With the coming of the cool wet weather of autumn, life begins to turn inward again . The fields lie fallow and bare, flowers wither, leaves decay, and all life seems to return to the earth. It's in this period of fading light, that strange and beautiful forms begin to arise from the undergrowth in the temperate regions all over Europe. In woodlands, fields, gardens and along roadsides, colourful fungi and mushrooms of all shapes and sizes quietly spring forth and flourish as if from nowhere, while all else appears in a state of decline. A short entry in volume 1670 of the Main Manuscript Collection at the NFC contains information collected from around Ireland on the topic of mushrooms in folk tradition. The material contained in this volume, previously unpublished and explored in this podcast episode, explores traditional attitudes to mushrooms in Irish tradition and outlines their uses along with popular beliefs concerning them. Audio from the NFC sound archive also features, along with audio material from the collections of the Irish Traditional Music Archive and the singing group Landless. My thanks to archivist Danielle Castronovo at the Economic Botany Herbarium of Oakes Ames, Harvard University for her help in filling the gaps of some correspondence between R. Gordon Wasson and the Irish Folklore Commission. My thanks to archivist Maeve Gebreurs at the Irish Traditional Music Archive for forwarding Diane Hamilton's 1957 recording of Robert Cinnamond's rendition of the song 'Gathering Mushrooms'. Thanks likewise to Emmett Gill, archivist at Na Píobairí Uileann for pointing me in the direction of the collection of which this song is a part. Thanks too to Dónal Lunny, copyright holder, for permission to include this piece in the podcast. A variety of sources are consulted and discussed throughout, some links below: Prehistoric fungal representations in Tassili Algeria https://www.britannica.com/place/Tassili-n-Ajjer A Prehistoric Mural in Spain Depicting Neurotropic Psilocybe Mushrooms? https://www.jstor.org/stable/41242925 The Fungus Lore of the Greeks and Romans https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0007153614800077 Dioscorides: De Materia Medica https://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/aconite/materiamedica.html Mushroom Artwork of Otto Marseus van Shrieck https://bit.ly/3nEwy3n Plutarch: Essays and Miscellanies https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3052/3052-h/3052-h.htm#link2HCH0065 The Hypothesis on the Presence of Entheogens in the Eleusinian Mysteries https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327838578_The_hypothesis_on_the_presence_of_entheogens_in_the_Eleusinian_Mysteries Mircea Eliade - Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691210667/shamanism Nora Chadwick: Imbas Forosnai http://searchingforimbas.blogspot.com/p/imbas-forosnai-by-nora-k-chadwick.html An Irish Materia Medica: Tadhg Ó Cuinn https://celt.ucc.ie//published/G600005/index.html William Camden: Brittania https://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/travellers/Camden/32 Seeking the Magic Mushroom: Life Magazine May 1957 (via MAPS.org) https://bibliography.maps.org/bibliography/default/resource/15048 Tina and R. Gordon Wasson - Russia, Mushrooms and History (vols. 1, & 2) [PDF] https://doorofperception.com/2015/04/r-gordon-wasson-seeking-the-magic-mushroom/ Audio featured from the Irish Traditional Music Archive: https://itma.ie Landless: https://landless.bandcamp.com/ National Folklore Collection online portal: https://dúchas.ie

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

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