The January 2022 issue of Vogue Poland spins sustainability with a more 60’s/70’s, transformative perspective, by delving into intriguing magical and cosmic phenomena.

In this fashion story photographer duo Agnieszka Kulesza & Łukasz Pik [IG] captured the fashion industry’s fascination with mushrooms — led by Stella McCartney, but with plenty of new players. Fashion editor Kamila Wagner explains why mushrooms can help save the world from an ecological disaster and model Signe Veiteberg is the mushroom mother, source of all nourishment and the ‘skin’ of our living earth. / Hair by Emil Zed; makeup by Marianna Yurkiewicz

AOC has translated everything we can so far at Vogue Poland and don’t believe that the clothes themselves are sustainable or made of mushrooms. That technology is advancing rapidly but is not yet ready for prime time.

It’s undeniable, though, that mushrooms are having a cultural moment in every aspect including as a replacement for meat. Put AOC in that camp. Mushrooms are fundamental to the organic construction of our earth.

And while those phallic-looking mushrooms bobbing around suggest that the patriarchy will take credit for saving the world with mushrooms, they are born of a much more organic and fundamental living bedrock of existence. You just KNOW that men will take credit for mushrooms. LOL as evidence of phallic superiority. Mushrooms were meant to rule.

AOC had an interesting Anne moment researching this fashion story. With our bedrock attachment to Africa as the origins of our modern humanity, I searched for mushrooms in Africa.

Note that I probably triggered the top return of ‘Panaeolus africanus’, although this is a “rare little brown mushroom that contains irregular amounts of the hallucinogens psilocybin and psilocin. It has been found in central Africa and southern Sudan.” How you word a Google search governs the top returns.

Did Carl Jung Eat ‘Panaeolus africanus’

What intrigues me as a student of Carl Jung, is that the famous psychiatrist, who articulated the concept of the collective unconscious and ancestral memory, made an extensive journey to Africa . I will not take the detour of discussing whether or not Jung was racist — as just about every white person including me is inherently racist in the minds of many people of color.

I’m as ‘woke’ as I am going to get after being personally attacked for having blonde hair.

AOC has an article about Jung in Africa. He was deep into southern Sudan and very close to southern Ethiopia and the Omo Valley [the inspiration source of my jewelry collection] — about five months into his journey of East Africa.

Jung went to a festival or celebration of some kind and he was overcome by his own behavior, which seemed to transcend his physical mind and rational consciousness. The psychiatrist was also highly impacted by the chanting and movements of the people who lived on the land and were “swept” — for lack of a better word — into what Jung described as a universal community of humanity and human movement.

Jung was so disturbed and upset about what he had experienced in his own self that he left Africa at once. He lost control of his own mind in this rapturous, communal celebration and found the experience truly upsetting, when set against the patriarchal, white-male superiority concept of mental acuity and capacity that dominated psychiatry at the time.

Jung’s experience sounds like a great acid trip to me, but if you believe you have control over everything in life, processing acid trips can be most unsettling — especially if the excursion is frightening and/or the surroundings unfamiliar.

As always happens with me, I just read another stunning analysis about Jung in Africa, and rather than derail this superb Vogue Poland fashion story on mushrooms, I will close for now.

Clue, though. If you look at the top of AOC web page, it says ‘Ubuntu for all’. I’m off and running in this new Jungian direction. ~ Anne