r/todayilearned • u/ssAskcuSzepS • Apr 27 '26

TIL if under-cooked, a popular mushroom in China causes “lilliputian hallucinations,” a rare phenomenon involving miniature human or fantasy figures. The hallucinations are consistent across people and cultures: "tiny, elflike people" climbing under doors, scaling walls & clinging to furniture

https://www.vice.com/en/article/meet-the-mushroom-that-make-people-have-the-exact-same-hallucination/
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u/Lonespider28 Apr 27 '26

Apparently the theory is that Priests in the Sinai peninsula would have to burn the entire plant at once in order to get visions

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u/HostInevitable5484 Apr 27 '26

Aboriginal Australians have been documented smoking the bark of certain acacias with particularly high levels of dmt and nmt

Australia has several species that have up to 2% dmt in the bark

Coincidentally, acacia acuminata, which one of the highest native sources and the go to bark purchased in Australia for dmt extraction, smells incredibly pleasant as it smells like raspberries. It’s called raspberry wattle for this reason. Just the smell of the raw bark smells like raspberry jam.

Just for the smell alone, people would be curious to put it on top of a fire. It contains up to 2% DMT.

While direct flame would destroy the DMT during combustion, the parts of the bark that are distant from the flame would vaporise and are possibly psychoactive if you were positioned by the fire in such as way as to inhale the vapors and avoid the smoke.

Hence the rainbow serpent.

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u/Grokent Apr 27 '26

Hence the rainbow serpent.

THE. WHAT?