Any evidence of psilocybin mushroom use among ancient peoples of the British Isles?

[kidklmx]

P. Cyanescens grows EVERYWHERE in the world, and everywhere in the world they have undeniably been used in shamanic rituals. Why wouldn't this be the chase for Europe? I mean the Greek Oracles are a great example of this (though it had more to do with gasses?), Druidism another.

I do know that Amanitas Muscaria has been intertwined with some Dutch folklore, and it has been described as highly toxic ever since the dark ages. Probably by someone who ate it and thought he was possessed by a devil or something. Either way, once we got our own drug laws (Opiumwet), they were instantly put up as Class I. It seems Christianity has made us so scared of the indescribable that older shamanic rituals were forgotten.

 

[Twigs]

Sorry for digging up an old thread.
The following pictures are from a church in the northern part of Denmark. The murals where made somewhere between 1500 and 1523:

First picture show Sct. George slaying the dragon. The interesting part is in the bottom left corner.
On the right is a small leaved lime a which is a symbol of love. The pointy things on the left seem to resemble P. Semilanceata quite a lot:

Close up:

It is the only place a mushroom has been depicted in a church in Denmark, so it seems strange to put it there unless it was know to be special.


Source (in Danish): http://www.stenlarris.dk/HALU/HPSILO.HTM

 

[Ismene]

^^

Looks a poor drawing of an arrow to me, or a tree with leaves. Most of those "drawings of mushrooms" are in the mind of the beholder. If you look at something long enough you can start to see it resemble what you want it to resemble. You can put any interpretation you want on it. Maybe it was drawn by someone pissed up on beer one night and he was shit at drawing? Who knows?

Why wouldn't they draw a person holding the mushrooms to his mouth?

 

[Ismene]

P. Cyanescens grows EVERYWHERE in the world, and everywhere in the world they have undeniably been used in shamanic rituals.

No they havn't kid. The only evidence of widespread mushroom use is the last 50 years in western societies and ancient use in a few areas of Mexico.

There's a lot of reasons why earlier people wouldn't use them - most of them would have been religious, they would have been terrified that they were "losing their minds" and they wouldn't know they were medically harmless.

Most important of all they would consider it a sin against God or that they were summoning up the devil. It would have taken an extremely brave and unusual person to take mushrooms before the late 50s.

 

[kidklmx]

There's only no mention of psilocybin mushrooms being used, A. Muscaria has been used throughout the world and ages and with that in mind, I really wouldn't know why the experimenters of those times wouldn't have tried other mushrooms.

Also take a look at the last data point, the first description of A. Muscaria use by Native Americans was in 1978. How can you know what they've done in the past? Not a lot is documented

Agreed about your response to mine though, I've grown a bit in the past months and I'm definitely not so sure as I was then

 

[Ismene]

Yeah there's all the theories about muscaria being the meaning of christmas, and when you get even deeper down that rabbit hole you come across all the early pictures of Christ with a "halo" round his head - guess what, that wasn't a halo...it..was...a...mushroom.

I just wonder how many people in these societies actually took mushrooms - I mean, even now, when we know they're harmless and God isn't going to destroy us an our families very few people take them. Imagine how few people would've been happy taking them a thousand years ago.