Mycorrhizae is also a collection of 31 different illustrations of mushrooms that were created as a daily ritual during the month of October 2021. Drawing mushrooms?slowly and focused?helped me through feelings of grief, loneliness and disaffection. As I researched into my mycology books, I found the parallelisms between fungi and my life all too fascinating: Fungi had mutualistic relationships, identity issues, they defied normativity. Fungi could find alternative ways to interact with other species. And among humans, mushrooms found sometimes love, others rejection, they were feared or worshiped.
Month after month I held onto fungi. They were often my caring old friends, sometimes my mentors or sages, frequently my most antagonistic defiers. These mushrooms were the Gods and Myths of the forest, the Jungian Archetypes that crowded the dreams of the wood creatures?as I aspire to become?, and they offered me a kinder understanding of our earthly nature.
Tools for survival, Mycorrhizae
A creative exploration exercise of the qualities of every mushroom resulted in the identification of each species with an Archetype, which all together formed The Fungal Archetypes: an illustrated collection of 31 cards. Every card, apart from the mushroom illustration and its scientific name, has the Archetype name and a short poetic depiction of the mushroom qualities and their relation to the mentioned Archetype pattern.
The Fungal Archetypes are what ties the Songbook together. Step by step, every part of the story narrated through the texts is accompanied by the relevant Archetypes.
But stripped off the author's story, the Archetypes remain, and they jump off into a quasi-mystical dimension to offer the reader an alternative story: their own story. Like the classic divination games, The Fungal Archetypes can become a self-guiding ritual or a narrative aid. One possible mushroom divination game (although not the only one) was created as part of this project and published online at The Fungal Archetypes Reading Table (archetypes.myco.land)
