Amanita muscaria

Amanita muscaria, Fly agaric mushrooms

Amanita muscaria is brightly colored fungus that's familiar to everyone from the illustrations found in fairy story books. Amanita muscaria is commonly found in autumn in Birch woods or under Pines. Amanita muscaria are the most eye-catching mushroom with its large caps of scarlet or deep red, mottled with conspicuous white warts. Associated with magic and the fairy kingdom because this other-worldly looking fungus is perhaps the oldest hallucinogenic plant known, having been in recorded use for over six thousand years. Amanita muscaria or as its commonly called Fly agaric mushrooms have been adopted by many cultures, in the northern hemisphere and worldwide to transport the person eating Amanita muscaria to visionary realms. Fly agaric mushrooms are believed to have been employed as a shamanic aid by the Vikings and is known to be used by the tribesmen of Siberia.

Amanita muscaria ritual use:

Siberian shamans eat Amanita muscaria in order to enter a clairvoyant trance state and mobilize their shamanic powers of healing. Amanita muscaria are also ingested when they wish to communicate with the souls of their ancestors or to contact spirits. One to three Amanita mushrooms appear to be the usual traditional dose with initial Amanita effects being felt in about twenty minutes. It was the practice of Siberian and other tribes to recycle the urine of someone who had already eaten Amanita muscaria, and thus, because a substantial amount of active substances in it remained unchanged, it could be used for later or given to someone who could not afford to buy Amanita muscaria.

Eating Amanita muscaria Mushrooms:

Today Amanita muscaria are very popular as they are the only genus of magic mushrooms allowed to be sold in a dried form. Amanita muscaria mushrooms are usually crushed into a powder and mixed with a few cups of water and let boil on a low flame for an hour. Drink it with or without the Amanita muscaria pieces on an empty stomach, drinking half the liquid and wait for an hour or two for Amanita effects. If you want stronger Amanita effects drink the remainder of the water. All parts of the Amanita muscaria mushroom are psychoactive but for the best results use only the Amanita caps and directly below this.

Eating Amanita muscaria mushrooms is difficult for consumption because the Amanita effects are highly unpredictable. Amanita muscaria effects can be divine, hellish or completely absent. Positive effects are often built up after taking Amanita mushrooms a couple of times. We recommend that Amanita muscaria mushrooms are taken only when you’re in a good frame of mind as this can have positive effects on the trip. Because of its unpredictability this mushroom is recommended only for advanced entheogen users, preferably with some experience with Psilocybe mushrooms.

Amanita muscaria effects can take up 5 to 10 hours and starts after half an hour to 2 hours after eating Amanitas. Many Amanita muscaria trip reports mention nausea and extreme sweating as initial effects but these soon lesson. Often one might fall asleep for a few hours with vivid dreams. After awakening the visions really begin, you will probably feel very energetic and ecstatic. To read more about Amanita muscaria effects please visit our Amanita Effects page.

Amanita muscaria description:

The mycelium (the mass of branched, tubular filaments (hyphae) of fungi. The mycelium makes up the thallus, or undifferentiated body, of a typical fungus.) is white in color and the fruiting body can grow as tall as 25 cm and forms a cap as large as 20 cm in diameter. The remnants of the velum (the veil-like membrane of immature mushrooms extending from the margin of the cap to the stem and torn by growth, revealing the gills of a mature sporophore; in a mature mushroom, the remains of the velum may form an annulus or ring around the stem, familiar from common button mushrooms and sometimes on the margin of the cap) remain on the cap in the form of white spots.

Amanita muscaria is also known as Fly Agaric, Fly Death, Toad Stools, Siberian Fly Agaric or Russian Amanita, Washington State Amanita, European Amanita, Soma and many others. Its distribution is from Alaska, Siberia, Scandinavia, Central Europe, North America, Australia, Mexico and the Philippines. Amanita’s sometimes occurs in the form of fairy rings or witches rings, small circles in which, it was assumed the witches or fairies would dance at night.  Fly Agaric Mushrooms grows only in symbiosis with birch and/or pine trees, Amanitas are found in artic, temperate, and even tropical climate zones.