SUMMONING THE SOUL MUSHROOM

‍By Carolyn Barron

‍

‍Raising huge breakers, lifting waves,

That drenched the stone mushrooms on the high bank, 

‍And soaked the magic fungus on vermeil boughs.

- Western Metropolis Rhapsody by Zhang Heng (AD 78-139)

‍‍

Ritual and Medicine were once entwined in a caduceus of consanguinity, an ouroboros of serpentine synergy. Mutually engendering one another, they coaxed forth each other’s latent powers and filled in the gaps in their respective repertoires. Most traditional medical systems still honor this alchemical marriage, but our current hegemonic medical paradigm has been ripping up the paperwork and denying them rights. As a healthcare provider, it’s fashionable and expected that I shirk away from this brouhaha and peddle the antiseptic certitude of allopathic care with sophistry and absolutism. However, I believe the physician should be a mender of chasms, honoring the prosaic prowess of each paradigm and fusing ritual and remedy as one.

‍

Along with the separation of ritual and medicine came another division that dulled the blade of medicine forever. Body was suddenly divorced from spirit, and doctors - as if by holy decree - decided then & there that medicine only treated one of them, and left the spirit to wilt in a vase forever.

‍

It is one year and over 3,000 acupuncture treatments into a pandemic in the Botanarchy treatment room, and I feel the gravitas of these chasms now more than ever. Patient after patient is coming to me wilted and supine, unable to navigate their way out of unrelenting depression and struggling to find both mojo and meaning in a sea of stagnation and ennui. Perhaps even more distressing, my dear patients feel guilty for not feeling spiritually well when the physical forms of many of our beloveds are deteriorating before our very eyes. Apologies predicate the tears, as if struggling to find your spirit in a disempowered mire was something paltry to balk at. We have been conditioned to ignore this suffering, as if the soul is a vestigial structure we should have already evolved our way out of.

It is at the altar of the forest that I kneel before the Hemlock on behalf of the the dispossessed. I ring the bell and wave the thurible, summon the Soul Mushroom to mend the chasm. I conjure thee, I conjure thee, I conjure thee, APPEAR!

The humble Reishi mushroom, growing like a rubicund wart upon the shaded Hemlock tree, is known by the ancients as Lingzhi. Oft translated as Divine Fungus or Soul Mushroom, she is used in the Taoist pharmacopeia as a medicine for cultivating shen - spirit - the most refined treasure of the body cosmos and one of the essential energies sustaining human life. The concept of shen can best be thought of as our ‘spiritual radiance', represented by the Chinese character for the physical heart plus something numinous that descends from above and hits earth like lightening. Lingzhi is depicted in ancient scrolls as a bridge between heaven and earth, an emissary of this numinous lightning. One can use her clinically as a mender of chasms - a substance to unite body and spirit and awaken our connection to nature & the divine by cultivating and nourishing the shen. In other words, she is the medicine for those suffering with spirit-sickness.

In addition to alighting and tending to the spirit, the Reishi mushroom helps us navigate seasonal changes by strengthening our resilience, something we see reflected in modern usage as an effective antihistamine for seasonal allergies, a potent antioxidant that targets free radicals responsible for aging, a liver tonic that has been successfully used for the treatment of chronic hepatitis B, and an immune-modulator that may help stop the growth & spread of cancer cells. Though she’s hefty in the lab, this is not a paean to her medicinal mellifluence, which can be found all over the internet. It’s an ode to her secrets and occult charms, holy writ less travelled.

“It affects the life-energy of the heart region, repairing and benefiting those with a knotted and tight chest. Taken over a long period of time, agility of the body will not cease, and the years are lengthened to those of the Immortals.”

-Li Shizhen’s ‘Compendium of Materia Medica’, 1596

Traditionally, those who wished to ingest this mycelial manna for spiritual guidance must rely upon the cunning of the forest folk, religious teachers, village shamans, or benevolent deer to find them. If seeking her counsel in art and literature, one can peruse the Materia Medica’s of yore, though she may be elusive as she is often cloaked in allegory and not spoken of directly (like many things both hidden and treasured). I learned from my mentor Lorie Dechar that the Lingzhi has it’s very own guardian animal, the mythical two-headed white deer, who feasts upon a diet of Reishi. As the animal spirit of Water, the two-headed deer resides deep within the old growth forests looking into two divergent directions at once - in one direction, the past, and the other, the mystical darkness of the future. In writing this missive, I stumbled upon the catalogue of an art exhibit honoring the Lingzhi in East Asian art at Cantor Art Center in 2017, and visibly swooned. Curated by PhD candidate Yu-Chuan Phoenix Chen, "A Mushroom Perspective on Sacred Geography" explores the visual history of the Lingzhi mushroom and its connections with the natural landscape, examining art from China, Japan, and Korea. From the exhibits curator and catalogue:

“The capped fungus is tough to find in a number of works, although its presence is always significant. A c. 18th-century Chinese painting by Changtai of the deity Shennong, also known as the Divine Farmer, shows the bearded sage with a basket holding lingzhi. The divine herb-picker was a recurring trope, representing someone with superhuman powers to find lingzhi in the wild, and to create elixirs of life. Gods and lingzhi also appear in a lengthy 16th-century silk painting by Qiu Yang, where the mushroom is presented as a gift to the most-worshipped goddess in Chinese mythology, Queen Mother of the West. The scroll depicts the birthday party of the Queen of the West, a powerful goddess from Chinese mythology. The goddess may offer a taste of divine fruit - the "peach of longevity," which grants immortality - to her party guests if they bring her a suitably impressive gift. In one panel of the scroll, which Chen likened to a comic book in how it tells a story through sequenced illustrations, a man is seen carrying a lingzhi mushroom, the sacred fungus intended as the goddess' present. In another, a figure wearing leaves or feathers is seen on a mountain where lingzhi mushrooms grow. According to legend, a woman retreated into the wilderness after fleeing political turmoil, where a Taoist taught her to find and eat mushrooms and medicinal herbs, through which she eventually attained immortality herself."

‍

A classic elf shelf in both appearance and temperament, Lingzhi grows horizontally out of her host log into a varnished red mantle, a tiny glowing altar at the base of the Hemlock tree. All species grow on dead and dying trees and produce annually, so if you are blessed with a prolific piece of wood you can make a pilgrimage to her year upon year, until she has consumed all of the wood substrate and vanished into the ethers. If hunting her in the woods, look for dead and dying Hemlock trees in the Northeast and Southwest, and you might be rewarded with shiny conks of Ganoderma Tsugae, freshest in all their glory betwixt May and July. I even had one sprout up on a tree outside my bedroom window, a portentous omen before she collapsed upon a car a week later (the Reishi tried to warn us). Ganoderma Lucidum is the species used in traditional East Asian Medicine, and she may appear on hardwood (especially maples & oaks) in warmer regions of Asia, the South Pacific, and Southern Europe.

I think of how our ancestors handled red things glowering from the boughs of trees, beginning with that apple foible in the Garden of Eden. In an essay on another infamous red mushroom that I will espouse upon later in this newsletter, Robert Graves mentions that the ancient Greeks were forbidden to eat any bright red food, such as lobsters, crabs, prawns, and wild strawberries. If you are a henchman of the patriarchy and in the business of severing folks from spirit, pointing at things and calling them poison is one way to keep the kids away from the good stuff. In the five element medicine tradition that I practice, red foods are said to enter the heart, igniting our inner fire element which is inextricably linked to the spirit coursing through matter. When our fire element is balanced, we are alight with divine purpose. All of this might give us a clue to the more occult powers of the Reishi, a red-fleshed fruit of the Old Gods that, if ingested with gentle reverence and keen awareness, can infuse us with a subtle but permeating enthusiasmos - having the god within us.

Poised, attentive, receptive, with a quiet heart and a wide-open mind.

This is the legacy and largesse of the Spirit Mushroom, hunted by the mystical two-headed deer, a gift befitting a goddess, bardic bread of bearded sages.

Because I hunt for mushrooms in soils both corporeal and literary, I like to think that the dancing heroine of Tolkien’s poem Tinuviel is not an elven princess, but a gleaming Reishi conk instead - peeking out of a hemlock in a spring grove, dank with the sanguine flush of Elphame:

He peered between the hemlock-leaves

And saw in wonder flowers of gold

Upon her mantle and her sleeves,

And her hair like shadow following.

Is this a forager’s parable concealed in a love song? Does he long for her emergence year after year to infuse him again with spirit, a fervent forager prostrating himself at the forest’s feet?

When you’re a mycophile, everything is a mushroom. When you’re filled with spirit, everything is a goddess.

An excerpt from the poem Tinuviel:

The leaves were long, the grass was green,

The hemlock-umbels tall and fair,

And in the glade a light was seen

Of stars in shadow shimmering.

Tinuviel was dancing there

To music of a pipe unseen,

And light of stars was in her hair,

And in her raiment glimmering.

‍

There Beren came from mountains cold,

And lost he wandered under leaves,

And where the Elven-river rolled,

He walked alone and sorrowing.

He peered between the hemlock-leaves

And saw in wonder flowers of gold

Upon her mantle and her sleeves,

And her hair like shadow following.

‍

Enchantment healed his weary feet

That over hills were doomed to roam;

And forth he hastened, strong and fleet,

And grasped at moonbeams glistening.

Through woven woods in Elvenhome

She lightly fled on dancing feet,

And left him lonely still to roam In the silent forest listening.

‍

He heard there oft the flying sound

Of feet as light as linden-leaves,

Or music welling underground,

In hidden hollows quavering.

Now withered lay the hemlock-leaves,

And one by one with sighing sound,

Whispering fell the beechen leaves

In the wintry woodland wavering.

‍

He sought her ever, wandering far

Where leaves of years were thickly strewn,

By light of moon and ray of star

In frosty heavens shivering.

Her mantle glinted in the moon,

As on a hill-top high and far

She danced, and at her feet was strewn

A mist of silver quivering.

‍

When winter passed, she came again,

And her song released the sudden spring,

Like rising lark, and falling rain,

And melting water bubbling.

He saw the elven-flowers spring

About her feet, and healed again,

He longed by her to dance and sing

Upon the grass untroubling.

‍A REISHI JOURNEY TO ELPHAME

This is a gift to all of my patients who need their spirits resuscitated.

Do you have a place where you first encountered magic? A sacred grove, a land enshrined in the pages of a favorite book, a Tinuviel from your own inner mythos, a garden that grows in your dreams that sows the seeds of magic in your waking life? For me, this place was a thicket of freshly shorn tree tangles in my backyard that formed a hollow enclosure, dank with the smell of rotting apricots that had fallen inside. If I went into this sacred temenos at dusk, I gained access to something I called Puppet City, a liminal space where I could see the strings of the world pulled by present yet invisible forces, elemental beings whose world was layered atop my own. As if guided by the hands of the Grecian Hesperides - nymphs of evening who painted with the golden light of sunsets - I would stare at one object as the day turned to dusk, chanting Puppet City Come Alive over and over until it did just that (though penned in 1987, this is still a useful spell). I came to learn this place had many names… Elphame to the Scots, Álfheimr to the Norse, Fairyland to the English, Tír na nÓg to the Celts, Kunlun Mountain to the Chinese Taoists. This is the domain of the Sacred Wild where gods, goddesses, ancestors, fabled plants, and mythical creatures dwell.

There is something about courting and encountering these places that wakes up long-dormant forces inside of us, resuscitating a weary spirit and rekindling our quieted magic. We are going to call upon the medicine of our own, personal Elphame along with the indwelling spirit of the Soul Mushroom to shepherd our spirit awake. Reishi, like the two headed-deer that seeks is medicine, teaches us that all life is interconnected on all levels of existence - past, present and future, spiritual, mental and physical. And to follow a simple magical equation used pan-culturally since time immemorial:

Eating the mushroom that grows on the sacred mountain imparts the magic of the sacred mountain.

Science!

You will need:

1. A quiet place to sit undisturbed, perhaps a mound in the woods or the foot of a commandeering tree. I tried this in my bedroom swaddled in a blanket and it worked just fine.
2. A hot cup of freshly brewed Reishi tea. I get my mushrooms from my friend Olga at Smugtown Mushrooms, who grows her own like a badass bog witch. The general ratio for a potent but palatable tea is about 1/4 ounce/10 small pieces/basically a handful of Reishi slices to 8 cups water, but no need to be persnickety about quantity. Slice your dried Reishi into small pieces and place in a stainless steel pot. Cover the mushrooms with purified water, bring to a gentle boil, then simmer on low for around two hours until a light amber hue arises from your brew. Strain your used mushroom slices, wait until it's a drinkable temperature, and voila! The mushroom of the immortals is yours for the imbibing.
3. A memory of a place, real or imaginal, where your spirit felt awakened.
   

We begin like all great parties do, seated in silence with a cup of mushroom tea in our hands.

To establish your connection to the pathways above and below, feel the vast expansiveness of the heavens above you, and the grounded embrace of the earth beneath you. Take some time to feel your body suspended between these two like a tree, airily unfurled whilst rooted and secured.

Slowly, with reverence, take a sip of your lingzhi tea, then another if you will. This is a good time to close your eyes. Follow the energy downward as you sip your tea, down, down, down, into the chthonic underbelly of your gut, following the tendrils as she snakes through your body.

Keep going. Allow the energy to plunge you even further into the depths, rooting like the foot of a toadstool deeper and deeper and deeper into the earth. Feel the dark, damp primordial mycelial web of earth’s womb embrace you. It is here that all things gestate, springing forth from her seed and the well of memory.

Out of this darkness where all magic is born, you find yourself at the mouth of a dense primeval forest, coming sharper into vision. Perhaps you have ventured here before, perhaps it is only familiar in feeling.

Imagine a shimmering, opalescent, two-headed deer emerging from a chasm in the trees, beckoning you to follow them into the thicket. Follow as they lead you deeper and deeper into the forest of memory, through the trees, twisting and turning.

In a forest clearing, the light begins to shine brighter and brighter. Dappled at first but then full of luster, you find yourself in a familiar place, though perhaps one untrodden for a long swathe of time. You are at the mouth of your sacred Elphame, the place you feel most aglow and agog. Feel it encroaching all around you, its sights, smells, sounds, and temperature, beholding its mythic majesty and drinking deep its plenitudes. Who are its creatures, its herbaceous citizens? What is the pattern of the wind, the elements at play? Is the ground soft like the belly of a peat bog, or wizened hard granite?

Allow the apparition to have its way with you, engulfing you with its magic. Feel it radiating and emanating from your heart center, the seat of the shen where your spirit nestles like a tiny fox. Feel your shen waking up and stretching in all directions, traveling through your body like a hearth fire, warming everything it touches. Explore this feeling and your sacred landscape until your longings are quenched.

Keeping these balefires lit, ask the land if there is anything you can do to tend to it in waking life. Take the time to listen to how you can honor and foster this connection. Seal it in your heart center.

When you are ready to return to waking life, summon the two-headed deer with an offering of lingzhi, and follow them as they lead you back through the forest to the opening you entered from. At the mouth of the forest, begin directing your energy upwards, up from the depths of memory through the sequestered soils, up, up, UP, until you emerge in your body in this present moment. Take the time to connect to your flesh and matter, feeling the gravity of your body resting upon the floor. I ring bells and splash water to remind me I am in a body swimming in a sensorial stew, which simultaneously seems to enliven me whilst also shaking off any accumulations. Gentle tapping or massaging will also help acquaint you with the present moment.

Allow yourself the time to assimilate and digest this experience, by reflecting, writing, basking, collecting.

When you have fully gathered your senses and metabolized your magic, reserve the last sip of tea as an offering. Bring it outside to a patch of earth, and pour a splash in honor of Elphame, your guides, and the local landvættir. Vow to avenge them by keeping the shen fires stoked.

‍

‍

GALLBLADDER 41: A FOOTSTEP FORWARD OUT OF WINTER’S TEARS 足臨泣

‍By Carolyn Barron

‍

Abandoned room ‍

ownerless home 

emptiness lies in wait under my words. ‍

Like a blind man

who would find a treasure in the garbage‍ 

I let winter pass.

‍‍

- Alejandro Jodorowsky

‍

Winter - for all the austere magic it sequesters in its cloisters of shadow and coolness - is something that many of our ancestors had to endure, and its shadow of ceaseless strife can cast itself upon us this time of year. Grief for what has been lost & sacrificed during the dark season - be it our daily litanies of work and play, our venerated dead, the freedom of movement, parts of our identity we had to cast aside to lighten our load when the harvest was meager and couldn’t support the fullness of our being - can get frozen beneath the surface of the body like bees encrusted in amber. If we do not take the time to thaw out and slough off these grievances during this seasonal pivot, we can become encumbered by their downward pull and stagnant restraint, which can thwart the emergent motion of Spring and keep us tethered to the underworld whilst everything else is leaping forward in Nature’s Grand Debutante Ball.

Our ally in spring cleaning is acupoint Zu Lin Qi 足臨泣 - A Footstep Forward Out Of Winter’s Tears. Located on the gallbladder meridian atop the foot, Zu Lin Qi is in the sweet spot between the tendon and the bone of your pinkie toe that becomes illuminated when you wiggle your toe like a witch wiggles her nose, where the tendon stretches across the foot revealing a little well just lateral to its border. The name A Footstep Forward Out Of Winter’s Tears is not just goth poetry, it also conceals a metaphor about the alchemy of transforming sadness into action. Think of a tree in the barren winter forest (a Hemlock, perhaps?) that collects the tears of the winter storms and uses them to propel new growth.

‍

From Taoist scholar Debra Betts:

‍

“Zu Lin Qi is a foot that moves out of winter’s watery reserves into fresh growth. It is where, with kindness, tears can be let go and vitality can return to our forward step. Here our angers, frustrations, fears, and worries can be left behind and we can move forward and mature.”

The gravitas of its namesake gives us a clue to its usefulness in clearing the weeds and undergrowth that may have accumulated during Winter. Zu Lin Qi opens what is called the Dai Mai - a vessel that is intimately related to releasing the traumas that we somaticize and store in the body. It’s a release valve for the pressures and restraints of stagnation that hide in the cupboards of our being. This is a point I use clinically for pressure in its various manifestations…headaches and migraines that feel full and distended, wanting to cry but not being able to, pressure behind the eyes, wrapping pain in the body traversing around the sides of the head, neck, hips, legs, and waist, the various restraints of those carrying the weight of the world upon their shoulders.

‍

The antidote to restraint is flow, the footloose and fancy-free kind. In the mythic imagination of this medicine, freedom and flow have their very own archetype - The Free and Easy Wanderer - Taoist mountain meanderers who cast away the confines of culture to move in sync with the rhythm of nature. With a light heart, unburdened cadence, and open mind, they traversed the wilds in sync with primal flow, meandering and flowing spontaneously like a bubbling brook. Their legacy is cemented in Zu Lin Qi, the point from which we propel ourselves forward and shake loose the stagnations of winter.

‍

Go ahead, pour some potion into that acupoint right now, free the qi to support the expansiveness of spring. With each gentle jab and poke, slough off the restraints and grievances accumulated through this long winter of our discontent, shed some tears for your dead. As you massage the point in gentle circles, focus on releasing emotions that no longer serve you, unburdening yourself of their leadedness. With the valiantness of Wood, bravely face whatever may be concealed in those cupboards, hiding nothing from yourself. Extract your sorrows bravely, bringing everything to the surface to be consciously released. Allow winter’s tears to flow.

‍

After you have worked your magic upon Zu Lin Qi, call upon the Free & Easy Wanderers to teach you some new dance moves. Spring is the perfect time to practice free & easy wandering, taking to the mountains and streets to gaze upon them with fresh eyes that have been cleansed of winter’s tears. If you are an urban dweller like myself, a technique I recommend using to guide your ritualist ramblings is something called the dérive.

An AcuSpell Spell for Free & Easy Wandering

‍

“ONE OF THE BASIC situationist practices is the dérive [literally: “drifting”], a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances…‍In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their relations, their work and leisure activities, and all their other usual motives for movement and action, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there.”

‍

The Situationists International- whether they outright honored them with an offering of rare roots upon their altars or they pilfered their tech without citing sources - invoked the Free & Easy Wanderers with the creation of the dérive. A technique meant to combat the malaise and boredom of the society of the spectacle (and the linear movements of city livin’), the dérive's goals include studying the terrain of the city (psychogeography) and emotional disorientation, both of which lead to the potential creation of Situations. From the perspective of this Anarcha-Taoist, the disorientation of the dérive explicitly breaks us out of patterned movement, allowing the wanderer to access the instinctive yet ever-elusive wellspring of Wu Wei: spontaneous, automatic, flowing. Studying the terrain of the city from this embodied place allows one to grasp li - organic order - how tao makes itself visible to the world.

‍

A person who will dérive through a city versus one who merely takes a stroll, will be open to choosing the option they would not normally choose - walking on a different side of the street, breaking free of pedestrian habits like staying in the confines of a crosswalk or relegating their perambulations to the pavement alone, cutting through a neighbor’s yard, stepping ONTO and OVER a piece of rogue furniture in their path. They might make a labyrinthian twist and turn around a sultry tree, or create a cairn from a stacked pile of discarded plastic water bottles.

‍

Go ahead and venture forth, dear Botanarchist! Purged of your pressures, there’s a lightness in your step and space on your inner altar to be filled anew with the divine. Hit the pavement, dérive, and mine for some heirophanies.

‍

A lesson from Zu Lin Qi:‍

‍To become besotted with the intoxication of action, we must succumb to the magic of bereavement.

‍

‍

‍