posted by Eric Stewart at 10:57 AM
I'm not sure how much more eclectic a person can be but I am sure that a lot of individuals consider themselves to be more unique than most - a definite contradiction of course. I was born on the first day of the summer of love and I have been an activist, a geek, a hippie, a bit of a punk, a nomad, a sailor, and a bunch of stuff all in between. I have been a pagan, a buddhist, a zoroastrian, an atheist, blah blah. Labels aside, scanning my posts are a better guage of my interests than any paragraph I can write. Yet I am so much more. Aren't you?
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Mycology
http://mycology.net/
Camping along the Snowy Range in southern Wyoming last August, we found Amanita Muscaria in great abundance. This was on our honeymoon. We considered this to be an auspicious sign of a successful marriage....
The Fly Agaric is a fungus I have a deal of experience with. It can be mildly psychoactive (adding a dream like quality to life like Datura but unlike Datura in that the experience is less dense) but only after at least a half a day of fasting.
One MUST prepare it in the proper way and I have SEEN people get very sick by not doing so. One cannot just pick one up and eat one.
Before taking one, tap the top of the cap not too gently so that one can assure that spores drop and the life cycle of the network is less impacted. After picking it, cut of the bottom of the stalk, the bulb. Then wash the entire mushroom in cold water. As you are washing the stalk you will feel a fine white material coming off. When it no longer comes off, it is washed thoroughly.
When this is done, peel the membraneous layer off of the top of the cap, peeling from the outside toward the center. You will have to peel it off in strips all the way around the cap. You will be left with a small portion at the center that does not peel off and you can simply use a knife to cut it off. Then wash the cap thoroughly, again, in cold water.
Now you are ready to mash the stuff, for a couple of hours, in cold water. A mortar and pistel is great for this but a bowl and a potato masher will do. When this is finished, strain the stuff through a cheese cloth or sheer t-shirt. You will probably have to squeeze the last remnants of the golden nectar with some elbow grease to get it all out.
In the northeast, the Fly Agaric IS yellow and this makes it easier to confuse with other deadlier varieties. With these, one seeks a liquid the color of a dandelion flower in full bloom. Any darker and one will get sick so if it is darker one can just add water until it is diluted to the proper color. I have never done it with the red variety but I would suspect that one should do the same thing. If it is not strong enough to elicity a reaction (I would fast for two days with juice only), then one can try again a little stronger. Better to start too weak than too strong.
This brew was taught to me by a Mic Maque shaman in the deep woods of northern Quebec. Oddly or not, the Mic Maque word for this brew is Soma.
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