How Psilocybin ‘Magic’ Mushrooms Reconnect Us With Nature from Reset (dot)me

"Indeed, although psilocybe semilanceata (colloquially, the ‘liberty cap’ mushroom) grows in the British Isles (and elsewhere), its cultural history in Great Britain begins with some purported use by the 1950s Beats, who were likely awakened to it by news of Wasson’s article. There is no mention in the literature of an intentional use until the 1970s, according to Andy Letcher, author of Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom. Therefore, the story of the magic mushroom is one of disclosure and of revelation.

On the one hand, it is a cultural history revealing itself, sometimes in a self-aware manner, sometimes not, but on the other hand — and this is true of all psychedelic substances — it has a mystery at its very heart, which is to say in one’s experience of consuming them. It is not just eyes able to discern the liberty cap in the grasses and identify which genus it belongs to, it is an intentionalised experience, an altered state of experience, that has emerged into a society that is ill-equipped to deal with it (and arguably the first to be in this rather child-like, naïve, state).
Moreover, the Western culture that psilocybe mushrooms have emerged into is arguably the most environmentally alienated culture to have existed to date. The post-industrialised West has, for several hundred years, viewed nature and the environment with utilitarian eyes, as an object to exploit; whether this be for increasing profit, progressing civilisation, or simply good old fashioned colonialisation. Interestingly, just as knowledge of the ‘sacred mushroom’ proliferated, the modern environmental movement also began to emerge alongside it. For instance, Silent Spring (1962) by Rachel Carson, which explored the destruction of wildlife through the widespread use of pesticides...."

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