🍄Poisonous Plant Medicine 🍄
Week 6 | Mandrake & Amanita: The Lost Wisdom of Shamanic Lineages

Mandrake and amanita muscaria are perhaps the most mythologized of all plant world beings.

Mandrake even makes an appearance in Harry Potter (yes, those screaming mandrakes are based on real plant lore!)

The red and white caps of amanita muscaria, also known as fly agaric, are perhaps the most easily recognized symbol of psychedelic plant medicine 🍄Most Christmas lore is actually rooted in amanita muscaria lore. Shamans of Northern Europe would wear red and white capes, going door to door to bring divinatory messages during the winter months - sound familiar? Reindeer are known to eat these little mushrooms, hence the mythology of flying reindeer and Rudolph’s red nose.

In the final class of this series we will speak about the forgotten shamanic lineages tied to these plants and discuss as much of their endless lore as we can fit in!

I'll be teaching this class tomorrow at @animamundiherbals and online on March 31st and April 28th.

I updated my shop yesterday with a few new medicines (see my stories today to get a peak at them all.)
This "Loving Boundaries" elixir is the one I am most excited about. My entire life seems to be a lesson in building strong yet permeable, loving yet firm boundaries that are compassionate to both myself and others. It has not been and is still not an easeful journey for me. I look at others who seem to have been born with their roots firmly planted in this earth, preventing them from experiencing the regular overstimulation/exhaustion I experience almost daily and I am truly envious. I’m grateful for the gifts that come with being so open but I know that I have arrived at a point in my life where I need to level up my energetic boundaries.

I am currently in the midst of unlearning some very young conditioning around things like - other peoples happiness is not my responsibility, people that love me will love me regardless of whether or not I can anticipate their needs, focusing on myself first is not selfish... facing these conditionings brings along with it many fears and these fears have had my nervous system in a quite a state.

These last few months I've been learning how supporting my nervous system is the most important thing I need to support my healthy psychic boundaries. That's why I've included a lot of nervous system support in this blend. It can be taken like an essence - a few drops on the tongue or in a glass of water, or more as a tincture - 1-2 dropperfuls. I'm really grateful to this medicine for its support and lessons at this time in my life.

Ingredients: Extracts of St. John’s Wort, Rosa Rugosa, and Yarrow in Vodka. Rosa Rugosa Glycerite. Essences of Pokeweed, Hellebore, Bleeding Hearts, Rose Rugosa, and Black Tourmaline.

🍄Poisonous Plant Medicine🍄
Week 4 | Foxglove, Monkshood, & The History of Witches Flying Ointments

Did you know that the image of witches flying on broomsticks comes from a psychedelic folk practice from the middle ages? Unfortunately, we have lost all documentation from the folk herbalists using this type of divinatory medicine during that time period. The only written accounts we have are survived in court records of witch trials where one of the main ingredients of witches flying ointments was said to be the fat of Christian children… sigh. In this week’s class we will talk about how we can recover and reclaim this ancient practice - free from false dogma!

We will also discuss the lore surrounding foxglove and monkshood - two very deadly poisons whose extracted alkaloids are used in some of our modern Western medicines.

If you are local to Brooklyn you can drop into this class this Thursday at @animamundiherbals, otherwise I am teaching it online on March 3rd and March 24th.

Trying to up my intake of nutrient rich plants via herb-infused ghee. Nettle and burdock infused on the right and reishi, turkey tail, dandelion, and astragalus infused on the left.

I’m currently at the library getting some work done and I remembered a thought I had earlier this week as I sowed my *deadly* poisonous aconite seeds:
How is this plant, called “the most prompt of all poisons” by Pliny the Elder, perfectly legal yet things as medicinally, psychologically, and spiritually beneficial as cannabis, psilocybin mushrooms, and ayahuasca illegal?

Unfortunately, I think we all know the answer to that. If aconite were safely ingestible and consciousness awakening it would be promptly outlawed. Plant can kill - no problem. Plant can cause you to question reality - it’s a danger to society and must be stopped at all costs.
This is not to say that aconite is not a magical plant with the power to shift our consciousness. We can do a lot of deep inner work on the plant spirit level but we have to know how to support that work in ourselves. Learning how to journey inwards without the use of consciousness shifting plants is a skill I hope that everyone has the privilege to learn in their lifetime.

This image is a page from Veneficium by Daniel A. Shulke

Infusing organic, biodynamic red wine with blue lotus, damiana, rose petals, vanilla bean, and honey to enjoy after reading tarot tonight at @bravedaughterspvd❤️ I usually avoid blue lotus because I find it to be *so opening* to the upper chakras that I get overstimulated... and I usually avoid alcohol because I’m a lightweight. But I felt a pull to make this that I couldn’t resist 🤷‍♀️

Thrift store find ✨ Monkshood aka aconite aka wolfsbane ✨

Experimentations with Amanita Muscaria 🖤🍄🖤

Trying to learn the best way *for me* to work with this ally. The spirit of fly agaric is strong and my normal course of action would be to just work with it on a plant spirit level. But from the first time this mushroom appeared in my dreams it seemed to be encouraging me to ingest. Last week I had an ancestral healing session with @adrienne_sloan where I met an ancestor who showed me images of Amanita tea and asked for offerings of it. I never thought Amanita would be a central ally for me, but here we are.

Today is the last day to sign up for the Poisonous Plant Medicine series. The next time I offer this course, I will be raising prices for it. Tomorrow we will be learning about plant spirit communication and poison as medicine - the foundations for my work with poisonous plants! You can drop into each class individually or take the whole 6-week course. Week 6 is when we will learn from Amanita Muscaria.

🍄 Poisonous Plant Medicine 🍄
Week 2 | Belladonna & Henbane: Sex, Death, & The Unknown

Sex, death, and what is unknown are generally considered taboo topics of discussion. Poisonous plants will lovingly take us right into those oft avoided places. Almost all the poisonous plants we will discuss through this series of classes are aphrodisiacs. Why would so many plants be connected with both our entry into life and our exit? These plants suggest that there is little separation between life and death, pleasure and suffering - and the best way to understand this is to go right to the places that seem the scariest to our conditioning!

Belladonna, aka deadly nightshade, literally means “beautiful woman,” her latin name Atropa comes from the Greek fate “Atropos” whose job it was to decide when each human life was to come to an end.

Henbane has many myths associating it with the Underworld, including its use in the wreaths that crown the souls of the dead as they descend to Hades. In European folklore it was used to attract lovers, and is still used for divination in communicating with the spirits of the Underworld.

Spots are still available for the Poisonous Plant Medicine online course. Thursday night will be the second class at @animamundiherbals!
All of these classes can be attended as the full 6 week course or you can drop in for individual classes.

Pictured above is a little painting of Belladonna I made about a year ago for a poisonous plant zine called "Persephone's Plants" that is due for a reboot soon