[Lecturer] So this lecture is bringing us into
a conversation about global perspectives on plant medicine
and predominant cultures that have used
and documented their systems of using plant medicine
to support health and wellbeing.
And also leading into a conversation about
the current landscape we're in as it relates to colonialism,
globalization, and risks of cultural appropriation.
So I wanna share some of the folk herbalism traditions
that I've had the privilege of getting to know,
and particularly the worldview and perspectives.
And you've had some exposure to this
through guest speakers who,
and many of them are more of a direct
and primary source on them than I am.
But what I seek to do is provide an overview
of some of the major healing systems of the world
and explore some of the similarities between them
and how they might be relevant today.
So first of all,
the Ozain-Yorubic medicine system comes to us from
West Africa or what used to be West Africa.
And this is an ancient healing system.
This was practiced at the time of Jesus Christ
and the system of medicine that was
practiced at the time of Cleopatra and the Fertile Crescent.
And many of us know,
and many of us in the West know of this as voodoo,
which is basically a twisted version of the word voldun,
which means spirit or chi or prana.
And ultimately,
similar to many of the other world systems
we're gonna explore,
this is as much a system of spirituality
as it is one of healing.
So a system that envisions the physical self
as a manifestation of emotional and spiritual reality.
And this healing tradition
is practiced widely in the world today
as well as in the United States,
particularly those traditions that were carried over
in the West African diaspora into the Caribbean,
and also parts of the United States.
And this tradition does have a major text.
It's called the Ifá corpus,
and it's a foundation for divine herbology.
So the way the plants help us connect to different deities.
And in Yorubic medicine,
the intention is to free the soul, essentially.
Physical symptoms are seen as manifestations of
a spiritual imbalance.
And it's widely understood in this tradition
that if you are purely treating the physical symptoms
but not addressing the underlying spiritual imbalance,
then you will not achieve wellness.
And in fact
those physical symptoms will pop up in other places
until the underlying spiritual imbalance is addressed.
And a lot of this I learned from Angelique Sobande Greer,
who is an existing elder and teacher of this method.
She's based in Tennessee
and also has a school in Costa Rica.
So I wanted to share a little bit about
the main sort of foundation of the Ozain-Yorubic system,
which is this representation of Nana Buluku
and Nana Buluku is sort of the primary god,
although this is a polytheistic system.
So there are many demigods associated
with the Yorubic medicine system.
But in this system Nana Buluku
is actually split into twins, Mawa and Lisa,
the sky is the sort of male, sort of the sun side,
whereas the earth is associated with female energies.
And this religion is inherently matriarchal.
So understanding that the female is the prototype
and then some fetuses choose,
or female is the prototype,
and then mirroring what happens in embryology,
there is a sort of splitting into
a male form in two sides of this.
And one of the things that I find striking about this model
is how similar it is to the yin and yang system.
You can see again that balancing of masculine and feminine,
night and day, earth and sky energies.
And in many analyses of the Christian tradition
and many of the major world religions of this time,
there's thought to be a suppression of the feminine aspects
that were intact in rebalancing this
with an overemphasis on the male energies.
The sky energy is the assumption
that heaven is more important than Earth
and that is the primary goal.
So just to give some examples of
how the system is developed.
Similar to Ayurveda,
there are certain tissues and fluids that are in the body.
This also has some similarities to the Galenic
or Hippocrates system,
which is also related to Humours.
But that there are certain groupings of Orishas or elements
that relate to physical correspondences.
So, just to give you a sense of how it's organized.
And if you're familiar with Ayurveda
or Chinese energetics or meridians,
you might see some similarities there as well.
So you can see that the organs are not on their own.
They're in sort of systems or affinity systems.
So the reproductive system,
the male reproductive system is related to the bone marrow
as well as the chi or the spirit or the voldun.
The lungs and the mucus membranes are closely related.
And this is also just to lead you into thinking about herbs.
So certain herbs were good for certain orishas.
So you can see that for the Oya system,
which is the one that's associated with the spirit,
and actually I'm gonna go back,
the Oya is the lungs and the bronchial passages.
The herbs that were relevant for that particular orisha
are Mullein, Comfrey, Cherrybark, Elecampane, Horehound.
And from a western herbalism perspective,
those are the herbs that we'd be using to support the lungs
and the bronchial passages.
So there's a fair amount of overlap there.
And keep in mind
that this is derived from an African tradition,
but it's being practiced
primarily in the northern hemisphere now.
So there are some herbs that are in this list
that actually come from the European tradition.
So we're starting to see evidence of that globalization
and sharing of knowledge.
But again, the system and the worldview is very different.
And I would argue
that that's the most important part of herbalism.
Not the herbs themself,
but what is the framework
with which the herbs are being employed?
And here's an example of the underlying magical principle
or the major elements.
So again, energetic, hot, cold, wet, dry.
And then related to elements of water, sky, fire, and earth.
And for those of you familiar with Ayurveda
and with some exposure to Chinese herbalism so far,
and the Five Element Theory,
you can start to see some overlaps here.
And remember, as Brendan Kelly said,
and as is emphasized in many of the texts
of these folk systems
is that these came from agrarian societies.
So these were societies that were living close to the land,
hunter gatherer as well as later,
some agrarian and agricultural systems.
And so their livelihood depended on their ability to
live in harmony with the land
and they saw their bodies as reflection
of those patterns in nature.
So that's really these systems are not distinct from
the natural rhythms,
but then they were employed for maintaining
the internal climate and landscape of the body.
And here is the yin and yang, which you're familiar with.
So again,
that similar aspect of balance achieved through
balancing the masculine and feminine energies
with relevance to modern physiology today
with the reference to the autonomic nervous system
and the fight and flight,
or rest and digest sides of the nervous system.
And this is going a little bit deeper
into the yin and yang model.
You can see that in the center here
into the Five Element Theory.
And the Five Element Theory
is just a more detailed depiction of this.
You can see that water and metal
or autumn and winter are at the base of this chart
in sort of in the part of the model where the black
or the yin is greatest.
So the yin is associated with stillness
and cold and moisture.
So in the wintertime,
that's when we see sort of condensed coldness,
cooler temperatures, energy, frozen water.
And then you see at the top of this diagram,
fire is associated with summer, the summer solstice,
and that's where the white part of this diagram or the yang,
the masculine sort of fiery, hot, dry aspect of this diagram
is at its peak.
The earth element is associated with the harvest season.
The wood element is associated with spring.
So something I wanna point out here is that
this is a depiction of Five Element Theory
from Classical Chinese Medicine or CCM,
which is distinct from Traditional Chinese Medicine or TCM,
which is the system of Chinese medicine
that is widely practiced by acupuncturists in the West.
And the main difference is that Classical Chinese Medicine
retains many more of the spiritual and emotional elements,
and not purely physical elements.
Whereas Traditional Chinese Medicine
was the system of medicine that was modernized
by Mao Zedong in the fifties during the cultural revolution
by stripping the more spiritual aspects of the system
out of it.
And I think that it's relevant to share this history
because you see this pattern
repeated in the European tradition as well,
of the separation of the metaphysical from the physical.
And to illustrate this yin yang model a bit deeper
in terms of its relevance to worldview,
the cycle can also be compared to a planning process.
And this could be just planning an event
or project or as much as planning a protest
or a community initiative.
So if we start with the action manifestation phase,
the doing, the results of all the planning,
that would occur in the peak yang phase.
So peak summer.
And that in a healthy sort of balance cycle,
this doesn't always happen,
should be followed by a period of celebration, appreciation,
and finally rest and reflection.
So the celebration and the nourishment and the reflection
and kind of the seeding and gathering of energy
and learning occurs in the yin phase
or the autumn and winter phase.
And then the planning, gathering, manifesting,
and doing happens in the yang
or the spring and the summer phases.
And this makes sense from a plant perspective as well,
the seed phase where there's all this sort of
built up potential.
There's a concentration or compression of nutrients
in one small place with a lot of sort of pressure
and potential energy.
Then in the springtime, sprouts.
And we see a seedling sort of growing towards this ultimate
destiny or manifestation, which is the flower.
And the seed pot or the fruit is often as associated with
the harvest season and the preparation for another cycle.
So that's also, yin is the formation of new seeds.
And that could be in the fruit or in a pod.
Another application of this in thinking about resilience
and the nervous system, just to illustrate this model
and its utility a bit more,
is thinking about the stress response.
So there's a shock.
We have a activation of the nervous system.
An activation of the sympathetic nervous system
with adrenaline, a stress response.
Ideally in a healthy system,
we have this sort of peak performance,
running away from a predator
or something that you've been planning for
and performing in a play or a theater performance.
And then the nervous system, in a healthy state,
should have a chance for returning to safety
or rest or resolution.
And rest and restore and nourish
before another cycle of the shock.
And of course,
this is an expression of health and balance and harmony.
And as I was sharing in the lecture
about nervous system health,
there is a pattern in our society where
our nervous systems are in a constant state of activation
and not given a chance to restore
and find rest and a perception of safety and rest.
And that can create fatigue
because we're not getting adequate balance
of action and rest.
To illustrate this through another world model,
Ayurveda comes to us from Southeast Asia.
And the word Ayurveda is made up of two Sanskrit words.
Ayu, which means life,
and veda, which means the knowledge of.
So this is not explicitly a medical or a healthcare system.
Again, it's very much a way to live.
It's a spiritual tradition.
And knowing about life
and how to cultivate life is Ayurveda.
Ayu or life is composed of four essential parts,
which is a combination of mind, body, senses, and the soul.
So again,
a holistic perspective of wellbeing
that incorporates not just the body
but other aspects, the soul and the mind.
And what you'll see when you take a closer look
at the Ayurvedic doshas
and the energetic structure is again, you can see elements.
In this case, water, fire, air, ether and earth.
And I've been forewarned
to not try to make a direct comparison, for example,
between Ayurvedic fire and Chinese fire
or Chinese Earth and Ayurvedic Earth.
There is definitely some linkages to be made,
but they are different traditions
and you can't make direct comparisons.
For your reading for this week,
there was a link to a dosha quiz,
which is a way to kind of understand your personal patterns
with regard to mood as well as physical tendencies
through the doshas Pitta, Vata, Kapha,
which are represented in the five elements.
And something to emphasize there is that
the goal is to achieve a balance of all three doshas,
but most of us are born with a dominance in one
or perhaps a deficiency in another one.
And so learning to assess your strengths
and weaknesses as you would in sort of any endeavor
can be a way to best design your lifestyle
for health and wellbeing.
And this is another sort of system
or worldview for not only looking at physical health
and wellbeing or emotional health and wellbeing,
but also looking at how to move through the world.
Pitta and Kapha are often seen as sort of opposite
with Pitta being a very athletic, type A personality.
With Kapha being much more calm, quiet, still.
And what I have seen in our culture is
an over preference for a Pitta body type
and way of being in the world
and a shaming of sort of a Kapha body
which tends to be rounder,
perhaps associated with more obesity.
But that's a cultural preference.
That's not necessarily true
when it comes to assessing health,
especially in a more balanced expression
of a Kapha way of being in the world.
And then to take us back to old history
in the European tradition,
this is a representation of the Hippocratic medicine system
and also Galenic medicine.
So Galen is considered,
both Galen and Hippocrates are considered the fathers
of modern medicine,
although it's sometimes hard to see how that is the case.
But I think part of the reason it's seen
as the root of the history of modern medicine is that
ancient Rome and ancient Greece were considered
the root of particularly the sciences
in the western tradition.
And Galen was the chief physician
for four consecutive Roman emperors.
So this was the system of medicine of Rome
and sort of their prominent time of colonizing
and spreading settler colonialism throughout Europe,
which then set the stage for colonial
and colonizing behaviors throughout the rest of the world.
But what you can see here in this model is again,
this connection to the elements.
And it's hard to know if this came from travel
and trade with Southeast Asian
or Chinese or African nations that were using these systems.
That's probably part of the influence.
But I think it's interesting to see that
even the roots of the modern medical system
was based on these elements
and these energies which are very closely related to nature
and life stages.
When it comes to other traditions,
I'm still piecing together
systems that come from the Celtic tradition.
And some of this comes through conversations with Nicole,
who you'll have a chance to listen to
in the other assigned lecture for this week.
So much of the knowledge of the Lyceum, or Path of Pollen,
Celtic shamanic medicine system is not written.
So I couldn't find any diagrams.
I've only seen descriptions.
And that's part of the reason it survived
into these generations.
The majority of pagan or Earth-based medical
and lifestyle systems, spiritual systems from Europe,
if they were in the written word, they were burned and lost.
So the Lyceum tradition in many ways survived
because it was never written, it was never documented.
It was passed down from mouth to ear for centuries.
And it's an ancient healing tradition.
And some of the ways you'll hear
a little bit more depth when Nicole talks about this,
but a lot of these traditions were what's called
hidden in plain sight.
So the Path of Pollen and the connection to beekeeping
allowed the practitioners of this way of being in the world
to be connected to really common agrarian practices
like beekeeping.
So they were able to keep these sacred tools
such as these smoking canisters,
which would be used for Mugwort and yarrow
and other aromatic plants,
and they would use them for the bees,
but then in the nighttime when they were gathering
for ceremony, they would use the same tools.
So to Roman or other religious
folks enforcing religious rules of the time,
they looked like innocent household or farming tools,
rather than spiritual tools.
Nicole also mentioned that the Lyceum tradition
has something that mirrors the chakra system.
So this is a photo of the chakra system,
which comes to us from Ayurveda.
And the Lyceum system has the same model,
although instead of chakras, it's stars and roses.
And I wasn't able to find an image of that
because it's not a written tradition,
but just to share that there's that synchronicity
and alignment between these two ancient traditions.
And then the musical scale, do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do
is also aligned with the vibrations of the energy centers
of the body similar to the chakras.
And that singing scale was a way to hide these traditions
through songs and stories.
So my exploration of plant medicine in Celtic
and European traditions mostly feels incomplete,
again, because not a lot of it is written down
or it's taken from,
basically the science is taken out of
the spiritual tradition
or the folklore that it was based in.
And one example of that is you may have heard of
witches on broomsticks and seen this image,
and that's actually a metaphor
for the use of Datura for flying.
Datura is a psychedelic
and journeying plant that comes to us from
the European tradition.
And particularly in times when gathering as medicine women
or witches was no longer considered safe,
they would gather on the astral plane
and not in the physical plane
by taking these journeying plants at the same time
and communing in those ways.
And Datura is a plant that is often absorbed
through the skin
or through an area where there's a lot of capillaries.
So the broomstick was actually a really convenient mechanism
for applying Datura to the handle of the broom,
and inserting it intravaginally
because the vaginal mucus membrane has a lot of capillaries
and is a really great way to receive these medicines
that are absorbed transdermally.
So witches flying on broomsticks
was a metaphor for using what's called flying ointment,
which often featured Datura or Belladonna or Henbane
and was used for metaphorically flying and meeting.
In my own explorations,
I feel a strong affinity to Raspberry, Hawthorne and Elder
as quintessential plants from the European tradition.
But a lot of this just comes through feeling
as well as the richness of folklore
and myth around these plants that come from countries
like England and Germany and Italy.
And I wanted to share that a lot of my understanding
of plants from my tradition just came from
more of a body knowing.
And an example of that is for Mugwort.
So this is a bit of a personal story.
And when I was in student and herbalism school,
I started taking Mugwort
because it was bitter
and I was looking for a digestive bitter.
And so this is one that just showed up on my chart
of digestive bitters.
I said, okay, I'm gonna take this bitter herb.
And this was at a time where I was really coming
much more from a scientific perspective
thinking about these plants
from a more reductionist perspective.
It's this bitter plant and I'm gonna take it
and it's going to engage with my bitter taste receptors
and have this effect.
And after taking Mugwort for a few months before meals,
I had this experience of
waking up in the middle of the night
with this itchy red skin all over.
And I had enough of a mindfulness practice
that I didn't panic,
and I just chose to sit for a little while
and kind of figure out what I should do.
I mean, of course I considered running out
to the 24 hour pharmacy and getting hydrocortisone cream,
but something told me to just sit with it
and see what was going on.
And in the process of sitting and trying to clear my mind
and sort of sit in the discomfort of feeling itchy all over
this,
basically I started writing
because I kept having these phrases that felt like poetry
in my mind.
And I ended up writing something
and then reading it and I was like, this is a poem.
And then I didn't really know that it was connected
to Mugwort until a few weeks later,
one of my herbalism teachers posted a blog about Mugwort
and there were so many themes from her description
of the spiritual benefits of Mugwort
that it was just really clear to me
that Mugwort was teaching me what else it was good for
from a non-scientific perspective.
So I'm gonna share that poem
and also an excerpt from that blog from my teacher,
Larken Bunce, so you can see it for comparison.
So this is the poem that came through
in the middle of the night.
She guides me deliberately into the darkness.
She hands me the sword of discernment.
What serves, what doesn't,
and patiently she teaches me to wield it.
She shows me my roots, my sacred resource.
She stirs, dredges, prods at dark pools of resistance,
reminding me to savor contemplation,
loosening the grip of composure,
embracing doubt and the unknown,
letting go into reckless wild abandon.
She connects me to the flame within,
teaching me to feed, protect, and live it.
Illuminating dank, dusty corners.
Reminding me that I'm beautiful in there.
Then she walks with me back to the light
and reveals that she is me.
And the artwork kind of came later
and includes some lavender and rose
and very Artemis like archer with the New Moon.
And you know this poem,
for those of you who have more experience with
spiritual explorations of the divine feminine
in any tradition, may not seem that profound.
But for me, coming from a primarily scientific worldview,
I couldn't believe what was coming through my mind.
And I've since written more poetry.
I share a poem also in the discussion with Nicole,
but this to me was one of my first clear examples
of the plant teaching me what it was good for
because there were no more guides
from my European tradition there to teach me.
And of course that wasn't entirely true
because just a few weeks later,
Larken Bunce who had been teaching my phytotherapy
and pharmacology class
and from a chemistry perspective posted this blog.
This was an Autumn blog.
So you you'll hear some of that.
And Larken Bunce is one of the co-directors
of the Vermont Center for Integrative Herbalism,
which was co-founded by her and Guido Masé
and Betzy Bancroft.
So this is what Larken wrote about Mugwort.
"I especially like Mugwort
and other members of the Artemisia genus,
like wormwood and sweet Annie.
These are cousins of desert Sage.
A familiar herb used as smudge in the Southwestern US.
The namesake of these plants is the Greek goddess Artemis.
She was a moon goddess,
encouraging connection to the darkness within.
That same inner darkness that we retreat to
for contemplation and reflection.
Carrying a bow and arrow she was also a keen huntress,
using her skills to protect the forest
and all of its creatures.
She was said to be especially concerned
with the health of young girls and birthing women.
But just as she protected
and brought fertility and health to those in her care,
she brought also illness and death.
And so she helped mediate the natural balance of dark
and light, growth and decay.
As the green slips away from the Vermont hills
and the animals gather food
and find warm dens for a long rest, Artemis is at work.
Now is the perfect time to use the plants that bear her name
to help us do the work suited to the season.
I often call on Mugwort, wormwood or sweet Annie,
whether as smoke, tea,
or small doses of tincture
when someone is having a hard time choosing what to nurture
and protect and what to let fall away.
Mugwort is known for bringing more vivid dreams to sleep.
But I also think of this plant
when someone has trouble visualizing their life dreams
or might know what they desire,
but can't fight to make it happen.
Here, Artemis lends the skills of an archer,
one who can select a target
and then defend the path to its realization.
I have also found that when someone is challenged
to take care of themselves,
especially if they've been nourishing others
at their own expense,
Mugwort can encourage self-preservation
so that tending others is a sustainable act."
So here's an example of a predominantly European plant
with myth and folklore and teachings,
not only about physical health and wellbeing,
but about ways of being in the world
that are connected to nature and more spiritually balanced.
And it really took this kind of convoluted,
non-linear path for me to discover
one of the greatest gifts of this plant.
So wrapping this up,
what I see as a theme across all of these
folk medicine systems is again,
that idea of balance and supporting health
as the primary foundation to basically make the body,
to remove the experience of disease.
If we support the physiology, there's no room for pathology,
which is a very different approach from
the predominant medical system
of this time in conventional medicine.
And what I've learned through my explorations
of these multiple cosmologies for health and wellbeing
is that we're really in this very unique time
in human history where we see physical disease
as the predominant goal in target for medicine.
This is a really unique time.
It's only been about 100 years
that medicine has been practiced in this way.
So this is something to consider as well.
Why is it that there is such disregard
and ignorance for these medical systems
that humans have been using for centuries?
And the reason they've been around for centuries
is that they work.
If they didn't work, they would've been abandoned
and they certainly wouldn't have been used
in multiple places around the world.
And again,
bringing back to the idea of the wellness foundation,
which is the physical body as well as the emotional body.
So as we transition into discussions
for the second half of this week,
I want to put forward some definitions of colonialism
and globalization
and consider these world medicine systems,
both historical and current,
because these are systems that are still being used
in the world today.
And pose some questions for you to think about
in preparation for the next lecture.
So colonialism is defined by the Oxford Dictionary
as the policy or practice of acquiring full
or partial political control over another country,
occupying it with settlers and exploiting it economically.
And Patrick Wolf, who is a scholar of colonialism, says,
"Settler colonialism operates through a logic
of elimination, characterized by relations of domination,
subjugation and dehumanization
that eventually becomes woven into the fabric of society."
And we're gonna be exploring specific political
and historical events that document
the ways that this relate to the current medicine system.
We live in a time of globalization,
which is defined as the increasing interaction of people
through the growth of the international flow of money,
ideas, and culture.
Often it's described as an economic process of integration,
but there are social
and cultural aspects as well through that exposure.
So it's not just about the exchange of goods and services,
but also exchange of technology,
which can include practices, ritual, also literature.
So what I want you to be considering
for the next couple of days is
where does colonialism and globalization apply
in modern herbalism?
How might you see those influences at play?
How are they still relevant?
And specifically,
how does it relate to cultural appropriation
and appreciation?
So this is a free write for you to do,
one or two pages just handwritten after this lecture,
and to bring with you into the next lecture
where we will be exploring
indigenous expressions of herbalism in globally,
but also in the European tradition,
and also considerations around herbal justice.