There are any number of reasons that one might be mycophobic. In Mexico, wild mushrooms were thought to possess “a supernatural aura.” Wasson was particularly interested in societies that venerated the fungus for spiritual reasons. There’s a famous scene in “ Anna Karenina,” in which a budding romance withers during a mushroom hunt. Reverence might take a variety of forms-think of Eastern Europe or Russia, where foraging is a pastime. They spent the next thirty years studying and cataloguing various species, searching out literary and artistic works about mushrooms.Īccording to Wasson, the world is divided into mycophiles and mycophobes. “She caressed the toadstools,” Wasson recalled, “savored their earthy perfume.” She brought them home to cook, and soon he, too, was enchanted. The first was to the Catskills, in New York, where his wife, Valentina, took a rambling walk in the woods and became enamored of some wild mushrooms. In 1957, a man from New York named R. Gordon Wasson published an article in Life about two trips he had taken, three decades apart.
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