Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom (ISBN 0060828285)

An Exercise in Character Assassination:
One star for the interesting tidbits of information not easily found elsewhere. Did his Oxford professors not teach Mr. Letcher the fallacy of the argumentum ad hominem? His personal attacks on Gordon Wasson and John Allegro bring this book down to the level of tabloid journalism. First, he portrays Wasson as a con artist who became famous as a result of clever salesmanship rather than for "clarity or originality of his thinking." He criticizes Wasson for skewing his data to fit a preconceived idea, but this is exactly what Letcher does. Letcher's premise is that psychoactive substances played no part in Old World religious practices (funny that they should have played such an important role in the other hemisphere). He overlooks or discounts historical data which demonstrates such a link as being "plot devices" of ethnocentric researchers trapped in the mindset of the sixties. We have seen this approach many times before: old theories are about as useful as old pop songs and TV shows, it's time to move forward and take the opposite view. But Letcher once again commits the same error he accuses others of committing by using flawed and dated arguments. One example is his assertion that if Soma was a hallucinogenic mushroom, it would have been simply eaten. Why go through the elaborate process of crushing, mixing, and filtering it? Evidence suggests that Soma was used in a mixture of various psychoactive and non-psychoactive substances, and hallucinogenic mushrooms went through a similar mortar-and-pestle procedure in Central America. He paints a picture of ancient people ignorant of the plants around them. When plants such as cannabis, poppy, and henbane show up in the archaeological record, he dismisses their possible psychoactive use in favor of such applications as food and medicine. But medicine is always closely linked to the removal of "harmful" spirits in religious practices worldwide (Letcher considers "shamanism" to be a dirty word in his semantic shell games). His view is that it's okay to acknowledge drug use in the rites of the heathen Native Americans, but to say the same thing might have happened in the Middle East is striking too close to our religious traditions. In the end, Letcher comes across as a bizarre "counterculture" version of Jerry Falwell complete with hippy hairdo and "acid folk group." Letcher saves his most scathing criticism for John Allegro, who is described as a "troubled mind" from the Erich von Daniken school of academia. Citing John King's rebuttal to The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross is another blunder on Letcher's part. If "the fly-agaric and its host-tree species are entirely absent from the flora of the Middle East," then why did the Israeli postal service issue stamps with fly-agarics in 2002? Has he bothered to check his facts? Attacking the character of a person simply cheapens your argument, and playing fast and loose with the facts makes you no more of a scholar than von Daniken. Terence McKenna is given better treatment by being portrayed as a misguided product of his time. Letcher crafts himself as an exemplar scholar in a world of conspiracists, but after discounting the time-wave theory, he strangely states, "the demolition of the time-wave does not preclude something interesting, unusual, or even of great magnitude from happening as predicted." Maybe Letcher thinks it will be the apocalypse. The bottom line is that he is more influenced by von Daniken than was Allegro, he is far less original than the "amateur" Wasson, and he is much more misguided than McKenna.

Why did he write it?:
After trudging through "Shroom", which I fortunately bought at cut-out price in a used book store, I have a hard time imagining what Andy Letcher's motivation for writing it was. I was waiting for some kind of new insight which would justify the time spent, but all I got was a lot of humorless nit-picking about "history", a protracted exercise in defamation, and a vacuum of misunderstanding of what his targets were about. History can be shaped to appear to prove or disprove anything anyway, by anyone with the will and patience to do so. Why title a book "Shroom" and then proceed to suck every ounce of wonder, mystery and fun out of the topic? It seems as if Letcher is trying in some way to reassert cold science's dominion over early 21st century life, refuting all ideas that fail to live up to the challenge of scientifically verifiable data. But this is totally missing the point anyway. Whether or not the ideas of McKenna, Wasson, Allegro or Heinrich can be proved or disproved by someone calling himself a "historian", they are mythology anyway, and a useful, vital mythology is what any culture needs to thrive. Our society is desperately in search of a new myth to help it negotiate the current state of disgrace it finds itself in. Just read a little Joseph Campbell for starters. You won't be able to "prove" any of it but you might come away with some inspiration, and that's more than I got from this book. The book jacket photo of the author says it all: hand blocking the lit side of his face, the other side in deep shadow, as if he didn't want anyone (especially magic mushroom enthusiasts!) to recognize him on the street. I don't blame him. One wonders if his little bubble was burst at that hippy rock festival at which Acid House music first appeared, thus setting the stage for Rave culture and the marginalization of his mandolin and bagpipe folkiness. Maybe he should actually try the magic mushrooms himself and see if they say anything to him. But no, that's not his calling and besides, they would probably tell him "Your music sucks, and so does your book".

Make room for the Shroom,the Fungus among us+:
Well,at least read the book.This is not a 'pro-hippie' book.That's what i liked about reading it.It gives the detailed and complex history of the 'Mushroom'.And how it has been used,worshipped,and ritualised by the ancients and modern peoples of the world.A great deal of attention is paid to the life and work of Terrence McKenna.He became the 'High-Priest of Magic Mushrooms',during the Haight-Ashbury hallucinogenic rad-chic days. Terrence Mckenna was a disciple of Timothy Leary,the charismatic pied piper of the LSD movement.His writings are still read with interest,yet mostly with a sense of humor.McKenna's imagination shines in his various research projects.Perhaps brighter than his mundane data.It's clear that the technological 21st century has not stopped mankind's quest, for the ultimate shamanic connection, with the natural world and cosmos above.Mushrooms are believed by some to be a ideal portal to a larger universe of understanding.Everything about mushrooms is in this book.Literary,scientific and social-wise aspects, concerning the influence mushrooms,has had on the psyche.And this is not historically endemic to an isolated gens of people.This 'Shroom' book is must-reading for all true neo-pagan followers.The impact of the 'Magic Mushroom' on world cultures cannot be ignored by any novice layman or even refuted by the elitist scholars either.

Science meets Religion:
In a provocatively packaged work, Andy Letcher provides historical accounts of the use of magic mushrooms (psylocibe varieties as well as agaric), re-examines many of the outlandish ancient accounts of magic mushroom use made during the 60's, details the current usage of magic mushrooms among trippers and shamans alike, and even recounts such recent occurrences such as the arrest of "Professor Fanaticus" Robert McPherson. A transporting read that grounds itself in solid references at every step of the way. A must for anyone interested in the topic.

384 pages of an irrelevant argument:
The very idea that any substance initialized religion is absurd. I define religion as the ideas and/or organization that occurs as a result of fundamental questioning, like, "what is all this for? why are we here?" etc. Questions like those are the basis of any religious or spiritual effort and precede ingestion of psychadelic substances. Psychadelics then aid in altering perspective and function as self-investigative tools. I believe this book is a scholarly work for those interested not in the direct application of spiritual practices, but in historical theories.