I am attempting to re-tell a story in which I myself am just at the beginning of. I did not write this story, it is as old as time. This is the story of ritual; of life itself, and the responsibility that comes with being something. It is the story of rituals that maintain balance and promote life. This story begs us to act as though the sun would not rise if we did not also rise with it. It calls us to see the interconnectedness of everything, the sacred in everything. This story invites us to live as though there is the utmost importance in every press of the keyboard, every interaction and word breathed into existence (or consciously kept to the self), and every attempt to come from the heart. This story gives me purpose. It reminds me of who I truly am: a steward to the earth and all its creatures, both a permanent and temporal being, and possibly the creator itself, or at least a tooth in the mouth of it.
Thank you for being here for its unraveling.
Water is boiling on the stove and I am singing.
This is water that I collected from a spring nearby. It is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen, with water bubbling graciously from the ground. A quiet, sacred nature surrounds it. It is the type of sacredness that exists in all natural life, but has been dimmed or built over or abused in the name of “capital” and “growth”.
When I visit the spring, I bare gifts and of course, song. The act of singing to something was not taught to me, at least not by my mother or her mother or my fathers’ mother or her mother, although I know they sang in their ways. This was taught to me by people who have not forgotten what it means to be human. People who live by the law of reciprocity and ayni; “today for me, tomorrow for you.” These people sacrificed much in order to keep their indigenous ways. To those who taught me how to sing, who showed me through ceremony who we all once were, who sparked re-membrance into every atom of my being, who taught me to give and then receive; thank you for giving this map of life back to me. Thank you for keeping the holy in life alive.
The song I sang to the boiling water was more like a sound that is much older than I and might have arrived at the same time everything came into existence. The tea kettle rang her own song of joy and aliveness. I listen to the cry of the kettle and am told “the water has boiled and has known boiling since we knew fire and well before. They have known each other since the beginning, and still she never tires of boiling; she* embraces the fire and the burning. I wonder how I burn.
*When I use “she” or any other pronoun, I am not assigning a gender to the subject. I am naming the energy of that thing as it appears to me in that moment. There have been times where god has been a woman because I needed it to be. God has also taken on the form of a father, a grandparent, nothing and also everything. God and other beings many times take the form of it or they. It is not to say that god or any thing is a man or woman or grandparent in form, but holds the energy of that thing.
The water that is boiling is intended for cacao. I am not talking about Hershey’s chocolate, here. I am talking about beautiful, unprocessed, pure cacao. This is a new ritual for me. I have had “ceremonial” cacao before, but never felt called to deepen my relationship to it or drink it on my own accord. Cacao was always the girl at my friends’ party who I knew and liked and got on well with, but would never ask to hang out one on one. Not until I found Cuatro Manos y Cinco Volcanes; a cacao farm that is indigenous owned and operated. Even then, I used cacao sparingly. On my recent trip to Lake Atitlan, I met one of these people who I thank and thank and thank every day. A real medicine man; a man who makes fires, burns candles day and night to “feed” the land, a man who studies nature and knows her by all her infinite names. He told me, “Your path is one of love and beauty. Your gift is how much you love, and you put that love into everything you do. So drink cacao. Drink lots of cacao.”
A beautiful cup of rose cacao from Nantli Cacao. San Marcos, Lake Atitlan
The spring water is poured and I mix the cacao with a tool made by the ones who grew the cacao. It comes from a far away land called Hawai-i in which I have never been. I have never poured cacao, planted cacao, harvested cacao, seen cacao in its homelands, or sweated for cacao. Yet I am here, doing my best to love and respect it as best I can. I know it is sacred. I know because I was told it is by the ones who grew it. But even more, I can find its sacredness in what it gives to me. It asks me to become someone I usually don’t have to be. At least not at first glance.
I don’t have to have reverence; for anything. I don’t have to. I can live without giving. I can live without recognizing the interconnectedness of all things. To what degree of happiness, grace, and love, I cannot calculate with numbers. I can only speak of the life I lived before reverence and deep love, and it is no where near as fulfilling and beautiful as my life now.
This is not the first time I sat with a plant I know (on the surface) nothing about. At seventeen I met psilocybin and have had a beautiful fourteen-year relationship with them since. They are one of my oldest and dearest friends. When we sit with sacred plants such as cacao, psilocybin, ayahuasca, tobacco, etc., there is a familiar feeling as though we’ve been there before. As if we know this plant, this friend. This ally of light and love. I believe they show us who we are, and who we aren’t, as well as things beyond our knowing.
After visiting Peru, I brought back hape. Hape is another sacred medicine made from tobacco and the ashes from different trees that grow in the jungles of Brazil. I have never seen these trees, processed the medicine, grown the tobacco, or been a part of a process that I am so grateful exists. I did not learn the songs that are sung before you blow the snuff into your nose, but I sing my own.
Origin Stories, Medicine, & the Importance of Ritual
When I sit with these plants, I often wonder where they came from. Who knew how to grow, dry and process tobacco? Who went into such deep listening and relationship to this plant to know what it is, how to sing to it, and to make it into something we can use. Who heard psilocybin speak through a pile of dung, saying, “I can help you”?
Two years ago I did a tobacco diet. If you are confused or appalled, I understand. If you told me about a tobacco diet and told me it healed you ten years ago, I would not have believed you. Tobacco and diet are not words put together often in the Western world. But in South America and among the Shipibo people, a tobacco diet is known to be medicine to the body, mind, and heart. Tobacco in many indigenous traditions is considered to be a master plant. That means it is the plant held with the highest regard; it is sacred. Tobacco is sacred, yet widely abused and as the plant has communicated “raped” in our modern day world.
There are a few different origin stories I have heard of the sacred plants and how and why they came here, but they all ring a similar tune; the plants came to help us, to remind us how to walk a good way through this life, and how to remember who we are when we forget. When the plants came into the world, they rode on the back of an anaconda in a river. All the plants were there: psilocybin, the cacti, ayahuasca, all of the plants, and at the head of the snake was tobacco.
When you sit with these sacred plants in a good way, they heal the heart, the mind, and the body. They purge old energy, stories, trauma, illness, and pain. Some would say they connect them to god or the source. I would say all the plants do this but through their lens. You will experience Source through psilocybin, but it will be through the mushrooms’ playful eyes. Ayahuasca will show you Source, but through a dark or symbolic way. (I do not mean dark as in evil; there is much to find in the dark that is good) Tobacco is different. The way it has been explained to me is that tobacco will bring you to Source, and then step aside. Want clarity? Sit with tobacco. Want grounding? Sit with tobacco.
Everything is God
My curiosity with medicinal plants first began with the ones I would describe as “loud.” It’s easy to hear someone or something that’s screaming! Mushrooms are loud, cannabis is loud, ayahuasca is loud. But what about the medicinal plants that are more subtle? Like the so called “weeds” in your yard, what do they have to say? What are their medicines?
Let’s take an apple, for instance. You might not consider an apple medicine, but does it not feed? Does it not provide nutrients? There have been times where I’ve held an apple, a fruit, anything I’m about to eat or use and I look at it and say “who are you? Where did you come from? What did it take for you to get here?” Once, after a mushroom ceremony, I brought an apple and a banana for us all to share and eat. As we looked at the apple, we all heard the same message: this was not a real apple. It told us its story of being sprayed and poisoned and made to grow in unnaturally straight rows. It said it is not what an apple was meant to be, and so we blessed it and thanked it and apologized for the cruel, unruly life it had been put through. It was made to be something that looked like an apple, but at its core was anything but. It was a representation of our society, void of sacredness and ritual, convincing all that they are mere products to be sold and nothing more.
I recently met a Tz’utujil Mayan shaman who said that we were convinced that god was in the sky so that we wouldn’t recognize her in the earth and in everything we see, feel, taste, smell, touch, and could possibly love. When god is not “here”, everything that is here is subject to exploitation. But the Mayan people of Tz’utujil know that this is god, it is all god; it is all god becoming. Everything is perfect in its imperfection, imperfect in its perfection. So even this imperfect knowledge of forgetting god, of forgetting how to grow and treat apples, is a chance for us to find god and find the holy in everything and every moment of our lives.
An imperfectly perfect garden at Thomas’ house. San Juan, Lake Atitlan
I realize more and more in this society of convenience that we have almost no clue how anything is made or where it comes from. I want to acknowledge that this ignorance is not universal. In fact, it is probably a phenomenon that only exists in first-world countries. Don’t quote me on that, but I have a hunch. I mean, it makes sense. Most of us don’t grow cotton, don’t produce yarn or fabric to then make our own clothes with. Most of us live off of food bought from a supermarket. Most of us have items in our homes that others made, and have songs in our hearts from people we never met. In fact, there aren’t too many songs everyone could sing together. There are some. I think of bar songs or songs you’ll hear in a Catholic church or on the radio that have been playing for the past 30 years. But whose songs are these? What do they represent? What do they create?
Another image that comes to mind is the captain of the ship from the Pixar movie Wall-E who doesn’t know where pizza comes from. He begins to learn about plants and how they grow food, so he presumes pizza comes from a pizza plant. On this ship, they no longer eat food, but drinks that are flavored as things. There is no connection to soil, to earth, to pizza, and what it takes to make it. There is a total disconnect to nature and as a byproduct, to the self.
Ritual is important because it reminds us that we are a part of the whole. When we sit around the fire, when we are present with everything, when we aren’t rushing through an activity but really are taking the time to sit with it, to make it a ceremony, we remember a part of ourselves. We are reminded of the interconnectedness of all things. We can use discernment. We can decide if this is important, and if it is, how do we want to conduct ourselves in its presence? Just like we spend time to get to know our friends, our potential partners, or anyone we plan to spend time with, we can give the same attention to that which whispers. To the fire that crackles, the water that boils, the sky that has raindrops for tears, the tree that grows towards the sky and the center. How do you crackle, cry, and grow? You might find it isn’t much different than the nature around you.
Ritual connects us to the truth of the world. I do not grow coffee, but someone did. What was it like, what is it like? How would I have coffee without the one who loves and grows the coffee? How would I have anything without love? Ritual reminds us the universe is loving. We have everything because of the love and reverence someone somewhere has. Anything good that exists is because of this truth. An apple grown with love tastes different than the one grown with greed. Create this reverence in your own life, connect to the medicine that exists in every moment. Talk to your coffee, your food, your house. You’ll start to remember where it all came from. Tell me about it when you do!
And to those that never stopped sitting around the fire, thank you. Thank you for remembering how to be human. Thank you for making a map for all of us to return to when we are lost.
I pray we all remember, and are found.