Sean Donahue: Herbs and Magic

Episode #27 March 24, 2016

Sean Donahue is a traditional herbalist and poet. He has also worked as a freelance journalist, a political organizer, and a nonviolence trainer. He is proud to be a regular contributor to Plant Healer Magazine.

While he has been blessed to receive amazing support and guidance from other herbalists, Sean’s primary teachers have been the wild and feral plants growing in the forests, fields, and swamps around him. He has trusted his own health completely to the plants since they first began helping him begin to heal asthma he struggled with since childhood.

As a practitioner, he looks to plants as allies in helping people remember their own beauty, strength, and power and in guiding them to health.

As a teacher, he encourages students to build their own deep, personal relationships with the plants around them grounded in the experience of their own senses and their own hearts. He identifies deeply with the traditions of the edge dwellers – those who live in the places where the human and wild meet, bridging the worlds.

For Sean, magic, medicine, and poetry are all expressions of a deep connection to the living Earth, and personal, cultural, and ecological healing are inextricably linked. He is currently working on his first book, a guide to plants for the underworld journey.

In this episode of HerbMentor Radio, Sean discusses herbs, magic and goes deep into two herbs… Hawthorne and ghost pipe.

Visit Sean at http://MedicineAndMagic.com

Episode Transcript

From HerbMentor.com, this is Herb Mentor Radio.

You are listening to Herb Mentor Radio and HerbMentor.com.

I'm John Gallagher. My guest today is Sean Donahue. Sean is a traditional herbalist and poet. He is a contributor to Plant Healer magazine, frequents the HerbMentor.com forums, and teaches classes at and speaks at conferences nationwide.

He encourages students to build their own deep personal relationships with the plants around them, grounded in the experience of their own senses and their own hearts. Sean will be speaking at the Traditions in Western Herbalism Conference this fall in Arizona, and we will mention some of his other classes and courses he's teaching later in the show. You can visit Sean any old time you want at medicine and magic dot com. Sean, welcome.

Thanks for having me, John.

Yes. And on behalf of all HerbMentor members, thanks for, offering your wisdom and experiences in the forums.

And, it's great to, have you here. And, you know, I love, talking with, folks about different all different ways and of relating to plants. And I know you listen to Herd Mentor Radio, so I know you've you've have heard all the different kinds of, viewpoints and different kinds of things that we've done. And, you know, our relationships with herbs are so important on our learning journey, and everyone seems to have different experiences.

And, last year, you taught a really well received class because I think I walked by it, and it was, like, packed, you know, at the traditions conference called the Allies for the Underworld Journey. And, and that is definitely an awesome title and definitely piqued my interest for sure. And this is winter time. This is the, dark times here.

And so we're recording this in February. So, and, and so and that's the water element in Chinese medicine. So this would be a great time to talk about, herbs and magic. And many associate, you know, topics in magic or things about that with things they see in movies and, you know, or or fantastic things, you know, or maybe people find things counter to their belief systems and things like that. But, I, probably pretty sure that there's a lot of, misconceptions and misunderstandings. So, Sean, what is what is magic? How do you define that?

I would say that magic involves having a really deep relationship with the natural forces of the universe around us. Really being invest in them well enough to understand their flows and to be clear enough in your own self, in your own heart, in your own will to be able to know where and how you want to direct energy, to know what energies are available to you, what allies you can call in, and to do that in a precise and focused way that harnesses any energy that's available to you towards towards towards the goal of, continuing your own part in the process of the universe always creating itself?

So, so basically, it's, you have an intention of learning something or wanna do something. And it it seems to be a lot about what you're saying is about just intention and manifestation.

Absolutely.

And self knowledge. So, you know, you can manifest all kinds of things and, and certainly there's nothing wrong with if your if your cupboards are empty and you are are in need of are are in need of some food, using magical techniques to call that to you. But there's also a deeper level of really understanding and refining more and more of the sense of the life you wanna live and the way you want to be in the world and the way and the gifts you want to bring forward and using that will and intention to to to guide that in a really focused way, really fine tuning more and more what it is that you want, who it is that you are at the core, and then really, just knowing where to place yourself in the flow of of everything around you, whether it be working with the cycles of the moon and looking at what the moon's doing, or working with the cycles of the sun, looking at where you are in the year, or looking at the way a river flows, and, really focusing your will and your imagination in alignment with those flows, with that motion, with that direction, so that you can pick up on that energy and ride with it.

So there's a part of it that's really active, that's really sort of putting your desire and your intention into the world, and then there's a part of it that's really learning to cooperate with things. It's real and learning to have a deeper relationship with what's with what's around you. And you have to have both pieces to keep it in balance.

Now, how about a simple example? Because I know that when somebody, you know, is thinking, oh, this is on something that's interesting to me or in this direction.

And and, I think people are a little, you know, a little frightened, not too sure what to do. Can you I mean, can you give an example of how simple, you know, like, some something someone could do and, like, what you mean in in a real practical just before we get into plants and medicine, you know, just like, we're gonna get into that in a second. But before we get into that, if you were someone who was just to say, what's what's an example of what how I do this? Like, what like, you know, like, you know what I mean?

Like, just because because because I know personally, I I learn better with examples. I'm I'm never, I'm not a big theory person, you know. Like, I'm I'm more just like, okay. Give me an example.

Absolutely. Yeah. And and these are ideas that are very different than what most of us grew up with. And so, yeah, it takes it it can it takes some getting used to to to approach it and figure it out. But I think probably one clear example that I could think of is, you know, I've living in Maine, I'm in the process of moving to the northwest. Mhmm.

And last fall, I was I was getting ready to make to make a trip out in December to visit and I didn't quite know how I was gonna make it all work. There seemed to be a whole lot of obstacles to getting there. And we happen to have a hurricane coming through our area.

And I thought, this is interesting. This is a storm that's moving really quickly, and I want really fast motion. And the storm is moving to the north and to the west. Mhmm. And that's where I wanna move. Mhmm. So I went outside in the storm, and I gathered a jar of rainwater.

And I held the rainwater in my hands, and I focused really clearly, sort of feeling myself where I wanted to be as though it was already happening. A breath, imagining imagining that intention in my head going into the water, into that rainwater and went inside and put put it on my altar. And that's the simple version. There were some more whistles and bells involved over over the weeks that followed, but that was the core of it. Right.

And sure enough, over the next few weeks, how cheap cheap plane fares showed up, the money to be able to make the trip showed up, things began to flow more in that direction. So it's kind of giving things a nudge. And you still have to do the things that you would do in everyday reality.

Like, I couldn't have sat there and not bothered to look at Travelocity and Expedia and accept the place that just show up.

So you're still living in a natural world, but you're using you're you're working with the energies around you to just to just sort of tweak things a little bit, to just kind of change the flow a little bit. So I just kind of like the way you move move in martial arts. You know what what the energy is doing, and you shift what what you're doing so that you can take advantage of what's coming at you.

So so I what I get here is we got some different elements I'm seeing here is we're working we're paying attention to nature and going with the flow. We're having an intention, and, and we're taking actions.

Right.

So those are some threads that I'm I'm hearing. If I'm gonna, you know, try to think about a few break it down into a little bit.

And a big part of it is just that your place in nature and, right, and just, like, really paying attention to Absolutely.

Signs and and things going in in in the natural world and it kind of, and then and do those things then kinda work when you're doing all that kind of then synergistically to kinda create an energy movement and things? Is that what you notice in China?

They do. And they also work better the deeper your relationship with the forces and beings you're working with. Mhmm.

And so, like, I have a hawthorn tree that I go and visit every morning, and I make little offerings of milk or honey Mhmm.

To the hawthorn tree. Tree. Hawthorn is a sacred tree in Celtic traditions, and it was sacred to, the fairy realms. And in those realms, milk and honey are traditional gifts. And so honoring that in the tradition of my ancestors, I bring milk and honey. And I found that that because I have that honoring relationship over time, sometimes when I have something I'm really holding deep in my heart, Hawthorne's planted the heart, I will, sort of put that put that prayer and that intention to some sort of little object that I'll tie into the branches of the tree. And that that's become really potent magic for me because I because I put the time into building that relationship.

You know, a lot of times people will talk about herbs and magic and there will be sort of lists of, you know, this plant was traditionally used magically in this way.

And those are valuable the work for you as well. But for me, it's not so much about memorizing associations as it is about developing those really personal relationships with what's around you. So you really understand what you're interacting with and you've really invested some of your invested yourself in that relationship. And then that's something you can call on in a much more potent and much more personal way.

Right.

Okay. So then let's go a little deeper then into medicine and magic. So what is that you may just go in a little more into that connection between medicine and magic.

Yeah. Well, really at their oldest levels, when you look at indigenous cultures around the world, whether that be, for the when most of us in North America speak of indigenous cultures, we think first and foremost of the First Nations on this continent.

But really, when you look back far enough, all of us come from indigenous ancestry, which really just means, people who live on the land that, people who who have developed a deep relationship, and a culture and society based on the land where they live that's really deeply enmeshed in cycles of life.

When you look back far enough into the history of any culture, any all cultures really began as indigenous cultures. At that point in their history, everything about about their way of life, is deeply embedded with living world around them. And from that standpoint, religion and magic and medicine aren't particularly separate. They're all about maintaining balances in the person, in the community, in in the ecosystem, in the relationship with the land, and that attending to those balances on all those levels becomes a way of maintaining health, be it physical health or emotional health or spiritual health or be it the health of a community or be it the health of the land, and that none of those things can really exist apart from the others.

Oh.

And so, you know, we live in a culture where most of us most of us come from lines of ancestors who lost that connection long ago. Most of us aren't living where our ancestors did before. So the best that we can do is to develop those new relationships ourselves with what's around us by really putting the time into listening and watching and honoring everything in our immediate surroundings. And that comes that actually ties back into some of the traditional places of the healer, the magician, the witch Mhmm.

In the community, is that that person generally tended to live out at the edge of town, sort of right where the where the forest ended and where the village began. There would be the little huts that you'd that you'd that, you'd have to walk away from the village to get to. And part of that was that, that person wasn't caught up in all the drama of the community, so they could work more on looking at it from a clearer perspective and rebalancing things. But another part of it was that it really was a place where worlds met where that person was responsible for the community, for being the one who really maintained at the deepest level the relationships with the plants and the animals and the the water and the land and the sky and the forest.

Certainly, everybody had some of those relationships themselves, but there was one person whose job it was Right. To really hold hold on to really hold that space. And then also, that place where the wild and the human met was very often also the place where the spirit world and material world were were seen as meeting. And so that that place of being at the edge of mediating between worlds is a traditional place for healers and magicians of many traditions. Whether you're doing it at a literal physical level or not, There there are approaches in modern life of learning to hold those spaces between worlds, learning to walk at that edge that, can bring a particular kind of medicine and magic to people.

So then, like, it seems as if that they're saying because culturally, whether, you know, whether things are going traditionally, whether it be European or Asian, African, Native American or Celtic or or whatever that, we are really like, there's elements that we can learn and take forward and continue this way of being in our lives even though so many of the traditional actual rituals themselves are lost. But, you know, it's interesting, Sean. You know? Yeah.

And and sometimes, you like, I'm just having this realization, like, I knew, some, Makota, medicine people that that had passed away by elders and and one who's a Mohawk and and and an African elder. I mean, it's really privileged to know, like, as friends, you know, all have passed away, these people I'm thinking of, but I knew them and, considered them friends and vice versa. And and, they it seems like they and they all had rituals that that seem to kinda have the same basic idea or the basic things that were purposes, but they're all different, you know. And I see that and they all and they all are people that learn these rituals from a very traditional place.

You know, one from a person who was hidden from Indian schools when he was growing up in the the Dakotas and one who was raised among a traditional tribe in Africa in the thirties and forties.

And and they were like, no, this is the way you do it, you know. And and then when they would say that, no. This is the way you gotta do it. You know?

This is the ritual. This is the way. I would always be like, yeah. But I'm not connecting with this because I'm not from Africa.

I'm not from South Dakota. I'm not from, you know, New York's upper New York state, you know, where he where all people are from. And then so but but I I also but but but in that, I I didn't, you know, I didn't even realize this till now. But I I guess in a way, I learned the essence of what they were teaching.

And then I somehow found a way in my own life to incorporate that kind of idea or energy that and so is that kind of where we're where we're heading here?

Yeah. Certainly that there are certainly I think there are a million ways to do things, but that's very much more the place that I'm heading. I think about, you know, in my when I was in college being really fascinated with Native American culture. Mhmm.

And then finally, some native friends of mine saying, you know, it's really great that you respect respect our culture so much, but this is our culture. It's not yours. Go look at your own ancestors. Mhmm.

And so, that began a part of the past for me where I really have delved more deeply into my Celtic ancestors.

Mhmm. And so, that became a part of the past for me where I really have delved more deeply into my Celtic ancestors and some of their practices. I do look to my ancestors because there are some things that resonate deeply and where, I do believe that on some level, where our ancestors come from matters, and calling in some of those traditions can be a helpful thing. I look to the people who lived on land where I live and live there still, for their knowledge of the plants and the animals and the cycles of nature, at the same time recognizing that that's not mine and I can't just take pieces of their practice and their culture willy nilly and claim to be following them.

Right.

And then there's and then there's a part of it that's sort of that's more improvised too. It's sort of looking at, okay, I get I see this core. I feel this spirit and what works here and now. Because the reality is that even when we're talking about the original traditions of the land we're living on, the land we're living on is not the same Yeah. As it was five hundred years ago. It's been shaped by this context.

So I think it was like a crab apple tree and about how, you know, crab a lot of our crab apples are descended from European apples that were brought over here that then got, it then began to grow wilder and they were changed by the seasons, by the soil, by the water, and they became something new that isn't really isn't really indigenous to this continent, but isn't really what came over from the other continent either.

And I feel like, to me, my practice is kind of a crap apple spirituality.

Yeah. It's interesting. It's really cool talking about this cause I remember when I was exploring, you know, I I lived in Ireland for a year and that's where my ancestry is from and I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm going around and go, you know, climbing to tops of hills and going to the seaside and talking to people. I'm like, people it's nobody remembers that, you know, then.

And I'm trying to then connect to the land. I'm like, I feel a connection here, but there's just you know, then I go home and I meet native people who are seemingly offering, like, culture and ways that they were doing things. Like, alright. I'll look at you know?

And and so, like, you have right. Exactly. Have these feelings, all over the place about, like, you know, trying to find that place. And I like that image of the crab apple tree.

Yeah. That's that's cool.

So so then, then let's take that to, to then how we then connect this with plants. Like, what's this all have to do with plants since you said, you know, with with crab apple tree thing. So let's go into that, like, as far as where we can take this with working with Yeah.

Yeah. So, Derek Jensen, quotes really amazing native activist and thinker, Jeanette Armstrong, who says that the fundamental difference between, this industrial culture we live in and an indigenous culture is that most peop is that most people in this culture think that when someone talks about talking with nature, they're speaking in metaphor. But it's not a metaphor, it's reality.

And for me, that's really at the crux of, working with plants.

But really at the crux of both my medicine and my magic with plants that, you know, at a literal biological level, plants are our ancestors and our relatives.

Slight variation in the molecule between chlorophyll and hemoglobin makes a difference between the fluid that flows through a plant's veins and the fluid that flows through our veins.

They are where we emerged from and they have existed around us. And they but they've existed around us often in a more constant forms, in a more constant relationship with, what's around them. So plan to know something about how to live in this world, in a way that's deeply, woven into the ecological patterns around them that that we've forgotten.

And so, to me, I first and foremost look at plants as my teachers.

And I go and spend time, really, you know, going deep into my heart. Steven Buener teaches some amazing, practices around this. So that round, if you bring your attention to the beating of your heart and you think about how your heart has beat for you all your life without you ever needing to ask, and you let yourself feel gratitude for that, you just let that gratitude wash over your heart, you begin to open it into that hard place more deeply. And that hard place is the place from which we communicate with the world, which, you know, if you ask people from most indigenous cultures, where in your body do you live?

Bunner points out that they will generally point to their heart.

If you ask people, where where do the plants speak to them? They'll point to their hearts. And what Stephen actually found through a lot of his research is that actually science is beginning to catch up with that, that our heart is this incredibly sensitive electromagnetic organ that picks up on the electromagnetic signals coming from every living thing all the time that are constantly fluctuating.

And because as it picks up on those signals, we're sending and receiving information from the world around us all the time. And that gets processed in our brains as emotion because that information goes right into the emotional centers of our hearts. And so that practice of going into the heart, of learning how to be in that space more and more, and then approaching a plant from that place and really trusting, you know, the feelings and the intuitions and the senses that come in, from that more deeply and spending enough time so that you can begin to refine more and more your understanding of what's coming from you and what's coming from the plant is really my starting point in building those relationships.

And the more I understand those, the more that I come to know a plant in the same way that I would know a person. And, like, just like, you know, I as I the more I know you, the more I would think about, oh, well, here's this person here's this person John would get along with really well, or here's a situation John would fit into really well, or, you know, I really need help with this. Who do I know who's good in this way? Well, John's really great at that.

In the same way, I could as I come to know black cohosh more and more deeply, there's that sense that whether it be a situation of shifting in energy of what's going on in my life or in someone's life around them or whether it be shifting in energy of what's happening in someone's it it changes from the place of remembering, oh, black cohosh is good for this and that, to that place of, oh, yeah. My friend black cohosh, that's who can help right now.

Okay. Alright. That makes that's great.

You know, that that makes it really clear.

You know, when you're talking about the relationships, I was thinking about my friend. I was mentioning my friend from Africa before and, his name was Ingwe.

And, he would say to people because for him it was all about the relationship and deep connection with nature and those relationships and making and calling on those things. And he's from African culture, so his metaphors and things he's working with are power of more more usual large animal based than plant in his culture, you know, because that makes sense. Trackers trackers and hunting game and whatnot. Yeah.

You know?

And, and so, you know, he would always say, you know, when you bring you to the wilderness, if you're, you know, I don't care what your beliefs are. If you're a Christian, I'll make you a stronger Christian. If you're a Jew, I'll make you a stronger Jew. If you're a Muslim, I'll make you a stronger Muslim.

His point was that, you know, when you really foster the deep connections with nature, this is for everyone. And it's really Right. To to use the the computer because I'm a computer geek, the the metaphor of Yeah. A plug in.

It's kind of like Yeah. You plug this in, plug nature back in to the power source into all these, into all of your belief system. And it really isn't about something that's separate from any other belief system. It really permeates and can weave in because even as cultures went from pre Christian to Christian in Europe, say, Ireland, for example, because that's what we're both familiar with probably the most, that the rituals and the intention behind them didn't change.

You know, solstice became Christmas. Right? So winter solstice became Christmas and and then, you know, spring rites became, Easter.

And then and then, you know, it's it's it's all of these holidays and the things in honoring of nature that really did stays and did continue and permeate. It's just that we kinda lost lost our way somewhere, you know. And and and so Absolutely. And plants are what you're saying, you know, plants are a great way to reconnect because they they don't run away like the animals.

So you can Yeah. You can find them and and work with them and create a great relationship.

The being really patient with if you put the time into approaching them with respect and listening deeply. They're, most plants are incredibly generous in, their ability to just sort of take you as you are and keep bringing those lessons more and more deeply. There are a couple pieces I wanted to pick up on what you were saying. It's that first of all, just in terms of beliefs, you know, beliefs are the stories we tell about the world around us and how it works.

And, you know, just like any other story, some stories, it's all from our point of view, and we can we can say that one story feels more true to us than another, and if that's working for us, then that's great. But the actual relationships we have with people, and with plants and with the land, More and more the more and more they become deep personal relationships, the more they slip out of that place of this is something I have an idea about. Uh-huh. This is something they have the story about where it fits in, and the more they become, this is a relationship.

This is changing. We're writing the story together as it goes along. Whatever else I might believe about where the world came from or where moral guidance comes from. This relationship is based on what this planet and I or this person and I experienced together.

And in terms of, the other piece I wanted to pick up on was what you're saying about about, you know, observing the times of year and the cycles of the year and the way different the way cultures sort of mark their holidays according to what's going on around them. That, yeah, when Christianity spread to new areas, when the holidays were celebrated changed so that it would make so that the story that was being told about them would make sense in terms of what was happening on the land.

And, in my own practice, something that, my teacher, Corina, taught me is about, you know, finding that cycle of the year for yourself in the place where you are rather than necessarily measuring according to a set calendar.

And when you go back to the origins of some of the holidays that modern pagans a big holiday of fertility and the world coming alive that modern pagans often celebrate on May first. But in Ireland, that was celebrated when the hawthorn bloomed.

Right.

And when you think about how people courting outside celebrating fertility, You know, in Northern New England, you're not gonna be doing that on May first Right. Because you're gonna get really cold, and you're not gonna be seeing a lot of things coming alive around you.

Right.

So if you're paying attention instead to the marker of when the hawthorn blooms. Or, in February, we're just past, what was the festival in bulk in the old Irish tradition, that later became Saint Brigid's Day. Mhmm. Because Brigid was the goddess who was responsible for the holiday.

Saint Brigid was a saint who had a lot of the same attributes as the goddess. And it was sort of the time when you're you're kind of you're most of the way through winter. You know, spring's not exactly coming yet, but you're beginning to feel that shift. You're beginning to feel like, you know, okay, it's inevitable now that spring is coming.

Winter is beginning to relent, and you might have some more big storms, but things are but plus the wheel is turning.

Oh, yeah. I'm with you. Yeah. Let me I I do I practice acupuncture, five element acupuncture, and when we're taught to, like, retreat seasons, and we're, like, looking at seasons and people and looking at paying attention to the seasons. And we don't go by the calendar.

We go by what's happening out outside in order to choose what, you know, element to treat on.

Yeah. So I get you.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah. And so traditionally, in Celtic areas, that was celebrated when, the sheep and goats gave birth. And, it was interesting. I noticed this week, actually, a friend of mine in the Midwest had her goats give birth right on the day that most people mark as in bulk, which is February second. But then, what I what I've found here in my time in New England has been that, for me, it's actually when the eastern skunk cabbage melts its way through the ice and points its space up through the ice for the very first time because that's the first thing that comes to life. And it's still wintertime, but you can tell that new life is coming. And so, yeah, now I'm moving to the temperate rainforest, but I'm sure that my sense of the cycles and what's important will really change.

The blooming the blooming of the Indian plum. The blooming of the Indian plum tree. We'll mark here.

Yeah.

Yeah. Around here. Yeah. Yeah. You'll see the first flowering tree is, something in my one of the things, the signs that I look for personally when I'm walking on the trail. Like, oh, the Indian plum's blooming. Must must be getting close.

Yeah. Yeah. And so marking yeah.

Marking the year according to what you experience and what's around you is another way of sort of finding where's the energy I can tap into.

Right. Alright. Okay. That is really cool. So, you know, there's a couple threads we can go down here now. And when we have time to talk soon.

One is, like, going into specific examples of some plants, like and then another is, like because I I haven't heard you talk about it. So do you like to talk about, like, your work or think or underworld stuff or, like, that you're working work with and teach about? Or do you wanna talk about plants or first? Or, like, I'm gonna let you lead that.

See where you wanna head next.

Yeah. Let's talk about plants, and then I'm sure that some of the underworld pieces will weave into that.

Okay. Cool. That's great. Awesome. So you're you you were talking a little bit of Hawthorne. I don't know if you have more to say about that or wanna continue with that or you wanna talk about any other plants or talk to you.

Yeah. You're the guest. Would you like another cup of tea?

If I could pour you some virtual coffee.

Let's plug that in. Let's plug that into your USB port and I'm gonna Right. I'll Skype you some coffee.

My computer has Java so it should work.

That's awesome. Oh, man. Go ahead. So, yeah.

So Hawthorne, yeah, it's incredibly interesting plant in terms of the traditions and its associations and the energy that it has. So, to begin with, just thinking about what Hawthorne brings as its core gifts, I think that Paul Birkner really speaks about this wonderfully when he talks about the fact that Hawthorne is so generous in terms of its fruit. When you go out to pick the berries that will grow off of a hawthorn tree, and they're so deeply nourishing to our hearts at both the physical and emotional level.

But if you're not paying attention, if you come in a disrespectful way and you just sort of are coming in a way that could be a threat to the hawthorn, there are those huge thorns that you're good to hit up against. Mhmm. You know, if you're paying attention, there's no way you could accidentally hit those thorns. They're giant. But if you're not paying attention, those thorns will cut you.

Right.

And so Hawthorne knows how to how to give generously, but at the same time hold its boundaries and be protected.

And I feel like, especially for a lot of us who are doing healing work, that's a really important pair of lessons for us to understand because, yes, that generosity is what brings us to this work and what drives us and what allows us to keep giving. At the same time, those boundaries are really necessary to our maintaining our health so we can continue to give and to our really keeping clear keeping clear what are we allowing in and what are we not allowing in because, you know, if you're giving to someone from deep inside your heart, keeping clear about what you're letting into your heart is important because whatever you're allowing in is gonna also affect what's what's coming out. So Hawthorne's a tremendous teacher in that way.

You know, in the old Celtic traditions, Hawthorne was a plant associated with the fairy realm. And wherever Hawthorns grew on top of a hill, that was believed to be one of the hollow hills that the fairy people had had gone beneath.

And so that story of the ferry people going underground is a really interesting and important story to me.

And actually, you know, my ancestors in Ireland trace back to the first Celts who arrived in Ireland, and they're the stories of the war that was waged between the ferry people and the Celts. And also the intermarriage that happened between them and so it was mostly men who came over on those first boats boats of Celts, and there were generations of children who followed. So, there are many in Ireland who believe that the people who we call fairies today were among their ancestors.

But so the story is that, you know, you had this culture that you know, that, you know, there are the hill the forests and some of the few forests left and the rivers and the mountains that are associated with the stories of these people.

And then into this land came another came an onslaught of civilization, came a warrior people who brought who were trying to conquer the land and make it their own, which is really, you know, one of the oldest and saddest stories that over and over again in human history, there are the people who are the invaders who come and subjugate the people in the land that were there first. And, you know, somewhere back in their history, they were the ones who were subjugated. So it's not like there are the good guys and the bad guys in global history. It's what at what point did this particular tragedy hit your ancestors.

But at this but at this particular moment, the story is that after a time of trying to coexist after being conquered, the ferry people, the Tuatha De Danann, decided to that they could no longer live in this world, and they disappeared beneath the hollow hills. They went underground.

And Celtic traditions, the underworld is really the place of beginnings, the place where, you know, it's it's it's the dark place. It's the watery place. It's like the womb. It's the place from which things emerge and the place to which things return and a place of deep, deep memory, memory that's older than the stories we tell.

And so, you know, you can look there are people who take these stories on a more literal level and I do personally hold to some degree of literal truth in these stories. But at a metaphorical level, you can think about the parts of ourselves that exist in a more integrated way, in a more flowing way in relationship to the land around us. In the civilizing process, it's a process that drives those parts underground because it's no longer safe for those parts to exist in the world when we're not living clearly from our hearts.

And then when we do open our hearts, it becomes, more possible for those parts to reemerge because it becomes safe for them to come out into the world again. And so sure enough, we have Hawthorne, this tree that is tonic for the heart that grows on top of these hills that the fairy people disappeared underneath.

And there are two times in the calendar that are said to be the times when, the when the veil when when the veil has been created between those worlds at its thinnest and the spirits in the fairy world, the beings in the fairy world can cross into this world more readily. And those two times are Beltane, when the Hawthorne blooms.

And Samhain, which would have the ancestor of our Halloween, which is close to when the Hawthorn is giving its fruit.

I see.

And and one of the things that really fascinates me about this is that, you know, there's these associations, there are other stories to me that very much point to the hawthorn being this heart opening that was part of that opening to the other to other realms in Celtic traditions.

But if we look at medicinal traditions, I'm not now to find any source in European and North American medicine prior to the eighteen nineties talking about the hawthorn being used for the heart that comes from Chinese medicine and it came into our medicine from that root at a fairly recent point in history. But yet at the spiritual and magical level, there are these stories that resonate with that, that indicate something essential about the Hawthorne that was speaking its truth in different languages and different ways to different people.

That's a lot to think about. That's amazing.

No. No. I I I it's, you know, you you talk, and I'm just, like, so I don't know about people listening, but I'm just, like, so, like, your voice and why you're speaking. I'm just, like, so, like, I'm so meditating on everything you're saying. I forget that I'm hosting a radio show.

I'm like, woah. I'm like, oh, yeah. Hi, everybody.

I do this. This happens from time to time. It's a good thing I'm not on a real radio station. They fire me.

They fire me.

That's why I do this.

Well, you know, that's that's the original meaning of the word enchantment. Right.

It's used to Definitely.

No. You just have a way of taking, something that seems, like, mythical or out there and then taking it and making it. Then all of a sudden, oh, yeah. This makes sense. This is very practical. I get it.

So it's definitely a gift of yours for sure. So Ben, how about, let's have another plant like, what what would you like?

I mean, there's a lot you can talk about. Osha, a mugwort, datura, if we wanna go really kinda weird.

Yeah.

Whatever you We'll see if datura comes knocking.

She's she's she's one who, when she knocks, I pay attention, but I also don't go there unless she knocks because as well as being potentially as well as being deeply physically poisonous at a dosage that's not very far from the medicinal dosage. So very don't don't try this at home or she also has a very, very intense energy. So she might come out later, but we'll see.

I I let that be up to her. Alright.

But, so, you know, one plant that always comes to mind when thinking about these realms is the plant that I call ghost pipe. A lot of people call it Indian pipe, monotrope uniflora, one of my deep allies.

I don't use the name Indian pipe because, you know, in so many native traditions, the pipe is a sacred instrument and a a sacred tool. And, you know, those aren't my traditions, it's not my sacred tool. And I don't feel like that name really comes out of the traditions of the people who use that tool. So I feel a bit of of discomfort around that name.

And so Ghost Pipe is another one of the old names of the plant. Cherry Smoke is another one of the old names of the plant. And I really like, I really prefer working with with those names. I use ghost pipe most frequently, but it sounds a little bit more similar to Indian pipes that someone's more likely come around to lining up what they already know about the plant with the word that I'm using that way.

Monotropa uniflora, it's a really interesting plant. A lot of people think of it a lot of people assume it's a fungus because it's a white plant. It looks kind of much for me. It has no chlorophyll.

But in fact, it's a plant in the archesia family related to blueberries and heather.

It, it's a ghostly white color and it grows with a thin stock that then goes out into a sort of bell shaped flower at the top, which to me, looks very much like a, a spinal cord with a brain stem at the end Right.

Tying back into the old, tradition of the doctrine of signatures.

Now the doctrine this is another one of those pieces that you can approach in different ways that I think that, you know, a lot of times people talk about the doctrine of signatures as sort as though it's sort of a relic of something past and as though there's a set of things that you're supposed to remember.

You know, yellow plants have something to do with the liver. Something to do with the liver is an important thing to note there because some yellow plants are liver toxins.

But, but so this idea that there's this set of things you memorize that tell you about planets based on their form. And those are all things that come out of people's actual experience at some point in history, and so there's a validity to them. But to me, the doctrine of signatures actually operates on a somewhat more intuitive level that it's not so much that there are that you can have this list of if you see this shape, this is what it means.

As it is that when we enter into relationship with the world around us, and we're really paying attention to a plant and to its form and to where it grows and how it grows.

As we take in the information from it, our brains will come up with metaphors based on the physical signs we see that point to something that's true about that planet.

And so in terms of the shape of the spinal cord in the brain stem, ghost pipe is actually a plant that has a very interesting relationship to the ways in which we process information coming in from the world that would come in from our peripheral nerves up through our spinal cord into our brain. Cool.

So I first learned about this plant from Tommy Priester, an herbalist in Boston who who teaches at the Boston School of Herbal Studies. Really, really great teacher. And, he told me that he used this plan for people who were experiencing physical pain.

And the way he described it was that, if someone was in pain and you gave them this plant, and he said that he generally give he he always worked with a tincture that if you generally give three drops first and then someone doesn't respond to three drops, you jump up to thirty drops because they don't respond to three. They're not gonna respond to five. But that it wasn't so much it didn't kill their pain in the way that if something something like poppy would.

It but it changed the way they're processing that pain. So they were aware that the pain was there, but they were no longer feeling that overwhelming physical sensation. He said it was like that you take your pain, and you put it beside you so that you see it and you know that it's there, but you're not under its control. You're not in its throat.

So I thought, wow, that's really interesting. And, you know, a year later, I began working with the plant myself. I had some interesting adventures about it that, are a little bit too rambling for me to go into here, but you can if people go to my blog, Green Man Ramblings, then, they can find some stories of those adventures.

Tincture from it. And then a few months later, a friend I had given some tincture to a friend, and a mutual friend of hers was visiting her.

And she walked in one day, and she saw him doubled over in pain.

And all she kept asking what was wrong, and the only words he could out were the pain, the pain. So she assumed he was in physical pain. So she went and gave him some ghost pipe tincture.

And over the next few minutes, he sort of set up straight, stopped rocking rocking back and forth, and began to be able to respond to the world again.

And it turned out that he wasn't actually in physical pain, that he was having an acute panic attack. He had just gotten some really devastating news and he didn't know how to process it.

And she brought him over to see me the next day to see what I could what else I could do to help him. And as he told me this story, he said, it was like somebody took everything that I was worried about and put it beside me where I could look at it and work on it.

And I realized, oh, that's how this plant works.

You know, our bodies and our brains experience emotional pain and physical pain in very similar ways, And sometimes the sensation, the information that's coming in is just too overwhelming.

And so we need to find a way to filter that a little bit better.

And what this plant seems to do is it works on those channels through which sensory information comes in, and it kind of narrows the gate so that you're not getting this onslaught of sensation that's overwhelming you, manageable place.

And I've actually used it in various first aid settings with people who are really freaking out for various reasons and found that, it's helped tremendously there.

And so then we go from the physical form. We began looking at the ecology of the plant.

I just I just had to interrupt you because this is really weird. Talk about think about magic. I just get exactly when you're talking, I get this text message. It just just what you were just saying.

I'm serious. My hair stands up on in random Yeah. A text message from my sister. Right?

And then says that, that my dad has been gonna fly out. Actually, I'm gonna we're gonna cross paths in the same city next week, ironically, but, saying that he's, having extreme pain for the last twenty four hours, a text message says. And he keeps saying that he wants to die.

Not being discharged today, maybe Monday, plan to go to rehab.

Some other message said that. I mean, that just, just a little weird for me. Wow.

Sorry. Wow. Live live on the radio. Oh, no. That's I just say, well, k.

I just I I mean, I don't mean to say it, you know, I just try I just had to say that it because Yeah. You know, it's it's So maybe we can just send him some thoughts of ghost ghost pipe or something.

Just kinda send send it out there to him. He's a painter. You know?

Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely focusing on medicine that's that's bad going to him and we can Yeah. How about that?

Find. Yeah. Thanks. So anyway, I just anyway, you were talking about ecology and going on.

Yeah.

Yeah, but this is also the way that this is part of the way that plants work is that, you know, plants begin showing up and you don't sometimes you don't know exactly why a particular plant is knocking at the door. But I find that very often, I'll start noticing a plant just just before somebody needs it.

And that's a part of the way that sort of this living world, all the parts of this living world talking to each other work.

And so, yeah, I hope that the medicine of the spirit of this plant really reaches him and is able to help him not be so fully in the grips of this pain. Mhmm.

Help him Mhmm.

Help him.

Yeah. So and in a weird weird way, I don't wanna seem callous in the segue, but in a strange way, that really plays into part of what I was gonna say about the ecology of the plant.

So the way this plant operates is that it is a semiperasitic plant.

It places its its roots go down into the mycorrhizal networks, the mycelial networks associated with the roots of plants.

Those, those are symbiotic networks where the the fungus and the plant are helping each other with with accessing nutrients from the soil.

So ghost pipe sends its roots to tap in to those interfaces and draw nutrients out of there, and that's where it gets its nutrition.

But if you begin to think about what we're learning more and more about mycelial networks and how they operate, and I'm sure some listeners are probably familiar with the work of Paul Stamets.

If you're not, go out and find, there are great interviews with them online.

It's a really amazing TED talk that he did where he talks about, the ways that consciousness works in the mycelial world.

That when we look at the if you look at the form of my these mycelial networks underneath the forest, they look very much like like the neural networks in our bodies. And in fact, what Stamets and others have found is that chemical and electromagnetic signals move along these networks from the same ways they move in our nervous systems.

So here we have this plant that's tapping into those systems those systems to get its nutrients. But in the same way, it's also tapped into that information system. We're learning more and more there's this emerging field of plant neurobiology that's showing that actually plants do receive information in very similar ways to the way we do. And so you think about, okay, you have this plant tapped into these networks. A part of what it's gonna have to be able to do is, you know, filter what's coming through so that it's not overwhelmed.

And it exists at sort of these yeah. It taps right into these junctures where the places where beings meet, the places where worlds meet.

And so, a part of its equal a part of its ecology has to do with being this mediator that exists in this place of incredibly rich information, both chemically and electromagnetically and needing to be able to process that down to the point where its little body can sustain what's coming in.

So it has this deep, deep connection to this underground world.

And simultaneously, when you look at its form, you can think of something that the flowers have like an opening, and you can imagine going down that opening and down that tube down into accessing that underground world. And the role that it plays in the underground world is one that is very little studied.

It's just beginning beginning to be well, I guess we're beginning to understand how much we don't understand. I had a really amazing conversation with Ryan Drumm about this, the tradition of Western Herbalism conference, and I hope to get the details right. He's telling me about this forest in New England that, it was growing back in fields that had been cleared for hundreds and hundreds of years.

And about the scientists who were watching what was growing back in that forest, and they had they had certain ideas and models of what they thought would grow there first.

And they found that ghost pipe was showing up years before their models predicted.

And there were two incredibly strange things about this. One is that it's a plant that's incredibly hard to cultivate. You can't really plant it very easily on purpose.

So either there were rootstocks or seeds that had remained viable but dormant underneath the ground all those hundreds of years waiting for the conditions to be right again, or somehow seed got carried in at just the right moment.

But either way, it was as though this was just waiting for the right moment, and then when the conditions became right, this world that had disappeared beneath the ground began to appear again on the front of this plant.

Cool. I get it.

But the other thing that's an utter mystery about this is that the food source for the plant didn't exist yet, but the plant was still thriving. The mycorrhizal networks haven't developed to a point where they should have been able to feed the plant, but the plant grew in first knowing that what it needed to survive was going to come.

That's incredible.

Wow.

And so when I think of the underworld, I think of this place where what's been lost and forgotten is waiting to emerge into this world again.

And when it reemergence, it won't be the same as it was before, because it will be shaped by the conditions around it, what it's growing into.

But that things that we thought would never come back, actually, when the conditions become just right, those gateways open and they emerge into the world again just like the dust pipe did in that forest years before anybody could have predicted that it would.

And, you know, we know that everywhere that's paved over, there are seeds under the surface and that those seeds remain viable, many of them. And so, you know, we talk in vitalist medicine about you remove the obstacle to cure, and the body itself begins to correct things, begins to move things back or its vital force knows Totally.

The way back to health. Alright. So the same is true of the Earth. We remove the obstacles to cure and in ways that we don't understand and can't predict, things begin to emerge and return.

And certainly, just like with physical medicine, you can damage things so severely that it's hard for the for there to be enough life force left to and enough time left for things to come back. So I don't wanna paint this over the rosy picture that, you know, one day we're gonna wake up and everything's gonna have grown back.

But, you know, given enough given the right conditions, given enough time, given the right nutrients, our bodies find their way back to health.

And the world finds its way back to health when we just find what's getting in the way and remove that obstacle.

Beautiful.

So, Sean, that was a good ending, but you were to, you are a poet. See, I said in the beginning, you as a poet. This man is a poet.

If you were now to have people move it forward and say, okay.

Today, we're gonna you're gonna do something to bring your connection to plants and yourself closer?

What is something simple someone can easily do today to take a step towards the journey of beginning to relate and to plants on the level that you have obviously so deeply have thought about and gone down from just you talking about Hawthorne and Ghost pipe alone, let alone there's so many others you could.

So what would that be, you think?

You know, I would say start off really simple.

Find one plant that lives somewhere you can easily get to at least several times a week.

And the time you spend there doesn't need to be huge.

You know, a few years ago, I was working in Boston my my day, and I was working a really busy job.

But when everything became too overwhelming, I could take a five, ten, fifteen minute break, however long I had, and go stand with that Lindentree and just put all of my attention there, and I would feel things shift in some subtle but powerful ways.

And so, you know, just going and being in the presence of one plant over and over again, you're gonna get lessons, you're gonna get transformation.

If you can take it a step further, what I'd say is, as you're approaching that plant, really bring your attention down to your physical heartbeat And take a moment to give thanks to your heart for all that beating it's done over your lifetime and let yourself feel that gratitude.

And bringing attention and gratitude to your heart opens that doorway to perception that exists in the heart that allows us to let the plants in more deeply.

Very simple practice and I want to again, make sure that I pay proper respect to its source that this comes from decent Gunnar's work.

But just that simple practice can really play put you in that place of being more open to what that plant has to give to you and how to speak to you. And if you just do that, even if it's just five minutes a couple times a week over the course of the year, you're gonna come to know that plant and yourself in deeper and deeper ways over that time.

Thank you.

So, Sean, my you're you're you're gonna be doing this a bit of a trek across the country, as you head towards your new home in, Vancouver Island. Right? And, up in BC. And, so as you're checking across between, what what are some upcoming classes that you're going to be, teaching that people could go find out about?

Yeah. So the details are still coming together around some of these, but hopefully, by the time this, broadcast is up, then, there'll be a little bit more in place.

At medicine magic dot com, I'll be posting them. So Saturday, February twenty fifth, I'll be in Michigan.

We'll be sort of Herb Mentor All Star Day when Jim McDonald and I teach Oh, that'd be a trip.

Yeah.

Oh, man.

I'm sorry for that.

Can you guys record it?

I would I think Jim's gonna try, so we'll see what happens. Great. Great. Yeah. So then, Monday the twenty seventh, I will be in Viroqua, Wisconsin. And during the day, I'll be seeing clients. And then at night, I'll be giving a talk on depression.

And Sunday, March fourth, I'll be in Bozeman, Montana, speaking in the morning about energetics and in the afternoon about herbs for the respiratory system.

An upcoming online course.

Yes. I was gonna ask you that too because because you can what's cool is Sean's done an online course before. So what what's the online course? That just means you can do any anywhere.

You can do it anywhere. This will basically be, I'll be guiding you through exercises, to deepen those personal relationships with plants. So the over six month process, and there will be a community of other people doing it at the same time So you can check-in.

We use a Moodle classroom, which is a little bit somewhat similar in its format to our mentor forum. So it'll be a forum where you can post what you're experiencing.

Broadcast, I've had a discount going on this course where if people signed up by by February fifth, they could pay half price. But if you mentioned that you heard about Nerve Mentor Radio, you can pay the two hundred fifty dollar price up anytime up through March first.

Nice.

Sweet. And by the way, I will mention this is two thousand twelve.

Yes. Our winter radio goes year after year after year after year. So you might be listening to this in two thousand fourteen if we make it past the Mayan calendar. And, and that that wouldn't apply that. So two thousand twelve.

I always said through.

And I also, have, I've been partnering with, bardic brews dot net, which was originally a site, doing education about Mead. But they, recorded a class with me teaching about asthma, and they're about to record it, my teaching about Plants for the Underworld Journey. So those more in-depth recordings and those themes will be available sometime in the next month or two.

It'd be cool it'd be cool to have you back in the future to do specific Urbinter radios on depression and on some, you know, that would be cool. I think that'd be really helpful for people. So maybe we could do that.

I would love that. Yeah. Okay. That'd be great. Yeah.

And hope. And hope. And the coming year my book will be out.

Yes. The book. And and do you have a are you have have a publisher for that?

Or you work I mean, are you just are you just writing it first?

Self publishing?

Yeah. I'm writing it and I'll be self publishing it.

So now I've set it on our mentor radio and it it has to get done.

And and of course you'll be at traditions in Western Herbalism conference in late in mid to late September. I don't know the dates off hand, but it's in Arizona this year, and you can find out about that at Traditions in Western Herbalism dot com. Of course, Learning Herbs is one of the major sponsors, and we'll be promoting the heck out of that when the time comes because we we, I kinda I kinda consider it the Herb Mentor live event because, it's Yeah.

It's really Yeah.

I mean, because I I love going to school.

We talk about first Yeah. We talk about personal calendars and that's really one of the highlights of mine each year. It's one of my favorite times of the year, an amazing gathering of people.

Because myself got I mean, Rosalie and you're there, Jim and Kiva, Sevensong, a lot of the the folks that people know well through videos and forum on Herb Mentor, you know, from especially because Kiva and Jim are are are help on the forum so much and you as well. And so it's kinda like a little family gathering. And and I can't get all over the place every year. I travel so much and it's just the one I know I can go to and guarantee.

So that's why I'm like, alright. We'll make this the official gathering. Anyone or mentor members out there, listening, who don't know about that could go check that conference out and know that we'll go and you can meet a lot of people. And it's so great.

I love meeting members there and, you know, people coming up and saying and you probably have too. You know, I've been there and say, oh, yeah. You're Sean from the floor room. Yeah.

Right? So I mean Yep. It's so cool, like, to actually meet in person. So many folks, that's the highlight for me because then I'm like, you know, I'm not just back behind my computer like I usually have.

It's like Real people.

Real.

So, so great. I look forward to your book. And, all the things you're doing, you can follow Sean at medicine and magic dot com. So please go there, and I'm sure we'll see Sean on the forums.

And, you know, Sean, it was so awesome that you could spend time with us this morning. I really appreciate it. And this was just fantastic. I really enjoyed it.

So Thank you.

I really enjoyed it too. And I'm just so grateful for everything you do to keep HerbMentor going and support our community in so many ways.

Thank you. I'll see you again and see you all at the conference. Thank you.

Herb Mentor Radio on HerbMentor.com is a production of LearningHerbs.com.

Visit LearningHerbs.com for free herbal lessons including Herb Mentor news, home remedy secrets, and supermarket herbalism. You'll also find the herbal medicine making kit and our board game Wildcraft.

Thanks so much for listening.

Sean Donahue: Herbs and Magic

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