Earth Magic
by Robin Rose Bennett
Excerpt from:
Healing Magic:
A Green Witch Guidebook to Conscious Living
Magic is indigenous to the earth and her processes of creation. Watch the
land come back to life in lush, flowering abundance after a volcano erupts,
covering all local forms of life with molten lava. Healing Magic is found in
what is natural, what is of the earth. We are the ones who decided sometime
in the age of "reason" to label the things of this world "mundane" and then
came to think of that as a synonym for dull and boring.
We are of the earth, and magic is inherent in our creative processes, too.
Watch a baby being born after the volcanic eruptions of labor, and there can
be no doubt that you are in the presence of the sacred. Watch and wait while
a butterfly emerges from a caterpillar's cocoon. To this day, no one knows
exactly what goes on in there. It is a mystery, yet it reveals that
transformation is a natural process on the earth.
Transformation is a process that all people are being called upon to
actively support and willingly participate in. Healing Magic can help people
reclaim the earth from those few who clearly do not love her, or life, and
return her to those billions of beings who do.
I was writing this section when the weather took a distinctive turn for the
balmy, shooting up to 68 degrees with bright sunshine for a couple of days.
I hung up my hammock, swinging for a while in "Spring's Here" bliss. The
following two days, the last of March and first of April, a blizzard fell,
covering the world here with over two feet of snow and enormously deep
drifts.
Hours before it started snowing, my cat was suddenly acting what I called
"crazed," running back and forth across the house, running outside and back
in again, and then out again. She never does that; in retrospect, it's
obvious she was sensing the coming storm.
Dry, heavy snow buried the short mountain laurel trees alive, brought old
oaks and young maples down, and bent 25-foot birches and pines so low, the
treetops were touching the ground. Snow and wind snapped power lines,
causing complete outages of life-sustaining water and heat and everything
that makes life comfortable, like electricity, lights, refrigeration, and
flush toilets. (The hammock survived.)
Life without these systems is inconceivable to a good portion of rural, and
virtually all suburban and urban middle-class and wealthy people today. Most
of us have little to no idea of how to manage if we lose our income, that
"buys" us the earth in the form of our food and shelter, our electricity,
and water that pours out of faucets all over the house.
Common conveniences (like air-conditioning) are thought of as necessities.
Poor people are getting poorer, with the decline in basic requirements for
living (actual necessities) that not having money has come to mean, like
fresh water to drink, hot water for washing oneself, or even a place to
sleep. We are utterly dependent on man-made systems, and most of us have no
idea how to deal directly with the earth.
After the storm, all my neighbors left. I didn't want to leave; it was
exquisitely beautiful and silent without electricity or people. I had spent
15 of the last 17 years of my life living in New York City. What did I know?
But I gathered wood for the woodstove that would give me fire for heat and
cooking, stored as much food as I could in plastic bags and glass jars that
I buried in the snow, and melted big bowls of snow to flush the toilet.
Fortunately, I was stocked up on food and candles and flashlight batteries,
and luckily, the folks I rented my cabin from kept a large quantity of
gallon water bottles in the garage attached to my home.
Crews were called in to help and eventually came from all over the country.
It was a week before the power lines and felled trees were taken out of the
driveway and the services were restored. It was one of the most profoundly
peaceful weeks I have ever experienced.
Everyone had been saying we hadn't had a "real" winter that year. I felt
that the earth enjoyed a long-overdue winter's nap. Before walking, late at
night, the mile and a half down the mountain to a waiting car on the main
road, my next-door neighbor said, "In 20 years here, this is the worst storm
I've ever seen." Seems we hear a lot of that kind of statement lately. It
isn't "just our imaginations" either, in the same way that it wasn't my
cat's imagination when she sensed the severity of the coming storm and
became agitated hours before it began.
by Robin Rose Bennett
Excerpt from Healing Magic:
A Green Witch Guidebook to Conscious Living
Botany and Wildcrafting for Herbalists DVD
Botany for Herbalists DVD
Susun Weed takes you on a walk with her apprentices and her goats across her land at the Wise Woman Center. In this DVD she explains the Latin naming system devised by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in the 1700's. Each herb has a family and a genus that it belongs to and a species that is its name. She explains the Tree of Life, flowering and non-flowering plants, and the reproductive cycle of flowering plants and herbs. She also teaches you about indentifying and harvesting herbs; and differentiates between annuals, biennials and perennials. As Susun says: “Weave yourself into the Wise Woman web. Join me in reclaiming herbal medicine as people’s medicine. Loving green blessings from me to you.”
Time: 1 hr, 12 min, 43 sec.
Produced in 2009 by HerbTV Studio
Price: $20.00
Order Botany for Herbalists DVD in our Bookshop
