting and germinating the spores, and isolating the mycelium, or fungal threads, obtained from the spores. The next step involves cultivating the mycelium on agar, a solid nutrient, in order to use it for inoculation. In the third step, mycelium grown on agar is then grown on a sterilized medium of whole rye grains. In the fourth and final step the rye-grown mycelium is cased, or covered with soil, a process that induces the production of mushrooms. This book describes each of these steps in detail, and can be put into practice by anyone able to read and carefully follow the instructions, provided that they can obtain spores or specimens of Stropharia cubensis.