Stoned Apes with Magic Cups

This collection of curious objects appears ancient because they are ancient. Yet the primordial relics are made today, produced in synthesis, from the shared natural knowledge of ‘stoned apes’, and secrets hidden in the Holy Scriptures for the making of ‘magic cups’.

Clay terra-cotta pots, beakers and grails are built following the earliest functional historical forms. The mud is fired at and around the temperatures that would have been limited to the early civilizations. The high temperatures of the kiln are low enough that the terracotta does not vitrify, rather they remain porous. A porous pot is best for growing any living thing, this earth-based medium allows air and water to pass through its walls which can then also store and contain nutrients.

Meanwhile

A dumb growing mushroom is popping up everywhere trying to make itself be seen. The Amanita Muscaria. The only way that this beautiful Fly Agaric mushroom can be ignored is because somehow a common knowledge has turned it into a dangerous poison. However, the Amanita Muscaria is and has been historically used by many cultures for shamanic and/or intoxicating purposes. These toadstools are not harvested, except in the case of this work, they are collected throughout the Teutonic forests from late summer until Halloween. The Amanita Muscaria’s principle alkaloids are ibotenic acid and muscimol. When the mushroom is dried the ibotenic acid is converted to muscimol which is the most desired agent. Fresh, the Fly Agaric contains a carbon dioxide molecule, this property will cause negative side-effects, experienced as a kind of carbonation of your guts, nausea, cramps, vomiting and extreme sedation resulting in a coma like sleep with no hallucinogenic effects. But the mushroom safely dried and later processed, avoids any of these possible symptoms and actually boosts its entheogenic properties. The autumn mushrooms are allowed to thoroughly dry, by early winter they would be ready to be consumed. The natural rhythm would account for this undefined period easily, marked as the change of season with winter’s apex indicating the moment to perform the secret operation.

Resurrection

The long dead Fly Agaric mushrooms have the capability to come back to life. The terra-cotta vessels are filled to their maximum with the dried specimens, pushed and pressed crunching to fill the pot. Grape juice in the capacity of the pot is poured over the mushrooms, until they are completely submerged. Here, the same grapes that given to a different ancient process would produce an alcoholic drink, will produce a drink with very different qualities. After a long soak, the grape juice has changed, poured off as tincture. The pots are covered, moist, left in the warm dark, consuming the sugars left behind, the mushrooms change form, the vessels are overtaken by the primordial mycelium, the vegetative part of the fungus, consisting of a network of fine white filaments. The pots are now alive, and the cycle producing the stimulating tincture can be repeated indefinitely.


This is the ‘stuff’ of the Holy Grail-

The New Testament is ancient scientific (empirical) knowledge embedded in a story. There are only two ways to preserve complex knowledge without writing. First, make it poetry or song where the rhyme helps one remember the information, the Rig Veda is a prime example of this, where the poetry of the Hymns lend itself to being used as a vehicle of knowledge. Second, make it part of a story. In remembering the story, the knowledge is remembered, but the story itself must be memorable. The New Testament is an example of this second method. As long as you know this story actually contains hidden knowledge, there is no misunderstanding; but if you don’t know it is really a vehicle for transmitting hidden knowledge with magical metaphors; and so believe it to be literal, then misunderstanding is all this method can produce. Many major points in the New Testament such as “the virgin birth,” “water to wine”, “healing,” “prophecy” and “the resurrection” fit Amanita Muscaria precisely, they of course do not fit a man or any other life form on the planet, except symbolically.


“It is not I who speak . . . it is the logos”

Requiring no intelligence, but certainly not mute, this immortal fungus and its accompanying magic vessel are the source of ancient legend and myth. It was called Maga, “the Great Gift,” the very root of our modern word Magic Magi, Magus, and Magician. Those who carried the Great Gift were called “Gift bearers,”. The Grail, Amanita Muscaria’s great gift to mankind, a magical never-ending source of inspiration, enlightenment, healing, comfort, joy, and by it’s very existence, astonishment. These grails and beakers recreated with Amanita Muscaria match the ‘Holy Grail’ of ancient legend perfectly.

Whatever else one may say about Amanita muscaria, she is certainly hypnotic. One could never call her tentative, nor afraid to stand out. She’s showy and she knows it.

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good to eat, and that it was pleasing to the eye and pleasing to contemplate, she took some and ate it. She also gave her husband some and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they discovered that they were naked.

The story of Genesis is the story of a woman who is mistress of the magical plants. At the metaphorical level, they had attained consciousness of themselves as individuals and of each other as "Other.

The world’s most famous mushroom

What is most remarkable about this Scarlet Woman is her power to bewitch from afar- you never have to touch her, much less eat her, to fall under her spell.

Living in a foreign land is often characterized by a loss of connection to the natural environment that surrounds us often leaving one citified, land-locked in the metropolis. Most of this connection to the land is built through a childhood, of picking berries with grandma, planting the garden with your father, digging for clams with grandpa, hunting for worms with your cousins, to go fishing with your old neighbor. When one finds oneself amongst pine and cedar, beach and poplars, missing the south seas, there is obviously no point to go picking figs.

Back in the Canadian forests I learned how to forage, I want to find chanterelles, morels, fiddleheads, and blueberries, but each time I come home with nothing except very much enjoying the fresh air. There is another way to treasure hunt, rather than deciding what to look for and then searching for it in the wild, one can start by trying to see what is there and learning how to use it. The witches would call it, hunting backwards.

Was getting slightly sleepy without realizing it. and 've read about the nausea, but god, i didn't know it was this bad. it just suddenly started. the nausea i mean. not eating beforehand is prob a mistake. ugh, the nausea is really bad … gonna lie down for a while.

just got up to tell you all VERY DIZZY and i notice the saliva effects too. salivating more than usual even before drinking water.

i felll askeep just now and suddendly wope up beofre 10. i don't rememembre dreaming or taking the mushrooms and just sat up for almost 5 minutes there not knowking anything. i didn't realise i was inder the influence until i knoticed i was repepating 'shut now' and' 'recipient' while looking back and forth at two nacent peoole. i know the pic are thise them byt sge looke anyway, so there's like three google for 3 pll to 'go for it' and 'recipent'/

its hard to type. i saw that my hard of view is sharrting to get hard now. when i see a line it rend tosee another like with the 'comp' 'abuse' words. damn i didn't reliuase but talkimg will be hard on this one,the visual field is too fast for me fo one thint. when i look left ahright as the keyboard once, it's like 'helllo nad tkae care'

sorry, tellying is hardf since i'mt thinkbg one character bakc is correct/i keepm moving my head to the northwest.i can tell i'm very under the influnce.it was go keep going northwest. keeps on upperright uppperright and hehe oops i thought my iphone was my mouse, i kep themside by sode controlled with a lit of effects but it does keep shiny and i have be my on my toes all the time. yep, lazy to correct the typos too.

walkked to the toilet just nopw and realized my motor skills isn't as stable as i thought it was. fell down while putting on toilet slippers. things are strange too, found mysefl very open to any suggestions, can be quite a dangerous drug in this context. and now my head heard this it keeps wanting to lean to the left and grabbed screen instead of my mouse.

i think amanita is clear for me. i have no 'mental noise', totally silent for the occational 'all clear' that its repeating now. it can repeat anything too, but just one phase. I notice it went 'boom, boom boom' just now, but otherwise the mental clarity is good,. i don't think i can talk properfly though but i can try if confronted.

the effects are mainly mental. the only 'visuals' i saw was a very fast moving field of vision. you dunno how hard it was to type those few words. my brain keeps repeating 'television' and another phrase i forgot to comfuse me. it wanted me to help something else, i think. oh i rememeber now! it was 'help' my brain keeeps repeating 'help' in a male voice like someone is in trouble. the vouce sounds middle aged, caucasian, and weakening, like he's drownking (not in water) in something like weak sand. quicksand i mean.

ah i can see i'm confusing you too. anyway, i was just talkking about a filed of vision who like to instist going 'went of form' come her' to eat oothter ahd i looked back and forth even thought I'm tyoping now. strabge, :) ate a time tam. wasn't aware of the taste at first but its great now. at firt duriring the crunching stage, it feels large and volimuniis in my mouth, but tasted dry, there wasn't any taste until a movied it back a bit towards by throat. then the nice taste came. i just notice i dropped a piece of chocolate on my hard and i was surprised at this new brown bit on my left hand. i was thinking is it a bug that landed on my hand or did i grow a new strange brown wart?

i didn't want to eat the small bit after i made the bug association. ah, now you scared me a bit.i don't like bugs and i subconsiouly shuddered a littke as i bruch it offed. damn. heh. surprised myself that i should shudder even know my mind knows that its obviously not some bug but a piece of chocolate.

oh i just noticed that i was doing minor twitching tooo. little things i can't control like my right hand twiched a acouple of seconds ago. which is strange (damn my brain insisted on writing 'why' as strange' but i won)

i don't know why but it seems that i like to wave now. like move to side to side.. oh damn i lost a bit of infor by not saving. btw, i haven't eaten, walking feels unsteady right now, will try again later.

short term memory is either affected or overrided by some other effect. can't do stuff quickly. wanted to resize the amanita pics and took ages. keep going to wrong folders that seemed 'right'. keep going to wrong menus that seemed 'wrong'. sometimes i even know they're wronf before clicking the folders and yet my hand goes to click it. what a paradox!

yeah it things can be quite blur. trying to do things is hard since your mind seems to have a mind of its own and want to do other things. so you end up doing things that was not what you wanted. this is like picking up wrong things - want to pick up keys, pick up fan instead, really strange stuff. hmm...

it’s quite interesting, not “noteworthy interesting” but “interesting interesting”.

Folks, just because it gets one ‘fucked up’ doesn’t mean it’s a guaranteed mystical experience. I see it in no other way than eating a poisonous mushroom, and I can’t blame mycologists for seeing it that way.

Amanita muscaria is the most famous entheogen in the world that nobody uses. (well, hardly anybody). It is the supreme symbol of all entheogenic religion: of secret cults and societies of initiates and whispered lost knowledge. Wasson thought it was soma and the origin of religion itself. John Allegro thought that Christianity was an Amanita cult, that Jesus was a code for the fly agaric. Clark Heinrich, expanding on the ideas of Wasson and Allegro, has Moses initiated into a secret fly agaric cult before he sees the burning bush, as well as the mushroom being the Holy Grail and the elixir of the alchemists. According Andrija Puharich, the sacred mushroom was so highly revered by the Egyptians and so secret that it wasn’t even part of their language. James Arthur and Donald teeter add the Sumerian Tree of Knowledge and Mithraism to the mushroom’s achievements. Peter Lamborn Wilson conjures Amanita-soma from Irish legends and folklore. Carl Ruck finds the mushroom hiding in the Golden Fleece, and in the fire of Prometheus. Blaise Staples finds Amanitas within secret orders in Christian monasteries.

What all of her worthy devotees have in common is their embracing of the word “entheogen”. Entheogen, proposed and subsequently championed by Ruck and his colleagues, has become the socially acceptable euphemism for “psychedelic”. Or such, anyway, was the idea-Wasson’s idea- so that classy folk could distance themselves from the
riffraff.

Unfortunately, “entheogen” is not a synonym for “psychedelic”. Psychedelics are wild and transgressive. Entheogens are sacred and spiritual. Entheogens aspire to social acceptability. They think if they can only prove themselves bona fide religious sacraments- or better, the ancient basis of all religion and culture- that maybe then Daddy and Big Brother will admit us back into the fold. It’s as if a blessing is cast just by the word being enunciated. One can almost smell the incense.

As for Amanita, all the attention is fine with her, as long as it’s all theoretical. If you eat her though, it’s a different story, and she’ll take her revenge for the idolatry.

They were in a pasture beneath some cypress trees. All the horses were staring at me, like they knew something, or were trying to say something.

Anywhere in the world it grew, plant doctors must have tried it. And there are many traces, but there almost always like old tracks, a footprint that’s almost completely blown away, or an impression that might be a footprint. There are traces of Amanita in Mesoamerica, among the Ojibway, and among some western Indian tribes. There are traces in the Pyrenees and traces in Germany. In Afghanistan there may even be footprints. There are traces in India, maybe. Traces, yes, and maybe traces in a secret sect of tantric Buddhists. Maybe.

There seems to be four classes of use for the mushroom: sacred and magic activities, such as divination and communicating with the dead; the recital of epics, going mad, singing and ranting for hours; for difficult physical work, such as haymaking and pulling boats with ropes; and as a narcotic, for euphoria and dreaming.

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The Ace of Cups

I do not know how old I am; I could be a naive young man or an old romantic or, why not, a young girl or an old woman. I can dance in an endless spring or shrivel up in an eternal winter. I do not command but am at my subjects’ service. I am not the way; I am the welcome mat. Whatever I receive, I give away.

Legends and stories of the grail echo down through the ages, whispering to us, of power and wisdom, living in a cup. Stories of wondrous cauldrons and magic bowls whose drink of healing, poetry, and inspiration never runs out. The Secret of the Grail is ancient, perhaps older than civilization itself, the stories predate Christianity, old myths that were adopted by the Church. The word Grail comes from the Celtic “Greal”, which means a brew of inspiration. The grail is mysterious, yet it is real, it can be understood. The grail is magical, yet like all magic once the secret is understood, it’s very simple. The creation of a grail involved the practice of the highest magic known to early humanity. A sacred, immortal, hallucinogenic plant crushed and consumed as a beverage. Immortal it comes back to life and lives in a suitable container, like this cup, perhaps forever.

Like all the higher fungus (mushrooms etc.) the Amanita muscaria fungus occurs in two forms, the mushroom (the fruiting body) and the actual plant (the primal form) this primal form resembles common molds, such as bread mold. The primal form of Amanita Muscaria can be huge; a single plant can cover multiple acres of a forest and weigh many tons. Once inoculated by the ancient process, it is this primal form, the mycelium, that grows and lives in the pots, beakers and cups. The enchanted objects are now alive, and provided they are given the most basic conditions to survive, they will, perhaps forever, in the least they should outlive you.

The names of the Amanita tincture: Soma (the pressed one), Ambrose (not-mortal) and Nek-tar (death-overcomer), Maga (the Great Gift), names obviously based on the plant’s resurrection and immortality and also the root of the words magic, magi, and magician.