Shakti is renowned for being a rare true albino and its extraordinarily thick and humongous stems and caps. When mature, Albino Malabar caps don a beautiful wavy appearance on the outer edge. Since the fruiting bodies are so pale, blue bruising will show up much more than on a typical cubensis.

In contrast to APE, Shakti is a heavy spore producer, meaning you could easily make a spore print with a mature cap. Also, as is unique to only true albino strains, the spores will be a translucent white (rather than the purplish-black most often seen in Psilocybe strains). 

Shakti and Mushrooms: Indian Heritage

Shakti roughly translates to ‘power,’ which makes sense considering the purported potency of this mushroom strain. 

In his book Hindu Goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine in the Hindu Religious Tradition, scholar David R. Kinsley describes shakti as follows:

“Shakti means power; in Hindu theology, shakti is the active dimension of the godhead, a divine power that underlies the godhead’s capability to birth the world and displays itself. Within the totality of the godhead, shakti is the complementary opposite of the sacred tendency toward stillness and quiescence. In addition, it is widespread to identify shakti with a female entity, a goddess, and to identify the opposite with her male consort. The two poles are generally understood to be interdependent and have relatively equal status in the divine economy.”

On the topic of Shakti, Arthur Basham (a well-known historian of India) wrote:

“The theme of shakti perhaps came out of a conflict – and eventual compromise – between a robust matriarchal culture that existed before the Aryan migrations (2500BC) and the male-dominated Aryan society o. The Mother Goddess of the Indus Valley people never allowed a dominant male to emerge. In India, The Earth Mother continues to be worshipped as the source that nurtures the seed and brings it to maturity. 

This fundamental reverence of a very agricultural people reaffirms that man depends on woman as she gives food, strength, and life. Mother Goddesses were worshipped at all times, but between the years of the Harappa Culture (2500-1500BC) and the Gupta (300-500), the cults of goddesses garnered little attention from the learned or influential and only emerged from the shadows to a position of absolute authority in the Middle Ages, when feminine divinities (theoretically connected to the gods as their spouses), were once more worshipped by the upper classes; by the Gupta Period the gods’ wives, whose existence had always been appreciated (but had been shadowy figures in earlier theology), began to be worshipped in unique temples.”

And then, of course, there’s the Soma mentioned in ancient Hindu texts – a substance that brought intoxication and communion with the gods. It is believed that this Soma may have been Amanita muscaria – a psychoactive fungus far different from any cubensis strains like Shakti or Malabar Coast. 

There’s so much to explore with India and psychoactive fungi – but for those who’d rather not travel internationally, these spore syringes can give you a taste of Shakti without ever leaving the US.

Disclaimer

We sell premium spore syringes made in sterile laboratory environments containing trillions of spores per syringe, suspended inside a 10cc syringe in pharmaceutical-grade distilled water (for research purposes only). All our syringes are made in a negative-pressure HEPA-filtered clean room. Cultivation of cubensis mushrooms is illegal in the United States of America. Psilocybin mushroom spores are legal in 47 of the 50 states, excluding California, Georgia, and Idaho.