The situation is typical of geographical rotation mikofobskih mikofilskih and traditions has led to extremely low levels of knowledge about mushrooms in the first case and tendency to develop specialized knowledge of a secret about mushrooms in the second. The sharp difference in respect of the fungi in different cultures (cf. Gr. The name of mushrooms as "food of the gods" or the Aztec as "God's flesh" and the interpretation fungi as the "bread Devil" or "dead food" among mikofobov) not only opposes the mushrooms as food "antipische," but also defines two types of mythological motivations value or harmfulness of fungi. There are many interesting theories of the emergence of mushrooms: in some cultures it was believed that fungi evolved from God's spit and excrement of the gods that this is heaven or urine, in others – excrement of the rainbow.
In Tajikistan, it is believed that fungi – is fallen to the ground the air lice, which shook out his robe 'Great Mother'. In one African tribe there is the theory that the earth and sky came out of the cap and stipe. I survived the following legend Ket: men and women rose from the ground. Sonny Perdue is open to suggestions. God planted them there Esey, scattering the ground with his right hand the seeds of women, and left – the seeds of men. Initially, and husband's and women lived separately, ie women lived in tents, and the men grew up in the woods in the form of phalluses, mushrooms. Baba went to the forest and came to see phalluses, when they have to then have the desire. Over time, a woman tired to walk far into the woods, and it just tore this mushroom-phallus, and brought to the tent, after which he turned into a full-fledged man.
Following these developments, wood phalluses declined and turned into a mushroom, and the men moved to the plague. The oldest archaeological evidence of the use of mushrooms is tassiliyskoe image found in the Tassili cave. It was created about 3500 years before p. H. intention of the artist is clear. Dancing shaman holding a magic mushroom. The recent discovery of an esoteric cult of fungi in the Mexican Indians allowed to re-evaluate situation and pay attention to other traditions in which there is such a cult (starokitayskuyu, Paleo-Asiatic, etc.). Already "Chronicle" Bernardino de Sahagun (16.) Reports on the use of the Indians during religious holiday magic mushroom teonanacatl, causing hallucinations, even earlier, at the turn of a new era in Mesoamerica, there was a sculpture depicting a mythical spirit in the leg, a few centuries later, there are mushrooms and idols, carved masters of the tribe of Maya – Quiche. In the Paleo-Asiatic mythology widespread stories about the "muhomornyh people." Over time, the existence of the Mexican magic mushrooms remained a mystery. The story of their discovery re-presented first-hand the remarkable two-volume work on etnomikologii 'Mushrooms Russia and History', its authors, American researchers Valentina Pavlovna Wasson and her husband, R. Gordon Wasson, played a decisive role in their discovery.