This volume concerns premodern understandings of vegetal nature that encompass multiple semantics and perspectives. Scholars from the disparate fields of art history, literature, and religious studies present tantalizing studies of trees and plants in sacred and secular thought. Some discuss the concept of the Book of Nature and its implications. Others explore narratives of symbiosis between humans and vegetal material, tree-dwelling hermits, spirits metamorphosing into wood, flowers or trees that sprout from bodies or the dissolution of the self into the natural world. Complementary to these approaches are studies that suggest a collapsing of time and space in spiritually charged yet ambiguous natural motifs or topographies where forests or groves are spaces of transformative experience.
A hands-on approach to working with the healing powers of plant spirits • Explores the scientific basis underlying the practices of indigenous healers and shamans • Illuminates the matrix where plant intelligence and human intelligence join • Reveals that partnering with plants is an evolutionary imperative Indigenous healers and shamans have known since antiquity that plants possess a spirit essence that can communicate through light, sound, and vibration. Now scientific studies are verifying this understanding. Plant Spirit Healing reveals the power of plant spirits to join with human intelligence to bring about profound healing. These spirits take us beyond mere symptomatic treatment to aligning us with the vast web of nature. Plants are more than their chemical constituents. They are intelligent beings that have the capacity to raise consciousness to a level where true healing can take place. In this book, herbalist Pam Montgomery offers an understanding of the origins of disease and the therapeutic use of plant spirits to bring balance and healing. She offers a process engaging heart, soul, and spirit that she calls the triple spiral path. In our modern existence, we are increasingly challenged with broken hearts, souls in exile, and malnourished spirits. By working through the heart, we connect with the soul and gain access to spirit. She explains that the evolution of plants has always preceded their animal counterparts and that plant spirits offer a guide to our spiritual evolution--a stage of growth imperative not only for the healing of humans but also the healing of the earth.
Ancient shamanic practice compelled the magician-healer first to make contact with the spirit of the plant to ask for its help before administering the herbal cure. This practice is alive today in Mexico among the traditional Indian shaman healers-principally the elder Huichol Indian shaman and plant spirit healer Don Guadalupe Gonzales Rios. Elliot Cowan reveals these ancient practices and guides the reader in the effective use of the wild herb plants in the area in which he or she lives. the result is a wonderful psychic and spiritual approach to holistic healing
Whether you live in a mountain cabin or a city loft, plant spirits present themselves to us everywhere. Since its first printing in 1995, Plant Spirit Medicine has passed hand-to-hand among countless readers drawn to indigenous spirituality and all things alive and green. In this updated edition, Eliot Cowan invites us to discover the healing power of plants—not merely their physical medicinal properties, but the deeper wisdom and gifts that they offer. Enriched by many new insights, this guide unfolds as a series of chapters on how plant spirit medicine helped Cowan resolve specific challenges in his own healing journey and in his work with others. In the telling, we learn how plant spirits can directly communicate with and aid all of us, including: Plant spirit medicine's five-element view of healingWays to assess our own states of health and balanceReceiving guidance from plants, including those found within herbal preparationsNew passages on community and sacred plants such as peyote, marijuana, and tobaccoAdditional interviews with plant shamans across diverse traditions, and more
Explores the creation of a garden sanctuary with practical advice on plant selection, color, creating pathways and gates, and sharing the space with wildlife.
An in-depth look at the role of plant spirits in shamanic rituals from around the world • Shows how shamans heal using their knowledge of plant spirits as well as the plant’s “medical properties” • Explores the core methods of plant shamanism--soul retrieval, spirit extraction, and sin eating--and includes techniques for connecting with plant spirits • Includes extensive field interviews with master shamans of all traditions In Plant Spirit Shamanism, Ross Heaven and Howard G. Charing explore the use of one of the major allies of shamans for healing, seeing, dreaming, and empowerment--plant spirits. After observing great similarities in the use of plants among shamans throughout the world, they discovered the reason behind these similarities: Rather than dealing with the “medical properties” of the plants or specific healing techniques, shamans commune with the spirits of the plants themselves. From their years of in-depth shamanic work in the Amazon, Haiti, and Europe, including extensive field interviews with master shamans, Heaven and Charing present the core methods of plant shamanism used in healing rituals the world over: soul retrieval, spirit extraction, sin eating, and the Amazonian tradition of pusanga (love medicine). They explain the techniques shamans use to establish connections to plant spirits and provide practical exercises as well as a directory of traditional Amazonian and Caribbean healing plants and their common North American equivalents so readers can ex-plore the world of plant spirits and make allies of their own.
Plants personify the divine— The Rig Veda (X.97) Trees and plants have long been held sacred to communities the world over. In India, we have a whole variety of flora that feature in our myths, our epics, our rituals, our worship and our daily life. There is the pipal, under which the Buddha meditated on the path to enlightenment; the banyan, in whose branches hide spirits; the ashoka, in a grove of which Sita sheltered when she was Ravana’s prisoner; the tulsi, without which no Hindu house is considered complete; the bilva, with whose leaves it is possible to inadvertently worship Shiva. Before temples were constructed, trees were open-air shrines sheltering the deity, and many were symbolic of the Buddha himself. Sacred Plants of India systematically lays out the sociocultural roots of the various plants found in the Indian subcontinent, while also asserting their ecological importance to our survival. Informative, thought-provoking and meticulously researched, this book draws on mythology and botany and the ancient religious traditions of India to assemble a detailed and fascinating account of India’s flora.
Consulting plant spirits for spiritual and psychological guidance and healing • Reveals how, by communing with the deva or spirit of a plant, we can call forth its medicine without even needing to ingest it • Includes wisdom from the devas of 13 herbs, such as rosemary, datura, and uva ursi • Empowers readers with the tools to develop their own inner resources for healing in relationship with the plant devas around them Each plant has a story to share with us, a healing story to guide us in trying times, a spirit medicine for the New Earth that is presently unfolding. Herbs are some of the most powerful allies we have for these transitional times--we just need to learn how to listen as they share their knowledge with us. In Wisdom of the Plant Devas, Thea Summer Deer reveals a new dimension of herbal medicine, one where the plant’s spirit is consulted for guidance and healing beyond the physical. Examining the botany, modern and traditional uses, history, and folklore of 13 special herbs, such as rosemary, uva ursi, and datura, she shares divinations and messages from their devas, or plant spirits, explaining how these stories carry the herbs into our lives, letting them work their magic on us. Exploring herbal medicine from an energetic perspective, she reveals that by communing with the deva of a plant, we can call on the plant’s physical, psychological, and spiritual medicine and guidance--without ingesting it or even being in its presence. Detailing the sacred space of a Medicine Wheel Garden, whether in a backyard or our imaginations, she connects us with the devas and empowers us to seek our own answers with their much-needed spiritual guidance and divinatory advice. Creating a bridge between botanical medicine and plant spirit medicine, she shows how by coming into community with the devas and co-creating with the world of nature, we can gain tremendous insights to help heal our hearts, our minds, and our spirits and consciously evolve as together we birth the New Earth.
"Once in a while you find a book that stuns you. Its scope leaves you breathless. This is such a book." — John White, San Francisco Chronicle Explore the inner world of plants and its fascinating relation to mankind, as uncovered by the latest discoveries of science. In this truly revolutionary and beloved work, drawn from remarkable research, Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird cast light on the rich psychic universe of plants. The Secret Life of Plants explores plants' response to human care and nurturing, their ability to communicate with man, plants' surprising reaction to music, their lie-detection abilities, their creative powers, and much more. Tompkins and Bird's classic book affirms the depth of humanity's relationship with nature and adds special urgency to the cause of protecting the environment that nourishes us.
Alongside the formal development of Judaism from the eleventh through the sixteenth centuries, a robust Jewish folk religion flourished—ideas and practices that never met with wholehearted approval by religious leaders yet enjoyed such wide popularity that they could not be altogether excluded from the religion. According to Joshua Trachtenberg, it is not possible truly to understand the experience and history of the Jewish people without attempting to recover their folklife and beliefs from centuries past. Jewish Magic and Superstition is a masterful and utterly fascinating exploration of religious forms that have all but disappeared yet persist in the imagination. The volume begins with legends of Jewish sorcery and proceeds to discuss beliefs about the evil eye, spirits of the dead, powers of good, the famous legend of the golem, procedures for casting spells, the use of gems and amulets, how to battle spirits, the ritual of circumcision, herbal folk remedies, fortune telling, astrology, and the interpretation of dreams. First published more than sixty years ago, Trachtenberg's study remains the foundational scholarship on magical practices in the Jewish world and offers an understanding of folk beliefs that expressed most eloquently the everyday religion of the Jewish people.
