Medicine Plants and why they're dangerous

Trigger warning - Here is another post that veers into the woo. And it's long. And it's even a little preachy towards the end. Ha!

There's medicine - that which helps us recover, physically, from illness or injury.

Then there's Medicine, that which supports us through life's transitions and stages of growth.

Most people, when ill or injured, simply want to be able to return to their "normal" state of health. But in the Medicine tradition, it is understood that to return to how - and who - we were before the illness or injury is impossible, and to try to is unwise. We are changed by each of these events. They are - or at least should be, from this point of view - opportunities for growth.



Ideally, then, Medicine should strengthen us, or more correctly, enable us to strengthen ourselves.

This is difficult for the materialist's mind to grasp. But in this tradition, (or traditions, plural, for there are many) each of the plants not only holds within it a medicinal use for a specific part or system of the body, but also Medicine for the Spirit (or psyche, if you prefer).

In a very real sense, the Medicine Plants are Guides.

Working with plants in this way was once the territory of the trained or hereditary Healers, the Medicine Men and Women, the "Shamans" (I hate that word, by the way). But these people, while they still exist, are not available to most of us, and those who purport to be trained or born to the work are very often fakes.

That leaves most of us without someone with this kind of knowledge to turn to. We're on our own. Worse, we're bombarded with advertising about this or that super-herb which will cure this or that ill, and some of them might even do so. But what will they do for our spirits? How can some factory refined powder enhance our growth?

It depends.

If we - as typical consumers - live our lives with body and Spirit/psyche as separate entities, there might be medicine there, but there is no Medicine.

But if we are already aware that Body and Spirit are one, that each speaks the language of the other, then we might begin to learn to find Medicine, to become more ourselves tomorrow than we are today. To grow into wisdom. To understand what that means.

If you can lay your hands on just the right herb will your Spirit speak up through your dreams and give you the answer you seek?

Yes. And no.

Dreaming is a skill. Learning to listen to the message our Spirit/psyche may have, whether through dreams or other methods, means un-learning the mental habits that have shut it out in the first place.

Yes, there are Medicine Plants for such work - mugwort for dreaming, wild lettuce for trance work, among others - BUT if we use them without proper intention they can actually end up being Bad Medicine, causing more harm than good. It's easy to be led astray, following what we think is Our Truth when in fact it's someone else's truth that we've taken on.

There are lots of people who are better off not even trying to work with Medicine Plants or even simple "herbal remedies". There are lots of people who will do better in the hands of the medical profession for their illnesses and psychologists who can help them work through any psychological baggage they may be carrying.

That may well be most people. And that's okay.

While I don't want to give the impression that working with the Medicine Plants is suitable only to a handful of spiritual elites, I am certainly not going to say "anyone" can benefit from it, either. It certainly is suited to some people more than others, or at certain times in one's life or stages on one's path.

I've seen - on occasion - the Medicine Plants themselves reject someone who sought their aid, which was an unpleasant experience, to put it mildly. And most everyone who has walked the Medicine Path for some time has a story where one plant has smacked them upside the head when they've been foolish or disrespectful. (I have a couple of those myself!). The plants that act as Guides to some are Tricksters for others.

But the Trickster is a Guide, too, so ...

I won't say it's impossible to reach the Medicine level of working with plants by way of commercial preparations but as you've heard me say many times, it's far from ideal. The Medicine is more clearly discerned in the living version of the plant. The relationship between living plant and living human very often is the Medicine that's needed most.

However, careful, in-depth research can net some very useful clues about what each plant might be able to teach us, even if we can't meet it where it lives.

If you're drawn to a plant by a hunch that it may hold Medicine for you (and the hunch is not to be pooh-poohed, it's often a valuable tool) not only should you look into the medicinal uses, but the flower essence as well, and even the way in which it might have been used in various magical traditions.

"Plant lore" - the legends, the heroes or gods or astrological associations that have built up over time around a plant will all help to "flesh out" the character of this creature - for it is a creature. Generations before us have worked with it, after all, so it's wise to find out what they learned.

Hawthorn is a great place to start with such an in-depth study. A lot of people take hawthorn to support their heart without knowing what other doors it might open ..

I get a steady trickle of emails from people who are struggling with various health issues, and I probably spend more time and effort on discouraging them from using commercial "herbal remedies" than anything else I do for them. This is a dangerous time in which herbs are touted by unscrupulous sellers as safe cure-alls and too many people leap in before they look. Oh my .. the stories I hear are sometimes just heartbreaking - people taking the wrong herb, too much of the almost-right herb, mouldy herbs, mislabelled herbs, herbs cut with God knows what.

But as well as this being a dangerous time for the naive consumer, it's a time of great discovery and re-discovery for anyone who sincerely wishes to learn the ancient art and skill of working with plants. There's a crop of excellent herbalists out there who have good broad hands-on experience with the herbs as medicine and they're sharing their knowledge. The old writings are becoming widely available along with the new. Ayurvedic practice, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Tibetan Medicine, the experience of the American Eclectic Doctors, Galen, Culpeper, Dioscorides; we have them all at our fingertips. Wow. Thankyou internet!

Alongside all of this, the Medicine Plants themselves seem to be becoming more communicative right now, or perhaps it is just that more humans are becoming aware that they were speaking all along. Either way, I'm certainly not the only one who can hear them. Writers like Stephen Harrod Buhner, Matthew Wood, Kiva Rose and many others (see my recommended reading list, above), as well as lots of "just folks" who don't write or blog, are listening, learning and growing because of the whispered lessons of these amazing creatures growing in the woods, meadows, parks, gardens, edges of Walmart parking lots and schoolyards.

But - Lord help us - before we can 'hear' or even read about the Medicine Plants in a way that sinks in, we must, I repeat, un-learn certain mental habits.

Intellectual laziness has to go. The attention span has to be extended. Sentimentality must be banished - this is NOT like that stupid movie, Avatar. A trusting relationship with the body has to be established by learning to fully use and fully appreciate the senses.

The Medicine Plants don't, of course, speak in words but in fragrance and texture and shape and possibly electromagnetic fields that interact with our own. We don't really know, and it will vary. Our minds translate their language(s) to ours, into words or images, sometimes as dreams, sometimes as flashes of inspiration.

A sense of play, a willingness to feel a little goofy and the ability to laugh at ourselves is also essential to getting to know them in situ!

They work on us, for us and with us from the inside out, but again, they can only be Medicine if our awareness allows it to be so.

So you see, there are multiple levels to working with Medicine Plants. That means you have ample ways to access them, but it also means you'd have to really feel drawn to it, sense there is something there worth discovering. Otherwise, why bother? It's work, after all.

Whether you seek medicine or Medicine, though, please understand that there is no benefit to be had from naivete. In the world that passes for "herbal medicine" today there are more shysters than shamans. There are well meaning but mistaken practitioners galore. There are pitfalls aplenty.

The worst and most common pitfall? That state of learned helplessness otherwise known as "consumerism".

If you call yourself a consumer - even a so-called "educated consumer" - then you are not yet suited to engage with the Medicine Plants. You might be close, just a step or two away, but you're not there. That one word is the stumbling block, first because it prevents us from understanding that the Medicine Plants are not just 'things' to be consumed, they are sentient beings.

Secondly, consumerism itself is dis-empowering.

It's a system set up to ensure that we are reliant on someone else (generally a faceless corporation) to source, prepare and decide how and when and why we 'consume' their product, be it food or medicine or clothing or the type of house we live in. It is a state of helplessness, of dependence. It's infantalizing. To see ourselves as consumers is to see ourselves as incapable of looking after our own needs without that third party. As long as we see ourselves that way, so shall we remain.

Yes, I know how harsh that sounds. I almost left it out, but it needs to be said. We live in an age where people honestly believe that they don't have time to cook for themselves, let alone grow anything or walk out the door with their eyes open to what is growing at their feet. But that's because they've chosen to accept the template that's been offered to them. 

The Medicine Plants break up that seemingly solid template in just exactly the same way that weeds will break through the seemingly solid asphalt of your driveway.

See? That dandelion that so pisses everyone off? That's a Medicine Plant in action.

So - Developing a relationship with the Medicine Plants is a dangerous thing to do.

It allows Spirit through, and nothing is more dangerous to the consumer lifestyle template than an encounter with Spirit. 

Psychological battles ensue. Relationships are challenged. A sense of personal responsibility creeps in and all hell breaks loose as we discover we're not nearly as fully developed as human beings as we thought we were.

Wonderment and awe at the natural world alternate with despair that we seem to be the only ones noticing its true value. It's often as brutal an experience as it is beautiful.

Is there a middle path? Of course there is. What that looks like will be entirely dependant on you, because now it's yours to choose. The template is yours to create.

It's still plenty dangerous, though!