* Fairy rings are a fungal phenomena.
* Fairies are often depicted as chthonic with underground halls, and eating fairy food traps you in their world forever. Fungi are one of the few living things that can survive and thrive underground without light.
* The Santa Claus myth and Christmas tree ornaments are deeply tied to hallucinogenic mushroom use by shamans in places where reindeer roam.
* Fungi are pervasively present in temperate forests which are seen as a natural habitat of fairies and were places feared in medieval times.
* Fairies are associated with glamours and deception, and many fungi, such as ergot, cause hallucinations and a sense of distortion of time..
* Fungal infections can make insects and small plants look and behave weirdly in ways that could cause them to be called fairies.
* The bane of fairies, iron and to a lesser degree salt, are inorganic while fungi are organic.
* Curious children eating mushrooms that cause their death or cause them to act abnormally could be associated with the changling myth.
* Fungi come in many varieties that are hard to distinguish from each other like fungi.
* Fungi have properties that distinguish them from "normal" biological things like plants and animals.
* Could "fairy dust" be spores or yeast?
* Mushrooms are of a scale often associated with fairies.
* There is a forests, fairies, and fungi sticker book anthology.
* Fairies are often depicted as amoral or having fundamentally different motivations than humans, which is a fit to fungi and its effects on mankind.
1 comment:
I always thought the stories about fairies and elves came from old Corded Ware and Beaker memories of EEF, their mounds, passage tombs, etc. Mushrooms would fit nicely with that.
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