The Healer's Dharma
Notes from meeting a mentor
Being in your twenties and discovering plant magic for the first time is an enchanting rite of passage. In my days as a young herbalist, I devoured the works of Juliette de Baïracli Levy, Rosemary Gladstar and Rosita Arvigo as I explored the plant world around me. I tasted bitter tinctures, grew fiery hot peppers for cider, wildcrafted plants in collective herb walks. I made friends with the plant kingdom first, in coastal Georgia along the tidal marshes, in the High Desert of Central Oregon and finally in the botanically abundant forests of Western North Carolina.
I was first introduced to herbs by a little Strega-Nona witch in my parents’ church, Mrs Townes. She wouldn’t have called herself a witch, being a devout Christian woman, hunched over from decades of gardening making herself shorter than most adults. She was small but commanding. When I was very young, I would help her clean her home. She would pour PineSol into boiling hot water and we’d wipe down every surface in her long, shotgun style house, white floors & cabinets and layers of white paint on the baseboards that glistened with the steaming hot cleaning mixture. I remember a photo of the President hung by her telephone on the wall and I was amazed that she knew him. Her magic wasn’t with politics, it was with plants, they couldn’t wait to grow around her. My memory of her includes shamrocks that leaned in to be closer to her as she passed. She gave me a little set of strawberry plants after I helped her clean one day and I took them home, cradling them like newborn chicks. I planted them in my backyard and remembered squatting down to watch them grow. In my small heart, I desired them to grow at cartoon speed, filling up berries with juice like a water balloon. I was content with my reality of just looking at them, seeing the dirt disturbed around My Garden and felt excited for a new thing that was only mine. I’m the 4th of 5 kids so everything in my life was in a custody negotiation with my siblings. That moment though, plants had full custody of me. The idea of growing food to eat, flowers to smell, medicine to heal was intoxicating to my fairy tale heart. I began to dream about plants, along with the usual characters of serpents and dragons. It was when I first consciously planted them did I begin dreaming them.
In my twenties, when I was catapulted into herbal knowledge (thanks to the other witch in my childhood, my sister) I found the lineages of women in plant medicine. Rosemary Gladstar’s school is where I studied, completing her course and receiving a diploma for my magical efforts. Rosemary’s Sagittarius spirit is all through her teachings and I loved learning mostly from her wild spirit. I read Juliette’s book and fell in love with her personal myth. My first overseas trip in life was to Greece, along with my sister, to find the forgotten places that Juliette lived. I traveled to Greece for my first Saturn return and to bury the symbol of my failing marriage, a scrap of my wedding dress. Juliette was the draw for my visit to Kythera, an island off Crete, the birthplace of Aphrodite. Kythera is a large island known for the mythical, sea foam birth of the Goddess and the heart shaped stones along the coast but largely not to the regular tourist route of the Greek islands. The ocean makes for a rough passage to the island based on the currents that flow in between it and Crete. Raising her hounds and squatting in ruins along the sea, Juliette lived a life from another time. I wanted to get a glimpse of that old life (and maybe see Venus), so we traveled from Athens to Crete to figure our way to Juliette…but the sea was too wild to take the boat to Kythera. Instead, we found western Crete a place in its own time for us. I buried the dress scrap in Delphi. Another story…
In the pantheon of women herbal mentors, Rosita was another tier, she invited the energetic lore of the plants with her book Spiritual Bathing. When I was exactly twenty years old, I read that book and following her guidelines for protection. I believe she became a guardian angel for my first solo quest across the country. Following a dream, with a heart full of love but not much else to my name, I drove from Georgia to Oregon in my tiny little Geo Metro car, protected by the flower magic Rosita shared. I’ve recommended her work since.
Twenty six years later, I was able to stand in an auditorium in the woods and meet her. She spoke at a conference here in Western North Carolina in May, days after my birthday (11th House Mercury Year, with Jupiter, Mars & Saturn also all activated) and Rosita was my entire reason for attending the conference. I loved the plant walks and other lectures I attended, but none compare to meeting an early mentor in person. A bonus to witnessing her, I was able to ask her a question about dreams, serpents and herbs. Asclepius & Hygeia magic
As I sat listening to her keynote, I took notes both as an herbalist and an astrologer. I wanted to share those notes here and my thoughts on the experience,
meeting a mentor days after going into an 11H year = astrology good
The Healer’s Dharma. Notes from Rosita Arvigo’s lecture.
‘You will always feel inadequate. This is humility’
It is vital to have regular exchanges with your colleagues
Nurture two things: Dedication & Surrender to your practice. These are easier said, than done, but both are required for service.
Have a generosity of spirit
be a comedian, pray, stand in love
whisper a prayer 9 times to change the field of energy. This was taught to Rosita by her teacher, Don Elijio, who learned it in a dream. Don Elijio was a Maya Shaman and Rosita’s mentor and teacher. He lived to be 103 years old and shared his century of magical, botanical wisdom for her to continue on.
Charge for your service. Charge what makes life possible for you
“Don’t be dazzled by symptoms. The symptoms are a secondary signification of a primary problem.”
Always say something positive to your client. This will be what your client remembers long after the session.
Five things for a healer: Faith, Love, Water, Plants & Prayer (She repeated this five times, holding up her hand and counting on her fingers)
Know your specialty. Do not spread yourself across too far with distraction
She gave a quote to warn those frozen in their study, who have not chosen to become themselves after years of study:
“The song that I came to sing remains unsung to this day.
I have spent my days in stringing and in unstringing my instrument.
The time has not come true, the words have not been rightly set; only there is the agony of wishing in my heart.”
-Rabindranath Tagore
This is your sign to begin. Start before you’re ready.
Lastly, she spoke of The Serpent. Toxic and medicinal. The symbol of health, from the rod of Asclepius and ancient Greece.
The toxic and the healing is the cycle of the serpent’s transformation. This is what we’re individually called to do in our lives: transform. Our circumstances, fate, choices and relationships will never be ideal but they will always be our own. From those circumstances, choices and relationships do we transform the poison into our healing.
In The Dream Covey, the year long course I’m teaching through the The Decan Walk , I have been teaching about Asclepius and the dream abaton. The healing that can ribbon through the dream world, with the aid of plants and preparation, is a phenomena. Our personal medicine is captured in the dream for us to observe, negotiate with and craft. What spells do we cast with the dreams we have?
We have had thousands of years of astrologers, healers, artists, writers. Nothing you can create, craft, concoct or delineate will be new to the world, but until you create it, craft it, prepare it or speak it…it will never be made by you. Dream it.
Little strawberries grow from baby plants each spring. Little serpents dance in the waters of a child’s dream.
Healing transformation continues to undulate in the curvature of fate.
Rosita & Don Elijio
spell it,
Christa
This is beautiful, Christa. Thank you for sharing