Have you ever tried mushroom hot chocolate? 🍄🍫☕ If you haven't, you should! It's sooo good! 😊
My favorite magic potion:
🍄 Hot, brewed chaga tea
🍄 Hot oat milk
🍄 Cacao powder
🍄 Cinnamon
🍄 Honey
I normally use chaga mushroom (🇫🇮pakurikääpä) I find here in Finland, but you can use reishi (🇫🇮lakkakääpä) as well. Both are quite easy to find at health food stores, too, if you don't get lucky in the "free supermarket" we call the forest. 💚
I decided to re-visit my world tree a couple of days after creating it, and this is what it looked like. 😊
I was originally inspired by this beautiful, moss-covered tree branch. Next to it I saw three Amanita muscarias (🇫🇮punakärpässientä), like red apples growing from an apple tree. Two of them were still very young, but look how much they have all grown in just a couple of days.
After a couple of weeks all this will have disappeared. My art remains in the circle of the forest, and all I carry back home are my photos. 💚
During the creation of the world, one tree starts to grow above everything else. 🌳 Its branches stop the clouds, and cover the sun and the moon. Even the starlight dies in the sky, and the world becomes dark.
The Grand Shaman Väinämöinen calls the magic of the oceans for help - and look, a hero starts to rise from the water. Väinämöinen isn't impressed, though. This hero is too tiny, the size of a thumb, and surely too weak. But the tiny hero grows into a mighty giant, who strikes down the tree with one swing of an ax. And so the light returns into the world.
Whoever finds a branch of that tree, is granted eternal happiness. Whoever secures the tree-top, gains the master magic. And whoever gets a hold of its leaves, finds love that never ends. 🌟
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(This is my short version of a story found in Finland's national epic, The Kalevala. To read the whole old poem in English, google "rune II: Wainamoinen's sowing.")
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Ps. If you want to see a "studio shot" of this artwork, check out my previous post.
Do you keep it quiet in the forest, or do you prefer to make some noise? 🎶
One friend of mine in Eastern Finland likes to sing in the woods, to make her presence known to the brown bears in her area. Here in the south I don't have to worry about bears, and I like to keep it quiet, especially when making art. Animals are curious, and quite often birds, deer, rabbits, hares or bees have come really close - probably wondering why this strange human is re-decorating their living room... 🍄
This is a sneak peek of my new mushroom art in the "studio" - I will post the finished artwork next. 😊
Have you ever wondered, why Amanita muscaria is commonly known as the fly agaric (🇫🇮punakärpässieni)? 🍄
Unsurprisingly - because of flies. Dead flies, to be specific. Before the era of industrial insecticides, people used to make fly poison by mashing these mushrooms with milk and a bit of sugar.
One old Finnish tale tells of a master of the house, who came home a bit drunk, saw a plate of white mash on the table and mistook it for porridge. "What a lovely wife I have", he thought with love in his heart, and finished the plate with good appetite. What happened to him next, the story doesn’t tell, but I'm guessing it wasn’t a typical hangover... 🍄
Ps. Thanks to everyone, who answered my question about your favorite mushroom names - they're hilarious! 😄
