Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide

Item Details

Berkely, And/Or Press, 1976, Softcover

Fourth [Revised] Edition, Very Good in color pictorial wraps.

8vo., 63 pp. Fourth [revised] printing. Photo-illustrated wrappers with illustrated front endpaper and title page, numerous drawings and photos, plus eight color photo plates. Very Good in color pictorial wraps.

Published under the pseudonyms O.T. Oss and O.N. Oeric, this slim 1976 handbook was the first book to lay out simple, reliable, home-cultivation techniques for psilocybin mushrooms — and its actual authors were ethnobotanist brothers Dennis and Terence McKenna, two of the most influential figures in modern psychedelic thought. Terence McKenna contributes the foreword under his own name, lending the guide added authority within the community it helped create.

With its whimsical line drawings by "Kat," documentary photography by "Irimias the Obscure," and refreshingly plainspoken instructions involving little more than grain, chalk, a pressure cooker, and mason jars, the book became — and remains — a foundational text of psychedelic counterculture, credited with launching an entire home-cultivation practice that predates the internet-era mushroom community by decades.

This is the fourth, revised printing of the original And/Or Press edition, still carrying the full color-plate program and illustrated wrappers that made the book distinctive from its first appearance.