The Plant Spirit Path as a Spiritual Practice

While explorations of the plant spirit path tend to appear as a sidebar to modern witchcraft, folk magic, druidry, and paganism, the plants-as-teachers and their rich traditions offer us a profound nature-centered path of spirituality that helps to connect us more to the world, to ourselves, and to the magic and medicine of the green realm.

Yours truly looking moody as hell many years back in one of my favorite green spaces

When we survey the ways in which plants have shown up spiritually for folks across time and place, we see over and over again that they sprout up as mighty teachers- showing the ways of the cosmos and the mysteries of life’s patterns. Trees have played a crucial role in all the world’s spiritual traditions, and often appear either directly as individual species or symbolically as in the world tree or tree of life as indicators of how things work and how we can create harmony in self, other, and cosmos.

As fantastic as this is, it should come as no big surprise. We are completely dependent on the verdant blessings of plants: our food, medicine, fiber, fuel, shelter, and inspiration come from them, directly. They emerged from the womb of the ocean just as we did and continue to stand tall as our deepest ancestors.

I teach (often!) that plants are the epitome of liminal beings. They are fruited in our world- we see and interact with them every day via trunk and canopy, leaf and flower, fruit and seed. But there is also a reflective aspect of the plants which exists hidden to our world- below, underneath, within the land. This aspect, the roots and rhizomes, grow down into the dark depths, the mysteries, the ground of being. Meanwhile, the canopy reaches upward into the spiraling light of the heavens which creates a sort of unified polarity, a push and pull, and here and there. Liminality in plants within my own sorcerous works means that when we connect to them in deep ways, they allow us to be connected to the wholeness of things. By engaging with the plants we can reach up into the patterns and possibilities of things or down into the dark depths where the dark cauldron of the beginningless beginning exists.

As a spiritual practice, there is one thing which stands out as most exceptional and effective to me on the plant spirit path- that which we lovingly refer to as working on one’s shit. We all have it. Patterns of disharmony- areas of our being, physical or subtle, where the energy of life simply does not flow with the grace we see in nature’s many dances. These spaces of stuck, stagnant, deficient, or excess vital force become the thoughts, feelings, diseases, pains, and narratives that, while completely reasonable in a world full of possibilities, simply do not feel like us. They are clear messages, alarms even, that something at the root level of our being has fallen out of cadence with the natural cycle of things, the flow of vitality, the nature of Nature.

The plant spirit path is a constant process of exploring these messages and considering the plant allies we can work with to explore them and release them- becoming more the best version of ourselves at every step. Always remember that nature abhors a vacuum- it is not possible that you heal yourself, even in small ways, without affecting the whole of things. So, if the plant spirit path we walk focuses on healing the self, then we are making great accomplishments.

There is also no way that we can work with the plants in any kind of intentional and dedicated way without also being drawn further and further into the reality of our own spiritual identity- as beings who are part of nature as much as any other being. The plants will reinforce as often as needed that we belong here, our presence matters, and that we have a great deal of magic and medicine to deliver into the great web of life through the kinds of beauty we create.

Again, if we get nothing else from the journey than this realization of inherent part-of-ness, then we will assuredly be the best we can be and always act for the highest good of all in ways that will be quite obviously spiritual to the outside viewer.

Of the countless aspects of plant spirit work that are deeply spiritual in nature, one more thing stands out as I write this… allyship. As human folk, many (not all, but many!) of us live in cultural spaces that have become fiercely anthropocentric. The human is the most important person in the room and all of nature if here to serve them… or in many cases, the human is the only person in the room (yuck)! By working with plants we come to realize quickly that the world is lush with persons of many varieties and expressions, many of whom we cannot even perceive. Humans, animals, insects, plants, trees, mountains, thunderstorms, and lakes- all may be indwelled by self in the same way your physical body floats in the spirit of your self-identity, your spirit.

Plant spirit path work will remind us of something we already know in the depths of our hearts. We are part of an infinite community of beings, all of whom are connected in profound and mysterious ways. Those who reach out to us and those we reach out to become our teachers and guides from across the hedge, giving us specialized access to the mysteries.

I just posted an in-depth class on this topic on my YouTube channel for you to enjoy for free… I hope you’ll watch!