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Since the beginning of human experience, plants have
played a role in the evolution of our species, not only in the provision of
food and medicine but in our deepest spiritual experience and the
development of consciousness. Their form, beauty, enchanting scents, their
healing and emotional qualities, have all provided a gateway to the Great
Mystery of Nature, which our Celtic forebears called “The visible face of
Spirit”.
Though our lands are no longer forested as they were, we try to recreate a
sense of their beauty and tranquillity in our gardens, parks, and the green
spaces in our cities, giving us at least a taste of Nature with which we can
sustain ourselves against the soulless backdrop of the steel and concrete
jungles that are our homes today. For many people, plants are still the
messengers of divinity, harmony, and beauty. They are also the source of our
health and wellbeing, not just as medicines but in their ability to relax,
refresh, or excite us.
Some deep part of us knows that the healing power of plants is inherent in
what they are as much as what they do. Flowers have a role to play, for
example, in all of our most primal celebrations of life and death – birth
and birthdays, comings-of-age, marriages, illnesses, funerals and deaths.
They are there at the first ‘I love you’, and they are there for our endings
too. Even after death our connection to the natural world continues and our
spiritual destination in many religious myths is some form of paradise which
is often symbolised as the “Heavenly Garden”, or the Garden of Eden.
Archaeology shows that plant spirit shamanism has been part of our healing
experience for thousands of years, predating other practices by millennia
and going back to a time when healers worked in harmony with Nature.
Plant shamanism is - and always has been – a person-centred approach and
incorporates, in a holistic way, practices such as herbalism, energy work,
aromatherapy, and counselling to provide a unique blend of therapies that is
most needed by each individual client, based on the healer’s attunement to
the state of balance or otherwise of that client’s soul. But it is also
fundamentally spirit-centred, and all traditional healers – from the
Curanderos of the Amazon to the ‘folk magicians’ of Ireland – regard plants
as sentient, aware, intelligent, alive, and as ‘doctors’ in their own right.
Plant shamanism involves practices for meeting these spirits, such as
shamanic journeying, soul retrieval, rituals using flowers and fragrances,
offerings to Nature, floral baths for protection, and the use of visionary
plants to find purpose, clarity, and new directions in life. All of these,
to the shaman, are implied by the term ‘healing’.
WAYS OF HEALING
As a young boy, I was apprenticed to a Welsh sin eater – a ‘cunning man’, as
they were called in Wales - who used plants and flowers in his healing work.
One of his methods was to bury the name of a patient, etched on a piece of
bone, in a corner of his garden, next to a patch of ‘sun flowers’. Each day
he would say his prayers to the flowers, consulting with them on the
condition of his patient, then squeeze a few petals so their aroma was
released. As the scent drifted upwards, he said, a little more of his
patient’s illness was carried away until he or she was healed.
This may seem like a strange approach in our culture today, but when I grew
up and went travelling I found the same essential methods used in Haiti,
Peru, Africa, Greece, America, Turkey… so it is not an eccentricity or even
unique to Wales.
The world over, in fact, wherever shamans work with plant spirits rather
than extracts and compounds as Western doctors do, it is understood that
plants are alive, aware, and willing to teach their healing secrets. Plant
spirit shamanism is therefore learned practically - by getting out into the
fields and making contact with natural forces, not by reading about plants
in some dusty library.
The sin eater communicated with plants in this way and knew several magical
uses for them that they had told him of. For example, the ‘sun flowers’ he
used were actually marigolds, but he called them sun flowers because they
are “Bright like the sun” and warmed the soul with protection. It is
interesting, then, that we find the same belief in Andean Peru, where rosa
sisa (African marigolds) are also used for protection. Here, they are often
planted by the door of a house, so if someone should pass by and give the
‘evil eye’, the flowers will catch these negative energies and protect the
soul of the house from disease. The petals turn black when this happens, but
revert to their bright colour when the energy is discharged through their
roots to the soil. The sin eater I knew had never visited Peru and yet the
message from the plant was the same: marigolds – “sun flowers” - protect.
WORKING WITH PLANTS
The key thing with plant spirit shamanism is to establish a connection with
the plant. Once that is done, the plant spirits themselves teach you
everything you need to know and reveal the many ways of using them in
healing, most of which are very unlike the Western medical notion of
ingesting them in a tablet or even a herbal form.
In Haiti, Peru, Brazil, Indonesia, and in our own Celtic past, there is a
practice, for example, of taking floral baths, where flowers and herbs are
added to blessed water. The sick person then bathes to wash away his
ailments. These baths are not restricted to physical healing, but can be
used to draw good fortune and change your luck (which is regarded as a real
and tangible force), by making you more ‘open’ to the receipt of money,
love, or spiritual power.
Other ways of working with plants include the making of pakets, ‘power
pouches’ containing herbs that remove negative energies, while returning
life force to the patient as the pouch is brushed over his body. The paket
has similarities to the Amazonian chacapa, a bundle of dried leaves which
has medicine powers to rebalance the patient’s energy field, and is rubbed
over the body in the same way.
The seguro of the Andes, a bottle which contains a mixture of plants and
herbs in Holy water and perfume, uses the same principles of spiritual
connection with the plants. Here the shapes, colours, or qualities of the
plants invoke various powers that the client wishes to draw in to his life.
Round, golden, seeds attract money, for example, while cactus spines embody
protection. The seguro, according to Andean shamans, becomes a “Friend”, you
can consult with. Every time you speak out your problems to this friend,
they are removed, while the powers of the plants draw good energies in.
One rule that comes up consistently in this work is that we must treat our
plant allies with respect. In Haiti, healers literally pay the plants for
their work by dropping coins at the base of the tree they’re collecting
leaves from. They are then ‘fed’ and there is a fair exchange: we charge the
plants with energy so they have the power to help us.
We must also treat plants kindly. Research shows that they have feelings,
intelligence, language – even the ability to count and make music! - and
they can sense our intentions and respond to our actions. If we treat them
with love, they flourish and grow; if not, then their spirits die and we
don’t have the healers we need.
GETTING OUT OF OUR MINDS
One of the biggest challenges for the Western mind in learning how to work
with plant spirits is our cultural fascination with science and measurement.
This socialisation into ‘scientific thinking’ is hard to overcome because,
as part of it, we have been taught to stifle our dreaming and imaginative
selves. Luckily, however, there are also plants which have a spiritual
intention to re-establish our connection with the spirit-universe and open
us up to the true nature of reality.
One of these is guayusa. In the Amazon it is known as “The night watchman’s
plant” because of its ability to bring lucid dreams and dissolve the
boundaries between wakefulness and sleep. Thus, the night watchman can take
guayusa and nap, while remaining alert to the sounds and sights around him
as he watches over the tribe.
The shamans say that in every country we have plants to cater for our own
needs; thus, in Europe, it may be difficult to find guayusa, but a tea made
of vervain, valerian, and chamomile will achieve similar affects.
Another way of getting ‘out of our minds’ is through a special state of
trance consciousness known as shamanic journeying.
To take any shamanic journey, find a time and a place where you can be alone
and undisturbed for 20 minutes or so, then dim the lights or cover your
eyes, lie down and make yourself comfortable.
Most journeys are taken to the sound of drumming, which encourages
‘dreaming’ patterns to emerge in the brain, taking the shaman deeper into a
more holistic experience of the world in its fullness. You can drum for
yourself, have a friend drum for you, or use a drumming tape to guide your
journey.
Expressing your intention and keeping this in focus is again important.
Intention is the energy that guides the journey and enables you to engage
with the mind of the universe so it can work with you.
You can try this yourself by setting your intention to meet with a plant
ally – the consciousness of a plant that will guide you into the world of
the collective plant mind. You do not need to have a specific plant in mind.
Stay open instead to whatever comes.
As soon as the drumming begins, imagine yourself entering a place which
connects you to the Earth in a way that is meaningful to you, then allow
your imagination to take you where it will. All you need do is receive.
When your plant ally appears to you, spend some time in conversation with
him or her (in the imaginative world, most plants take human form). Enquire
about its healing gifts and the way these properties manifest in the plants
themselves. Ask how you can work with this ally and the plants that embody
him or her.
Visit your ally often in this way and you will learn more about the world of
the plants, the nature of reality and, indeed, about yourself, as part of
this vast and beautiful universe.
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