“Magic mushroom” diverts here. For different purposes, see Magic mushroom (disambiguation).

Psilocybe semilanceata
Magic Mushroom; usually known as sorcery mushrooms, mushrooms, are a polyphyletic casual gathering of growths that contain psilocybin which transforms into psilocin upon ingestion.[1][2] Biological genera containing psilocybin mushrooms incorporate Copelandia, Gymnopilus, Inocybe, Panaeolus, Pholiotina, Pluteus, and Psilocybe. Psilocybin mushrooms have been and keep on being utilized in native New World societies in strict, divinatory, or profound contexts.[3] Psilocybin mushrooms are additionally utilized as sporting medications. They might be portrayed in Stone Age rock craftsmanship in Africa and Europe, yet are most broadly addressed in the Pre-Columbian figures and glyphs seen all through North, Central and South America.

Main article: Psilocybin § History
Early

Pre-Columbian mushroom stones
Ancient stone expressions close to Villar del Humo in Spain, recommends that Psilocybe hispanica was utilized in strict customs 6,000 years ago.[4] The hallucinogenic[5] types of the Psilocybe class have a background marked by use among the local people groups of Mesoamerica for strict fellowship, divination, and mending, from pre-Columbian times to the present day.[6] Mushroom stones and themes have been found in Guatemala.[7] A statuette dating from ca. 200 CE. portraying a mushroom unequivocally looking like Psilocybe mexicana was tracked down in the west Mexican territory of Colima in a shaft and chamber burial place. A Psilocybe animal types referred to the Aztecs as teōnanācatl (in a real sense “divine mushroom”: agglutinative type of teōtl (god, holy) and nanācatl (mushroom) in Nahuatl language) was supposedly served at the royal celebration of the Aztec ruler Moctezuma II in 1502. Aztecs and Mazatecs alluded to psilocybin mushrooms as virtuoso mushrooms, divinatory mushrooms, and wondrous mushrooms, when converted into English.[8] Bernardino de Sahagún revealed the formal utilization of teonanácatl by the Aztecs when he ventured out to Central America after the undertaking of Hernán Cortés.[9]

After the Spanish success, Catholic evangelists crusaded against the social practice of the Aztecs, excusing the Aztecs as heathens, and the utilization of stimulating plants and mushrooms, along with other pre-Christian customs, was rapidly suppressed.[7] The Spanish accepted the mushroom permitted the Aztecs and others to speak with devils. Regardless of this set of experiences the utilization of teonanácatl has continued in some remote areas.[3]

Current

The principal notice of psychedelic mushrooms in European restorative writing was in the London Medical and Physical Journal in 1799: a man served Psilocybe semilanceata mushrooms he had picked for breakfast in London’s Green Park to his loved ones. The pharmacist who treated them later portrayed how the most youthful youngster “was gone after with attacks of unbalanced chuckling, nor might the dangers of his dad or mom at any point hold back him.”[10]

Psilocybe mexicana

In 1955, Valentina Pavlovna Wasson and R. Gordon Wasson turned into the principal known European Americans to take part in a native mushroom service effectively. The Wassons did a lot to promote their experience, in any event, distributing an article on their encounters in Life on May 13, 1957.[11] In 1956, Roger Heim distinguished the psychoactive mushroom the Wassons brought back from Mexico as Psilocybe,[12] and in 1958, Albert Hofmann originally recognized psilocybin and psilocin as the dynamic mixtures in these mushrooms.[13][14]

Enlivened by the Wassons’ Life article, Timothy Leary ventured out to Mexico to encounter psilocybin mushrooms himself. At the point when he got back to Harvard in 1960, he and Richard Alpert began the Harvard Psilocybin Project, advancing mental and strict investigation of psilocybin and other hallucinogenic medications. Alpert and Leary searched out to direct research with psilocybin on detainees during the 1960s, testing its impacts on recidivism.[15] This investigation explored the subjects a half year after the fact, and found that the recidivism rate had diminished past their assumption, beneath 40%. This, and another analysis directing psilocybin to graduate eternality understudies, showed contention. Soon after Leary and Alpert were excused from their positions by Harvard in 1963, they turned their consideration toward elevating the hallucinogenic experience to the beginning hipster counterculture.[16]

The advancement of entheogens by the Wassons, Leary, Terence McKenna, Robert Anton Wilson and numerous others prompted a blast in the utilization of psilocybin mushrooms all through the world. By the mid 1970s, numerous psilocybin mushroom species were depicted from mild North America, Europe, and Asia and were broadly gathered. Books depicting strategies for developing huge amounts of Psilocybe cubensis were additionally distributed. The accessibility of psilocybin mushrooms from wild and developed sources have made them one of the most generally utilized of the hallucinogenic medications.

As of now, psilocybin mushroom use has been accounted for among certain gatherings traversing from focal Mexico to Oaxaca, including gatherings of Nahua, Mixtecs, Mixe, Mazatecs, Zapotecs, and others.[3] A significant figure of mushroom utilization in Mexico was María Sabina,[17] who utilized local mushrooms, for example, Psilocybe mexicana in her training.