13/12/2025
Sacred Fungi
Lanmaoa asiatica, a mushroom consumed in China, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines appears to reliably invoke lilliputian hallucinations, “a rare, clinically defined psychiatric syndrome (named after the tiny people in Gulliver’s Travels) characterized by the perception of numerous little people autonomously moving about and interacting in the real-world environment.”
Records at Yunnan Hospital in China stated that “96% of patients affected by this mushroom report seeing an abundance of ‘little people’ or ‘elves,’ often dancing, jumping, or marching around.”
The consistency of the hallucinations among people and across cultures is remarkable, while the results from recent chemical analyses are curiouser and curiouser:
“Chemical and genomic analyses performed on Lanmaoa asiatica at the Natural History Museum of Utah have revealed no traces of any known psychoactive compounds, suggesting that something entirely new is waiting to be discovered.”
Read the fascinating account from researcher Colin Domnauer: https://nhmu.utah.edu/articles/experts-explore-new-mushroom-which-causes-fairytale-hallucinations
