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Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide

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Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide
AuthorO. T. Oss and O. N. Oeric (Terence McKenna and Dennis McKenna)
LanguageEnglish
SubjectGrowing psilocybin-containing mushrooms
GenreNon-fiction
PublisherAnd/Or Press; Lux Natura; Quick American Publishing
Publication date1976
Publication placeBerkeley, California
ISBN978-0915904136
OCLC2647420
WebsiteBook PDF

Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide: A Handbook for Psilocybin Enthusiasts is a short book about cultivation of psilocybin-containing mushrooms by authors with the pseudonyms O. T. Oss and O. N. Oeric, later revealed to be Terence McKenna and Dennis McKenna, which was published in 1976.[1][2][3][4][5][6] A second, revised edition was subsequently published in 1986.[1][6] The brothers developed novel, easy, and efficient methods for growing psilocybin-containing mushrooms and describe this in the book.[3][2][4][5] The book sold over 150,000 copies.[2][4][3] The popularization of psilocybin-containing mushrooms is attributed to the book and hence to the McKenna brothers, with psilocybin-containing mushrooms being rare and obscure prior to the book's publication.[1][3][5][7]

See also

References

  1. Monteith, Andrew (2016). ""The Words of McKenna": Healing, Political Critique, and the Evolution of Psychonaut Religion since the 1960s Counterculture". Journal of the American Academy of Religion. 84 (4): 1081–1109. doi:10.1093/jaarel/lfw010. ISSN 0002-7189. Much as the popularization of LSD can be attributed to Leary, the popularization of entheogenic mushrooms can be attributed to Terence and Dennis McKenna. In 1976, under the pseudonyms of O. T. Oss and O. N. Oeric, the McKenna brothers published a book called Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide. [...] The book also identified itself as a "how-to guide" for growing mushrooms cheaply and efficiently in one's own home. Previously, mushrooms had been an exotic item. In the 1950s and 1960s, devoted Psychonaut tourists traveled to Mexico in order to partake, but the McKennas' fungicultural innovations rendered travel unnecessary (Hanegraaff 2012: 402). Besides discovering a suitable method for growing tropical mushrooms in midwestern basements, the McKennas also promoted the use of DMT (an entheogen found in some plants) as well as Salvia divinorum, a hallucinogenic species of sage. [...] Oss, O. T. and O. N. Oeric 1986 Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide: A Handbook for Psilocybin Enthusiasts. Rev. ed. Berkeley, CA: Lux Natura.
  2. Nicholas, L. G.; Ogamé, Kerry (7 April 2006). Psilocybin Mushroom Handbook: Easy Indoor and Outdoor Cultivation. Ed Rosenthal. ISBN 978-0-932551-33-7. Retrieved 2 July 2026.
  3. Matsushima, Yoshihiro; Eguchi, Fumio; Kikukawa, Tadahiro; Matsuda, Takahide (2009). "Historical overview of psychoactive mushrooms". Inflammation and Regeneration. 29 (1): 47–58. doi:10.2492/inflammregen.29.47. ISSN 1880-9693. L. Eneos published "A Key to the North American Psilocybin Mushroom" in 1970, which described sites and methods for amateurs to collect natural psychoactive mushrooms in detail and explained how to culture mycelia to mushrooms on agar media. Terence and Dennis McKenna discovered a new and efficient method for the private, home-based cultivation of Psilocybe cubensis, and published "Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Growers Guide" in 1975 under the pseudonyms O.T. Oss and O.N. Oeric23). The guide sold very well, and was followed by similar publications that spread the home culture of psychoactive mushrooms worldwide in a short time.
  4. Metzner, Ralph (25 July 2005). Sacred Mushroom of Visions: Teonanácatl: A Sourcebook on the Psilocybin Mushroom. Simon and Schuster. p. 10. ISBN 978-1-59477-628-1. Retrieved 2 July 2026. In addition to the increasing discovery and identification of wild-growing psychoactive mushrooms, a major boost to freelance personal explorations of visionary mushroom experiences occurred when relatively simple techniques of home cultivation of major species, especially Psilocybe (originally Stropharia) cubensis, were developed and published. One of the first was the cultivation guide written by the McKenna brothers, under the pseudonyms O. T. Oss and O. N. Oeiric (1976), which has sold over one hundred thousand copies. The spread of mushroom cultivation provided thousands, perhaps millions, of individuals in North America and elsewhere easy access to powerful tools for exploring the visionary dimensions and potentials of human consciousness.
  5. Thoricatha, Wesley (30 September 2015). "Psychedelic Pioneers: Terence and Dennis McKenna's Scientific and Cultural Legacy". Psychedelic Times. [Terence and Dennis McKenna] were also fascinated and deeply moved by the effects of psilocybin mushrooms (which were available in abundance in the cow fields of Colombia), and in 1976 they published Psilocybin: The Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide under the pseudonyms OT Oss and ON Oeric. This book was significant to the dissemination of psychedelic information and experimentation, as together they had refined a method for reliably growing psychedelic mushrooms at home with commonly available supplies. For the first time, people who were interested in a psychedelic experience could now produce their own psychedelic substances without needing to be an expert or chemist with laboratory equipment.
  6. Oss, O. T.; Oeric, O. N. (26 April 1993) [1986]. Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide: A Handbook for Psilocybin Enthusiasts. Ed Rosenthal. ISBN 978-0-932551-06-1.
  7. Jordan, Ken (23 February 2023). "Dennis McKenna's Heroic Mushroom Journey". Lucid News - Psychedelics. Terence and his brother Dennis did much to lay the groundwork for the current psychedelic moment, from sharing inspirational visions to publishing the first popular, practical handbook for cultivating psilocybin mushrooms, the 1976 "Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide." [...] This comprehensive, academic approach is a long way from where Dennis started with psychedelic plants in the 1970s. Back then "we wanted to be able to grow the mushrooms to have access to the experiences. There was also, you know, the mercenary motivation, but that wasn't really the reason. We wanted to make the mushroom experience more widely available to people so that they could confirm – or not – all this crazy stuff. [...] As for the grower's guide? "Well, it did make mushrooms the major psychedelic of the latter part of the 20th century, right up until now. And it's interesting that of all the psychedelics, it emerged to be the perfect clinical psychedelic.