"Plants as Spirit Helpers"

"The Shaman Way: Plants as Spirit Helpers"

By Shaman Elder Maggie Wahls

A Shaman learns to use the assistance of animals in journeying and in healing, but also enlists the power of plants - as spirit helpers. Plants are a powerful source for healing. All things on this planet garner their power from the sun and as plants live and breathe the sun, they as a whole have much to offer. Plants however live at a lower vibration than people or animals. They move more slowly and can have a much longer life than humans in some cases such as the giant sequoia. So their power is used for longer methods of healing just as the herbologist prescribes doses of tinctures for several days.

How do you choose which plants to work with?

Each plant has a particular kind of power to it. Some plants are for growth and some for retardation, some for light and some for dark. Each plant has two sides to it as well. The outer side - that which you see with your physical eyes; and an inner side which you can learn to see with your inner eyes. Sometimes the inner side is not a plant at all but an insect or some other being.

The Inner Side of Moss

I was walking in a strange forest far away from my home as a young girl enjoying the day and not paying attention to my path. Suddenly the sun disappeared behind a dark ominous cloud and I realized that it would soon be storming and worse than that, I was lost! I began to run in the direction I thought would take me home. But it just went deeper and deeper into the dark forest where the trees were now being whipped back and forth by the rushing wind. Leaves blew across my face as the sky turned darker and darker. The rain started to come down in a hard pelting that hurt my bare skin and I knew I had better take cover and try to remain calm. I found an open trunk of tree, hollowed out by a lightning strike many years before that offered some shelter now so I jammed myself inside and began to cry at my situation. I recognized the moss growing inside the tree trunk as the same moss my mother used for a soup we all liked very much. I wished I could go right now and take some of this moss to my mother and she would make us all a hot bowl of soup. I looked again and there were little green people standing in the moss no bigger than the moss itself and I told them to get my mother. I must have fallen asleep there because when I opened my eyes my mother and father were lifting me out of the tree trunk. We went home and my mother had prepared the moss soup earlier in the day for our supper. It never tasted better than it did that day!

Copyright © 2007 Shaman Elder Maggie Wahls. All rights reserved.

Excerpt from her online Shamanism course
Discovering the Shaman Healer Within: Apprentice Course.
http://www.selfhealingexpressions.com/course_overview_24.shtml