Plant Spirit Medicine
Heaing With the Power of Plants
by
Eliot Cowan
Swan-Raven & Co.
an imprint of Granite Publishing
P.O. Box 1429
Columbus, NC 28722
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©2011 by Eliot Cowan
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Navigation: Click the Chapter title to go to the Table of Contents, which is linked to the chapters.
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ISBN 9781893183445
1. Huichol Indians--Ethnobotany.
2. Huichol Indians--Medicine.
3. Huichol Indians--Religion.
4. Ethnobotany--Mexico.
5. Medicinal plants--Mexico.
6. Healing--Mexico.
7. Shamanism--Mexico.
What Others are Saying About Plant Spirit Medicine...
“Unlike herbalism, which uses the chemical properties of the plant to heal the physical body, plant spirit medicine, according to Cowan, is a ‘magico-religious rite, in which plant gods bestow their grace.’ It addresses the origin of illness rather than the disease itself. ‘For all practical purposes, illness takes root in the mind or the spirit anyway.’”
—Jill Neimark
New Age Journal
“…He is the perfect shaman for the disillusioned era in which we live. He’s the kind of mystic we believe—unflinchingly honest. In his book, he describes his own foibles and resists the temptation to romanticize his grizzled shaman mentors.”
—Penelope Kramer
Intuition Magazine
“Eliot Cowan, a self-described plant shaman, believes that if we make the effort to connect with plant spirits, they are more than willing to teach us how to heal ourselves.”
—Whole Life Times
“Suffice to say, plant spirit medicine is not scientific medicine. Cowan, however, is the right person to tell scientifically oriented Americans that they may be overlooking the most amazing telecommunications system ever invented.…Scientists around the world, in fact, are studying this phenomenon and are less apt to dismiss plant spirits; their research is showing that healing powers do appear to travel through space and time. Cowan’s work—and the plant world—appear to deserve people’s attention.”
—Natural Health
“Cowan speaks from a seemingly constant state of wonder. His work accesses mind-body medicine in its purest sense: simply the intention—the essence—of the plant, not its flesh, is the healing mechanism. This type of healing takes place within the level of reality known as the shamanic dreamtime where all beings can communicate. His clarity brings a level of truth and integrity to some of the more advanced forms of mind-body medicine which are completely beyond explanation, documentation and verification, yet speak of the highest potential of our race.”
—Spirit of Change Magazine
“Plant Spirit Medicine is of important spiritual magnitude. The information given here can help anyone to begin using these techniques and practicing plant spirit medicine.”
—New Age Retailer
“I think that this is probably the best of the books about white guys learning about traditional ways. He has really done his homework, served his apprenticeship…. He’s authentic…. Eliot really has my respect.”
—Hal Bennett
Author, Zuni Fetishes and Follow Your Bliss
“Reading this book provided me with a deeper glimpse of what is possible for me in my relationship to the natural world. In my years as a naturalist and educator I have long experienced a mystical connection to plants, animals, rocks and water…. Eliot Cowan has given me insight that this connection can reach beyond feeling, to dream, vision, song and healing. By using extensive interviews with a wide variety of healers, he supports and embellishes upon his own ability to seek counsel and guidance from the spirit inside plants–not ground up plant parts or smoked plants or plant juices, but plant spirits–to help him heal a wide variety of maladies.”
—Ann Linnea
Naturalist, author of Deep Water Passage
“The first time I read Plant Spirit Medicine, I responded with amazement and delight. Cowan’s simple tone convinced me that he was truly telling stories that were more wondrous to me than Castaneda’s. These are not stories of power, they are stories of boundless love.”
—Sheri Reda
Conscious Choice
“Eliot Cowan has charted the territory for a medicine of the past and the future. He restores one of the vital links which is the healing power behind our relationship with the plant world. His rediscoveries and teachings embrace the core of deep healing. This book is a great addition to the alternative medicine collections.”
—Malidoma Somé
Author, Ritual and Of Water and the Spirit
“This book is a call to a new awakening to the special bond between the human and the plant world. With clarity and wisdom, Eliot Cowan has crafted a fascinating narrative to open our eyes, heal our mind and bodies, and strengthen our spirits.”
—Thomas Leach
Chairman of the Dept. of Communicative Arts
Pembroke State University
“Eliot’s book brings a renewed sense of appreciation for the wisdom intelligence of nature. His sensitivity and receptivity offers inspiration to our own listening process. For if we don’t listen more effectively to the Spirit(s) of the natural world, how will we survive?”
—Tom Pinkson
Clinical Director,
Center for Attitudinal Healing
“Plant Spirit Medicine…provides fascinating stories of people communicating with plants and their healing experiences. Eliot Cowan is a plant spirit medicine teacher and practitioner. This book is highly recommended reading for people who are open to natural healing.”
—Natural Health Book Reviews
“Cowan, along with his teacher, takes us to a higher plane of healing by sharing how he communicates in the dream world of Shamanism. In this authoritative and spiritual book, the author exposes the reader to the practices of plant healers.”
—New Frontier Magazine
“This is the journey of the shaman-healer working his art in a traditional way in the modern world. Cowan’s study of acupuncture, herbs and homeopathy, is very much a part of his work. Yet he moves beyond these healing modalities in an attempt to distill the pure essence of herbalism and discover the core of healing. This is done through the stories of his quest and of people who are healed through his work. As an apprentice to a Huichol Indian shaman, you can expect him to guide you to another dimension of healing. But no hype here; he is as sincere and unpretentious as his medicine.”
—The American Herb Association, Vol. 14:1
“Such a book reminds us of the natural way of healing ourselves, in place of the chemical medicine that many of us consume on a daily basis. It is a true shame that the so-called modern medicine often overlooks the power of the medicinal power of plants.”
—Tom Varnada, Shenandoah Newsletter
Contents
Author’s Preface to the 3rd Edition
Part I
Chapter 1: Plant Spirit Medicine Dreams
Chapter 4: Medicine and Dreams
Part II
Chapter 11: Blocks to Treatment
Part III
Chapter 13: Don Enrique Salmon
Chapter 15: Sharon Puhky-Evans
Chapter 17: Grandma Bertha Grove
Author’s Prefatory Note
I thought about this book for almost a year before I actually sat down to it. The day I began writing was the day I was told I would be introduced to Don Guadalupe González Ríos, a Huichol Indian shaman. Somehow this news gave me energy. There was a sensation of having the wind at my back, speeding me somewhere I wanted very much to go.
As it turns out, that sensation was quite accurate. Among the Huichols, “wind” is the symbol for the unseen and all-pervasive power of a shaman, and Don Guadalupe received his gifts from a plant so holy that his people call it the “wind tree.”
Perhaps years of work prepared me to meet this man. When he began to teach me about the blessings of the wind tree, I was ready to hear his message. I had seen it over and over again: gracious plant spirits liberating people from suffering. Or perhaps I was prepared to meet him by the very suffering of people who don’t know where to look for grace.
Don Guadalupe’s plant teachers filled his heart with a love that illness cannot withstand, a love that makes him an unshakable, happy man. He wants to share that love with me, and with you, if you care to have it. It comes in compassionately measured doses during several years of muscle-building apprenticeship.
If the story of my apprenticeship is to be told, it will have to wait. In the meantime, this book comes to you on the breeze of the wind tree. It is a personal book full of stories, but it is only incidentally about my colleagues and me. The book is really about how the Creator’s love medicine flows to you through our brothers and sisters who have roots. If my prayers have been answered, the book is that love and that medicine.
Author’s Preface to the 3rd Edition
When this little book was finished, I thought it would be durable, but doubted it would really prosper in the market place. It seemed too offbeat. We will see in time about durability, but I clearly underestimated its appeal. There are many people who have had, or want to have experiences with plant spirits, and this book has proved clever at getting itself into these people’s hands.
There is nothing in the text I would change, but I would like to clarify two things:
First, Plant Spirit Medicine is a partnership with nature, much like gardening. Miracles bless our gardens in response to steady loving work. You don’t plant seeds today and expect a crop tomorrow. More effort is needed to get lasting results. All the clients mentioned in this book continued with treatment over an extended period of time: I don’t treat people for only one or two sessions.
Second, while I have had some successes working with absentee clients, I very seldom attempt ”long-distance” healing, and never with people I have not already worked with in person.
There are old friends I forgot to thank, and new friends who have worked unselfishly to open a path for the medicine. I ask all these people to accept the heartfelt thanks of everyone who will ever be touched by the spirit of a plant.
Foreword
by Hal Zina Bennett, Ph.D.
Hal Zina Bennett is the author and/or co-author of more than 30 successful books on holistic health, spirituality and human consciousness. His most recent books are Zuni Fetishes: Using Native American Objects for Meditation, Reflection and Insight, and Lens of Perception, a breakthrough book on human consciousness and the powers of perception.
I first met Eliot Cowan nearly ten years ago, when I was asked to work with him on an article on plant spirit medicine for Shaman’s Drum magazine. At the time, he had been working with plant spirits for less than three years. He’d been getting excellent results from his efforts and was attempting to integrate what he was learning with his very successful work as an acupuncturist in Sacramento.
I was intrigued by Eliot’s writings, in part because of my own interest in holistic health and shamanism. I had read about the healings of indigenous peoples throughout the world who cured with plant spirits, and the process had intrigued me. However, the idea that plants have spirits and that humans are capable of communicating with them ran against the grain of all I’d been taught through my formal education. Yet, it was clear from talking and reading about healings that had taken place in this way, that there was something to it and that people truly had received miraculous healings through the medicine men and women who practiced this process.
There is a part of me that even now holds onto my faith in the scientific method, insisting on proof, at least in the form of well-documented empirical evidence. Yet, my own experiences with ancient shamanistic practices long ago convinced me that there is an unseen reality that impacts our lives profoundly, yet which science has been unable to validate. The work I did with Eliot Cowan on his first article opened my eyes and I began looking at plants in a new way. I had always felt nurtured in nature, feeling the spirit of the forests during walks in the woods, and recognizing how very deeply touched I was by flowers or by eating vegetables freshly picked from our own garden. Perhaps, I reasoned, my responses to the vegetable world went deeper than aesthetics.
While I did not see or speak with the spirits of plants—at least not in the way Eliot describes in this book—I definitely began to change how I related to plants. Clearly, they were animate; that is, they contained and expressed the spirit of life which lives in all of us and which is the essence of the mystery of life itself. And clearly, each plant appeared to project an identity of its own—a character, if you will, that told what it was about. When I began looking very closely, I became convinced that the character of each plant was something much more than an aesthetic judgment on my part. I found myself deeply attracted, for example, to stinging nettle, which grew in abundance along a walking trail I discovered during a camping trip in Northern California. It was clearly not a beautiful plant, with its rather forbidding, spiked leaves that left your skin burning if you brushed against them. However, I somehow knew this plant had a generous and helpful spirit. During one wilderness trip, we were plagued by mosquitoes and when I looked around for a way to relieve the itching welts that covered my body, I found myself focusing in on the nettle growing along a little creek. I carefully picked a couple dozen leaves, put them into a pot, covered them with water, and steamed them for about twenty minutes. Then I swabbed my skin with the still warm, damp leaves, which by now looked a little like overcooked spinach. Almost instantly the itching stopped and the mosquito welts went down. My partner did the same and also enjoyed relief.
Later, back at the trailhead, I spoke with other campers about our experience with the nettle. An older couple said that they, too, used the “stinging nettle” for this purpose. In addition, they told us that a tea made from the nettle was an excellent remedy for diarrhea and that it was reputed to be excellent for stimulating the immune system to help deal with infection. Another woman told us that the cooked leaves of nettle are quite tasty and that she always mixed them with the dried backpacking foods she carried with her into the mountains.
As I became increasingly aware of the complexity of our relationships with the plant world, I began to ask a brand new set of questions. First and foremost, I had growing respect for the ancient tradition of herbology for healing, which was actually the basis for modern pharmaceuticals—and continues to have a major impact on that field. I asked myself, how did the first ancient healers learn of the medicinal benefits of foxglove, for example, that was later the basis for formulating digitalis, for treating certain heart disease? Unlikely that it was discovered randomly, through accident or trial and error. It seemed reasonable to assume that ancient medicine men or women were somehow able to communicate with the plants or in some other intuitive way read what they might offer us humans.
I continued to be interested in how we humans discovered the benefits of plants. Then, toward the end of my mother’s life, she mentioned to me that her grandmother, who lived in Northern Michigan, had been a midwife and herbalist. I had never heard this story before. I asked my mother if she knew how my great grandmother learned about such things. Had she studied with another healer? Mother didn’t know the answer to that, but she said that the her grandmother often went foraging in the woods and meadows for her herbs and that she seemed to have a reverence for the plants, treating them as if they were god-given, almost like angels sent to help humans. She said that her grandmother also told her that animals are able to communicate with plants, that a dog or cat, for example, will seek out exactly the right plants and eat them for their therapeutic effects. Mother said that when her own mother hemorrhaged following childbirth, her grandmother gathered herbs near their home and administered them, stopping the bleeding almost immediately.
Upon first reading the manuscript for this book, I was reminded of all these events, most of which I’d experienced or had been told about since my first work with Eliot several years before. Now I saw that he had taken his research a giant step further. He had gone off to study with healers such as Don José Ríos, Don José Morales, and Don Guadalupe González and others, and he had come back with information that has been lost to the modern world. Moreover, there were new elements to his work—the use of shamanic dreams to help guide and direct the therapeutic process using plants. All of this indicated to me that unlike so many modern whites who have become intrigued by shamanism and the ways of indigenous peoples, Eliot had gone the full route. He had done his homework in a sober and thorough way, seeking answers not because he was drawn by some sentimental notion about “Indian ways,” or the ways of ancient intuitive societies but because he was genuinely interested in healing. He seemed driven by a mission to do the very best he could to find the most effective use of healing plants.
I read this manuscript from front to back, pulled along, page after page, by the author’s modesty, thoroughness and dedication to his subject. Halfway through, I realized that this man was probably the most “authentic” student of the ancient ways that I had ever read. He not only didn’t sensationalize or sentimentalize his teachers, he unflinchingly observed their shortcomings when they were displayed, gleaning their wisdom in spite of themselves. He confronted his own skepticism and moved beyond it to discover and ultimately begin practicing and teaching to others all that he had learned.
I believe we all owe Eliot a great debt of gratitude. Many people have spoken of the importance of going into the remote areas of the world where herbal healing and shamanism are still alive and well, though quickly dying out as a result of civilization encroaching upon their habitats. Drug companies are spending millions of dollars going into the diminishing rain forests, seeking chemical compounds of the healing plants. Yet, here is Eliot, a single man, who has not only studied very hard with the ancient healers but himself has become a gifted healer and teacher, sharing his valuable gifts with all of us.
This is a breakthrough book in its own right, filled with stories of the adventures of this healer, but also filled with wisdom that might have been lost forever had it not been for Eliot’s courage, burning curiosity and desire to be of real service, that motivated him to dedicate his life to this craft. Eliot is a modern man who has found a way to seek out the wisdom of the past and bring it into a contemporary setting before it is lost forever. His work restores our link with the powers of ancient intuitive traditions that can serve us in our lives today. And his efforts add to our collection of tools for mending not only our individual health complaints but also the violent wound that has severed us from the natural world and the world of spirit.
Part I
Plants, Spirits, and Their Medicine
Chapter 1: Plant Spirit Medicine Dreams
My friend Peter Gorman is walking down a trail in the Amazon jungle. He is on his way back to the village after watching his Matses Indian friend set a trap for wild boar. The Indian takes advantage of the walk to show Peter some medicinal plants growing along the trail. Within a few minutes he has pointed out several dozen species and pantomimed their healing virtues.
Arriving at the village, Peter summons his interpreter and returns to the hunter’s hut. He didn’t have his notebook with him on the walk, he explains, and he couldn’t possibly remember all he had been shown. Would the hunter be kind enough to say once again how the herbs were prepared and used?
The hunter-shaman smiles at Peter and then begins to laugh. He invites all his wives and children over to have a good laugh, too. When they have all laughed themselves out, he explains, “That was just to introduce you to some of the plants. If you want to actually use a plant yourself, the spirit of the plant must come to you in your dreams. If the spirit of the plant tells you how to prepare it and what it will cure, you can use it. Otherwise, it won’t work for you. Boy, that was a good one! I’ve got to remember what you just said!” He laughs again.
Meanwhile, in Connecticut, a major pharmaceutical firm approaches a shamanic studies institute. The firm wants to contact shamans of the Amazon in order to get information on medicinal plants. The company plans to take samples of the herbs, isolate active molecules, and manufacture them in the laboratory.
I can imagine the scene when the pharmaceutical firm makes it to the Amazon: The shamans laughing uproariously as they collect their fees. The field workers rushing specimens back to the laboratory. Skilled technicians spending millions of company dollars researching new compounds, only to come up with one disappointment after another. The shamans will be discredited, but they won’t care. They will still be in the jungle working cures with the plants they have used for centuries.
The American firm will go to the jungle infatuated with its superior technology, dreaming of profits from a patentable new drug. No one will think of asking the shamans what the active ingredients are. If they do ask, they won’t like the answer.
There is only one active ingredient in plant medicines—friendship. A plant spirit heals a patient as a favor to its friend-in-dreaming, the doctor.
To the people of the Amazon this truth is basic. Any four-year-old understands it. That is why the Matses hunter-shaman called his children over to have a good laugh at my friend Peter. They couldn’t believe a grown man could be so silly!
The Matses and many other non-European peoples understand that both nature and humankind are endowed with intelligence and spirit. Therefore, humans and nature are of the same family. In all cultures there exist individuals who have especially vivid experiences with the spirits of nature. These are the shamans. Shamans make friends of the spirits of nature and call upon them for help with everyday affairs.
Plant spirit medicine is the shaman’s way with plants. It recognizes that plants have spirit, and that spirit is the strongest medicine. Spirit can heal the deepest reaches of the heart and soul.
There is nothing exotic about all this. Don’t be misled by talk about the Amazon. If you want to meet the most powerful healing plants in the world, just open your door and step outside. They are growing all around you. If you don’t believe me, or if you have a taste for romantic locations, you can try going elsewhere. But if you stay there long enough, it comes down to the same thing: dealing with the local weeds.
In keeping with this homegrown quality, I want to tell you what has been happening around my home lately. At first this may seem to have nothing to do with our subject, but bear with me; in time it will make sense.
Today I went to visit a Huichol Indian named José Benítez Sánchez. In certain circles José is famous as a visionary artist. Among his own people he is known as a shaman. José lives part-time in a village near Tepic, Mexico. The rest of the time he lives in the resort city of Puerto Vallarta. It was there I went to find him.
As I approached his home in one of the humblest districts in town, I recalled the first time I met José the year before. This was a man who earned a huge income by Indian standards. Yet as he welcomed me into his house, it was apparent that he had but one material possession of any consequence—an electric fan. Our visit was brief, for he was due to leave in a few hours to meet with the President of Mexico.
José cheerfully admitted that he did not have money for bus fare. Looking down at his ragged cut-offs, he allowed that he also did not own a pair of pants to wear to greet the President. Evidently he sensed I was confused about why a successful man should be so destitute, for he told me the following story:
When I was a boy I admired my grandfather. He was a powerful shaman. One day when he felt I was old enough to understand, he told me, “José, there are two types of power that one can acquire. One type is used for your own personal reasons. The other is used for the benefit of your people. You can walk the road to the first type of power or the second. But let me tell you this: the second road is the road to happiness.” Since my grandfather was a very wise man, I took his advice, and I have stayed on the second road. Whenever the gods give me something, I immediately pass it on for the use of my people.
José’s presence radiated contentment. Obviously his grandfather had known what he was talking about. I dug into my suitcase and came up with a pair of pants, which I presented to him together with his bus fare. He accepted my gifts with sincere thanks and not a trace of surprise. Then he took off on his voyage to see the President, leaving me one small step farther down the road to happiness.
As I was reminiscing about that first meeting, I looked up to see José walking toward me. José is a good-looking, compact man of middle years. Today he was wearing long pants, a short-sleeved shirt and a cowboy hat. The only sign of his background was his intensely colorful Huichol shoulder bag.
He invited me into his house. We sat down at a table with two of his paintings-in-progress. We chatted about the pilgrimage he would be leading in a few days. Children toddled in and out. A teenage girl stood outside, her chin propped on the windowsill, listening carefully. Eventually I got around to the purpose of my visit:
“I want to ask your advice about something, Don José.”
“Of course. Go ahead.”
“Did you know an old man, a great shaman named Don José Ríos? They called him Matsuwa.”
“Matsuwa, yes. He was a relative of mine.”
“Well, I met him years ago, and he helped me. Then, about three years ago, my father was dying of cancer. He said he wanted a shaman to help him, so I went to see Matsuwa. He was living in Las Blancas at that time.”
José nodded.
“When I arrived I found that Matsuwa was as bad off as my father was. He was very weak and couldn’t get out of bed. He was moaning with pain; he said that his legs were killing him. He was lying in the hot sun, but he was shivering with cold. I had to put a blanket over him.”
José made a face to let me know he understood the anguish of the moment.
“It occurred to me to see if I could help Matsuwa. I gave him a treatment. Right away he stopped shivering and asked to have the blanket taken off. His legs stopped hurting too, although he was still too weak to sit up. When the people saw this they asked me if I could help them too. One of Matsuwa’s nephews took me to see his father, who had been hit by a train and couldn’t walk. On the way to see his father, the boy asked me if I believed in the Huichol way of healing, using feathers. I said, yes, of course I believed in it. ‘In fact,’ I told him, ‘your uncle helped me a lot with his feathers. I would like to learn about Huichol healing myself.’
“The boy told me that there was someone in the village who was very good at healing with feathers. This man had learned his skill by making a pilgrimage every year for five years to a nearby peak.”
“That peak is called ‘El Picacho,’” said José.
“You know it, then,” I said.
“Of course.”
“Well, after that I returned to the United States, and I began to visit El Picacho in my dreams. I want to tell you what I saw in my dreams, so that you can advise me, Don José.”
“What did you see?” José asked me.
“At the very top of the mountain there is a flat area where two trees grow. There is a person there, a Huichol man. He is short. His face is round; he has plump cheeks. He smiles all the time. The little man is accompanied by a small deer. The deer dances and does all sorts of antics. The deer and the man let me know that they can help me to heal people.
“I have dreamed of this place many times now. There have been occasions when people who live far away have asked me to heal them. Since I didn’t know what else to do, I have asked the man and the deer to do the work. There have been some very good results.”
“It is exactly as you say,” said José.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“The tree you saw is the wind tree that grows on that peak. The short man lives there too. He is the magic of the wind tree. If you go there he will talk to you, just as we are talking. But you should tell him to talk with you in Spanish, because you don’t understand Huichol.
“I have seen this little Huichol man. He crosses my path when I am on pilgrimage to visit the gods. I ask his permission to pass. I explain that I am on my way to someplace else, and he lets me go. Just as you say, he is very short and has fat cheeks and thick lips. Actually he is very, very old, although often he appears to be young. The deer lives there at El Picacho as well. Sometimes the antlers of the deer appear on the head of the little man. This is all the magic of the wind tree, which you also saw in your dream. The wind tree teaches people how to heal. It also teaches music. There is a world-famous musician in our tribe. It was the wind tree that taught him.”
“You say that a wind tree grows on the peak,” I said, “but there were two trees in my vision.”
“They are both the wind tree,” José replied. “One represents the left antlers of the deer and the other represents the right antlers. Many people go and make the sacrifice to the wind tree there at El Picacho. This is a very good thing. Because you have dreamed this, it would be very good for you to go. The little man you saw does live there. If you go with faith and ask that he appear to you so that you can learn from him, he will appear in person.
“However, it would be necessary to consult first with someone who is familiar with the magic of El Picacho, someone who has made the sacrifice. I myself rarely go to that region. I keep busy with other sacrifices, other pilgrimages. There is someone in my village, though, who knows the mountain very well. His name is Guadalupe González Ríos, and he is also related to José Ríos. He is a very good man, not at all stingy with information. I am going to our village tomorrow. When I see him, immediately I will remember this conversation and I will tell him about you. Perhaps you can come to the fiesta when we return from our pilgrimage. The three of us can talk together then. We should be back by the 24th.”
“What day of the week is that?”
“Thursday, I believe.”
“Friday!” said the girl in the window. This was her first contribution to the conversation.
“Too bad!” I said. “I will be in the United States at that time.”
“Never mind. Come by my house when you return and we will go to my village together. Perhaps I will bring along another man who has also dreamed of the wind tree. He is a German.”
“Frenchman,” chimed the girl.
More than once during my school years, I awoke in the middle of the night with the solution to a mathematical equation that had completely stumped me during the day. I never told anyone that I had done my algebra homework in my sleep. I was afraid that people would think I was weird. Eventually I stopped having these dreams.
Much later in life I discovered that it is not at all unusual for people to learn from dreams. Nowadays I enjoy asking people if they have ever dreamed something which later came to pass. About seventy-five percent say they have indeed had a dream of this type. And everyone has dreams that take place somewhere other than the bedroom where their sleeping body lies. When we dream we can easily travel to distant places. We can know the future. We are given special understanding that enables us to solve life’s problems.
For the most part these wonderful dream powers lie “dormant” in our society, but the Huichols and the Matses of the Amazon consider dream learning to be “true” learning. Indeed nearly every culture on earth, except our own, respects dream learning as true learning. We revere the rational, analytical method of learning honed and polished since the days of the ancient Greeks. We do not realize that the shamans of our species have honed and polished another method. This dreaming method is neither rational nor analytical, but it works extremely well.
The key to this method is to get into the dream state of consciousness, keeping in mind what it is that you wish to learn or accomplish. The way you get into the dream state is incidental. Some shamans learn to go to sleep and dream about what they wish to dream about. Others use psychotropic plants. Many simply listen to monotonous drumming to induce the dream state. I use drumming.
When I first heard about El Picacho several years ago, I was eager to learn from the spirits said to dwell there. With the demands of conducting a busy acupuncture practice, raising young children, and attending my dying father, it was impossible to visit the peak in person, so I decided to visit in dreams. I lit a candle and some incense to help set the mood, then I lay down on my back and relaxed. I affirmed my intention to visit the sacred site and meet any helpful spirits that might live there. As I listened to loud, repetitive drumbeats, my state of consciousness shifted. My dream helpers appeared to me and flew me to the peak where I had the experiences I recounted to José Benítez Sánchez today, several years after the original dream.
My conversation with José confirmed for me that my dream corresponds with an ancient tradition. As a Huichol and a shaman, he had no trouble accepting that I had met a tree spirit who could help me heal people. Being a middle-class white American, on the other hand, I have been plagued for years with the question: “Am I making this up?”
“Am I making this up?” This is the question, the monster, faced by every Westerner who ventures into the world of dreams. There is only one way to subdue this monster—put the dream to the test and see if it works. If the magic of the wind tree can heal people, does it really matter whether I am making it up?
Several years ago, I guided a group of my students to dream the medicine of the willow. We were sitting in a circle sharing our dreams. One man, a physician, said that there was an aspect of his dream he did not know how to interpret. “Over and over again,” he said, “the willow spirit kept repeating to me, ‘Look up! Look up! Always look up!’”
A month later I again met with the physician, who told the following story:
I have a patient who seemed perfect for willow medicine, so I’ve given it to her three times now. When she came back after the first treatment, she insisted I tell her what that “wonderful medicine” was. At the same time she kept turning to a potted willow on my windowsill. She said something strange and wonderful: “That plant is so lovely. I would like to be that plant!”
I asked her to tell me what the treatment had done for her, and she mentioned improvements in a long list of physical complaints. “But,” she said, “This is the best thing of all…. I didn’t realize it before, but I have been depressed all my life. I was so negative! It was as if my mind’s eye was always looking down at the ground, and all I could see was the dirt. But you know, from the moment I left here last time, I heard a voice inside that said, ‘Look up! Look up! Always look up!’ and now it’s as if I am seeing the beauty around me for the first time!”
At that moment I told her that the plant on the windowsill and the medicine she had taken were both willow. I also shared with her my willow dream and said I had heard the same voice saying, “Look up!” She was so moved she began to cry. At the next treatment she brought in a poem she had written to thank the willow spirit.
The experiences of the class, the physician, the patient—where did they come from? Is there such a thing as a willow spirit? If so, what is it really? Does it matter? Evidently it does matter to the young physician. He has since decided that we were all just making it up, and he has stopped practicing plant spirit medicine.
As for me, it seems that plant spirit medicine keeps practicing me. I thought I would go to José Benítez Sánchez and find out about an entirely different kind of healing having to do with sacred mountains, dancing deer, and such. I instead found out it is all about the magic of the wind tree, so I’m back where I started from—learning medicine from plants.
Chapter 2: Plants
The year is 1970. I am an urban expatriate trying to live on the land in Northern Vermont. It is early spring; there is still snow on the ground. Soon it will be time to fix the fence, and I need posts. I shoulder a bow saw and a machete and set off to my favorite part of the farm—the cedar bog that surrounds the waterfall.
The sun is shining brightly today, although the air is still cool. As I enter the woods I listen to the wind sifting through the cedar boughs. I take a pinch of leaves, crush them under my nose, and nod a greeting to the trees. The cedars here grow in little families with several trunks sharing their roots. Among these families are miniature meadows, soon to be filled with grasses and wildflowers. I will spend the next two or three days working in this place, I guess. Had I brought the chain saw, I could have been finished by lunchtime today, dinner at the latest. I make a mental note never to bring the chain saw.
I have never cut fence posts by myself before. This time I can do it any way I want. How do I want to do it? If I were growing here in this bog, how would I want it done? I turn to the nearest cedar and ask it how I should cut the fence posts. I don’t expect an answer, of course, and I don’t get one. Or do I? Somehow it is now perfectly obvious how I will cut my posts. From each clump I will select a trunk that is crowding the others. I will carefully cut that trunk, limb it, and pile the brush on top of the stump. This way, I won’t kill a single tree, I won’t choke the meadows with brush piles, and I will leave the grove healthier and more beautiful than I found it. This will probably take me an extra day or so, but who cares?
Poet Gary Snyder says the way we kill our farm animals is a source of endless bad luck for our society. This is an interesting statement and, I think, a true one. It is based on an understanding of what in the East is called the law of karma. Here in the West, we express the same understanding through homilies: “What goes around, comes around.” “He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword.” Many people have expressed concern and even outrage at the unnatural and cruel lives and deaths inflicted upon our livestock. It took Snyder, who is no vegetarian,µ to point out that our behavior towards animals rebounds on us just like all the rest of our behavior. If we take lives without respect and gratitude for the sacrificed animals, then we too will be subject to humiliation and alienation. This is not cruel fate or harsh nature, but just us creating our own bad luck.
Might it not be also worthwhile to consider our relationship to plants? The most striking thing about this relationship is that we need them but they don’t need us. We humans are utterly dependent on plants to cover all our needs: fuel, shelter, clothing, medicine, the petrochemical cornucopia, and, of course, food. (Even meat is made of plants.) In contrast, plant communities do just fine without people. We seem to offer plants nothing but suffering, destruction and the threat of extinction.
There is some karmic rebound here. We are devastating forests and the foundations of vegetable life: soil, air, water and solar radiation. This is not only murderous, but also suicidal. Under the circumstances, the continued generosity of plants towards our species is absolutely remarkable. What makes plants so generous? What makes us so brutal?
Somewhere along the way we lost the experience of unity. We live our lives propping up the pathetic lie that we are different from everything else. This is a lie because the same awareness shines in the heart of all things. The lie is pathetic because it dooms us to a dry life of alienation.
Difference breeds indifference. If you think the forest is not you, you are more willing to exploit it or let others exploit it for you.
Plants, on the other hand, are not under the illusion that they are separate from the rest of creation. Observe how any plant interacts with soil, air, minerals, animals and insects. Everything around it is enriched and benefited by its presence. Plants live in harmony with nature. One might even say that plants are nature. Out of this union comes their incredible generosity to us and to all their other fellow creatures.
For the first time I am dreaming with a plant. English plantain is growing here, and I see a young woman with enormous wings sprouting from her shoulders. Somehow I know she is the plantain spirit. I approach her and introduce myself. She asks why I have come.
“First of all, ” I reply, “I want to thank you for the help you have given my friends and me over the years. Your leaves have healed many wounds. I come to visit you to ask for another kind of help, a deeper kind. The cuts and scrapes of my people are nothing compared to the pain in our hearts and the pollution in our minds. Can you help relieve this kind of suffering too?”
The plantain woman hops off her leaf and flies close to me. For a moment she hovers in front of my face and looks intently into my eyes. Then she smiles and says, “Of course, I will help you. My brothers and sisters will help you also. We are very happy to do this. In fact, we have been waiting for two hundred years for someone to ask us for this kind of help. We can do nothing unless we are asked.”
“We can do nothing unless we are asked.” Leave it to a plant to come up with the understatement of the millennium! Look at what plants do when they are asked: all human civilization is a form of excess grain—the generosity of plants. The history of our species shows us that plants furnish us with whatever we ask for. Our society values comfort, so that is what we have gone to the plant world to get. This is wonderful as far as it goes, which is not very far in the direction of satisfaction. If for a moment we could forget the quest for comfort and ask plants to help us find joy, richness and significance in life, is there any reason to suppose they would not share those qualities with us just as they have shared everything else? To think that plants are mere dumb creatures that do not know ecstasy is ignorance or tragic arrogant folly.
All things enjoy ecstatic union with nature. Life without ecstasy is not true life and not worth living. Without ecstasy the soul becomes shriveled and perverted, the mind becomes corrupt and the body suffers pain. Ecstatic union with nature is necessary for normal health. It is necessary for survival.
I gave a class recently in which the students brought patients for me to treat. One of the patients was a middle-aged man just out of the hospital. He suffered from leukemia and had had a close brush with death. He had abandoned his artistic career and was wandering about looking for a treatment that could spare him pain in his last days. A dream journey to his soul revealed an inner landscape barren and forlorn as the most forbidding desert. I treated this man with the spirits of two plants. A few days later, I returned home to Mexico. Before long, I got this letter from the student who followed up on his treatment:
The man we saw earlier this month who had leukemia called me this week saying he had felt good results from the treatment and wanted to come see me for another treatment. When he came, he began to tell me what had happened to him. The day following your treatment with him he awoke in what he called “a different state of consciousness,” which has been constantly with him ever since. He spoke of “recollecting himself” by going to an island where his family had spent a lot of time, and also to a petroglyph that was an important rock to him and had at one time spoken to him.
Last week his doctor reduced his white cell killing drug by one half because his white cell count had dropped by one half. He cleaned up his studio and has begun painting again. He has been having what he calls “lucid dreams,” and he speaks of the healing quality of these dreams.
Anticipating his treatment, I had decided to use the mullein spirit with him. The day before he arrived I had found mullein growing in a ravine. The following morning before he got to my house, I made another dream journey to the mullein. I was transported to a place where a crow waited for me alongside a colony of mullein plants. Nearby, a tree was standing. Among its limbs, crow feathers and mullein leaves formed a nest. Here someone needing nurturing would be fulfilled with waves of blessings. When he was ready he would then fly away.
When our patient arrived I treated him with the mullein spirit. As he was lying on the table he heard a crow outside my window. He began telling a story of having taken a baby crow that was once given to a girlfriend of his. She not wanting it, our patient made a nest for it and cared for it for months. He spoke of how deeply he became involved, learning the ways of crows. When the time came, the crow flew away.
The most remarkable thing in this story is that the patient entered a “different state of consciousness.” This new consciousness enabled him to find healing in his dreams. It enabled him to re-enter the magical connection with nature that he had had in his youth. Inside that magic, life was once again worth living, and his body responded by rallying to fight his disease. The proof that this man was healed was that he cleaned up his studio and began to paint once again. In other words, he was resurrected. He came back to life.
Thanks to ecstatic union with nature, this man now has some chance of survival, whereas before, he had none. Ultimately, though, healing is not about whether you die. Healing is about how fully you live. I hope this artist goes on to live a long and fruitful life, but if he were to die tomorrow, he would still be a great success because he would have really lived.
For my protection and your enlightenment, it is worth taking a moment to make sure this is clear: I did not diagnose or treat this man for leukemia. Plant spirit medicine does not diagnose or treat any illness. I am not holding out any herbal preparation as a cure for any disease. In chapter twelve I will further explain how the practitioner of plant spirit medicine, in assessing which plants to use with a given person, pays no attention whatsoever to any symptoms that person may have.
There are many examples of plants’ willingness to reintroduce us to the joy of a close relationship with nature. A sixteen-year-old boy, for example, came to see me complaining of severe hay fever. Since he worked part-time as a gardener, this was a serious handicap. After his first treatment he returned and asked me what was that “weird stuff” I had given him. I asked him why he thought it was weird, and he replied that on his way home from my office all the trees and shrubs “were, like, waving at me and stuff!” I knew immediately that the plants were signaling their friendliness to him and that their pollen would no longer cause him any trouble. This turned out to be true.
Other people have returned after treatment to tell me stories of “falling in love with the Earth,” or “feeling like I’m not alone,” or “seeing fairies in my backyard.” One of my favorite such stories involves Karen, a woman in her twenties who was suffering from depression as well as a number of physical complaints. I had chosen to treat her with the spirit of hummingbird sage, a beautiful shrub that grows in the coastal ranges of Southern California, where I was living at the time. In my dream work with the hummingbird sage, the spirit appeared to me as a jolly, muscular little man full of fun and kindness. He was dressed in a pointed cap, a medieval tunic, leggings and shoes with pointy turned-up toes.
This was Karen’s report after her treatment:
After I left here I felt so tired that I went home and lay down. I was half asleep and had a dream or a daydream or something. It was totally vivid and lifelike. In this dream I felt that someone else was entering my body. I wasn’t frightened because I felt he was a very good person—kind and fun-loving. I could see him very clearly. He was short and strong and was wearing funny old-fashioned clothing and shoes with pointy, turned-up toes. I felt he was there to give me something I needed.
That afternoon I felt a strong urge to go to my special spot in the mountains. There is a certain place I go to; the smell there reminds me of the smell of the sage that grows in Colorado, in the Rockies. I lived in Colorado until my mother died. I don’t know, I guess I am trying to recapture the feeling about life that I used to have when my mother was alive, so I go to this place. The problem is, I never quite manage to get the feeling back. I get a little glimpse of it, but then it fades away. But this time, after the treatment I went to my spot and it worked! I got that wonderful feeling back! In fact it still hasn’t left me!
I asked Karen to draw me a detailed map of her special spot in the mountains. After work I drove up there and hiked to the exact location. There I found one of the largest stands I’d ever seen of the fragrant hummingbird sage.
Some people, like Karen, are sensitive to these experiences and communicate them well. Others are less sensitive, less articulate. Many people probably never tell me about them because they don’t want me to think they are crazy. Nevertheless, I have heard many of these stories, and I now believe that everyone who is touched by the plant spirits gets some taste of magic and union with nature. The following excerpt is from a letter written by another observant and expressive woman. She writes of the effects of her first treatment:
…It was wonderful—no, better than that, it was fantastic, magical, incredible and, to top it all, you (or rather the spirits) cured me of a deep and dark longing that I have carried with me like a pain all my life. I feel that something has become clearer, has settled, is no longer a question, a separation. Since I last saw you, many strange and magical things have happened to me—dreams and unusual coincidences. All of it confirms for me what I have always believed—that everything is connected, all are part of the whole. I have always known this but did not directly experience it. But since your treatment it is as if many doors have been pulled open and the spirit allowed to rush in. I feel “touched,” connected, whole, and a little mad—intoxicated, full of joy!
Plants wish us well in every way. They can provide not only for our physical needs, but also for our heart and soul. They are perfectly willing to bring us into the blessings of their union with nature. But, as the plantain spirit told me, they can do nothing unless they are asked. I would add that we have to know the right questions and the right way to ask them.
What is the right way to ask a plant? Part of it has to do with appreciating that a plant has roots. A plant lives here, with this dirt, rain, sunshine and air. With these it does its growth magic. From plants we learn that if you want to enter nature, you have to do it here because this is the only place nature can be found. From this it follows that if you are going to ask a plant to bring you into the blessing of nature, you have to ask a plant that grows here. J. R. Worsley, the great English acupuncturist, says, “Local herbs are not ten times stronger, not a hundred times stronger. Local herbs are one thousand times stronger than exotic ones!” Professor Worsley is not exaggerating.
One woman described her first treatment with (local) plant spirit medicine as “bringing me back to a place I’ve been before.” This gets right to the crux. We are part of nature, but how many of us really live in nature? Whether we live in mud huts or skyscrapers is not entirely the point. The point is the joy of being in the dance of creation as an equal partner with everything. This means bringing us back to where we already live—on the earth, with the dirt, the rain, the sunshine and the air, just like our brothers and sisters, the plants.