Parboiling twice with water weakens its toxicity and breaks down the mushroom's psychoactive substances; it is eaten in parts of Europe, Asia, and North America.

[12] The 16th-century Flemish botanist Carolus Clusius traced the practice of sprinkling it into milk to Frankfurt in Germany,[13] while Carl Linnaeus, the "father of taxonomy", reported it from Småland in southern Sweden, where he had lived as a child.

[14] He described it in volume two of his Species Plantarum in 1753, giving it the name Agaricus muscarius,[15] the specific epithet deriving from Latin musca meaning "fly".

[12] French mycologist Pierre Bulliard reported having tried without success to replicate its fly-killing properties in his work Histoire des plantes vénéneuses et suspectes de la France (1784), and proposed a new binomial name Agaricus pseudo-aurantiacus because of this.

[21] Several regional names appear to be linked with this connotation, meaning the "mad" or "fool's" version of the highly regarded edible mushroom Amanita caesarea.

[26][27] A large, conspicuous mushroom, Amanita muscaria is generally common and numerous where it grows, and is often found in groups with basidiocarps in all stages of development.

As the fungus grows, the red colour appears through the broken veil and the warts become less prominent; they do not change in size, but are reduced relative to the expanding skin area.

[4] A. caesarea is distinguished by its entirely orange to red cap, which lacks the numerous white warty spots of the fly agaric (though these sometimes wash away during heavy rain).

[39] The complex also includes at least three other closely related taxa that are currently regarded as species:[1] A. breckonii is a buff-capped mushroom associated with conifers from the Pacific Northwest,[40] and the brown-capped A. gioiosa and A. heterochroma from the Mediterranean Basin and from Sardinia respectively.

A recent molecular study proposes that it had an ancestral origin in the Siberian–Beringian region in the Tertiary period, before radiating outwards across Asia, Europe and North America.

Commonly seen under introduced trees,[49] A. muscaria is the fungal equivalent of a weed in New Zealand, Tasmania and Victoria, forming new associations with southern beech (Nothofagus).

The levels of muscarine in Amanita muscaria are minute when compared with other poisonous fungi[72] such as Inosperma erubescens, the small white Clitocybe species C. dealbata and C. rivulosa.

[91] Marija Gimbutas reported to R. Gordon Wasson that in remote areas of Lithuania, A. muscaria has been consumed at wedding feasts, in which mushrooms were mixed with vodka.

[99] Amanita mushrooms and muscimol are not approved as an ingredient in food or dietary supplements[100] , with some drawing comparisons to the controversial legal status of hemp-derived cannabinoids.

[104] In 1979, Said Gholam Mochtar and Hartmut Geerken published an article in which they claimed to have discovered a tradition of medicinal and recreational use of this mushroom among a Parachi-speaking group in Afghanistan.

Ojibwa ethnobotanist Keewaydinoquay Peschel reported its use among her people, where it was known as miskwedo (an abbreviation of the name oshtimisk wajashkwedo (= "red-top mushroom").

According to this hypothesis, the compound influenced the twitching movements of early aquatic organisms, leading to the development of behaviors such as jumping onto land—a crucial step in the evolution of terrestrial species.

[117] In 1968, R. Gordon Wasson proposed that A. muscaria was the soma talked about in the Rigveda of India,[118] a claim which received widespread publicity and popular support at the time.

[122] Indian scholars Santosh Kumar Dash and Sachinanda Padhy pointed out that both eating of mushrooms and drinking of urine were proscribed, using as a source the Manusmṛti.

[123] In 1971, Vedic scholar John Brough from Cambridge University rejected Wasson's theory and noted that the language was too vague to determine a description of Soma.

[124] In his 1976 survey, Hallucinogens and Culture, anthropologist Peter T. Furst evaluated the evidence for and against the identification of the fly agaric mushroom as the Vedic Soma, concluding cautiously in its favour.

[125] Kevin Feeney and Trent Austin compared the references in the Vedas with the filtering mechanisms in the preparation of Amanita muscaria and published findings supporting the proposal that fly-agaric mushrooms could be a likely candidate for the sacrament.

Philologist, archaeologist, and Dead Sea Scrolls scholar John Marco Allegro postulated that early Christian theology was derived from a fertility cult revolving around the entheogenic consumption of A. muscaria in his 1970 book The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross.

[128] Christian author John C. King wrote a detailed rebuttal of Allegro's theory in the 1970 book A Christian View of the Mushroom Myth; he notes that neither fly agarics nor their host trees are found in the Middle East, even though cedars and pines are found there, and highlights the tenuous nature of the links between biblical and Sumerian names coined by Allegro.

A classic description of this use of A. muscaria by an African-American mushroom seller in Washington, D.C., in the late 19th century is described by American botanist Frederick Vernon Coville.

The authors state that the widespread descriptions in field guides of this mushroom as poisonous is a reflection of cultural bias, as several other popular edible species, notably morels, are also toxic unless properly cooked.

[29] Garden ornaments and children's picture books depicting gnomes and fairies, such as the Smurfs, often show fly agarics used as seats, or homes.

[144] Other authors recorded the distortions of the size of perceived objects while intoxicated by the fungus, including naturalist Mordecai Cubitt Cooke in his books The Seven Sisters of Sleep and A Plain and Easy Account of British Fungi.

[146] A hallucinogenic "scarlet toadstool" from Lappland is featured as a plot element in Charles Kingsley's 1866 novel Hereward the Wake based on the medieval figure of the same name.

[147] Thomas Pynchon's 1973 novel Gravity's Rainbow describes the fungus as a "relative of the poisonous Destroying angel" and presents a detailed description of a character preparing a cookie bake mixture from harvested Amanita muscaria.