Sacred Plant Medicine: The Heart of Green Medicine
Shantree Kacera, R.H., D.N., Ph.D.
How do we deepen our connection to the medicinal wild plants?
How do we go beyond the physical realm of this, heal that, and that heals this, go beyond just treating symptoms, treating just the obvious or treating just the disease?
How do we deepen our healing herb practice?
How do we deepen our love relationship with the Green world?
If we look at our not-so-distant past, we will see the approaches used by all ancient cultures worldwide. Be it Ayurveda from India, Traditional Chinese Medicine from China, Tibetan Medicine from Tibet, Unani Tibb System from Arabic/Persian, or any Shamanic practices from around the world, they all worked with the energetic qualities of the plants. It was also practiced by the ancient Greeks and Romans and by herbalists throughout Europe until the 17th century. Numerous Native American tribes, especially the Cherokee, evolved energetic healing systems, which are still used today. Understanding the principles of energetics is essential for treatment. The traditional herbalists considered the complete healing essence of the plants from the physical, emotional, and spiritual levels. They all approached healing plants as something sacred.
The Sacred
Recognizing and seeking out the sacred is one of the primary drives that make up an individual's fabric, shaping our human ancestry. When we enter the realm of the holy and experience its transcendent nature, we will begin to understand the herb. That’s when we go from understanding a plant from a head/mind level to understanding it on a heart/body level. The experience of the sacred is translated into smells, tastes, sights, sounds, and touch. This is the level of intimacy, a deepening.
“In making contact with the sacred through plants, one must go into the world of plants, not as a human who knows everything, but as a seeker who has come to learn.”
-Stephen Harrod Buhner
Indigenous people who live close to the Earth and love it and the living plants that grow upon it believe there is an essence in all things, including herbs. From where did this capacity to understand the plant come from? It came from the connection of our common ancestry and our shared connection with the Spirit of the Earth. We can enter the world of plants, but many of us have forgotten this essential aspect of being human. Each herb can be known through its energetic vibration:
Sight – colour and texture,
Taste – temperature and texture,
Touch – texture and firmness
Smell – aromas and potencies
Sound – patient awareness listening
Earth as Healer
Ancient healers saw the Earth as the all-nourishing Mother and healer. The giver of life and the powerful forces of the elements: air, fire, water, Earth and ether. Consider our lives in the modern cities that people live in. If you are ill, you get a prescription drug. All our medicines come from the hospital, doctor, or pharmacy and are artificial products. These modern drugs of today have been processed, refined, potentized, reprocessed, and stripped of their natural health-giving qualities. The more healing the plant, the closer it is to the source, which is the Earth.
Many wouldn’t embrace the concept that Earth is wise, giving, and sacred. Too many couldn’t escape thinking of the Earth as a dumb rock with some water and greenery on top.
We do not distinguish between a human mother and Earth Mother from our youngest times. We recognize both instinctively. One is the conduit of the life force, the other its source, and both bear the truth of belonging, of home. We come out of our mothers, both of them, knowing this deeply. This is not a mental construct or even a philosophical concept. It is an actual reality, for we experience it in our bones, cells, and even our synapses because we are made of the stuff of life. All our organs and glands, including our brains, are crafted from the Earth's raw materials.
“We are stardust and must get ourselves back to the garden.”
-Joni Mitchell, songwriter
In Traditional Native American spirituality, they teach their offspring that all people come from the Earth. They speak of unborn generations of children whose faces come from beneath the ground. For them, Earth-as-Mother is more than a compelling idea. They feel it in their hearts.
The Japanese Zen Buddhist philosopher Daisetz Suzuki believes the Earth is man’s body. She is boundless love, a profound source of joy; the Earth is humankind’s great educator and disciplinarian. If we begin to see, accept, and act on the vision of our place within Nature and the plant kingdom, we, too, may come to live wisely and responsibly on the Earth.
“Behold the herbs! Their virtues are invisible, and yet they can be detected.”
-Paracelsus (1493-1541) Physician, Natural Philosopher, Alchemist, and Mystic
Healing Earth in Action
Whether we focus on the chemistry of secondary plant products or the energy fields of plants, the context is one of ecological embrace. A unique opportunity is created by taking in plant medicine through any of the five senses: sight, smell, taste, touch, or sound. A doorway is opened to the possibility of a miracle or the gift of the Earth of natural healing that goes beyond the removal of disease. This is a way to directly experience an ecological flow and integration, a feeling of belonging, in the most profound sense, and of knowing that one is healed, whole and at home. This healing goes beyond treating pathologies and alleviating bodily suffering; the plants do so well. This is the healing realm of the transcendent, the touch of the luminous, the transformation that takes place through the divine touch. It is the direct result of healing the separation from the embrace of both nature and soul that plagues humanity. There are openings and times when the use of green plants touches us in an experience of the green. The greening power is a vital energy that is life, the Spirit of the Earth, the divine in form, that which heals and transforms humanity. The healing gift Mother Earth offers abundantly and freely through her greenery is indeed a greening of the human condition, pointing to hope and renewal.
DEEP HERBALISM, DEEP ECOLOGY
From an herbalist’s perspective, the healing force of the plant realm abounds. Approaching the field of herbalism from any of its diverse components brings light to a field of human endeavour that is a beautiful weaving of the miraculous and mundane. To see the fullest potential of herbalism and experience the transformation of the heart, with its reverence for all life, is building bridges between plants and people. It seems self-evident that greening power is a driving force behind changes that touch humanity.
ALIENATION
Our lives are a cacophony. Isolated from wind, rain, sun, heat and cold, we are trapped in our metal, concrete, and plastic catacombs.
“Living in such a world, is it any wonder that we turn to drugs, to ever more sensational means of stimulation, to entertainment that renders us catatonic?
Insulated from nature and ungrounded, why should we be surprised at our brutality?
Where is there room for gratitude in such a world, and what should we be grateful for?”
–~Arthur Versluis
Numerous theories explain the signs of decay in our society. The disorder that is happening in the world around us from child and elder abuse, rape, murders, drug and alcohol addiction, homelessness, environmental degradation and suicides. But all these are more symptoms than causes.
Why are the family units disintegrating?
What explains our addictive Nature to drugs and alcohol?
Why are our children drawn to gangs and violence?
Why do individuals feel so alone, disconnected and unfulfilled?
Alienation is the answer to all of these questions. Alienation is from the natural order, the most basic of order, upon which all others- social, familial, psychological and spiritual- rest—the order of the Earth.
The absence of the felt knowledge that Earth is Mother causes great suffering for individuals and society. Without it, we are fundamentally lost, confused, and spiritually misshapen. When our carefully crafted social or emotional security systems crumble under the onslaught of a divorce, victimization, financial failure, or the death of a loved one, there is no ground upon which to stand. We feel the cold void where the nexus with the Earth Mother should be. The majority of us become motherless children. We become orphans in life.
The symptoms of our alienation from plants and NNature are evident:
1. Plants seem foreign and foreboding. It has the feel of “not me.”
2. We hold NNature at an intellectual arm’s length. We’re obsessed with studying & labelling plants.
3. Our relationship with Nature is based on the desire to exert control, to bend the natural world to our will and wishes.
4. We have deluded ourselves into believing that Nature is a thing rather than a living entity.
Every one of us is a direct offspring of Nature and depends upon the green world of plants. We comprise air, water, land, and sun-nourishing elements. The Earth is our true Mother, our biological and existential home and our source and sustenance, but most of us are orphaned from her. We spend most of our lives in artificial environments, immersed in metal, asphalt, glass, and plastic. Our days are filled with interfacing with computers, charge cards, telephones, televisions, microwaves, automobiles, pavement and, of course, the internet. And we are emotionally impoverished for it.
“Once upon a time –
but this is neither a fairy tale nor a bedtime story-
We know less about the natural world than we do today. Much less. But we understood that world better, for we lived ever so much closer to its rhythms.”
-Daniel Swartz
How we view or feel about the Earth and her green plants often reflects how we feel toward our inner being, which we derive from the Earth. Alienation from the Earth and alienation from one’s self usually go hand-in-hand. People who avoid NNature, in most cases, have made a lifestyle of evading their inner NNature. To many people, the Earth is a stranger, and we fear or at least regard her with wariness. Similarly, we fear our inner Nature, which we derive from the Earth. We make it a habit of sidestepping nature and shunning the inner self, which reflects the natural world.
A close, intimate relationship with a living plant or tree grounds one’s psyche and essence in the certainty of one’s roots. Losing touch with nature’s rhythms means losing touch with one's deepest self. Many of us have done just that.
AN EARTH CONNECTION
Try this Earth Experiment:
On a warm sunny day, lay on your stomach in a field of grass or wildflowers.
How does this feel?
Is it a foreign touch that greets your body or the nurturing feel of life?
Is resting on the Earth’s skin comforting, or does it make you feel weird, foolish, or out of place?
Does the ground feel alive or seem foreign, inert, and objective?
Whatever you may feel or not feel, you’re in direct contact with the Earth. The Earth is our primary source of nourishment, which comes to us all directly or indirectly from the plant realm. Most of us understand this intellectually, but few believe it.
RETURNING TO THE GARDEN
”Only human beings have come to a point where they no longer know why they exist.
They have forgotten the secret knowledge of their bodies,
senses, and dreams.”
~Lame Deer
Our active, thinking mind can drown out our awareness of the sensations nature and the plant realm use to draw us homeward. The journey homeward begins by first making an effort to be in the here and now, the present place and time, while being in the presence of the green ones. This can be as simple as meditating upon a flower, leaf, seed, or a whole tree. Or bring your focus on a particular mode of sensory contact by listening to the sound of the birds and the bees, smelling the aromatic flowers, tasting the wild fruits of the woods, touching the various textures of the barks of the trees, or visually absorbing the Earth’s wondrous colorations.
Psychologist David Michael Levin states that we should restore our spirits and celebrate the sacred. We must begin by reentering the body and exploring how technology has cut us off from the body’s wisdom. Each of us must lose our minds and return to our senses, the language of the Earth, the language of the plant realm. It is easier said than satisfied, especially for us who make our living by intellectualizing our world by thinking, planning, and worrying, but it is possible.
By taking in the nourishment of the Earth’s life through our senses, we enliven our spirits. We can all find small pockets of NNature, even those who live in densely crowded, urban subdivisions; these places can be turned into sacred oases that re-awaken one’s sensitivity to life.
Just visit home.
Nature is still there.
The green world of plants will allure you.
And all you need to do is listen, smell, taste, see, and touch.
You are a child of the Green Earth.
“He loved the Earth and all things of the Earth. He knew that man’s heart away from nature becomes hard; he knew the lack of respect for growing and living things soon led to the lack of respect for humans too.” ~Luther Standing Bear / Oglala Sioux
Shantree Kacera, R.H., Ph.D. D.N. is a Therapeutic Herbalist & Ayurvedic Nutritionist with 45 years of experience in the Natural Healing Arts. He founded Spirit of the Earth, The Living Centre Education Retreat Sanctuary. He teaches Certificate Courses in Conscious Living: The Sevenfold Path to Peace, Therapeutic, Practical Herbalism and Shamanic Herbal Energetics,
Constitutional Ayurvedic Medicine, Tongue Diagnosis and Clinical Constitutional Iridology