🍄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.

🍄 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