“I believe that Mycelium is the neurological network of nature. Interlacing mosaics of Mycelium infuse habitats with information-sharing membranes. These membranes are aware, react to change, and collectively have the long-term health of the host environment in mind.”
— Paul Stamets

Mycelium is the root-like structure of a fungus made up of many branching, thread-like hyphae. Mushrooms are the fruiting body and often the most visible parts of Mycelia. Mycelia form an extensive ecological network that cycles nutrients through natural systems benefiting soil, plants, and animals. With almost every step we take, Mycelia are under our feet.
Scroll down for Mycelia resources and love notes.

Planning Your Gratitude Ceremony

September 24th, 2022 at your own time
This is a coordinated prayer that you offer in your own landscape (not an online event)

In recognition of Mycelia and the contribution they provide to the web of life, we invite you to join us for the ONE Mycelium Gratitude Ceremony. Members of the ONE community will express their gratitude for Mycelium around the world. We encourage you to pray with the land and funga where you live, adding your Heart and energy to a vibrant future for Earth and all life.

Reciprocity is a cornerstone in good relationships with our Nature kin, and showing our gratitude is key to building Co-Creative Partnership with our landscapes. Preparing for this ceremony and expressing your gratitude will help build more relationship and understanding between you and Mycelia.

In coordinating this simple ceremony, we have partnered with our friends at ForaTree.org, and we have created a printable instruction sheet to provide guidance and the framework for you to bring your creativity and open heart.

We invite you to let us know that you will be participating in this gratitude ceremony. If you are invited to share your Mycelium love notes and stories through the “Let us know you’re participating” button.

Sitting with Mycelium

I sat down on some roughly cut grass, small prickles from thistle stems amid clover and fallen goldenrod blossoms. We were next to a cluster of spruce who guarded the edge of a granite cliff falling steeply into the Atlantic. My careless hand knocked a mushroom cap off their stem, and I was startled. I put my palm down next to the stem and thought an apology and wondered, “What are you doing out here in the grasses, rather than tucked into the shade of the trees? “  

The question rebounded to me—“What are you doing here?” 

There was an unspoken dialogue as my fingers twined among the grasses and the fingertips of my imagination plunged down, under the surface—reaching for you, Mycelia. 

As I felt for threads so fine and buried they are nearly imperceptible to my senses, I witnessed You—woven as you are with an unimaginable intricacy. Not woven in a grid, as I might assemble a fabric on a loom, or even with the magnificent grace of the spiderweb I saw caught in the wet light of today’s sunrise. No, you are so multidimensional it makes my mind spin as you connect points— beads of Being— in every direction—horizontal, vertical, and at every angle and curve and distance.

You speak with ease to spruce and wildflowers and grasses, and all the drops of moisture in the soil above the crumbling granite whose secret cracks you help to open for spruce’s roots to explore. 

I forget how many million microbes are in a teaspoon of soil, but you, Mycelia, are conversant with them all. You are ever transforming death into life—the rotting tree trunk and the fallen insects become in your hands the nourishment of root and seed. You are holding Life like a Mother, sustaining and connecting us all with your incomparable web.  

You, dear Mycelia, are the true “safety net” for all of us who cling to life on this precious Earth. 

More Mycelium Love

Mycelia, I thank you for your communication network, and I feel my heart-breath, infused with gratitude, traveling down my body into the Earth to join your vast web.

Thank you for your intricate network pulsing and humming as information, nutrients, death stories, and creation stories travel along your threads for miles and miles, encircling the Earth and all of life.

Thank you for weaving and connecting all of Earth’s ecosystems, working to harmonize, nourish, and balance life.  

You are completely engaged in the sacred act of reciprocity, and from your hidden dark home, you transform rotting wood, dead leaves, and animals and give away all the nutrients to sustain new life.  

You are the embodiment of community and collaboration.  You are medicine.

I am in awe and grateful for your ancient time origins and worldwide consciousness. You show me the interconnectedness and interrelatedness of all that has been and all that will be. 

Thank You for weaving the tapestry threads of the wonder and miracle of Life, connected and interconnected through community within our beloved Mother Earth.

I send my deep love and gratitude to you, beloved Mycelia. 

“As soon as I looked into the cap of this mushroom, it was like looking up into the sky on a dark night. Seeing the stars, seeing part of the spiral of the galaxy.”
— Giuliana Furci, Women Working for the Earth Summit

Resources

Organizations:

  • Fungi Foundation: The Fungi Foundation is a global organization that explores Fungi to increase knowledge of its diversity, promote innovative solutions to contingent problems, educate about its existence and responsible applications, as well as recommending public policy for their conservation.

  • SPUN: Society for the Protection of Undergound Networks works to protect and harness the mycorrhizal networks that regulate the Earth’s climate and ecosystems.

  • North American Mycological Association: NAMA is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization of professional and amateur mycologists with over 90 affiliated mycological societies in the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

Articles:

Media: