James arthur is passionate about Amanita muscaria mushrooms. He speaks at conferences, writes books, devotes time to his websites, and publishes videos about his passion. While the Erowid crew does not agree with many of his interpretations of the prominence of A. muscaria in art and history, we have spoken to several people who have thoroughly enjoyed his presentations and talks and found them thought provoking.

This video is a live recording of a presentation given at a small conference in Oregon. As with his earlier video Mushrooms and Mankind, it primarily consists of the narrator (James Arthur) discussing various aspects of the symbology of Amanita muscaria representation in ancient and modern art while flipping through examples in a slideshow. James Arthur has an irreverant and casual presentation style and gets into many seemingly far-fetched theories about the role of A. muscaria throughout history, but it's interesting to see some of the artistic and spiritual representations of Amanitas in a wide variety of contexts.

I'm not quite sure what to say about the back cover blurb (below) except that it seems to have little to do with the actual video. Unless you've been waiting impatiently for a video on this topic for years wondering "why isn't anyone documenting this topic more!?", it doesn't qualify as "the most important video of the 20th century".

As an interesting side note, the rest of the space on the video we received is filled with footage of a seemingly unrelated rock band playing a Led Zeppelin song. Odd. James Arthur wrote us with a description of how it's related. He said:

"It is a video of a band I am in, a Led Zeppelin Tribute band. Led Zeppelin has a film called "The Song Remains The Same" wherein they highlight the Amanita muscaria which features prominently in their music and lyrics. It is just something that those who know would know. "You Really ought to know" (Led Zeppelin lyric). We toured for 10 years and have been praised as the best Led Zep tribute act in the world by several Zep fanzines."