ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS:

SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII

EDITED BY
JOHN W. ALLEN

An Albino Penis Envy Strain of Psilocybe cubensis.

Copy Number __1__ of 35 Deluxe Copies.

A Limited edition of 250 copies.

Copies 1-35 are deluxe editions with 51 extra full color photographs.
Numbers 26-250 will retain Full-Colored Double-Sided Cover with 61 colored Text Images.
All copies will be numbered and signed by John W. Allen.

ISBN 978-1-61623-898-8
Publisher: Exotic Forays
Seattle, Washington

Winter 2009
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII

SEX, MUSHROOMS, AND ROCK Huxley, Albert Hofmann, Weston La Barre,

Timothy Leary, and Jochen Gartz.
AND ROLL
Keywords: Mushrooms sex, orgasms, aphrodisiacs,
By
rock and roll, phallic symbolism, sexual fulfillment,
anthropology, ethnomycology, Neotantric sex and
SHROOMIUS GLORIOSIS
evolutionary psychology.
(John W. Allen)
Procreation was the primary reason to insure the
Abstract
survival of the existence of our species in all
primitive states and societies. The very act of sex
This article is the first ethnomycological
often occurred under the auspices of the chieftains
documented case study involving the use of
or leader of a clan who controlled who had sex with
psilocybin mushrooms as an aphrodisiac and is
whom and he would be the first to have such
based on an exchange of several letters of
privileges as the leader of the tribe.
communication between the author, Sasha Shulgin,
and Jochen Gartz, written in the mid 1990s. It tells
Humans learned and developed certain social habits
in detail, my first psilocybin experience between my
and traits from their everyday observations of the
wife and I that produced an intense sexual euphoric
social behavior of the animals and insects living
union while under the influence of magic
within their environmental surroundings. In fact,
mushrooms. It had produced within us, timeless
we, as humans built our entire social structures
hours of pure orgasmic pleasure. The aphrodisiac
based on the living habits of insects and animals
effects of such mushrooms were first reported in the
that we observed thousands of years ago. We
literature at the time of the conquest of Nueva
learned all of our common habits and traits from
España. Both Francisco Flores and Bernardo de
watching the daily habits of bees, birds, ants and the
Sahagún reported that mushrooms used by the
termites. And there was a time that we too, also of
Aztecs ‘provoked lust’ and were ‘but one of the
a carnivorous nature, consumed those very insects
many aphrodisiacs found in the New World.’
that taught us all how to behave. All of the
Between 1955-1966, several noted scholars briefly
foundations and structures of our world began in the
reported experiencing similar euphoric effects and
mound of a termite or an anthill or in the hive of a
noted instances of erotic sensuality in others while
bee, and especially from the behavior of the
they were under the influence psilocybine. Many of
primates whom we so mimicked in our daily affairs,
these scholars realized they had found the perfect
as they did also mimic us. We saw ourselves in the
sexual aphrodisiac.
primates and in the social behavior of the insects,
the queen, the workers, the soldiers, etc., our own
This paper contains a short bio and I share with the
behavior and eventually we became influenced from
reader, how I came to know of drugs at the early
their intelligence and from their consciousness, and
age of ten-years-old as a child growing up in
thus we built our world of today from their
Chicago. This article chronicles my experiences
standards of existence long ago.
from childhood through the mid 1990s, further
embellished from notes in my personal files and
Sexual dimorphism and sexual division of labour
memories of my life's experiences with drugs and
occurred between male and females among humans,
sexual activities. Furthermore, I present early pre-
as well as with animals and insects as early
historical evidence of such sexual activities between
humankind sought control of their women, their
humans, animals, sex and mushrooms, including a
meat (the male being the primary hunter of food),
short presentation of phallic symbolism and
and their strength to retain their communal society,
festivals, historical data, and the words of Aldous

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 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
then their extreme opposites, their females who
eventually became the masters of agrarian
knowledge, the planting of stapled crops. Such
knowledge brought rituals to the rites of spring, the
planting of the crops, the rain that brought forth the
sprouts, of the seeds that brought forth vegetative
life, of the very rain that fell from the sky every
spring, and rain may have appeared to primitive
man as the sperm falling from heaven. So as early
man sought meat to feed their communities, the
female would carry the meat back to their villages,
and that formed a division of sexual labour (La
Barre, 1970). However, woman held their own in
matters of vegetation, clothing, possible food plants
and medicinal plants, yet, their main and primary
purpose for existing was that of procreation. They
were carriers of children and they were of the
human condition, usually the property of the chiefs
of their tribes or clans. In most primitive tribes,
group sex was no different than the group sex
experienced in the world of the primates, of whom
the late ethnobotanist Terence McKenna had noted,
left their tree-world in search of better foods.
McKenna wrote that primates had first discovered
and ate mushrooms long before humans had and he
explains that the primates were the first (outside of
the various insects who had a symbiosis with dung),
to eat the fungi found in the manure of the animal
trails they had followed, the very meat needed to
feed their community. Terence believed that the
primates would eat the mushrooms and horse
around all day long, generally having nothing better
to do then too eat mushrooms and have mad wild
group monkey sex. And so primitive man, having
observed the primates in their natural surroundings
and experiences, also followed the trails of manure
imitating the behavioral patterns of the primates and
soon early man was enjoying countless hours of
extra sexual activity. This cultural phenomena of
mushrooms and sex created a sexual culture that
was based on the act of copulation like the
hierarchy of herds of wild four-legged ungulates
such as deer, elk, antelope, goats, all whose
strongest male in the herd, would compete in battle
with the other males for dominance of the female of
the species and his right to have sex with all the
2
other females of the herd. That right to sexual acts
controlled by the strongest flourished for millennia
and as noted, often belonged to the strongest beast
in the herd or as in the case of the clan or tribal
chain, he who was the strongest, would have the
honor of impregnating every female in their
conclave. Interestingly, a male lion, when in heat
for about a week, has sex at least 200 or more times,
yet on the other-hand, I find Terence McKenna’s
theory of groups of wandering primates binging on
having sexual mushroom orgies strange; in that
some primates are not capable of sexual social
behavior and the fact that a chimpanzee apparently
has an orgasm in less than ten seconds of the act.
Maybe they keep having an instant ten-second
orgasm over and over and over until they do get
their females pregnant, but I do not think they
understand that is what makes their babies.
During those early beginnings of primitive sexual
conduct in controlled societies, the planting and
tilling of the soil and the spring rains also became a
part of the sexual union between humankind and its
natural environmental surroundings. I referred to
that in school once as, “The Seeding of the Earth.”
I was chastised and humiliated in front of my
classmates for some of my advance learning
concepts and understandings of who, what, why,
when and where we all are and came from.
It was in my world, that I, while under the
influences of what R. Gordon Wasson came to refer
to as the Sacred mushrooms, that I came to
recognize that I had just learned how to express my
self sexually by the self-expression of my own
transient sexual feelings (as those referred to in the
Philosophy of Hamaan, “The discovery of a
spiritual meaning,” and in the grossest and most
offensive manner, material that would be akin to
experiencing the feelings brought on by an act of
pure primal primitive instinctive sex.... me,
behaving like a wild animal in my own
environment. For the animal, if it is time, then they
do it where they are and it is their natural spirit to
do it. One could interpret animal sex as transient
sex or as instinctive sex. But to be positive, such
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
sex would be the ultimate natural primal act, and
primal in the sense that it transcended, via, a
human-like nano-chip imbedded in one’s own
DNA, a hidden record of the possibility of a past
link in time, spanning the individuals record of
eternal sexuality from one’s own first breath at the
beginning of the human creations eons ago. From
the very moment in human history, when that first
breath was born, you know that you were the first
human born and now, at this moment of your
present reality, you realize that you were the one
that had breathed that first breath (spirit), the breath
of life. And you understand how it must have
occurred in that very instant, of that very first
existence, an experience that could be described as
the most pleasurable primeval time-spatial
transformation while being on the mushrooms, that
you could be in more than one plane of existence at
the same time yet being nowhere other than where
you already were at. To have an inevitable
primeval orgasm occur at the exact moment when
just a single contact between two peoples eyes or
the light touch of two opposite beings possessing a
magnetic positive and negative tender touch as both
of their fingertips meet one another and began to
melt into one another and this electrifying sensual
feeling in turn would set off a synaesthesia in the
form of a rainbow shooting colored numbers that
you can hear passed beyond and between your
senses and back into you and your other self
(Alexander, 1969). “Synaesthesias (e.g., ‘seeing’
sounds” and hearing colors).
And I sit here in that moment that is most profound
and I put to paper my own historical document
detailing the sexuality, sociology, and my concept
of the anthropology of the purpose of procreation
from day one as I see myself producing the most
profound psilophoric orgasmic effects ever
produced by a human’s soul as psilocybine, a
neurotropic alkaloid found worldwide in certain
higher fungi connects head-on in symbiosis with my
brain’s own neurotransmitter, serotonine. It is in
that exact instant as the recognition of one side of
the universe sends a series of synaptic electrical
sparks as a conduit of cold fusion reaching
3
outwards, and then directly bounces back, to and
fro, going forth in unison, triggering a reverberating
domino effect as one side of the universe becomes
the other side of the universe. This instant melting
of two entities that once were complete opposites
have now been wired together by time, space and
sound for every color I hear is beyond me and is, at
the same time, as being seen as one with me. A
joining of two souls hidden in geometric emptiness
can now begin the conversion by which two can
multiply to become three. While no bodies exist in
this space, in this particular time and place, where
all who have been here before realized that if they
were not here before they came, then they ask
themselves, where will they be after they have all
gone. Such is the interaction that I now felt between
the psilocine, the serotonine, the pheromones and
us. Slowly, since there is no real sense of time, I
began to realize that there is no time because time is
constant. There is no past because it has come and
gone. I have to consider if there is a future since is
has not yet happened. So I, I who have no vision,
begin to see that I had another side to me. A side
which had just moments ago occurred when my
eyes touched her eyes, and my ten finger tips spread
apart from one another and in perfect harmony as
once again, our finger tips met and gently melted
together as one, forging our souls to become
connected by creating a singular molecular strand
forming between us in a neon glow as we sent unto
each other from within our fingertips, another
synaptic electrical fiber charged by the purity of my
sensory auditory visual transformation that
produces my sperm without me thinking that it is
going to come and then before I realize it has
happened, and in that very moment of a
microsecond, in the blinking of an eye as we did so
as one between us, we melted faster than a single
bolt of radiated lightening as we oozed past the
memory of our eternal existence and all of this
occurred because in a minute eon of eternal time, a
past particle of eternity had just sent another jolt of
electrical mist the moment she and I had touched
one another again with our twenty finger tips, and I
remembered, my creation and her creation in the
womb of warmth that in that very moment, as our
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
eyes touched one another’s souls, we had just been
reunited as one as the warmth of the orgasm
continued to cause our bodies to interact with one
another like an echo bouncing across what I thought
where the heavenly skies of my ancestors dreams.
And so we laughed. Together and in separate tonal
frequencies and we could see the number of our
laughs as they played out their grids across our
flushing faces of joy, tears of joy and in color as the
sounds of our tears met the taste of our scents,
misting into each others facial embrace.
Since I am a practicing agnostic, this in itself was
a true miracle. I could actually concentrate, but
only for a moment and then the ripples, the
continuing vibrations, the multiple reverberations
and the myriad flow of continuous echoes had once
again returned and took command of our
transformation. The continued existence of the
spatial time-warped orgasm still sent both of us
quivering in rapture as we sped through the myriad
echoes of time and space.
As I slowly but surely became the pot of gold at the
end of the vocal rainbow of countless drops of what
I perceived to be fertile sperm, I knew they were
reaching out swimming upstream like salmon as
they each sought out their own supply of eggs we
knew that it would only take one to create ourselves
anew. But I also knew I had not really sent out any
seminal fluids other than the fluids our bodies
created to keep us moist, wet and warm during our
attempt at conception, an act of coitus and we were
both wet and warm while we concentrating on the
act of copulation and I could still hear her voice
lightly beckoning to me, calling out to me, asking
me to reach out and further touch her where she
knew I should be touching her and I could hear her
heart pleading in sensual rhythmic rapture as her
body began to sway to and fro through the air which
had stepped aside to let us float into one another
because her finger tips had now sought out the
moisture of my tongue and I knew what she needed
me to give her because her eyes and lips said it all
without speaking a single word. And while she
4
sounded as if she were halfway across the universe,
I could visually see that she was just sitting with her
chest attached to mine, that she was there, directly
in front of me, not more than a touch away. Her
breasts glittered and sparkled with the sound of
pulsating throbs and I could see the breath of her
breast and the movement of her chest resonating in
tones of vibrant colors from the beat of her heart
which was like a beautiful rose, breathing every
breath as if it were her first breath. And again, as I
heard her eyes speak to mine; I noticed that no
words emanated from her mouth.
I could feel her telepathically communicating to me
without verbally uttering a single word. I also
noticed that my legs had somehow, without my
conscious knowledge, began to naturally become
wrapped around her waste line and she apparently
had inched her way closer to me as her legs lifted
upward and slowly entwined themselves around my
waist. How could this be, movement without
thought. Conditioned to respond without command.
And soon I begin to wonder where had all this time
come from or gone to, and what had this time been
all about. Had we been sitting here like this locked
together at the loins for only a few minutes or had
we been engaged in this rapture of sound and color
for the past few hours.
I suddenly became aware that while my knowledge
is archeologically blind, and that I only briefly
touched on the primitive basics of humankinds first
sexual social contact, that there is a vast treasure of
hidden historical knowledge linked from primitive
time about the importance of the phallic symbolism
of the pineal and/or phallic shapes of the fungi, and
their possible relationship to the shape of the male
phallus and the total steel erection of my male
sexuality brought out while under the influence of
the mushrooms and I felt that I needed to
understand more about how I came to be in the
womb that birthed me, knowing fully well that I
was at one time, not yet of this Earth and once I had
arrived, I needed to know how I knew where to go
after I came here.
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
I assumed it was the heartbeat. A living pendulum,
a perfect time piece that breathed and sang in total
synchronization to the tune of time. It became our
breath and that became our spirit. A pendulum
producing an auditory thumping that in essence
became in perfect constant rhythm, the very spark
that invoked the breath of life. What a magnum
opus? The greatest gift ever given and now I knew
how I came to be. I had been created, and everyone
of this Earth, like me, all have a heart that beats and
sings the very same sound, the music of our souls.
The secret of life is the heartbeat, the breath, the
spirit and the soul. Even the Earth breathes as it
travels through space. We all live because of the
constant beating of the heart, and having the
knowledge of knowing where to go to feed once we
have emerged from out of that dark tunnel and into
the very light we all have been told only existed at
the end of a dark tunnel. How did we, as newborns,
know where to go for substance? And suddenly, in
a vision that only I could hear, I knew that
somehow, somewhere in my uninformed mind,
there were unborn memory circuits, some unknown
past primal instinct that somehow mysteriously
relayed to me the connection of my past existence, a
pathway sent into my unconscious mind the data I
obviously should follow in order to get as close in
proximity as possible to the comfort zone of that
constant thumping and rhythmic sound of a beating
heart, a warm heart that my very soul had been
synchronized and aligned with in harmony for the
past nine months as I grew within my mother’s
womb.
And this occurrence of fertility is still one of the
greatest mysteries of all times. And while I am
‘bemushroomed’ and I am being totally sexual in all
matters, I also seem to be able to conceive of many
thoughts and actions at the same time as I am
experiencing the ecstasies of my sexual activities
occurring between me and my wife. And strange as
mysterious as the mystery of birth is, we see
historically that the phallic male tool has been
symbolically and historically immortalized by
humankind through art, sculpture, literature and has
been worshipped in many cultures both from our
5
primitive past and in our present stage of existence,
yet the female sexual organs are more forbidden
morally than that of the males pineal organ. We
learn through nature and time that once the egg
begins it’s morphing journey into that of a living
fetus, the tissue that becomes human creates its
organs and the two primary human organs are the
brain and the heart. And the latter invokes a
constant auditory sound that produces in the fetus, a
continuous heartbeat found in all things living. The
ticking of that heartbeat and the oxygen our lungs
breathe are what keeps us going. The heart is the
2nd most unusual organ in our system and it seems
to be an actual organic metronome, and in my
unconscious state of mind, I somehow knew, over
many millennia, passed down from generation to
generation, knowledge that being near the rhythm of
the heart in such a stage of life, was the safest place
to be in order to continue to exist. Like the child
and the beating of its mother’s heart, Kenna and I,
in our symbiotic state, had also became one with the
constant pulsating and vibrated sound of the
thumping beat of the greatest musical experience
providing the body with feelings of pure ecstasy,
the nirvana of orgasm and the creation with the
missing link. Think about how simple everything
seem to be in that first moment when you heard the
beauty of a simple sound, one that had traveled
across vast distances as well as defeated the
emptiness of infinite periods of time, eons that came
and went by, always coming and going, that was the
music of being part of both the past and the present
at the same time. It was the sound of the season and
it’s beat was like that of a primitive shamanic drum
beat, a beat recognized and known of in every
existing culture of this world and from the world of
the past. A shamanic drumbeat, the rites of spring,
the rains of life, the planting of the seed, the growth
of all that we know, all of that came about because
we lived in tune to the very rhythm of the heartbeat
and the music it produced. And again, in my sexual
throes of ecstasy, I found that I was adhering myself
in symbiosis with the soft marsh-mellow-like flesh
of the very essence of she who had shared her soul
in partaking of the creation of our children; myriad
images of both her and me. A combined creation of
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
one from two that grew to become a part of both.
And in my grace, I kept grasping the warm flesh to
hold on until I finally recognized that my fingers
had not yet developed and that I was only
experiencing the warm softness that was the flesh of
my own body entwined with that of Kenna’s warm
body. I wondered as we wrapped ourselves around
one another, how could I as a child know? Yet in
the womb, I knew that everything I was now being
made aware of was coming to me and to my
significant other, from the auditory sensory
perceptive language spoken to us by the mushrooms
we had consumed. We were joined together
because we were meant to be as one. Together, we
were now very moist and wet, yet we both realized
that we had just emerged from out of the dark of our
past and into the light that was our future and that
the mushrooms would now allow us to follow the
molecules of sound as they pulsated from the
throbbing heartbeat that we shared and we could
actually see the beat of the heart from the outside
looking in. Having both just indirectly returned
from our very own past primal existence, we began
again to show each other just what we were really
capable of by providing untold pleasure to one
another now that we realized that this is what the
mushrooms and our pheromones wanted us to do.
So I let my tongue moisten her nipple and she again
began to quiver as if the Earth, traveling through
space, had suddenly slowed down to let the pleasure
we were experiencing stay the course and it seemed
to us that time had stood still to let us pass it by.
And as the Earth slowed down, I found it
comforting that we had not been tossed away into
the void of the darkness as we traveled in tune to
the harmony of time. And we both realized that
our symbiosis with one another, the relationship we
had formed between the mushrooms and our
pheromones, including the added continuity of our
continuous sexuality, Kenna’s multiple orgasms, as
well as the self control I had in holding back my
own, occurred only as a result of the chemical
interactions between the tryptamine alkaloids we
had consumed. We also realized that hidden
messages sent to us and from each of us to the
6
other, had made us very aware that the lyrics that
Grace Slick was singing at this very time and
moment, rang out into our souls, declaring, “Ready
your body for love, there is no gravity here.” I later
could not figure out how the music and the timing
of Grace Slick’s very words, always applied to what
Kenna and I were sexually doing to one another.
Thus the very words spoken to us from that
recording actually played a role in our sexual
ecstatic union. I then recalled that Tim Leary
(1983) stated, “Sex is God,” thus I knew what God
really was.
I now understood that the constant sexual attraction
that Kenna and I normally shared with one another
was the result of the relationship shared by the
sexual attraction our pheromones shared between us
and that we were not only soul mates to each other
but were intensely symbiotically linked genetically
as the soul mates of our pheromones. And when
our bodies were introduced to the tryptamine
alkaloids, the male and female combination with the
mushrooms allowed us to become sexually as one.
I then started to think that sex is religion. And
religion is something that is supposed to make one
feel good, yet every week, millions of people go to
church and listen to depressing sermons about the
sufferings of millions of others, and they hear the
words of God and Jesus who graciously loves us all
yet fails to respond to our prayers and help all of us
when we are in need of them. So I have never felt
good about organized religion where everyone
contributes weekly donations to a few who live well
from their congregations and so I found that sex
was something that really made me feel good and
made me realize that sex was the reason we all were
here and so sex became my religion
Looking up, I could now see that Kenna was
actually laying next to me in the opposite direction
and yes, my mouth had still been attached by
nurture to her nipple. Yes, I was still erotically and
numbingly suckling from her beast, and the flavor
she gave me became the taste of the “Nectar of life”
as she moaned and purred like a kitten while I
pressed my hands softly on both of her breasts, and
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
pushed on them in a cushioning fashion, not only to
the rhythm of the beating of her heart, but also to
the sound of music whereas, the voice of Grace
Slick, singing like a lost angel from heaven, was
still telling us what to do to one another. With my
eyes closed and my mouth on her breast and both
my hands fondling her breasts, I slowly moved
down upon her towards the object of her desire and
as I did, I then felt her also as she locked her lips
around my male organ, the creator of life, I felt her
soul respond naturally in her desire to willingly
taste the nectar of my seed and together I would
share the nectar of my soul as she had done with
me. Again, at that moment, Grace Slick’s words
caught out attention as they echoed out from across
the heavens, as she now sang, “Como libertad—if
he looks good when you see him, if it sounds good
when you hear it—If he feels like a good man when
you see him, touch him, when you come near him.”
Yes, I felt that this is indeed why we were here.
The mushrooms gave us the knowledge of our life
and allowed us, with each and every breath, each
beat of our hearts, that we incredibly remembered
that we had at one time, a distance apart from one
another, both climbed out of the womb and traveled
that long distance from a place of darkness in inner
space to another dimension of existence outside of
the darkness so that one day we might meet one
another and be joined in the very union that had
created both of us so long ago. And then out of
nowhere, we both felt the heaven within our bodies
explode in ruptured waves of rapid orgasms,
although I felt the orgasm, I still was able to hold
back as I slowly went down into her and our bodies
assimilated as one in duet-tic harmonic tones of
touching, tasting and seeing each other’s thoughts,
of speaking to one another without the use of words.
In fact the only sounds we made were the guttural
language of our primal ancestry engaged in serious
conduct with each other. We did not have much to
say verbally and we really did not need to say
anything, but the moaning we both emitted was as
constant as was the beating of our hearts. This was
something new, a language where only the sound of
pleasure had any meaning and every moment was a
7
pleasure unlike anything we had ever experienced
before. That said, without uttering a single legible
word, we had learned how to communicate between
ourselves by just looking into one another’s eyes
and in that manner we knew what each other
wanted the other to do. We knew where and when
to touch and we knew how to touch, and all Kenna
wanted to do was cum, she loved every orgasm I
gave her and with each primitive sound emanating
from her lips as our bodies melted into one another
and our eyes cried tears of joy, I was so filled with
pleasure by her look in those moments when she
came. That is what got me off. And this is what
satisfied me. Me watching her continuously as she
continued to vaginally explode, over and over and
over, and telling me that she was still coming, I
loved the pleasure of her smile that she was so
completely satisfied, and I could feel her orgasmic
concussions that brought her to tears and laughter
that she was glad we were there together, I knew
within me that no one before me had ever felt the
happiness I brought into her body and mind on that
first voyage into our sexuality and the pleasure was
still giving to her shown brightly towards me as her
smile of gratitude was totally insatiable and
undeniably ecstatic. And the night was still early
and we again began the ritual in getting to really
know one another all over for again. I could never
forget the look in her eyes as she looked into mine,
we knew that our bodies, our minds, and our eyes
had formed a life-long friendship, one that now
existed between the pheromones that were activated
in advance of their purpose through their accidental
contact with their introduction of the tryptamine
alkaloid, psilocine with that of its chemical relative,
serotonine. That is what Thomas Lewis (1978)
shared with the world. He knew that humans are
sexually attracted to one another because the female
and male pheromones echoed to one another, the
message that their needs were one of wanting and
what they wanted and needed were the needs of
sexual union and satisfaction. And it is always sex
that they get and they get it when they want it. It is
not the human brain that becomes, “Horny.” It is
the reason for their existence, to bring the fullness
of sex to one another. The messages that Kenna
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
and I shared in symbiosis were messages of
sexuality. Something that Kenna and I constantly
longed for, whether we were high or not. We
commanded a need to be sexual at least three times
a day or more. Once out lips locked, nothing short
of a few orgasms could separate us or keep us apart
from one another’s touch. Only someone in the
middle of nowhere, possibly someone drifting in
ecstasy along the edge of the center of the universe,
outer space, inner space could command an
understanding of two people wanting to have noting
but hours of sexual pleasure. Unfortunately for
most humans, such sexual unions and pleasures are
rare and when two souls are connected as mates, in
order to mate, mushrooms provide a reason for
loving everything that we all are and the pleasure of
knowing that we can give one another feelings most
people will never experience.
Again the massive outbreak as we both broke into
laughter with tears of colored columns dancing
down our cheeks. The residue of the tears joined
with us in perfect harmony like tantric drops of
essential oils, bearing the odor of scented roses that
I seemed to keep imagining were actually the scents
of living tissues that I had suppose could be referred
to as wet-moistly liquid bodily fluids brought from
the taste of this Neotantric act of sex. However, we
were not into yoga and have always been sexual
with one another to the fullest extent. So why
would we imagine it was of a tantric nature since
we were truly soul mates and our lives and sexual
nature were clearly created so that we in turn could
create, not just children, but create multiple orgasms
within one another. The effects of the mushrooms
on our very souls showed us that we were the
perfect Ying and Yang, the first Adam and Eve, and
the everlasting Alpha and the Omega. It was at this
moment of orgasm that I had realized why I was,
why my wife and I were, and what being here really
meant and we both knew that from within one
another we could really give to one another
everything there is to give.
For some reason I cannot begin to fathom, I seemed
to recall the words of a strange teen idol, Peter
8
Frampton, who had once sang, “I want you, to show
me the way.”
And so, that is what the mushrooms did. They
eventually begin to show my wife and I the way.
And while these thoughts began racing through my
mind at incredible speeds, it was almost impossible
to hold a single thought for more than a few seconds
at a time. To add to the seemingly endless and
somewhat unimaginable fantastic euphoria of total
continuous orgasms that my wife continued to have,
we also were experiencing the most beautiful
intense visual kaleidoscopic and neon glowing
geodesical pattern grids vibrating with every
movement we were experiencing. As we breathed,
they came in ripples and waves and with each
breath, we trembled with pleasure and it was hard to
concentrate on the orgasms my wife was
experiencing because they just kept coming and
going, bouncing and reeling and the melting of her
constant orgasms, one after the other into mine
taught me the meaning of Mose’s Staff and the
power it wielded and her lips shuttered over and
over as her volatile body kept contracting and
expanding, always coming towards me and at me
and reaching out to hold me tighter, but at the same
time that we would fused together over and over,
we never arrived havening to instantly refrain from
one another’s touch at every moment we pulsed.
And those pulsating orgasms of hers continued to
come at the same time I responded at an astounding
incredible speed of equal proportions, with spatial
partitions and physical palpitations that we could
see the auras of our nakedness dancing across the
room to the music of the cassette tape that we were
playing, Grace Slick’s, “Theme from the Movie
Manhole.” One thing I learned real fast was the
true meaning of the words, “Boom! Boom! Boom!”
Then my wife said to me in the softest cushiony
sounding voice I had ever heard her speak to me
with, so sexy was the sound that I realized that no
sound had came from her mouth but I could hear
her eyes speak out to me, asking me if I had so
much as remembered that astronomy book she had
brought home from the school’s library with the
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
beautiful nebulas in it and I noticed that there was
still such an intensity of euphoria within me and I
felt the continuous flow of colors emanating
throughout the room, the reverberations of our
bodies still varied while waves of continuous
orgasmic spasms and the constant reminder that we
were secluded within the warmth of our parents
womb and that warmth still remained within us.
Another noticeable feature of this voyage was that
our walls were like a continuous Escher film
playing on a tape loop showing fantastic impossible
mathematical equations of colored patterns in
sequence with one another and with each sequence
of movement, they followed the music of our heart
beat. Then again, l lost myself in that time between
space and orgasm. And then I returned to my
thought whereas I wondered where that idea about
the astronomy book had come out of her head from?
She had told me the very next evening that the
images of the nebulas from space was where she
was at during all of her multiple moments of
orgasm. I then, for the very first time since the
effects of the mushrooms had commenced, realized
that we both had just verbally communicated as the
mushrooms spread their effects upon our souls and I
noticed that while my hands were palming hers, we
had just now somehow locked our palms together in
a hand grasp and the flow of our warmth shot like
missiles of misty spray into one another’s body and
I still held on tight, embracing her soul throughout
our hand and eye contact.
So then I realized I had remembered that I had
almost forgotten about the astronomy book on
Nebula’s and outer space that my wife had just
asked me about. I realized our holding one another
together in union was a lot more important and
pleasurable than nebulas and did not cost what it
would of cost to have out asses being shot into outer
space by 6 billion pounds of thrust. Again more
stupid laughter only this time she asked me what
was so funny and I told her that she was funny and
her breasts were like soft marshmallows and I
wanted to wallow in them and cum all over them
and then wipe the moist come into her mouth and
9
around the inside of her lips and she knew from the
look in my eye what I was thinking. I told her that
it was just the fluids of the nebulas shooting through
the constant movement of space through time.
Then she told me just how warm the melting of my
sperm on her moist hot lips tasted and we kissed
and she told me that is how the Nebulas melt as
they get sucked into a black hole so they can began
anew. Interestingly, I learned that if I came on her
belly and chest on my first orgasm, her vagina
would not be over moist and I could then still
maintain my erection without having a ten minute
timeout before going at it again. We also had long
periods of foreplay by having oral sex and
switching back and forth having vaginal sex. We
did not want the moment to end.
So, a break in our moment came as I got up, turned
on the lamp, and it was like the sun had just come
up. The room was razor sharp and everything in it
appeared as new, so pristine, as if it had just been
created for that moment that we first saw it. I then
retrieved the astronomy book from the shelf and
brought it to Kenna flipping open to a single page in
the center. “My goodness” I thought, I had never
really realized just how beautiful the images from
outer space really were. As I write these memories
down, they reminded me of a moment when my son
was about ten years old and he questioned me why
we (the U.S. of A.) had been spending so much
money to send rocket ships into outer space when
so many children around the world were starving
and dying. Of course I told him I really did not
have an answer to that question and he replied,
“Daddy, don’t they know that we are already in the
middle of outer space.” Strange how children know
things we do not see or understand and we just look
at them and say, “Their just children.” I had to
laugh looking back at that incident because 20
million miles to the left is not much different than
20 million miles to the right. So my son was right.
We are already in the middle of outer space and
why don’t we take care of what we already have
instead of trying to go to Mars, which we know is
already a dead planet. Maybe subconsciously we
are trying to return to where we once came from.
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
And so I told Kenna that no matter how beautiful
the natural look of the heavens and nebulas were,
was that one thing I knew for sure was that they
were nothing compared to her natural human
beauty. So I then complimented her on just how
beautiful she looked and smelled and how good she
tasted and how our closeness to one another had
given us the impression that we felt as if we were
touching each other without moving and we were
still able to retain and maintain a solid contact and
electrical connection with one another just by
looking into each others eyes. But also our contact
was at the same time still very sexual and so I
turned off the lights and the color grids and
geodesical patterns returned to our space and my
fingers had now spread her legs apart and we locked
into one another again. I remembered this feeling of
pleasure that ensued from the rapture of being
interlocked with one another like a Chinese ‘Finger
Cuff’ puzzle, but I had to be polite and thoughtful
and so I said, “Yes, Kenna, that was an awesome
book.” And she agreed with me and responded
about how amazing it was that we were able to see
those very Nebula’s in our room, which in the semi
darkness and lack of light, made it appear that we
were actually in the center of Outer Space.
We had a geode near the bed that had been cracked
open years before and it contained these beautiful
luminescent colors that now seem to emit sounds
and messages of soft music tingling throughout our
bodies. I looked at the Geode and said out loud, “I
wonder how old this rock is?” to which my wife
replied, “Not as old as the earth? Then it hit me like
a lightening bolt zapping down from the heavens
above and I looked at her and said, “This rock is the
Earth? And then I realized that no one, anywhere
on this planet could ever tell me truthfully exactly
how old this Earth is because no one knows. There
is no way to comprehend when and where we all
came from but in grade school I was asked to write
an essay on how the Earth was formed and how life
on this planet began and I received an F for my
essay and it was a good plausible explanation that
the Earth originated as a storm on the sun, a solar
flare, a sun spot explosion sent flying through space
10
composed of large gaseous chucks of substance that
eventually found an orbit and over the eons, cooled
off, whereas steam lifted off from the Earth to the
skies, then cooled and rain fell, constantly, over and
over until parts of the Earth formed solid matter and
eventually life crawled out of the sea to the land
masses that had formed over millennia’s But I am
not yet near the beginning of this tale of my life
because the mushrooms are very much in control
and I loved what they are sharing with me and my
wife so, as I still could feel the wave of orgasms as
they continued their assault on out senses, I began
to notice her nipples were growing, enlarging and
hauntingly seeking out the warmth of my lips. And
then, at that moment, as in other moments, for some
reason, I cannot recall, I noticed her nipples had
gotten hard on both of her breasts and so I placed
my right hand, cup-fashioned, over her other breast
and my other hand between that place between her
legs and as I did so, she again began to have several
multiple orgasms the moment my hand had touched
her fleshly nipple and cupped her soft breast and her
warm clitoris throbbed as I massaged it after
wetting my finger in her mouth.
I still was not able to get past my rebirth, and it was
also her rebirth and the psilophoric warmth of the
orgasm was still exploding within us. While my
orgasms were throbbing and some seminal fluid had
begun to slowly flow from within me, I ejected no
sperm, but she still continued to have nothing but
multiple orgasms. I thought, “How strange??
Questioning only for a brief moment what was
happening to us while I was trying to remember that
we were two of God’s children who had, for some
time now, vibrated and reverberated in and out of
and beyond our normal parameters of existence. I
again begin to question the timing of this wonderful
intriguing euphoric fantastic sexual birthing
voyage? And soon I also wondered where and how
long had I been gone? Had I really experienced
being in the womb prior to the slap I received on
my butt after I emerged into the light from that dark
space? Were we okay? Would this be a long
voyage?
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
Having realized that I had really just transported
myself and Kenna through time and space into my
own mother’s womb on the day of my creation and
back again, I again experienced another feeling of
déjà vu after viewing the photo-like images of some
of those far away galaxies pictured in that
astrometry book and I seriously believed that was
really where my body had been. The images of the
nebulas reminded me of what my surroundings
looked like to me as I snuggled all curled up like
Mr. Peanut in the womb. As I watched the images
of them I watched as they traveled through time and
space and I could see them as they breathed in the
new while breathing out the old. It made me think
again of Terence McKenna’s comments on the alien
spores that came to Earth from outer space.
David Jay Brown and Rebecca McClen noted that
Terence believed that aliens might have sent spores
to the Earth as a form of intelligence to be absorbed
into human consciousness through the use of these
mushrooms. David also brought to light the fact
that Terence might have subscribed “to the notion
that psilocybin mushrooms are a species of high
intelligence -- that they arrived on this planet as
spores that migrated through outer space, and are
[were] attempting to establish a symbiotic
relationship with human beings. In a more holistic
perspective, how do you see this notion fitting into
the context of Francis Crick's theory of directed
panspermia, the hypothesis that all life on this
planet and its directed evolution has been seeded, or
perhaps fertilized, by spores designed by a higher
intelligence?
TM: As I understand the Crick theory of
panspermia, it's a theory of how life spread through
the universe. What I was suggesting -- and I don't
believe it as strongly as you imply -- is that
intelligence, not life, but intelligence may have
come here in this spore-bearing life form. This is a
more radical version of the panspermia theory of
Crick and Ponampurama. In fact I think that theory
will probably be vindicated. I think in a hundred
years if people do biology they will think it quite
silly that people once thought that spores could not
11
be blown from one star system to another by cosmic
radiation pressure. As far as the role of the
psilocybin mushroom, or its relationship to us and
to intelligence, this is something that we need to
consider. It really isn't important that I claim that it's
an extraterrestrial, what we need is a body of people
claiming this, or a body of people denying it,
because what we're talking about is the experience
of the mushroom. Few people are in a position to
judge its extraterrestrial potential, because few
people in the orthodox sciences have ever
experienced the full spectrum of psychedelic effects
that are unleashed. One cannot find out whether or
not there's an extraterrestrial intelligence inside the
mushroom unless one is willing to take the
mushroom.
DJB and RM: You have a unique theory about the
role that psilocybin mushrooms play in the process
of human evolution. Can you tell us about this?
Whether the mushrooms came from outer space or
not, the presence of psychedelic substances in the
diet of early human beings created a number of
changes in our evolutionary situation (Brown and
McClen, 1993).”
Outer Space, a place that Terence McKenna
believed had brought alien spores as they traveled
light years through outer space to reach the earth,
the very outer space that Terence believed brought
Psilocybe cubensis to this gigantic living organism
in orbit around the heart of our universe, and there
you are, in a satellite, looking down at the single
organism known as the Earth. “God is a plant
known as the Earth.” And looking at the Earth from
a satellite orbiting the tiny planet you can almost
see the living organism as it breathes through space,
and in that moment you can also feel it breathing,
pulsating, and you realize that the clouds are
moving and land masses appear and disappear and
the oceans weave in and out and back and forth, and
all of the constant remains the same. You are
coming, you are going, and the song remains the
same and you remain and forever begin anew as we
all have in and out of our past existence.
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
Some concerns of sexual perfection regarding
articles on sex and shrooms had come to light
within my conscious thoughts, basically historical
thoughts, some in regards to the widespread
popularity of pineal worship and the fact that many
cultures have annual penis festivals. And I will
talk briefly of humankinds fascination of the
worship of the male member later in this journal
article of my experience with mushrooms, music,
sex and my wife’s moments of multiple orgasms for
it was at this moment in thought that my young son
had awakened from a terrible nightmare and his
crying was a most irritating moment of the
evening’s memorable sexual events.
I really needed to see a clock and after a while I saw
the time. We had only been high about 20-30
minutes at the most. For some reason, as noted in
the literature, the mushrooms had caused time to
almost stand still and that is how it was for us.
However, now our son had awakened and he
apparently was suffering the effects from having a
bad dream. He would not stop crying. Later I
learned to leave the children at a baby-sitter if you
planned on having a long days journey into the
night.
So here we were, my wife getting edgy because our
kid does not want anything to do with us. He cries
while we attempt to pick him up and hold him, He
then pushes us away. On the shrooms that is not a
good feeling if your son doesn’t want you
And all of this crying time from our son was hard
to handle and understand because we had a great
love for him because he was half of each of us.
Kenna noted that a feeling had began to emerge
within the still vibrating orgasm spasm that she said
was sending ripples of pleasure informing her that
the memories within us of this sexual union was a
pure driving force of unlimited energy with a wild
pull of gravitational stability that we should never
be in a position to let anything interrupt our
moments of pleasure. And so we began to realize
that the synaptic connection of the spark from the
ingestion of the alkaloid psilocybine that had come
12
into contact with the neurotransmitter, serotonine
infused naturally in our minds and brain, had
produced a reaction which converted the
psilocybine into psilocine and this is what caused
Kenna and I to become one with another, and this in
turn, caused the alkaloid psilocybine to
methodically join in a kaleidoscopic union by
converting the musical cacophony of serotonine by
conversion from an inanimate chemical into an
animate production of converting through animation
with that of the neurotransmitter serotonine
intrinsically weaving our spirits into a mycelial
network, throughout the human body, presenting us
with a shimmering shuttering intense vibratory
psilophoric echo of endless pleasurable
reverberation.
It reminded us both, as participants in the schematic
of the symbiotic relationship within our
surroundings and natural naked environment, that
the warmth of the womb was created by two
conscious minds looking directly into one another’s
eyes and ten fingers touching one another in
harmony. We saw the visual sparkle of our eyes
within each other, and at that moment, we had
thereby launched a synaptic spark contracted by a
single milligram of psilocybine. So we
programmed our thoughts by fine-tuning in on the
primeval effects of human physiology, evolving
slowly into a natural symbiosis between ourselves,
while the psilocybine mushrooms, acted as sensory
factors with our human sexuality as it suddenly
emerged into a single glowing molecule. Thus we
felt a gentle embraced cacophony of the sound of
colors that produced within us, a symbiotic celestial
harmony. Imagine, our souls had now blended into
one another, culminating in more multiple orgasms
for my wife, an echoing reverberation of a single
synaptic electronic charge that also allowed me to
hold back my orgasms for 4-6 hours, yet had three
during that time frame. We were both grateful that
we could relate our bioassay to others on how we
prolonged the most natural act, the orgasm, in all of
its euphoric primeval emotions. Neotantric sex,
produced from combining human sexual symbiosis,
and pheromones with psilocybian fungi.
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
Included in this tale of sexual union are letters of
personal communications concerning the subject
matter of the topic at hand between me (the author),
Alexander ‘Sasha’ Shulgin and Jochen Gartz, and
the sexual drug-induced thoughts and theories of
Timothy Leary, Albert Hofmann, Terence
McKenna and others. Historical data and comments
obtained from several of the early Franciscan and
Dominican Codices of the Spanish historians who
had first noted and reported on the aphrodisiac-like
effects they observed in Native Mesoamericans who
used the sacred mushrooms ritualistically and
privately during and after the time of the conquest
of Nueva España is also presented.
As this study continues, one will see how this study
relates in detail the path that led me to become
interested in drugs, my first marijuana fusion with
the music of the West Coast from the 1964, Los
Angeles LA Teen-Age Fair, an event where I had
my first experience of sex while on LSD with two
girls who willingly violated my honor and taught
me how to make a woman feel all that she would
need to feel, the Monterey Pop Festival, and later,
while under the inebriating psilophoric effects of
psilocybine mushrooms, while experiencing an act
of sex lasting more than 4-6 hours and experiencing
nothing but multiple orgasms from this symbiosis,
I will continue this tale from where I do now depart
to my beginnings in becoming a shroom lover who
loves the purest of sexual pleasures ever given to
humankind from a loving God and the music that
makes it all worth the while.
The First Communications Between John W.
Allen, Sasha Shulgin and Jochen Gartz, an
introduction into sex and drugs
The very first conference on hallucinogenic and
narcotic drug/plants in America took place in San
Francisco in 1967, and was known as “An
Ethnopharmacological Search for Psychoactive
Drugs.” Some of the scholars at that conference
included, R. Gordon Wasson, Richard Evans
Schultes, Andrew Weil, Carlos Castaneda and
13
Alexander Shulgin. A book was published on this
conference and edited by Efron, D. et al., 1967 for
the U.S. Public Health Service Bulletins. Over the
years, I became close friends with many of the
speakers at that conference except for Carlos
Castaneda.
I first read some of Sasha Shulgin’s work in the
early 1970s. However, I did not meet him until the
latter 1970s at a conference in Port Townsend in
1977 and in San Francisco (1978), and then again at
Ron Piper’s “Gathering of the Minds” symposium
(1994),” where Sasha and I both presented lectures
and slide presentations at Chapman University in
Orange County, California. A few days later, I
attended, along with Jochen Gartz, Sasha, and
several of the Gatherings of the Mind presenters, an
evening lecture presented by Rick Doblin for the
Albert Hofmann Foundation discussing an update
on his current research projects involving MAPPS.
This occurred in Santa Monica.
While in attendance there, Sasha and I chatted for
an hour or so along with Jochen Gartz, Jonathan
Ott, Rick Doblin, and several other enthnobotanists,
drug-plant researchers and enthusiasts.
Although it was not until the early 1970s that I had
first read one of Sasha’s papers on psychoactive
compounds he had written in the 1967 book, “An
Ethnopharmacological Search for Psychoactive
Drugs,” I later became aware of Sasha’s writings in
other journal publications such as those that
appeared in “The Journal of Psychedelic Drugs.”
However, it was during this evening lecture and
while I had only talked briefly with him at those
first conferences in the late 1970s, and later in April
of 1994, I realized that some of our mutual likes of
one another’s ideas came about through several
letters of correspondence in the early 1990s
between Sasha, Jochen Gartz and me.
Our correspondence came in the following letters
rearranged to present them in their proper
perspectives. These missives introduced Jochen
Gartz and one of his papers on P. cubensis indoles
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
to Sasha Shulgin, and then Sasha’s first written
letter to Dr. Gartz. This in turn was followed after
Sasha received from me a package of photos of
Thailand Hill Tribes-Peoples along with some
images of mushrooms. Next, Sasha wrote to me of
Dr. Gartz who wrote to Sasha expressing an interest
in finding someone in America who was involved
with an interest and love for the magic of these
interesting psilocybian mushrooms. That very same
day, Sasha wrote to Dr. Gartz that no one in
America was currently interested in doing research-
involving psilocybine-containing fungi.
Then Sasha received my package of images, two
unpublished mushroom articles co-authored by Dr.
Mark D. Merlin of the University of Hawaii. In
return, Sasha told me of his exchange of
communication with Dr. Gartz and that he would
introduce Dr. Gartz and I to one another and we all
would become good friends and colleagues. Then
Sasha wrote to both Gartz and me and here is what
occurred from this exchange of mycelial
information
Letter 1 from Jochen Gartz to Sasha Shulgin
“Akademie der Wisswnschafien der DDR –
Dated Leipzig 2 August 1990.
Dear Dr. Shulgin,
I know you as an authority of psychoactive
substances from the literature and as a member of
the board of the Hofmann Foundation. May I ask
you about some problems about psychoactive
mushrooms in the U.S.A.?
In my own study I have analyzed the variation of
psychotropic indoles in mushrooms of Europe and
in Psilocybe cubensis.
What do you say about the present status of
psilocybin mushrooms in the U.S.A.? Of course
psilocybin is a controlled substance (class 1) in
Europe and in the USA. But I think that it is more
impossible to control the mycoflora in an area and
the cultivation through the user than plantages of
marijuana!
14
Additionally, it seems for me that the mushrooms
bring only few and relative slight problems for only
a minority of users. This is in contrast to the
problems of designer drugs, more and more
substances without any knowledge of their
pharmacology. I’m very glad if you can send me
some articles about newer aspects of the
mushroom segment of the drug scene in the U.S.A.
Thank you very much,
Sincerely yours,
Dr. Jochen Gartz.”
Then Sasha replied to Jochen that no one in
America was currently conducting research or a
study of the psilocybian mushrooms.
Letter 2 response to Jochen Gartz’ August 2,
1990 from Sasha Shulgin in California.
“Dear Dr. Gartz,
Thank you for the reprint of your article on the
indolic content of the various parts of Psilocybe
cubensis. And thank you for the kind letter that you
sent along with it. Let me try to answer your
questions.
Under Federal Law, mushrooms that contain
psilocybin or psilocin have not been specifically
named. However, there is much legal action that is
not focused on the intent of the defendant rather
than the actual behavior. If he is found to be raising
mushrooms, or if he is arrested while gathering
mushrooms in the fields, then it may be intent to
possess and consume something that contains a
Schedule 1 drug, and prosecution may well follow.
The question comes up: Did the defendant know
that there was (or there might have been) a
Scheduled drug in his possession? Much of the
legal activity is dictated by just who the person is,
and what is his social status. It is a difficult picture
to explain.
The fact that mushrooms might produce only
relatively slight problems to a minority of users has
absolutely no bearing on the writing, or the
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
enforcement, of the law. There are drugs that are
explicitly illegal in the U.S.A. that are totally
without any record of abuse, even drugs that have
not yet been synthesized, that are named in the law
as Schedule 1. It is the concept of using something
that is not part of the medical pharmacopoeia, or not
specifically approved by the government agencies,
that is the motivation of law enforcement. A little
work continues here and there, but it is not
highlighted.
The bottom line is that there has been a dropping off
of research in the area of these fascinating indoles,
and a complete stopping of any clinical research
into their action or possible value. I am sorry to
have to give this dismal picture of the status of
research here, but that is the direct outgrowth of our
legislative paranoia on the subject of drugs and their
abuse.
Sincerely,
Alexander T. Shulgin.
8 September, 1990.”
Letter 3 from Sasha Shulgin to Jochen Gartz
Sasha received a package from me that included
photographs of mushrooms, Thai Hill tribal groups
(Ahka and Meo), and a note from me thanking
Sasha for sending me an autographed copy of
PIHKAL. The letter below was sent on the very
day after Sasha mailed a discouraging letter
informing Dr. Gartz that no one in the U.S.A. was
currently researching psilocybian fungi.
10 September 1990.
“Dear Dr. Gartz,”
A few days ago I sent you a letter in response to
your mailing of a reprint and your letter asking
about the nature of research in this country
regarding fungi related to the Psilocybe world.
My answer was a little discouraging. And then, by
that chance happening that can never be explained,
the very same day I received a magnificent mailing
from a correspondent in Hawaii who has been
15
conducting research in the use of these fungi
throughout Thailand. He had sent me two
spectacular research studies that he and Dr. Mark
Merlin of the University of Hawaii have prepared
for publication. One is an exhaustive study of the
cultural structure of mushroom use in Koh Samui
and Koh Pha-Ngan, in Thailand. The other, a
complete and critical review of the existing medical
literature on Panaeolina foenisecii and the studied
conclusion that this species is probably neither a
public health threat nor a psilocybian-containing
psychedelic.
I am enclosing my letter to him, which is an
introduction of you to him, and then this letter is of
course an introduction of him to you. All of which
is probably confusing, but it does serve to answer
the second question in your letter --- you asked
about articles about the newer aspects of mushroom
segment of the drug scene in the U.S.A. Where
there is life, there is curiosity, and there are always
people about us who are very much alive and
curious. Thank Heaven.
Please keep in touch.
Sincerely yours,
Alexander T. Shulgin.”
4th letter from Sasha Shulgin to me
concerning the above correspondence
between Sasha and Jochen Gartz.
9 September 1990.
As noted above, somewhere between August and
September of 1990, I had sent Sasha a package with
about one dozen or so 8 x 6 inch photo images of
Thai Tribal groups, some mushroom images and 2
unpublished manuscripts written by me and my co-
author, Dr. Mark D. Merlin of the University of
Hawaii. The articles were the results of Dr.
Merlin’s and my research studies regarding the
ludible use of psychoactive mushrooms on Koh
Samui Island in the Gulf of Thailand and a 2nd paper
regarding the non-active properties of Panaeolina
foenisecii. The former appeared in an issue of “The
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
Journal of Ethnopharmacology,” and the latter
appeared in a German publication, “The Yearbook
for Ethnomedicine and the Study of Consciousness”
(containing articles by Albert Hofmann, Terence
McKenna, Stanley Krippner, Ralph Metzner, Lester
Grinspoon, William Emboden and others).” It was
a gift package because Sasha’s wife’s daughter
worked with some of the Hill Tribes-peoples in
Thailand and other areas of South and Southeast
Asia.
Here is the letter Sasha sent to me the day after he
wrote to Gartz (9-8-1990) that there was no one in
the USA studying mushrooms.
“Dear John,
I just today received your incredible mailing. What
a complete and total treasure of information! The
photographs are spectacular, and I want to hang on
to them until my wife’s daughter comes home next
month. She has been spending a year in Bangkok,
well, actually in and out of Bangkok, using it as a
base of operations as she visited India, and Japan,
and Malaysia as well. She will be totally fascinated
by the photographs, and will be especially interested
in the detailed descriptions of the mushroom world
that you have presented.
I remember having seen the private inquiry paper in
the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs and admired the
thoroughness with which you ran that story down.
And I share with your sadness that nothing could be
changed in any way in the public’s memory of the
event.
The two papers that you have written with Mark
Merlin are really treasures. Where is the study on
the Thai mushroom culture to appear? And the
review of the P. foenisecii data is good in that it
brings together in one place all the scattered
information, and allows a comfortable conclusion
that at least this mushroom will probably not be a
threat to our youth.
By remarkable coincidence, I had just today sent off
a letter to Dr. Gartz, in Leipzig, in which I
16
bemoaned that fact that there was very little clinical
research being done in the U.S. in the area of the
Psilocybe mushrooms. And that there was very
little interest. And then, bang. I received this
jackpot from you, and a good reassurance that there
are indeed some researchers with an active interest
and a drive to discover. I am enclosing [to me,
John], a copy of my dark letter to him [Gartz], and a
copy of the reprint he had sent to me on the analysis
of various parts of P. cubensis. This should serve as
a kind of introduction of him to you. And I am
going to send to him [Gartz], an immediate follow-
up letter, an anti-dark letter, with mention of your
work, and extend to him your name and address. I
am not at liberty to send him copies of these two
papers of yours [and Merlin], as they are advanced
copies and the material has not yet been published.
But I will introduce you to him, and let him know
that interest in these magical fungi is not entirely
dead in the Western Hemisphere! I hope he writes
you.
Thanks again for the wealth of material in your
mailing. Sasha, 9-9-1990.”
Letter 5 from John to Sasha.
A year and a half later, I was without typewriter or
computer, so I wrote a hand-written letter about my
current research with Dr. Gartz, thanks in part and
due to Sasha’s introductions between us to one
another, and of my relationship with Jochen in the
world of mushrooms. I also wrote in this letter to
Sasha of my first real mushroom experience that
included a night of sexual enhancement and
psilophoric euphoria, which taught me to think in
such abstracts notions that surely “God is a Plant
Known as the Earth.” This led me to the belief that
sex is also a religion that brought together between
two people in love, the closeness of what the
meaning of life is really all about (procreation and
becoming the progenitors of humankind’s future
generations), a real union between two cells of
existence becoming one with all. Also included in
this letter is an updated yet brief chronological
history of how I came to that point in my life. As
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
the original letter was hand-written and then re
edited into about four revised versions, copies that
are really hard to read, I used data from several of
the various hand-written copies from the four
original drafts and edits of the single ten-paged
letter I had written to Sasha.
March 27, 1992
“Dear Sasha,
Aloha from Hilo, Hawaii. I am writing to
personally thank you for your wonderful book,
PIHKAL. It is a very beautiful journey and a
compelling poetical masterpiece. I am now re-
reading it for a 2nd time within 5 days.
I was drawn to many of your personal childhood
experiences as they also correspond to incidental
treasured moments of my own childhood and many
of your childhood adventures are, in turn, related to
my own by proxy; almost as if we were the same
person, only worlds apart in our physical entities
and yet separated only by mind and distance. And
those very secret hiding places as you described
from your youthful days are also related to similar
places I was drawn to in my youth. I can vividly
recall many natural habitats described by you as
similar places I would hide in my youth when I
needed to be one in privacy from the outside world
and within the confines of a natural habitat outside
of my own normal environment.
It was in these secret gardens that I would feel the
raw euphoric rapture of nature having a symbiosis
between the environment and me with my thoughts
of all that I knew. Your own velvet childhood
memories seem to be intertwined and so have
become to me a myriad connection with some of
my own.
It was in this wooded area where I first experienced
the nature of collecting and eating certain plants
which grew behind my home; wild asparagus,
scallion onions, rhubarb and those miniature super-
sweet little wild strawberries were common near the
woods. I too, recall that when I was young in those
magical gardens of privacy that I would suck the
17
nectar from the plucked tip of the morning glory
flower’s end after plucking them from their vines.
And this nectar to me was sweet, and it was to me
the nectar of the gods.
I do not consider it strange that many years later in
my thirties, I would become acquainted in learning
to consume the very seeds of the morning glory, and
A Shroomy Graphic Visual.
later the Woodrose, whose powers flowed from
within the seeds of these perennial vines into my
very soul. Can you image the mystery and majesty
of relayed communication I could draw from these
“Vines of Glory” and import into me their
symbiotic mind-altering and intensely somewhat
erotic consciousness-expanding energies? Again,
becoming one with the earth and advancing to the
next level of intelligence and knowledge.
I too, as a child and as a young adult teen, soon
learned to see mushrooms, but I was frightened of
them as toadstools and recognized them as a force
not to be reckoned with. They scared me so I most
assuredly avoided even touching them.
On the other hand, like Dick Schultes did as a child,
I pressed leaves into the pages of beautiful books to
preserve their individual uniqueness. I soon became
an avid collector of botanical leaves and wild
flowers, learning from my grandmother how to
press them into a book and preserve them on paper.
I too, had a small plant book for identifying plants
in Illinois. And by the time I was 13, I played the
trumpet while you played another instrument. I also
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
collected stamps, and had a regent album with close
to 50,000 stamps by the time I was 15.
Regarding the fact that you are a most extraordinary
alchemist of the highest order, I was but a humble
master of a Gilbert Chemistry set. I learned to turn
water to a red color making it appear as a potion of
red wine; however, my real success was in creating
cool stink bombs that I loved to release in movie
theaters and museums.
A T-Shirt Designed by Hawkseye Website and
Created for John W. Allen by Wipaporn.
At about twelve to fourteen or so, I began to write:
poems, short historical novellas and sci-fi
adventures, similar to those in the style of Flash
18
Gordon and Buck Rogers movie serials. My best
story was the “The Adventures of the Red Devil and
Sparky.” One major problem was that my
grandmother considered my writings to be foolish
and burned them in our coal stove. She constantly
heckled me that I needed to go to school and/or get
a job and help out (me a paperboy with two daily
after school routes, and a back yard car-wash
business). The personal destruction by my
grandmother of my literary interests infuriated me
and made me feel like a geek and outsider to
everyone I met who was my age. It created within
me an image of low self-esteem.
I even began to play guitar, which years later was
also described as nonsense that would get me
nowhere and would eventually cause me to possibly
grow up to become a bum. Years later in 1964, I
had a band. Our daily practice of loud songs such
as the Rolling Stones, Yardbirds and Real McCoys
caused my mother and grandparents grief. They
claimed the noise was unbearable, always asking
why I did not play nice music like Elvis or Sinatra
or Dean Martin. They liked the Beatles but not loud
music. I saw the Beatles three times in Chicago
.
In the summer of 1964, I wrote and recorded a
novelty record that had the Beatles singing on it,
now available on my website for a free download,
but luckily preserved for all times in an issue of
Shroomtalk, and the Beatles were part of my record.
Yet I felt different than others in my age group and
felt like I did not belong to anyone’s world but my
own. Alone. I was but just one amongst and
competing with, more than 160 million people to be
part of their world and they wanted nothing to do
with me. I was, in all reality, in a hurry going
nowhere fast and feeling nothing at all.
I should also mention that I wrote poetry from the
age of nine to 27. Then in 1967 as I was hitchhiking
across America, I left my poetry collection in a van
in New Orleans and I hardly wrote any more poems
or songs. Luckily, I did have some of the songs
copied and published so I remembered their words
and kept them as treasured memories.
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII

John W. Allen, 1943-1944.

Fantasy Girl Erotica.

Shroom Spirits at Koh Samui, Thailand. Art by Wipaporn of Ban Nathon, Koh Samui.

Featured below: [This is an extra added section describing how I first, as a child growing up in Chicago,
became aware of drugs in general, yet at the age of somewhere between six- to ten-years-old, I personally had
no idea what a drug was and in my youthfulness, my meaning of the word “drug” was that it was used by my
family doctor when describing a medical prescription my mom obtained at the local pharmacy. It was not a
word you would hear from someone of my age, especially between 1948-1952].

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 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII

ANTI-MARIJUANA POSTER

As a child growing up in Chicago, I first became aware of drugs when I was somewhere between the age of
about six- or seven-years-old or as much as ten-years-old. The first noted incident of a drug to me was in
regards to marijuana.

About one block down the street from my home where I partially grew up was a small poster pasted on the wall
of an apartment building next to Fannie Mae’s Chocolate Factory two blocks from my home. This very poster
was printed exactly ten blocks down the street from my home. It was the most famous anti-marijuana
propaganda poster created from the paranoiac minds of the likes of Harry Anslinger, J. Edgar Hoover and the
FBI. This infamous 1940s anti marijuana poster read:

Of course as a child at such an early age, I had no
comprehension of what this meant or the
implications of this poster. Nor did I understand that
marijuana, when smoked, also produced an altered
state of consciousness. I do recall a distant Aunt
from Racine, Wisconsin, who once told my mom
that a friend’s son had once smoked marijuana and
was arrested for running naked down a hotel
hallway and arrested for public nudity.
I also remember as a child having my schoolmates
hold and squeeze my stomach real tight while I
would take ten deep breaths, and then pass out from
hyperventilating. Looking back on these moments
in my childhood, I realized that I could remember
the dizzy effects of light-headedness, but was totally
unaware at that time that this was an alteration of
my consciousness and that these sensations were
naturally induced for the effects.

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 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII

By the time I was thirteen to fourteen-years-old, I

became aware of another form of an altered state.
This one was the result of and caused by a mixture
of cleaning chemical compounds.

One hot summer day in July in the middle 1950s,

my mother was preparing a bucket of soap,
ammonia, kitchen cleanser and other cleaning
chemicals to soak my sibling’s and my dirty clothes
(underwear and socks). She had gone to the back of
the house for over an hour and we wondered why
she was taking so long getting back. My
grandmother found my mom lying on the stairs in a
state of confusion, babbling and making no
common sense at all. My mom was looking up in
the air exalting, “look at the pretty snowflakes,” and
describing how beautiful the rainbow butterflies
were. Of course, my brother and sister and I, along
with my grandmother, saw nothing except the usual
everyday Chicago factory skyline from our
backyard. I spent three days with her in the mental
ward of the hospital worrying that she was going
crazy and would never return to normal. This was
my first experience baby-sitting a hallucinatory
‘bad’ trip, which, according to my mom, was a
strange trip. She did not recognize anyone,
including me. She was totally whacked for three
days. While today, I have an inkling of what such
chemicals could do to the mental condition of a
person, yet I did not, at the time, understand what
had happened to her at that age of my innocence.
Of course, years later, this opened up my mind to
future possibilities in life because after really
turning on, I understood the nature of my mother’s
illness caused by the inebriation and inhalation of
the mixture of chemical compounds. And that
inebriation was a most dangerous one that the
government allows its citizens to manufacture and
sell to the public. Funny thing about marijuana is
that I have never seen a warning on a package of
cigarettes saying, “Warning, this may be handed to
you by a stranger.” Or, “Warning: Smoking
marijuana may be hazardous to your health.” Like
Andrew Weil (1972), noted in his book “The
Natural Mind,” one method employed by young
My Stoned Face on a Xerox machine.
children to achieve a state of altered consciousness
was to play “Ring around the Rosie.” Well, I too
played “Ring around the Rosie” until I too would
get so dizzy that I would laughingly fall to the Earth
in a frenzy state of reckless abandonment of
silliness.
On a visit home to my family in 1960 after being
hospitalized at Fort Gordon, Georgia, for pleurisy, I
was given a 30-day recuperation leave. I had a
friend who owned a newsstand and he carried
several men’s adventure magazines like, “True
Stories,” “Saga” and “Argosy.” In one of those
magazines, I browsed an article titled, “Seven Puffs
to Heaven.” It was about Opium smoking and the
dreams of the smoker, who, after he took each puff,
advanced one step closer nirvana in realizing that
each puff was a new dream and wrote of his seven
consecutive puffs, noted in the magazine’s title, to
achieve that realm of euphoria and enter Shangri-la.
Then after two years in the military it was time for
me to leave the military behind and so I was
discharged at Ft. Ord, California in the summer of
1962 and I headed south to Los Angeles, and this
was my introduction to real pollution. My eyes
burned from the intense smog in 1962. I worked in

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 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII

a recording studio as an engineer and I acted for a while, even appearing as an extra in the film, “The Greatest
Story Ever Told.” Years later in Thailand in 1990, I learned from my colleague, Mark D. Merlin, that he also
was an extra in the film at the same time I was an extra on the same set at Desilu Studios in Culver City,
California. I also ran into a childhood friend from high school in Duran, Illinois while working on the film.
Interestingly, Mark Merlin’s recently found long-lost sister turned out to be Leslie Easterbrook of the “Police
Academy” movies and Rob Zombie’s, “The Devil’s Rejects.” I also had a 20-second scene filmed in Chicago
in “Mickey One,” starring Warren Beatty, and did a few TV segments of some Westerns. But I ended up as a
short order cook slinging hot dogs and fries to people like actor Steve McQueen and Jim Murdock (Mushy on
Rawhide), who made daily visits to eat the gross food I cooked in IHOP’s franchised restaurant chain called the
Dog House on Sunset and Fairfax in Hollywood. They both had heavy coffee addictions and would ask for
refills over and over. Sometimes sitting at the counter drinking coffee for several hours.

John Allen, Jochen Gartz, and Sasha Shulgin, Gathering of the Minds, L.A. 1994.

I obtained my first marijuana joints when I discovered a pack of Pall Mall’s on the ground of the movie set
while listening to actor Max Von Sydow’s double performing as Jesus. At first, I thought that those hand-rolled
Wheat-straw-tobacco-looking filled papers were Bull Durham. Later that day, I smoked about half of that first
doobie after going home in the morning from the movie set. I did not get out of bed for the rest of the day, all
the while listening to Dylan over and over and over. I later smoked a doobie on the set listening to Max Von
Sydow as Jesus while he gave a sermon. I actually thought I was there during the real sermon millennia ago.

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 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
In 1964, I attended the L.A. Teenage Fair. They had
a Ken Kesey “Acid Trip” room you could go into
for 35 cents. It was illuminated with the spurting
blobs of colored oils from a liquid projector and
laser-beamed lights echoing across the room. The
walls inside the “Acid Trip” room were painted in
psychedelic paisley patterns to enhance your mood
into a simulated mind-set change, and loud music
blared on you from ear to ear with the sounds of the
time. You heard the new changing sound of music
from rock and roll being rearranged into the
psychedelic sounds of the Doors, Strawberry Alarm
Clock, the Who, Beatles, and Rolling Stones and
after smoking a doobie, that music would send me
into a natural altered state of consciousness. It was
a trip.
It was in this very trippy ‘trip’ room that I met two
girls who soon took me out of the room into the
back of their parked van and turned me on to LSD,
while removing all of my clothes as well as all of
theirs. They said they were going to purify me.
That was my first acid trip and it was the coolest
thing that could have happened to me. All of a
sudden, I no longer felt like the geek, the outcast,
and the loner, who use to look differently and be
different from everyone else. All of a sudden, I
began to realize that many of the new people I was
becoming acquainted with were no different from
me, and, in fact, were just like me. A few years
earlier, after that first joint, I learned I could look
forward to each coming day with a good outlook on
life and its meaning. That single half of a joint had
changed many aspects of my life and future. For
once in my life, I felt I belonged and that I was a
part of everything and everyone around me.
Between 1964 and 1967, I had hitchhiked several
times across the U.S.A as if looking for myself.
And after that 1964 first trip on acid with those two
girls, I realized that I had nothing to look for,
because I was me all along.
I let my hair grow long and became a ‘summer of
love’ hippie in the year of 1967. I was working in
Los Angeles, a few blocks down from “Pandora’s
23
Box” on Sunset near Fairfax at the “Fifth Estate
Coffee House.” Mama Cass hung out two doors
away next to the giant Hanna and Barbera’s
‘Bullwinkle and Rocky’ statues that were looming
next door to us. I was most fortunate to attend some
of the wild parties Mama Cass hosted there.
Al Mitchell owned the coffee shop I went to work
at, and sometimes Al would have mysterious
dealings at times with people who came to the
coffee house office arriving in black Lincoln
Continentals with darkened windows.
The first popular underground newspaper, The Los
Angeles Free Press, originated in the basement of
this coffee house in 1965. We had an ACLU office,
an anti-draft resistance group, and a kind of little
small free clinic for street people and for those who
had over-dosed on acid or other drugs. Later, Art
Kunkin, editor of the L.A. Free Press, moved his
offices and paper down to Fairfax near Santa
Monica by Foster’s, “Blue Grotto” coffee house.
Foster was the first African-American hippie I met
and he wore a Robert Wagner ‘Prince Valiant’ wig.
And he was not strange at all. During the summer
of 1965, a young man from Michigan came to L.A.
for a summer job. His name was Harvey
Ovshinsky, and after working a summer job with
Art Kunkin and his underground paper (L.A. Free
Press), Al’s “Fifth Estate” appeared in the artwork
of Freak Out under the “Freak Out! Hot Spots.”
Eventually, Harvey Ovshinsky, after working a
summer job with The Los Angeles Free Press
returned to Detroit and started his own paper in
1965 that he named, “The Fifth Estate,” after the
coffee house he worked in where two years later I
became its night manager.
Origins of the Fifth Estate Underground
newspaper
The FE (Fifth Estate Underground Press) was
started by Harvey Ovshinsky, a 17-year-old
Detroiter, who had previously self-published what
was then called a fanzine in high school. After
spending the summer of 1965 working on The Los
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
Angeles Free Press, the first of what was to be
dubbed the Underground Press, he returned to
Detroit filled with enthusiasm for a similar effort
there. Ovshinsky also brought back the title, Fifth
Estate, for his paper, swiped from the coffee house
he frequented on Hollywood's Sunset Strip. The
shop owner, [my employer, Al Mitchell] later
threatened to sue the paper for appropriating its
name from his shop, but gave up when he realized
there were no assets to go after. At that time there
were more than 500 underground newspapers
throughout the Americas--maybe even a few
thousand--that only lasted an issue or two. It was
the sixties and the revolution was in full swing.
One of Al Mitchell’s first real attempts at his dislike
of authority came about when he, Peter Fonda and
others organized the teen-age curfew protests that
became known as the Sunset Strip Riots.
In the mid-1960s and the 1970s, the strip’s coolest
club was Pandora’s Box. It and the strip became a
major gathering-place for the counterculture — and
the scene of the Sunset Strip curfew riots in the
summer of 1966, involving police and crowds of
hippies, actually inspired the Buffalo Springfield
song "For What It's Worth.”
A few films were eventually made about the
incident, but they were typical Hollywood teen
exploitation films with not much substance in truth.
After Art Kunkin and his L.A. Free Press moved
out from our basement, Al began his own
newspaper called the “L.A. Underground.”
After three weeks of working there, Al made me the
night manager and kind of short order cook. I made
Pea Soup served with a roll, and Spaghetti dinners
for customers besides coffee and sodas.
The dinners were one dollar, and the coffee was ten
cents a cup with free refills all night. I worked the
“ten p.m. ‘til six in the morning” shift, and every
morning I was greeted with the song “Six O’clock”
by the Lovin’ Spoonful. It was a good-feeling song
for the hour, and what a way to go home and get
24
some sleep and rest. The fun part of this job was
that every morning, my assistant clerk and I usually
picked up all-nighter party girls who needed a place
to crash. That would usually be in our beds. These
were girls who hung out all night at the coffee
house on the weekends and slept during the day. We
would smoke pot, have great sex and listen to good
living music (Grass Roots, Love, Strawberry Alarm
Clock, etc.). Ah yes, Tim Leary later called it the
‘Holy Weed.’
On an unspecified day in mid-June, Al Mitchell
asked me if I would like to cover the Monterey Pop
Festival for his underground paper. I told him I had
no funds, but he said he was a personal friend of
Derek Taylor (the ex-road manager for the Rolling
Stones), and that Derek was in charge of the press at
the Monterey Pop Festival so I said “sure.” He
provided me with the use of a free 35 mm camera,
six rolls of film, and a letter of introduction to
Derek Taylor.
So I hitchhiked up to Monterey the day before the
concert was to begin, and soon found the press
trailer where I met Derek and handed him the letter
from Al, asking permission for me to be a part of
history. Derek was real cool, and I asked him if I
could grab a sexy, cool, loose chick to carry my
film and camera equipment (tripod, film, lens
cleaner and flashes). I was immediately given two
press card passes, and kindly thanked Derek, who
politely ask me to say hello to Al Mitchell when I
returned to L.A.
After leaving the press trailer, I instantly matched
up with a cute, loose blond who was willing to
accompany me back stage and in front of the stage
where I took beautiful photos of the various
performing groups. I can be seen in some pieces of
clippings of the Monterey Pop Festival movie,
where I am visibly observed shooting photos of the
Who as Pete Townsend began to smash the stage
with his guitar. I also met Owsley, and had great
acid. There was orange Kool-Aid and chipped
pieces of “purple flats” circulating all over the
acreage grounds where we were. There were also
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
several hundred hippie booths selling hippie items
such as, beads, tie-dyed t-shirts, crystals, hand-made
colored-stones and natural looking-glass lens
kaleidoscopes, incenses, rolling papers, pipes, etc.
At night we stayed in a large tent pressroom, using
mats and sleeping bags on the floor. Others camped
outside, and there was also a big crowd at the local
football field and park where Bob Dylan showed up
and played for a few hours. Orange Kool-Aid acid
punch was passed around in the press tent and
Hendrix, Jorma Karkonan, Country Joe MacDonald
and others jammed all night long. While some
would leave, other musicians at the festival would
then join in the music replacing those who left. This
was also an important happening for me because it
was my first experience of Déjà vu. I actually felt
and believed this had all happened before.
One fact of the whole scene was that there were no
drug arrests, no drug over-doses and three days of
love, peace, tranquility and the best music concert
ever in the world. I would like to share that they
had a Perry Boys Smorgasbord restaurant, and we
would go in and fill our back packs with fried
chicken and other foods for those who had none and
the restaurant actually closed up on Saturday
afternoon after running out of food for the 40,000
people in attendance.
After the pop festival, I had returned to L.A. and
gave Al Mitchell his film, and I then headed north
to San Francisco with Carol Harris, the daughter of
the Chief Narcotics Judge of Beverly Hills Juvenile
Court. Her father once committed her younger
sister to a juvenile home for six months for finding
pot seeds in the glove box of their family car.
After spending a few weeks at Gorda Ranch in Big
Sur and consuming my first Peyote, which also
ended up as an aphrodisiac with my girlfriend, we
both put flowers in each other’s hair and headed
north to San Francisco. We had a transistor radio
and Scott Mackenzie was singing, “If you’re going
to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in
your hair,” followed by Grace Slick and the
25
Jefferson Airplane singing about mushrooms in the
song, “White Rabbit.” It reminded me of my tenth
birthday when I was taken for a dinner party at a
Chinese Restaurant near Old Town in Chicago. I
had a bowl of soup and it was so delicious that I ask
the waitress, “What kind of soup is this?” To which
she replied, “mushrooms soup.” I threw up all over
her and my younger sister when she told me it was
mushroom soup. Who would have ever thought
that I could ever eat another ‘shroom?
This was then the beginning of the perfect
movement.
By the late summer of 1967, I became partner and
part owner of a booth in the Bohemian Bazaar head
shop at 1764 Haight Street near Haight and Cole. A
few doors down the street from my shop was the
Straight Theater. I cleaned their theater in the
mornings to get in free at night for the daily 4-hour
rock concerts. There were seven clubs with four
hours of music every night in San Francisco. And
the cost was usually $2.00 to $3.00 per ticket, and
free acid was always passed around. The Jefferson
Starship song, “We Built this City on Rock and
Roll,” was the most truthful contribution to the city,
and it was a real reflection of what San Francisco
was all about. The odor of pot in San Francisco was
enjoyable, and its odor reeked throughout the
district. On some police raids, kilos would come
flying out of 2nd-storied windows down into the
street and people would grab them and run. And
sometimes the police standing around would yell
stop! Of course no one did. Golden Gate Park was
also a place of free love, and live music played on
most weekends. And then there was ‘Hippie Hill.’
Hundreds of us would gather there daily and make
music or listen to the music of others. It was here
that I first heard the group, “It’s a Beautiful Day”
perform their new hit single, “White Bird.”
In the early spring of 1968, I became aware that the
year before, the first symposium on narcotic and
hallucinogenic plant substances was held in San
Francisco. Eight years later, I actually purchased a
copy of the book concerning the symposium of the
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII

first conference on Shamanic Entheogens, and I After a few years it was renamed as Erox being sold
learned a little more on the history of some of the in large quantities by Isis Health Foods in South
natural substances we all love today. Of course, at Africa and then when Africa made it illegal,
the time of that conference, there were many Drittewelle in Grand Turk, Turks and Caicos
misconceptions and papers being published with Islands, British West Indies took over the business.
lots of misinformation in them due to the fact that
this oncoming world of psychedelia was all very Marketing of 2CB as Erox came in packages of 20
new. to 100-5 milligram purple tablets. Quantities
included powdered forms by the ounce. While I
Sasha, I must also admit that I noticed while reading lived in Hawaii, I ordered 100 tablets sent in 5
PIHKAL that some aspects of my life were quite in- separate packages. Instructions for use indicated:
tune and parallel to many aspects of Ann’s life and
her life with you and her experiences and the Composition = 5mg
numerous first-hand accounts of your friend’s dimethoxybromophenylethylamine.
reports of what they experienced from the many
compounds you created and consumed with them. Pharmacological Classification: Central analytic.
However, I considered myself at that time while Indications: A temporary aid in the attainment of
reading your study that I was nothing more than a erection by men suffering from sexual impotence.
mere amateur ethnomycologist. But I was rather Contraindications: Should not be taken by pregnant
rudely uneducated in these matters, and felt like an women.
outsider who was gaining an education from
mingling with the psychedelic fringe and studying
what they were teaching and writing about. I fully
noted that Ann’s experiences with 2cb were very
reminiscent to that of my own experience on that
compound you created. And this was in the
summer of 1978, prior to the October-November
Conference on Hallucinogens and Shamanism in
Native-American Life.

I remember asking you about bromo in late 1978

while attending that very conference in San
Francisco at the Japan Trade Center. I was
interested in learning what this bromo was, and
presented you with the formulae name and asked
you about the compound my friends were making
which we called bromo because of the bromine
additive to the structure of 2cb. I gave you the
name of 2-5, dimethoxy-4 bromine-
phenylethylamine and you gave me back a name 4-
bromine, 2-5 dimethoxy-isopropolamine. You told
me they were probably the same.
Interestingly, in the 1990s, a form of bromo (2CB)
was being sold in the UK and Europe as Nexus.
To explain this in a better light, I had first tried 2cb
months earlier in the summer of 1978 in the
University District of Seattle in a basement lab built
in a bookstore that used to be Dr. Feelgoods Head
Shop. At that time (1978) it was the oldest head
shop in Seattle. Unlike your groups of testers, we
followed the pathway of Phil Ochs as we “had a
small circle of friends,” a group of five participants,
and we were definitely ingenious virgin explorers
treading into the very edges and out worldly and
ethereal regions of other dimensions. We were

26
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
brave, intrepid mind travelers who were told to
snort the compound for the best effects, and so we
quickly sniffed up a five to ten-milligram dose,
dividing the compound evenly into each of our
nostrils. Within several seconds, we had the worst
nose burn possible, and it lasted from about three to
five minutes. It was excruciating and irritating as
hell! I thought that my nose hairs were on fire and
it was so sore that I was soon comparing the
burning, painful sensation to that of the alleged
effect attributed to the burning symptoms caused by
St. Antony’s Fire (ignis sacer).
It took from between two to three minutes and up to
as long as five minutes after inhalation for the nose
burn to subside, and once the nose burn was not
noticeable anymore, thousands of visual patterns
and colors began to flow and my body began to be
turned into pure orgasmic euphoria; gradually at
first, and the visuals and warm-like rushes began to
come on to me in a dynamic flow of ripples and
waves and the flow of the rhythm of the compound
seemed endlessly forever, continuing beyond my
expectations into a new field of consciousness
which I had never before ever experienced. When
snorted, the dose is five milligrams between your
two nostrils, and the high lasts about two- to four
hours or so. When we had consumed it in a
capsule, fifteen to twenty milligrams takes 30 to 45
minutes for the come-on, and the high lasts close to
six hours.
My partner at the time and I made love for four
hours, completely non-stop, and she continually had
numerous multiple orgasms, similar to those we had
experiences with both mushrooms and the ten hour
sexual experience while on MDA.
These latter communications were for the physical
attributes to 2CB’s euphoric discoveries, and that
lead me to my interest in further developing my
research into the many various sundry fields related
to all ethnobotanical plant materials and chemical
substances developed from many of those god-
given gifts seeded here on Earth for all humankind.
27
Dr. Gartz of the University of Leipzig in Germany
turned out to be a most amazing colleague to me,
and, thanks to you and Ann, he soon became, and is
now still, my good personal friend and I really value
his friendship. This is a first for him for someone
living away from his home in Germany, and now
we are beginning to work together on several papers
and I have helped in arranging his first visit and
lecture in the United States at the Annual
Breittenbush Mushroom Conferences in Lake
Detroit, Oregon.
I greatly appreciate your kindness for introducing
him to me and me to him via snail mail. I soon
began to look at this ‘shroom connection as the
mushroom DNA of consciousness between
scientists of voyagers of the mind who share similar
thoughts on their origins and the origins of these
beautiful medicinal healing plants.
During Jochen’s first year of communication and
correspondence with me, he gradually opened up
concerning his interest and involvement with
mushrooms and his use of several other
psychoactive compounds, many not known to most
of the world..
In one of his first letters to me, he noted that no one
in his country used magic mushrooms. However, in
later personal communications to me he stated that,
“I too know the experience of the mushroom.”
I soon came to realize Jochen must have consumed
some of those magic fungi in order to make such a
statement to me, and this in itself afforded me the
pleasure and knowledge that someone living
thousands of miles to the east of me, far away in
Leipzig, Germany, a colleague from behind the ex-
Iron-Curtain, was involved in a world somewhat
paralleled to that of my own and yours.
In a subsequent letter to Jochen, I queried of him,
asking if he knew of anyone else in East Germany
who took drugs or mushrooms as he did. And then
in another letter back to me, he acknowledged and
somewhat confessed, “No one else in East Germany
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
used drugs.” Later, after we had met in America for
the first time, Jochen admitted to me that numerous
acquaintances and some colleagues of his had
experimented with several different psychoactive
substances, especially the mushrooms we all so
love.
While in America, Jochen and I picked a pound of
blue ringers and a few specimens of Psilocybe
baeocystis from a MacDonald’s lawn in Tumwater,
Washington, off of I-5 near the Black Lake Exit to
Tumwater. We were staying at a beach home of a
friend on Holstein Island near Fungi Perfecti, and
Gartz and I ate ‘shrooms. I played the guitar in the
dark and Jochen kept telling me I had to let the
mushrooms take over, and I should slow down and
mellow out. He took a surprise photograph of me
standing alone in the dark. I was spacing out and
could see the outdoor campfire near the beach. You
should have seen my eyes. It almost scared the shit
out of me. And it looks much scarier in color than
black and white.
John with red-eyes on Blue Ringers in 1991.
Holstein Isle, Washington.
28
Later, we picked some P. cyanescens, P. astoriensis
(P. azurescens) and ‘liberty caps’) in Astoria,
Oregon and then we visited with Gary Menser at the
Eugene Oregon Annual Mycological Society
meeting. Later we pulled into a parking lot of the
Bon Marche store at the Valley River Shopping
Mall across from Skinners Butte Park and found
about an 80-pound patch of blue ringers. Then we
both drove to the Breittenbush Annual Mushroom
Conference to present lectures. Four days later,
Jochen had to return home to Germany. About one
year later, I received another letter sent to me from
Jochen who shared with me several papers on new
aspects of hallucinogens and other psychoactive
compounds. And Jochen told me of the euphoric
effects of Inocybe aeruginascens that allegedly
manifested euphoria when consumed.
Sasha, I have written below for you and Ann part of
my response to you on the aftermath that followed
my observations while my wife and I were under
the influence of a large dosage of Psilocybe
semilanceata.
My First Real Voyage Beyond Gravity
My first mushroom experience as I often tell people
was a half-gram of a possible Psilocybe cubensis
stem given to me in the early 1960s in California. It
was not enough of a mushroom dose to feel any of
the little known effects I had read about concerning
these hallucinogenic mushrooms. At least no
effects to which I had read or could compare my
feelings to. This 1960s trip was soon followed in
1972 in Chicago when I was given a couple of
capsules that I was told were psilocybine and that I
could smoke them. Nothing happened. By the end
of 1973, my wife and I took a trip on what were
purported to be a can of hallucinogenic mushrooms
that turned out to be a can of frozen Agaricus
mushrooms, sealed in a tin similar to that of the
U.S. Army’s K- and C-Ration tins. My friends and
I were told to keep them frozen or the chemicals
would fall to the bottom of the can and that
whomever ate a spoonful of the syrup from the
bottom of the can would get extremely high. The
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
fact of the matter is that those frozen mushrooms
were laced with LSD and coated with PCP to hide
the effects of the acid. The person I purchased them
from, an alleged friend, had informed me that they
had been smuggled into America from Mexico.
By the fall of 1974, I had finally read both Tim
Leary’s, “High Priest,” several Harvard publications
on mushrooms by the late ethnobotanist Richard
Evans Schultes, Andrew Weil, and the infamous
article in Life Magazine by R. Gordon Wasson.
Those readings caused me to realize that the
mushrooms I had eaten were not real magic
mushrooms. And this brings me to the story, a true
tale of the ‘shrooms that began my life long journey
into the study of these magnificent objects of desire.
My very first real mushroom high was, in fact, a ¼
to a third of a small high. It consisted of a total of
24 medium-sized specimens of Psilocybe
semilanceata (liberty caps). I look at this point in
my life as a turning point, but consider it a funny
moment in my life because I identified them from a
mushroom guide by Alexander H. Smith who
wrote, “A Field Guide to Western Mushrooms.”
The mushrooms pictured in Smith’s guide were
actually Psilocybe pelliculosa. What I found as P.
pelliculosa turned out to be P. semilanceata, a total
of 24 fresh medium specimens along a fence in a
swampy area pasture surrounded by clumps of
sedge grass in the drier areas of pastureland at
Bartel’s Meat Packing Plant’s farmlands next to the
Fern Ridge Reservoir, west on 11th street, outside of
Eugene, Oregon.
Sasha, according to your scale, I would probably
rate my experience on those 24 medium shrooms as
a ½ to 3/4s of a 1+ rating. I did not experience any
visuals and there was only a slight feeling of a
whistling sound of the wind in my ears and a mild,
mild feeling of a light virtual form of euphoria
spreading throughout my physique. But no feelings
of what the shrooms were suppose to be about.
On the following day, I discovered, by accident, my
second field, located 16 miles east of Eugene,
29
Oregon on Highway 26 heading towards Florence
just past a little town called Noti. This farm was
owned by cattle tender named Lester Hale and had
been in his family for more then 100 years. There
were pastures for a fifth of a mile on both sides of
the highway, but the ones on the left were ‘shroom
happy and were a good place to go and find some.
Up until that day I had scoured Oregon for more
than two years, traveling hundreds of miles,
walking past the lib caps, all the while looking in
manure for cubes, based on F. C. Ghouled’s,
Psilocybe Mushroom Guide, a guide that was
intended for mushrooms found only in the south and
southeastern United States. It was funny and sad at
the same time because all the while I was looking in
manure for Psilocybe cubensis for three seasons, I
had no inkling that I was actually walking past and
over the real liberty caps I did not know were there.
This discovery of Lester Hale’s shroom farm and
the liberty caps occurred in November of 1974.
I learned of this magic holy land with a ‘shroom
hunting companion who, along with me, met some
similar-minded folks in a van loaded with about ten
pounds of freshly picked liberty caps. They told us
where they found them, and a few of the people in
the van were eating caps and tossing the plucked
stems out of one of the van’s window. They did not
know that the stems were also vessels of magic
potions not to be tossed out a car window. They told
us to go down the highway and we would see the
farms just beyond Noti, and the farmer would rent
us a blue bucket for ten dollars or so, and in that
way, the farmer would know who had permission to
be on his farm. Many farmers actually used to put
up signs saying, “No Trespassing” or “No
Mushroom Picking.” Others would rent buckets
used to hold picked mushrooms and on some
weekends, many farmers ended up making over
$300.00 every weekend from ‘shroom’ pickers.
Additionally, a few trespass busts or tickets
occurred with some pickers, and one 80-year-old
grandma held seven teenagers at bay with a shotgun
for the kids trespassing on her properties; but when
the County Sheriffs arrived, they actually arrested
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
her for terroristic threatening and let the seven kids
go after making them dump their ‘shrooms. Later,
through several mushroom workshops and
conferences, I learned that the liberty caps grew
north from Bandon, Oregon, to Vancouver, British
Colombia, along the I-5 corridor with the epicenter
occurring between the Cascades in the east to the
Olympic Mountains in the west.
Now, back to my mushroom discoveries on that
cold November day. My friend Randy Johnson and
I criss-crossed the field for about an hour and
picked about 400 mushrooms each. We carefully
examined them from cap to stem, colors, sticky
pellicles, striate margins, incurved margins, some
with a few tads of bluing at the base of a stem and
others had white gills, sterile for some reason or
other and produced no spores. I was still using the
Alexander H. Smith guide to identify them. Only at
that time we now realized and knew that the local
kids who picked them had referred to them as
Liberty Caps. Of course, we did not know the
difference between a liberty cap (P. semilanceata)
and P. pelliculosa.
At that time, there were actually two or three
pamphlets out on magic ‘shrooms for the Pacific
Northwest, two of which were popular and had been
written by Leonard Enos and Everett Kardel. Their
guides were used for finding liberty caps, and were
copied from the journal publications of Singer and
Smith’s Psilocybe monograph in the 1958 issue of
the journal, “Mycologia.”
One pleasurable moment was to hitchhike to the
field and bring with me a one-gallon wax milk
carton container to put my mushrooms in. I easily
learned to hitchhike out to Lester Hale’s Farm,
leaving no parked car to suggest that anyone was
trespassing, and in this way no police would drive
by and see a car parked alongside the farm so I was
never worried about hassle. Many people driving
down the highway used to look out at me, honk
their horns, and wave to me as they passed by.
Many had fishing poles on their roofs or sticking
outward through their car door windows.
30
Sometimes a few had stopped because they thought
that I was digging for earthworms to go fishing. By
the way, a one-gallon waxed milk carton container
holds approximately 1200-1600 mushrooms, or
close to a fresh pound. And one fresh pound can
dry to approximately from one dried ounce to one
and a half dried ounces. In later years, I used to
give Lester free copies of my book and he would
sell it to pickers to earn extra cash and then I was
allowed to wander the fields at no charge.
I would then hitchhike back to my home in Eugene
with the milk carton by my side. Once, a cop drove
by and saw me with my milk carton. I was hoping
he would think I had just come from the country
store and was going home. He offered me a ride so
I got into his cruiser and we headed down the road
towards the Noti Market, which would have been in
the other direction if the cop believed me.
However, after a few minutes down the road, he
looks me straight in the eye and commented to me,
“Been ‘Shroomin’?” I was a little freaked. So I
admitted I had been out in the fields. During the
early 1970s through about 1982, most cops would
report to newspaper journalists that there were no
psilocybine mushrooms in the area. They would
make statements in the local newspapers that they
had analyzed dozens of pounds and found no illegal
substances. Check Oregon and Washington News.
(see, http://www.mushroomjohn.org/news.htm).
One Sheriff in Oregon even claimed, “All you need
to do is eat a few of those mushrooms and drink a
couple of high-balls and you would get quite a
bang.” So I confessed to the Sheriff that I had been
picking ‘shrooms. He next inquired of me what I
was going to do with them. So I told him I wanted
to keep them for large parties and I would make a
tea out of them for everyone. He seemed pleased at
that response and said, “Good! I am really glad you
were not going to sell them. I would have had a
different attitude if you had told me you were going
to sell them.”
Interestingly Sasha, I made a habit of counting
‘shrooms and one day I had picked, again by criss-
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
crossing a field or two, more than 6,000 liberty
caps. This took close to 7 hours of picking. My
usual daily pickings were from 1200 to 1600
mushrooms. I would also converse with the
mushrooms while collecting them in the field, by
asking them, “Where is your brother, your cousin,
your uncle. I am here for you.” I thanked them for
being there in that humble field for me and wished
them well, and hoped that a new family would be
ready for me to come and pick in a few more days.
After finally returning home to my family with that
bag containing my 1st-400 fresh ‘liberty caps’ on
that first day of my lucrative collection, my wife
and I had decided that we would attempt to eat
some of these mushrooms later in the evening after
we put our son to bed. We had been mulling over
what TV show we would watch and my wife
wanted to watch the movie, “Sounder” while I
wanted to watch a new “Bob Hope Christmas
Special.” This in turn led us to discuss exactly how
many mushrooms we should eat. I noted to my
wife, Kenna, that the 24 specimens I had eaten the
night before had only given me a partial feeling of
what the effects of the mushrooms were supposed to
be like, and did not really bring about an altered
state of consciousness. So I decided that maybe we
should both consume forty fresh mushrooms. Now
these ‘shrooms were somewhat larger and taller in
height than the 24 medium liberty caps I had tried
the night before. By weight, this dose of 40 fresh
mushrooms would have been the equivalent of one
fresh ounce or less. Today, that would be three to
four fresh doses for most beginning psychonauts.
Forty of these ‘shrooms are equal to approximately
½ of a fresh ounce or 1 dried gram. However, my
wife was insistent that 40 might not be enough, so
she suggested that maybe we should try 60
mushrooms each. Wishing to appease her for the
moment, I whole-heartedly agreed with her, and
counted out sixty mushrooms each. That high
would be well over a fresh ounce of liberty caps,
and turned out to be somewhat equal to that of a
Mazatec Ceremonial dose with massive visuals and
physical euphoria to the max! But the symbiosis of
body, the mushrooms and the music was the rapture
31
of cosmic consciousness beyond any realm I have
ever experienced or gone to in my entire life.
As we both began to consume the mushrooms and
wash them down with chocolate milk, she told me
they tasted like grass and were nasty, but she
continued to consume them as if they were string
beans. It took about 10 to 15 minutes for both of us
to consume them all. However, I soon began to
wonder if 60 fresh mushrooms might be just a tad
too many to eat, and we certainly did not know
what we were about to get into. After a few more
minutes of watching her gobble down some of her
liberty caps and her constant complaining about
their foul and putrid, bitter taste, I soon began to
realize that someone should always be in control of
a trip when taking a new hallucinogenic substance
for the first time. So, like an LSD guru or a trip-
guide, I remembered that when partaking of a
powerful hallucinogenic drug that someone should
always be there to help and guide the other in case
of a bad trip and since this would be a new
experience for both of us, I decided that when my
wife was not looking, I would put ten of my
mushrooms back into the bag. At the same time as I
had finished consuming my dose, I took care to
properly attend to the many fresh species I had laid
down single file in some newspaper to dry on the
top of the stove and in the shelves above the warm
stove with the stove door cracked open for air.
Like Terence McKenna, I also believed that the
fresh plant experience was so much more powerful
than the synthetic experience, but I never had
synthetic psilocybine in my life. As noted above, I
was once sold a capsule of LSD in the early 1970s
that I was told to smoke and nothing happened.
Most assuredly they were not psilocybine capsules
but were, instead, LSD. On a lighter note, the come-
on effects to the ‘shroom high were very fast and
made me a little nervous at first; the results of a tea.
I had read in the writings of the Wasson’s that
according to Mazatec methods, the mushrooms
must be consumed slowly over a 15-20 minute time
period. This allows the commencement of the
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
active effects of the tryptamines alkaloidal
ingredients to take hold of you and gradually build
up in your system slowly so as not to shock your
CNS (Central Nervous System). Sometimes, when
one consumes the sacred ‘shrooms real fast to get
them down into their system, it causes their mental
and physical mind-set to overcome their psyche and
their onset of the experience will spiral out of
control. The mental and physical come-on
commences as you began to realize that the
‘shrooms are now working to enter into your temple
of mind and body and that come-on is indeed very
fast and swift. If one were to consume the
mushrooms all at once as in a soup, tea, milkshake
or mushroom smoothie, then the come-on to the
effects of that mode of consumption, could in some
ways, be compared to the launching of an Apollo
rocket during its initial lift-off: Very fast, very
intense, and in less than 10-minutes, wham you are
high. A jolt that in effect, brings on a severe shock
to the CNS, causing the consumer to become
impregnated into a temporary state of schizophrenia
and most assuredly, many instantly inherit a slight
dysphoric reaction to the fast come-on. Another
negative effect cause one to think they were dying
or have a lot of confusion and disorientation until
the first ½ half hour was over and the lift-off had
settled into a quiet tranquil orbit of content.
Eventually, about 15 minutes after my wife had
ingested her 60 mushrooms; she informed me that
she needed to go lie down on the bed for a few
minutes because she was feeling intensely strange.
She admitted that she felt somewhat nauseous and
appeared to be slightly uncoordinated in her
movements. As she walked softly towards the
bedroom door, I noticed that she appeared to be
floating across the floor. So now I now felt so alone
as I sat in my living room, somewhat like a lost soul
lost in transit and not knowing what to do with my
self as the onsets of my predicament began to
commence. Soon, I too began to feel a slight bit of
queasiness in my gut, and after a few more minutes
had passed, I heard a faint voice in the distance
calling me from afar. I realized that I had heard my
name being called and amazingly I saw what I had
32
just heard appearing to me in brilliant colors,
vividly floating out to me from inside the bedroom
doorway. The sound seemed to me as if it was
resonating from very far away, kind of like a
whispering echo that reverberated in glowing wisps
of neon soft colored hues. I was in instant awe as I
perceived the majestic appearance and wonder of
the brilliantly colored molecules of sound that
spelled out to me from across the room, projecting a
verbal message to me that only I could hear and see,
and it came from somewhere beyond the norms of
human consciousness, from an unknown level of
intelligence that only my cognitive reasoning could
fully interpret. Terence McKenna had talked of the
acuity of vision and now I had that same eyesight.
How could I comprehend that I had just received an
incoming call, maybe transferred to me from
another dimensional plane of existence occurring
within the space of just a few minute particles of
sound. After a few seconds, I immediately realized
that it was my wife calling out to me from out of the
darkened bedroom. “John?” Again a quiet whisper
sounded across the space of our apartment. “John,
come here right now. You are not going to believe
what is happening in here.” Her whispers
somewhat reminded me of echoed reverberations
bouncing off the earth to the moon and back to my
apartment. I immediately arose and walked the
long green mile, a distance of about ten feet from
me and like a lost wanderer, a celestial voyager, I
slowly took that first step into the darkened void of
the emptiness of space, yet it was only just my
bedroom.
It was then that I began to notice that their were
Escher like butterflies, caterpillars and lizard visuals
bouncing on and off my walls, beautiful 3-
dimensional imprints of kaleidoscopic shapes
whose movements left traces of colors and trails of
neon lighting as colored grids appeared as
embroidered luminescent lines of colors with neon-
like optics bouncing back and forth across the room.
They came at me in waves and ripples and I felt
their colors and their silence as my body began to
reverberate in harmony to their rhythms. In fact,
they were dancing to the rhythm of the soft music
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
my wife had turned on when she first entered the
room minutes before I arrived. As I listen, each
breath I took became a concerto of longevity. A
second in time and with each breath my flesh
quivered in instant rapture with the colors of sound
that controlled every mood and thought I assumed
were created for me to be a part of.
I will remember this experience more than any I
ever had felt before this moment. In fact, I recall
that night and that moment as if it had happened
only yesterday. I thought to myself that, “If I were
to die, then I would want someone to cremate me,
roll me into a joint and smoke me so they could
gain all the knowledge of my life. So I lay down
next to her and then I asked her to sit up in front of
me and as she sat up facing directly towards me, we
noticed that we were now both completely naked;
not really comprehending how we undressed
without knowing we had. Behold, we had become
as true purity in the eyes of our creator. And so we
looked into one another’s eyes in the dark of the
room, yet we could clearly see into one another’s
eyes, while only a dim light from the living room let
us see one another as we were. Then everything we
ever knew was gone. Flash upon flash hit us with
the full thrusting power of a rocket lifting off and
we could not think of anything else except to touch
one another with our eyes and our fingers met and
we held each other together as our souls became
locked in tune we had become as one. Now both of
us were brightly glowing, as if we had been bathed
in vibrant neon colors that pulsed and throbbed with
every beat of our hearts.
[Author’s note: This is where the experience
continues that began at the front of this article and
at this moment, we now faced our darkest fear; out
first bum experience ever after we had what seemed
to be more than a hundred orgasms. Our son had
just awakened, and his disposition was that of a
child with a very unexplainable really bad mood.
So here, I now continued the tale of this incredible
erotic voyage to another place and time, another
world, one of magic and sexual sensuality that,
according to Terence McKenna, had historical
33
beginnings dating back at least somewhere between
75,000 to 15,000 ago (McKenna, 1992, 1993), and
now we suddenly were interrupted by what had
became our first partial bum trip which had started
out as a Neotantric sexual ‘shroom’ voyage.]
After about five minutes of listening to the Beatles,
a length of time that seemed to be a few hours but in
reality was only a few short minutes, my 2-year-old
son, Corey, woke up and needed a diaper change.
He cried and cried and he would reach towards us
and when we went to lift him, to cuddle and hold
him in our arms, he would cry even louder and push
us away and he would refuse his bottle. This went
on continuously while we attempted to change his
diaper. Since he would not stop crying, it began to
effect our mood. Normally our son was a happy,
peaceful little man who generally stopped crying
the instant we gave him a bottle of milk or we
would change his diaper. Only on this occasion, his
crying began to irritate us and my wife was freaked
out that maybe he had accidentally consumed a
mushroom when we were not looking. But no
matter how loving we tried to be to him, he just
would not stop crying. Also, when my children
were sick, my wife would usually ask me to be the
one to take them to the hospital. She personally did
not like doctors or hospitals, so I dressed the little
guy, all the while being fried out of my brain and
seeing everything the Wasson’s had reported seeing
during their first veladas and all night vigils in
Mexico in the mid 1950s (Wasson, 1957). It was
hard to stay composed at that time and the space in
my head kept rolling in color to the confusion I was
experiencing.
So I went downstairs to my friend’s apartment to
ask him and/or his girlfriend if they would drive us
to the hospital because our son was freaking out and
could not stop crying (in reality, it was us who were
having a freak-out over his condition, not Corey).
We figured that out the next day. Then we
informed our friends that we had eaten some of
those magic mushrooms everyone was hearing
about in Eugene. So my friends got dressed, came
out and loaded us into their little VW, and instead
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
of taking us to the Swedish Hospital, they drove us
into downtown Eugene and up the mountain known
as Skinners Butte Park (another great shrooming
spot in Eugene) and stopped at the lookout where
you can see for miles from Eugene between
Springfield and Junction City. There, they gave
my still-sobbing son a lollipop. Strangely enough,
that totally shut his mouth up and instantly, both of
our headaches ceased to exist. See what Western
medicine can do with a lollipop? And we were also
glad we did not have to face doctors with our
dilated eyes and laughing moods that were
beginning to commence since Corey had stopped
crying. After another 15 minutes on the mountain
top lookout had passed, and one lollipop fully eaten,
our son nodded out and my friends returned us to
our home for the night. We then proceeded to move
his baby crib into the living room and we both
undressed and lay down next to each other on the
bed. I turned on the cassette player, and for the 2nd
time that evening, we listened more carefully as we
again began to make love to the words of Grace
Slick of the Jefferson Starship as she so beautifully
sang the “Theme song from the movie Manhole.”
This is a whole side of an album that also had Dave
Crosby, Jorma Karkonan, Paul Kantner and Marty
Balin on it. The song was about sexuality, and was
sung in both English and Spanish. And while
Manhole’s theme was a song of pure sexuality,
actually every song that Grace Slick sang on that
manhole album was in one way or another about my
wife and I and what we were doing to one another
under the influence of the mushrooms as we
sexually played in that bed. Below I have described
that experience for you Sasha and for Ann, because
again, it relates to many of the reported effects and
comments of those participants who wrote of their
PIHKAL experiences noted in your book.
I lay down next to my wife, who calmly asked me
to please hold her. She said she was shivering a
little and needed my warmth to bring her peace.
Peace much needed after a ten-minute or so cry by
my son. This taught me not to have the kid around
the next time we did ‘shrooms. Those original first
ten minutes of crying seemed like an hour of
34
torture. But once Corey slept, our trip changed
from one visual kingdom into a universal progenitor
mode. It told us the reason we were. The reason all
of us are. Where we came from and where we were
going: To make babies, and our pheromones and
hormones were beginning to call out to each other
for us to touch one another. Now we could really
understand much more clearly what each other
needed to do to one another after that initial 30-40
minute sexual rush had captivated us into a
dimension not of this world.
I can vividly recall the most outrageous colored
geometrical and geodesic kaleidoscopic patterns I
had ever seen in my life. I looked at them on my
hand but I was able to distinguish that they were
coming from the ‘shrooms, and I was not going
crazy at all. I will explain the crazy comment near
the end of this tale. They so reminded me of
Escher Prints, impossible in reality but real in my
state of altered consciousness. Of course, I
continued to observe these continuing patterns of
moving butterflies, flowers, and lizards (mud-
puppies, wood-living and ground-loving brownish-
reddish salamanders). They were the same as the
ones I’d observed, who frequented the somewhat
swampy-wooded areas along West 11th street near
the Fern Ridge Reservoir and Bartel’s Meatpacking
Plant. They were the same little fellows I observed
on my way cross the railroad tracks and through the
wooded area to the swampy pastures of the back
lands of Bartel’s Meat Packing Plant. All of the
Escher-like mud puppies I saw immersing with one
another on my wall in vivid color were sending me
transmissions from the outskirts of Eugene where I
first found my 24 ‘shrooms the day before. I could
feel that the spirits of these living visual entities
who were now looking at me, and all this time they
were evolving by contracting and expanding to and
fro, and coming towards me yet moving backwards
all in rhythm to a vivid lined-grid, while the sound
of Grace Slicks Manhole song started to get hot and
when Grace sang, her words echoed in tune to our
movements. I was beginning to learn the acuity of
and cognitive purposes of my senses now enhanced
by the very mushrooms I had eaten.
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
So, as I lay next to my wife and when she asked me
to hold her and touch her, I reached over to her
chest and cupped my hand onto her breast.
Approaching her breast with the precision of a 747
making a landing on a runway strip with the
accuracy of alignment being perfect, it was then that
I realized that this landing strip I was flying down to
was my wife’s nude sensual body. Instantly I felt
her heartbeat flow from where my hand cupped her
breast and my fingers tweaked her nipple and a
euphoric sensation followed to my hand from her
breast, onto my hand and up my arm until it reached
my heart, and I became so sensitive that my senses
were overloading with euphoria. Her breast felt like
a marshmallow, so soft, and she sent to me the
sensation that her breast was melting into my hand.
It felt as if my hand had reached inside, into her
heart, and she transposed and then transported to
me, words which only I could hear in my head, and
the colors of her words that shot up my arm only
fueled to me the music of her soul. I can only say
that anyone else who has experienced this
Neotantric form of sexuality knows of what I speak;
yet it is hard to explain the sexuality that came from
that single touch. One that caused her to experience
nothing but multiple orgasms from the moment I
touched her breast, and continued for the next three
to four hours of our making love. Psilocybian
Neotantric Sex, Now a new form of pleasure.
As noted, we were still making love to Grace
Slick’s Manhole album. The lyrics of the song, with
a complete orchestra, were exactly about us
together, doing what we were doing to each other
while we made love, and she still had nothing but
multiple orgasms and I was able to hold back for
several hours, with about three of my own in a four
to six hour period on those ‘shrooms’.
After my 2nd or 3rd orgasm several hours later, we
decided to take a hot bath in the dark. So we
continued to listen to the Grace Slick Manhole
album theme again. Shit, have you ever bathed in a
bath of Bill Cosby’s strawberry Jell-O? That is
exactly how the water felt on our bodies! We had a
bathtub with no water faucet for a bath. So we
35
plugged the drain after turning up the music, and
closed the curtains and turned the shower on us.
The feelings between us now extended and
transported us both to a warm waterfall pool in the
middle of the jungles of Columbia, South America.
We were in heat and this was Kismet, Shangri-La,
Utopia, Euphoria, Atlantis and Eden. To us, we
were the creator and the creations.
Sasha, I have noted above, that the majority of
Oaxacan Mazatec Indian shamans and sabios, say
that to have sex during, before, and after a
mushroom healing and curing ceremony would
drive one mad, but I believe it is one of the nicest
madness that one could be driven to.
Pike and Cowan (1959), wrote in Practical
Anthropology that,” there is one taboo that most
people consider very necessary to observe when
eating the mushroom. That is, they have to be
ceremonially ‘good’ or ‘clean’. Specifically, they
must refrain from sexual intercourse for four or five
days both before and after eating the mushroom.”
One year later, Eunice Pike (1960), added to her
comments about having intercourse while on
mushrooms which she had described in her previous
paper written with her friend Florence Cowan in
1959. This time she changed her statement to read
as, “When contacting “Christ” by means of the
sacred mushroom, they are supposed to refrain from
intercourse about four days both before and after the
mushroom ceremony.” Pike added to this statement
the following comment, “If they do not, it is said
that the mushroom may make them crazy.”
In 1981, Alvaro Estrada wrote in his biography of
Marìa Sabina about this same activity. Marìa was
just 14-years-old when her mother arranged her
marriage to 20 year-old Serapio Martίnez. At 20,
he drank little, but soon went off to war and came
back a changed man. They were now married for
six years. He came home and impregnated his
beautiful Marìa, and later began to drink a little
aguardiente, but she loved him with all her heart.
During her pregnancy, she managed to refrain from
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
sexual activity. She told Alvaro Estrada that it was
“true that Serapio drank a little aguardiente, and
that he worked a lot, but he liked women. He
brought several loose women to my house. There
were three of us under the same roof when that
happened. The loose women left my house fifteen
or thirty days after they arrived. I wasn’t jealous
because I felt myself to be Serapio’s true wife.
With him I procreated three children: Catarino,
Vivianna, and Apolonia. Each one of my children
was born at intervals of a year and a half. My
husband’s liking for women made our relations not
as good as I would have liked. I loved him and it
hurt me to know that he was in love with a girl in
the Hot Country. He became more and more distant
form me because he preferred the other.”
Serapio soon caught the ‘sickness of the wind’ in
the Hot Country; and died after three days of
agonizing pain.
In discussing her condition of pregnancy to Alvaerz,
he wrote of her reason to remain sexually inactive
during her condition. Marìa told him that; “I never
ate the Saint Children while I lived with Serapio,
since in accordance with our beliefs the woman who
takes mushrooms should not have relations with
men. Those who are going to stay up shouldn’t
have sexual relations for four days before and four
days after the vigil. Those who want to can
complete the five and five.”
Wasson in his book, “The Wondrous Mushroom:
Mycolatry in Mesoamerica (1980),” wrote of some
of the prohibitions required in order to participate in
a velada that, “For four days before the velada you
must abstain from alcohol of all kinds, from eggs,
from sexual intercourse; and after the velada for
four days more.” Alvarez added that “These four
days seem to have been a basic-pre-Conquest ritual
pattern of Mesoamerica,” adding the he could not
find any reason that eggs would be banned.
I first learned of this feeling of long-termed
sexuality and drugs from my first acid trip with
those two girls in a van who gave me my first dose
36
of LSD and took off my clothes, as well as theirs,
and showed me what my body was really for. And
the acid has never made me crazy, nor have the
mushrooms.
While I explicitly remember these events Sasha, I
would have much rather related this missive to you
and Ann in person. Maybe someday I can do that,
and we can discuss these phenomena of sex and
drugs.
Best of regards,
John
The above missive was sent March 27, 1992 to
Alexander Shulgin.”
Correspondence between John Allen and Sasha
Shulgin.
The letter posted below is from Sasha to me
regarding his response to the above hand-written
letter. As previously noted, I first wrote to him two
years before in 1990 after he introduced Jochen
Gartz, and me via snail mail. The above hand
written letter concerning my sexual mushroom and
acid trips was mailed to Sasha on March 27, 1992.
It was later re-copied from several rewrites and
embellished with additional text from hand-written
pages in my files and from several short versions of
my “Tales of the Shrooms that are locked away in
my files that I saved over many years concerning
personal communications and relationships with
others and comments on my observations of sexual
activity on various other entheogenic drug plants
and ecstatic new research chemical compounds.
I was living in Hilo, Hawaii at the time I wrote that
letter to Sasha, and had just ordered with cash, a
newly printed, hand-autographed copy of TIHKAL
that Sasha sent to me. It is the letter I first wrote to
him a few years after receiving his book, and that
letter is the basis of this article. That copy of
PIHKAL was stolen from me in Hawaii and I never
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
found out who took it, although it was autographed
to me.
6th letter to me from Sasha relating to my above
letter to him and Sasha’s response to me on 7
April 1992 for the above letter of March 27,
1992.
“Dear John,
What a fantastic letter. You share with Ann and me
a great deal about yourself, and with that, you
become a real person, not just a name in a post
office box in Hawaii somewhere.
Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin, A Gathering of the
Minds Symposium, L.A. 1994.
37
What good fortunes that the Gartz interaction went
well and has developed into a friendship. And your
comments about the terrible pain from the snorting
2C-B are exact duplicates of reports from others:
An intense burning that last a minute or two,
following by intense visual effects. I suspect that
not only is the onset faster with this route, but that
the total dosage needed is considerably less.
I feel that we (you and I and Ann and maybe Leary)
are the few in the world who not only observe and
revel in the sexual sensitivity that is part and parcel
of the psychedelic experience, but actually Ann
holds that if you can’t make love on a new
compound, look closely for negative side-effects or
perhaps properties other than awareness
enhancement. It is fine to talk about cosmic
exploration and religious enlightenment, but the
extraordinary sensuality enhancement that is part of
the psychedelic experience is remarkable. It is a
subject that our prudish neighbors would rather not
discuss, but then the use of these drugs is a no-no
for discussion as well. WE do indeed live in
prudish times. And just wait until a Buchanan—
influenced Bush gets the help for another four
years. It is becoming out-right scary.
The work on TIHKAL is still going on at a fair
pace. I am looking forward to getting a lot of
information in there about all the tryptamines,
including a section on psilocybin and their
mushroom sources. May I use a bit of your
comments for the Qualitative Comments Section?
As before, there will be acknowledgements in the
appendix, but no traceable connection between
“Who did,” and “Did what.”
I hope this gets to you before your return to
Honolulu. Thanks again for sharing your
experiences. With my greatest admiration,
Sasha.”
Interestingly, the no sex for 3-days before or after a
healing and curing ceremony predates the conquest
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
John W. Allen and Tim Leary at The Gathering of the Minds Conf. L.A., 1994.
perhaps by hundreds if not thousands of years
before, implying that Mayans, Olmecs, Toltecs and
Aztecs were probably having sexual relations after
consuming mushrooms outside a ceremonial setting.
Tim Leary’s Comments on Sex, Mushrooms and
Eternal Bliss.
Tim first ate mushrooms during a summer hiatus in
Cuernavaca, Mexico, in 1960 and virtually wrote of
his experience in a beautiful poetic rapture (Leary,
1968). He claimed that he had become a changed
man after eating 7 specimens later identified as
Psilocybe caerulescens Heim. Tim observed that
once one had taken a deep step off the edge of a cliff
and survived, then one had truly become as one with
their soul and mind. After Tim’s trip, his friend and
colleague, Richard (Baba Ram Dass) Alpert, had
flown down to Mexico and offered Tim a ride back
to Massachusetts. Later Tim shared with Alpert, his
shroomanic voyage by devoutly praising the effects
that the mushrooms had provided a most powerful
ecstatic religious experience while under their
metaphoric influence. Tim declared his experience
38
in many extravagant metaphors, noting it “was
above all and without question, the deepest [most]
religious experience of his life (Leary 1968, 1983).”
When I first read Tim’s two autobiographies (High
Priest and Flashbacks), written almost 20 years
apart, I felt what he wrote. At times Tim regarded
the use of mushrooms as sexual aphrodisiacs. In
1994, I spoke with Tim of my 1st symbiotic
experience between mushrooms and sex. I told him
I believed sex was God, a thought I later learned
that he also apparently shared. Tim noted that to
experience a continuous orgasm for hours on end
while in a human symbiotic joining with the
mushrooms, that the euphoria and feeling of orgasm
suddenly becomes increased more than a thousand
times its original tone. Below are Tim’s 1961
visions of his sexual mushroom encounters that he
observed and wrote of in High Priest (Leary, 1968).
In Trip 7, Frank Barron was the book guide and
wrote notes on each outer side of the pages in this
chapter. This particular trip was an invitation for
Arthur Koestler to attend a psilocybin session in the
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII

confines of a somewhat pleasant non-psychiatric
setting. Tim then conducted a mushroom session at
his home after attending meetings at the Ritz hotel
with several personal friends and colleagues. Tim
notes in High Priest that Arthur Koestler had told
Tim that, when previously given mushrooms in a
psychiatric setting in Michigan, he reportedly
claimed to have had an extreme paranoid trip and
decided that the mushrooms were not for him. This
in turn, required that Tim ask Arthur to come to
New York to sit in and observe a non-professional
setting for the proper use of mushrooms for
therapeutic purposes.
Tim also invited Charles Olsen as a guru-trip guide
and Frank and Nancy Barron as well as several
other friends. In Tim’s own words we read, “When
we started our research at Harvard, I wrote to A.K.
telling him about the mystical experiences we were
encountering and invited him to participate in a
love-feast.
However, Arthur had told Tim that he had eaten a
dose of clinical psilocybin while visiting with a
psychiatrist and that he had a trip down Hades way
that was most assuredly not one of fun or comfort
and ever since he had been paranoid about
psychedelic drugs. And he informed Tim that he
really did not want to have any thing to do with
Tim’s mind game plan for the evening.
Arthur told Tim that the mushroom pills did not
affect him at all.
As soon as Tim arrived back at Harvard, he
informed Frank Barron of his failed attempt at not
convincing Arthur that the mushrooms could be the
catalyst for a new beginning in therapeutic
medicine.
Tim noticed that Frank felt that Arthur was lonely
as Tim had noticed and realized that everyone at the
session had a partner, but not Arthur and without a
mate, you might be disappointed in the trip, but
with someone to cuddle up to, then “God and Sex
are always with us.”
Tim realized that Frank had hit the nail dead on the
stump. He saw a unique aspect of the mushroom
experience that Tim felt he had not yet been able to
cope with, and Tim began to realize how obvious it
was that the psychedelic experience, especially the
mushrooms, were able to release the most
extraordinary of sexual energies never thought
possible before. Tim knew that Frank Barron was
definitely onto something. “God and sex are the
two central beats of the drum.” With mushrooms
when you blow your mind, you are only left with
God and the life he gave you –“and life is sex.”

Later that evening, Leary had passed out several

psilocybin tablets to Charles Olson, Frank and
Nancy Baron, some girl from Harvard, and Leary’s
friends Núñez and Rhona. Finally the great Arthur
Koestler who a few days before was paranoid about
tripping the rift, decided to down ten 2 milligram
tablets of Leary’s supply from Sandoz Labs in
Basel, Switzerland.

Later, the Barons went off somewhere to be sexual

and a few others also did the same. Leary had
noticed that Arthur was not having a good time and
thought he really must be a lonely man with no one
there to share his body and soul with. In the
morning, Tim drove Arthur to Logan Airport and Unpublished Psychedelic Illuminations.

39
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII

John’s Ex-Wife Relates her First Sexual Experience on Acid At 14 with her Girlfriend.

Window Pane, the Molecule and Bisexual Self Discovery, early 1970s, Oregon.

I would like, at this moment in my tale, to take the
time to ask you all for your full attention while I
bring up a short subject regarding what Tim is
talking about. My ex-wife, the mother of my two
sons, was 14 and a half years old when she and her
girlfriend, living in Portland, went to a concert and
each took two hits of amber-colored windowpane
acid. It was too much of a dose for such young
female adults to be taking, but they had apparently
been eating acid for more than a year, which my
wife had told me she had obtained from fellow
students at Beaverton High in Oregon. So this was
not something they were not used to.
However, after a half of an hour or more, the two
girls became paranoid and afraid they were going to
die. Fighting the onset of the effects of the
windowpane acid, they induced a friend into driving
them home. By then they were even more afraid,
but had no intention of going to the hospital for
treatment. They were also afraid that if they did so,
the police at the hospital would arrest them for
illegal drug use or for being under the influence of
illicit intoxicating drugs, thus causing them to
experience even further paranoia. So, as they
arrived home and settled into Kenna’s bedroom,
both of them were still very frightened.
Before too long, they decided to hold on to one
another to keep from falling apart. So they
embraced each other, and in those first comforting
moments, they came to understand that nothing
could harm them while they were under the
influence of this very intense acid, and that their
holding on to one another gave them both a reason
to explore each other’s bodies. By then, they were
feeling nothing but euphoria as their paranoia
slipped silently away into the darkness and out of
their space.
Soon the warmth of their bodies began to spread,
and they found themselves lovingly touching one
another. They took their clothes off, and as their
bodies completely emerged into a single celled

40
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII

entity, they continued to touch one another and kiss sexual symbiotic union between humans and
and use their tongues bringing on sensations like mushrooms.
they never knew could be possible. My ex-wife
shared her tale of this encounter and told me that
she and her girlfriend had made love for hours, both
experimenting with each other while constantly
experiencing nothing but multiple orgasms. This
was another of the many positive symptoms and
effects of the natural symbiosis of body, LSD,
warmth, and the physical joining of two souls in a
rapture of sensuality. Kenna told me that she had
never before ever experienced the rapture they felt
that evening.

I should also mention that they never showed an

interest in each other sexually before this euphoric
incident occurred, and were not into lesbianism, but
Kenna preferred to be heterosexual and liked to
have normal sex with males. This incident occurred
in the very early 1970s.

Years later, I first met her at a party in Aloha,

Oregon, and she had a six-month old baby, and we
looked into each other’s eyes and something
happened between us: a magical moment when the
eye of our souls connected and we saw each other
close-up, and our hearts and minds became as one.
This only occurs once in every person’s life. A real
soul mate filled with sexuality, and she and I
became those pages in Tim Leary’s writings.
Tim continues his thoughts of the sexuality
brought into the open by the mushrooms.
This was the very nature and context of what
was going through Tim’s mind as he conversed
with his colleague Frank Barron in their office
at Harvard University concerning their
observations of Arthur Koestler’s psilocybian
dysphoric reactions while under the influenced
of the mushrooms during the previous
evening.
On page 153 of High Priest, Tim goes on to
relate to his readers the importance of this
A Tribute to Timothy Francis Leary
Although his experiences observing these
actions between humans and drugs occurred in
1961, it took him seven years later (1968), to
inform the world of that magic union of two
becoming one, and described the “Raw electric,
shuddering sensitivity of the psychedelic
experience!” by admitting that, “we were
dealing with a powerful aphrodisiac, probably
the most powerful sexual releaser known to
man. The effect was sensory contact [and] was
intensified [a] thousand-fold, but also deeper.
The union was not just your body and her
body, but all of your racial and evolutionary
entities with all of hers. It was mythic mating.
Neurological union. Cellular sex. Archetypes

41
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
merging. It was the direct reliving of
thousands of matings. She was an insect-
queen buried deep in the damp tunnels of the
anthill humming with genetic energy and you
burrowed down dark to find her. She was a
bird of plumage trembling in the thicket for
your feathered embrace. She was a taxi-dancer
from Alexandria.”
“The psychedelic drugs exploded sex right off
the pages of Playboy into new dimensions of
union my mind wasn’t ready to handle.
And what was more awesome still was the
after effect. You came out of a session with
changed emotions. New attractions and
repulsions developed. There was the session
with the graduate student couple. He
wandered around murmuring ecstatically
about his new insights into space, time, and
meaning. She lay by the fire with her arms
over her head murmuring his name. When he
ignored her, her soft eyes moved around the
room and her body twisted in search. She
looked at me and smiled. Then she unfolded
and swam towards me. Her husband was
standing looking out the window. Her
husband. His wife. Now she was the all-
woman receptive Earth; tomorrow she would
be reincarnated as a pretty graduate student. I
retreated behind the couch.”
“After their second session, they separated and
she married the man whose image she brought
back from her psychedelic trip.”
It was almost inevitable that the guide of the session
would be seen as God and lover. When the mind is
suspended you project on the calm person who has
turned you on, all the attributes of divinity and
malehood.” Tim continued on about the couple by
adding that, “We call this process of new attraction-
repulsion re-imprinting. The person you turned-on
fell in love with you or never wanted to see you
42
again. I have never met with Arthur Koestler since
his trip.” Tim pointed out that since that time, Allen
Ginsberg had been his lone soul brother.
Tim also became quite confused because of his
religious upbringing. He explains that, “In the
first two months of our Harvard psychedelic
research, seven women followed [him] home—
much as the baby ducklings followed Conrad
Lorenz—and announced their love. For many
reasons I was not ready in 1961 to face the
sexual potentials of psychedelic drugs.”
Interestingly, in August of 1941, Tim began his
study of human behavior at the University of
Alabama with psychology as his major, yet by
the fall of 1942, Tim was expelled for sexual
misconduct (having a sexual encounter with the
Dean of the school’s daughter) and because of
his expulsion, he lost his draft deferment (Allen
in Mushroom Pioneers, 2001).
Tim admits that, “I was awed and confused by the
sexual power. It was too easy. I was too much an
Irish Catholic, too prudish to deal with it. Too
Western Christian to realize that God and sex are
one, that God for a man is a woman, that the direct
path to God is through the divine union of male-
female.”
“Besides, I was still involved in being a scientist.
Too weighed by the duties and responsibilities
to enjoy the newly opened paradise. I was too
much an intellectual. I wanted to understand
before plunging in. I felt a moral obligation to
Harvard University—a good place on this dark
planet. How could I enjoy the ultimate sexual-
sensual experience in my study and square it
with my scholarly position? How could I be
consumed by ecstasies undreamed of by oriental
kings and return to my Harvard Square office
the next morning.” “It was there—this tender
garden of divine bliss—and I was voyaging
towards it, but while I held my Harvard
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
position I held to a self-imposed, ridiculous
renunciation. I didn’t turn-on with the slim
brown model. I watched the Arab girl leave with
questioning regret in her black eyes. I gave
mushrooms to the honest, soft Joan, which she
used to turn on one of her suitors whom she
married. I let the Cherokee Princess drift away
clothed in a leather façade that yearned to be
moistened.”
“My sexual yoga was to start in 1964, after I
learned to come to my senses with ‘Holy
Marijuana.’
As noted above, 1964 was also the very same
year that I had experienced my first acid trip
with two girls and had not known of Leary’s
thoughts about this matter at the time.
A year later, Arthur Koestler killed himself
while staying in Berlin (Leary 1968, 1983,
Allen, 2005 [2001]).
Some Comments by Terence McKenna on
Primates, Mushrooms, Sexuality and
Primitive Man.
Terence had equated the use of mushrooms as a
primeval product that began with primates in search
of foods as their environments changed from one
region to another while they bred with one another.
Primitive food hunters and gatherers often followed
mass migratory herds of mammals and in doing so
they learned of the visions and euphoria that the
mushrooms imbued upon those who partook of their
meat. In fact, primarily primitive humankind,
through trial and error, eventually discovered every
food and staple foods we eat today. So these food
hunter-gatherers, in search of food, followed the
manure trails of the last of the large migratory herds
of these mammals and in doing so, discovered the
meat of the mushrooms that grew from the manure
of the mastodons, wholly mammoths, and various
43
types of buffalos and other four-legged ruminants
that roamed from one grassy area to another.
In his book, “Food of the Gods,” Terence presented
several theories which answer some of the most
important questions sought by intelligent man about
the origins of religion, and primitive humankinds
first observation and use of psychoactive plant
drugs, something they may have first observed from
learning the habits of primates, whom we once
thought we were descended from. Terence relates
that in his book, “Food of the Gods” that, “My
book is about the history of drugs, it tries to show
drugs’ cultural and personality-shaping impact.
People have attempted-unsuccessfully—to answer
the question of how our minds and consciousness
evolved from the ape. They tried all kinds of things
to account for this evolution, but to my mind, the
key unlocking this great mystery is the presence of
psychoactive plants in the diet of early man.
“Orthodox evolutionary theory tells us that small
adaptive advantages eventually become genetically
scripted into a species. The species builds upon this
minute change to further its adaptive advantage
until ultimately it out breeds all of its competitors
for a particular niche of environment.”
Sukie Miller, in her interview with McKenna in
OMNI, questioned Terence about his theory of apes
and their interest in ingesting drugs or drug plants.
“Yes” he replied to Sukie. “Lab work shows that
that psilocybin eaten in amounts so small that it
can’t be detected as an experience, increases visual
acuity. In the sixties, Roland Fisher at the National
Institute of Mental Health gave graduate students
psilocybin and then a battery of eye tests. His
results indicated that edges were virtually detected
more readily if a bit of psilocybin were present in
the student’s body. Well, edge detection is exactly
what hunting animals in the grassland environments
use to observe distant prey! So here you have this
chemical factor; when added to the diet, it results in
greater success in hunting. That, in Turn, results in
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
greater success in child rearing and so increases the
size of the next generation.”
“As we descended from the trees and into
Grasslands, we began to experiment with bipedal
gait and omnivorous diet, we encountered
mushrooms. At low doses, they increase visual
acuity, at midrange, they cause general central-
nervous-system arousal, which in a highly sexed
primate means a lot of horsing around, which means
there is more pregnancy among females associated
with psilocybin-using behavior. Higher dosages of
psilocybin lead to group sexuality and dissolved
boundaries between individuals. The ego dissolves
and you experience ecstasy. We can assume that as
the level of ingestion became high enough, ego less
states were quite common.”
I have to take time and note my disagreement with
Terence regarding this subject of group sex on
mushrooms. It is something that my wife and I
could never do; although we have had relations with
other women on several occasions. But we are
monogamous as a couple and the privacy of our
oneness with ourselves, being our own gods in
symbiosis with one another we would not like
others see what we love doing to one another. Hah!
So I do have some morals after all. However, such
sex on MDA is common.
Terence believed that “there was a kind of human
paradise on Earth. People danced, sang, had poetry,
jokes, riddles, intrigue and weapons, but they didn’t
possess the notion of ego as we’ve allowed it to
crystallize in Western societies. The reason for this
lack of ego was a social style of mushroom taking
and an orgiastic sexual style that was probably lunar
in its timing (McKenna, 1992, 1993).
While Terence McKenna’s primate theories make
sense in that ape-like primitives did, as he claims
they did, eat the mushrooms found in manure after
leaving the forest habitat that was their environment
for millennia makes sense. However, I believe that
at the same time in our history of humankind that
they also followed the large migratory herds of
44
mammals in search of foods as their food supplies
became scarce so they too moved and left their
environments and it was in this manner that the
food-hunter gatherers learned to differentiate what
foods were palatable, edible, and/or toxic
(poisonous or deadly). They became very
knowledgeable about what food-plants were good
and what food plants were harmful. In a historic
viewpoint, they also became the first to use the
shamanic wisdom imbued in them from the trial and
error of what was good for the betterment of their
tribal customs and what was not. The males were
the hunters of the meat, and yes, humankind was as
carnivorous as the some of the very wild animals
they sought to feed to the members of their clans,
while at the same time, the female members were
the child bearers and also the gatherer of the
vegetable staples used daily to provide the nutrient
plant foods they used in order to survive.
David Jay Brown, in his interview with Terence,
discussed the visual acuity of the apes in their hunt
for food and new breeding grounds after leaving the
dark forests, stepping out into the light of the world.
David asked Terence, “You have a unique theory
about the role that psilocybin mushrooms play in
the process of human evolution. Can you tell us
about this?” To which Terence replied, “When a
person takes small amounts of psilocybin visual
acuity improves. They can actually see slightly
better, and this means that animals allowing
psilocybin into their food chain would have
increased hunting success, which means increased
food supply, which means increased reproductive
success, which is the name of the game in
evolution. It is the organism that manages to
propagate itself numerically that is successful. The
presence of psilocybin in the diet of early pack-
hunting primates caused the individuals that were
ingesting the psilocybin to have increased visual
acuity. At slightly higher doses of psilocybin there
is sexual arousal, erection, and everything that goes
under the term arousal of the central nervous
system. Again, a factor which would increase
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
reproductive success is reinforced (Brown and
McClen, 1993).”
And so, as both sought out the foods necessary for
their very existence, like the primates before them,
they came in search of the meat by following the
manure trails of the large migratory herds of cattle,
buffalo, mastodons, boars, and other four-legged
ungulates and ruminants, and in doing so,
somewhere along that pathway, they came to eat the
fungi. Most assuredly, they also had already begun
to eat other fungus, but I think that most fungi
would not have been something tasteful to their
human experience. In hunting for the plants they
choose to feed their small communities with, many
found and first ate hundreds of plants, and many of
those were most likely of an entheogenic or
hallucinogenic nature. LaBarre (1978) discusses
the origins of religion in his book, “The Ghost
Dance,” and in doing so stands firm in his
assessment, like R. Gordon Wasson, that all
religions, or the idea of religions had their
beginnings in primitive societies by the food-hunter
gatherers who first found and experienced the
ineffable or ‘bemushroomed’ state that R. Gordon
Wasson introduced all of us too in his scholarly
historical documents of the sacred mushrooms.
Throughout the years, McKenna supported his
theory that sexual divinity began with primates in
early human history and then spread the influence
of mushrooms amongst young adults throughout the
past into today’s Society. I want to emphasize that
Terence McKenna believed that orgiastic group
sexuality occurred in primitive societies, amongst
both humans and apes, and how, over the centuries,
religions institutions and their established
hierarchy’s had removed all knowledge of such
matters from the pages of recorded histories. And
now, in this time and place, in this world, the
knowledge of the mushrooms has once again
reemerged and returned unto our world.
When asked, “Isn't it true that psilocybin inhibits
orgasm?” McKenna replied, “Not at the doses I'm
talking about. At a psychedelic dose it might, but at
45
just slightly above the "you can feel it" dose, it acts
as a stimulant. Sexual arousal means paying
attention, it means jumpiness, it indicates a certain
energy level in the organism. And then, of course, at
still higher doses psilocybin triggers this activity in
the language-forming capacity of the brain that
manifests as song and vision. It is as though it is an
enzyme which stimulates eyesight, sexual interest,
and imagination. And the three of these going
together produce language-using primates.
Psilocybin may have synergized the emergence of
higher forms of psychic organization out of
primitive protohuman animals. It can be seen as a
kind of evolutionary enzyme, or evolutionary
catalyst (Brown and McClen, 1993).”
Jochen Gartz: the Alleged Euphoric symptoms
of Inocybe aeruginascine.
This brings to mind, the work of Jochen Gartz of
the University of Leipzig in Germany who, after
reading of numerous medical reported case studies
of incidents involving accidental fungi ingestions in
Germany where individuals became inebriated after
consuming small meal quantities of a newly
discovered species of psilocybian fungi, Psilocybe
aeruginascens.
Dr. Gartz, then studied this mushrooms history in
the published literature and noticed that nearly all
the individuals who had sought medical attention
for their strange malady that caused visions of
colors and auditory hallucinations, also reported
having intense periods of euphoric rushes which
continued for several hours after the onset of the
symptoms from eating these fungi had commence.
In seeking out the chemical alkaloidal contents of
Psilocybe aeruginascens, Gartz and Drewitz (1983)
reported the occurrence of the alkaloid psilocybine
in sample specimens analyzed in their studies,
noting that this discovery now implied that Inocybe
aeruginascens should now be considered to be a
constant producer of psilocybine. On the other
hand, no psilocine or baeocystine was found to be
present in that particular study. Gartz also noted
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
that the alkaloidal content of Inocybe aeruginascin
was lower in content when compared to other
psilocybian species. However, Gartz later reported
finding equal amounts of both psilocybine and
baeocystine, as well as equal amounts of
aeruginascin, a new unknown tryptamine compound
previously not known to occur in any other species
of psilocybian fungi. He assumed that this new
compound was the active ingredient responsible for
the euphoric effects described in the published
literature he had found reported in various editions
of European medical and mycological journals.
Drewitz (1983) was the first to report on euphoric
intoxications from the Potsdam District in Germany
in June and July of 1980. Gartz wrote that Inocybe
aeruginascens was the only known European
species that caused accidental hallucinogenic
experiences with benign somatic effects after
misidentification of the species as a possible edible
fungus. Because of the 1983 article by Drewitz,
Babos (1983) also reported a similar case of
unintentional ingestion in Budapest in July of 1970.
In this case, the same symptoms were also reported.
Later, Gartz (1995) did a bioassay of 2.4 grams of
dried mushroom material and reported feelings of
euphoria, abstract hallucinations and a very vivid
sensation of the soul in flight. Later Gartz
published another paper on the euphoric effects of
Inocybe aeruginascin in voluntary and accidental
ingestions, still believing that the species was
capable of producing euphoria in those who
consumed them (Gartz, 1992). Yet I have found
similar case studies of incidents of the accidental
ingestion of both Panaeolus and suspected species
of the genus Gymnopilus in the literature between
the 2nd century B.C. and the later 1950s that also
indicated cases of reported euphoria in accidental
ingestions.
However, after much thought on this matter, I came
to the conclusion that of the 19 species out of 200
known species of psilocybian fungi that I had
personally bioassayed over the years, many with my
wife, I found that they were also intensely euphoric
in their actions, especially in medium to high
dosages. Since each species of psilocybian fungi
46
contain different amounts of chemical activity, and
each individual mushroom contains a like-wise
different amount and mixture of active alkaloids, it
would be almost impossible to provide an exact
dosage for the somatic and euphoria we had
experienced that evening so long ago. So, basing
my personal experience of those original 50 to 60
fresh specimens of Psilocybe semilanceata that my
wife and I consumed, that would have been
comparable to a fresh ounce of liberty caps each (at
least two to three doses each), and that would be the
equivalent of 3-4 dried grams and although the
clinical dose of liberty caps is 1-2 dried grams, it
would mean that my wife and I had probably
consumed between 50 to 75 mgs of actual chemical
content. A normal dosage being from 15-30 mgs.
Sex on Mushrooms
This brings to mind, some interesting comments
and facts concerning Intimacy, Sex, Drugs and
Rock and Roll.
During the 1960s, sessions involving psychedelic
drugs like mescaline, LSD, DMT and psilocybin
were usually accompanied by the music of the
classics; Beethoven, Mozart, Wagner, Schubert,
Chopin, Tchaikovsky, etc. What I, or most baby
boomers of the last century, would refer to as
dungeon music. Dirge like dreary music that made
a listener feel as if they were being chained to a
wall and whipped. Under the influence of
neurotropic experimental drugs such as LSD, one
could actually hear the presence of a cart rolling on
wooden wheels down a cobblestone street, the local
serf listening to voice of the town crier chanting
over and over, “bring out the dead, bring out the
dead,” while the bells tolled on and on and on. For
me, in my time and my place, my music was the
music of the sixties and the seventies. The
disturbing use of classical music played and used in
legitimate psychiatric sessions during the fifties and
sixties would probably have made me paranoid and
schizophrenic just from being exposed to the raw
emotional feelings of the moods associated with the
darkness of the period from which the music had
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
originated in. On Mozart or Wagner, I could
actually feel the dank and damp wet dungeons of
the castles and the torture of human souls, whose
feebled weak voices cried out for a savior to come
rescue them from their unjust torture and I could
hear their voices from within the dungeon walls as
they cried out in pain to me, begging me to rescue
those who were less fortunate then I from the
sorrows of their souls.
Yes, that is the music that modern medicine men of
the Western World wanted to use as an adjacent to
psychotherapy along with the newly discovered
entheogenic drug-plants edging their way into the
halls of Ivy League campus’ bearing the fruits of
the dark and foreboding times and fear of plagues,
pestilence and rats gnawing at the ropes on my
ankles, wrists and at the least, to hear classical
music while tripping on powerful psychedelic mind-
altering drugs would be most uncomfortable to me
and literally drive me up the wall sideways.
My music was the sound of the times. Hendrix, The
Jefferson Airplane and Starship, Santana, Pink
Floyd, the Doors, Steppenwolf, Quicksilver, the
Byrds, Yardbirds, the Mamas and the Papas, Moby
Grape, It’s A Beautiful Day, Country Joe and the
Fish, Dylan, Donovan, Buffalo Springfield, Eric
Burton and the Animals, 13th Floor Elevator,
Cleveland Wrecking Crew, Fleetwood Mac,
Sopwith Camel, etc. That’s the music that would
have served as a proper adjacent to
psychotherapeutic drug sessions of the times.
Sessions known to have succeeded in healing those
who were mentally unstable or bi-polar when mixed
with mind-altering psychoactive drugs would
probably present positive results in therapeutic
treatments. I think that the use of psychedelics in
the early sixties at Harvard would probably have
been far more successful if rock music had been
played rather than the drab and dreary mood evoked
mid-evil music that the scholars forced their clients
and patients into listening too. The music of our
time relates to our senses, not to those of the 15th to
18th century, whose morbid music was but a
reflection of the disparity of the times. I mean, that
47
dungeon music was so dark and foreboding that I
doubt it did anything to alleviate the depression and
uncomfortable-ness of a bad trip. The latter is
music I have listened to before but could never
handle when tripping on potent psychedelic drugs.
It was Timothy Leary who wrote in High Priest and
Flashbacks, how mushrooms, acid, and sex were
forever, and publicly told how women reported
multiple orgasms on LSD. Leary informed us of his
sexual encounters at many such parties where he
and his associates, colleagues and friends sexually
flirted with many beautiful young hippie-like and
society-like girls, often engaging in free orgasmic
psychedelic sexual ecstasies. Always under their
influence, much of that open sexual activity
occurred at his free-rented mansion in Millbrook
and at his IFIF (International Federation for Internal
Freedom) organization in Zihuatenejo, Mexico.
It should be noted that Leary wrote of shrooms and
sex several years before he ever ate LSD, but did
not publish his own mushroom sexual rapture
encounters until the year 1983 in his revised
autobiography, Flashbacks.
Tim Leary’s First Sexual Encounter With
Mushrooms and His Elegant Lady Companion
Malaca.
The Ultimate Aphrodisiac – spring 1962.
Newton Center Massachusetts.
In the early 1960s, Tim was friends with one of the
world’s greatest solo jazz trumpet players, Maynard
Ferguson and his wife Flora Lu. Flora “hosted
salons in New York and Millbrook, where
illustrious artists, musicians, and scientists met to
discuss philosophical matters.” Tim acknowledged
that Flora Lu was responsible for combining Asian
design with modern fashion.
Flora liked Tim to the degree that she told him that
she and her husband and friends had been talking
about him, declaring that Flora had decided that
while Tim may have been a hotshot psychologist,
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
he really needed some “down-to-Earth things,” like
how to dress. And how to cut his hair, “…and
what music to listen to and [especially] how to
make those [psilocybin] sessions more aesthetic
than this faculty club atmosphere you’ve got going
here. So I’d be honored,” Flora continued, “if
you’d come to my house next weekend. I could
arrange experiments with some interesting subjects
and show you what life is like in the first-class
lounge.”
Later the next weekend, Flora Lu introduced Tim to
“a black-haired spellbinder.” Her name was
Malaca, a model from Morocco whose face had just
graced the cover of Holiday magazine. She was
also a member of the royal family of the Shah of
Iran, searching for a new meaning in her life, and
was well informed by Flora Lu of Tim Leary and
his experimental use of certain mind-altering drugs
such as psilocybin, marijuana, hashish and DMT.
Flora Lu and her husband Maynard drove Tim and
Malaca to their Tudor-styled home, and as they
approached the house from the driveway, Tim noted
that there were two jaguars in front. “Let me show
you your new laboratory,” said Flora.
Tim wrote that their “living room was enormous
and plushly carpeted. A huge U-shaped couch,
deep and soft, framed the giant fireplace. Rubbed-
wood paneling and bookshelves made the flashy
non-objective paintings stand out. One wall was
lined with electronic sound equipment and yards of
record albums.”
Tim continues his description of this enormous
rooms by commenting on the fact that, “What
impressed” him the most, “about this luxury of this
room was the sure erotic intelligence with which
each detail had been arranged.”
After showing Tim his room, Flora Lu motioned to
him to follow her and she said, “Would you like to
see our room?”
48
Tim observed, “The master bedroom was a soft
cave of lace, tassels, drapes, and furs. Reubenesque
paintings and tantric yentas. It was a delightful
introduction to a hedonic consciousness. Indeed the
very existence of pleasure as a way of life had been
unknown to me.”
Tim admitted that he had lived much of his adult
life amid the “upper-middle-class comforts, the
habitation—functional machines used by
professional people in this era (early 1960s).”
“But,” thought Tim, “these were more convenient
quarters. Flora Lu had designed a temple to seduce
each sense into rapture, to entice the body into a
harem embrace. In this bordello baroque shrine my
hedonic education was initiated.”
At that time, “I was a successful robot—respected
at Harvard, clean cut, witty, and in that inert culture,
unusually creative. Though I had attained the
highest ambition of the young American
intellectual, I was totally cut off from body and
senses. My clothes had been obediently selected to
fit the young professional image. Even after one
hundred drug sessions I routinely listened to pop
music, drank martinis, [and] ate what was put
before me.”
Later in the evening, Maynard, Flora, Malaca and
Tim dosed their selves on psilocybin tablets. Tim
had seated himself on the couch situated in, “Flora
Lu’s Elysian chamber, letting his right cerebral
hemisphere slowly open up to direct sensual
reception. Flora Lu and Maynard started teaching
him eroticism---the yoga of attention. Each
moment was examined for sensual possibility. The
delicious grace of moving one’s hand, not as part of
a learned survival sequence, but for kinesthetic
joy.”
“I was wearing the silk shirt and velvet trousers that
Flora Lu, true to her promise to be my complete
fashion coordinator, had [earlier] left on my bed
while I showered. Flora Lu was wearing light blue
silk. Maynard was Florentine noble garbed in tight-
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
fitting velvet pants. In a Moroccan caffan Malaca
was soft, touchable.” Tim wrote that, “A fire
burned gently in the hearth. The air was scented
with incense. His sensitized ears now as big as the
Arecibo Dish, Maynard swayed with pleasure.
Flora Lu floated around the room, her face
transfigured with delight. Malaca blossomed into a
flower of great beauty, her classic features now
stylized with the dignity of an Egyptian frieze.
He claimed, “His eyes were connected with hers.
We rose as one and walked to the sun porch. She
turned, came to me, entwined her arms around my
neck.”
Tim now explains this encounter between him and
his companion Malaca, and their sexually euphoric,
aphrodisiac effects that came about after the effects
of the mushrooms had began by proclaiming that,
“We were two sea creatures. The mating process in
this universe began with the fusion of moist lips
producing a soft-electric rapture, which irradiated
the entire body. We found no problem maneuvering
the limbs, tentacles, and delightful protuberances
with which we were miraculously equipped in the
transparent honey-liquid zero-gravity atmosphere
that surrounded, bathed, and sustained us...”
Later Tim noted that, “This was my first sexual
experience under the influence of psychedelics. It
startled me to learn that in addition to being
instruments of philosophical revelation, mystical
unity and evolutionary insight, psychedelic drugs
were very powerful aphrodisiacs.”
Soon as daybreak approached, Malaca went to bathe
and Tim went downstairs watching the sunrise from
the glass windows. Flora Lu sat on the rug with
fresh coffee, asking Tim, “I want to continue the
discussion we were having last night.”
Ah yes Tim thought, “the secret of the universe.”
But Flora Lu leaned over towards Tim and
remarked, “It’s all sex, don’t you see?” Tim
confessed to himself that, “it had all become clear.
Black jazz combos playing the boogie.
49
Swedish blonds disrobing on a tropical beach.
Tanned slim Israeli boys belly dancing to frenzied
drums. Soft laughter from dark corners and behind
bushes. The real secret of the universe was that
everyone knew it but me.”
Several days after Leary had experienced the
euphoric sexual properties of these powerful
mushrooms, he asked Aldous Huxley "what he
thought about the erotogenic nature of the
psychedelic drugs which were slowly becoming
popular among the undergraduates at Harvard.
Huxley seemed agitated at Leary's query by saying
that "of course this is true, Timothy, but we've
stirred up enough trouble suggesting that drugs can
stimulate aesthetic and religious experiences."
Huxley further stated, "I strongly urge you not to let
the sexual cat out of the bag.”
The Changing of Tim’s consciousness after his
Rapture on Psilocybin.
Tim then revealed “my first reaction to the
aphrodisiac revelation was to have a good laugh at
my own expense. We had been running around the
land offering mystic visions and instant personality-
change to priests, prisoners, and professors, and all
the time we were unwittingly administering the key
(if used in the right circumstances) to enhance sex.
What an inhibited square I had been. Why did it
take so long for me to stumble onto this fact? We
had long recognized that these drugs tremendously
intensified bodily sensations—taste, smell, touch,
colors, sounds, motion, [and] breathing. And we
knew that in the right setting strong empathic
connections formed between people. By
programming set and setting toward the
philosophical, spiritual, or scientific, we had steered
ourselves perversely away from an otherwise
inevitable heightening of sensuality and affection.”
Tim felt that, “Huxley was unrealistic about one
thing. It simply wasn’t possible to censor
everybody’s experience as we had censored our
own. About this time we learned to our dismay that
hip pleasured-seekers in Las Vegas, Beverly Hills,
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
and Aspen were saying that LSD (a psychedelic
drug none of us had yet tried) meant ‘Lets Strip
Down.’ These discoveries came as a delicious
shock to our prudish academic minds.”
In conclusion, “it had never occurred to us that this
experience, which we treated with such deference
and awe, could become a popular party item.
(Except for that rascal Dick [Alpert, AKA Baba
Ram Dass], who was already researching this area
with cooperative Harvard undergraduates.) It was
the night’s experience with Malaca that alerted me
to the certainty that our G-rated philosophical drugs
would eventually be used recreationally. Since this
sexual awakening at the Ferguson’s house, I have
found myself duty-bound as a scientist-philosopher
to pass on the information that psychedelic drugs,
with appropriate set and setting, can be intensely
aphrodisiac. This statement—perhaps more than
any other—makes anti-drug people furious (Leary,
1983, 1990).”
The Worship of the Penis and Phallic Symbolism
in a Historical Perspective.
Phallus can refer to a penis, or to an object shaped
like a penis. The word comes from Late Latin
"phallus", from Ancient Greek "φαλλός" phallos,
penis.
Human sexuality before the food-gatherers
discovered potent medicinal plants that increased
their frequency of sexual activity somehow was just
a normal act. Not thought of as something to do on
a daily basis. Through trial and error, the early food
hunter-gatherers soon learned that some plants
caused strange behavior in humans when consumed
and usually these plants ended up in the hands of
the shamans, the medicine men, the witch doctors,
the alchemists, the herbarist, the magicians, the
sorcerers who used them to heal, or to kill, to
divinate, to use as tools of power and tools of fear
and some became aphrodisiacs, used to seduce or to
use in impregnating young virgins to carry on the
human condition. Some of the earliest known
plants to be used in such manner included
50
marijuana, opiates, and mushrooms. The latter were
easily known by the food hunter-gatherers from
following large migratory herds of mammals in
search of food when small game became scarce. It
stands to reason that these nomadic wanderers
would be naive to fail to observe the meaty fungi
fruiting from the manured dung heaps of these large
animals. We have read the wisdom shared us
shroom lovers of the academic world by the late
Terence McKenna who knew of the primate’s use
of the manured fungi that they ate for their
neurotropic effects. And Terence recognized that
these primates loved the increased sexual activities
they knew were the result from eating these special
mushrooms. While both marijuana and the opium
poppy plants have been known for their benumbing
properties used medicinally throughout the ages to
alleviate pain, many also knew that those particular
plants also were somewhat aphrodisiac in effect that
they could be used to seduce the female sex or
could control the opposite sex into sexual
submission. Worship of the virgins also was part of
the sexual discovery of the rites of spring, the
planting of the crops and the fertility of the seed,
both the seed of the dominant male and the seed of
the plants grown to feed the people of the
community and the domination of the female
species through sexual possession are a fact.
Throughout human history, the male penis has been
both an object of worship and of fertility while the
female sexual organs were rarely depicted in art,
especially art from the Middle East to the Orient.
We can see in museums around the world, more art,
sculptures, statuettes, frescoes, bas relief’s,
paintings, sketches and drawings depicting the male
member and very few in history of the female
sexual organs.
Fetish-like phallic artifacts depicting ancient
sculptures of phalluses have been found in
archaeological digs and in ancient temples in many
regions of the world, a majority of which were first
recorded among the vestiges of ancient Greece and
Rome. In many ancient cultures, the discovery of
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
phallic structures were believed to symbolized
wellness and good health.
One of the oldest phallus representations ever
discovered is the ‘Hohle’ phallus, a 28,000-year-old
siltstone phallus discovered in the Hohle Fels cave
(also known as Hohlefels, Hohler Fels, is German
for "hollow rock"). It is a cave in the Swabian Alb
of Germany. Christian visitors sometimes refer to
this cave as the cave of prehistoric porn. Recently,
a University of Tuebingen archaeologist Nicholas
Conard referred to a small 2-2-½ inch 35,000-year-
old Ivory carving resembling an impregnated
female as being very sexually charged. It was
discovered in six separate fragments depicting a
female with a swollen belly, wide-set thighs and
large, protruding breasts.
The Ancient Egyptians related the cult of phallus
with Osirus. Archaeologists have written that Osiris'
body was cut into 13 pieces and Seth allegedly
scattered them all over Egypt. However, Osiris’
wife Isis supposedly retrieved all of them except
one, his penis, which legend has it that it was
swallowed by a fish . In Egyptian mythology, the
phallus was a symbol of fertility, and the god Mim
was often depicted ithyphallic (with a penis).
An Ivory statuette from El Amrah (near Abtu
(Abydos)) was of a man that stood with his legs
together, his arms at his sides and an erect penis.
The man depicted on this statuette is an early
representation of Mim, The Egyptian God of
fertility. Min was always a god of fertility and
sexuality. He was shown as a human male with an
erect penis and numerous glyphs portrayed him as a
man holding symbol or a flail. The way he holds
his flail might be symbolic of sexual intercourse -
the flail forms the V while his upraised forearm
seems to thrust inside the V.) Numerous statues of
Mim show him with his hand encircling the base of
his penis. During the period of the New Kingdom
times he was sometimes shown as a white bull, a 4-
legged ruminant that was sacred to the fertility god.
A poem dedicated to Mim, referred to him as,
51
“…Mim, Bul of the Great Phallus, You are the
Great Male, The owner of all females.”
To the Egyptians, Min wasn't just a fertility god,
such as Hapi or Osiris, who only presided over the
fields - he was also a god of male fertility who
could give the pharaoh (and other men) the power
to father a child. As with Osiris, Min was an
agricultural god - at Medinet Habu, Ramses III is
shown scything a sheaf of wheat for the Festival of
Min. There are also scenes of pharaohs who are
drawn ceremonially hoeing the ground and watering
the fields under the supervision of Min. It is
interesting to note that a virgin was poetically
referred to as an 'unplowed field'.
Again we can see a relationship of male dominance
and female submission and the gift of agricultural
knowledge that would also become an object of
worship, the seasonal celebrations of the planting of
the crops (The Rites of Spring) were followed in the
latter summer and early fall with festivals of the
Harvesting of the Crops. The planting of the crops
was one of the earliest rituals involving an
association between sexuality and male dominance
of the species since not only were the food crops
worshipped, but the planting of the seeds of life into
the female was also a ritual of great importance to
the dominant male of the clan or tribe. Some
theories related to witchcraft and brooms sticks
evolved from females who had knowledge that
certain plants when boiled and potions were made,
if rubbed on the vaginal walls with a brush would
give the female intense euphoric sensations that
when sexual penetration occurred, the sexual drive
that followed would drive the female into
uncontrollable fits of sexual frenzy causing them to
become wild and loudly uncontrollable. Some said
that the feelings of their vaginal walls being rubbed
with such potions gave one a sensation similar to
one falling through the sky, or as in witchcraft, a
sensation of flying, maybe on a broomstick.
In traditional Greek Mythology, Hermes was also a
deity of bounderies and exchanges, but among
other deities he was also considered to be a phallic
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII

diety by his association with representations of The Mara Kannon Shrine in Nagato, Yamaguchi
himon herms (pillars) featuering a phallus. While it Prefecture is one of many fertility shrines in Japan
would be pure speculation to consider Hermes a that still exist today. Also present in festivals such
type of fertility god, his son Pan was often depicted as the Danjiri Matsuri in Kishiwasha, Osaka
as having an exaggerated penis. Prefecture and the Kanamara Matsuri in Kawagawa
Prefecture are annual public phallus festivals.
Another Greek diety was Priapus, who was
considered to be the real Greek god of fertility and Also famous is the Kyoto festival (200,000
whose symbol was an exagerated phallus. His attendies), where every female is required to touch
mother was Aphrodite, and his father was either the phallic sculptures.
Dionysus or Adonis. According to different myths,
he was the protector of livestock, fruit plants,
gardens, and male genitalia. These are but a few
examples rom ancient civilized societies who
worshipped the powers that the pallus contributed to
the sanctity of life.

But it also again brings to mind the conquering elk,

buck stag, and other animals, as well as human
adversaries who fought one another for the right to
control the females of the herd or of the local tribal
groups. Thousands of years later, many modern
cities hold annual phallic festivals where phallic
fetish symbolisms are publicly displayed as objects
of worship and desire.

In 1978, Federico Kauffmann published two

volumes in Spanish and English, Sexual Behavior in
Ancient Peru. Which detailed organized information
on the sexual art of Peru. Recent research indicates
the possible use of hallucinogenic plants as a
possible factor behind the massive collections of
sexual representations in Peruvian Ceramics.
Some Contemporary Annual Phallus Festivals
While little is known in the phallus festivals noted
below, we have no idea if thousands of years ago,
whether entheogenic or neurotropic plants were
employed for sexual fullfilment by the primitve
cultures whose ancestors of today organize these
annual phallic festivities.
The city of Tyrnavos in Greece holds an annual
Phallus festival, a traditional phallcloric event on
the first days of Lent.
Females at the Annual Kyoto Phallus Festival.
Near Fang, male/female agricultural and human
fertility fetishs are commonly used by Hill Tribe
groups in Northern Thailand next to new land tracts
(Rai’s, located in new village areas where crops of
rice are to be planted. I purchased a hand-made
fetish for $2.00 in the mid 1980s, in the northern
region of Fang, Thailand in the Golden Triangle.
An Ahka male/female fertility fetish representing
human sexuality also represents the sexuality of the
planted crops to be grown akin to small hill top
backgrounds used as windbreakers during the
monsoon seasons intense rains.

52
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
An Ahka Male/Female Fertility Fetish, Thailand.
In the Taipai airport a terminal display features a
gigantic phallus made of bamboo used to shame
gods where landslides and mudslides occur in
mountainous regions (see page 89).
Ancient Scandinavia
The Norse god Freyr is a phallic deity, representing
male fertility and love.
The short story Völsa þáttr describes a family of
Norwegians worshiping a preserved horse penis.
Somewhere in our unrecorded history, there are
probably incidnts of phallic worship associated with
both homesexuality and mushrooms in that the fear
of mycophobia can be association with the
statement, “I am not putting that thing in my
mouth” and could relate a fear of same sex or of
poisoning by comsuming phalic looking mushooms.
53
A Mochica Peruvian Ceramic with an
Exaggerated Phallus.
Ancient India
Shiva is the most ancient of the Hindu deities with
prehistoric origins, who is also the 3rd of the Hindu
Trinity and one of the most widely worshipped and
edified deities in the Hindu pantheon. But, Shiva is
worshipped much more commonly in the form of
the Lingam, or the phallus. Evidence of phallic
worship in the Indian Subcontinent dates back to
prehistoric times. The famous "man-size" lingam in
the Parashurameshwar Temple in the Chitoor
Distirct of the Indian State of Andhra Pradesh,
better known as the Gudimallam Lingam, is about
1.5 metres in height, carved in polished granite.
Khajuraho (Hindi) is a village in the Indian State
of Madhya Pradesh, located in Chhatarpur District,
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
abour 385 miles (620 kilometers) southeast of
Delhi, the capital city of India. Khajuraho has the
largest group of medieval Hindu and Jain Temples,
famous for their erotic sculpture. 10% of the
sculptures on the outer walls of the temple depict all
ages of male and females in sexual positions of the
Kama Sutra including animals and humans together
and separately. The basic Universal Divine Energy
(Shakti, [Sakti] the embodiment of the female), is a
symbol of the union of man and woman and it is the
main spiritual emotion in Hindu art depicted in the
man-woman sculptures seen in Amravati,
Khajuraho, Konark, etc. Here Divine Energy
(Shakti) manifests in the man-woman union, the
basis of Vedic art and culture. The Chandelas who
built the temples between the 9th and 12th centuries
were followers of the Tantric cult that believes that
gratification of earthly desires is a step towards
attaining the ultimate liberation (Wikipedia).” Some
look humourously at the temple of love
commenting, “No wonder they have a population
explosion.”
Maithuna Couples Lakshmana.
In Neotantra the most important features of sexual
practice revolve around the experience of subtle
energies within our sensual embodiment, and the
54
accessing of these energies both to enhance pleasure
and to challenge our egotism into its dissolution and
that the sexual and erotic aspects of neotantra
cannot be authentically engaged in without adequate
preparation and discipline. And mushrooms may
just be that discipline required to attain the
expanded orgasm sought by those truly in love. In
sum, tantric sexuality is just one dimension of a
spiritual path that is devoted and dedicated to the
challenge of becoming aware, in every moment of
our embodied lives, of the supreme flow of the
sacred lifeforce itself—the Sacred Unity of Love.
Some teachers of neotantra practices frequently
have the belief that sex and sexual experiences are a
sacred act that is capable of elevating its
participants to a higher spiritual plane. They often
talk about raising Kundalini energy, worshiping the
divine feminine, and activating the chakras to
experiencing full-body orgasms. The word "tantra,"
in this context, often refers to the set of techniques
for cultivating a more fulfilling sexual/love
relationship. Tantric sexual practice is one aspect of
the last stage of an initiate's spiritual path, where
s/he, already realised the voidness of all things, to
attain perpetual bliss. (Anand, 2003; Bharati, 1993).
Kandariya mahadeva maithuna.
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
Kandariya mahadeva maithuna.
The Expanding Orgasm
Expanded orgasm is any sexual experience more
intense and extensive than what is described as that
of a regular orgasm. It includes a range of
sensations that include orgasms that are full-bodied,
and orgasms that last from a few minutes to many
hours. The term was coined in 1995 by Dr. Patricia
Taylor. It was used in her Ph.D. research of intense
sensual experiences of 44 couples from various
backgrounds and referenced in a video she
produced in 1998.
Distinguishing features of expanded orgasm are
energetic sensations and contractions all over the
body, especially in the abdomen, inner thighs, hands
and feet, and of course the genitals. Dr. Taylor
describes reports of practitioners going into various
altered states of consciousness, bringing about deep
emotional release and rejuvenation, profound
spiritual experiences, having awarenesses not
normally perceived in regular orgasm, and
perceiving energy expanding beyond the limits of
55
their bodies (Taylor, 1998, 2002, 2005, 2009).
Similar experiences were reported in studies by Dr.
Jenny Wade (2004), and by David Deida (2005).
In addition, Brauer, Bodansky, and Schwartz
report women having hundreds or thousands of
contractions in one sensual connection. In 1991.
Alan and Donna Brauer in “The ESO Ecstasy
Program: Better, Safer Sexual Intimacy and
Extended Orgasmic Response, Warner books, Page
24–25, quoted from Masters in Johnson noted by
describing female orgasm as “a brief episode of
physical release” characterized by either “a series of
rapidly recurrent orgasmic experiences between
which no recordable plateau-phase intervals can be
demonstrated or by a single, long-continued
orgasmic episode… status orgasmus may last from
20 to more than 60 seconds.” (See Bodansky and
Bodansky, 2000; Brauer and Braeur, 2001; and
Schwartz and Schwartz, 1995) for related data on
expanded orgasms.
Balkans
Kuker is a divinity personifying fecundity,
sometimes in Bulgaria and Serbia it is a plural
divinity. In Bulgaria, a ritual spectacle of spring (a
sort of carnival performed by Kukeri) takes place
after a scenario of folk theatre, in which Kuker's
role is interpreted by a man attired in a sheep- or
goat-pelt, wearing a horned mask and girded with a
large wooden phallus. During the ritual, various
physiological acts are interpreted, including the
sexual act, as a symbol of the god's sacred marriage,
while the symbolical wife, appearing pregnant,
mimes the pains of giving birth. This ritual
inaugurates the labours of the fields (ploughing,
sowing) and is carried out with the participation of
numerous allegorical personages, among which is
the Emperor and his entourage.
Switzerland
The bear on the arms of Portein, Switzerland has a
clearly visible red phallus, in accordance with the
long-held tradition.
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
While many countries celebrate the sowing and
harvesting of the crops and the large amount of
annual phallus festivals occur worldwide, it seems
that Peru and two states in India most likely have
historical links to entheogenic plant use in
association with sexuality. R. Gordon Wasson in an
interview with Robert Forte talked of Hindu homes
in both Bihar and Orissa India whose front of their
homes were painted in really bright psychedelic
paisley imagery similar to the visuals often
associated with hallucinations attributed to
psilocybian fungi, including stunning visuals that
Dr. Wasson himself had experienced on his first
mushroom voyage as reported by him in the May
13th, 1957 issue of Life Magazine. Wasson also
noted that the Babu of the local tribe in the Sandal
region of Bihar was aware of the active properties
of the dung-heap fungi of cattle Wasson claimed as
Stropharia (Psilocybe) cubensis Earle (Forte, 1988).
Orissa is also the center of the Satki cult.
Historical References from 1500-2007 on
Regarding Sex and Some Psychedelic Drugs.
According to the writings of the Spanish Historians
Diego Duran, Francisco Flores and Bernardino
Sahagún, including numerous accounts from other
conquerors during and after the Spanish invasion of
the Americas, we became aware of the mushrooms
and their possible use as aphrodisiacs. Also, others
have described similar studies and mentions of the
sexual possibilities found in the writings of R.
Gordon Wasson, Maria Sabina, Florence Cowan,
Eunice Pike, Tim Leary and others. In some of
these modern anecdotal materials we have been
taught that the majority of Mazatec Indian shamans,
curanderas, brujos, sabios/sabias, and their Indian
participants of mushroom vigils and veladas, all
refrain from sexual activity 4 days before and 4
days after a mushroom ceremony. To do so, as
many of the medicine men and woman all seem to
agree on, is that it, “would bring about a lasting
madness.” This is also apparently true for Peyote
and Salvia ceremonies. Yet some Indians have been
reported as participating in sexual activities while
on peyote.
56
Many of the early Spanish chroniclers (which
included naturalists, botanists, and some members
of the clergy), had sailed from far across the
Atlantic to America. They were the first to explore
this brave new world of ours. They traveled here
under the fear of God, leaving behind them the
terrors of the dark Middle Ages, leaving behind
them a world they were just learning to crawl out
from under.
Furthermore, while the Spanish invaders were
seeking shorter routes to the West Indies for trade
and commerce, these Spanish invaders were also
seeking such treasures as Coronado's "Seven Cities
of Cibola" (the lost city of gold), or "El Dorado," as
it later became known as, and the so-called
"Fountain of Youth," and even aphrodisiacs to
seduce young women.
In one portion of the codex written by Sahagún, a
devout catholic informs us that the mushrooms "aun
provocan a lujuria" that they "even provoke lust."
Wasson (1980) believed that Sahagún may have
been responsible for adding these words, and
wondered why they were inserted. He inquired if
they were meant to either excite the sixteenth
century readers seeking always the Fountain of
Youth and new aphrodisiacs, or to incite his pious
readers against the mushrooms?
Other reported effects presented by Sahagún, who
undoubtedly provided some of the best descriptions
and effects of these mushrooms and their possible
relationship to sex, were found in the “Florentine
codex.”
In book two, page 130, Sahagún wrote that:
"Teonanácatl grows on the plains, in the grass. The
head is small and round. The stem is long and
slender. He who eats many of them sees many
things that make him afraid, or makes him laugh
[incessant laughing is but one of the more
pleasurable positive effects from a psilocybian
inebriation]. And in book ten, page 49, Sahagún
provides us with an incident of abuse by a
noblewoman who used mushrooms for pleasure
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
rather then healing or curing: "The bad noblewoman
[is] infamous, very audacious, stern, and proud.
Very stupid, brazen, besotted, and drunk. She goes
about besotted; she goes about demented; she goes
about eating mushrooms."
As one can see, the Aztecs also had what appear to
be drug-plant related problems in their society just
like we have alcohol and tobacco related problems
in our society.
Other reports from Sahagún tell us of “the Harlot,”
the Carnal Woman who is described at length. Put
briefly, she is the whore of the itching buttocks.
She lives like a bathed slave, acts like a sacrificial
victim, goes about with her head high--rude, drunk,
shameless, eating mushrooms" [Ibid P 55].
Another historian, Francisco Flores, also made the
suggestion that the sacred mushrooms were but
"one of the many aphrodisiacs found in Nueva
España."
The above descriptions, written by the Spanish
clergy and historians regarding the effects that the
Sacred Mushrooms had on those who consumed
them, definitely explains their (the historians’)
animosity regarding the Aztec and Mayan use of the
mushrooms and other plant medicines. And
remember that the clergy were sure to report more
on the negative effects of the mushrooms.
My research on this matter of sex and drugs
(Acid and Mushrooms).
During the past twenty years I have communicated
with numerous authors, adults and young couples
who have experimented with psilocybian fungi.
Many couples have reported that their sexual
appetites were definitely increased during their
inebriations while under the influence of the sacred
mushrooms. In fact, most of the male subjects who
were interviewed mentioned that they were able to
maintain an erection and to hold back orgasm for
several hours. On the other hand, their female
counterparts claimed to experience nothing but
57
multiple orgasms during the entire sexual encounter
while inebriated under the influence of the
mushrooms (Allen, personal files). And many
reported that there was no way they could have sex
while under the influence of the mushrooms.
As noted above, no person of spirit (healer),
has sex for four days before and after a mushroom
ceremony (Pike and Cowan, 1959). According to
the shamans and sabios, this experience would
cause permanent madness; suggesting that one
would go crazy from the experience. However,
many Westerners who have experienced intercourse
while under the influence of inebriating mushrooms
have claimed that it is the finest madness they have
ever experienced. What is interesting is that there
are no documented studies done in regards to this
aspect of one of the many effects attributed to this
type of intoxication.
Even Albert Hofmann observed what he believed to
be “erotic sexual effects” in two female
participants; María Sabina's daughters, Apolonia
and Aurora, both prospective curanderas during a
ceremony held in the home of María Sabina which
occurred while Albert Hofmann was under the
influence of Salvia divinorum: "Blissful, yearning,
moans of Apolonia and Aurora, between singing
and prayer, gave the impression of the young
women in the drug inebriation was combined with
sensual sexual feelings (Hofmann, 1980)?”
Amanita muscaria (Soma)
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII

SEX UNION WITH SOMA, BY NORTH

AMERICAN INDIANS: THE FIRST REPORT.

R. Gordon Wasson (1979), writing in an issue of the

Albert Hofmann, shroom in Hand and molecule
on his mind.
of “The Journal Psychedelic Drugs” brought to the
attention of Western Civilization, the fact that the
mushrooms believed to be referred to as Soma, of
the Vedic Scriptures, were being used by North
American Indians of Algonquian ancestry who
reportedly used Amanita muscaria for sexual
gratification and enhancement of the euphoric
effects associate with the symbiosis of humankind
when combined with certain species of fungi
reported throughout history as having aphrodisiac
effects. However, only one known reference stands
out and we can thank R. Gordon Wasson for his
retelling of this incident in his journal article
publication on, “The Traditional Use in North
America of Amanita muscaria for Divinatory
Purposes.”
In this scholarly well researched studied backed by
historical letters of communication and facts,
Wasson wrote that, “Almost 20 years ago, shortly
after the [1957] publication of Mushrooms Russia
and History, Claude Lévi-Strauss, the famous
anthropologist, wrote us a letter in Paris calling
attention to a remarkable citation concerning
mushrooms in Jesuit Revelations. A superior of the
new Jesuit Order, Pére Charles l’Allemant in a
lengthy epistle dated 1 August 1626 from Quebec to
his brother in France, also a Jesuit Father, undertook
to describe the customs of the natives thereabouts,
an Algonkian group. Discoursing on their religious
beliefs he wrote (and I translate):

…. They assure you that after death they go to

heaven where they eat mushrooms and hold
intercourse with each other.

He fails [in telling] us why they singled out

White Wizard: Lord of the Shrooms.
mushrooms to eat, nor does he tell us what kind
they ate. We can now say with certainty that those
mushrooms were Amanita muscaria. Let it also be
noted that Pére l’Allement’s letter to his brother was
dated 1626, a full century earlier than the earliest

58
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
reference to the Siberian mushroom practice, viz.
von Stranhlenberg’s few words published in 1730.”
A sad note to this mention of a sexual union
between the fly agaric mushroom, Amanita
muscaria and humankind in Heaven, is the only
reference found in the literature of the Middle Ages
regarding the possible aphrodisiac properties
surrounding the chemistry and symbiosis of this
species and humans recording in the literature of the
past. Some of the original creators of the Shakti
cults in Orissa were the Aryans who wrote of Soma.
PSILOPHORIA
At this time, I would like to propose a new term to
be applied for describing these effects experienced
by those who, while under the influence of these
mushrooms, have the most orgasmic and cosmic
sexual experience of their life. This term is to be
known as "psilophoria." "Psilo" for the chemical
substance within the mushrooms and "phoria"
extracted from the word euphoria. Gartz (1996)
wrote about numerous occasions where several
innocent collectors in Germany foraged for edible
mushrooms and accidentally consumed specimens
of a newly discovered psilocybian mushroom,
Inocybe aeruginascens. All involved reported
euphoric reactions during their intoxication. These
occurred on numerous occasions in and around
Potsdam and outlaying regions of Germany.
Some Final Comments Regarding Public Use of
These Mushrooms in Society.
Between 1959 and 1970, a new era of cultural
phenomena began. Because of Wasson's numerous
publications regarding the rediscovery of the
psychoactive fungi in Mexico, Jonathan Ott created
the phrase “recreational drugs.” It eventually became
a common epithet applied to those who used and
misused hallucinogenic mushrooms and other mind-
altering substances. This term was applied to drug
use in regards to individuals who consumed mind -
altering substances in a social atmosphere rather than
for medicinal or healing purposes.
59
The term “misuse” rather than “abuse” is more
appropriate since one abuse’s their own bodies
themselves rather then the substance. The prolonged,
continued use of the psychoactive mushrooms will
not leave any detrimental effects or long lasting
injurious damage or harm to those who consume
them over short periods of time. However, tolerance
from continued use will cause the visual effects of the
mushrooms to disappear. Physiological damage is
not a matter of concern. However, short-term mental
fatigue or minor psychological dysphoria and
tolerance to the effects are possible when excessive
dosages are used continuously.
Listed below are several comments by scholars
regarding their thoughts on the non-addictive nature
that follows the use of hallucinogenic mushrooms?
The quotes presented below provide personal
accounts that show the mushrooms are not dangerous,
habit-forming or responsible for any long termed side
effects. They have a low potential for abuse and do
not present a danger to society. These responses are
from the brave, intrepid time travelers who first
experienced the harmony given to them from the
mushrooms they so much loved, and prove that they
had survived a voyage into their souls with the
mushrooms as their guides: I would like to point out
that these comments are not the words of professional
MD’s but rather everyday normal individuals who
have studied these mushrooms and their effects
before coming to the conclusions they present below.
And since those statements were first spoken, many
of these scholars have since passed on, but their
influence has definitely changed the concept that such
entheogenic plants are not harmful if used in a proper
mind-set and setting.
1. Wasson (1958) stated that "the mushroom is
anything but a narcotic, and there is yet no proof that
it can have deleterious effects."
2. Robert Graves (1958), Greek historian and scholar
wrote that "because of my protestant conditioning, I
would never take cocaine, heroin, hashish or
marijuana even experimentally, but the Mexican
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII

mushroom does not belong to this range of drugs, nor does not present a social problem, nor is there
is it habit forming." evidence for predicting the development of a
problem" Thompson et al., 1985).
3. Author Frederick Swain (1962) wrote of his
initial experience while under the influence of
inebriating mushrooms during a Mazatec ceremony,
"I don't recommend the use of the mushrooms to
anyone, even though they are physically harmless.
They are not habit forming. It is not possible to
develop a physiological craving for them."

4. Years later, Wasson (1980) still held firm to his

previous statement and reiterated that "the A Penis Envy strain of Psilocybe cubensis.
mushrooms are not habit forming, they differ in this
respect, not only from alcohol and from tobacco, but
from other drugs such as opium that are narcotics
stimulating beautiful dreams. In the course of our
many expeditions to Mexico covering seven cultural
areas, we have seen no evidence that the mushrooms
can cause harmful physical effects."

5. Peter Furst (1986) believed that, "there is no

evidence that pure mushrooms are at all dangerous."
He further states, "in fact, there is no scientific data to
refute the generally accepted notion that pure
psilocybin [containing] mushrooms are safe and pose
no danger to public or individual health. There are
however, real dangers associated with the [improper]
identification of hallucinogenic species of
mushrooms."

6. Dr. Gastón Guzmán (and his colleagues) wrote

that, "field and laboratory studies strongly indicate
that psychoactive mushroom use as it normally
occurs does not constitute a drug abuse problem or
a public health hazard" (Guzmán et al., 1976). Kenna Allen Floating on 60 Fresh Liberty Caps,
Eugene, Oregon, circa early 1970s.
7. In addition, a 1985 survey conducted among
college students in California, suggests that, "the
low frequency and few negative effects of
[hallucinogenic mushroom] use indicate that abuse

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ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII

R. Gordon Wasson and John W. Allen, San Francisco. Winter 1978. Photo Michael Aldridge.

Andrew Weil and John W. Allen. Drug Awareness Week. University of Hawaii. 1988.

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 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII

Andrew Weil Comments on an unfounded mushroom dependence” is virtually non-existent.

psychiatric report presented to the Juvenile Court
system in Seattle, Washington during a hearing
regarding a psychiatric evaluation describing Mr.
Allen as suffering an alleged dependency caused
by magic mushrooms.
One simply does not encounter people who take
hallucinogenic mushrooms frequently enough to form
any dependent pattern of use. One reason is that the
interesting effects of these plants disappear if they are
taken frequently.

During my divorce proceedings in the early 1980s,
my wife and I were asked to submit to psychiatric
evaluations in regards to the potential custody of our
children. The psychiatrist assigned to interview me
had the same last name and correct spelling as that of
Albert Hofmann, and he did not like drug users. He
gave a very negative report on mushrooms, and on
me, to the court, and so I asked Andrew Weil to
intervene. This is Dr. Weil’s response to the
psychiatric report by a court appointed psychiatrist,
which unfortunately, I no longer possess a copy of
said report.
I have met Mr. Allen at several conferences on
hallucinogenic mushrooms in the Pacific Northwest
over the past four years. I do not regard his use of
these mushrooms as excessive or dependent.
Incidentally, I am familiar with his booklets on the
subject and consider them credible pieces of work.
Very truly yours,
Andrew T. Weil, M.D.,
Research Associate.

BOTANICAL MUSEUM OF HARVARD

UNIVERSITY

Oxford Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 01238.

January 25, 1983

Re: John Allen,

Attn: Mr. Richard S. Graves,
Child Welfare Service.
Department of Social and Health Services,
1700 East Cherry Street,
Seattle, Washington, 90122

Dear Mr. Graves,

Psilocybe semilanceata (‘liberty cap’), Austria.
John Allen has asked me to comment on a psychiatric
Photo: Courtesy of Pilze.
report addressed to you that diagnosed him as
suffering from hallucinogenic mushroom
Grace Slicks Theme from the Movie Manhole
dependence.
1. “Sometimes it’s easy to believe it, sound may be
I am a physician and researcher of psychoactive
the warmest thing he’s found. He just starts
plants, drugs, and drug abuse; the author of three
Playing, then he says to me, “Ready your body for
books and over 150 scientific articles on those
love, there is no gravity here.
subjects, six of which deal specifically with
hallucinogenic mushrooms and their abuse potential.
Look up---the roof is gone and the long hand moves
It is my professional opinion that “hallucinogenic
right on by the hour.

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 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
Look up ---the roof is gone
2. La musica de españa es para mi como la libertad.
Canta como si la libertad es suiyo
Convenie resuena para escaper. Escuche viento
norte escuche. Como corneta Nevada corneta,
Cantar. Alrededor vient oriente vient oriente
enroyar disenroyar querdas que gritan,
Querdas que cantan.
3. Spanish wind keeps telling me how it feels to
sing free. It keeps blowing on me, it keeps showing
me, another way to listen. And if you hear the wind
singing just like someone singing for your love,
The more it sings, the more you know, horns and
strings and time will show—show you freedom,
4. Como libertad—if he looks good when you see
him, if it sounds good when you hear it—
If he feels like a good man when you see him touch
him, when you come near him—
I keep thinking about the way you keep appearing
in my ear.
5. Viento del sur suena como carne caliente en
tambor—carne en pero vineto oeste resuena,
Como alas metalicas. Giralda vena demonstrando
el camino lamentando se por la noche,
La rueda de yairro hierro en frente del sol. Quatro
pedasos de metal con puntas.
Corta el aire corta elcielo la hentes mopelados para
delatar resonar resonar escaper.
6. And if you hear the singing silver wind—fly,
sailing human bird---fly into me.
63
Look up---the roof is gone and the long hand moves
right on by the hour. Look Up
Listen---the north wind sounds like freezing horns
sailing through the east wind---And the East wind,
Has winding unwinding strings—south wind sounds
like skin on drums, skin on skin,
But the West wind, Ah the west wind echoes like
metal wings—like a weathervane whining through
the night.
Iron wheel turns in front of the sun, four-pronged
metal cuts the sky.
Man must fly.
Convenir resuena escapar---escapar.
7. If he wants to leave and follow the sound of the
wind, he’s going to sing as it blows, Let him go.
He’ll make the long faces smile; he’ll turn the dead
air into sound,
He’ll come back on the circle. He’s not gone; he’s
just going around.
Don’t tie him down, he wants to run---Give him the
sun, Don’t tie him down, he wants to run---Give
him the sun, And if you see---you think that man is
going to leave, You can follow him but he’s already
gone.
GIVE HIM THE SUN.
Grace Slick’s Album Cover: Manhole.
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
An Afterthought
Although this study and hypothesis concerns the
euphoria and aphrodisiac effects of sexual union
between male and female partners in the privacy of
their own confinements while under the influence of
psilocybin mushrooms, as you read through this
erotic night of mushroom symbiosis between my
wife and I, I again want to remind all that Timothy
Leary first brought this subject of the human
symbiosis between sexuality and drugs to the
enlightenment of the public in the 1960s, and later,
his colleague. Richard Alpert, in a controlled
supervised psychotherapeutic study with human
volunteers, used LSD in four sessions with a
practicing homosexual who admitted to thousands
of encounters with same sex partners and only 3
relationships with a female partner, yet confessed
that he believed that he was bisexual in nature.
In four sessions, the first three brought out
terrifying feelings in the male and by the third
session he was terrified and unable to achieve an
erection, when his penis apparently shriveled up
during his attempts with a female partner, with
whom he had a long-standing platonic relationship
and his female friend was willing to share
intercourse with him to help in his therapeutic
attempts to understand the nature of his own
sexuality. Interestingly, it was during the fourth
session on LSD that Alpert noted that this time his
client had “experienced [a] very strong sexual
desire towards the woman almost immediately and
they experienced sexual union, which she reported
as the most profound sexual experience of her life
(Alpert, 1969).
To further the realization that the use of psilocybin
mushrooms and other natural hallucinogens and
chemical compounds enhance the male/female
union in manners similar to Neotantric sex, I end
this theory with a comment from Ann Shulgin who,
along with her husband Shura (Sasha), consumed in
some juice of fresh fruits, approximately
15 milligrams each of a white crystalline
powdered substance, without mentioning whether
the chemical was psilocybine or psilocine. For the
64
first hour, Shura and Ann debated the effects of the
chemical substance vs. the natural fungal fruit.
Eventually they ended up in bed together and I
present here, Ann’s final comments as a closing
prayer to the virtues of togetherness and sexual
union when two people are brought together as one
in all aspects of their sexual being in symbiosis with
neurotropic compounds.
In the darkened bedroom of Ann and Shura, Ann
shivered and asked Shura, ”How about getting
under the covers right now, maybe?” Shura swung
his legs off the side of the bed and took off his
dressing gown. The skin of his left thigh rippled
faintly, as if an electric current were flowing across
it. I looked at the long, muscled back and the lovely
small, rounded bottom, but I wasn’t quite enough at
ease yet to reach out and stroke it. The energy
tremor had become impossible to ignore. I dropped
my gown on the floor and scrambled under the
sheets where I lay, grasping Shura’s hand, watching
the tiny fans of rainbow color which crowded the
ceiling.
I closed my eyes and held by breath in astonishment
at the multitude of colored images filling the mental
screen. I was standing on the floor of a mosque,
looking up at arches painted with gold-edged
designs. I was aware of Shura throwing off the
covers. The two of us were joining in the net of
light that covered the earth, adding ourselves, our
emotions and thoughts, our experiences of each
other’s smells and tastes, to flavor the whole. In the
slowing of time, each touch of hand and mouth was
an act of beauty, an offering of our own livingness
and power to affirm. We were saying Yes to
ourselves, to each other, to being alive, and Yes was
pulsing back to us.”
Ann continued with the following questioning of
what had just happened between her and Shura by
adding, “How do we learn to make love? How do
we know to trace brocade circles with our fingers
on the beloved’s skin. To say I want with a single
stroke of ankle on thigh, to honor the beauty of
curve and bone with hand and mouth. It’s a
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII
language of body, and it opens with the opening of
love in the heart and mind. It can’t be explained. It
teaches itself as you touch.” And then she
whispered, “Thank you,” and lay beside him with
closed eyes as she breathed evenly into the night
(Shulgin and Shulgin, 1997:PIHKAL).
REFERENCES
Alexander, W. M. 1969. Sex in the Philosophy of
Hamaan. Journal of the American Academy of
Religion. Vol. 37(4):331-340. Oxford University
Press.
Allen, J. W. 2005 [2001]. Mushroom Pioneers:
Ethnomycological Journals Sacred Mushroom
Studies vol. VII.
Anand, M. (2003). The New Art of Sexual Ecstasy.
New York: Harper Collins.
Alpert. R. 1969. LSD and Sexuality. Psychedelic
Review volume 10:21-24.
Babos, M. 1983. Beobachtungsangaben bei einer
halluzinogenen Inocybe-Art (ung), deutsche
zusammenfassung. Mykologische Mitteilungen:
Lardesverein für Forstwesen. Mykologische und
Holzschutzgesellschaft (Mikolögicie
Közlemenyek):3:143-144.
Brauer, A. and D. Brauer. 1991. The ESO
Ecstasy Program: Better, Safer Sexual Intimacy and
Extended Orgasmic Response. Warner Books. Cite
Johnson in Masters: p 24-25.
______ and ______. 2001. ESO: How You and
Your Lover Can Give Each Other Hours of
Extended Sexual Orgasm.
Bharati, A. (1993). Tantric Traditions. Delhi,
India: Hindustan Publishing Company.
Bodansky, S. and V. Bodansky. 2000. Extended
Massive Orgasm: How You Can Give and Receive
Intense Sexual Pleasure.
65
Brown, D. J. and R. M. Novick. Interview with
Terence McKenna. 1992. High Times Magazine
200. Excerpt from Maverick of the Mind. Crossing
Press, 1993.
Duran, D. 1867 [1581]. Mexico: J.M. Andrade and
Y. F. Escalante (1867-1880). Historia de las Indias
de Nueva España y Islas de Tierra Firme. (2 vols.),
see vol. 1:431. Editorial Portúa. México City. See
1967 edition (Angel M. Garibay, Ed.).
Efron, D. H., Holmstedt, B., and N. S. Kline.
1967. The Ethnopharmacological Search for
Psychoactive Drugs. NIMH Workshop Series No.
2, Department of Health, Education and Welfare.
United States Public Health Bulletin No. 1645. U.
S. Government Printing Office. Washington, D. C.
Estrada, A. 1976 [1981]. María Sabina: Her Life,
Her Chants. An Autobiography. Ross-Erikson.
California. Translated into English by Henry Munn.
Forte, R. 1988. (Mag., Int.). A conversation with R.
Gordon Wasson. ReVision the Journal of
Consciousness and Change vol. 10(4):13-30. Also
in Forte, Robert. (Ed.). 1997. Entheogens and the
Future of Religion. San Francisco, California.
Gartz, J. 1992a. Inocybe aeruginascens,-ein
"neuer" Pilz Europas mit halluzinogener wirkung.
Yearbook for Ethnomedicine and the Study of
Consciousness vol. 1(1):89-98.
Gartz, J. 1993. Narrenschwämme: Psychotrope
Pilze in Europa. Herausforderung an Forschung und
Wertsystem. Editions Heuwinkel. In German.
Gartz, J. 1996. Magic Mushrooms Around the
World: A Scientific Journey Across Cultures and
Time. The Case for Challenging Research and
Value Systems. Lis Publications. Los Angeles,
California. Translated by Claudia Taake. 120p.
Gartz, J 1995. Inocybe aeruginascens Babos.
Eleusis n. 3:31-34. December.
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Gartz, J. and G. Drewitz. 1985. Der erste
Nachweis des Vorkonumens con psilocybin in
Rißpilzen. Zeitschrift FüMykologie, Band
51(2):199-203.
Flores, F. 1986-1889. Historia de la Medicina en
México vol. 1:55 (See p. 258, aphrodisiacs).
Guzmán, G., Ott, J., Boydson, J. and S. H.
Pollock 1976. Psychotropic mycoflora of
Washington, Idaho, Oregon, California and British
Columbia, Canada. Mycologia vol. 68(6):1267-
1272. November-December.
Hofmann, A. 1980a. The Mexican relatives of
LSD--The sacred mushroom Teonanácatl. LSD My
Problem Child:101-144. McGraw-Hill. New York.
Hollister, L. E., Prusmack, J. J., Paulsen, J., and
N. Rosenquist. 1960. Comparison of three
psychotropic drugs (psilocybin, JB 329, and IT-290)
in volunteer subjects. Journal of Nervous and
Mental Diseases vol. 131:428-434. November.
Leary, T. 1995 [1968]. High Priest. The World
Publishing Co. New York (1968). And Ronin
Publishing, Berkeley, California 1995).
Leary, T. 1983. Flashbacks: A Personal and
Cultural History of an Era. J. P. Tarcher Inc. Los
Angeles.
McKenna, T. 1992. Food of the Gods: The Search
for the Original Tree of Life. A Radical History of
Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution. Bantam. NY.
Miller, S. 1993. (INT.). OMNI Magazine vol.
15(7):69-74, 90-92.
Pike, E. V. 1960. Mazatec sexual impurity and
bible teaching. Practical Anthropology vol. 7(2):
49-53. April.
Pike, E. V. and F. Cowan. 1959. Mushroom ritual
versus Christianity. Practical Anthropology vol.
6(4):145-150. July-August.
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Sahagún, B. de. 1956. [16th century]. The
Florentine Codex.
Schwartz, B. and L. Schwartz. 2000. Extended
Massive Orgasm: How You Can Give and Receive
Intense Sexual Pleasure.
Swain, F. 1962. Four psilocybin experiences: 1. El
hongo mistico. Tomorrow vol. 10(4):27-34.
Taylor, P. 2000. An Observational and
Comparative Study of the Practitioners of Expanded
Orgasm: An Investigation Of An Effective,
Powerful, and Accessible Path to Transcendent
States of Consciousness. Ph.D. thesis. Results
summarized on page 152, Table 6, "Descriptive
Statistics."
______. 2002. Expanded Orgasm, Soar to Ecstasy
at your Lover's Every Touch. Sourcebooks.
______. 2005[1998]. Expand Her Orgasm Tonight
- DVD, Virtual World Studio.
______. 2009. Expand Her Orgasm Tonight! The
21-Day Program For Partners.
Thomas, L. 1978. Lives of a Cell.
Thompson, J., Anglin, P., Douglas, M.,
Emboden, W. and D. G. Fisher. 1985. Mushroom
use by college students. Journal of Drug Education
vol. 15(2):111-124.
Wasson, R. G. 1957. Seeking the magic mushroom.
Life: 100-102, 109-120. May 13.
Wasson, R. G. 1979a. Traditional use in North
America of Amanita muscaria for traditional
purposes. Journal of Psychedelic Drugs vol. 11(1-
2):25-28. January-June.
Wasson, R. G. 1980. The Wondrous Mushroom:
Mycolatry in Mesoamerica. Ethnomycological
Studies No. 7. McGraw-Hill Book Co. New York
 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII

COSMIC ORGASM by Designed by John W. Allen Poster: Terence McKenna & J. W. Allen

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Art contributions include hand-painted batik and t-shirts sketched and designed by John W. Allen, painted by
Adisron Junlawanno (Mr. Samui) of Ban Chewang, JWA & Wipaporn of Ban Nathon, Koh Samui, Thailand.
Mushroom Poster of Terence McKenna and John W. Allen (courtesy of Psychonaut, the Shroomery).
Photographs: Timothy Leary and John W. Allen by Ron Piper; R. Gordon Wasson and John W. Allen by Michael
Aldridge; Andrew Weil and John W. Allen by Mark D. Merlin; Psilocybe semilanceata by Pilze (Austria); John W.
Allen, Sasha Shulgin and Jochen Gartz by Troy Donohue. All other graphic images and photographs are by John
W. Allen. Blurbs, courtesy of Dr. Stanley Krippner, Dr. Tjakko Stijve, Paul Krassner and David Jay Brown.

For further reference on Amanita muscaria with suggestive concepts as a sexual phallic erotic mushroom pictured
as art on early postcards from the late 1800s and early 1900s, see: Stijve, Tjakko. 1999. A Short note on Erotic
Mushroom Imagery in Old and Modern Postcards. Australian Mycologist Volume 18(3): 72-75.

Teonanácatl: A Bibliography of Entheogenic Fungi by John W. Allen, and has been newly revised in a
CD-ROM edition, Winter 2010. More than 2928 References, 2306 Annotations, 10,003 Cross-References,
1516 Screen-Sized (7 and ½ in Height) Colored Images, Over 1,000 Pages, 3,689 Files, 51 Folders, Size:
270 MB (283,645,932 Bytes), and Size on Disk: 277 NB (291,168,256 Bytes). ISBN 1582143994. Price in
United States is $39.99 plus $5.99 Shipping and Handling. Foreign Overseas Shipping: $8.99. Mail to:
Bibliography, Exotic Forays, P. O. Box 45164, Seattle, 98145-0164, Washington, U. S. A.

Email: mjshroomer1@yahoo.com. myconaut@live.com.

Web-Site: http://www.mushroomjohn.org/
Web-Site: http://www.ethnomycologicaljournals.com/

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ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII

Ying and Yang.

Time Warp and Mr. Samui’s Shroom Dreams.

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 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII

Phallus Display – Taipei International Airport.

THEME: ANTI-LANDSLIDE TREASURE

Aside from the suggestive phallic symbolism of certain mushrooms shapes such as those represented by
Psilocybe cubensis and Dictyphora species (including stinkhorns in China and Hawaii) that allegedly cause
instant orgasms in females who sniff them or rub them on their genitalia, this particular display describes an
opposition to sexual enhancement. “In the ancient legend of Tsou’s, it is deemed that the cause of a landslide
along mountain planted crops are attributed to the floor sweeping of a goddess called “TANCAHAE” on top of
the mountain. Accordingly, a representation of masculinity – a penis sculpture is carved pointing to the
mountain top where the landslide takes place by making the goddess to be ashamed of seeing it and to
immediately run away and thus solve the landslide problem. Ever since, whenever there is a landslide or
mudflows taking place in such areas in Taipei, the wooden anti-landslide treasure will be served by the Layi’s
to suppress the problem.

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 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII

Heavenly Celestial Neotantric Mushrooms - Representing, Psilocybe samuiensis and Psilocybe cubensis.
Sketched from actual photographs of both species by John W. Allen, color enhanced in KPTS 3 and then
hand-painted on Hanes T-Shirts by Wipaporn of Ban Nathon, Koh Samui, Surat Thani, Thailand.

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 ETHNOMYCOLOGICAL JOURNALS: SACRED MUSHROOM STUDIES VOLUME VIII

Throughout history, from Europe to the Far East during the 14th through the 17th centuries, many explorers and wandering
vagabonds, wrote and published fascinating academic and journalistic accounts after observing primitive people becoming
inebriated while participating in centuries old ritual shamanic practices. Westerners were astonished after first taking notice
that those who had knowledge of the powers of such medicinal plants and their alleged effects needed to be documented for
historical records that such magical plants were observed in use by Siberian shamans who used Amanita mushrooms.
Furthermore, over the past 2 millennia, we have learned in the last century from enthnobotanists, Richard Spruce and
Richard Evans Schultes of Amazonians who used tryptamine snuff (DMT, 5_MEO_DMT, yopo, Africans who used Ibogaine;
and the Nahuatl speaking Olmecs, Toltecs, and Aztecs who employed the sacred tryptamine mushrooms containing psilocine
and psilocybine and their Indian brethren who used peyotl. The tryptamine derivatives such as DMT and similar plants
provided their services to the indigenous peoples, as admixtures for ayahuasca, caapi, yage, all of which contain harmaline
type compounds) that let the spirit separate from the body with disembowel eyes and one under such influence of such
curative medicinal plants could freely flow through the netherworld of time and space to places beyond their normal planes of
existence while their bodies remained stable in a single place yet their spirit examined their world beyond their existence. All
of these indigenous peoples knew the secrets of the Earth and held great respect for the power such plants imbued in them and
the nature gained by two becoming as in symbiosis with such plants. Many had associated and noted the floating of the spirit
flying in search of knowledge and of sexual union and stimulation and floating away of the soul stimulated the sensation of

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sexual flight. And many primitive societies reportedly used certain potions created from crushing of leaves or the brewing of
tea with the intent to arouse and sexually stimulate the females counter partners and even females themselves who also became
sexually involved with one another. Their rapture, heard in loud moans throughout the nights in small village hamlets gave
rise to false claims of witchcraft and the odor of burnt flesh of warm bodies echoed throughout the kingdoms feministic
witches of the middle European nations who were often brutally chastised and condemned by Rome and the Catholic
Churches for punishing those who practiced unnatural human acts of same sex practices while under influence of such plants.
They sought food and war-games with similar like primitives, often killing and stealing the females for purposes of
propagation. Let us also recognized and give praise to the Nahuatl speaking Olmecs, Toltecs, and Aztecs, the masters who
employed the sacred tryptamine mushrooms containing psilocine and psilocybine and their Indian brethren to the north of
Oaxaca who used peyotl. From Mesoamerica and the South America, we also had Salvia and morning glories, the latter
containing lysergic acid amides similar to the sacred ergot compounds served at the temple of Dionysius at the Elysian Fields
in Greece, where it has been written that the sacred potion (Kykeon), was probably an alleged lysergic acid amide, possibly
very closely related more to LSD than the Morning glories or the Agreria nervosa (Baby Hawaiian Woodrose Seed). Since
there are many grains of wild grasses in the Mediterranean related to Claviceps purpurea (ergot), it is a likely source of the
potion served at the mysteries of Demeter. And it is said that the Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, at the rites of Demeter,
may have consumed it. All of these indigenous peoples knew the secrets of the Earth and held great respect for the power such
plants imbued in them and the natural knowledge gained from becoming one with such plants. Many had associated and noted
the floating of the spirit flying in search of knowledge and of sexual union and stimulation as one under such influence could
believably allowed their spirits and souls to float away thus stimulated the sensation of sexual flight. And many primitive
societies reportedly used certain potions created from crushing of leaves or the brewing tea with the intent to arouse and
sexually stimulate females and even females themselves also became sexually involved with one another. Their rapture, heard
in loud moans throughout the nights in small European village hamlets in the Middle-Ages gave rise to false claims of
witchcraft and the odor of burnt flesh of warm bodies echoed throughout the kingdoms as feministic witches of the middle
European nations were often brutally chastised and condemned for unnatural human acts of same sex practices while under
influence of such plants.

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