Dances with Herbs. The Herbalist’s Path. Eyes are opened up to beauty, in such a way, that the world instructs in a way of natural service. I believe, it is a service to Love.
This last summer, I was sharing an herbal remedy that my family has used, and passed down for generations. I was asked by some Herbalists, and some of my Teachers, if this was Hungarian Tradition or Cherokee Medicine Tradition. Aye, ya eye! Which, and where did it come from?
I scratched my head. I started picking mushrooms at age 3, and that did not come from either one, that came from both medicine streams in my family…for, it is the medicine stream of life, living, survival, healing, health and consciousness. The idea of pure medicine, when plants and animals, and those in inbetween and betwixt, intermixed over mountain ranges, starts swirling and spiraling in my head. The Medicine Drum beats with the Medicine that we find at our doorstep, in our hands, the Medicine that we work with. Each Medicine Tradition has its own way of working with the Medicine that arrives on the doorstep, the Medicine that we work with.
Those who read my musings, know the drumbeat of my own voice as I joke that Peppers are controlling us humans, using us so they can move around and experience different thrills of working with different cultures, in an ethnic thrill to their etheric bodies. A dash of each human, of each culture has made Thai peppers what they are, and Hungarian Paprika what it is…each Pepper of a wholly distinct difference in the same bloodline. The Peppers delight in this. So do the Mushrooms, the Chickweed, and Oak.
In fact, in such journeys of wholeness, I do wonder if the plants, the animals, and those inbetween and betwixt think it is fun when we get sick, so as to play with us to make us well, show us the Medicine that exists and grows with us every day. Well in body, as well as well in soul. Harmony, change, resistance, difference, unity, personality, all notes to each plant, to each life form. Well in love, and well in death. Well, in the centerpoint of depth. They, the plant world and other worlds, love us so! Giving and giving so much to us, and YET, they play with us to get something for themselves. Movement, Planting, Successive Generations, Spicy Trips and Happy Laden Smacking Lips. They love us and need us as much as we love and need them IN OUR LIVES.
So the questions I was receiving about which side of what Healing Tradition a certain Medicine originated from, and my short answer, was both healing streams. Plants playing across cultures for thousands of years. Watermelons rolling around Carpathian Mountains and Plains, and eventually, Appalachian Alpines and my Grandfather’s Pacific Northwest Farm.
Without the question from my Plant Teachers, I would have never made the journey to understand how the two tribal cultures of my Family worked with a specific plant, and how they are joined. Just something passed down, there IS no such thing. The Oral Tradition contains relationship to the other and within, that has a story that teaches the way of working with the plant, where working with Medicine, we receive Medicine. Working with Healing, we receive Healing. Medicine, to cure, live through, and prevent illness. With plants, illness is not separate from the medicine. The very ways of a couple generations back may be brought back to life, and honored, with an ongoing adventure. I’m walking that road of bringing forth the Wisdom of my Grandparents through the haze of commercial forgetting and blandness that exists, that thwarts the carrying on of the deepest of humanity’s continuation, the erasure of the interdependent relationship between beings that leads to dependence instead of Belonging and Blessing.
Harvesting plants with care, with Prayer and Blessing, we tend to the Stewardship of the World in a way in which we are part of the beautiful painting, working directly with life, so that the coming generations of all the Beings, come into Blessing. That is a work, a responsibility, that IS bringing Love and Abundance to the world. It puts us into the position of joy, of learning from other beings directly, what they have to teach and to share in a dance of mutuality (community). The ethnicity of each Herb, is like the ethnicity of each Human, distinct, personal and variable, and where we, in the art of life, discover the possibility. This is both a Carpathian Basin Teaching and a B.R. Cherokee Teaching, a Uniting of Medicine Ways.
(c) 2014, Summer L. Farkas Takacs-Michaelson, CH
serendipityherbals 