It has widely been assumed that every group of peoples descended from Indo-Europeans have developed a Soma ritual (a form of shamanism involving ingestion of a hallucinogenic substance) with one exception--the Celts/Irish. Renegade scholar Peter Lamborn Wilson (allegedly the real identity of anarchist-philosopher Hakim Bey) is challenging this notion, based on his extensive research of primary sources in the Emerald Isle. He believes that the ancient Irish did have a Soma ritual, which was not explicitly recorded as such but rather was "masked" in various references to apples, berries, dragons, the Sun, ambrosial milk, one-legged beings, and other motifs that appear in art and legends of the time.

In one example, Wilson ties the word Pooka (like the leprechaun and the banshee, a famous supernatural creature of Ireland) to words and phrases for mushrooms, especially the psychedelic variety. "The earliest source I've found on this subject is also the best: Thomas Keightley's The Fairy Mythology (1850). Keightley (1789-1872), an Irish folklorist who lived and published in London, was a friend of that remarkable antiquarian bookseller and author T. Crofton Croker, who used Keightley's material in his own books, and 'inspired' Keightley to compile his Mythology (Briggs 1976). Keightley says the puff-ball [a type of mushroom] is called puckfist or Puck's Fist in English and Cos-a-Phooka or Puck's Foot in Irish. In Welsh 'toadstools or poisonous mushrooms' are named Bwyd Ellyllon or Elves'-food. "Perhaps, however," says Keightley (p. 412), "it is not the large ugly toadstools that are so named, but those pretty small delicate fungi, with their conical heads, which are named fairy-mushrooms in Ireland, where they grow so plentifully." This constitutes a perfect description of the Psilocybe semilanceata or 'Liberty Cap.'"

One of the drawings reproduced in this book represents a scene from the folktale "Connla and the Fairy Maiden". In the caption, Wilson explains: "In one of the most beautiful of all the Irish Soma tales, the hero eats an apple of Fairyland and is seduced by a beautiful maiden whom only he can see. She beckons him away, never to return. Note the mushrooms [in the illustration]."

As with just about all Soma, the identity of Irish Soma is not 100 percent clear. Wilson feels that it is probably a mushroom, but he's not sure if it's a Psilocybe or the Amanita muscaria. The botanical identity of Irish Soma isn't as important to Wilson as the fact that it existed at all. He spends much more time reconstructing the usage of Soma in Ireland and tying it to other Soma rituals, including those of Vedic India (from which we get the word Soma).