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Customer Review
Product Description
Did mushroom tea kick-start ancient Greek philosophy?
Was Alice's Adventures in Wonderland a thinly veiled psychedelic mushroom odyssey?
Is Santa Claus really a magic mushroom in disguise?
The world of the magic mushroom is a place where shamans and hippies rub shoulders with psychiatrists, poets, and international bankers. Since its rediscovery only fifty years ago, this hallucinogenic fungus, once shunned in the West as the most pernicious of poisons, has inspired a plethora of folktales and urban legends. In this timely and definitive study, Andy Letcher chronicles the history of the magic mushroom—from its use by the Aztecs of Central America and the tribes of Siberia through to the present day—stripping away the myths and taking a critical and humorous look at the drug's more recent manifestations.
Informative, lively, and impeccably researched, Shroom is a unique and engaging exploration of this most extraordinary of psychedelics.
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Nice attempt at a juxtaposed position - but already disproved
Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom by Andy Letcher, 2006Shroom is an interesting theory against the "mushroom theory of religion." Letcher brings together many new insights and material previously overlooked by many researching the field of entheobotany, and especially entheomycology. This book is a must read and a welcome tome to any good library on this subject.But there are many problems with Letcher's thesis. Firstly, he props up many of his arguments by ignoring most of the newer research, and especially archaeological iconography, that has come to light post Wasson/Allegro. His argument focuses heavily on Wasson, McKenna and Allegro. And in his case against Allegro, all but one of the items he presents as evidence are bogus rumors that have already been debunked by Judith Anne Brown, Michael Hoffman and I since 2005.He's completely dismissive of the idea of mushrooms in Christianity but only by attacking the shallowest of...
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April 7, 2007
(California) | Helpful Votes: 18 | Rating: 4
Partial critical engagement with entheogen theory of religious origins
Shroom covers topics including refutation of the mushroom theory of the origin of religion, the recent U.K. psilocybin mushroom scene, a critical treatment of Wasson's research methodology and mushroom theory of Vedic religion, and Tim Leary as backdrop leading up to the later popular use of psilocybin mushrooms. This is a valuable book that contributes some new perspectives and new coverage of entheogens in Western culture; this book is a must-have for entheogen researchers. The present review focuses exclusively on his critique of the mushroom theory of religious origins, which he sometimes treats as though it is a critical refutation of the overall entheogen theory of religion.Letcher has not disproved the entheogen theory of religion, or even fully engaged with that hypothesis. At most, he has made a partial effort to call into question the mushroom theory of the pre-historical origin of religion, in the form of a secret cult spreading from a single origin over time...
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April 1, 2007
(Egodeath.com) | Helpful Votes: 27 | Rating: 4
A great modern perspective on a culturally skewed topic
by Andy Letcher, is that most wondrous of finds; a magic mushroom book that dares to confront modern orthodoxy, and does so in a way that actually advances our knowledge in the field. Billing his text as "A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom", Letcher does not disappoint in dishing up the tastiest mushroom morsels modern research can unearth. And for those of you who think you "know it all" already, I assure you, this book has the best a fungophile could hope for: New stuff.Instead of starting at the dawn of time with proto-hominids chomping down mushrooms and inventing religion -- like most trendy mushroom books would have you believe -- Letcher instead takes an about-face and scrutinizes this myth of the "ancient mushroom cult" as well as the visionaries who elevated it to the status of academic lore. After first picking through the research and finding no hard evidence of this supposed ancient mushroom cult, Letcher then goes on to point out that for the bulk of Western...
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March 19, 2007
(Seattle, WA USA) | Helpful Votes: 12 | Rating: 4
There's a fungus among us...