![]() In Japan, mushrooms are particularly coveted for their delicious, nutritional, and medicinal qualities and demand is outstripping supply. 1 Although their interest in lightning and mushrooms is not driven by a religious quest, their research may inadvertently shed light on an ethnographic mystery. Recently, scientists in Japan have demonstrated a link between lightning and prolific mushroom fruiting. Science, alas, has had little to say about mushrooms and thunderstorms. Is Soma really a mushroom? Are mushrooms the children of thunderstorms? Read on. These hymns are some of the world’s oldest religious texts, and from them we know Soma is “the child of the thunderstorm”. In the book, Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality, Gordon Wasson 2 argues that Amanita muscaria, the classic red or yellow fly agaric, is the identity of the mysterious Soma, god of the RgVeda, a sacred collection of ancient Vedic Sanskrit hymns. The ancient god Soma may even have been a mushroom himself. ![]() 1 And mushrooms and thunderstorms are partners in folklore all over the world. The farmers of Japan say thunderstorms are good luck– they make the mushrooms grow. ![]() By Miwa Oseki Robbins, who enlivened my Mushrooms Class in Fall 2012. ![]()
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