Mycelium Mind and Magic Mushrooms

Mycelium Mind and Magic Mushrooms
Earlier this year I moved to a new place on the edge of a large village. My window looks out on to rolling hills and crevices with patches of native woodland. Feeling immediately drawn I walked out there with my dog. Straight away it felt warm and familiar, welcoming, loving even. Various grasses, thistles and reeds punctuated the ground, cropped short and rotovated by grazing cattle. Deer and badgers, hidden deep undercover were warned of our presence by the calls of green woodpeckers, jays and ravens. The whole place stretching several square miles has a collective feel of sentience. Deep green patches, lines and circles underfoot were evidence of numerous mycelium masses that cover the whole area. As autumn began the mushrooms, fruiting bodies of mycelium sprung up in abundance. This secret and hidden world, equally significant to the world of plants is overlooked by most people. An experience I had a couple of years ago when out in woodland revealed a sentience that is all around us. Perhaps it was the mycelium beneath the forest floor that had sought me out. It brought back hidden memories from my early to mid teens when magic mushrooms had found me. Epiphanies I had foolishly dismissed as delusional took on a new meaning. Reading books by mycologists, particularly the work of Paul Stamets inspired me to look again at psilocybin mushrooms.
The more is learned about mycelium the clearer it becomes how free of boundaries the subject has. Mycelium masses are the biggest life forms on the planet. Some are known to be several thousand acres in size. They are everywhere we are. Life is dependant on them. They are a parallel reality virtually unacknowledged, invisible to most yet, once you are awakened to this you never see the world as one dimensional again. Mycelium is the bridge between life and death. I have come to believe they are conscious and their sentience broader than ours.
Lift up a fallen log in any forest and you will see fine Lacey white mycelium networks. These are the most well known and visible along with those found in timber roof struts, evidence of dry rot. Beneath field and forest these hidden and inconspicuous life forms have largely escaped our attention and few grasp their importance nor their implications and possibilities. Mycelium is essential for human and planetary health. Human digestion is dependant on bacteria performing a similar job as subsurface mycelium in the forest, breaking down organic matter, creating soil. Trees could not grow without symbiotic association with the mycelial interface between plant roots and nutrients. Mycelium runs throughout the planet, mushrooms being the visible fruiting body. Mycelium protects and heals the planet yet still many feel an aversion even fear though we would be wise to see them as teachers and allies. Mycelial networks of threadlike cells have begun to be used in biotechnology, through harnessing their ability to clean up polluted rivers, to enhance forest health and for agricultural pest control. Paul Stamets has recently been brought in to clear up the bio hazardous areas damaged by the chemical weapons used by the Saddam Hussein regime. Utilising specially bred strains of symbiotic termite mound mycelium his company has been able to clear up oil spillage, returning be spoiled areas to healthy habitat.
There are more species of fungi, bacteria and Protozoa in a handful of soil than their are species of plant and vertebrate animal in all of North America. Through the breakdown of plant nutrients they create soil. With each footstep on field or forest floor we walk on these vast, sentient cellular membranes, causing disturbance and debris the threads respond to. Working to channel nutrients to where they are needed over vast distances. Mycelium threads travel several inches in a days growth. They are the interface between life and death and perhaps for this reason are feared though, more accurately should be seen as planetary guardians.
Stamets believes random selection is no longer the dominant force in nature. Instead it is our political, economic and biotechnology that will determine the fate of the Earth. Ecologists now believe that at the current rate of extinction half the vertebrate animal species on the planet will be lost in a hundred years. Yet if we are correctly motivated the twentieth century could be remembered as the age of biotechnology.
Mycelium mass is the neurological network of the planet. An interlacing network of information sharing with the long term health of the host in mind. The mycelium strays in constant molecular communication with its environment devising complex enzymatic and chemical responses to changes. Spreading thousands of acres in mass. The largest life forms on the planet. Intelligent. Unseen. Working for the common good. To me that qualifies as something close to a god.
We are more closely related to mycelium than we are to plants sharing some 25% of the same DNA. Fungi employs an external digestive system secreting acids and enzymes into their immediate environment and then absorbing nutrients using netlike cell chains. They marched onto land allowing plants to subsequently inhabit, some 700 million years ago. Many millions of years later, one branch of fungi led to the development of animals including us. We developed to capture nutrients internally. 250 million years ago a catastrophe wiped out 90% of the Earths species. Probably following a meteorite strike Earth darkened under a volcanic dust cloud causing mass extinction. Fungi inherited the Earth. The age of the dinosaurs followed until 185 million years ago another meteorite struck and the same happened again. Mycelium prepares the scene for other life.
James Lovelocks Gaia theory sees the planet as a singular intelligent whole. Mycelium is the living, sentient network responsive to everything from a landslide to a tree fall to a footstep of a human, a mouse or a fly. A complex information sharing network of fungal consciousness. The mycelium mass emits alluring attractants, scent trails most noticeable to us when walking through a forest after a rainfall. Mycelium operates at a level of complexity way beyond our most powerful computers. A biological internet where information on all life forms is communicated through the land. It my seem something of a leap of imagination to see mycelium as intelligent yet recent studies suggest otherwise. Complex mazes hiding food sources have baffled scientists as mycelial threads find their way without error. Perhaps only through an alliance can we work together for a brighter future. Mycelium has the ability to grow through rocks. It is this important capacity that could lead to bringing life to desert planets. It is now thought by many cosmologists that life came to earth through techniques that in future may be harnessed. It is entirely likely that life travels throughout the cosmos, mycelium spores riding upon comets or carried by stellar winds that kiss life onto desert planets.
Nature copies good ideas. Mycelial architecture is immediately familiar. Neuronal networks inside the brain, turbulence patterns in hurricanes, dark matter that though invisible has been mapped out, the Internet all have conform to similar pattern and structure. Biological patterns are influenced by the laws of physics. Mycelium exploits the natural momentum of matter.
Any catastrophe from a fallen tree to an oil spill creates a field of debris to which many fungi respond with waves of mycelium. These abilities are being harnessed to clear up disease and toxic waste. Outnumbering plant species by six to one mycelium is the bigger hidden reality. They are everywhere from our bodies, environs and habitats serving as immune systems. Fungi are the common bridge that links all life. The inter connectedness of life is an obvious truth that we ignore at our own peril. Destroying our environment is suicide. Enlisting the help of fungi can help. Dried mushroom balls have been found with the bodies of peat bog men. Their use being a spark can smoulder within for days, allowing fire to be transported. Penicillin was harnessed to cure infection. Walking in woodland where mycelium scents the air statistically is proven to trump Prozac in treating depression. Psilocybin, once thought to cure PTSD and depression through the mind coming to terms with life experiences is now thought to cause biological neuronal changes that physically cure depression.
The parallel unseen reality of the mycelial mind reached out to me in my early teens, as it did many others, a secret bond between the earth and humanity, stretching back in time to palaeolithic mycologists. For thirty five years it didn't contact me again until this year.
Psilocybin mushrooms are scarce in the wild forest but common where there are humans. They are prolific in disturbed land around cities, forest tracks, landscaping among new buildings where wood chips are used and at the edge or interface between field and woodland, between civilisation and the wild. They are abundant where people meet; courtrooms, prison grounds, hospitals, college campuses, utility substations, municipal buildings, office complexes, sports fields, the suburban spread, public concerts, anywhere with humans and sawdust.
The ecological awakening that mushroomed out of the 1960s to combat planetary destruction was concurrent with the reemergence of interest in psilocybin, a visionary quest continuing through the next two decades on into my generations coming of age. Active species have become massively abundant in response, testament to their evolutionary success. These indigenous entheogens directly spread by the spiritually inclined. There are no means of stopping their spread without causing ecological disaster. Mushrooms are present so long as there are plants.
Magic mushrooms are a powerful sacrament and offer a significant evolutionary advantage for those sensitive enough to hear the call. Their use goes back at least 7000 years and probably existed in palaeolithic times. Their use has been documented in shamanic ceremonies by Mesoamerican people's. Modern day mushroom cults are remnants of an ancient religion practiced by Aztec and Mayan civilisations. Mushroom motifs and mushroom stones have been frequently found in Mayan temples. These were religions were practises until Catholic missionaries arrived, persecuting practitioners and driving out mysticism until they were all but wiped out. In Europe they played an important part in cultural history. Aristotle, Plato, Homer and Sophocles all partook of sacred mushrooms. A ritual ceremony was carried out in a temple honouring Demeter, the agriculture God. It's continuance for 2000 years is testament to its importance. Thousands of pilgrims walked from Athens to Eleusis paying the equivalent of a months wages for the privilege. Once there they assembled in the initiation hall, a great telestrion where sat in rows on steps that descended to a hidden, central chamber from which a fungal concoction was served. They spent the night there and reportedly came away changed forever. They were sworn to secrecy on the ceremonies specifics on pain of imprisonment, even death. These ceremonies continued until early Christian centuries. Clearly mushrooms have had a profound effect on western consciousness.
Mushrooms follow human disturbances to the environment and also natural disasters such as earthquakes, avalanches and volcanoes. As humans destroy woodlands to create new built areas, psilocybes and other sacrophites proliferate. They thrive at the interface where humans, forest and grassland coexist. Psilocybin occurs wherever people congregate. Civilisation and fungi have co evolved. Mycelium is innately intelligent and speaks as a voice for the land to those sensitive enough to hear.
Deforestation and the domestication of animals would have seen the explosion in numbers of psilocybin active species mirroring the growth in human numbers. The importation of exotic plants caused the spread of invisible spores of none native species. The mushrooms we see are but the small fruiting bodies of an ever present invisible other reality. They are at the front end of evolution precisely because of their psilocybin content. Travelling wherever we go it is a great evolutionary strategy. They carry a message from nature. At a time of planetary crisis brought on by humans, the earth calls out through the mushrooms, sacraments that lead directly to a deeper ecological consciousness and motivate people to take action.
As a youth mushrooms called out to me revealing the fractal mathematical patterns common to Sufi mosques, Buddhist sand paintings and countless examples of sacred art depicting the same place of space or mind. Once more the earth called out to me a few years ago in a mystical experience where my consciousness entered the land. I lost all sense of self as though all my particles dispersed and merged with all others in the quantum field. Like seeing things as they really are for a time. It felt warm, loving. And now I find once more that the mycelial mind, the voice of the earth has spoken to me again as it speaks to many others. I don't see this as supernatural but biological. Mystical states surely have a biology much like there must be a neural biology to falling in love. I believe mycelium is sentient and seeks us out.


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