Shurooms: The Origins of Psychedelics — From Kemet to the Cosmos

In 1957, a white American banker was credited with "discovering" the magic mushroom—a tradition Indigenous communities had maintained without interruption for millennia. SHUROOMS: The Origins of Psychedelics — From Kemet to the Cosmos names the pattern behind that erasure and sets out to correct it: extract the molecule, erase the practitioner, patent the therapy. This book restores Africa to the center of the story.

Written by Ajarn Shaman Shu (Robert S. Shumake)—an initiated Babalawo and Oluwo of the Ifa/Osain tradition, an ordained Shaiva practitioner, and an initiated Ajarn of Thai esoteric Buddhism—SHUROOMS is not written from the outside looking in. It is a synthesis of history, ethnobotany, and clinical science delivered with the spiritual authority of a consecrated practitioner across multiple lineages.

Ranging from the sacred pharmacopoeia of the Nile Valley to the Bwiti iboga ceremonies of Gabon, from Yoruba plant knowledge under Osain to the modern laboratories of Johns Hopkins and Imperial College London, this book argues that Africa is not merely a participant in the global history of psychedelic plant use—it may be its origin.