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The fairytale world of mushrooms

The season of autumn is mushroom season! I love mushrooms!
They’re such absolutely extraordinary organisms!

Did you know that the actual mushroom is an extensive network under the ground, the so-called mycelium?
What we call mushrooms are merely the fruit body above the ground, just as apples are not the entire apple tree.

By the way, mushrooms are more readily classified as animals than plants.
Yes, you read that right!
They don’t perform photosynthesis; they ingest organic nutrients in liquid form; and their cell walls are composed of chitin, which is only found in the animal and not in the plant kingdom.

Mushrooms make up a realm of their own – between animals and plants.
A realm of wonders in which, for example, there is no dependence on day and night, as with other living beings.
It’s a fairy-tale world. At once beautiful and dangerous.

As a child, I would often go to the forest with my grandfather to look for mushrooms.
He knew the secret spots and how to distinguish edible mushrooms from their poisonous doubles.
The deathcap looks like a mushroom, but it’s poison is deadly! It’s recognisable by the white lamellae found only by the bulb from which it grows but which is underground and is easy to overlook.

Hallucinogenic mushrooms can also be found in this magical world, like the little ‘magic mushrooms’ that contain the psychoactive substance psilocybin. But the most beautiful and best-known hallucinogenic mushroom is the toadstool, or fly agaric. The glow of its red cap with its white spots can be seen for miles around.

But where did the fly agaric get its name?
Opinion is divided on this matter.
Some say it’s because in earlier times it was used to make fly traps. To do this, one would place small pieces of mushroom in sweetened milk and hope that the flies would perish by drinking the sweet milk, which now, however, had been poisoned by the mushroom. Perhaps some did as well – while others simply had an extraordinary drug experience.

And that brings us to the second interpretation of the name:
That is, the hallucinogenic effect of the fly agaric is said to produce the experience of flying, among other things, in which case the root word ‘fly’ would not have come from the creature called a ‘fly’ but from the verb ‘to fly’.

In late medieval witches’ or flying ointments as well, in addition to various nightshades, fly agaric is supposed to have aided in producing the hallucination of flying.

A hallucinogenic experience after consuming fly agaric is vividly described in the story of Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, where Alice grows sometimes bigger and sometimes smaller, i.e., her perception of her body undergoes a radical change, depending on which side of the mushroom she eats. Well, the hookah-smoking caterpillar did suggest that she experiment a bit…
As always, it’s all about the right dose.

Original drawing
by Lewis Carroll from
‘Alice in Wonderland’

In spite of that, in our neck of the woods, toadstools are considered symbols of luck. Especially at the turn of the year, one sees them everywhere as decorative figures and images on greeting cards.

Doesn’t Father Christmas come flying up on a sleigh pulled by reindeer, all the way from the far north, the land of the Scandinavian and Siberian shamans?
Could it be that he needs the help of a hallucinogenic fly agaric for that? In any case, reindeer have supposedly been observed pawing the snow with their hooves in search of this intoxicant.

Now, just at the sight of a marvellous fly agaric, my spirit flies to fairy-tale lands. Afterwards, it gently returns to draw and write down the experience.

By the way, tonight I ate an insanely good mushroom risotto – with truffles!


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