Conscious Medicine
I haven't had time to describe the visit Crystal Bridges Museum
and the Plant Medicine tour we took on their beautiful grounds ten days ago.
It became intertwined with a book loaned to me by my friend Jessie
Vincent, entitled "Creek Indian Medicine Ways". The book was
authored by David Lewis Jr., the last of "Initiated" medicine men
(and women) of the Creek Nation. There were three classes of medicine men
described: the main, the carrier, and the specialist. The
specialists were medicine men for the sacred ceremonies of the tribe. The
carriers were persons fully knowledgeable about the gathering, preservation and
administering of plant medicine. However, only the main, initiated,
medicine people could visualize the properties and actions of the plants.
Only they could be said to "understand" the plants and to
formulate treatments based on their understanding.
The book included a list of plants used in the medicine.
This list corresponded only partially with medicinals discussed on the
tour and only partially with the much larger list of medicinal plants in my
several reference books. Mr. Lewis states categorically that the medicine
of several different plants had to be combined to synergistically treat
illness. This idea of combining qualities is also key to plant medicine
treatment by other cultures and traditions. Mr. Lewis goes on to say that
the plants themselves will not truly cure without the "words" of the
initiated healer. With this statement Lewis raises the standard of
treatment to the level of consciousness. I could gain no formulas for
healing at all from the Lewis book and had no way of truly understanding it.
Nor did Lewis intend for me or any other to be able to use his book as a
guide for treatment.
Stephen Buhner, author of "The Secret Teachings of
Plants" is a westerner, living in Vermont, who like Lewis heals from
direct knowledge of plants along with a strong sensory perception of the
patient's needs. These two healers are not of course unique. More
famous was Edgar Cayce and there are many others including those who faith heal
with their hands and the spectacular Chinese healers whose tradition gave us Qi
Gong and Tai Chi Chuan. Probably every culture in every corner of the globe
where special sensitive people were educated to connect with life, there were
healers whose consciousness was the greatest part of the cure.
Lewis says that this level of healing consciousness was taught
to the apprentice; that it took work to achieve the knowledge and insight.
In the Middle East 130 years ago Georges Gurdjieff asks his father,
"How did he learn to become an Ashokh?" the father replied,
"from his father". the boy then asks and where did he learn?
"from his father and so on, all the way back to God". In the
Creek tribe and in the land by Mt. Ararat and in all the holy places of the
indigenous cultures people were educated to sense real life.
I was educated to be successful in the unreal world of American
capitalism so I am only now trying to expand my perceptions to this connected
life. Jessie Vincent told me to hold he yarrow, to breathe it in for 20
minutes...that then I would begin to understand what yarrow was and could do.
As Above So Below
The Plants Alive model of the
Earth and Moon: 1" = 2,000 miles
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