“Our indigenous herbalists say to pay attention when plants come to you; they’re bringing you something you need to learn.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer, Author of “Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants”
I believe we all have plant allies, which are particular to each of us as individual bodies of consciousness. Some of those plants have been with our ancestor for generations. And the seeds of those plants would be what I call our "ANCESTOR SEEDS."
I encourage everyone to follow their ANCESTOR SEEDS back in time to rediscover lost indigenous sensablities within. . .
I'll share a little of my experience:
I am of Italian and Lithuanian in heritage. . .and although I was raised to be a contemporary U.S. citizen by my second-generation immigrant parents . . . I continued to express a sort of old world sensitivity toward plants, animals, land and energy. There was a certain pressure to assimilate culturally and hide those old [witchy ] ways. But, for me, the awareness of the invisible persisted. . . it both intrigued and frightened me, as it was somewhat taboo in the eyes of my Catholic Mother and Grandmother. But, I secretly wished to find the lost relatives from my genetic past, who might have passed down memory and knowledge from a time before the Industrial Revolution.
In the meantime, as an adult, I sought an "alternative lifestyle." And, as the mainstream culture shifted, I grew into a wild gardener, tending the empty lots and areas around my various homes. I began to notice that certain plants called to me . . .First it was RUE, then it was QUEEN ANNE's LACE. . . two of what I would now call my ANCESTOR SEEDS.
I have begun to identify with a bygone rural cult called the Benandanti, who were strong dreamers, who astral projected at night in order to protect the fields of Northern Italy . [ see Carlo Ginzberg's "Good Walkers" ]
It was a plausible fantasy, a story I made up to connect to a disappeared past. . . a past that was erased by what Clarissa Pinkola-Estes calls the "overculture."
I read somewhere that the Benandanti used the talismans with the image of the leaves of the Rue plant as identifyers. . . they became my phantom ancestors and I made myself matching clay talismans to wear.
. . . more later,
XO --k.tauches