Across anthropological records, oral traditions and cultural lore, mushrooms appear at the threshold of life and death. In the natural world, mushrooms are the organic alchemists of decay and “breakdown” bridging the visible and the invisible, turning life over as an ancient keeper of the balance. Where mushrooms are found, the whole ecosystem hums with renewal.
Magical mushrooms contain psilocybin and can be recognized as teachers that help us cross through portals of perception. From the Mazatec veladas (vigils) in Mexico, to Siberian shamans brewing Amanita tea beneath the auroras, to the ancient Greek rites of Eleusis, fungi have appeared in rituals as mediators between seen and unseen realms [1,2]
Across cultures and centuries, psilocybin has been ingested “to see” and connect with ‘spiritual forces’ and a subtle intelligence that dwells beyond our ordinary awareness. In devoting to an altered state, we may encounter ancestors, archetypes, or other aspects of our Self – these experiences are known to deliver lessons reshaping how we understand life, death, and our place within the living web.
The Thinning Veil
Here in Canada, many of us grew up on Halloween as a favorite seasonal celebration – though over time, the commodity of candy and sugar has become its defining symbol. The costumes and Trick-or-Treating roots span from Samhain (Hallowe’en, All Hallows’ Eve), an ancient Celtic festival marking both an ending, and a beginning – the Celtic New Year, when the old cycle of light dies so a new one can be born. As the leaves begin to turn and fall in the northern hemisphere, the collective attention drifts toward the unseen, the mystery of death, and what lies beyond. It is commonly stated at this time of year, that there is a” veil between worlds” thinning… Perhaps you notice your intuition seems louder and the dreamworld feels closer.
Around harvest time in Mesoamerica, Día de los Muertos invites the ancestors home for a visit, celebrating life through remembrance. When we allow space for grief and love to co-exist, through ceremonial/celebrational ritual in community, we open the heart’s door to deeper healing and integration, perhaps even with candy 😉 We love to see more ancestral rituals emerging as our awareness begins to shift from capitalism to genuine communion. Japan, China, South Asia, and parts of Europe, all mark autumn as a threshold season, one foot in the underworld, one in the sun. [3]
Seeing in the Dark
Shamanic cultures honour mushrooms as beings, compassionate helpers of the ceremonies they are presented in, where healing energy is cultivated. The Mazatec curandera Maria Sabina of Huautla de Jiménez, Oaxaca, Mexico, was a female curandera (Shaman) Indigenous, and autonomous, however lived unfortunate and real repercussions in sharing her life and legacy with the ceremony of mushrooms. [4]
She called them “niños santos,” the “little saints.” She described how these beings allowed her to “see in the dark”; Maria Sabina’s ceremonies helped members of the community recover soul fragments, and receive messages from those who had passed.
During her veladas (vigils) participants would eat mushrooms in silence, while María Sabina began to sing her cantos -ceremonial chants that opened the unseen world. Sickness and dis-ease was revealed at the root, ancestors offered guidance, and the spirits of nature sang their counsel through sensation and song. The mushrooms, she said, were intermediaries, interpreters of the invisible.
The Spiral Nature of Life and Death
Mushrooms feed on the decomposition of what once lived, transforming what has fallen or reduced to ash, into fertile new ground – the soil as the ultimate space holder for beginnings and new life. In this way, mushrooms mirror the process of spiritual renewal: what dies in us gives life to something more conscious, more complete.
Mushrooms are the communicators of the underworld. Their mycelial threads weave beneath forests like a blanket of telepathy, trading nutrients, information and bringing balance to entire ecosystems. When we ingest mushrooms we link ourselves into this conversation. Plugging into a living intelligence that innately knows how to recycle pain into wisdom, and grief into growth. [5]
It’s no surprise that so many who journey with psilocybin speak of encountering loved ones who’ve passed, or receiving “messages” that seem to come from the other side or another dimension. Perhaps they are there all along, and the mushroom acts as an ally to our growth and healing in removing a veil that otherwise keeps these perceptions invisible to our human eyes and minds. Perhaps these are not just hallucinations, but transmissions from the same network that carries an energy imprint, a frequency, of every life that has ever been lived…
Microdose the Mystery
As our days quicken and the nights grow longer, the air sharpens and we feel something mysterious and ancient. Between harvest and hibernation, we walk in a liminal space and we can observe the tender dance between life and death in nature. If the veil truly thins during this time, what happens when we consciously invite psilocybin into this opening, perhaps exploring gentle, sub-perceptable experiences through microdosing with an intention for healing and an openness to the helping spirits of the mushrooms.
To begin an intentional microdose protocol with magic mushrooms during the harvest season of Samhain/ Halloween is to embrace a sort of therapeutic mischief. We highly recommend it! In tune with the season, you can begin to slow dance with the dark and observe what becomes illuminated when you devote a time and space of inquiry and lovingly ‘get to know the shadows.’ When we approach the mushrooms with reverence, genuine curiosity, and a healthy willingness to move toward a death cycle, we set the stage for true transformation. We learn to trust the spiral nature of life and death, and that certain aspects of ourselves or our lives are ready to be released, composted, and reborn in time.
Messages from Beyond
The mushrooms open our eyes through theirs, revealing what’s been waiting to be seen. Some journeys bring a sort of trickster energy; a spirited stirring of what hides beneath the surface. Others deliver the truth, loud and luminous, sometimes painful. The mushrooms can make us laugh until we cry, or give voice to something trapped in time. Messages can arrive as scents and sounds… any way these insights come into our consciousness, is an opportunity for healing and can be experienced as a warm glow of remembrance, this is a real treat to our soul. [6]
As we move into the darkest time within the wheel of the year, whether you’re lighting candles for the ones who dreamed you into being, honouring ancestral traditions, or simply walking among the fallen leaves, acknowledge the same intelligence that pushes mushrooms through decay is pulsing within you, creating the world we share. What if whenever you communed with mushrooms, you committed to re-enter life more fully, spirited, awake, listening and living for the next unfolding of creative potential.
Trip or Treat, friends. 🍄
May you bring your well-ancestors close and may your journeys be kind.
Sources & Further Reading:
- Muraresku, Brian C. 2020. The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name. St. Martin’s Press.
- Ruck, Carl A. P., R. Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann, and Carl J. Staples. 1978. The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
- Williams, Paul. 2004. “Buddhist Death Rituals in Southeast Asia.” Journal of Ritual Studies 18
- Estrada, Alvaro, ed. 1981. María Sabina: Her Life and Chants. Translated by Henry Munn. Ross-Erikson.
- Sheldrake, Merlin. Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures. New York: Random House, 2020.
- Luke, David. “Discarnate Entities and Near-Death Experiences under Psilocybin and Other Psychoactive Substances.” Journal of Scientific Exploration 25, no. 4
