A magic mushroom is any of several species of fungus containing psilocybin, a compound that produces hallucinations and altered states of perception when eaten. The name is used both casually, for the mushrooms themselves, and as a byword for the wider practice of taking them, whether gathered from the wild or dried and sold. It carries none of the clinical weight of “psilocybin mushroom” and instead frames the experience as strange or otherworldly, which is exactly how the phrase entered English in the first place.
What’s the origin of the phrase ‘magic mushroom’?
The phrase can be traced to a specific piece of writing. On 13 May 1957, Life magazine published “Seeking the Magic Mushroom”, an article by the amateur mycologist R. Gordon Wasson describing his experience two years earlier taking psilocybin mushrooms during a Mazatec ritual in Oaxaca, Mexico. Wasson had travelled to the region to investigate the traditional ceremonial use of the mushrooms, and his account of the visions and sensations he underwent brought the practice to a mass audience for the first time.
The wording of the title was not Wasson’s own choice. According to the record of the piece, it was a Life magazine editor who added the words “Magic Mushroom” to the headline, and this was done against Wasson’s wishes. Wasson had approached the subject as a matter of ethnomycology and ritual tradition rather than novelty, but the editor’s phrase was the one that stuck. Once it appeared under the Life masthead, in one of the most widely read magazines of its day, “magic mushroom” passed quickly into everyday use as the standard popular name for these fungi, well ahead of the more technical “psilocybin mushroom”.
The phrase’s staying power owes something to its economy: it captures the promise of a transformed state of mind in two ordinary words, without needing any knowledge of the chemistry involved. That plainness is likely why an editor’s throwaway addition to a headline outlasted the more careful language of the article beneath it.