The ancient practice of mushrooms & cacao

Hi there 🍄 

This week’s highlights include a guide to chanterelles and a time-lapse video of the iconic stinkhorn mushroom.

An ancient practice in the modern age

Where past meets present 🍫 In ancient and indigenous South American cultures, psilocybin mushrooms and cacao were combined in spiritual ceremonies. Cacao is a “teacher plant” and is often viewed as a spirit guide, one that’s especially beneficial during a mushroom trip. Each was revered for its godliness and sometimes, the two were combined in a single drink. Indigenous practices still protect this sacred relationship as modern mushroom companies introduce cacao into their products to harness the same effects. As research on the positive benefits of functional mushrooms and cacao is published, knowing how to respectfully adopt these ancient rites is the modern mission.

Read more about cacao and mushrooms.

Coming to a farmer’s market near you

Chanterelle season 🧺 Chanterelles are one of the top three mushrooms sold worldwide. Their peppery taste sings enough to stand alone but is versatile when added to dishes like pasta. Chanterelles are also some of the most expensive culinary mushrooms. It all comes down to the fact that they can’t be grown commercially, so your chanterelles at the farmer’s market have likely come from professional foragers. Wild chanterelles grow across continents, from Europe to Africa to North America, but if you head out this fall, practice ethical wildcrafting and leave more for the forest floor.

Read more about how to use chanterelle mushrooms.

Around the web

• The Women’s Visionary Council is hosting the 2023 Women’s Visionary Congress from October 6-9, 2023, in Berkeley, California. Folks of all genders are welcome, and it’s the first time the WVC will be held since 2019. The Women’s Visionary Council has been responsible for amplifying the voices of women and elders in psychedelics since 2007, and their panel at this year’s Psychedelic Science was one of the most informative and moving.

• Roland Griffiths, the psychedelic pioneer whose 2006 study on psilocybin is linked to the re-emergence of mainstream psychedelic research, spoke with Lucid News’ Ann Harrison about how the field has progressed.

• A government forestry office in eastern Germany caught this time-lapse video of a stinkhorn mushroom growing and decaying over one week. As they say with stinkhorns, “you’ll smell them before you see them,” and the flies certainly did in this case.

Featured artist: Alexis Nikole Nelson

Alexis Nikole Nelson is a forager and wildly popular creator who posts on TikTok as alexisnikole and Instagram as blackforager. Her videos are so informative, from how to mindfully forage to how to actually use what you find in new ways. Her encyclopedic knowledge is approachable and the joy she finds in the natural world is contagious. She even won the first James Beard Award for Best Social Media Account in 2022! Her recent recipe on Mushroom Chicky Tenders using Chicken of the Woods, shown above, is one that’s on my permanent rotation.

If you found these stories enlightening 🍄