Spiros as a small kid always wondered why his mother Christine, a brunette woman amazingly beutiful, why she never wanted to be called by her first name. Sure it was a strange name, but very beutiful as well if one sucked on it a bit. As a child she had chosen to be called by her name Christine instead of her first name, for a reason she did not want to tell. She got a very serious look in her eyes every time he mentioned that other name, which begins with the letter M. He wondered this as he sat there 4 years old reading his favourite childrens book. It was called Greta Garn and Ludde Lump, Swedish for "Greta Yarn and Ludde Dustparticle". Yes it was about a married couple, Greta and Ludde, who lived in a red ball of yarn in Misses Mushroom's Bedroom, and then one day a vacuum cleaner came along. Then, many many years later when Spiros found out he was the brother and husband of Mother Spider, he understood why Christine never wanted to mention her first name. Because the author of the childrens book about Greta and Ludde carried the same name! But also, it turned out, she thought "Christine" was simply just a more feminine and sensual sounding name, more fitting for such a beutiful woman as her.

On the bed with its white cover, roses embroidered all over, the two little boys hurtled their pillows wildly at each other, laughing and shouting. Mother's laughter was also heard from the kitchen as she was making pancakes. Suddenly the loud sound of something crashing against the floor in the bedroom, as the boys hit a small marble statue with one of the pillows. The statue was of a woman undressing; it fell to the floor, the head fell off.

“Come!”, said one of the boys to his brother Adam, both still laughing and noticing little the broken statue. “Follow me.”

They ran to the other bed room.

“I want to show you something.”

He went up to the book shelf and brought down a porcelain jar, a big jar depicting a fruit basket as lid.

“I picked these caterpillars down by the water,” he said and lift the lid.

Out flew 14 butterflies that fluttered through the room and out the open window to the amazed eyes of the two little boys.

“That's love,” said one of the boys.

A true friend, we feel, is characterized by that quality. A true friend is someone who knows everything about you and still loves you. Unconditional love.

There is a special mushroom on this Earth. They say that if you eat of its white and golden flesh you will find out the secret of the gods, a secret so strange that few dare take it into their lives. If you are willing, it will guide you into something stranger than a fairytale, and into worlds you could never have imagined possible. For the ones who avail themselves to the secrets of this mushroom, immortality is but a pale reflection of what becomes possible. This mushroom, hidden in history, has now entered center stage.

We the Cogan Family, the Family of the I Ching, have been working in a lust last spun for 129 years to deliver our present to all who want it. It is our dearest secret, we are sure you will understand why.

Whether or not the psilocybin mushroom already is in your life with its light and magic, this book is a gift to you, Dear Ingenious Reader. A gift and an invitation.

With a crash the black canon ball, carried through generations and once shot at Sweden, landed in Spiros bathroom and went straight through the floor down through the ceiling at Adam's house a mile away.

That black canon ball was actually a spore - the seed of a mushroom - on another level of reality and that is part of the story of how the mushroom came into our family's life; we are hoping by this book and by Strawberry to give you a somewhat more gentle invitation, or if you're already familiar with psilocybin and Ayahuasca, tons of fits of rolling boneless laughter on the floor and a licking good story that you will notice “no one but a mushroom could ever come up with.” Real or not? Dear Ingenious Reader, quickly into these 840 pages and you will notice that is not at all the correct question to pose.

.......And Spiros drank of the Ayahuasca nectar and became a jaguar and spider, leaving the human world without apology once and for all, slipping in a timeshadowy fashion inbetween awake and adream, adead and alive, away into the Sisters' impossible sea, passing beyond from the end of words, and his veins open as his soul flows out into Sissy and it sweetens them, pleasures them at last, like waves returning to the source, and they saw it all, back home again; and with a last stitch they wove him into Plomari and left together, singing-- and it is yet to see if Spiros will ever come back to visit us.