alt Hacker NewsIt is interesting how the hallucinations consistently represent tiny people/elves to the mushroom consumer, even across geography/culture.
I wonder what the brain is doing…
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I think it makes sense given the following:
- Your brain has been trained extensively to recognize faces / people. Even very small babies can do this.
- Your brain processes a large amount of mostly noise, and sometimes mislabels noise as objects, which trends towards face-like things (see: seeing faces in clouds, people in shadows etc.) Various classes of substances make this effect more noticeable (even stimulants, including caffeine)
- The jump from that to 'elves' is largely just cultures have some form of small magical person.
Would be interesting if the chemical mechanism is related or similar to the DMT one that creates the "machine elves" experience.
Since we're in the topic of elves and common hallucinations, I want to share these Salvia trip replicas that some say are extremely accurate:
Lilliputian hallucinations are also common in mental illnesses with hallucinations. Definitely some kind of physical foundation for it in the human brain.
reminds me of trip reports from people trying Salvia Divinorum - there's even a name for these tiny people, 'Smelves'
Occam’s razor would say they’re real.
I wonder what lab rats would experience - lots of tiny rats ?
Could be that the mushroom just temporarily interferes with the substances the elves put in our water supply to keep us in the dark?