Word: amanita
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...conference participants showed a certain sense of urgency because most of these substances are still known only to relatively primitive peoples whose cultures are being bulldozed away by developing countries. The "psychoactive" substances under study ranged from amanita muscaria to yagé, from snuffs to enemas. They extend from the Andes across Polynesia to the East Indies, from the Siberian valley of the Yenisei to Hindu Kush and the Mediterranean. Among the most discussed...
...describes, their mental ones. More treasured still have been the substances used to bring mortal flesh into the presence of the divine. Such was the mysterious soma, mentioned in a Sanskrit chronicle. Nomads on the Kamchatka Peninsula lofted themselves into the dazzling world of the gods with the mushroom Amanita muscaria, and discovered that the visions of one eater could be passed to as many as five others if each one drank the urine of the man before him. In South America, long before Columbus, witch doctors took cohoba snuff to converse with gods and the dead...
...Hallucinogenic" or "psychedelic" (literally, "mind-manifesting") drugs come in three groups. The mild ones are morning-glory seeds, nutmeg and marijuana. The moderately potent ones are the mescaline of Weir Mitchell's experiment, psilocybin (derived from the Mexican Indians' "sacred mushroom"), bufotenine (a constituent of Amanita muscaria), and dimethyltryptamine (found in cohoba). By itself on the third level is LSD. It has 100 times the potency of psilocybin and 7,000 times that of mescaline, which is itself considerably more powerful than marijuana...
Blame for 95% of the victims was laid on an innocent-looking toadstool with a greenish cap known as Amanita phalloides,* whose tender meat can cause violent abdominal cramps, vomiting, diarrhea, liver damage, intense thirst, convulsions, delirium, and death in from five to ten days. Concerned, Paris officials dispatched special champignon sherlocks to inspect incoming truckloads of wild mushrooms at the central market, and the Pasteur Institute stepped up shipments of an antitoxin serum...
...deranged but enchanting mentality that Author Jackson has chosen this time belongs to Mary Katherine ("Merricat") Blackwood-actual age 18, mental age a precocious twelve. "I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet," she reflects, "and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom." She is a gentle child who promises herself to be kinder to her Uncle Julian. She is already kind enough to Constance and to her enigmatic cat Jonas. But for some reason she is never allowed to touch knives...