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Amanita muscaria
Traditional Uses
by Erowid

  • Finno-Ugrian people in eastern and western Siberia,
  • several groups of Athabaskan peoples in North America (ceramic figurines depicting A. muscaria found from AD100 in mexico). (Plants of the Gods, Shultes & Hofmann).
  • There is some speculation that A. muscaria was used by vikings for their 'beserker rages'.


A Siberian Amanita Muscaria Legend "A koryak legend tells us that the culture hero, Big Raven, caught a whale but was unable to put such a heavy animal back into the sea. The god Vahiyinin (Existence) told him to eat wapaq spirits to get the strength that he needed. Vahiyinin spat upon the earth, and little white plants--the wapaq spirits--appeared: they had red hats and Vahiyinin's spittle congealed as white flecks. When he had eaten wapaq, Big Raven became exceedingly strong, and he pleaded, "O wapaq, grow forever on the earth." Whereoon he commende his people to leaarn what wapaq could teach them. Wapaq is the Fly Agaric, a gift directly from Vahiyinin." - Plants of the Gods (Plants of the Gods)

Wasson argued in his 1968 book, "Soma - Divine Mushroom of Immortality" that Amanita muscaria was the mythical Soma of the Indian Vedic hymns.