Fungal Fantasy: The Rot Beneath the Visions

A Fungal Obsession

There is a rising wave of interest in mushrooms.

Psychedelic ones. Edible ones. Medicinal ones.

After a few hyped-up documentaries and new-age healers discovering what indigenous tribes have known for centuries, mushrooms have made a strong comeback. They're in cafes, in retreats, in ceremonies, in powdered jars next to your yoga mat.

A curious culture is building itself around them. One part is about health and immunity. The other is wrapped in a spiritual packaging.

None of this is new. What’s new is the marketing.

The problem is not the mushroom. The problem is the excuse we’ve made it.

A spiritual ticket. A reason to indulge. A shortcut.

It is being consumed more for experience than for clarity. More for escape than for embodiment.

The question is not whether it is good or bad. The question is, do you know what you are opening yourself to?

And more importantly, are you ready for what it can show you or dismantle in you? Can you hold what might unravel in you, or will you just collapse back into your story with more decorated language?

This article is not an attack or an endorsement. It is an attempt to look at it in full clarity, without the fog of culture, craving, or counterculture.

The Decomposition Principle

Mushrooms break things down. That’s their nature. They are decomposers. They take what is dead and stuck, and release its locked energy. So when you consume them, they bring that principle into your system. They start dissolving inner structures. Mental, emotional, perceptual.

This can be beautiful. It can also be terrifying. Because most people haven’t built an inner skeleton strong enough to handle that level of breakdown. They enter the disintegration without the tools to rebuild. And what remains is a fragmented, romanticised version of awakening.

Breakdown is not a problem. But only if you are prepared for what happens next. Decomposition must be followed by composting, integration, digestion, becoming whole again. And the mushroom doesn’t do that for you. That’s your work.

Vedic Views on Mushrooms

No strong historical evidence supports a widespread use of mushrooms, culinary or psychedelic, in classical vedic or yogic traditions.

But it’s not that simple.

The Rig Veda, one of the oldest sacred texts known to us, is filled with hymns to Soma. A mysterious, potent substance praised as the drink of the gods. Soma was no ordinary juice. It was praised as a doorway to higher vision, divine communion, and expanded states of consciousness.

So what was it?

This is where things get foggy.

Ethnobotanist R. Gordon Wasson proposed that Soma was the psychedelic mushroom Amanita muscaria - the red-capped, white-spotted mushroom known to many ancient Siberian shamanic traditions. Others have argued for ephedra, sarcostemma or even concoctions of multiple psychoactive herbs.

There’s no scholarly consensus. But one thing is clear,

there was a time when altered states were part of the spiritual technology.

Psychoactive plants or fungi were not indulgences. They were tools for insight. Soma wasn’t recreation. It was revelation.

But something changed.

As Vedic culture evolved, a new class of priests and social order emerged. With the rise of Brahmanical orthodoxy, the culture of ecstatic mysticism began to be replaced with a culture of purity, hierarchy, and structure. What was once wild, direct experience became doctrine. What was once open exploration became a system of control.

They sanitized the sacred.

Soma faded both in practice and memory. The original plant or fungus was lost, its preparation ritual forgotten, its ecstatic vision buried under layers of symbolic interpretation.

In Yogic traditions, especially the later paths of Patanjali Yoga and Vedanta, the emphasis shifted toward discipline, tapasya, prana, dhyana. Direct chemical alterations of consciousness were largely left behind.

They were considered unreliable, external, and potentially binding. They experienced Soma within. The elixir produced through control of breath, bandhas (pranic locks) and Kriya. They realised the wonders of breath and life force.

This doesn't mean psychedelics were inappropriate. It just means the trajectory of Indian spiritual systems leaned inward, towards the breath, silence and direct inner alchemy.

But once, in its deep past, there was a window, brief, wild, unafraid where substances like Soma opened the door to something far beyond the mind.

And then the door was no longer needed.

Why Are Mushrooms Prominent in South American Cultures?

This is where the contrast becomes vivid. The way different civilizations approached altered states reveals the inner architecture of their spiritual worldviews.

Indigenous Cosmology

In many South American traditions. Amazonian, Andean, Mesoamerican. The spiritual map doesn’t rise away from the earth. It descended into it.

The world is alive. Everything breathes spirit. Trees, rivers, animals, clouds, even decay. There is no hard boundary between matter and spirit. There is no shame in turning to plants for wisdom. And mushrooms? They weren’t just food. They were devas. Teachers. Beings with personality. Deities with agency.

The Mazatec people, for example, called psilocybin mushrooms flesh of the gods. These weren’t metaphors. The mushroom was a doorway. A ritual. A presence.

There was no fear of death. Death was part of the process. Decomposition, decay, and shadow were not enemies. They were thresholds.

This is why mushrooms had a place.

These cultures were not built on renunciation or transcendence. They were shamanic, not yogic. They didn’t try to abandon the external world. They entered it. They didn’t try to silence the mind. They let it dissolve into the larger rhythm of the forest, the ancestors, the cosmos.

The yogic direction is nivrtti - inward, ascending, dissolving. This was pravrtti - outward, descending, entangling. Both seek liberation. But they walk different routes.

Shamanic paths embrace the underworld. Yogic paths lean toward the unmanifest. One seeks to merge with the wilderness of creation. The other to dissolve beyond it.

But eventually the outward would meet the inward. The earth would meet the sky. Deities would meet the breath.

Cultural Preservation

Here’s the other layer. South American cultures preserved their shamanic traditions. Even after colonization, many indigenous tribes held on to their knowledge. The rituals survived. The songs, the plant lore, the cosmology, it all continued, usually passed down orally. Sometimes hidden. But never lost.

In India, something different happened.

If there was once a tribal, earth-rooted, plant-medicine-based spiritual lineage, it got absorbed. Vedic and post-Vedic Brahmanic orthodoxy became the dominant framework. The idea of purity grew stronger. The body became something to transcend. The earth, something to rise above. States of consciousness became earned only through tapas, prāṇāyāma, dhyana and not through any plants.

And with that, the shamanic strand withered. Perhaps deliberately.

You still find hints of it in Adivasi knowledge, in village traditions, in oral folk medicine.

What South America preserved, India buried.

So while mushrooms rose as sacred teachers in Amazonian temples and Mesoamerican pyramids, they never found their place in the spiritual mainstream of India.

Spiritual Significance of Mushrooms in Yogic/Tantric Terms

Now, let’s not look at mushrooms as a Western trend or an Amazonian relic. Let’s read them through the yogic eye, what they do to you, where they take you, and what kind of terrain they belong to.

Fungi as Chthonic Teachers

Mushrooms don’t grow in the light. They don’t rise toward the sun. They emerge from dampness, rot, and death. They grow out of the carcasses of trees. They digest the dead and return it to the earth. If you still associate this with impurity, you’ve missed the point altogether.

This is not lower. This is sacred.

They are chthonic beings of the underworld. Patala. The nether realms. Simply the subconscious. The layers beneath the surface. The veiled worlds. Where death speaks. Where the ego cannot breathe without lying. Where light doesn’t penetrate unless you carry it in yourself.

Mushrooms are guides in this terrain. Not comforts. Not ecstasy trips. Guides. You don’t take them to transcend. You take them to enter. You take them when the illusions of ascent no longer satisfy you.

In that sense, they are tamasic. In the tantric way. Tamasic as darkness that digests. That ferments. That prepares you. That melts the hard structures you worshipped too long. In tantric alchemy, tamas has its role.

Without tamas, there is no shava. Without shava, there is no Shiva.

Mushrooms are tamasic. But not negative. They’re tamasic like the cremation ground is tamasic. They break the self down. Slowly. Organically. No escape route. You become mulch. That is the medicine.

Tantra has one simple essence to understand. Whatever the experience is, beauty, pleasure, enjoyment, bliss let you be completely present in it, but without any mental agitation. Without being carried away by it.

This is why mushrooms are not for the early yogi.

Not for the one still hungry for experiences.

Not for the one still escaping through transcendence.

Not for the one who wants light without earning the descent.

They are for the one who has already seen the light and now dares to turn back, descend, and face the part of them that still resists.

You don’t go into the underworld to find yourself.

You go to cremate the parts that aren’t real.

That’s the real spiritual potential of mushrooms not highs, not visions, not insight. Decomposition.

That is why it’s sacred. That is why it is dangerous.

Because if you’re not ready to die, the mushroom will lie to you.

Prana and Psychedelics

Let’s cut through the fantasy. Psychedelic mushrooms do not give you prana (life force). They consume it. To transform something in you.

They don’t energize you.

They don’t fill you with vitality.

They disrupt patterning. They shake the system.

And in that disruption, things can either open or collapse.

What they do is interfere with the normal architecture of the subtle body. The nadis, the energy channels, which flow in complex harmonics woven through breath, emotiona and memory are suddenly loosened. Like someone pulling the strings of a veena randomly. You might hit a note of beauty. Or you might snap something.

So yes, at times, this can cause a temporary surge of sensation, even a flow of energy that mimics states of pranic awakening. Some people feel bliss, insight, deep silence.

But it’s not because the mushroom gave them that. It’s because their mind was cracked open.

And in that crack, something poured through.

But if the vessel is unprepared, what pours through can distort more than it liberates.

The yogic path doesn’t work through disruption. It works through inner heat (tapas), purification, surrender. It reshapes the system slowly, attentively.

The breath is the tool. Mantra is the tool. Silence is the tool.

Psychedelics don’t replace this. They may shake you into a vision. But they won’t hold your hand after.

Kundalini is not a thrill. It’s a transformation.

And yogis knew this. That’s why they avoided all external stimulants, psychedelics included.

Not because they were closed-minded. But because they understood how delicate the subtle body is. And how long it takes to refine it.

"If you haven’t trained your system through breath, discipline, and inner stillness,

psychedelics will only show you what you cannot yet hold."

Sometimes that can inspire you.

Other times, it can fragment you.

This is not fear. This is precision.

So don’t ask if mushrooms give you insights. Ask if you’ve built a body that knows what to do when the floodgates open.

The Illusion of Depth

Mushrooms don’t lie.

They show you what you carry.

But what you carry isn’t always truth.

Most of the time, it’s noise. Old memory. Ego. Wounds. Fantasies.

If the inner vessel is unclean, ego-driven, or fragmented,

then the visions mushrooms bring will reflect that distortion.

They don’t purify you.

They amplify you.

And if what’s amplified is unresolved pain, shame, ambition, or spiritual pride, then the “journey” becomes a hall of mirrors.

You start seeing your own shadow material, surfacing through symbols, archetypes, gods, serpents, deities, disasters.

It feels powerful.

It looks spiritual.

But it’s just your own basement on a projector screen.

This is where most people get caught.

They take the hallucination literally, as if it were a divine download.

They think they saw the truth.

They think they’re special now.

They think they’ve arrived.

It’s a trap.

One of the most seductive traps in altered-state journeys: the delusion of revelation.

This term is well known in seasoned psychedelic circles.

It’s when the ego gets intoxicated on spiritual imagery, profound-sounding voices, inner movies of cosmic proportion and thinks it has understood reality.

But what really happened is simple.

The subconscious threw up its contents.

And you mistook it for prophecy.

You don’t become free by seeing strange visions.

You become free by seeing through them.

So yes, mushrooms can open doors.

But they also open escape hatches.

If you are ungrounded, they won’t show you God.

They’ll show you your own madness, dressed in sacred robes.

The vision is never the truth.

It’s a test.

Mushrooms: Neither Inferior Nor Divine

Mushrooms are not some fallen, impure food to be feared.

And they are not divine light capsules to be worshipped.

They are exactly what they are, beings of decomposition, connection, and transition.

They grow in darkness, feed on death, and break down the old to nourish the soil.

In that sense, they are sacred but not in the way most people want to hear.

They don’t vibrate high.

They don’t fit the sattvic, upward-moving path of transcendence and clarity.

But that doesn’t make them useless. It makes them transformative.

"They are chthonic teachers, of death, impermanence and the underworld forces.

Not for escape. Not for bliss. But for descent. Disintegration. Root-level work."

In food, use them if your digestion can handle them. Don’t fall for the “superfood” marketing - see how your agni (fire) responds. Some bodies process them fine. Others bloat, dull out or stagnate. Know your system.

Spiritually, they are not for the curious.

Not for the spiritually bored.

They’re for people who are grounded in their body and nervous system.

People who have already seen some light, so they can now walk into the dark without getting swallowed.

That’s the thing with mushrooms:

They’re powerful not because they lift you but because they dissolve boundaries.

If you’re anchored, that’s insight.

If you’re scattered, that’s madness.

So don’t make a demon out of them.

And don’t make a god out of them either.

They are tools. Bridges. Doors.

To places that are rarely talked about in yoga studios.

Use them if the moment calls.

But don’t carry them in your pocket.

They’re not for daily living. They’re for crossing thresholds.

They rot what is false.

Only take them if you’re ready to let go of what dies in the process.