Imbas Forosnai- the ancestral Irish use of psilocybin mushrooms

Imbas Forosnai is  described in Sanas Cormaic as a ritual involving eating the ‘red flesh’, thought to be a reference to the fly agaric, a psychedelic mushroom which grows in great abundance in Ireland. In shamanic rituals, it would have been combined with the liberty cap psilocybin mushroom to achieve altered states of consciousness.

Like the Mazatec indigenous tradition in Oaxaca, Mexico, where psychedelic mushrooms were used for healing, an indigenous tradition of psilocybin use existed in Ireland. Centuries of colonisation and suppression damaged this tradition, but it is not true to say that it became entirely extinct. Our old ways got passed down through the wise women, the mystics and the healers, and there exists to this day in Ireland, elders who remember some of our old traditions, and it came down to us through our music, folklore and mythology. Every Autumn, the psilocybin mushrooms grow in great abundance on our ancestral sacred sites and ancient places of worship.