Sarah’s got a great post about flying ointments up on her blog.
I read through, and nodded, because working with plants who give that sensation of extra perception or flying or of a door being opened is a decidedly acquired taste and let’s face it.. talent. As I was reading I thought to myself, this is such a comprehensive post, but I wonder how many newer crafters will catch the subtext and admonitions, and actually heed them. Crafting supplies, and unguents, and the like are the one area in which the customer is probably not right, and should never be assumed to be right, if they are expecting a product to do something specific and it decides not to deliver on that. The various plant vaults at Erowid are awash in such thrill-seekers, and jackasses. The whole, “Well, I ate 10 jimson weed seeds and nothing happened, so then I smoked a joint and ate like 100 more and shit, I am never doing that again” instant gratification itch which some are not lucky enough to survive.
I have a jar of Sarah’s Medea’s Unguent, for example, which contains mandrake, but it is not something I approach casually, like, “Dude! I wonder what’ll happen if…” Truth be told, I have not used it yet, because the time is just never correct. Which tells me (among other things) that one of my few talents lies in timing and knowing when to proceed with a working or ritual, or when to just put the unguent away, and get back to meditating on why I’d use the unguent in the first place. And just for a different example of this, I was nudged to put away the mugwort dream pillow after working with it for afternoon naps for a brief period of time during which I, 1) met puzzling spirits on a bus, 2) visited places I’ve never been and found them familiar, and experienced very strange lucid but light sleep whereupon awakening I was exhausted. Chalk that up to the thujones, boys and girls, and the plant itself giving ME a whirl to see what I was about, as I was attempting to do the same with IT. Brings new meaning to “pick your poison”.
And it is a great reminder that plants are not necessarily allies to all of us, and they are certainly not there just to be used and exploited for other purposes. Take my word for it when I opine that even the plants you think are your allies are not terribly concerned with your welfare if you are naive enough to trust them to not mess with or poison you. They are that they are, and they were here before we upright-walking apes came along to mostly take them for granted.
I grow diviner’s sage, but have yet to work with it beyond eating a few leaves last year and feeling more grounded than grounded. And it was such a mistake eating the leaves then, the way I did. The plant was teasing and testing, and my logic that the plant is not toxic overcame politeness and proper procedure, “Come on, you could use some greenery to munch on…”, “Uh…. okay!” Wherein I spotted another weird skill of mine, knowing when a plant is potentially messing with me (after the fact, but at least I know what that nudge feels like, and I am lucky it was not something that would deep six me and shrug, “Eh, these stupid apes…”)
I’ve had conversations with Harry about plants and their demeanors. Belladonna is tricksy and cannot help but shove the susceptible ones over that tipping point when it comes to the berries and people thinking that smoking the leaves would be a good idea; that’s what it does. Read books like Healing and Ancient Brews and it becomes clear that a great many people are susceptible to the lady in red, and that a lot of the same uncredited information is available in many places. Buchner refers to the juice of the berries (sans seeds, please) as being incredibly sweet, but with a sinister hint to it, redolent of the poisonous seeds. I’ve seen that description in at least two other places. If you read Dale Pendell’s account of belladonna seed tincture, the 8 drops of it at Burning Man with Daniel Schulke (yep, THAT Daniel Schulke), and the writhing dancing girl in front of the writhing undulating whale (and what these things looked like the following morning when the effects had worn off), it becomes clear that belladonna has things to show people. Are people really capable of grasping those things? I’m not sure there’s an answer for that, but it leads directly into another question on whether all witches need to be working with poisonous plants at all, be that ingestion, rubbed into the skin, brewed up as tea, smoked, inhaled passively. This is where modern knowledge of plant chemistry and classes of poisons comes in handy, and where it bumps up against tradition as witnessed in ancient texts and practices, although… knowing that atropine acts by blocking acetylcholine from its receptor sites in nerve cells is certainly interesting.
There’s a reason this is loosely referred to as The Poison Path, after all.
My unpopular opinion is that not everyone has the chops to handle plant work when it comes to the banefuls as well as the medicinals, edibles, and herbals. Nor is everyone supposed to cross the hedge. I’ll put it this way: just because Silver Ravendrool has penned words on paper on the hedge, doesn’t necessarily make it accessible to everyone. Hell’s bells, I am still wondering if I am cut out for plant work, given how I had crop failures with almost everything important this year, such as the daturas, the mandrakes, and then slews of edibles. The only good crop was breadseed poppy, and this plant is just so friendly and personable, it almost made me forget about the less than exemplary crops. No, I’m not a straw tea drinker; I really did grow these for the breadseeds, and, well, for Hekate as well, and for every ancestor ritual I do, and every chicken we cull for the table.
I don’t want to take Scylla’s brilliant post about obligation out of context, but one does this because one is obliged to do it. This is not a universal path. A practitioner who works with plants and unguents or potions is not a hyperbolically motivated Hermione Granger, holding a clipboard with a class list and projects list, checking off each item as an achievement or notch on the belt, in one’s own blood. And witching is not about bragging rights, either (I’d wager those who go into this with that intention are the first to go mad after several hundred “Holy shit! This is real!” moments.) It is not a rationalization for writing erudite-sounding posts on things one has not experienced, in some undeclared contest of trying to be what one is not, in order to fit in somewhere… anywhere…
Much better to be skilled and competent with a few things, than to be a jackass of all trades and mistress/master of none of them, right?
11 Responses to “much of witchery is in learning where your skills actually lie”
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Boy, is it ever. One of the many neat things in Daniel Schulke’s Viridarium Umbris is his remark about working with rose. I can’t remember the exact wording, but it’s along the lines of: you could work with nothing but rose for the rest of your life and not get to the end of its magical possibilities. When I get more settled in my life, rose is a plant I want to spend a LOT more time with. At any rate, I do encourage people who are looking for a plant to work with magically to try mugwort or clary sage because they will both have a noticeable physical effect, which is what I think many people are looking for, but they are not toxic. Exhausting yes–I will certainly agree with you on that with mugwort. I love mugwort (and actually the entire artemisia clan) as a plant but I rarely ingest it because it takes a few days for its effects to wear off for me.
Belladonna always makes me think of those two weighlifting guys on Saturday Night live. Modifying their slogan a bit, I believe it is “I’m here to fuck YOU up!”
*cackle* Hell yes! Belladonna is Hans und Franz, and we are all just girly men!
I really need to reread Viridarium… I’d totally forgotten his commentary on the rose. Rosa is such a large clan of flowering plants of varying species and ages.
Clary definitely is a good plant to get to know, and I’ve yet to venture near the jar of tinctured blooms I made earlier in the summer. It was such an enticing teal green mouthwash kind of color early on, “Come try me! I’m pretty!” and then a week later, olive drab
My mugworts did not want to grow, so I took that as a hint that I’ve done my hitch with mugwort for now; explore the clary instead, and bake with the breadseeds, etc. The wormwood shrub, however, seems to like the front yard. Only one plant survived to get transplanted into the ground.
I grew clary sage this year and they’ve turned into massive plants – no flowers though. My cat loves to try to munch on the leaves when I’m not looking. I want to make a dream oil using it – is it okay to just use the leaves?
“A practitioner who works with plants and unguents or potions is not a hyperbolically motivated Hermione Granger, holding a clipboard with a class list and projects list, checking off each item as an achievement or notch on the belt”
This made me very happy. I see witches too often try to do so many things they think they have to like there’s some kind of witchy to-do list they have to finish before they’re considered a “real witch”. It’s a bit frustrating and most just don’t believe that they don’t have to do it all and its even okay if they suck at some things. It’s okay to specialize and focus on the things you’re good at!
And the Medea’s salve.. well mandrake’s a lot of fun (one of my favourites to use on its own), but be careful what you wish for when using the salve as it’ll most likely happen. Each jar belongs to Hekate.
Sarah, if you can shelter your clary plants so they don’t freeze in the winter, they’ll bloom for you next year. Honest and for true! That’s how mine came to flowering. One of them was supposedly a white variety, but it bloomed lavender, and then my standard issue plants seeded from seeds I got from Bountiful Gardens bloomed in both hues. Anyway, the white one lived in a pot for three years before flowering. Clary sage takes its good old time, but once it is ready to bloom you’ll be busy all spring and summer snipping stalks of florets as they mature
It is perennial on the left coast, methinks. I got snow in the backyard last spring, and it got below freezing a couple times in the winter, but this is a very hardy plant. All of this to say, I don’t know about the leaves. I think Harry might know. Clary is regarded as an exaltive, as balsamic (in perfumery the essential oil has faintly ambery tones, emphasis on ‘faintly’… it reminds me of funky mud.) The thing I use the gigantic leaves for is as offering plates, actually.
The one I need to tincture blooms from right now is something not many books mention, Leonotis leonurus. As in I need to get off my ass and start removing buds tomorrow, for the jar of undenatured etoh. I’ve had that plant for three years and it has changed position in the garden as many times, but is very tough. I’d no clue people pursued this as an ally until reading Pendell mention it, and finding to my surprise that there is a vault for it at erowid. That plant actually called me when we visited the Occidental Arts & Ecology Center for their fall tour, which is also when I got that “white clary sage”. I could see growing a full border of it for late summer blooms.
Hermione always comes to mind for me at this point. I mean, she was so driven she messed with time travel to sign up for and attend extra classes… And this is where I draw a comparison between the hedgesteading community and the urban homesteading community, wherein there is this very urgent drive to be an expert at each and every skill set, each task, each craft. It is not possible. Nor should it be. When a body is that driven, there is very little time to actually assimilate and then utilize all the lessons one is learning as one goes, because the body spends so little time at rest, so little time at doing nothing for a change, you name it.
AND, before I forget… thank you so much for the advice on the salve. I ask Hekate periodically if I should reach for the salve but so far no nudge, no symbol, no dream. I think the wait is for me to have all my shit in one sock rather than scattered all over, and sleep deprived.
Sarah, you can use the aerial parts of the herb to make an extract. I used the flowers (bracts, actually) in my tincture because I had read that’s what part to use, but Bartram’s Encyclopedia of Herbal Medicine, which I depend on for best info on the material level of herb work, says “herb.” I found the tincture of the flowers to be mighty effective for dreamwork if a tablespoon was taken in a small glass of warm water before bed. I tinctured using folk amounts, simply covering the bracts plus a finger’s width with undenatured 90% spirits of wine. Such high proof alcohol tinctures in a few hours. I’m going to do a tincture of the leaves in brandy this year.
Sara, same thing happened to my clary sage tincture–emerald green then changing to olive. Just the chlorophyll fading, but the tincture sure hasn’t lost any power.
to date, mugwort is who i sleep with when i’m having trouble getting to sleep.
Actually, you’re not taking my “obligations” bit out of context at all. I am obligated to work with the artemisias – but absolutely NOT supposed to work with European Nightshades. If I were not obligated I would not work with artemisias either.
The story of why I am obligated could (and probably will) fill an entire post. But even a dozen posts about being called, and how to tell the difference between your own ego saying “I WANT” and the gods/spirits/allies saying “Hemhem” is still going to be lost on entitlement whores.
But it is very heartening to see more people speaking about the “catbox cleaning” (“Oh god, I don’t want to… but it’s going to be so much worse if I don’t”) side of things, rather than the “checklist of hollow achievements.”
i used stems, roots and dried flowers of clary sage to make dream pillow. my mugwort wanted to travel. i gave it to my local community garden nursery many months ago when they asked for plant donations… for some kind of fundriser sale..i didnt have anything in my garden to give away….but there were all these wee little mugworts all over the place at that time near where the critters had turned the soil over…i potted them all in one container and sent them on their way..they must have split them up for the sale..at least two people have since reported to me that the girls doing well in their gardens. the travelling mugwort sisters. *glad*
on a different note..have you read g.r.r.martin’s song of ice and fire books? in book 2, the “shade of the evening” drink that turns the warlocks’ lips blue had always made me think of belladonna. the chapter when daenerys, mother of dragons..goes into the house of undying..after taking a swig of the drink is one of my favourites. its all alice in wonderland’y and yet beautifully trippy. the description of the house is one of my favourite bits in the novel.. song of fire and ice wiki> http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/House_of_the_Undying ..i dont know if you’ll like it..but check it out! start with book 1..game of thrones.
Scylla, I am sorry this is coming so late… I thought I responded when I approved your comment. I agree with you. Being pushed to work with specific materials but not others, and being obligated to work with them in very specific ways is something that is going to be lost to the lot of hangers-on who think that if they just agree with everything, or jump up to say they’ve read that book, too, or whatever, they’ll suddenly have access to whatever they expect comes next. Because they’ve not been pushed or obligated yet, themselves; well, they’re probably not ready… When they finally hit that tipping point and seem to be in a specific groove that probably bears no resemblance to what they were expecting, they’ll understand.
But man, there sure is a lot of “catbox cleaning” day in day out. That is an apt analogy. It’s not glamorous, but if it doesn’t get done, guess what… the workings don’t work. Which brings me to something else when it comes to wording and descriptives. These are “workings”. The word “work” makes an appearance, which implies that this ain’t recess, or play time. Otherwise we’d be really watering down the meaningful to narcissistic fripperies. Chop wood, carry water, check ego at door, wash dishes for offerings, sweep floor… And I’m not saying this in some mutated Lutheran work ethic kind of way, where work is supposed to hard, but it builds character, dammit. Sometimes the mundane work is where much of the lesson lies, if I can assume there is probably a lesson there. Remember, the ego got checked so character doesn’t exactly play into this other than representing who someone is as opposed to what they have fantasized they are. Welcome to reality.