Jochen Gartz - Magic Mushrooms Around the ... - preterhuman.net

Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, Germany,
Switzerland, and recently Russia near the St.
Petersburg area. The mushrooms have even been
found in Siberia. In some areas, where the
mushrooms thrive in abundance, a more
comprehensive mode of usage can be observed,
without attracting much additional attention over
a longer period of time.
Costly measures, such as the deployment of
helicopters over pastures in the Jura Mountains of
Switzerland to flush out mushroom collectors have
rarely been used and were quickly abandoned.
Switzerland is another country where
Psilocybe cubensis is being cultivated and used
without attracting much attention. Below is an
account provided by a Swiss friend about his first
ever experience with this species:
Intense, kaleidoscope-like colors are being
generated. I begin to dive in and out of other
realities, followed by the painful loss of ego, death
and life. Suddenly I find myself inside a wooden
box. My body is a black mass full of low-level pain.
I have the black plague. I was put inside the box,
because I was thought to be dead, but I am still
alive. I am being carried to and placed on top of
cart so that I can be transported to be burned. Few
others are being given such a box. At first I
am in despair, but then I know that the end is near,
anyway. Death is a liberation for me. I
remember: I see my house in the city center of
Metz, where I used to live until now. Then came the
plague. My years of selfish dedication of helping
sick, degenerate, stinking, hungry and dying people.
I provide comfort and companionship, as
well as medication that remains ineffective. I
continuously make house calls, there is no end in
sight. I become ill myself. At first I deny this
fact, but now I am inside this wooden box, in a state
of semi-consciousness. I know that the end is here.
I know that I am a physician named
Claudius Vinzen and that the year is 1427.
I wake up in the reality of winter, 1990.
Metz, where is Metz Later on, I locate the city on a
map of France and until this day, I have been trying
to verify if this physician lived there during the
Middle Ages. I am reminded of my long years of
professional work with criminal and drug-addicted
youngsters. I sense the common elements of
these two realities (karma), the sacrifices of
selfless helping.
Such deeply moving experiences do
not appear to be unusual (compare to reports of
experiences with Psilocybe semilanceata in
Chapter 3.1) and should always be studied in all
seriousness.
Only France seems to engage in
elaborate activities designed to locate collectors
of psychotropic mushrooms. Despite its grand
mycological traditions, France is a country that
has a rather absurd prohibition against the
exhibition of Psilocybe and Stropharia species
(European Stropharia species do not produce
psilocybin) at scientific conventions. As a
consequence, French mycologists have been
avoiding the use of the genus Psilocybe.
Nowadays, at mycological conventions,
Psilocybes are exhibited under the old name of
Geophila (Quelet), which appears to have gotten
around the problem of breaking the law.
According to my personal communications
with mycologists, the usage of
Psilocybe semilanceata in Italy began in about
1980/1981 and has been rising steadily since
then. At the same time, there have been no
clinically relevant cases, nor any legislative
action on the matter. Towards the late 1980s,
usage of psychoactive Psilocybe species began in
the former Czechoslovakia, for instance, around
the region of Brno. It appears that Psilocybe
bohemica is used more often in this country than
Psilocybe semilanceata, as the former species is
quite common there.
Very little is known about European usage
of mushroom species from other genera. In the
mid-1980s, Spanish youngsters near Barcelona
were observed using Panaeolus mushrooms.
The well-known booklet authored by Oss
and Oeric about the cultivation of Psilocybe
cubensis has been translated into several European
languages and published in different countries. It
is almost certain that the book is being used as a
cultivation guide in Europe, however, there are no
available data about the success rate of these
experiments. In many cases, commonly occurring
contaminants probably prevent fruiting of this
subtropical species on rye substrate.
I won't risk making predictions about the
extent of future usage of indigenous European
psychoactive mushroom species, nor am I able to
predict which species may or may not gain in