Nicholas E. Brink's Blog, page 6
April 15, 2019
The Medicinal Ways of Plants
The Medicinal Ways of Plants
Each medicinal plant has its own personality, and discovering its personality leads us to understand how it is used in healing. Similarly each illness or problem has its personality, and discovering the personality of the problem leads us to understand which plant is needed for healing. Rather than the reductionistic nature of our medical establishment that breaks disease down into isolated bits, the holistic approach is to examining the personality of the disease that unites its diverse expressions, progressions and changes.
The personality of the medicinal plant that has developed through evolution is defined by its niche in the natural environment. The stressors and strains that have created the particular plant through evolutions include the wind, water, drought, sunlight in excess or deficiency and many other factors. These features of the plant that have directed its evolution and define its personality are then called upon to treat the same features of the personality of the disease.
The defining personality features of the plant become clear in listening to the plant through trance as was used by our hunting-gathering ancestors. Asking which plant should be used to treat a specific arbitrarily named illness misses this understanding of the relationship between the plant and the illness. First, the illness exhibits itself in many different ways that need to be considered in selecting the plant. Second, such a question falls back to the reductionistic ways of our medical establishment and the pharmaceutical drug industry. Each plant has its own intelligence, and when asking it for help while in trance the plant hears at a deep level our need and is able to select from its many available chemicals those which meet our need. In some cases, if it is not the appropriate plant to serve our need it can refer us to the appropriate plant. In a recent trance experience, yarrow led the person to the olive leaf, a more appropriate plant for a particular heart issue.
Ecstatic trance as I use and teach is a great traditional avenue for opening a person to the plant spirit or its personality to give us direction in healing.
Each medicinal plant has its own personality, and discovering its personality leads us to understand how it is used in healing. Similarly each illness or problem has its personality, and discovering the personality of the problem leads us to understand which plant is needed for healing. Rather than the reductionistic nature of our medical establishment that breaks disease down into isolated bits, the holistic approach is to examining the personality of the disease that unites its diverse expressions, progressions and changes.
The personality of the medicinal plant that has developed through evolution is defined by its niche in the natural environment. The stressors and strains that have created the particular plant through evolutions include the wind, water, drought, sunlight in excess or deficiency and many other factors. These features of the plant that have directed its evolution and define its personality are then called upon to treat the same features of the personality of the disease.
The defining personality features of the plant become clear in listening to the plant through trance as was used by our hunting-gathering ancestors. Asking which plant should be used to treat a specific arbitrarily named illness misses this understanding of the relationship between the plant and the illness. First, the illness exhibits itself in many different ways that need to be considered in selecting the plant. Second, such a question falls back to the reductionistic ways of our medical establishment and the pharmaceutical drug industry. Each plant has its own intelligence, and when asking it for help while in trance the plant hears at a deep level our need and is able to select from its many available chemicals those which meet our need. In some cases, if it is not the appropriate plant to serve our need it can refer us to the appropriate plant. In a recent trance experience, yarrow led the person to the olive leaf, a more appropriate plant for a particular heart issue.
Ecstatic trance as I use and teach is a great traditional avenue for opening a person to the plant spirit or its personality to give us direction in healing.
April 1, 2019
Secret Teachings of Plants
Book Review: Secret Teachings of Plants: The Intelligence of the Heart in the Direct Perception of Nature by Stephen Harrod Buhner. Rochester, VT: Bear & Co., 2004.
I was drawn to reading the “Secret Teachings of Plants” after reading Stephen Harrod Buhner’s earlier book, “The Lost Language of Plants,” and I found “Secret Teachings” especially enlightening. It opened me to the power of the heart beyond being just the pump for moving blood. The heart also produces an electromagnetic field that reaches beyond the body to receive messages from other electromagnetic fields of other life and substances of the Earth. These perceived messages are emotional in nature, and the heart’s direct neural connection with the brain and especially with the hippocampus carries this emotional input from the outside world to the hippocampus where it is interpreted to give this input meaning.
Buhner’s book provides powerful insights into the calling of spirit guides, especially the guiding spirits of plants. The electromagnetic communication, whether from animal or plant, offers us the avenue for communing with these spirits. This communication is a two-way dialogue between the caller and the called. Before answering a caller, the spirit guide may want to know if you are really calling from your heart and if the answers you seek will come to you though your heart. This two-way communication was very much part of the lives of our hunting-gathering ancestors, but it is something that has been denied or ignored for the last several thousand years during the time in which we have been taught that talking to spirit guides is a sign of mental illness, or at best a superstition.
During this time we came to believe that the brain is the only place of memory and learning, and that the heart is no more than a pump for pumping the blood through the 60,000 miles of blood vessels in the human body. Buhner describes a number of other physiological features of the heart that facilitate the flow of blood: the vacuum that is created within the vortex of the spiraling flow of two or three streams of blood through the vessel, a spiraling flow that is facilitated by a twisting action of the vessel. In addition, the composition of the blood with heavier blood cells at the center of the vortex facilitates the vacuum that pulls the blood through the vessels. Thus the heart as a pump is only a limited part of the process. Buhner then continues in leading the reader on this amazing journey through the heart, a heart that is also an endocrine gland that produces a number of hormones that affect the functioning of the heart, brain and the entire body to protect the neurons that directly connection the heart to the hippocampus, and to protect the arteries from atherosclerosis, coronary heart disease, and strokes. Others hormones inhibit pancreatic cancer cells, regulate blood pressure, improve memory and learning, and have an effect on Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases among other things. The heart is directly connected to the central nervous system with neurons that extend directly to the amygdala, thalamus, hippocampus and the cortex, the brain centers concerned with emotional memories and processing; sensory experience; memory, spatial relationships and interpreting the meaning of sensory inputs; and problem solving, reasoning and learning. Then there are the pacemaker cells throughout the heart that work together electromagnetically to regulate the contractions of the heart. The electromagnetic field and each section of the field no matter how small contains all the information encoded within it, information that is communicated to and from the external world as well as within the body through the electromagnetic impulses.
According to Buhner, learning to listen to the spirits of plants from your heart takes commitment and patience. Opening or listening to your heart requires quieting your mind while focusing on your heart reaching out electromagnetically to the plant’s electromagnetic field. With honest commitment in doing this the plant spirit will respond and come to you. If you are seeking a particular plant to heal, whether for yourself or someone else, the plant that comes to you will know what you are seeking, and what to do as it selects from the very large number of chemicals that it has available to find the appropriate medicine to meet you need. To communicate this need, in the same way that you opened your heart to communicate with the plant, you need to open your heart to listen to the problem for which you are seeking help. In this process rigorous self-examination is important to release you from the issues, moral and otherwise, that can distract you from listening to the plants and the problem of concern.
From my personal experience with clinical hypnosis and ecstatic trance, quieting the mind and listening to that which is from beyond consciousness is quite directly accessed through these states of trance. Listening to and receiving that which is from beyond you has become an expected experience in our ecstatic trance groups when others in the group have an experience very similar to yours. Also, in using clinical hypnosis I realize as the therapist how aware I am of what the client is experiencing while we are both in trance. In these two settings listening through the heart is most evident.
Buhner’s writing gave me the feeling that if I was able to continually listen through my heart as did my hunting and gathering ancestors that I could live in health forever, or at least to a ripe old age. The answers are not found in the simply and linearly prescribed medicinal herbs to heal particular problems but are found by listening through the heart to the spirits of the herbs, the problem to be addressed and to what the spirits have to say.
The book is divided into two halves. The first half, The Systole, is of when the heart contracts, forcing the blood outward to all parts of the body. It is the analytic part of the book to explain the how and why of the functions of the heart. The second half, The Diastole, is of when the heart relaxes and the heart again fills, filling the heart with emotions, of what needs to be expressed in our current world. In the last thousand years of our so called rational or scientific thinking, our thinking has become linear. We seek to understand Nature by breaking it down into small segments for study that leads us to experiencing it as lifeless. This era of enlightenment through rationality should be call the era of endarkenment. The emotional aspects of life perceived through the heart from the world around us have been ignored, thus we have been receiving only the lifeless information perceived by the brain.
Life is self-organized. The living cell is composed of lifeless atoms and molecules. This jump between the lifeless and life has not been explained by the linearity of science. The cells self-organize into more complex life forms, the amoeba, bacteria and more complex microbes. These organisms come together and organize themselves into more complex life forms. As these organize into more and more complex life, the life of the organs of the body and the body of a particular species are formed. But this is not the end. All of a particular species and then the complexity of the interdependence of all living species in its entirety come together and self organize in the complex system of life. Within this complexity there is communication between all levels, communication in the form of chemical, hormonal, electromagnetic, gravitational, behavioral and verbal messages. Breaking this complexity down into its component parts for study is like breaking down a sentence into its grammatical parts to understand the form of a sentence. With this analysis the message of the sentence is lost. This communication and response system between all levels of life is continuous and instantaneous, constantly changing, making adjustments for the health of Gaia, and for life to continue this communication and response needs to be cooperative and not competitive.
Some time ago from my reading I wrote a summary of five features of the coming New Age: a sense of oneness with the Earth; a sense of community with each other; a sense of harmony and peace; a sense of curiosity and continued learning; and a sense of creativity. There are likely others, but this is a beginning. One source was Carl Calleman who suggests that the world of dualities will dissolve, that our need to define such dualities as that which is good and that which is bad, or that which is beautiful and that which is ugly, will end, and we will find value in and appreciation for the diversity that we all have to offer. This dissolution of dualities would lead us to greater peace and harmony, but I have had a difficult time trying to imagine what a world without such dualities would be like. Stephen Buhner’s image of the “Secret Teachings of Plants” has clarified this ending of dualities in his description of a world in which “the entire system and all its parts are cooperative and not competitive. They make up one system. They are whole.” (p. 39). As we return to our rightful place within the evolution of all that which is of the Earth, a place where we are cooperative in supporting this system, we will with necessity be non competitive. We will be just one of all its parts, sensitive to and in communication with all the other parts. All life will respond in their own ways to deal with hot and cold, or to deal with health supporting or pathogenic microbes. Dealing with such dualities will be done with cooperation and without competition. Each level of life in this complex system of life will respond in its own way to minute changes in its environment that impinge upon it, responding rapidly to maintain its health and ability to procreate, grow and to maintain the sustainability of all in this complex system.
Among the forms of communication Buhner elaborates on two, electromagnetic and magnetic communication. Animals such as the shark and other fish have extremely sensitive receptors to picking up electromagnetic signals that can tell them the kinds of fish, how many and where there are available for a meal. Birds and bees are highly sensitive to the Earth’s magnetic field to orient birds in their migration and give the bee direction to flowers and back to the hive. Most interesting is the fact that within the hippocampus of the human brain are sense receptors for magnetic waves, magnetic signals for interpreting spatial relationships, meaning and the health of the heart, carrying information internally regarding blood pressure, immunity, pain and stress. Its effect on stress as regulated by cortisol impacts the immune function, memory, insulin sensitivity, tissue repair and a sense of well being.
I find that this description of communication through electromagnetic fields is parallel to Ervin Laszlo’s description of the holographic matrix that contains all information from the beginning of time that is received by the cytoskeletal structure of the brain. This information as described by Buhner though is of the emotions perceived from the outside world and received by the heart. Though, “because we are trained to ignore these particular kinds of sensory cues and the information they contain, most people do not consciously utilize the heart as an organ of perception. Most of the information received is thus processed below conscious levels of cognition,” (p. 95). This is exactly why I use and teach ecstatic trance, a trance state that opens us to information from outside the body, from outside the brain and heart, information that is received below the level of consciousness. It has become expected that the ecstatic trance journey experiences within a group are sufficiently alike or similar thus reflecting what we might call “mind reading,” providing us with examples of receiving information through the heart from beyond ourselves.
I was drawn to reading the “Secret Teachings of Plants” after reading Stephen Harrod Buhner’s earlier book, “The Lost Language of Plants,” and I found “Secret Teachings” especially enlightening. It opened me to the power of the heart beyond being just the pump for moving blood. The heart also produces an electromagnetic field that reaches beyond the body to receive messages from other electromagnetic fields of other life and substances of the Earth. These perceived messages are emotional in nature, and the heart’s direct neural connection with the brain and especially with the hippocampus carries this emotional input from the outside world to the hippocampus where it is interpreted to give this input meaning.
Buhner’s book provides powerful insights into the calling of spirit guides, especially the guiding spirits of plants. The electromagnetic communication, whether from animal or plant, offers us the avenue for communing with these spirits. This communication is a two-way dialogue between the caller and the called. Before answering a caller, the spirit guide may want to know if you are really calling from your heart and if the answers you seek will come to you though your heart. This two-way communication was very much part of the lives of our hunting-gathering ancestors, but it is something that has been denied or ignored for the last several thousand years during the time in which we have been taught that talking to spirit guides is a sign of mental illness, or at best a superstition.
During this time we came to believe that the brain is the only place of memory and learning, and that the heart is no more than a pump for pumping the blood through the 60,000 miles of blood vessels in the human body. Buhner describes a number of other physiological features of the heart that facilitate the flow of blood: the vacuum that is created within the vortex of the spiraling flow of two or three streams of blood through the vessel, a spiraling flow that is facilitated by a twisting action of the vessel. In addition, the composition of the blood with heavier blood cells at the center of the vortex facilitates the vacuum that pulls the blood through the vessels. Thus the heart as a pump is only a limited part of the process. Buhner then continues in leading the reader on this amazing journey through the heart, a heart that is also an endocrine gland that produces a number of hormones that affect the functioning of the heart, brain and the entire body to protect the neurons that directly connection the heart to the hippocampus, and to protect the arteries from atherosclerosis, coronary heart disease, and strokes. Others hormones inhibit pancreatic cancer cells, regulate blood pressure, improve memory and learning, and have an effect on Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases among other things. The heart is directly connected to the central nervous system with neurons that extend directly to the amygdala, thalamus, hippocampus and the cortex, the brain centers concerned with emotional memories and processing; sensory experience; memory, spatial relationships and interpreting the meaning of sensory inputs; and problem solving, reasoning and learning. Then there are the pacemaker cells throughout the heart that work together electromagnetically to regulate the contractions of the heart. The electromagnetic field and each section of the field no matter how small contains all the information encoded within it, information that is communicated to and from the external world as well as within the body through the electromagnetic impulses.
According to Buhner, learning to listen to the spirits of plants from your heart takes commitment and patience. Opening or listening to your heart requires quieting your mind while focusing on your heart reaching out electromagnetically to the plant’s electromagnetic field. With honest commitment in doing this the plant spirit will respond and come to you. If you are seeking a particular plant to heal, whether for yourself or someone else, the plant that comes to you will know what you are seeking, and what to do as it selects from the very large number of chemicals that it has available to find the appropriate medicine to meet you need. To communicate this need, in the same way that you opened your heart to communicate with the plant, you need to open your heart to listen to the problem for which you are seeking help. In this process rigorous self-examination is important to release you from the issues, moral and otherwise, that can distract you from listening to the plants and the problem of concern.
From my personal experience with clinical hypnosis and ecstatic trance, quieting the mind and listening to that which is from beyond consciousness is quite directly accessed through these states of trance. Listening to and receiving that which is from beyond you has become an expected experience in our ecstatic trance groups when others in the group have an experience very similar to yours. Also, in using clinical hypnosis I realize as the therapist how aware I am of what the client is experiencing while we are both in trance. In these two settings listening through the heart is most evident.
Buhner’s writing gave me the feeling that if I was able to continually listen through my heart as did my hunting and gathering ancestors that I could live in health forever, or at least to a ripe old age. The answers are not found in the simply and linearly prescribed medicinal herbs to heal particular problems but are found by listening through the heart to the spirits of the herbs, the problem to be addressed and to what the spirits have to say.
The book is divided into two halves. The first half, The Systole, is of when the heart contracts, forcing the blood outward to all parts of the body. It is the analytic part of the book to explain the how and why of the functions of the heart. The second half, The Diastole, is of when the heart relaxes and the heart again fills, filling the heart with emotions, of what needs to be expressed in our current world. In the last thousand years of our so called rational or scientific thinking, our thinking has become linear. We seek to understand Nature by breaking it down into small segments for study that leads us to experiencing it as lifeless. This era of enlightenment through rationality should be call the era of endarkenment. The emotional aspects of life perceived through the heart from the world around us have been ignored, thus we have been receiving only the lifeless information perceived by the brain.
Life is self-organized. The living cell is composed of lifeless atoms and molecules. This jump between the lifeless and life has not been explained by the linearity of science. The cells self-organize into more complex life forms, the amoeba, bacteria and more complex microbes. These organisms come together and organize themselves into more complex life forms. As these organize into more and more complex life, the life of the organs of the body and the body of a particular species are formed. But this is not the end. All of a particular species and then the complexity of the interdependence of all living species in its entirety come together and self organize in the complex system of life. Within this complexity there is communication between all levels, communication in the form of chemical, hormonal, electromagnetic, gravitational, behavioral and verbal messages. Breaking this complexity down into its component parts for study is like breaking down a sentence into its grammatical parts to understand the form of a sentence. With this analysis the message of the sentence is lost. This communication and response system between all levels of life is continuous and instantaneous, constantly changing, making adjustments for the health of Gaia, and for life to continue this communication and response needs to be cooperative and not competitive.
Some time ago from my reading I wrote a summary of five features of the coming New Age: a sense of oneness with the Earth; a sense of community with each other; a sense of harmony and peace; a sense of curiosity and continued learning; and a sense of creativity. There are likely others, but this is a beginning. One source was Carl Calleman who suggests that the world of dualities will dissolve, that our need to define such dualities as that which is good and that which is bad, or that which is beautiful and that which is ugly, will end, and we will find value in and appreciation for the diversity that we all have to offer. This dissolution of dualities would lead us to greater peace and harmony, but I have had a difficult time trying to imagine what a world without such dualities would be like. Stephen Buhner’s image of the “Secret Teachings of Plants” has clarified this ending of dualities in his description of a world in which “the entire system and all its parts are cooperative and not competitive. They make up one system. They are whole.” (p. 39). As we return to our rightful place within the evolution of all that which is of the Earth, a place where we are cooperative in supporting this system, we will with necessity be non competitive. We will be just one of all its parts, sensitive to and in communication with all the other parts. All life will respond in their own ways to deal with hot and cold, or to deal with health supporting or pathogenic microbes. Dealing with such dualities will be done with cooperation and without competition. Each level of life in this complex system of life will respond in its own way to minute changes in its environment that impinge upon it, responding rapidly to maintain its health and ability to procreate, grow and to maintain the sustainability of all in this complex system.
Among the forms of communication Buhner elaborates on two, electromagnetic and magnetic communication. Animals such as the shark and other fish have extremely sensitive receptors to picking up electromagnetic signals that can tell them the kinds of fish, how many and where there are available for a meal. Birds and bees are highly sensitive to the Earth’s magnetic field to orient birds in their migration and give the bee direction to flowers and back to the hive. Most interesting is the fact that within the hippocampus of the human brain are sense receptors for magnetic waves, magnetic signals for interpreting spatial relationships, meaning and the health of the heart, carrying information internally regarding blood pressure, immunity, pain and stress. Its effect on stress as regulated by cortisol impacts the immune function, memory, insulin sensitivity, tissue repair and a sense of well being.
I find that this description of communication through electromagnetic fields is parallel to Ervin Laszlo’s description of the holographic matrix that contains all information from the beginning of time that is received by the cytoskeletal structure of the brain. This information as described by Buhner though is of the emotions perceived from the outside world and received by the heart. Though, “because we are trained to ignore these particular kinds of sensory cues and the information they contain, most people do not consciously utilize the heart as an organ of perception. Most of the information received is thus processed below conscious levels of cognition,” (p. 95). This is exactly why I use and teach ecstatic trance, a trance state that opens us to information from outside the body, from outside the brain and heart, information that is received below the level of consciousness. It has become expected that the ecstatic trance journey experiences within a group are sufficiently alike or similar thus reflecting what we might call “mind reading,” providing us with examples of receiving information through the heart from beyond ourselves.
Consciousness in the New Age
I have written periodically about the nature of the New Age towards which we are moving, i.e. unless we destroy ourselves first through global climate change. In summary of a number of different writers who describe what they expect in this the New Age, we will experience a sense of oneness with the Earth, a sense of community with each other, a sense of harmony and peace, a sense of curiosity and continued learning, and a sense of creativity. For us to survive and again live sustainably on our one and only Earth it is in this direction that we must go.
One way our hunter-gathering ancestors experienced the sense of oneness with the Earth was in their ability to commune with the spirits of all that is of the Earth. Though I believe that it is now impossible to live as they lived, primarily because of our extreme increase in numbers, I believe that we can again open ourselves to listening to the spirit guides of Earth’s fauna and flora. Our earliest ancestors experienced the world of the spirits as alive, spirits that gave them direction in how to live, but eventually over time as their way of life became more complex this ability of listening to the spirits was relegated to the shaman of the community. But the spirits are still alive within us as when you listen to what comes to us in your nighttime dreams, dreams of spirits or spirit guides that give us direction in life. When we begin to listen to and value our dreams we have begun on this journey to again find direction in life from the spirits of the world of the spirits.
But to again listen to and commune with the spirits beyond our nighttime dreams we need to quiet our interfering rational mind. One way to quiet our mind is through the use of a trance state of consciousness, whether hypnotic or ecstatic. I have used hypnosis for more than 40 years and for the last 10 years I have been teaching ecstatic trance. In using hypnosis you are letting go of your rational consciousness, opening yourself to what may come to you spontaneously. In using ecstatic trance you are moving with intent into this other world of the spirits to find answers to questions or seek help from the spirits while using drumming or other rapid stimulation to your nervous system to distract you from your rational thinking. When moving with intent into the world of the spirits the ecstatic trance postures as used by the shamans on antiquity and researched by Felicitas Goodman gives direction to your trance journey. These postures and their use are described in my previous blogs and books. Both avenues are effective though you will likely find a preference for one or the other. But what comes to you in trance becomes important in giving you direction in life and opens you to a whole new world beyond yourself.
One way our hunter-gathering ancestors experienced the sense of oneness with the Earth was in their ability to commune with the spirits of all that is of the Earth. Though I believe that it is now impossible to live as they lived, primarily because of our extreme increase in numbers, I believe that we can again open ourselves to listening to the spirit guides of Earth’s fauna and flora. Our earliest ancestors experienced the world of the spirits as alive, spirits that gave them direction in how to live, but eventually over time as their way of life became more complex this ability of listening to the spirits was relegated to the shaman of the community. But the spirits are still alive within us as when you listen to what comes to us in your nighttime dreams, dreams of spirits or spirit guides that give us direction in life. When we begin to listen to and value our dreams we have begun on this journey to again find direction in life from the spirits of the world of the spirits.
But to again listen to and commune with the spirits beyond our nighttime dreams we need to quiet our interfering rational mind. One way to quiet our mind is through the use of a trance state of consciousness, whether hypnotic or ecstatic. I have used hypnosis for more than 40 years and for the last 10 years I have been teaching ecstatic trance. In using hypnosis you are letting go of your rational consciousness, opening yourself to what may come to you spontaneously. In using ecstatic trance you are moving with intent into this other world of the spirits to find answers to questions or seek help from the spirits while using drumming or other rapid stimulation to your nervous system to distract you from your rational thinking. When moving with intent into the world of the spirits the ecstatic trance postures as used by the shamans on antiquity and researched by Felicitas Goodman gives direction to your trance journey. These postures and their use are described in my previous blogs and books. Both avenues are effective though you will likely find a preference for one or the other. But what comes to you in trance becomes important in giving you direction in life and opens you to a whole new world beyond yourself.
March 25, 2019
Plant Spirit Guides
Plant Spirit Guides
I have just finished ready my second book by Stephen Harrod Buhner, “The Secret Teachings of Plants.” Again this book provides powerful insights into the calling of spirit guides, especially plant spirit guides. Whether animals or plants, calling spirit guides is a two-way dialogue between the caller and the called. The guide wants to know if you are really calling from your heart and if the answer you seek will come to you though your heart. This two-way communication was very much part of the life of our hunting-gathering ancestors, but it is something that has been denied or ignored for the last several thousand years during the time in which we have been taught that talking to spirit guides is a sign of mental illness, or at best a superstition. During this time we came to believe that the brain is the place of memory and learning, and that the heart is no more than just a pump. Buhner explains in detail how the heart is also a site of receiving or perceiving emotional information that comes from outside or beyond our body and the memory site for this emotional information.
My interest in accessing the spirits of medicinal plants drew me to these books by Buhner. According to Buhner, learning to listen to the spirits of plants from your heart takes commitment and patience. Opening or listening to your heart takes quieting your mind while focusing on your heart reaching out to the plant through their electromagnetic fields. With honest commitment in doing this the plant spirit will respond and come to you. If you are seeking a particular plant to heal, whether for yourself or someone else, the plant that comes to you will know what you are seeking, and what to do as it selects from the very large number of chemicals that it has available to find the appropriate medicine to meet you need. To communicate through your heart with this need, in the same way that you opened your heart to communicate with the plant, you need to open your heart to listen to the problem for which you are seeking help. In this process rigorous self-examination is important to release you from the issues, moral and otherwise, that can distract you from listening to the plants and the problem of concern.
From my personal experience with clinical hypnosis and ecstatic trance, quieting the mind and listening to that which is beyond consciousness is quite directly accessed through these states of trance. Listening to and hearing that which is beyond the self has become an expected experience in our ecstatic trance groups when others in the group have an experience very similar to yours. Also, in using clinical hypnosis I realize as the therapist how aware I am of what the client is experiencing while we are both in trance. In these two settings listening through the heart is most evident. Either form of trance is effective in quieting the mind, the mind that would otherwise interfere with listening through the heart. The channels of communication are through the electromagnetic fields that surround everything including the plant, you, and your heart, with the channel extending from your heart to the hippocampus of your brain through direct neural connections. It is in the hippocampus where the message from the heart is interpreted, providing it with meaning.
Buhner’s writing gave me the feeling that if I were able to continually listen through my heart as did my hunting and gathering ancestors that I could live in health forever, or at least to a ripe old age. The answer is not found in simply and linearly prescribing certain medicinal herbs to heal particular problems but to listen through the heart to the spirits of the herbs and the problem to be addressed and to follow what the spirits have to say.
I have just finished ready my second book by Stephen Harrod Buhner, “The Secret Teachings of Plants.” Again this book provides powerful insights into the calling of spirit guides, especially plant spirit guides. Whether animals or plants, calling spirit guides is a two-way dialogue between the caller and the called. The guide wants to know if you are really calling from your heart and if the answer you seek will come to you though your heart. This two-way communication was very much part of the life of our hunting-gathering ancestors, but it is something that has been denied or ignored for the last several thousand years during the time in which we have been taught that talking to spirit guides is a sign of mental illness, or at best a superstition. During this time we came to believe that the brain is the place of memory and learning, and that the heart is no more than just a pump. Buhner explains in detail how the heart is also a site of receiving or perceiving emotional information that comes from outside or beyond our body and the memory site for this emotional information.
My interest in accessing the spirits of medicinal plants drew me to these books by Buhner. According to Buhner, learning to listen to the spirits of plants from your heart takes commitment and patience. Opening or listening to your heart takes quieting your mind while focusing on your heart reaching out to the plant through their electromagnetic fields. With honest commitment in doing this the plant spirit will respond and come to you. If you are seeking a particular plant to heal, whether for yourself or someone else, the plant that comes to you will know what you are seeking, and what to do as it selects from the very large number of chemicals that it has available to find the appropriate medicine to meet you need. To communicate through your heart with this need, in the same way that you opened your heart to communicate with the plant, you need to open your heart to listen to the problem for which you are seeking help. In this process rigorous self-examination is important to release you from the issues, moral and otherwise, that can distract you from listening to the plants and the problem of concern.
From my personal experience with clinical hypnosis and ecstatic trance, quieting the mind and listening to that which is beyond consciousness is quite directly accessed through these states of trance. Listening to and hearing that which is beyond the self has become an expected experience in our ecstatic trance groups when others in the group have an experience very similar to yours. Also, in using clinical hypnosis I realize as the therapist how aware I am of what the client is experiencing while we are both in trance. In these two settings listening through the heart is most evident. Either form of trance is effective in quieting the mind, the mind that would otherwise interfere with listening through the heart. The channels of communication are through the electromagnetic fields that surround everything including the plant, you, and your heart, with the channel extending from your heart to the hippocampus of your brain through direct neural connections. It is in the hippocampus where the message from the heart is interpreted, providing it with meaning.
Buhner’s writing gave me the feeling that if I were able to continually listen through my heart as did my hunting and gathering ancestors that I could live in health forever, or at least to a ripe old age. The answer is not found in simply and linearly prescribing certain medicinal herbs to heal particular problems but to listen through the heart to the spirits of the herbs and the problem to be addressed and to follow what the spirits have to say.
March 21, 2019
Spring Equinox 2019
#59 Spring Equinox 2019
Time sure passes quickly. As of this next Summer Solstice it will be 15 years since I celebrated the Solstice with you at Galvendrup. Wishing you a joyous coming of Spring. We are so much looking forward to see the life come back on our acre in High Falls, NY, especially of that which we planted last summer before our first winter there. My connection to the Nordic Gods and Goddesses still thrives and even more now in my new venture of using ecstatic trance journeying for calling upon the spirit guides of the Earth’s flora. I realized a few months ago that until now most of my spirit guides have been of animals. It has been exciting calling upon the spirits of those of us with roots that grow in the ground and most all of them with some healing quality. Idunn has become so much more alive within me in my visits to her gardens that spread over the Earth, gardens that heal and keeps us young, especially her golden apples. Four of the first trees we planted in moving to New York were apple. With my own roots among the Sami people in Lapland and their use of the labyrinth, I also built a large labyrinth about 24 meters across that I walk to connect with my ancestors, and I have planted around it many medicinal plants, goldenseal, black cohosh, wild ginger, ramps among them. Walking it is very trance inducing. I know that trance was very central in the lives of our Nordic ancestors, giving them direction in life, healing, and divining to find answers to questions and seeing into the future. It’s been a very busy but an exciting and good year. My new book, Applying the Constructivist Approach to Cognitive Therapy: Resolving the Unconscious Past, was released two days ago, my first academic book in quite a few years and it brings ecstatic trance into the therapy setting.
I enjoy and so much cherish following the activities of Forn Sidr and a number of you with whom I am Friends on Facebook. It is fun trying to read the posts written in Danish but I always appreciate the translate button.
Hil! Idunn
*For those of you who may not understand the meaning of the number 59, I have written a message for the last 59 solstices and equinoxes since Toni and I celebrated the summer solstice with those of the Danish Forn Sidr nearly fifteen years ago in 2004 at the Galvendrup Stone on the island of Fyn. Forn Sidr is a recognized church in Scandinavia that worships the ancient gods of the north.
Time sure passes quickly. As of this next Summer Solstice it will be 15 years since I celebrated the Solstice with you at Galvendrup. Wishing you a joyous coming of Spring. We are so much looking forward to see the life come back on our acre in High Falls, NY, especially of that which we planted last summer before our first winter there. My connection to the Nordic Gods and Goddesses still thrives and even more now in my new venture of using ecstatic trance journeying for calling upon the spirit guides of the Earth’s flora. I realized a few months ago that until now most of my spirit guides have been of animals. It has been exciting calling upon the spirits of those of us with roots that grow in the ground and most all of them with some healing quality. Idunn has become so much more alive within me in my visits to her gardens that spread over the Earth, gardens that heal and keeps us young, especially her golden apples. Four of the first trees we planted in moving to New York were apple. With my own roots among the Sami people in Lapland and their use of the labyrinth, I also built a large labyrinth about 24 meters across that I walk to connect with my ancestors, and I have planted around it many medicinal plants, goldenseal, black cohosh, wild ginger, ramps among them. Walking it is very trance inducing. I know that trance was very central in the lives of our Nordic ancestors, giving them direction in life, healing, and divining to find answers to questions and seeing into the future. It’s been a very busy but an exciting and good year. My new book, Applying the Constructivist Approach to Cognitive Therapy: Resolving the Unconscious Past, was released two days ago, my first academic book in quite a few years and it brings ecstatic trance into the therapy setting.
I enjoy and so much cherish following the activities of Forn Sidr and a number of you with whom I am Friends on Facebook. It is fun trying to read the posts written in Danish but I always appreciate the translate button.
Hil! Idunn
*For those of you who may not understand the meaning of the number 59, I have written a message for the last 59 solstices and equinoxes since Toni and I celebrated the summer solstice with those of the Danish Forn Sidr nearly fifteen years ago in 2004 at the Galvendrup Stone on the island of Fyn. Forn Sidr is a recognized church in Scandinavia that worships the ancient gods of the north.
March 18, 2019
A Turning Point in Ecstatic Trance
Today is a turning point in my research on ecstatic trance with the release of my book “Applying the Constructivist Approach to Cognitive Therapy: Resolving the Unconscious Past.” It places ecstatic trance in a prominent position among other ways of accessing the unconscious mind to resolve unconscious issues by offering two chapters that address its use for resolving such issues, one on Felicitas Goodman’s research and the power of the ecstatic postures, and the second on ecstatic soul retrieval. This book is published by the academic publisher Routledge as a potential text book to be used in teaching an expanded approach to cognitive therapy. Beside the traditional modalities in therapy of dream work, guided imagery, clinical hypnosis and analytical hypnotherapy for accessing the unconscious, ecstatic trance and ecstatic soul retrieval are presented as another powerful modality for delving into the unconscious past.
I feel that this is an important turning point in having ecstatic trance become more broadly accepted as we move into a new world, the New Age. Ecstatic trance has been used over the centuries by the hunting-gathering people of the world as an effective way of healing and looking beyond our so-called rational world of the five senses to the world of the spirits. Now, with our new understanding of world of the spirits, the world beyond that which has been considered rational, a real world of growing acceptance, it is time to accept this ancient avenue of healing into our current practices of healing.
I feel that this is an important turning point in having ecstatic trance become more broadly accepted as we move into a new world, the New Age. Ecstatic trance has been used over the centuries by the hunting-gathering people of the world as an effective way of healing and looking beyond our so-called rational world of the five senses to the world of the spirits. Now, with our new understanding of world of the spirits, the world beyond that which has been considered rational, a real world of growing acceptance, it is time to accept this ancient avenue of healing into our current practices of healing.
March 12, 2019
The Lost Languagae of Plants
Review: The Lost Language o Plants: The Ecological Importance of Plant Medicines to Life on Earth by Stephen Harrod Buhner. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2002.
After beautifully and poetically describing his early connections to nature, connections that were taught to him by his great-grandparents, Buhner ventures into vividly describing the interior wounds caused by our soulless world and the exterior wounds of watching its destruction. Our languages, whether cultural or scientific, define who we are. The overall understanding of the aliveness of our Earth is lost when the interconnection and interdependence of everything that is of the Earth is broken down into small component pieces for study and define the languages of science. This disconnect from the Earth is also evident in our culturally spoken languages. As children we naturally experience the living Earth with love, but we are soon taught in school, religious institutions, from television and by parents that the Universe, Earth and everything of the Earth is a lifeless and soulless machine over which we have dominion to be consumed as we see fit. Buhner writes from his heart, describing emotionally where this loss of love and knowledge of Nature is taking us. This disconnect is truly terrifying, a loss that separates us from the aliveness of the world around us.
Our separation from the living Earth very direct impacts the world of medicine and pharmaceuticals. 95% of the pharmaceutical drugs we take are not metabolized by the body but excreted, drugs with questionable effectiveness that generally treat only symptoms without providing a cure. These drugs excreted in our urine and feces go into the environment and are not removed by waste treatment facilities, thus they add greatly to pollution and directly end up in the animals, insects and plants that we are so dependent upon. The effect of these pollutants on the Earth and its life is not know but is considered one cause of the extinction of so many species. Other sources of pollution to the environment come from the manufacturing of these pharmaceuticals. Also a huge amount of consumed or thrown out personal care products end up in the environment. Several other sources of pollutants to the environment are the waste products of the chemo and radiation therapies and the medical, infectious and pathological wastes produced in hospitals and other medical facilities including the toxic dioxins, phthalates and mercury. Then there is the severe problem that comes from the continued search for new antibiotics to deal with the pathogenic bacteria and other microorganisms that are rapidly becoming resistant to the presently known antibiotics, antibiotics that destroy both the harmful bacteria as well as the beneficial bacteria that we so much depend upon. In addition the medical establishment has a history of violently suppressing the use of the natural medicinal herbs that had so effectively kept life on Earth healthy for hundreds of thousands of years.
After reading these frightening chapters on pharmaceuticals and antibiotics the chapter¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬ Plants are All Chemists provides a new sense of hope. We are dependent upon each plant for breathing in carbon dioxide and breathing out oxygen, a process which has remained in its delicate and sustaining balance for all life on Earth, but a balance that the human species is now in the process of destroying. Beyond this dependency we have much to learn from Earth’s flora in how it survives and stays healthy, and how to live as part of this balance by listening to the flora as did our hunting-gathering ancestors. Plants have many thousands of chemicals in their environment that they have learned to effectively use, some to support and protect their propagation for seed germination and through their roots, some for maintaining their health by fighting disease and some for their growth. Some of these natural chemicals are pathogenic and harmful, but the plant produce antifungal, antibiotic and antimicrobial compounds when needed without creating resistant pathogens.
Plants when needing to be pruned can allow foraging predators, animals and insects, to assist in this task, but they also know when enough is enough and have chemicals to end this foraging, pheromones and scents that send the forager fleeing, some that can make the plant toxic, and some that interfere with the fertility of the foragers thus decreasing their population. When the plant needs room to grow it also has allopathic chemicals that cause the competitive plants to retreat. Buhner offers many examples for each of these situations, e.g. in this last case the toxic Juglone of the Black Walnut that has caused us problems from the several Black Walnuts that stand near our fruit trees. We have search for what we can plant near them and found that Cherries, Red Osier Dogwood and the Viburnums get along with this toxin. What is most impressive is a plant’s ability to communicate in this world of interdependency and the rapidity with which it can respond with specific chemicals when needed for growth, health and sustainability. Joining in this communication by learning to listen to the plants can be effectively facilitated by using ecstatic and/or hypnotic trance as I have used and describe in my previous writings.
Buhner then presents the concept of a “keystone plant” that attracts other plants into its community or archipelago upon which it depends for health maintenance, plants that are also dependent upon each other. His example is the community of plants around the “keystone” Ironwood trees in the Sonora Desert that have taken hundreds of years to become established. He also describes the “nurse” plant that leads the way to create such a community before the keystone plant finds its way to join it. On the wooded hillside of our acre in the Hudson Valley there are two ironwoods that are growing in the middle of a grove of dogwood. Maybe in this case the dogwoods are the keystone plants, but I have been clearing out a tangle of invasive multiflora rose and barberry, both very invasive in the area. Maybe it is a mistake, i.e. if these invasive plants have been supporting the ironwoods and dogwoods, but I have left a few of these invasives. We have a small herd of deer in residence and since the barberry is a magnet for ticks, maybe they should be removed though the barberry also has many medicinal qualities. Buhner’s book is very thought provoking, and in a personal communication he agrees that at least some of these invasives should remain.
Buhner then continues with many fascinating examples of how animals use medicinal herbs. Especially interesting is the chimpanzee’s use of the rough, bristly and hairy leaves of the Aspilia to rid themselves of intestinal worms. The chemicals in this leaf weaken and even kill the worms, but the chimpanzee folds the unchewed leaf like an accordion and swallows it whole. The folds of the rough bristly leaf catch the worms as the leaf passes through the GI track, pulling the worms loose and out. Buhner’s numerous examples reveal the high intelligence of the animals and show in an amazing way how the animals have learned to use specific plants effectively for specific problems.
The biofeedback loops of communication within a plant species, between different species of plants, and between plants and other life send messages for when to use specific chemicals produced by the plants and other soil organisms to maintain plant health, growth and fertility. The artificial pharmaceuticals that end up in the environment cause chaos in this network of life causing the loss of many species. Again the examples offered by Buhner of this chaos are frightening.
Plants are ecological medicines. Cancer has increased “exactly parallel to the decrease of diverse plants as foods and medicine” (p. 206). In 1900 a person’s diet included a much larger diversity of plants and many were wild-gathered, plants that contained multiple types of compounds that inhibit cell-division and cancer, thus cancer was much less of a problem then than it is today.
Buhner in Chapter 10 returns to his beautiful and poetic way of writing from the heart. He offers a hopeful description of what could be a healthy future if we can return to our rightful place in the continued process of evolution rather than thinking of ourselves as superior to all other life on Earth. We again need to learn to listen to the plants that also listen to us and know our needs. We again need to learn the language of the plants. The chapter ends with a beautiful series of exercises on how to listen, not intellectually but emotionally and spiritually from the heart, to the spirits of the Earth’s flora, a topic that has been so important to me personally in my teaching of ecstatic trance, a trance state that distracts us from interfering intellectual thoughts through drumming and opens us to the ecstatic world of the spirits. So important in these nine exercises are the latter exercises when the earlier exercises are repeated but this time taking with us on these trance journeys our younger selves. As it did for Buhner during his childhood, our child self so naturally knows how to listen to the spirits of the natural and wild world. By seeing this world through the eyes of our child-self we can again open ourselves to this world of the spirits as I write about in my book, Trance Journeys of the Hunter-Gatherers: Ecstatic Practices to Reconnect with the Great Mother and Heal the Earth.
The last chapter of the book calls upon four very articulate writers who describe from the heart their personal journeys of reconnecting with the Earth. The Lost Language of Plants is a most important book to read to help in guiding use to finding those ways to sustain the health of the Earth for our children, grandchildren and all future generations.
After beautifully and poetically describing his early connections to nature, connections that were taught to him by his great-grandparents, Buhner ventures into vividly describing the interior wounds caused by our soulless world and the exterior wounds of watching its destruction. Our languages, whether cultural or scientific, define who we are. The overall understanding of the aliveness of our Earth is lost when the interconnection and interdependence of everything that is of the Earth is broken down into small component pieces for study and define the languages of science. This disconnect from the Earth is also evident in our culturally spoken languages. As children we naturally experience the living Earth with love, but we are soon taught in school, religious institutions, from television and by parents that the Universe, Earth and everything of the Earth is a lifeless and soulless machine over which we have dominion to be consumed as we see fit. Buhner writes from his heart, describing emotionally where this loss of love and knowledge of Nature is taking us. This disconnect is truly terrifying, a loss that separates us from the aliveness of the world around us.
Our separation from the living Earth very direct impacts the world of medicine and pharmaceuticals. 95% of the pharmaceutical drugs we take are not metabolized by the body but excreted, drugs with questionable effectiveness that generally treat only symptoms without providing a cure. These drugs excreted in our urine and feces go into the environment and are not removed by waste treatment facilities, thus they add greatly to pollution and directly end up in the animals, insects and plants that we are so dependent upon. The effect of these pollutants on the Earth and its life is not know but is considered one cause of the extinction of so many species. Other sources of pollution to the environment come from the manufacturing of these pharmaceuticals. Also a huge amount of consumed or thrown out personal care products end up in the environment. Several other sources of pollutants to the environment are the waste products of the chemo and radiation therapies and the medical, infectious and pathological wastes produced in hospitals and other medical facilities including the toxic dioxins, phthalates and mercury. Then there is the severe problem that comes from the continued search for new antibiotics to deal with the pathogenic bacteria and other microorganisms that are rapidly becoming resistant to the presently known antibiotics, antibiotics that destroy both the harmful bacteria as well as the beneficial bacteria that we so much depend upon. In addition the medical establishment has a history of violently suppressing the use of the natural medicinal herbs that had so effectively kept life on Earth healthy for hundreds of thousands of years.
After reading these frightening chapters on pharmaceuticals and antibiotics the chapter¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬ Plants are All Chemists provides a new sense of hope. We are dependent upon each plant for breathing in carbon dioxide and breathing out oxygen, a process which has remained in its delicate and sustaining balance for all life on Earth, but a balance that the human species is now in the process of destroying. Beyond this dependency we have much to learn from Earth’s flora in how it survives and stays healthy, and how to live as part of this balance by listening to the flora as did our hunting-gathering ancestors. Plants have many thousands of chemicals in their environment that they have learned to effectively use, some to support and protect their propagation for seed germination and through their roots, some for maintaining their health by fighting disease and some for their growth. Some of these natural chemicals are pathogenic and harmful, but the plant produce antifungal, antibiotic and antimicrobial compounds when needed without creating resistant pathogens.
Plants when needing to be pruned can allow foraging predators, animals and insects, to assist in this task, but they also know when enough is enough and have chemicals to end this foraging, pheromones and scents that send the forager fleeing, some that can make the plant toxic, and some that interfere with the fertility of the foragers thus decreasing their population. When the plant needs room to grow it also has allopathic chemicals that cause the competitive plants to retreat. Buhner offers many examples for each of these situations, e.g. in this last case the toxic Juglone of the Black Walnut that has caused us problems from the several Black Walnuts that stand near our fruit trees. We have search for what we can plant near them and found that Cherries, Red Osier Dogwood and the Viburnums get along with this toxin. What is most impressive is a plant’s ability to communicate in this world of interdependency and the rapidity with which it can respond with specific chemicals when needed for growth, health and sustainability. Joining in this communication by learning to listen to the plants can be effectively facilitated by using ecstatic and/or hypnotic trance as I have used and describe in my previous writings.
Buhner then presents the concept of a “keystone plant” that attracts other plants into its community or archipelago upon which it depends for health maintenance, plants that are also dependent upon each other. His example is the community of plants around the “keystone” Ironwood trees in the Sonora Desert that have taken hundreds of years to become established. He also describes the “nurse” plant that leads the way to create such a community before the keystone plant finds its way to join it. On the wooded hillside of our acre in the Hudson Valley there are two ironwoods that are growing in the middle of a grove of dogwood. Maybe in this case the dogwoods are the keystone plants, but I have been clearing out a tangle of invasive multiflora rose and barberry, both very invasive in the area. Maybe it is a mistake, i.e. if these invasive plants have been supporting the ironwoods and dogwoods, but I have left a few of these invasives. We have a small herd of deer in residence and since the barberry is a magnet for ticks, maybe they should be removed though the barberry also has many medicinal qualities. Buhner’s book is very thought provoking, and in a personal communication he agrees that at least some of these invasives should remain.
Buhner then continues with many fascinating examples of how animals use medicinal herbs. Especially interesting is the chimpanzee’s use of the rough, bristly and hairy leaves of the Aspilia to rid themselves of intestinal worms. The chemicals in this leaf weaken and even kill the worms, but the chimpanzee folds the unchewed leaf like an accordion and swallows it whole. The folds of the rough bristly leaf catch the worms as the leaf passes through the GI track, pulling the worms loose and out. Buhner’s numerous examples reveal the high intelligence of the animals and show in an amazing way how the animals have learned to use specific plants effectively for specific problems.
The biofeedback loops of communication within a plant species, between different species of plants, and between plants and other life send messages for when to use specific chemicals produced by the plants and other soil organisms to maintain plant health, growth and fertility. The artificial pharmaceuticals that end up in the environment cause chaos in this network of life causing the loss of many species. Again the examples offered by Buhner of this chaos are frightening.
Plants are ecological medicines. Cancer has increased “exactly parallel to the decrease of diverse plants as foods and medicine” (p. 206). In 1900 a person’s diet included a much larger diversity of plants and many were wild-gathered, plants that contained multiple types of compounds that inhibit cell-division and cancer, thus cancer was much less of a problem then than it is today.
Buhner in Chapter 10 returns to his beautiful and poetic way of writing from the heart. He offers a hopeful description of what could be a healthy future if we can return to our rightful place in the continued process of evolution rather than thinking of ourselves as superior to all other life on Earth. We again need to learn to listen to the plants that also listen to us and know our needs. We again need to learn the language of the plants. The chapter ends with a beautiful series of exercises on how to listen, not intellectually but emotionally and spiritually from the heart, to the spirits of the Earth’s flora, a topic that has been so important to me personally in my teaching of ecstatic trance, a trance state that distracts us from interfering intellectual thoughts through drumming and opens us to the ecstatic world of the spirits. So important in these nine exercises are the latter exercises when the earlier exercises are repeated but this time taking with us on these trance journeys our younger selves. As it did for Buhner during his childhood, our child self so naturally knows how to listen to the spirits of the natural and wild world. By seeing this world through the eyes of our child-self we can again open ourselves to this world of the spirits as I write about in my book, Trance Journeys of the Hunter-Gatherers: Ecstatic Practices to Reconnect with the Great Mother and Heal the Earth.
The last chapter of the book calls upon four very articulate writers who describe from the heart their personal journeys of reconnecting with the Earth. The Lost Language of Plants is a most important book to read to help in guiding use to finding those ways to sustain the health of the Earth for our children, grandchildren and all future generations.
March 11, 2019
A Child's World of the Spirits
Children so naturally listen to and hear the spirits of the Earth. For them it is part of play. The values they learn about life are so often taught to them through the animals and plants they love and find in many of the books they read or are read to them, animals that become their spirit guides. But as they grow older with the pressures of society, of schools, religious institutions, and parents they are expected to give up these childish ways, ways that the adults relegate to imagination and superstition. Yet their imagination comes from beyond the five senses, from a sixth sense, the world of the spirits. For us as adults to survive into the new world we need to again see the world through the eyes of our children or our younger, child self, the world of the spirits.
With the child’s natural ability to listen to the spirits, their experiences in ecstatic trance quickly lead them into this spirit world. Though it has been very rare that a child is part of an ecstatic trance group, I have listened to their nighttime dreams, dream experiences that are alive in the spirit world, dreams that teach them so much beyond the world of separation. The world that schools teach them is that the world is a machine without life, without feelings. The church teaches them that they have dominion over the Earth and that the Earth is there for the taking so take from it everything you can. They learn that the Earth is without feeling and taking from her does not hurt her. Trees can be cut down, plants pulled up and animals killed indiscriminately. Parents are generally most concerned about the child’s future, that they are able to take care of themselves so they need to end being a child and act like a productive adult. Through dreams, trance and child play the world around the child is alive and we need support this world of theirs for them to continue to experience the world as alive. The Earth, our Great Mother, has so much to teach children and each of us, so we need to open ourselves to her and to listen to what she has to say. As so aptly described in the exercises offered by Stephen Buhner in his book The Lost Language of Plants, seeing the world through the eyes of a child can again bring the world of nature back to life for each of us.
With the child’s natural ability to listen to the spirits, their experiences in ecstatic trance quickly lead them into this spirit world. Though it has been very rare that a child is part of an ecstatic trance group, I have listened to their nighttime dreams, dream experiences that are alive in the spirit world, dreams that teach them so much beyond the world of separation. The world that schools teach them is that the world is a machine without life, without feelings. The church teaches them that they have dominion over the Earth and that the Earth is there for the taking so take from it everything you can. They learn that the Earth is without feeling and taking from her does not hurt her. Trees can be cut down, plants pulled up and animals killed indiscriminately. Parents are generally most concerned about the child’s future, that they are able to take care of themselves so they need to end being a child and act like a productive adult. Through dreams, trance and child play the world around the child is alive and we need support this world of theirs for them to continue to experience the world as alive. The Earth, our Great Mother, has so much to teach children and each of us, so we need to open ourselves to her and to listen to what she has to say. As so aptly described in the exercises offered by Stephen Buhner in his book The Lost Language of Plants, seeing the world through the eyes of a child can again bring the world of nature back to life for each of us.
March 4, 2019
Language and Felicitas Goodman
The Languages of Felicitas Goodman
I have been reading Stephen Buhner’s The Lost Language of Plants, and though I am only about a quarter the way through the book, each chapter has profoundly affected me. One chapter describes how a language affects a person’s personality and the way one looks at the Earth. He tells the story of a man who knew several languages and how his wife saw changes in his personality when he was immersed in a different language. He was a very different person when in Greece and speaking Greek. The languages of the sciences takes much away from the person in the way one looks at the world, sciences that breakdown what is being studied into its component parts, thus losing the reality of the whole. Buhner was a mathematician as I was at the end of my first four years of college, i.e. before I switched psychology. Though psychology seemed more real in understanding people, it still segments them by studying such components of a person as how they learning, emotions, abnormal psychology, and the many theories of personality theory. Only in my private practice as a psychologist did I feel the person again coming together as a whole person as I focused on speaking the language of the client through the use of hypnosis and narrative therapy.
But in reading this chapter I thought much about Felicitas Goodman, who in her research brought together the elements of ecstatic trance and incorporated this new language within herself. Being a cultural linguist before getting her PhD in anthropology she knew quite fluently about twenty languages. It came to me that knowing this many languages took her out of the box of how knowing only one language limits a person in how they see the world. The language of anthropology is again very segmenting and limiting, e.g. the ethnographic research of some native culture again is segmented in examining childrearing practices, rites of passage, religion, etc. which misses again the true nature of the culture in the attempt to be objective, but Goodman stepped out of the box by recognizing the power of ecstatic trance and incorporating it as if it were another language in her life, the language of the spirits. By incorporating it within herself she broke the rules of objectivity in anthropology and likely lost creditability in the eyes of other anthropologists, but by doing so she has had a great influence upon the many people she taught in using what she learned.
Yet her openness to new avenues of inquiry continued until the end of her life as evident in her interest in Rupert Sheldrake whose research opened her to new ideas of the nature of ecstatic trance and its value. Her ecstatic trance experiences showed her the reality of the spirits and Sheldrake’s thinking would have taken her deeper into understanding the world of the spirits, the spirits of the ancestors including the spirits of ancestral medicinal plants, spirits of the Earth, and how the spirits give us direction as how to live in oneness with all life of the Earth.
I have been reading Stephen Buhner’s The Lost Language of Plants, and though I am only about a quarter the way through the book, each chapter has profoundly affected me. One chapter describes how a language affects a person’s personality and the way one looks at the Earth. He tells the story of a man who knew several languages and how his wife saw changes in his personality when he was immersed in a different language. He was a very different person when in Greece and speaking Greek. The languages of the sciences takes much away from the person in the way one looks at the world, sciences that breakdown what is being studied into its component parts, thus losing the reality of the whole. Buhner was a mathematician as I was at the end of my first four years of college, i.e. before I switched psychology. Though psychology seemed more real in understanding people, it still segments them by studying such components of a person as how they learning, emotions, abnormal psychology, and the many theories of personality theory. Only in my private practice as a psychologist did I feel the person again coming together as a whole person as I focused on speaking the language of the client through the use of hypnosis and narrative therapy.
But in reading this chapter I thought much about Felicitas Goodman, who in her research brought together the elements of ecstatic trance and incorporated this new language within herself. Being a cultural linguist before getting her PhD in anthropology she knew quite fluently about twenty languages. It came to me that knowing this many languages took her out of the box of how knowing only one language limits a person in how they see the world. The language of anthropology is again very segmenting and limiting, e.g. the ethnographic research of some native culture again is segmented in examining childrearing practices, rites of passage, religion, etc. which misses again the true nature of the culture in the attempt to be objective, but Goodman stepped out of the box by recognizing the power of ecstatic trance and incorporating it as if it were another language in her life, the language of the spirits. By incorporating it within herself she broke the rules of objectivity in anthropology and likely lost creditability in the eyes of other anthropologists, but by doing so she has had a great influence upon the many people she taught in using what she learned.
Yet her openness to new avenues of inquiry continued until the end of her life as evident in her interest in Rupert Sheldrake whose research opened her to new ideas of the nature of ecstatic trance and its value. Her ecstatic trance experiences showed her the reality of the spirits and Sheldrake’s thinking would have taken her deeper into understanding the world of the spirits, the spirits of the ancestors including the spirits of ancestral medicinal plants, spirits of the Earth, and how the spirits give us direction as how to live in oneness with all life of the Earth.
February 28, 2019
Book of Herbal Wisdom
Review - The Book of Herbal Wisdom: Using Plants as Medicines by Matthew Wood, Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 1997.
After reviewing “Herbal Allies” by Robert Rogers, a book that I found very important to my personal journey into medicinal plants, Rogers emailed me, thanking me for the review, but he added that I needed to review Matthew Wood’s books. With this introduction I was led to Wood’s book, “The Book of Herbal Wisdom: Using Plants as Medicines.” His stories of 41 different medicinal plants are very useful, enlightening and readable. I will select several to review, but most important are the six preliminary chapters that provide ways or systems for categorizing the plants medicines and medical problems, thus giving a clearer system as how the plants can be used.
One of the most important ideas I have gained from reading these books is to more deeply recognize how our Great Mother Earth has created all life to be interdependent upon each other for a healthy and sustainable balance, and when used properly the Earth’s flora becomes a very important piece in maintaining this healthy balance. One of my beliefs is that about ten thousand years ago with the beginning of the era of agriculture and the domestication of animals we began to believe in the so called knowledge of good and evil that gave us controlling dominion over the Earth. Because of our greed for wealth this beginning has led to the destruction of the Earth, destroying the Earth that had so healthily maintained the hunter-gatherers of the earlier era. This knowledge threw us out of the Garden of Eden and is where our current medical practices have been amiss by ignoring the beautiful healthy and sustainable balance of all life that our Mother Earth has provided.
This belief is beautifully restated by Matthew Wood. He begins with the idea that plants have stories to tell, stories that “begin in the hidden depths of the earth, in the unknown light of a place called the Underworld. From this source of mystery and power, the healing power and wisdom of the herbs ray out like a light, into our world. They never lose the magic that is innate to the inhabitants of the world of mystery… People try to press herbs into a rational scientific box. This is not only entirely foreign to them, it kills their spirit and does not make ours soar” (P. 4). The excitement I am finding in my own journey is to connect with the plants in the Underworld through shamanic dreamtime journeying using ecstatic trance. As Wood describes, the power of animal spirit guides, the bear, the wolf, and the turtle teach us so much, but the spirit guides of the medicinal herbs are also available to us if we open ourselves to them through observation and dreamtime experiences as found in vision quests. The American Indians, as well as the ancient Greeks, believed in the knowledge that comes from dreamtime.
Wood then proceeds by offering several useful systems for listening to the herbal spirit guides. One prominent way is to recognize the signatures of the plants. The doctrine of signatures “is that a plant resembles the disease, organ or person for which it is remedial”…“Signatures represent configurations of energy or patterns in plants and these correspond to similar patterns in people. We are not looking for superficial resemblances, but for one that operates on the level of essence.” (Pgs. 21-22). This essence is found through intuition and imagination, again bringing us into the realm of dreamtime. Dreamtime I find is best accessed through our nighttime dreams and through such waking dream experiences as found in hypnotic and ecstatic trance, experiences that take us into the spirit world where the signatures of plants become clear. One of Wood’s examples is of the Juniper, a saxifrage with roots that clove and break apart rock, thus it is suited for breaking kidney stones, especially meaningful to me since I have been recently diagnosed as having a kidney stone. I experienced this signature characteristic of the Juniper as I sat before and communed with one while in ecstatic trance, a Juniper that is growing on a rock shelf of blue stone at our home in the Hudson Valley of New York.
Wood then examines a number of interesting classification schemes. First is the Greek four humors or temperaments: the sanguine of people possessing an excess of red bile or blood causing them to be impulsive and joyful but without restraints, thus with a tendency towards hemorrhage by being careless. Then there is the choleric or bilious temperament for those with an excess of yellow bile or choler who tend to be willful and angry with jaundice, liver or digestive problems. Third is the phlegmatic temperament of those who are full of mucus, moody and sentimental. And finally there are those with a melancholic or black bile temperament who tend towards inactivity and death.
Another scheme is of plants that are categorized as hot or cold and moist or dry with these characteristics graded from one to five in intensity, e.g. the juniper berry is cold and dry in the third degree. Another scheme is the four elements of earth, air, fire and water with possibly a fifth element, the spiritual. The Chinese scheme of Yin and Yang is also considered. How these classification schemes may be used in classifying medicinal plants and medical problems is considered, each adding something to the wisdom of medicinal herbs.
I found the next chapter on Alchemy and Chemistry the most enlightening. During the seventeenth century emerged the beginning of our understanding of what our Earth is composed with the discovery of a number of elements such as phosphorus, gold, iron, sodium and sulfur. Over the next century this list of inorganic elements grew, but understanding the nature of organic substances lagged behind. The organic substances were recognized as different from the inorganic elements and initially were categorized in a broad classification scheme of their effect on the human body: the bitters, tannins, volatile oils, resins, carbohydrates, mucilage, salts and minerals, saponins, alkaloids, phenolic compounds, flavonoids, cardiac glycosides, coumarins, acids, and anthraquinones. For example, the wide varieties of bitters have a bitter taste and stimulate secretion of digestive juices and functioning of the liver. The resins produced by plants and trees are for protection against fungal infections or injuries. The tannins are astringents to bind and tone tissues. This classification of organic compounds has become very useful in describing the beneficial nature of the medicinal plants and herbs, and it is used along with the hot/cold and moist/dry scheme throughout the remainder of the book as Wood describes his list of medicinal herbs. Wood prefers to use small doses of his herbs and uses them individually though he is not against the use of combinations of the herbs.
Of the 41 herbs that Wood describes I will review just three, Burdock, Nettles, and Yarrow, three that grow in great profusion in our area of the country. Burdock and Nettles are especially important to me because they were the first that I grew accustom to using in our garden and yard. We have enjoyed eating the young shoots of nettles each spring but with the frequent stings we received from our stand of nettles we quickly learned to appreciate the burdock because of the way that with a quick rub the burdock leaf takes away the sting. Also of curiosity is that the two plants seem to generally grow near each other.
Stinging Nettles
In each chapter Wood begins with a description of how the plant is used then concludes the chapter with how it is prepared and the dosage to be used. From antiquity the mature Nettle stalks have been used for the strength of the fiber of which it is composed, fiber used for making cloths, rope and netting. The linen made from this fiber has been unearthed from two thousand year old burial sites yet in good condition. When during the world wars Germany was cut off from a source of cotton their uniforms were made from Nettles, and now in such places as gun shows it is sorry to see that the German uniforms are found still in beautiful shape whereas the American uniforms are rarely available.
Nettles like especially rich soil and flourishes near septic systems and outhouses. This trait may be the reason why it is the highest vegetable source for protein and is enriched with nitrates and uric acid. Because of its high ability to remove uric acid it is a very good remedy for kidney problems and gout, and because of its high nutritional value it is used to treat anemia. It is also used to treat inactivity and has been used to whip paralyzed limbs to bring the muscles back into action. Matthew Wood offers many stories of when the plants have been used most effectively. One example is of a man with a serious back injury who was told he would never walk again, but by repeatedly forcing himself to walk through a patch of nettles he managed to regain his ability to walk. The formic acid that produces the sting quickly deteriorates after picking so in order to benefit from this plant it must be used quickly or freeze-dried. It also removes mucus and phlegm so is good for opening the lungs, cleaning the kidneys and treating fevers. It is a hot and dry plant so it is useful in cold and damp situation such as in London. Lastly it almost immediately gives relief to the pain of burns and promotes rapid healing as is suggested by its burning, stinging signature. Nettles can be hung to dry in the shade on a warm dry day, though it must be used more persistently when dried in this way. It can be tinctured in brandy or vodka.
Burdock
Burdock is another plant that cleanses the liver and kidneys as a blood purifier. It is classified as a cooling and moderately drying plant. Its cooling nature makes sense in treating the hot sting of Nettles by neutralizing the formic acid. Its personality may be described by its deep and strong roots. It is slow, steady and strong. Its hardy influence can rejuvenate old deep down chronic conditions. The bitter yet sweet roots with their high oil content when nibbled on raw assists digestion and relieves inflammation such as from a sore throat. The seed can be ground in a coffee mill and used for the same purposes. Its signature large leaves like those of mullein and comfrey have a strong action on the skin and lungs, and the burs seize like Velcro to improve memory. It is also effective in treating problems with the uterus and a swollen prostate. A stored root quickly goes rancid because of its high oil content so it is best stored in brandy or glycerin.
Yarrow
The sticks of the stems of Yarrow have been used in China as divining sticks. Medically its more magical use is to stem arterial bleeding of deep cuts and wounds that cut to the bone. One signature of the plant is it lacy leaf in which the leaf segments cut back to the central vein or back to the bone. Wood suggests that in stemming the flow of blood Yarrow causes the artery to suck up the blood. It also lessens fevers. The Chinese think of heat as causing the blood to become restless, thus the cool nature of Yarrow quiets the blood. It is also used as a bitter tonic for digestion. It grows in rough and gravely soil and the juice of its young leaves is used in healing. A poultice of Yarrow is good to reduce swelling and blood blisters. One of Wood’s examples is of a man who was unconscious and hospitalized due to a brain aneurism and was not expected to regain consciousness. A friend spent her time dripping yarrow on his lips, and he woke after a week and soon regained most of his previous functions. This cold and dry plant can make the mind calm and rational, and it induces sleep. It has a strong affinity to blood and bleeding such that it is important for female complaints as a menstrual regulator. It is also used as a medicine for skin cancer. I have several pre-cancer lesions on my forehead so have been using a tincture of yarrow which seems to be healing the lesions. The plant is most powerful when it is grown in sandy, gravely soil. Yarrow grown in rich soil where it may grow to over three feet tall should be avoided.
In my continued pursuit of understanding the medical nature or uses of plants this book is an important resource for the 41 plants Wood reviews. Though his descriptions of the plants are most enjoyable reading, and I have read a number of these descriptions, there is so much information that to benefit most from the book is to return to the description of a particular plant when communing with the spirit of the plant. I have been visiting these plants while in ecstatic trance and find that these trance experiences bring me very close to the plant where they become alive within me. On these ecstatic trance journeys I use three ecstatic trance postures, first a divination posture to ask questions regarding the beneficial nature of the plant, second a healing posture where I hold the plant next to my heart to hear what it has to say to me, and third, a metamorphosis or shape-shifting posture to become the plant to bring it alive within me. Over these three sessions, each at least a day apart, I learn much of the personality of the plant as it becomes part of me. It is during this process that I find reading about the plant, especially Wood’s description, most powerful as the plant become alive within me such that it will not be forgotten. Also in this process of learning I find that I cannot visit the spirits of more than three plants per month, otherwise what I leaning is lost in confusion. During this time of learning about a particular plant it is beneficial to use it for how it is meant to be used. This is one reason why I have selected Stinging Nettles, Burdock and Yarrow.
After reviewing “Herbal Allies” by Robert Rogers, a book that I found very important to my personal journey into medicinal plants, Rogers emailed me, thanking me for the review, but he added that I needed to review Matthew Wood’s books. With this introduction I was led to Wood’s book, “The Book of Herbal Wisdom: Using Plants as Medicines.” His stories of 41 different medicinal plants are very useful, enlightening and readable. I will select several to review, but most important are the six preliminary chapters that provide ways or systems for categorizing the plants medicines and medical problems, thus giving a clearer system as how the plants can be used.
One of the most important ideas I have gained from reading these books is to more deeply recognize how our Great Mother Earth has created all life to be interdependent upon each other for a healthy and sustainable balance, and when used properly the Earth’s flora becomes a very important piece in maintaining this healthy balance. One of my beliefs is that about ten thousand years ago with the beginning of the era of agriculture and the domestication of animals we began to believe in the so called knowledge of good and evil that gave us controlling dominion over the Earth. Because of our greed for wealth this beginning has led to the destruction of the Earth, destroying the Earth that had so healthily maintained the hunter-gatherers of the earlier era. This knowledge threw us out of the Garden of Eden and is where our current medical practices have been amiss by ignoring the beautiful healthy and sustainable balance of all life that our Mother Earth has provided.
This belief is beautifully restated by Matthew Wood. He begins with the idea that plants have stories to tell, stories that “begin in the hidden depths of the earth, in the unknown light of a place called the Underworld. From this source of mystery and power, the healing power and wisdom of the herbs ray out like a light, into our world. They never lose the magic that is innate to the inhabitants of the world of mystery… People try to press herbs into a rational scientific box. This is not only entirely foreign to them, it kills their spirit and does not make ours soar” (P. 4). The excitement I am finding in my own journey is to connect with the plants in the Underworld through shamanic dreamtime journeying using ecstatic trance. As Wood describes, the power of animal spirit guides, the bear, the wolf, and the turtle teach us so much, but the spirit guides of the medicinal herbs are also available to us if we open ourselves to them through observation and dreamtime experiences as found in vision quests. The American Indians, as well as the ancient Greeks, believed in the knowledge that comes from dreamtime.
Wood then proceeds by offering several useful systems for listening to the herbal spirit guides. One prominent way is to recognize the signatures of the plants. The doctrine of signatures “is that a plant resembles the disease, organ or person for which it is remedial”…“Signatures represent configurations of energy or patterns in plants and these correspond to similar patterns in people. We are not looking for superficial resemblances, but for one that operates on the level of essence.” (Pgs. 21-22). This essence is found through intuition and imagination, again bringing us into the realm of dreamtime. Dreamtime I find is best accessed through our nighttime dreams and through such waking dream experiences as found in hypnotic and ecstatic trance, experiences that take us into the spirit world where the signatures of plants become clear. One of Wood’s examples is of the Juniper, a saxifrage with roots that clove and break apart rock, thus it is suited for breaking kidney stones, especially meaningful to me since I have been recently diagnosed as having a kidney stone. I experienced this signature characteristic of the Juniper as I sat before and communed with one while in ecstatic trance, a Juniper that is growing on a rock shelf of blue stone at our home in the Hudson Valley of New York.
Wood then examines a number of interesting classification schemes. First is the Greek four humors or temperaments: the sanguine of people possessing an excess of red bile or blood causing them to be impulsive and joyful but without restraints, thus with a tendency towards hemorrhage by being careless. Then there is the choleric or bilious temperament for those with an excess of yellow bile or choler who tend to be willful and angry with jaundice, liver or digestive problems. Third is the phlegmatic temperament of those who are full of mucus, moody and sentimental. And finally there are those with a melancholic or black bile temperament who tend towards inactivity and death.
Another scheme is of plants that are categorized as hot or cold and moist or dry with these characteristics graded from one to five in intensity, e.g. the juniper berry is cold and dry in the third degree. Another scheme is the four elements of earth, air, fire and water with possibly a fifth element, the spiritual. The Chinese scheme of Yin and Yang is also considered. How these classification schemes may be used in classifying medicinal plants and medical problems is considered, each adding something to the wisdom of medicinal herbs.
I found the next chapter on Alchemy and Chemistry the most enlightening. During the seventeenth century emerged the beginning of our understanding of what our Earth is composed with the discovery of a number of elements such as phosphorus, gold, iron, sodium and sulfur. Over the next century this list of inorganic elements grew, but understanding the nature of organic substances lagged behind. The organic substances were recognized as different from the inorganic elements and initially were categorized in a broad classification scheme of their effect on the human body: the bitters, tannins, volatile oils, resins, carbohydrates, mucilage, salts and minerals, saponins, alkaloids, phenolic compounds, flavonoids, cardiac glycosides, coumarins, acids, and anthraquinones. For example, the wide varieties of bitters have a bitter taste and stimulate secretion of digestive juices and functioning of the liver. The resins produced by plants and trees are for protection against fungal infections or injuries. The tannins are astringents to bind and tone tissues. This classification of organic compounds has become very useful in describing the beneficial nature of the medicinal plants and herbs, and it is used along with the hot/cold and moist/dry scheme throughout the remainder of the book as Wood describes his list of medicinal herbs. Wood prefers to use small doses of his herbs and uses them individually though he is not against the use of combinations of the herbs.
Of the 41 herbs that Wood describes I will review just three, Burdock, Nettles, and Yarrow, three that grow in great profusion in our area of the country. Burdock and Nettles are especially important to me because they were the first that I grew accustom to using in our garden and yard. We have enjoyed eating the young shoots of nettles each spring but with the frequent stings we received from our stand of nettles we quickly learned to appreciate the burdock because of the way that with a quick rub the burdock leaf takes away the sting. Also of curiosity is that the two plants seem to generally grow near each other.
Stinging Nettles
In each chapter Wood begins with a description of how the plant is used then concludes the chapter with how it is prepared and the dosage to be used. From antiquity the mature Nettle stalks have been used for the strength of the fiber of which it is composed, fiber used for making cloths, rope and netting. The linen made from this fiber has been unearthed from two thousand year old burial sites yet in good condition. When during the world wars Germany was cut off from a source of cotton their uniforms were made from Nettles, and now in such places as gun shows it is sorry to see that the German uniforms are found still in beautiful shape whereas the American uniforms are rarely available.
Nettles like especially rich soil and flourishes near septic systems and outhouses. This trait may be the reason why it is the highest vegetable source for protein and is enriched with nitrates and uric acid. Because of its high ability to remove uric acid it is a very good remedy for kidney problems and gout, and because of its high nutritional value it is used to treat anemia. It is also used to treat inactivity and has been used to whip paralyzed limbs to bring the muscles back into action. Matthew Wood offers many stories of when the plants have been used most effectively. One example is of a man with a serious back injury who was told he would never walk again, but by repeatedly forcing himself to walk through a patch of nettles he managed to regain his ability to walk. The formic acid that produces the sting quickly deteriorates after picking so in order to benefit from this plant it must be used quickly or freeze-dried. It also removes mucus and phlegm so is good for opening the lungs, cleaning the kidneys and treating fevers. It is a hot and dry plant so it is useful in cold and damp situation such as in London. Lastly it almost immediately gives relief to the pain of burns and promotes rapid healing as is suggested by its burning, stinging signature. Nettles can be hung to dry in the shade on a warm dry day, though it must be used more persistently when dried in this way. It can be tinctured in brandy or vodka.
Burdock
Burdock is another plant that cleanses the liver and kidneys as a blood purifier. It is classified as a cooling and moderately drying plant. Its cooling nature makes sense in treating the hot sting of Nettles by neutralizing the formic acid. Its personality may be described by its deep and strong roots. It is slow, steady and strong. Its hardy influence can rejuvenate old deep down chronic conditions. The bitter yet sweet roots with their high oil content when nibbled on raw assists digestion and relieves inflammation such as from a sore throat. The seed can be ground in a coffee mill and used for the same purposes. Its signature large leaves like those of mullein and comfrey have a strong action on the skin and lungs, and the burs seize like Velcro to improve memory. It is also effective in treating problems with the uterus and a swollen prostate. A stored root quickly goes rancid because of its high oil content so it is best stored in brandy or glycerin.
Yarrow
The sticks of the stems of Yarrow have been used in China as divining sticks. Medically its more magical use is to stem arterial bleeding of deep cuts and wounds that cut to the bone. One signature of the plant is it lacy leaf in which the leaf segments cut back to the central vein or back to the bone. Wood suggests that in stemming the flow of blood Yarrow causes the artery to suck up the blood. It also lessens fevers. The Chinese think of heat as causing the blood to become restless, thus the cool nature of Yarrow quiets the blood. It is also used as a bitter tonic for digestion. It grows in rough and gravely soil and the juice of its young leaves is used in healing. A poultice of Yarrow is good to reduce swelling and blood blisters. One of Wood’s examples is of a man who was unconscious and hospitalized due to a brain aneurism and was not expected to regain consciousness. A friend spent her time dripping yarrow on his lips, and he woke after a week and soon regained most of his previous functions. This cold and dry plant can make the mind calm and rational, and it induces sleep. It has a strong affinity to blood and bleeding such that it is important for female complaints as a menstrual regulator. It is also used as a medicine for skin cancer. I have several pre-cancer lesions on my forehead so have been using a tincture of yarrow which seems to be healing the lesions. The plant is most powerful when it is grown in sandy, gravely soil. Yarrow grown in rich soil where it may grow to over three feet tall should be avoided.
In my continued pursuit of understanding the medical nature or uses of plants this book is an important resource for the 41 plants Wood reviews. Though his descriptions of the plants are most enjoyable reading, and I have read a number of these descriptions, there is so much information that to benefit most from the book is to return to the description of a particular plant when communing with the spirit of the plant. I have been visiting these plants while in ecstatic trance and find that these trance experiences bring me very close to the plant where they become alive within me. On these ecstatic trance journeys I use three ecstatic trance postures, first a divination posture to ask questions regarding the beneficial nature of the plant, second a healing posture where I hold the plant next to my heart to hear what it has to say to me, and third, a metamorphosis or shape-shifting posture to become the plant to bring it alive within me. Over these three sessions, each at least a day apart, I learn much of the personality of the plant as it becomes part of me. It is during this process that I find reading about the plant, especially Wood’s description, most powerful as the plant become alive within me such that it will not be forgotten. Also in this process of learning I find that I cannot visit the spirits of more than three plants per month, otherwise what I leaning is lost in confusion. During this time of learning about a particular plant it is beneficial to use it for how it is meant to be used. This is one reason why I have selected Stinging Nettles, Burdock and Yarrow.
