On Home Soil

This year Ayahuasca brought me away from the cornucopia of medicinal plants and trees in the Amazon and directed me to the plants I can see from my own front door in the UK.

Our connection with nature in the UK may not be on the same level as the tribes of the Amazon, but the plants are ready and waiting with the same vigour and healing power of their rainforest counterparts. And they have so much to say!

Without letting the mind get in the way, I was intuitively called towards two well known plants that are commonly known as weeds, opening up a whole new world that was more powerful than I had ever considered. 

Perhaps most surprising was the dynamic of harvesting my own plants and the teaching that this created.

Dandelion

The first plant I dieted was the dandelion, back in spring. A flower often considered to be an invasive weed. A plant overlooked by many as being medicinal due to its prevalence in undesirable and derelict areas. 

I decided to diet the dandelion without the supervision of a Curandera which enabled me to make the mistakes I needed to make.

The first thing Dandelion taught me about was the honourable harvest, reciprocity and respect. All things I knew but wasn’t necessarily living. I’d harvested a good amount as they were growing all around. After opening my diet a little carelessly I must admit, one morning, I encountered stomach pains later that day. I tuned in to the Dandelions and received their take on things.

“First of all, that opening wasn’t much of a ceremony, not compared with other plants you’ve dieted, are Dandelions not worthy of the same reverence as other plants.”

“Secondly, you’re too early! We’re still feeding the bees as not much else has blossomed yet. We have a vital job to do that supersedes your personal development needs, so come back at the end of the month when you see other flowers blooming.”

I did just that they said, and felt the affronted and bossy attitude was well justified in light of my actions, serendipitously I was reading Robin Kimmerer’s book, Braiding Sweetgrass, at the time and read about the Potawatomi teachings on the honourable harvest:

Know the ways of the ones who take care of you, so that you may take care of them.

Introduce yourself. Be accountable as the one who comes asking for life.

Ask permission before taking. Abide by the answer.

Never take the first. Never take the last.

Take only what you need.

Take only that which is given.

Never take more than half. Leave some for others.

Harvest in a way that minimises harm.

Use it respectfully. Never waste what you have taken.

Share.

Give thanks for what you have been given.

Give a gift, in reciprocity for what you have taken.

Sustain the ones who sustain you and the earth will last forever.

All teachings that had come into my awareness this past decade but the message was obvious. The time is now! Move out of scarcity and hoarding. Move out of not enough.

Come into reciprocity and relationship. Give and receive. Awareness and care.

I took on the messages and applied the honourable harvest a month later, giving back gifts of oats and Mapacho and harvesting with care and reciprocity.

 I opened with the masculine energy of Huachuma this time. Many people see the energy of flowers as female and they largely are, for me the Dandelion was totally masculine. The virility and strength with which it spreads it seeds helped me to honour my own masculinity. 

The Dandelion will also go and grow where other plants won’t, the places that mankind has left its scar on the earth. There is a huge healing role that Dandelions play here. Taking energy from the sun and feeding it into the soil to heal it.

Their roots go deep and each part of the plant has a different healing capacity. For my diet I drank a cold tea steeped overnight from the flowers and ate the leaves in salads.

I received both physical and emotional healing in my kidneys and new levels of wisdom from this incredible plant.  Later in the year I was privileged to hold a Dandelion ceremony for 30 men and was amazed with the vigour with which they reconnected to this mighty plant spirit and how strongly the dandelion energy filled the space. Another plant alliance I will cherish in this world.

Mugwort

As the summer drew to a close, Mugwort, also known as Artemisia Vulgaris, began to move into my field. Poetic that after the masculine of the Dandelion, a strong feminine plant was calling to balance things out.

I was familiar with Mugwort, I had sat in ceremony, joyfully, with her before. I knew her to be the head plant spirit of the British Isles. Known well to the witches and druids of old and a gateway into dreamscapes and magic. 

This time I had my curandera supervise the diet from afar. I harvested honourably, listening to the plants as I went, and opened with all the ceremony that each and every plant deserves.

It was a homecoming.

By unplanned chance I had been out harvesting liberty cap mushrooms that morning with friends and in the spirit of true friendship they had both given their harvest to me. My intention was to connect to the land on which I was born.

After opening with Ayahuasca I closed my eyes and saw visions of mushrooms instantly. 

“Eat them.’ she said.

“Can I wait to see how strong you are first?”

“Do you not trust me? How about trust.”

Well, what could I say to that?

I ate the mushrooms tentatively…

“All of them, Ayahuasca demanded with an amused tone.”

Hahaha, “Ok.”

The best gift we can give to the earth and the plants is to constantly cultivate love in our hearts and tend to that garden. That is so much harder than it sounds and what love is for one is different to another. For sure I am learning that it can never be given to anyone if you are not giving it to yourself. Giving it to yourself often involves the simple act of saying no. All the old lessons came back with vigour to say “START LIVING LIKE THIS!”

As the strength of the plants increased I felt myself connecting to the mycelium beneath the earth and could see spirits in the distance running towards me. As they came closer jaguar and anaconda on one side, raven and horned gods/beasts on the other, I felt the spirits and god heads from both sides of the Atlantic racing towards me. They crashed together inside me… and it really felt like a crash as I shook violently and tried to hold onto the ground. I was seeing all gods now, as a green energy shone through me showing various incarnations of the prophets of love on earth, and then there was just love at the highest level, pure love that was for everyone. It was so powerful that it reached into every corner of existence, every dark nook and cranny and simply forgave everything. There was nothing that could not be forgiven.

I felt myself forgiven for everything and loved myself so freely and completely that for a long time I couldn’t speak, no words would come out. 

“Stick a fork in me I’m done.” I said to myself. Of course I’m not done, there is so much, but at that moment it felt like I was.

And then after all that, in danced mugwort to begin the diet. As a beautiful young woman and as an old haggard crone. She helped deepen into the complexities around the teachings from all my previous diets. Refining and empowering as she went, lifting stone after stone.

Like the dandelion she is a power plant and protector of nature, growing by roadsides and catching the fumes from cars to protect the landscapes and woodlands behind her. Transforming the energy and holding balance.

We moved through judgement of self and dealing with the judgements and misunderstandings of others. We moved through the nervous system and healed the traumas of the past.  

I was taught about the energies of the world and holding my own energy in the face of that.

Into intuition, lucid dreaming and telepathy.

Into the religious roots of the ‘dieta' and back into the importance of honouring agreements we make with other beings.

Finally I was brought back down to earth with a bump after dancing with the gods and reminded that I am still human, and with being human comes a good dose of humility.

As I smudged my home with her towards the end of my diet I could smell ayahuasca in the smoke.

“We are the same at our essence, we harness the same power of love, we are connected.’ she said.

I’m really just scratching the surface, there was so so much to this diet and I am forever grateful to this wonderful plant and all the plants that have worked with me and continue to do so. I owe them so much and can only hope I can give as much as they do.

I feel more trees and plants of these weathered Isles calling in 2020. They are crying out for connection. If you hear them call, then please pick up the phone.