Fantastic Fungi, A 3D Netflix documentary, proves that there’s so much more to mushrooms than providing a delicious pot of soup for dinner. It gives us a deep, deep insight into how much they contribute to the intelligence of the ecosystem. Indeed, there is a world under our feet, an underground network that connects the trees and plants and sprouts up its fruits – mushrooms for our nutritional and medicinal benefits. The magical world of fungi is full of wisdom and knowledge.
While most of us enjoy the medicinal and nutritional benefits of mushrooms, we hardly remember to appreciate their source, fungi. As a matter of fact, we take nature for granted and hurt the ecosystem in different ways. These include the indiscriminate use of pesticides that kill the microorganisms in the soil and the fertilizers that break the symbiotic relationship between plants and trees and the mycelial network underneath the ground. The movie has once again awakened us to our responsibility of protecting and preserving nature, which is akin to protecting ourselves.
Written by Mark Monroe, narrated by Brie Larson, and directed by Louie Schwartzberg, Fantastic Fungi Netflix reveals how mushrooms can save the world. The film features interviews and presentations by naturalists and scientists, including the renowned mycologist Paul Stamets, whose enthusiasm has led to groundbreaking discoveries about mushrooms and the fungi kingdom in general. It is amazing to know that with each step we take, we trod over around 300 miles of sprawling fungi – that’s a magical phenomenon occurring beneath us.
Fantastic Fungi Netflix Paul Stamets
Back in Burning Man 2019 when the world was counted as pre-pandemic normal, MAPS hosted a one week conference in in the EntheoGeneration camp within the dust of the BRC Playa. Many of the psychedelics enthusiasts and researchers gathered together to learn about the new clinical discoveries under MAPS Phase II MDMA trial as well as the psychedelic psychotherapy best practices.
Within the speakers, the self-taught renowned mycologist Paul Stamets (The Fantastic Fungi Guy) speech received the largest turnout, with about 200 people standing outside the huge dome, listening to Paul talking about magic mushrooms, mushrooms and bees, his microdosing blend formulation known as Paul Stamets microdosing TEK, and indeed, the debut of the movie Fantastic Fungi directed by Louis Schwartzberg ! The consciousness shifting movie’s first premiere screening happened on the Thursday of Burning Man week in the Black Rock City.
The Fantastic Fungi movie features Paul Stamets (Yes, the inventor of Stamets’ Stack) talking about his connection with the earth and his stuttering experience from childhood that was treated by mushrooms. He introduces how the mycelium network is the largest living organism in the world that acts as a communication network between trees and other plants. Mushrooms have the responsibility of decaying things and decomposing them back to the nature and transporting them underground between other living organisms where they are needed the most.
The Fantastic Fungi movie visuals and cinematography fascinates you as you watch how beautifully mushroom fruits blossom out of nothing, their gills break and spores spread infinitely to the air. This is must-watch movie for anyone to learn about the magic of fungi kingdom and their critical role and contribution to the ecological cycle.
The movie went to the theatres in fall 2019 and was premiered before the closure of the theatre rooms due to Covid. As magic mushrooms and their therapeutic benefits is going to the mainstream, the movie has become available on Netflix as of August 3rd. Deepak Chopra speaks to Louis Schwartzberg about how we process consciousness through our receptors as part of the Fantastic Fungi Global Summit and how meditation and psychedelics contribute to our processing power enhancement.
Fantastic Fungi and The Magic Beneath Us
Fantastic Fungi showcases the magical earth beneath our feet. Billions of years ago, fungi made the soil that supports life, with a vast network system connecting roots from trees and plants over the planet.
The mycelial network is the real organism that is down under our feet. The mushroom, as revealed in Fantastic Fungi, is the fruit, like the apple on the tree. Growing into mushrooms are fungi. Fungi are neither vegetable nor animal – they are some kind of hybrid in-between. The fungus has its own expansive kingdom that consists of over 1.5 million species of mushrooms, including the popular magic mushrooms that come in different varieties, such as golden teacher and penis envy. The mycelium spreads wide under the ground touching the tips of the roots of trees and plants.
The movie gives insight into the magical, symbiotic relationship that exists beneath us by demonstrating the mutual benefit between the trees and mycelium. The mycelium may be supplying the trees carbon that it has been storing under the ground. In return, the trees may be giving the mycelium sugars that it has been creating through photosynthesis. Through this, mechanism, the trees can also leverage the mycelium to transfer and absorb nutrients that it needs. The mycelia kingdom operates a mutually beneficial kingdom that, if we can adopt, could help us solve many of our challenges, including environmental and political problems.
The Mycelium as a Natural Communication Network
There is also a strong communication network that exists in the magical earth beneath our feet. The trees utilize the mycelium as a medium of communication and a warning system. For instance, if a plant is being attacked by a disease or insects, it can communicate to the plants next to it, warning them of the need to beef up their immunity. One great lesson to deduce from this is that though plants don’t speak any language like us, that doesn’t mean they don’t communicate.
Fantastic Fungi shows that just like human beings, the mother tree also nurtures the baby tree. This beautiful relationship can make us become more conscious about the works of nature and realize that we aren’t the only ones that have feelings or care about the regeneration of life for continuity. This may not come as a surprise to mushroom lovers and those who have been following the recent developments in psychedelic studies. In many clinical trials, researchers have found that psilocybin, the main compound in magic mushrooms, can promote neurogenesis – forming of new neuron connections.
For instance, findings show that some people experience slow brain cell growth and are less adaptable due to some conditions related to anxiety and mood disorders. This can affect various brain regions, including the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in decision making, and the hippocampus, which is involved in memory and learning. Healthy use of magic mushrooms can help people overcome the condition by promoting the regeneration of neural connections needed for everyday cognitive functions. It is then not surprising seeing many people express an increase in mental health wellness after dosing on shrooms.
Fantastic Fungi and Netflix
One thing Fantastic Fungi and Netflix have in common is that they both brought succor to our world when we needed it the most. Released in November 2019, just a few weeks before the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Watching Fantastic Fungi on Netflix demonstrated the regeneration power of the mycelium system, which can help bring hope to a dying soul. It can bring the reassurance that the planet earth and the universe in general still have a whole lot to offer mankind. The film couldn’t have come at a better time.
Similarly, Netflix also showed that digital content, such as movies and documentaries, can support our wellbeing when we are at the lowest ebb of our lives. While Netflix has been in existence since 1997, its popularity and followership surged during the pandemic. It became many people’s source of entertainment, company, and good content while it seemed as though our world could be heading towards extinction.
Through Netflix, many people came in contact with Fantastic Fungi and were thrilled by the magic that exists in our world and the earth underneath the ground. In an interview granted to Rodale Institute, Fantastic Fungi director Louie Schwartzberg said: “So many people that have seen the movie will come up to me, and they’ll say they cried.” When asked why they cried, they say it could be “because [seeing the movie] is a way of reconnecting with your soul. It’s a way of reconnecting with nature.” This goes to show that regardless of one’s background or belief system, watching Fantastic Movie on Netflix or other platforms can draw a wave of emotion. It’s worth crediting the ingenuity of the brains behind it in capturing the intelligence of the fungus kingdom and leading us back to our origin. There are also many other lessons to learn from the movie, which include the health benefits of magic mushrooms and other species of shrooms.
Mushrooms’ Power to Heal and Save
Many scientific studies have proven to us that mushrooms can heal and save. As directed by Louie Schwartzberg and narrated by Brie Larson, Fantastic Fungi demonstrate the healing power of mushrooms in an incredible way. The recent resurgence in psychedelics has contributed immensely to altered consciousness and mindfulness studies. And among classic psychedelics, magic mushrooms have enjoyed substantial research – though more grounds still need to be covered. The movie features some participants in John Hopkins psilocybin studies who shared their profound experience on how they were healed by psilocybin mushrooms.
One-third of the study participants felt it was the most significant meaningful moment in their lives. About 70% said it was one of the 5 most significant moments in their lives, which is akin to having a parent pass away or seeing a child being born. Some of the conditions magic mushrooms help them with include depression, anxiety, and addictions.
For centuries, mushrooms have been used for medicinal purposes. In the 1950s and 60s, psilocybin mushrooms and other psychedelics were examined in clinical settings when the likes of Timothy Leary and other scientists brought the spotlight to their efficacy, especially on mental health-related cases. But the war on drugs in the 1970s disrupted the studies when psychedelics “escaped the lab” and became a “trippy substance” among the counterculture generation during the hippie movement.
However, magic mushrooms made a comeback with psychedelic resurgence around 1999. Since then, many scientific works have demonstrated how effective they are on psychological cases, including degenerative conditions like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. The ongoing renaissance has helped us understand the healing effects of various magic mushroom species. These include African Transkei, blue penis envy, and dancing tigers.
Watching Fantastic Fungi will ultimately open one’s consciousness to wonder: How popular would magic mushrooms have been today had their studies not been abrupted in the 70s? And for those wondering if it is worth dedicating so much energy to a thing as common as mushrooms, the movie can also remind them how an extraordinary discovery can come out of a seemingly ordinary thing.
It took us on an immersive journey through time. It went back to the memory lane to the Civil War in the mid-20th century. During the war, moldy bread was slapped on soldiers’ wounds to prevent infection. Later in 1928, Professor of Bacteriology at St. Mary’s Hospital in London, Alexander Fleming, discovered penicillin, the first true antibiotic in history. It was mass-produced for the first time during World War II and saved tens of thousands of soldiers’ lives.
Can Magic Mushrooms Be the Answer to Our World’s Problems?
Paul Stamets, through this Netflix documentary and his books on altered consciousness, has once again reminded us that the answers our world yearn for, the healing our hearts so much desire, and the knowledge to save our planet, might not be up in the star. They could be down underneath the earth. From several anecdotal reports and clinical trials, shrooms’ healing power has been demonstrated repeatedly. The indigenous people understood this power, which is why they held the magic mushroom sacred and transferred it down to many generations. Available evidence suggests that if psilocybin and other psychedelics are well harnessed, they may one day help us understand our subconsciousness and spirit better. Thanks to leading research institutes championing the studies.
Today, there are many psychedelic dispensaries where people can buy magic mushrooms online. Various psilocybin products such as shroom tinctures, shroom capsules, and shroom edibles are accessible both online and offline. In addition, some US states have legalized or decriminalized the use of psychedelic mushrooms. In Canada, the health authority granted permission for the use of psilocybin mushrooms for treating some patients experiencing end-of-life care near treatment in August 2020. Before the end of the year, more than a dozen patients had benefitted from such exemptions. All these show that magic mushrooms would continue to benefit mankind for generations to come. They have survived many seasons of stigmatization and ridicule. Yet, they are still maintaining their stand as one of the most beneficial and reliable sources of natural alternative therapies.
Magic Mushroom’s Power to Transform
Paul Stamets, Brie Larson, director Louie Schwartzberg and others in the team took viewers on an immersive journey through time in this consciousness shifting film. Fantastic Fungi suggests that fungi may be the catalyst to human evolution, a hypothesis that many scientific studies have also raised. A 2019 study demonstrates that plants’ ancestry lineage may be traced to algae through the use of fungi. The fungi may have transported the water-living organism to probably colonize land 500 million years ago. This is long before Homo Erectus evolved in Africa. Seeing Fantastic Fungi Netflix and other digital platforms could help remind us of the commonness human beings share with other primates. And this is quite fundamental to many questions about our evolution. Apart from humans, there are other 22 primates that eat mushrooms.
Given the versatility and reproduction power of fungi, it isn’t impossible that primates may have foraged various fungi species, including psychedelic and non-psychedelic mushrooms. They may have consumed them for different purposes, possibly for ritual purposes, while unknowingly enhancing their cognitive abilities.
Another study also draws the connection between magic mushrooms and human brain evolution. Human ancestors may have come in contact with psilocybin-containing mushrooms and undoubtedly consumed them millions of years ago. Though it is unclear while exactly they took magic mushrooms in the first place, findings show that it eventually influenced their lifestyle significantly.
There are speculations that H. Erectus’ brain size doubled between 2 million and 700,00 years ago. And there has been a three times larger increase in the brain size of homo sapiens between 500,000 and 700,00 years ago. Fantastic Mushrooms alludes to the fact that the consumption of mushrooms may have been responsible for this.
The Beginning, the End, and Regeneration
This consciousness shifting film features some of Paul Stamets highly educative TED Talks. And in one of them, he expressed how the mycelial plays a role in every living organism’s beginning, end and regeneration. For billions of years, the mycelium has been the magical earth below our feet, an underground network that can heal. It breaks down organic matters into their components and molecules that plants can absorb for life to re-emerge. With this power, Paul Stamets inferred that matter begets life, and life becomes single cells, and single cells form chains. Chains form branches. Matrices form interlocking, intersecting mosaics of mycelium. We will all die and decompose – and that’s okay. Because we will enter into the micro-verse. But we will forever exist together within the macromolecular matrix. That’s the power of mycelia, a network that can heal and regenerate lives. If we harness the lessons in Fantastic Fungi, it will help us save our planet. Indeed, mushrooms can heal and save, Fantastic Fungi has shown.
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