Journeying into Deep Medicine, Magic, and Connection: A Comfrey Initiation

As I’ve shared before, I have personally gotten so much depth and connection from working directly with the earth for healing food, and medicine, and meeting my needs. More than just knowing or being out in nature, using nature to heal yourself and your loved ones is a profound experience. Looking at the fragments our ancient ancestors left behind, such as evidence from Utzi the Ice Man and the Siberian Ice Maiden, we know that our ancient ancestors used plant and herbal medicine extensively. They carried herbs with them, they were buried with herbs and mushrooms, and this obviously worked for them or we wouldn’t be here.  We see evidence of psychedelic mushroom use for millennia older than our recorded history, painted in caves and carved into stones 30,000 or more years ago.  We see evidence of longstanding herbal practices that stretch into pre-history–how long have humans been allied with sage, apples, or elder? We might know very little about these ancient human ancestors–but we know they extensively used the medicines of nature. Working with plants, trees, mushrooms, and the natural world deeply, to me, is a core part of finding our way back to balance with nature.  In this post, I’ll share some of my recent thoughts on moving from the mind to the heart to build deeper plant connections and relationships.  I also think this work is particularly potent at “liminal” times of year, such as right now as we come to the Fall Equinox.

A Comfrey Initiation

I recently had a very magical day of plant initiation. I always try to take opportunities to have experiential, in-person learning from people directly. I know there are a lot of online herbalism courses and some of them are quite good, but to me, there is no substitute for humans teaching humans in a natural setting.  When I take an online class, the information is transmitted in a one-way direction.  I feel like it is all learning of the mind–I watch a video in the isolation of my home on a screen. I take notes. I may have a chance to interact with the instructor or other students (or not), but most of it is all on my own.

I had known of a local herbalist, Jennifer Tucker, who was up in Central Pennsylvania, but I never had a chance to meet her till this past summer at the Hawthorn Botanical Gathering.  There, we connected and traded books.  I began reading her amazing book Evelyn’s Ways, which focuses on poulticing and topicals (an area I have wanted to learn more about).  So, I asked her if I could take a class from her. She invited me to her farm for a one-on-one session.  We began the day by going to her comfrey patch–a stream running on the side of her house with an enormous amount of comfrey and other medicines–there were hundreds of comfreys there! She had boots, but I only had a pair of hiking sandals I wasn’t keen on getting wet for the whole day, so I stripped off my shoes and went barefoot, connecting with the medicine.  She also showed me a new plant – Small Flowering Willow Herb (Epilobrum parviflorum)–which popped up in our garden this year, and who I’ve wanted to get to know.  We took our succulent comfrey gathered in baskets and bags back to her kitchen, where she show

ed me how to puree the leaves for making poultices, which could be used fresh or frozen for winter use.  She also shared with me her insights on many other plant medicines including Ghost Pipe, Pluersy Root, and Cleavers.  She sent me home with big bags of comfrey and a fresh comfrey poultice we had made–that she slid into this little cloth envelope.  She told me that I could poultice anytime I felt led.  I felt led.

That night, I went to my outdoor bathtub and took a bath, lighting candles and one of my smoke-clearing sticks to keep the mosquitos away.  I engaged in some ceremony before stepping into the tub.  Using my intuition, I first placed the poultice over my leg where there was need, where I had a recent serious cut that left a red and nasty red scar.  After some time when I felt the work of the poultice was done there, I placed the poultice over my heart and lungs and just breathed. I felt the spirit of Comfrey come to me, along Jennifer’s teacher, Evelyn Snook, and she was joined by with many women who had passed these teachings to her. I felt the lineage of this plant settling in my bones. I felt this plant unblocking spiritual blockages in my heart and lungs–grief, sadness, and pain–from the trauma of the last few years.  After the bath under the light of the moon, I harvested some more comfrey from my own plants, and then I went back into the house and processed the comfrey as she taught me, putting the finished poultices into the freezer for the winter months. From the beginning to the end of the day, I was on a journey to deepen and connect with this sacred plant medicine.

Deepening Plant Connections

I wanted to share this story for a few reasons as it illustrates some general principles for nature connection. The belief that I and many druids share is that the human world (and by proxy, the natural world) is in a state of deep unbalance because we have disconnected ourselves and our culture from nature’s wisdom, resources, and lessons–and we’ve replaced this connection with poor substitutes (technology, social media, consumption).  People who are new to nature spirituality or related paths want to understand how to deepen their practice with nature.  They want to connect and align and feel like they are human again.  And they want to do so in part because these substitutes do not work.  In fact, the more we turn to these human-created substitutes for the quick dopamine rush, the more that we feel hollow inside. The only remedy is reconnecting with nature in meaningful and deep ways. And the story above offers a philosophy for doing so. I always advocate one of the best ways of connecting with nature more deeply is learning how nature can support your needs: food, clothing, warmth, shelter–this is what humans have been doing with nature longer than we have recorded time.  And we can approach this in gratitude and respect, which teaches us a deeper connection. And for someone like me of white ancestry–I feel like this is so critical.  I have to work to unlearn the value systems that have been given to me and instead embrace my place as one of many equal parts of this great ecosystem of the planet.

Getting to know nature = creating reciprocal relationships. To really get to know nature, we need to bring ourselves back into balance and not just appreciate nature (which is a great first step) but learn to create relationships with nature based on mutuality. Because in the end, the only way humans really value nature is by seeing the value in nature.  I love herbalism and wild food foraging for this reason–we all want to be in good health and we all need to eat.  It’s an amazing experience to be sick and have nature heal you and bring you back to vitality.  It’s an amazing experience to realize that these plant and mushroom medicines are just there, waiting for us to reach out, and to take the first steps. No amount of sitting in my house and watching videos about Comfrey compared with the experience of being barefoot in the stream, harvesting comfrey that later healed my body.

Working with plants and their medicine in an embodied way. When people ask me where to start with this deeper relationship of nature, I recommend starting in herbalism because all of us need to support our bodies and health and plants and mushrooms offer tremendous healing potential. Herbalism cultivates mutuality – we learn how to tend nature and harvest from nature ethically, and we can connect deeply with ancestral ways of doing so.  I have a huge New England Aster patch blooming in our hugelkultur meditation garden right now–and you know what? Not only is that patch offering incredible pollinator support (and is just covered in bees), but there is enough New England aster in our single garden bed to give 30 people or more daily medicine, and there are enough seeds in that patch to scatter to fill a whole field with healing medicine.  This is the abundance of nature. All I had to do was create space and tend the plants so that they tend to me. Practicing herbalism teaches us that healing potential is literally free from the living earth.  It amazes me how plants can be so much more effective (and not cause the terrible side effects) of modern pharmaceuticals–especially for long-term well-functioning, long life, and managing chronic conditions.  But also, the herbal community has cultivated really healthy relationships with plants and sees those relationships from a place of mutuality. This means that if someone starts studying herbalism in their community, they will likely be taught reciprocation and honoring plants. And I will say the same absolutely cannot be said of the wild food foraging communities, which currently and most, unfortunately, are more interested in extractive relationships, hence my writings on foraging ethics.

As my story above shares, much of deepening plant relationships and reconnecting with nature is about embodied experience–I can read about Comfrey in 30 books, but if I never put a poultice on my body when I’m in need, I’m not going to understand Comfrey.  We have been conditioned by screens to assume that all knowledge transmission is the same and that everything can be done online. But no, this is not true. Now, with the proliferation of short-form video–somehow we are now told that knowledge can be gained in 15-45-second snippets.  I’ve learned a lot about comfrey before–and I’ve used it in poultices and salves.  I’ve studied books, watched videos, and learned about this plant in a lot of different ways.  I’ve even spirit journeyed with Comfrey and have painted her in the Plant Spirit Oracle.  I thought I knew her. But it wasn’t until a human being, with her deep initaititic tradition to comfrey and carrying this tradition forward opened the door for me that I now feel like I have a really deep understanding of this plant.  And what a magical and rich journey that has been.

Avoiding the glittering false allure of consumer culture. But another suggestion I have is to avoid the internet and social media and its glittering, dark allure of speedy and quick knowledge.  That’s not the way nature works.  This is not the way to learn about nature.  Screen time will not result in any deep connections. In fact, I suggest avoiding as many screens as you can.  Avoid the AI, as it is no substitute for direct experience. Replace screens with the green.  Especially, avoid the 30-second snippets on TikTok on how to connect with nature or forage for plants, because there’s almost nothing of value in this.  Plant medicine is not learned through screens, it is learned deeply by relationship building. Try to find actual human beings from whom to learn nature’s wisdom and sit with the plants yourself.  Remember that all of nature works in her time, and nature’s wisdom is in slow time.  We only get what we put into it, and that time in nature is well spent.

Getting as local as possible. But the other part of this is that I believe that if we are going to reconnect with nature in meaningful ways, this means reconnecting with nature that is just outside of our door.  It is too easy to start reading herbal books and thinking that you have to use the herbs of other continents–and I point to the proliferation of (very good) herbs like Ashwagandha or Astragalus – herbs that have been the result of successful marketing campaigns that are now here in places they don’t grow.  These herbs are wonderful herbs, and they are effective as medicine, but they do not live in my ecosystem. The only way I have access to them is based on a web of consumer-based networks that are driving behaviors that are destroying the planet. I can’t grow or harvest Ashwagandha, which means that I’ll never be able to build the same kind of relationship I have with Comfrey. I’d rather connect with Stinging Nettle, Lemon Balm, and Oatstraw or other plants that I can grow, harvest, and interact with myself that can do similar things for the body.  I feel like just as I am living in my ecosystem so are the medicines of my needs in my ecosystem. There are herbs outside my your door that can do most of what the popular consumer herbs can do. And as I’ve written about before, we don’t know where the consumer herbs are from or how they are grown or the ethics involved in their harvest.  So again, I feel it is very good to keep it local, keep it relational, and keep it centered on you are a person living in a particular ecosystem.

So, friends, go out into the parks, woods, the fields, the ditches, and your backyard.  Find your human teachers who know the local plant medicines.  Find the good ones who aren’t always sitting in front of screens, but rather the ones who have dirt on their hands and who know things passed on by other local people.  Every single person offers something to teach.  Every one of us has something to learn. May the comfrey be with you.

PS: Here’s a link to Jennifer’s book page on Evelyn’s ways. You can also see this great interview by Matthew Wood and Jennifer Tucker here.

Announcements

I have an upcoming Land Healer’s Network Call on September 23, 2024 at 8:30pm EST. You can find details and login information here!

I’ve had a few exciting appearances in 2025 that I wanted to share with you.

OBOD Gulf Coast Gathering – March 20-23, 2025  I will be the keynote workshop presenter for the OBOD’s Gulf Coast Gathering in Louisana in March 20-23, 2025. In my workshop, I’ll be sharing more about this exact kind of thing I wrote about in the post above–how to connect deeply and joyfully with the medicine and magic of the plant realms and create a joyful druid practice. Registration opens for the GCG on October 1st and more details are here: https://gulfcoastgathering.druidry.org/   I hope to see you there!

Land Healing Retreat at Dreamland with the Green Mountain Druid Order- June 13-15th, 2025. I will be collaborating with Fearn Lickfield of the Green Mountain Druid Order to lead a land healing weekend retreat at their beautiful Dreamland retreat center in Vermont.  This will be a very unique and one-of-a-kind event.  As I have more details, I’ll share them, but in the meantime, please mark your calendars if this might be of interest to you!

Other things are in the works too, so stay tuned! :). I hope to see you at one or more of these wonderful events!