The Wisdom of Plants

Living on an off-grid homestead in the Hawaiian rainforest, my days are defined by encounters with plants. I pick lemongrass and mamaki to boil for tea, dig up a long, thin ‘awa root to chew for its relaxing effects, pull back the sweet potato vines that are trying to claim my spinach patch, chop down racks of bananas to share with neighbors, and relax in the hammock strung in the shade of two big, sturdy monkeypod trees. As I work at my desk, I can hear the wind rustling in the bamboo grove and the birds cheerfully raiding the fruits on the guava trees. My after-work to-do list is always packed with plant-related activities like pruning, foraging, and deciding what new trees and herbs to grow. 

In the lush valley I call home, plants play the role of food, medicine, fuel, shelter, and unofficial currency. In the six years I’ve lived here, they’ve also become close friends. I look forward to seeing them when I wake up in the morning, and love to hear them whispering all around me as I fall asleep at night. When nobody’s looking, I’ll sometimes talk to them, bury offerings of coffee beans near their roots, or pour out a small cup of tea just outside their dripline. And when I go to visit a waterfall or sacred site in a distant part of the valley, I’ll try to bring some flowers or ‘awa with me in the manner of a respectful guest. 

One of my neighbors, a basket weaver who is forever harvesting thin, sturdy roots and palm fronds for her work, is fond of saying that the valley where we live has “plant-dominant consciousness.” In her view, there are so many more plants than people in this remote and rugged part of the island that we can’t help but tune in to their mode of existence and be influenced by their constant presence.  

I’m delighted by the idea that my neighbors and I are outnumbered by plants, and that our thoughts, worries, and opinions leave little trace on the vast green consciousness that surrounds us. I love knowing that I’m a minority in this plant-dominated world, and that even if I live among them for the rest of my life, there will always be new things to discover and understand. Most of all, I love the beauty and serenity of an environment in which sunlight filters through banana leaves, geckos chase each other up and down the sugar cane, and human-made structures are few and far between. 

Of all the authors I’ve worked with since joining Hierophant Publishing, I think Wendy Dooner would enjoy this lush and remote patch of rainforest most of all—and she would almost certainly resonate with my neighbor’s ideas about plant-dominant consciousness. In her new book, Plant Spirit Herbalism: Discover the Power of Medicinal Herbs for Inner Transformation, she writes, “Shamanism taught me that herbs are so much more than the compounds we can extract from them. They are wise teachers and loving friends, and when we take the time to connect with them—not just physically, but mentally, emotionally, and spiritually—our lives become much richer for it.” 

In Dooner’s experience, plants have distinct personalities, much like people—and like people, they’ll open up to us when we introduce ourselves, pay attention, and offer to be friends. The technical descriptions of herbs in Plant Spirit Herbalism are interspersed with stories of the ways they can show up for us on an emotional or spiritual level, and techniques for deepening our awareness of the varied and subtle ways they communicate. It’s clear that for Dooner, a walk in the woods or a stroll through a garden is an experience imbued with magic and meaning, every plant a living spirit with important wisdom to convey. 

However, this holistic perspective didn’t come easily to her. The child of New Age parents who were more partial to meditation and crystals than chemistry, Dooner rebelled as a teenager by studying plant science, physiology, pathophysiology, and herbal constituents. As a student at a four-year herbal medicine program at a local university, she reveled in wearing a white lab coat and looking at plants through microscopes. She writes, “I certainly had no time for what I considered the ‘woo-woo’ nonsense that some of my older classmates were discussing about herbs—their ‘energy,’ their ‘wisdom,’ and the ‘healing’ they could offer human beings that had nothing to do with their physical medicinal properties.” 

It was only after running her own herbal medicine clinic for several years that Dooner began to feel a tug towards a richer, fuller understanding of plants—and began to move from a relationship based on extraction to one characterized by loving reciprocity. In other words, she stopped using plants as objects, and started interacting with them as living beings. 

The shift from extraction to reciprocity is perhaps the key marker of growing maturity in human beings. This is true at both the practical and spiritual levels. As babies, we’re extraction machines: our only job is to take as much food and attention from our parents as we can, no matter how much sleep or stress it causes them. As we grow older, we slowly learn to share, help out, return favors, and consider our impact on others. Ideally, this process would continue at a consistent rate throughout our lives, so that by the time we reach middle age we’d be deeply oriented towards reciprocity, having left our extractive instincts far behind. 

However, this ideal is rarely easy to achieve—especially in a culture that teaches us to grab all that we can before someone else takes it, or to dismiss or minimize the existence of any type of consciousness that differs from our own. All too often, we limit our circle of empathy to include only our immediate friends and family: the people most like us, who speak our language, share our customs, and towards whom we most readily extend our assistance and concern. The people, plants, and animals who fall outside of that circle become abstractions: resources we extract, rather than friends we know. 

For thousands of years, spiritual traditions from around the world have taught the value of expanding our circle of empathy, whether by loving our neighbors, practicing hospitality towards strangers, sending compassionate kindness to all beings, or bringing respect and restraint to our relationships with animals and plants. It’s clear that we are meant to grow beyond the extractive tendencies which can be so automatic, and bring our full selves to every relationship, no matter how unfamiliar it may be. 

In Plant Spirit Herbalism, Dooner gives us tools for expanding our circle of empathy to the trees, plants, and herbs that surround us, no matter where we may live in the world. Whether it’s through journeys, offerings, rituals, or everyday conversations, Dooner shows that plants are more than mere matter to be steeped in a tea or mashed into a poultice, but friends and allies who can console, uplift, and inspire us every day of our lives. Far from simply relieving a headache or clearing up a rash, herbal medicines can also affect our minds, moods, and level of consciousness when we relate to them with reverence, curiosity, and respect.  

Although bringing plants into your circle of empathy may feel unfamiliar at first, it soon becomes second nature. As Dooner writes, “We are always in dialogue with other forms of consciousness, whether we realize it or not.” Recognizing this dialogue is the key to expanding your circle, and inviting new kinds of friendship into your life. 

As I edited Plant Spirit Herbalism, I loved to imagine Dooner strolling around her land in rainy Scotland, checking in with stands of nettle and lemon balm the way I check in with clumps of ginger and pineapple on my land almost seven thousand miles away. I’d love to know what she’d make of the enormous monkeypods, or what messages she’d hear from the kukui trees whose pale green nuts litter the forest floor. I imagine sitting down to a Sensory Tea Ceremony with her, a core practice she teaches in her book, and discovering all of the aspects of soursop leaf or mamaki I’d never noticed before. I have a feeling she’d know exactly what my basket weaving neighbor means when she talks about plant-dominant consciousness, and that she’d enjoy tromping through the forest with another neighbor of mine, looking for herbal medicines. 

For now, I will have to content myself with leafing through Dooner’s beautiful book, recalling the friendships I’ve shared with plants like nettle, elderberry, and dandelion when I lived on the mainland, and whose spirits, according to Dooner, are still available to guide and delight me no matter where I live in the world.  

This winter, may you all be surrounded by the wisdom of plants—and engage in the dance of reciprocity wherever you go. 

 

Sincerely, 

Hilary T. Smith 

Senior Editor, Hierophant Publishing 

 

 

Plant Spirit Herbalism CoverHerbs are powerful medicine. Cultures around the world have cultivated relationships with healing plants for thousands of years, respecting them not just for their physical medicinal properties, but also for their spiritual power. 

In this book, you will enter the world of what author and licensed medical herbalist Wendy Dooner calls Plant Spirit Herbalism—a rich, colorful landscape populated by benevolent plant spirits. Each chapter focuses on a specific herb, exploring its history, healing properties, and role as a spiritual ally. Every herb discussed grows in the world around you, from the humble dandelion to the stately rose.   

Dooner’s unique combination of scientific rigor and intuitive insight provides a holistic approach to working with herbs that honors both their capacity for physical healing and their power for spiritual transformation. With her expert guidance, you will: 

  • Create herbal preparations, including tinctures and flower essences 
  • Develop a personal connection to plant spirits, accessing their unseen healing properties 
  • Deepen your relationship with specific herbs through rituals and practical medicine-making 
  • Undertake plant spirit journeys to deepen your relationship with specific herbs 

Let Dooner be your guide on this journey as Plant Spirit Herbalism provides a fresh perspective on the natural world, inviting you to form deep and lasting relationships with the nurturing plant spirits which already surround you. 

Britton Boyd

Britton Boyd is an animist, witch, writer, and herbalist residing in the high desert mountains of Northeastern Oregon. In 2017 she hiked the entirety of the Pacific Crest Trail, a 2,660-mile quest from the border of Mexico to Canada. Her experiences on the trail pushed her body to its limit and made beautifully and agonizingly concrete the wisdom of earth-based, animistic witchcraft.

The Magic of Nature

Hello dear readers!

As I mentioned in last month’s newsletter (which you can read here if you missed it), I am the new senior editor at Hierophant Publishing.

One of my first tasks in this role has been to familiarize myself with our catalogue by reading as many Hierophant books as possible (which gives new meaning to the quote, “If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.”). And while I eagerly devoured books like The Mastery of Self by don Miguel Ruiz Jr. and Warrior Goddess Training by HeatherAsh Amara, when I saw that Earth Witch: Finding Magic in the Land by Britton Boyd was next on my review list, I must admit I was a little reluctant.

Before reading this book, I would never have thought of myself as a witch.

True, I live deep in the forest of rural Hawaii, in a strange little cabin I built by hand, and can often be seen gathering herbs and mushrooms, a handwoven basket slung over my arm. I spend a suspicious amount of time conversing with trees, stones, and bodies of water, and am partial to candlelight, incense, and dark, windy nights.

But a witch? Never.

Like many of us, I associated that word with my fourth-grade teacher’s Halloween costume, pointy hat and all, or with certain trendy Instagram accounts wherein witchcraft consists of skincare routines and home décor. I’ve never, to my knowledge, cast a spell.

Indeed, witchcraft has always struck me as dizzyingly complex, with its elaborate tables and charts—moon phases, obscure qualities of herbs and gemstones, the proper combinations of ingredients for various workings, etc. If you challenged me to either cast a spell from one of those manuals or change the head gasket on my truck, I’d probably have better luck with the head gasket.

Please let there be no charts, I thought as I downloaded the manuscript onto my e-reader and got down to business.

Snuggled up with a pot of guava leaf tea, rain falling on the metal roof of my cabin, I began to read:

 

Magic lives in the soil, in the backwoods, in the bones of the dead, and in seemingly desolate places in nature.”

 

 

 

When I read those words, something in me nodded in recognition. Just that morning, I had dug up a fresh ‘awa root to share with some visitors, the soft and fragrant soil falling away to reveal the pale white lateral. Nearby on the Pali, or hillside, the bones of my neighbors’ Hawaiian ancestors have been resting for hundreds of years, rocks piled carefully to mark the sites. The forest where I’d gone mushroom hunting the day before was lonely and storm-tossed, with many broken branches littering the trail, its towering trees charged with mystery. What was the feeling I experienced when I spent time in these places, if not magic?

A few pages later, I highlighted these words:

 

“It is only with time and an erotic merging of the land and ourselves over many seasons that we can experience something real and profound.”

 

 

 

I recalled the many times in my life when I moved: from British Columbia to California, California to Washington, Washington to Oregon, Oregon to California, California to Hawaii. With each of these moves, I felt a sharp loss as the land, plants, and animals which had become dear to me were taken away. In each place, I had to undergo a sometimes-difficult process of getting acquainted with new land, new plants, new animals, and new magic. It took many seasons to complete this erotic merging: many seasons of slow and intentional practice before my body was at ease with the coldness of the river or the current of the ocean, my eye adept at spotting the shapes of the herbs in the forest, my tongue familiar with the taste of the berries, my nose quick to identify the scent of wildfire and mugwort, candycap mushrooms and rotting cedar, night-blooming jasmine and wild ginger.

I’ve never felt quite at home in a place until this erotic merging is well underway. Until that point, I feel lonely and disconsolate, excluded from the web of connection which is so central to my well-being.

This was especially true when I first moved to Hawaii. The tropical plants were utterly inscrutable to me; lush and beautiful as it was, the natural world felt like a locked door, and I couldn’t find my way in. Although I lived in the forest, I couldn’t feel the forest. I was a stranger there, and this state of separation was painful to me.

One day, my next-door neighbor came over to visit. She had a question for me. “Do you talk to the land owners?” she said.

“The land owners?” I said, thinking perhaps she had mistaken me for a renter. “No, I bought the land from—”

My neighbor shook her head. “No,” she said, “the land owners. You have to talk to them. Give them offerings. Tell them why you’re here.”

It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that when she said land owners, she wasn’t talking about the people whose names were on a title chain down at the county records office. She was referring to the real land owners—the spirits of the ancient, sacred land we were lucky enough to call home. My neighbor explained that the land owners were always watching, always listening; it was important to ask their permission before entering a new part of their domain, and to pre-emptively ask forgiveness for any clumsy mistakes I might make while I was there. It was good to leave gifts for them, too—they were partial to strong liquor—but mostly, it was important to talk to them. To be in relationship with them. It would be both odd and rude to cut through my neighbor’s yard every day and pick fruit from her trees without ever acknowledging her presence; failing to engage with the land owners was just as anti-social.

The next day, I took a walk in the forest. “Hello, land owners,” I said out loud. “My name is Hilary. I honestly don’t understand how I ended up here, but I’d like to do a good job of living in this place. Please teach me how to live here. I’m sorry for all the things I’ve already done wrong.”

I felt something inside me change when I said those words. Some little tendril of connection became established. Suddenly, I wasn’t a stranger anymore. I had introduced myself; no matter how shyly, I had entered the web.

From that point on, the erotic merging I craved began to happen. My ears picked up the many different moods of the stream running along the edge of my land, telling me if the water was high or low. I began to sense when it would rain, moving my laundry inside just seconds before a downpour. When I walked in the forest, edible and medicinal plants made themselves known to me, and I always came home with my basket full of exactly what I needed. I found myself talking to the land owners more and more frequently, pouring out tea for them in the morning, or wine at night. This magic had nothing to do with charts and tables; it was as natural and obvious as talking to my “regular” human neighbors.

As I write this now, another natural and obvious fact is staring me in the face: I’m an earth witch, and have been one all along.

Real magic has little to do with gemstones and magic wands; it’s in the quality of our attention when we move through the natural world, and in our capacity for relationship with neighbors both seen and unseen. I’m grateful to Britton Boyd and her fabulous book for calling these facts to my attention, and reminding me that whether or not we identify with the word “witch,” we can all engage with the magic of nature, give ourselves joyfully to the service of the earth, and walk a path of connection, communion, and reciprocity with all forms of life.

I’ll share more of my journey next month, and until then, I encourage you to find the magic and mystery in the land you call home, wherever that may be.

 

Sincerely,

Hilary Smith

Senior Editor, Hierophant Publishing

 

Cover image for Earth Witch by Britton Boyd

 

 

 

 

Earth Witch: Finding Magic in the Land by Britton Boyd

Interested in exploring your own magical connection to the sacred land around you? In Earth Witch, author Britton Boyd invites you to seek out the deep and mysterious connections with the earth that lie at the ancestral roots of witchcraft. This book provides those new to witchcraft with foundational practices on which to build an organic spirituality rooted in the natural world, and challenges seasoned witches to renew the ancient relationship with the earth that lies at the heart of their craft. Packed with stories, spells, and rituals, Boyd encourages all of us to live in service to the planet we call home.

Learn more and read two free chapters from the book here.

Earth Witch: Finding Magic in the Land

In Earth Witch connect with ancestral roots and find spirituality in the natural world. Spells, rituals, and magic await!

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Unlock the magic of numerology! Discover your significant six numbers and amplify your spell work. No complex math required!