Becoming Friend to Plants
DISCLAIMER : I am neither a botanist, neither a physician, I just speak about generalities and don’t do any diagnostic nor recommendation. If you are ill, see your physician.
We need plants but plants do not need humans.
“Life is life--whether in a cat, or dog or man. There is no difference there between a cat or a man. The idea of difference is a human conception for man's own advantage.” ― Śrī Aurobindo
What is a plant ?
Take a moment to see what is a plant. Plants are intelligent conscious entities. Their intelligence has a different form than ours. They have a brain, we have it in a skull with neurons and dendrites, plants have it in the ground with their roots.
This plant brain :
- searches for resources,
- transforms molecules,
- harnesses sun rays to photosynthesize and ionize water, getting hydrogen to reduce carbon,
- cooperates with other plants,
- Exchanges and links with fungi. Without fungi, there would not have any tree.
How cooperation with fungi takes place for the tree
The fungus on a tree transforms nutrients, like nitrogen and phosphates, that would not be accessible directly by the tree. The fungus also protects the roots of a tree from parasites that can be found in the soil. In return, fungi get sugars that are not essentials for trees.
In my city, Pau, you can see three trees of the same species near a building. All three were planted at the same time but they are very different. The first one is 12 feet tall, the second is 18 and wider and the third 24 and very wide. When you know the place history, you’ll remember that near the tallest, there were two big trees of another species. So they exchanged fungi and nutriments even after these two trees were cut.
Looking for balance
Plants generally don’t move, so they have to accept what they have at the place where they are. They are always looking for balance where they are. When a species is numerous somewhere, it is because the soil is sick, de-structured, or just unbalanced. They are the symptoms and yet the medicine: they are healing the soils. Seeds can sleep somewhere and germinate when weather and soil are adequate, their time spectrum is much longer than ours.
Plants are experts in homeostasis as our climate is going mad. They get hydrogen from water giving back oxygen and stocking carbon. They can teach us that we are not separated, that it is a human illusion. It is of paramount importance that we befriend again with plants, fungi, and animals to awaken us to the Gaia consciousness.
Symptoms and medicine
When you have a packed soil, bindweed will grow to heal it. In France, an encyclopedia has been published, although not translated into English, called L'encyclopédie des plantes bio-indicatrices alimentaires et médicinales : Guide de diagnostic des sols by Gérard Ducerf in 2 volumes (Encyclopedia of Food and Medicinal Bioindicator Plants: Soil Diagnostic Guide) which lists plants and soil diagnostics according to their presence.
Thistles are mainly considered as "injurious weed" while they deliver a high nectar production and their root is beneficial in packed soils, allowing water to go deep through the layers, beneficial for all plants around.
Stories of intelligence at work
Wouter Van Hoven, a zoologist from Pretoria University in South Africa, noticed that giraffes were able to browse one acacia out of ten. He discovered that when an acacia was browsed, it released poison in its leaves and also ethylene gas so that its fellow creatures downwind would receive the smell signal and imitate it instantly, transforming delicious young leaves in poison for giraffes. Tomatoes when attacked by a moth, sample the insect's saliva and then release an odor calling out the moth's precise predator. Chemicals are the language of the plants. Humankind chose, abusively, to use synthetic chemicals to lie to them, creating a cacophony that disturbs them.
Human benefits
Humans use plants to solve health issues. To regulate high blood pressure, for example, hawthorn is adviced. The Bach Flowers Remedies are used to restore emotional balance. Yew taxol is being used for cancer drugs. We could go on going through a big list.
Most western medicines are extracted from plants. The big technological hidden agenda is to replace nature, erasing consciousness and freedom on this earth to manipulate every free organism with synthetic chemicals, bypassing our deep essence. This intoxicating chimeric dream is lethal, we have to awaken before it serves its purpose, for now, it is a tool to awaken us to our real power but if it is prolonged, human species will die. Plants or fungi can live on their own, while humans are parasites, they need plants and animals to survive. This is the moment to speak about plant spirit medicine.
Plant spirit medicine
In the late 80s, Michael Dunning was seriously ill in Scotland. He happened to meet the Wittingehame Yew. Yew are extraordinary trees able to live for thousands of years and still rejuvenating. In their lives, they change sex several times. They were revered by druids, they are the cathedral of the ancient world with neolithic stones. Michael met the yew spirit and got healed.
Eliot Cowan was a graduate student in filmmaking in the late 60s. A strong urge made him leave university for a farm in Vermont. There he saved a goat’s life with herbalism. Later he learnt Chinese medicine in England with J R Worsley. Then he went on learning on his own, practicing shamanism with Michael Harner who suggested contacting plant spirits, that is what he did. At last, he met native healers to improve his plant spirit medicine way.
His book is very practical, vision changing and full of stories. You can contact the plant spirit through dreams with three ways :
- by drumming, even using a drumming recording
- by psychotropic substances
- by pilgrimage to powerful spots
He describes a very precise protocol to do it with drumming. He insists about the fact that local plants are very powerful. No need to go to Amazon forest.
He had his first contact with plantain spirit (Plantago lanceolata). This spirit was introduced as a woman. She said :
“We can do nothing unless we are asked”
Plant spirits give precise advice about how to prepare, even other plants, and for which problems. They are happy to communicate and help a thankful and respectful being. They help you to heal your spirit and then it has repercussions on the physical plane. This book is really a must-read for those who want to become a friend of plants.
Now we no longer have excuses for not becoming a friend to plants.
Sources
- Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm by Harrod Buhner
- Fantastic Fungi by Louie Schwartzberg
- Sacred Hoop magazine
- DMT Dialogues, Encounters with the Spirit Molecule edited by David Luke and Rory Spowers
- L'encyclopédie des plantes bio-indicatrices alimentaires et médicinales : Guide de diagnostic des sols by Gérard Ducerf
- Plant Spirit Medicine by Eliot Cowan and his website.
- Plant Spirit Wisdom — Shamans and sin eaters — by Ross Heaven
- Shamanism — as a daily practice for daily life — by Tom Cowan
- Soul Companions by Karen Sawyer (one chapter is about Michael Dunning)