The Mushroom of God

Last Saturday, I read an erotic story called 'Pollination' by Absman420. Absman's an interesting writer - his stories are certainly erotic, but they are more certainly symbolic and mythic. 'Pollination' details the alien "invasion" of a plant that creates a symbiotic relationship with a human male. The plant is penis shaped, and it "ejaculates" pollen into the faces of men who get close to it. The pollen has the effect of transforming the men into massively muscled and dicked guys, who each take possession of a potted plant, and yet who is possessing whom becomes an interesting question. The plant's goal becomes the men's goal: reproduce the seed. By ejaculating on the ground, the men cause new plants to grow, which then pollinate more men, etc. 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' as erotic novel.

This is more or less the basic theme of many Transformation stories - the seed only wants to reproduce, it brings more and more men into the fold, and by submitting to the seed's desire, the men get everything they desire. The seeds give men more than just big bodies and big dicks, they give them sexual pleasure, and other strange powers unknown to humans before them.

My hubby and I went on a mushroom tour through a local woods on Sunday. A fascinating journey into the relationship of fungi and woody plants, given by an expert in the field. Fungi are a type of super-organism that live beneath the soil - they are tiny, interlocked white fibers that spread throughout the forest floor, and they may create the largest single "being" of any kind on earth - by mass. Bigger than a whale or a dinosaur, yet "invisible" to us. The visible mushroom is the fruit and reproductive organ of the fungi, it exists simply to create spores.

The fungi live in the forest and provide a service to the great trees (though I'm not sure what that is) and the fungi get carbohydrates from the trees in return. They each cannot exist without the other. Species of fungi are specific to species of trees, or vice verse. Some fungi are parasites, and others are true symbionts. Some are able to keep "dead" leaves alive, in order to use them all winter long.

John the Revelator was exiled to the island of Patmos, which is rumored to be particularly covered with Fly Algeric - Amanita Muscaria (though I've never been there, so I can't say for sure). Were his Revelations the result of eating the mushroom? Would his visions have less value to us if we knew that they came to him via the same psychedelic mechanism used by Native American shamans?

Fig trees are recurring symbolic elements in the bible; Adam and Eve made their aprons from fig leaves, and there is the parable of the fig tree in Mat 21:19. A fig tree has a bizarre life cycle - it cannot exist without the symbiotic relationship between itself and the wasp. Which came first, the fig or the wasp?

I have to wonder - is man created by God to serve a symbiotic purpose? Is man important to God for a very basic reason? Not just romantic love or feudal fealty, but something really, really basic, like a mushroom and a tree? A wasp and a fig? Will it be a symbiotic relationship?

Is a man the mushroom of God?