Fungi - Kingdom Fungi (Spectrum Materia Medica Volume 2, Volume 2)

The Materia Medica of Fungi is as elusive and mysterious as the fungi themselves. The repertories list 72 fungi, of which 27 have less than 20 symptoms; 40 exist in name only, and perhaps 13 might appear in a repertorization. Our knowledge, themes and signatures have to date come from the alphabet of Agaricus, Bovista and Claviceps [Secale]. In The Hollow Men T. S. Eliot wrote: Between the idea And the reality, Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow This is where we find the fungi. They are the critical link in the biological cycle of life and death. They exist in the penumbra, of our fields and forests; our homes and rafters; our literature and folklore; our medicines and drugs; our fridges and foodstores; our living and dying. In Spectrum Fungi we are led ineluctably down the road of excess, to a palace of homeopathic wisdom. We begin to understand the evolutionary role of fungi in plant life, as in Monera we learnt that bacteria form the engine of human evolution. We walk in the shadows of the transformative nature of the fungi, without which we should be forever swamped in the unrotting debris of our own making. As fungi deliquesce our solid flesh, fertilising the waiting earth and delivering us back to the silent depths, so they also transubstantiate the grape into wine and the flour into bread. With speed and strength, the fungi penetrate, like an invisible fifth column through the soil of our being, the Psora of our materia medica, hydra-headed, bizarre, unexpected, infiltrating, colonizing, absorbing and decomposing. Sinister? Infinitely so, in their hidden power.