Mushrooms — Diamond Medicine Technologies

The oldest medicine

Long before written history, human beings were reaching for the mushroom. On a rock wall in the Tassili n’Ajjer plateau of the Sahara, a figure painted some 7,000 to 9,000 years ago dances with mushrooms sprouting from its body — widely regarded as the oldest surviving image of sacred mushroom use. A cave mural at Selva Pascuala in Spain, painted around six thousand years ago, appears to show a row of psilocybin mushrooms. The exact meaning of these images is debated, as ancient art always is — but the thread is unmistakable: across the Stone Age world, our ancestors knew these mushrooms, and held them as sacred.

The web beneath our feet

To understand the mushroom, you have to look beneath the soil. A mushroom is only the fruit; the true organism is the mycelium — a vast, fine web of living threads that runs through the earth in every direction. Mycelium is one of the oldest forms of life on land, older than the trees, and it weaves the forest together: carrying water, nutrients, and even chemical messages between plants, root to root, in what scientists now call the “wood wide web.” The largest living organism on the planet is a single honey-fungus mycelium in Oregon, spreading across thousands of acres and thousands of years old.

The beautiful documentary Fantastic Fungi captures this better than almost anything: the earth itself is connected by this living network, and the mushroom is how it speaks to the world above. When we take this medicine, we are not consuming a drug so much as touching the oldest intelligence of the living planet.

A thread through human history

From Mesoamerica — where the Aztec and Mazatec peoples called them teonánacatl, “flesh of the gods” — to Siberia, to the Sahara, mushrooms appear again and again in the spiritual life of humanity. Some scholars have even argued, controversially, that visionary mushrooms left their fingerprints on the world’s oldest myths and sacred stories. We don’t need to settle that debate to feel its weight: for as long as there have been humans seeking the divine, the mushroom has been there.

Remarkable efficacy, remarkable safety

When our founder first began researching mushrooms in 2015, what struck him most was the rare combination the science kept showing: profound efficacy alongside an extraordinary safety profile. Psilocybin has very low physiological toxicity and essentially no potential for physical dependence — it is widely considered one of the safest psychoactive substances known when used thoughtfully, with proper screening, set, and setting. Few medicines offer so much while asking so little of the body.

The Johns Hopkins renaissance

Psilocybin acts on the brain’s serotonin (5-HT2A) receptors, appearing to loosen and “reset” the rigid patterns of connection tied to depression and anxious, looping thought. At the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research — and in studies published in journals like the New England Journal of Medicine — psilocybin-assisted therapy has produced rapid, sometimes lasting relief from treatment-resistant depression, at times from just one or two doses, with benefits holding for up to a year for many patients. In people facing life-threatening cancer, a single session eased depression and end-of-life anxiety for the large majority. Researchers are also studying psilocybin for addiction — smoking, alcohol, and opioids — and for depression in people with early Alzheimer’s disease and mild cognitive impairment. It has earned the FDA’s “Breakthrough Therapy” designation. The research is still unfolding and results vary, but the direction is remarkable.

A turning point in the science

In the past two years, the research crossed a threshold few expected so soon. In 2025, and again in 2026, the two largest and most rigorous trials ever run on psilocybin — both Phase 3 studies for treatment-resistant depression — each met their goal, showing a clear, statistically significant lifting of depression after only one or two guided doses, with relief holding for many through six months. It is the first time in history that a classic psychedelic has reached positive Phase 3 results, the last major stage before a medicine can be considered for approval. What our ancestors held as sacred, the most exacting standards of modern medicine are now beginning to confirm.

Hope for our veterans

Among the most moving frontiers is the work with veterans. Many who carry the invisible wounds of war — post-traumatic stress, depression, the weight of moral injury — have described finding real relief through psilocybin where little else had worked, and formal research into psilocybin-assisted therapy for PTSD is now underway. For those who gave so much and have suffered in silence, this medicine is offering something that has been in short supply: hope.

Mushrooms and longevity

The newest frontier may be the most surprising. In 2025, a study published in npj Aging reported that psilocybin extended the lifespan of human cells in the lab by more than half, and that aged mice given psilocybin lived significantly longer — a roughly 30% increase in survival — leading the researchers to call it a possible “geroprotective” agent. It was this kind of finding that drew longevity pioneer Bryan Johnson, whom we met in the Bufo section, to explore psychedelics as part of his work on the aging brain. It is important to be honest: this is early science, done in cells and animals, and there is not yet human proof that any psychedelic slows aging. But it hints at something the traditions have always sensed — that this medicine touches life at its very roots.

The body, not only the mind

The newest and most surprising frontier reaches past the mind and into the body itself. In a 2026 study from the University of Padua — peer-reviewed in the journal Pharmacological Research and indexed on PubMed — researchers gave very low, non-psychedelic doses of psilocybin to mice on a rich, fattening diet. Over twelve weeks the treated animals showed striking changes: less weight gain, a reversal of fatty-liver disease, blood sugar drifting back toward normal, and insulin sensitivity restored to nearly healthy levels. They even saw signs of repair to the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas — and, unlike many weight-loss drugs, the mice kept their muscle strength. Most remarkable of all, this worked through a different doorway in the body (the 5-HT2B receptor) than the one that carries the visionary experience; the animals showed no psychedelic effects at all.

We want to be completely honest about what this is. This is exploratory, early-stage research, done in mice — not people — and one promising study is not proof. But this is exactly where every important medicine begins: a careful question, an animal model, a result worth chasing. Human studies are the next step. For a tradition that has always seen this mushroom as medicine for the whole being, it is moving to watch science begin, cautiously, to ask the same question.

Reverence and honesty

We hold all of this with both hope and honesty. Much of the science is still young. Some of it — like the popular practice of “microdosing” — has not held up well under the strictest testing, where belief, intention, and ritual appear to carry much of the effect. Researchers themselves still debate how to measure experiences like these fairly. We are not doctors, and nothing here is medical advice or a promise of healing. We walk beside this medicine the way our ancestors did — with reverence for the mystery, and respect for the science.

The return to the child

In our sequence, mushrooms are the medicina of the land — and the medicine of return. After comfort, release, and reconnection, this is where we are led back to our own innocence. The mushroom helps us find the inner child again: the pure, open, present part of us that was always there and that life slowly taught us to forget. It is said that the only way into the kingdom of heaven is to become like a child — not childish or careless, but pure of heart, able to see clearly and to live fully in this present moment. That is the gift of this medicine: to see ourselves and the world with new eyes, washed clean, awake, and alive. The ancestors revered it, and now the laboratory is beginning to confirm it — reverence and rigor, together.

Research & further reading

Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research

Psilocybin for major depression effective for up to a year (Johns Hopkins)

Psilocybin for depression in early Alzheimer’s disease / mild cognitive impairment (clinical trial)

Psilocybin extends cellular lifespan and improves survival of aged mice (npj Aging, 2025)

Ancient Saharan rock art and early mushroom use (Tassili n’Ajjer)

First Phase 3 trial of psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression — positive results, 2025 (Psychiatric Times)

Second Phase 3 trial meets primary endpoint, 2026 (HCPLive)

Psilocybin vs. a standard antidepressant, head-to-head (New England Journal of Medicine, 2021)

‘Psilocybin rewires the brain for people with depression’ (UCSF)

Meta-analysis: psilocybin for depression, 8 studies / 524 patients (2024)

Low-dose psilocybin for fatty liver, obesity & diabetes in mice (Pharmacological Research, 2026 — PubMed)

For ceremony and facilitation, visit Temple of Higher Frequency.