drink tea, give thanks

So, you've decided to try an herb, to come into the herblore of the ancestors and let it heal you. Perhaps you've come intrigued on your own, or hearing from a kinsman, or maybe prescribed by an herbalist. You've gathered the herb, from field or from market, and now before you, you've prepared decoction or infusion. What is the optimal way to gain all the healing the herb can bring? Don't just drink the tea, and do not make the mistake of thinking that the remedy is entirely material or chemical. Best it is to welcome the spirit of the plant within, giving thanks, and let your imagination glide along its subtle, energetic workings. If you let your tea be a meditation, you will find you get much more out of the medicine, and the plant may share secrets with you.


drink tea, give thanks.
sip
and welcome
the weed within.
close eyes, let light
dance within flesh, feel
wort's wight move
within, knowing
just where to go ; open
to where that green, tawny doctor
goes, altering, sifting, shifting,
speaking
words of scintillation,
hael and maegen glow. let
odr follow through fields of corn,
drink in field, let kindreds
of weeds come alive and live
in mind and heart
and body and vision. Dream lazy
and easy, alert and relaxed,
follow herb's easings,
glidings, subtle growth within.
Curious, that plant's spirit,
knowing how to grow in earth,
finds new soil strange within psyche,
neurons, tissue and blood, grows new,
sprouts, flowers, finds its life within you.
You are unwhole for not having tasted
enough of ecosystem, drink world in,
body yearns and needs, caress, embrace,
beheld. Welcome wights of meadow
and field, mountain and dale, river,
pasture, marshland, high alpine wood,
stark desert shrub. Your mind is deluded
and thinks it is human. You are an open primate
whom all Being inhabits, if you allow,
and be whole. Open your heart.
This is healing. This is religion.
This is how it was always meant to be.
Wort well wots the ur-days of yore
and right now takes you into that eternity.
Breathe.


Now the plant lives within you. It will, from time to time, wish fellows of its own folk to come and visit. Then is the time to drink more tea. It is likely you've been brainwashed from an early age to think of all such meditation as so much hogwash and mumbo-jumbo, and even if you're willing to engage it, it's for "relaxation", but is "really" "all in your head", so you may be tempted to think. Resist this temptation. You have taken the plant within you, and a gift calls for a gift. The plant has worked good for you ; speak well of the plant. Sing the plant, draw the plant, write the plant. Do justice to that which has worked you good. You've initiated a relationship. Try to suspend the part of your mind that dismisses such as "woo woo", and remind yourself that this is as old as humankind, and the most natural way of being. Walk about knowing your health is not separate from health of fields and meadows, mountain and marshland. Alive within you, alive without you. Hail!