Fungi have been on earth an estimated billion and a half years. Fossil records show their presence at least 400 million years ago, during which time they may have been the dominant life form on earth, preceding even the dinosaurs. Modern humans only set up shop a few million years ago. Through dental analysis, we know that mushrooms already played a role in the lives of Stone Age people. Europe’s oldest mummy, Ötzi, The Iceman, was found with mushrooms in his pockets. Mushroom cultivation only appeared in the last 1000 years, and for some species, has not yet been able to fully replace wild foraging

Entheogens Across Time and Space

Compelling cave drawings and ancient art discoveries pairing humans and mushrooms suggest that these early people were also hip to the medicinal and spiritual possibilities of mushrooms. The most famous of these, made 9,000 years ago, are found at Tassili n’Ajjer in Algeria, depicting dancers holding or “sprouting” mushrooms from their bodies with patterns that imply a connected mystical experience.

Entheogen or entheogenic plants and fungi are the preferred terms for when psychoactive substances that “induce profound changes in perception…[are] taken with spiritual intent or when they have spiritual effects.” Use of psychedelic mushrooms or entheogenic fungi to alter states of consciousness and commune with the divine or the natural world in ceremony and ritual stretch across centuries and cultures.

The Egyptians and Romans referred to mushrooms in general as “food of gods.” The Mayans and Aztecs used entheogens in healing rituals and religious ceremonies. Some have speculated that the ferocity of Vikings in battle has been attributed to their consumption of entheogens before battle. China and Japan have over a 500-year-long history of using mushrooms for culinary and medicinal practices, and symbolizing health, luck, fertility, and longevity in art.

Colonialism & Criminalization

A culture’s relationship to mushrooms can span a spectrum from healthy reverence to mycophobia. Because entheogens possess the power to transform and harm, those who wield them face scrutiny and often misunderstanding, as in Medieval Great Britain, where folklore associated mysterious mushrooms with witchcraft. Spanish colonization of South America led to persecution and banning of many indigenous spiritual practices. In the United States, the imperialist, capitalist, and patriarchal forces of our culture have twisted and threatened sites of authentic, safe, scientific, and respectful contact with psychedelic mushrooms. In this nuanced field where science and spirituality meet, carelessness, greed, and lack of understanding led swiftly to politicization and distrust.

Consequently, the modern history of mushroom use is often a dark one, plagued with cultural appropriation, exploitation, colonization and fear. Amateur mycologist R. Gordon Wasson retains the ignoble credit for sparking North America’s interest in psychedelic mushrooms with his 1957 article for LIFE, “Seeking the Magic Mushroom.” Granted access to a sacred Mazatec mushroom ritual in Oaxaca under the guidance of shaman Maria Sabina and under the condition of secrecy, Wasson violated the sacred experience and her privacy by publishing his experience, photographs, and her name and location. When outsiders began flocking to her village, she was ostracized, jailed and died in poverty. Swiftly after this unsanctioned exposure, “psilocin and psilocybin were isolated, characterized, synthesized and named by Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann,” the industrialized world seized mushrooms from their native vernacular, and the once closely held and dearly protected indigenous practices were again vulnerable to colonial intent.

Altered consciousness with hallucinogenic compounds and entheogens took root in American counterculture during the sixties, but a mere fourteen years later, the scientific and countercultural promise was met with suspicion and backlash. In 1971, Richard Nixon declared a War on Drugs, and psilocybin was classified alongside heroin as a Schedule I substance. This classification outlawed not only the substance, but research involving the substance. Psilocybin is still illegal under Federal law today and the cultural perception of psychedelic mushrooms was tinged with a fear that persists.

The Mushroom Renaissance and Beyond

However, in the last few decades, an entheogenic fungi renaissance has begun to develop. Research around the therapeutic, psychiatric, and medicinal benefits has led to discoveries about how entheogens may help people experiencing treatment-resistant depression, PTSD, and substance abuse disorders. Legal breakthroughs have followed in kind, protecting religious usage for indigenous groups at the federal level and decriminalizing or legalizing use in and beyond clinical settings at the state and county level, similar to the recent path of cannabis in the United States. There is optimism that safe, regulated access is on the horizon. As psychedelics hurtle towards mainstream embrace, entheogens remain the cultural heritage of indigenous people, and they “have the right to protect, preserve, and develop their traditional practices and medicinal knowledge.”

This new era is still very much unfolding, and a contemporary relationship with psychedelic mushrooms is ours for the shaping. Scientists, healthcare practitioners, indigenous groups, and enthusiastic “psychonauts” of all kinds believe that new, informed approaches to entheogenic fungi can access vital potential for our collective futures. Having barely scratched the surface of the complete history of mushrooms, psychedelic and otherwise, may this brief history send you deeper, so that the way forward is created with wisdom from the past.