On Mushroom Ceremonies, Altars & Animals
Entheogenic Journal Entry; Sep 1, 2024
This is a summary of apprenticing the mushroom on my latest trip, using psilocybe tampelandia. This journey is part of a larger process of initiation and learning to apply the medicine (bird and mushroom) with the corresponding ceremonial / ritualistic work.
Earlier Events
In the days leading up to this journey on Sunday Sep. 1 2024 I’ve continued my work with the birds in this town. I feed the local pigeon population and have trained them to perch on my hand. The latest experiences involved a lot of death and burial as I find dead birds (or pieces of them) on the street. The main tower in town has a peregrine falcon nest on top and that bird of prey eats pigeons. A week ago I was there at the right moment, when I saw a red stringy object fall from the sky. When it hit the ground I discovered it was a chewed on pigeon leg with ring. A seagull almost snatched it before I could procure it. Apparently, the falcon chucks out the bones and leftovers from its nest (obviously in retrospect). After this event I understood why I’d been finding lots of bird wings around the church. This spiked my curiosity. The day after I scavenged through the heaps of leaves around the tower walls and pulled out an entire pigeon skeleton with ring. Both ring numbers I queried in the Dutch Pigeon Database. I contacted the respective owners and conveyed their racing pigeons had died on their flight back home.
Dead birds and their remains I carried back to my house. I smudged them with sage, took their wings, tails and claws, and then buried them on a dedicated pigeon graveyard hidden in the bushes of a nearby park. By observing and tracking the birds on a daily basis my understanding and eye are improving significantly. On the night of the trip I found a Great Cormorant floating dead in the city’s moat. With a pair of branches I chopsticked it out of the water and dragged it under a hazel. The body was partially in decomposition and the head had been entirely consumed, leaving only a skull. I didn’t have the means to bury it, but it was rotting in so I felt it was better to drag it into the bush.
Preparation
On my last journey I got a hunch I should start working with candles. So, I looked into ceromancy and read a couple of books on the topic. I mainly skimmed through these resources as I wanted to know whether there was any link between breath, awareness and the use of candles. The last trip I experienced a candle may respond to shifts in awareness and clarity of mind (which are connected to breath). In previous trips under the effect of psilocybin I experienced that candle light might be communicating with me in a certain fashion, urging me to integrate fire into the ceremony. Though it opposes the idea of having my place dark in order to easily dive into the visual experience of psilocybin, I had to make it work somehow. Candles are used in mushroom veladas in Mexico (partially inherited from Christian custom), so this practice is not uncommon.
My solution was to build my altar in a separate room from where I’d do the journey. In my current setup I’ve built my altar on a window sill in the staircase of my house. The altar consists of a painted picture of Bird Spirit, a necklace with claw and feathers from my favorite pigeons, three candles, a plate for offering nuts and seeds, and a pair of pigeon wings to smudge palo santo or sage. The window I put ajar for fresh air and to let any smoke rise to the sky. Incense can poison the air in my experience and bodily at the expense of bodily comfort. With the candles lit, the altar is an active place of protection and safety in which I can always return when things get too dark.
Ingestion
Making tea from truffles is in my experience bad for achieving a therapeutic dose. I’ve tried this the last few times, but one clearly needs to use more medicine compared to simply ingesting the mushroom. But overtime I detest the taste more and more, so tea was a relief, though the accompanying journeys less profound. And so this time I bought the most amazing pie in the super market and sprinkled the medicine on top. It was so delicious that it mostly overwhelmed the nasty taste of the truffle. I am not going to return to tea and use the pie method from now on, as this journey was properly strong.
The Journey
The first part of the trip was very visual. When I closed my eyes I saw 3d worlds, spaces, in bright neon colours shifting on a dime. They are unnatural hues and they are accompanied by repetitive bird screeches. Sometimes I get scared, but I was quite tired this time and in a lucid dream state, and was able to relax into it.
Animal Understanding
The next phase for me is often somatic. In this stagetensions in my body are resolved. These were mostly in the psoas, legs, knees, shoulders and chest. These tensions I am partially aware of in my waking hours, but on the medicine, their origins become clear, and previously unconnected pains become clearly part of one and the same issue. The best analogy is of this experience is like looking through a diamond. Piercing through the glass you see a fragmented version of reality. But on the journey the inverse is true. Unrelated issues in the body coalesce into one. Once that view has been attained, my body immediately dispels the disease. The illness has become clear.
The way in which my body resolves the tension is comparable to the Trauma Release Exercise (TRE). They are tremors in the fascia (connective tissue) and they need to vibrate to release. During this phase I’m probably working through bodily disease for at least half an hour. The process is intense but not discomforting. When the illness is brought up it is momentarily discomforting, claustrophobic, and alienating. But when I let myself freely move in the way the medicine wants, solutions occur rapidly. Most of the journey I spend in bed to have ample degrees of freedom.
The movements are strongly connected to the breath. Often I need to register there’s a discomfort in the breathing system. I figure out this is often resolved by moving legs, hands or arms into a more comfortable position. Or it is as subtle/simple as lifting the blankets off my chest so that I can breathe. Sometimes the solution can also be introducing more fresh air into my room, or adding another blanket to stay warm. Clearly, the body wants more comfort to move into a position of healing. By properly feeling and responding to my body’s needs I can orient into a setup in which a tremor can release. Cognitively this might sound very illogical, but the body has its own understanding which is very animal-like. The human mind cannot intellectually grasp this. It needs to be a lived experience. This knowledge is still in our bones. Anatomic study of human embryos shows that in pre-natal development the egg transitions from fish stage to amphibious, to reptile, to eventually mammal. But I also wonder, whether during the day I might be unaware of physical discomforts, and that I should take better care of myself by tending to my physical needs of comfort and safety (1st chakra).
The latter part of the movement phase was a the deep dive into understanding I’m animal, undergoing a process of pre-mammal (reptile) to mammal. I was rapidly moving through millions of years of evolution where the struggle of animal neurological platforms try to reach dominance over each other. It was a judo match between reptile and mammal fought inside where one will have to surrender to the other. The mammal in the end won and dominance was established, and the snake neurology recedes. Only after mammalian victory relaxation set in. This motif is reminiscent of Egyptian Cosmogony in which Apep (the Snake of Nun) wrestles with Atum-Ra, the human consciousness, at the beginning of time.
In retrospect, all the work before the journey with the animals seemed to have had a strong correlation with this animal stage on dominance, death and evolution.
Tribal Initiation
The next stage of the trip (~2 hours in) was metaphysical. My breathing extended and deepened and I felt as I was breathing not just for myself, but for my tribe, other individuals with me in spirit with their bodies in other parts of the planet. This experience was reinforced by the altar, that appeared to be the gateway, the link, to the larger organism, the tribe I’m part of. At some instances during the journey I returned to the altar, or peeked through my bedroom door, to notice the light of the candles was still flickering. The altar was still ‘running’ (active).
Through this tribal channel I received disease that clearly wasn’t originating from me. My nose clogged up instantly and it felt as if I was processing toxins from others. At the same time I felt assisted by female spirits who I understood to be my friend and teacher in real life who both live in the US. During this part I wanted to call her, but it was so apparent that both women’s awareness were with me. My mentor guarded the gate and altar, overlooking the whole situation whilst my friend showered me in healing energy, trying to alleviate these tribal illnesses. This experience coincided also with the previous stage, where I understood that I existed beyond my phsyical body, and that my spiritual ‘body’ was way larger. In that same way these helper women also extended out multidimensionally, interacting with me at a distance, like a mycelial network.
The lines became blurry. I had a sense of quantum entanglement with my friend and that we were two sides of the same coin. A memory appeared of pigeon Bordeaux who had been perching on my hand earlier that day for an unusual extended amount of time, and I saw this was the same spirit as my friend. They were merely different manifestations of the same entity. It sounds wild, but that’s what I observed.
In the end the mucus and toxins had to be discarded. I spent at least half an hour on the toilet expelling phlegm and micturition. Possibly, these toxins were already residing in my body, and consequently the medicine was flushing them out. Though that was not how I was experiencing it. My imagination portrayed these poisons were from my tribe and was also possibly digesting illnesses of my friend. Shamanic practitioners have noted that part of initiations involve working with ancestral trauma. Likely, this might have that. But my experience was more inline with the suffering of the people in my tribe living today. A predominant image emerged that I was a Jabba the Hut creature (Star Wars), an organ through which all toxins accumulate — a giant yucky piece of layered meat that only devours and excretes.
War, Desperation, and Surrender
Passing the high, the final stage of my journey was the most difficult part. I’ve had a similar experience once before where I had to ‘breathe through the night’. Meaning, it became so dark, that I was praying for the Sun to rise, as I wasn’t sure if it would ever. At this stage there are few things to cling onto. One kind of relief is the church bell that strikes at the full hour. I have often been wondering why they still do this in the digital age. But when it gets really dark, then you understand. That bell is for the desperate.
This time over I felt completely defeated. Like I had been in a war, cut off from my troops, abandoned on the field to die. At this point I had left my bed and sat in the chair of my living room, trying to find a match to light some candles, as I couldn’t handle the darkness anymore. I didn’t want to put on the electric light as it’s too harsh on my eyes and very discomforting.
Bits of me were struggling against the loss. Muscles didn’t want to quit and succumb. But all to no avail. The only option for any kind of relief was complete surrender. Complete resignation, subjection, and defeat. I couldn’t get myself to accept it. I was afraid the enemy would not have mercy on me. They were going to kill me when they’d find me.
I set my hopes on a character (a Nazi general) from the war movie A Bridge Too Far (1977) describing operation Market Garden, the allied attempt to free the Netherlands from the Nazis during the WWII. In one of the scenes towards the end when the English garrison in Arnhem is sieged and detained. The commander, played by Anthony Hopkins, fears the worst falling into the hands of the ‘evil’ Germans. But when they finally meet, the nazi general hands over a piece of chocolate and says, “Please accept it, this was dropped by your planes yesterday by accident in our territory. English, huh? Nice, to meet you too. What a wonderful unexpected show of pure grace, mercy and understanding, and how the English commander was completely caught off guard that he had been fighting the good guy, the real gentleman, and his own pride and preconceptions. That German general understood all too well, that a similar fate awaits all soldiers, and likely not too far in the future, for him too. Swaths of high ranking nazis properly understood Germany had already lost. Duty kept them from resigning. The English were in denial over their loss, completely informing how operation Market Garden played out.
I don’t know why I am in these trenches. I only know that some of my ancestors have gone through the WWII. Both my grandmothers had witnessed the occupation, battles, and the ensuing Hunger Winter (Dutch Famine 1944–1945) after Market Garden failed to seize the final bridge across the Rhine. The fact that I have never heard anything from my grandfathers is worrying. My stepfather for sure has secondary trauma from his mother that went through the starvation period at a young age. Those generations certainly did not have the support, knowledge or any kind of facilities of clearing the war trauma. Most Dutch carry the motto of just “moving on”. My grandmother from my father’s side used to say, “Kop d’r veur,” which roughly translates to put your head into the wind. She used to say about biking into a headwind that it was just merely a case of peddling longer. This kind of mentality was encouraged as much of the country had been destroyed. Homes, dykes and bridges had to be rebuilt. It was also a very convenient method to not address the trauma.
My grandmother died of Alzheimer’s. She used to sing German songs when I was still a child. I know her house got bombed, that her brother got arrested by the Nazis and a lot of other things she never told us. This part of my family has clear German lineage. And I intuit my grandmother did not have any problems with annexation into the larger German realm, heritage and culture. This is a taboo subject in the Netherlands. I expect she was very charmed by the strong young German guys that marched into our lands, otherwise one wouldn’t be singing their songs at the age of 70.
The province Groningen in the north, where we are from, they speak in a certain dialect easily understood by Germans. We can cross the border and effortlessly connect to our neighbors. When I went to Australia at the age of 18 I mostly hung out with Germans and avoided Dutch. I feel way more connected to Germans somehow and gladly speak their language. It’s like that scene from Braveheart where an Irish army is sent on the Scotts by the English, and they both realize they don’t want to fight. They’re brothers.
Then I fell asleep. The trip lasted from 23:00 till 05:00. The next day I felt wonderful.
Sources
- Animal Speak — Ted Andrews
- A Little Book of Candle Magic — D.J. Conway
- Yin Yoga: Principles & Practice — Paul Grilley
- Trauma Release Exercise (TRE) — David Berceli
- Mazatec Mushroom Velada — Maria Sabina
- Ra: The Path of the Sun God — Scottish Film Production Fund
- A Bridge Too Far (1977) — Cornelius Ryan
- Drawings and Pigeon Photography — Bitcoin Graffiti
