Missing Witches - WF： Rebecca Beyer - You Can Know 10 Plants Deeply And Be A Wonderful Healer

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00:00:37.180 slash missing witches you aren't being a proper woman therefore you must be a witch 0.93

00:00:41.700 you must be a witch I did an episode about Hilda Gardner being in 0.99

00:00:49.760 last season that's awesome and I still feel like it's endless the amount to learn about her and

00:00:57.560 from her oh totally I feel like I've just skimmed the surface and I've been like writing and

00:01:02.700 researching about her for like seven years and I'm like I'm like wow there's more coming up

00:01:09.040 there's so much hi other folks who may waft in gorgeous ghosts that you are you're always

00:01:17.160 welcome and we're always electrified to have you amongst us making our questions better

00:01:22.780 making our cauldron richer our vibe bigger come to the missing witches podcast

00:01:27.740 welcome snowstorms welcome cedar groves welcome three-year-old stomping upstairs

00:01:37.600 and oversized high heels uh welcome whoever your guests and company are today and whatever

00:01:47.460 oh weights you're carrying sorrows you're carrying joys and delights they're all welcome

00:01:54.020 in this circle we make in the dark between our ears i'm so excited this gray afternoon

00:02:03.160 north of montreal because i'm sitting down with rebecca byer and i'm so excited i'm so excited

00:02:11.660 to talk about hildegard of bingen i'm so excited to talk about wildcrafting and ethnobotany and

00:02:18.740 why it matters and how we can do it she wrote the book on wild witchcraft um you can follow

00:02:26.980 her work online in so many different places that we will link to you in the show notes for this

00:02:34.140 and I'm just excited I love seeing someone who walks that academic line with witchcraft and

00:02:40.160 folk stories and folk ways um I'm just really excited to meet you thank you so much for being

00:02:45.160 here oh no problem thanks for having me yeah it's a pleasure um how are you are you okay

00:02:53.040 I'm really good I'm really great I feel like some guilt saying that I guess because a lot of people

00:02:58.840 are not doing good right now but personally I'm doing really well thank you how are you

00:03:04.180 yeah it's heavy I'm a little heavy today

00:03:07.040 borrow some of my lightness to help you feel more regulated yeah thanks

00:03:15.640 thanks I'll take it it's funny we're going to talk about potions and medicines and poisons

00:03:22.280 it's something I've been thinking a lot about I'm writing a bit about it and my daughter has a real

00:03:28.080 severe um anaphylactic allergy and and just went into shock again like two nights ago so

00:03:34.520 I'm just sort of shook and yeah that's a lot yeah yeah just wrapping my head around it all

00:03:44.000 um can you talk a little bit about that thing you know I know you've you've you've written about it

00:03:51.540 that the portion makes the poison about that um getting to know getting to know that spectrum

00:03:59.760 for each of us and what that's like the saying the dose makes the poison yeah that's one i really

00:04:06.900 love and i sometimes can remember the latin for that term but i right now of course cannot uh

00:04:12.680 and as an herbalist i think the place where you know it's kind of like you know even taking an

00:04:18.740 Advil, one Advil, make your headache go away, but 16 Advil will eat your stomach lining. So it's a,

00:04:24.660 it's a concept I think we're really familiar with regardless of whether we're in the plant world or

00:04:28.820 not, but it becomes such a big and present, like a reminder to just be really clear on what you're

00:04:36.520 taking in and what, for what reasons and how much and for how long. And I think for any, you know,

00:04:43.680 of our magical or herbal practices, it's a great way to like both physically and metaphysically

00:04:49.440 be present with that. Like if you're reading a ton of crappy, intense, hard, violent news all

00:04:55.500 the time, it might make you feel really crappy. And if you like take a break, maybe every two bad

00:05:00.220 stories and read three good stories, maybe that would kind of counteract the poison versus if

00:05:05.560 you're taking, you know, one drop of poke root tincture versus 16 drops, you're going to have a

00:05:10.140 very different experience with these low dose medicinals, whether they're plants or ideas or

00:05:15.560 concepts or feelings. How did you get started on this road? How did you start to have a relationship

00:05:21.800 with plants in this way? Well, I, you know, like every good herbalist was raised in suburban New

00:05:27.040 Jersey. I grew up in a lot of different places. My family moved a ton, but I spent a lot of my

00:05:36.420 years from like eight to 18, all over the state of New Jersey. And we actually lived rurally for

00:05:43.020 a time there on a farm. And I really fell in love with animals. We raised horses and goats and

00:05:49.680 chickens, ducks and quails. And I watched them eat plants. I fed them plants, but I didn't know

00:05:57.080 what they were eating. And I was curious about it. And I ended up, I've always been a huge nerd,

00:06:02.300 loved medieval history, which led me to, you know, one of our mutual loves Hildegard von

00:06:06.760 Bingen. And I also love to read about potions and, you know, fantasy stuff. And I think being

00:06:12.440 a Renaissance fair nerd and also a living history nerd via being a horse girl, I ended up driving

00:06:19.440 horses when I was 19 for a summer at a living history farm in New Jersey called Howell Farm.

00:06:25.200 And I also learned 1890s era gardening. So it was organic gardening techniques. And I got to do

00:06:30.840 everything with hand tools and I had never been happier in my entire life I had no tv no internet

00:06:37.240 I lived with two other young women who um also interestingly enough were both pagan which we

00:06:42.940 found out like as we secretly quietly admitted it to each other and I was just like I want to

00:06:48.120 live this way every day I want to cook with wood I want to heal with plants I want to eat

00:06:51.960 from the garden I want to secure my own meat like I want to do it all so that was kind of through

00:06:58.140 history through animals things like that I love that I also love that the hope that gives to all

00:07:05.580 our fellow suburban New Jersey people ask me all the time they're like oh you must have been doing

00:07:13.240 this your whole life you're raised with this I'm like no I only started studying plants when I was

00:07:17.460 18 so it's like there's no time that's not like too late to start yeah and how do you start I mean

00:07:26.940 I live very woods I feel I live very very woods so I could just see the mountains and lakes

00:07:33.920 stretching in the distance and even and still I feel so overwhelmed at the idea of trying to

00:07:40.400 understand the systems and the holobionts that I take up space with the plants that are around me

00:07:47.480 it just feels so overwhelming to start a practice you know consuming anything feels dangerous I

00:07:54.280 guess in part because of my experiences with my daughter I want to have those relationships I

00:07:58.520 sort of sit and pet them and like listen to them and meditate with them but how do we start yeah I

00:08:04.760 think you know I got lucky by working directly with like living breathing humans who already

00:08:10.300 knew what a lot of plants were my mentor I apprenticed with a woman named Natalie Bogwalker 0.99

00:08:15.040 who is a primitive skills and you know kind of survival gardening expert in where I live in

00:08:20.720 Western North Carolina when I first moved here, when I was like 22, I'm 35-ish now. And I now

00:08:27.400 teach with her and for her school that she runs called Wild Abundance. And I have to say, people

00:08:33.060 always ask me when I teach a foraging class, they're like, what book should I get to learn

00:08:36.780 foraging? I'm like, don't get any books on foraging. If you do have to get a book, get Sam

00:08:42.460 Thayer's books. They're all excellent. But you really want to meet plants with somebody who is

00:08:47.960 a trustworthy, preferably someone who's patient who can help walk you through how to ID a plant

00:08:53.580 in the wild. And then you can learn more about a plant through books, but I really think it's

00:08:58.660 great to find real humans. You can go on plant walks with and maybe take a foraging class with

00:09:04.640 and just do that as often as you can in lots of different seasons. Yeah. There's even video

00:09:09.960 classes, which are like a close second. Cause you can see just photos can be deceiving. It's like

00:09:14.960 getting you know catfished on online dating you never know really what you're looking at

00:09:18.460 totally and the names vary so much you know that the names in lore I was just reading on your

00:09:27.580 your blog and I was so delighted because I think the second piece I stumbled on

00:09:31.560 was about a plant that I think you call life everlasting and here we call pearly everlasting

00:09:39.180 yeah they call it pearly everlasting here as well yeah yeah and my only relationship with it is it

00:09:47.680 it smells lovely and my daughter likes to yell the name I love that so much so we run through

00:09:55.340 the woods hollering pearly everlasting that is this thing ever I'm like so delighted by that

00:10:02.020 it's a good smell it's one of our wood spells we just yell it which is great tea you know for

00:10:08.140 coughs and flus and colds and it's a really important plant in the um african hoodoo

00:10:15.140 tradition in the south especially its name you know tells you kind of what it's used for basically

00:10:21.540 everything life everlasting overall tea used in a lot of uh hoodoo ritual and um folk magic

00:10:27.660 and is also now used in appalachian folk magic but yeah you're so right you know it's

00:10:33.460 I think remembering too, the way our brains work is not a computer. You're never going to know

00:10:38.600 every plant. You're never going to know every detail, your grandmother, your grandfather,

00:10:43.500 your grand siblings, you know, your relations didn't do it like that. So you don't have to

00:10:48.240 know everything and you can still be a really knowledgeable person. You don't have to know any

00:10:52.340 Latin names. You can still be really knowledgeable, you know, it's a very Westernized way to look at

00:10:57.660 things. I'm really susceptible to that since I have a degree in plant science, I can, I'm always

00:11:02.480 to remind myself like there's many ways to know something and it's like a very like I think like

00:11:08.140 a colonized mindset to say you have to only know the plants all of them are nothing all of their

00:11:14.380 scientific facts like you can know 10 plants super deeply and be a wonderful healer and be able to

00:11:20.460 feed yourself in a beautiful way you know to help add to your diet and things like that

00:11:25.100 hmm that's such a lovely idea that you could just add a couple and it would still sort of

00:11:32.020 radically expand the number of species that you interact with one interesting thing I read when I

00:11:37.080 was writing my thesis on like the relationship between plants and people in Appalachia I read

00:11:43.360 that this is just blew my mind and indigenous folks in my area where I live in western North

00:11:48.840 Carolina ate between 1200 and 1700 plant animal and fungi and everything in between species of

00:11:55.920 beings and the average American eats 32 plant foods in their life like that variety wild isn't

00:12:05.020 that amazingly like shocking yeah we've lost so much biodiversity in our diets because you know

00:12:10.900 if you have European ancestry you have been not foraging for more than a thousand years

00:12:16.660 and it's like that's and you know of course there are people that know how to forage but

00:12:22.100 like as a community culture most people do not know anymore and we've lost so much nutrient

00:12:28.360 and medicine like access it's extremely upsetting to think about yeah it's heartbreaking to think

00:12:35.120 about and I can definitely add that to the pile of things that I have anxiety about you know I

00:12:39.900 should learn everything so I can you know somehow we can contribute to knowing everything about all

00:12:45.100 of these missing powers in these plants you know they're disappearing is there a way of of flipping

00:12:51.260 that you know where our interaction is somehow giving back to that diversity instead of thinking

00:12:57.700 from this extractive mindset i have to know before it's gone that's a really beautiful question um i

00:13:03.060 think one thing that keeps coming through for my partner and i on our little nine acre um piece of

00:13:09.020 land that we live on is wild tending. I really, this was not a new idea. Um, indigenous people

00:13:16.100 in North America have been wild tending since I think they were humans. And by that, I mean, 0.77

00:13:23.620 uh, working with existing stands of plants to propagate them, protect them, ensure their

00:13:29.000 continued survival and use them and also be used by them, you know, when we pass away.

00:13:34.840 so I read Kat Anderson's book Tending the Wild I may be saying the the title incorrectly because

00:13:41.960 there's like some great subtext in there but she is delightful and her look at how California

00:13:47.980 indigenous folks manage with fire their landscape is so inspiring no matter where you live you know

00:13:53.880 I don't live in a I live in a wet humid rainforest in North Carolina so the the concepts though of

00:14:01.120 like just focusing on your region you don't have to know everything you can't so why not focus on

00:14:07.180 your region where you live or where you spend the most time if you live in multiple places

00:14:11.000 and why don't you think about the ways in which you can become a steward of pre-existing plant

00:14:17.960 populations and you know I think of things like nettle plants really easy to id and work with

00:14:23.360 with gloves on right and mugwort and other plants that are really common or even considered invasive

00:14:30.320 We can steward them in pots on our yard or in an apartment deck, you know, that we can make

00:14:36.120 relationships by growing these plants and working with them that way or collecting seed and spreading

00:14:40.980 them if they're wild or doing activism to prevent logging in places where they grow and ensuring

00:14:46.780 that first nations people have access to be able to practice the indigenous way they developed for

00:14:51.500 like 10,000 years. So we don't have to reinvent the wheel. That's kind of some things I'm really

00:14:57.160 leaning into right now you're really thoughtful and deliberate about making sure that your work

00:15:02.200 is not just perpetuating more of this sort of colonial violence or more of this extractive

00:15:09.800 violence with indigenous communities or it seems that way it seems like like that's something that 0.63

00:15:12.840 you take really fucking seriously do you want to talk about it yeah yeah it's kind of scary because

00:15:17.500 it's such a complicated and deeply important thing to talk about and I feel like I'm lucky to get to 0.96

00:15:24.740 hear from a lot of people in my community and get to hang out with my friends who are like you know

00:15:29.900 living indigenous people and get their feedback and like be in community with them working on

00:15:35.420 plant projects ethnobotany projects especially the catawba nation with my comrade rude to lesson who

00:15:41.360 i really love who just is a bright light in the world who works with the catawba youth and we

00:15:46.480 teach foraging classes down there we have before the pandemic but um and we've worked on some books

00:15:51.880 together, making booklets about plant use that everyone can have access to in the community and

00:15:56.680 the tribal council. And I'm just thinking about like how, what are like direct actionable steps

00:16:01.580 we can take? Like my articles, I write my blog posts. I think it's good to just be making language

00:16:07.300 around stuff really like more common, but then also looking like, okay, but what are we going

00:16:11.540 to do with that? Like, I'm not going to go online and yell at someone who looks like me and shame

00:16:17.820 them because they're not maybe they haven't read any of this material yet I want to like call them

00:16:23.160 in and say hey come on let's go we're gonna do this cool thing together come on come here let's

00:16:27.320 go let's be real sometimes you do have to yell at certain people honestly I found like I think the

00:16:34.940 best thing we can do is like witches and plant people and like stewards of land is like be

00:16:40.520 patient with people who you see are trying but like not quite getting it because I make mistakes

00:16:45.160 all the time and like I need somebody to call me in so I want to do that for my community you know

00:16:50.720 yeah I do know what you mean can you talk about that sort of complexity around identifying as a

00:16:57.640 witch having a relationship with nature with spirit and finding a path to that that's not

00:17:06.940 appropriative I mean you just answered it but can you talk about it more specifically from the witch

00:17:10.860 perspective yeah it's it's one of my honestly like most passionate areas I'd love to talk about

00:17:16.540 I think for me like what I kind of advocate is not only like a bioregional diet like how much

00:17:23.120 food can we gain not gain can we find and work within our bioregion or the place that we live

00:17:28.880 biographically also how can we make our magic that way I wrote a blog post a couple years ago

00:17:34.860 called like the terroir or the I don't know how to speak French so I'm so sorry I need help

00:17:38.980 yeah wow yeah that's how magic like what does magic look like where you live and i think you

00:17:46.380 know because like i have no indigenous blood other than from my like way extinct european

00:17:51.600 ancestors in ireland and germany it's hard when you live somewhere that you are not from

00:17:56.260 historically not just because of the like complex relationships it makes with people around you who

00:18:01.660 are from here the first nations but because you kind of feel homeless in a way spiritually and

00:18:07.280 so I think there's two things. One is I think it's really important to, to have relationships

00:18:12.620 with the beings that are just around you. And I think seeking gently relationship with them,

00:18:19.880 if they want relationship with you is really important. And two is definitely seek relationships

00:18:25.280 with people who live around you, who are living humans, who are part of those communities,

00:18:29.040 if they want to be in relationship with you and, you know, to what extent that is something that

00:18:34.520 is interesting to them. So for me, that looks like teaching free or, you know, discounted

00:18:39.540 foraging classes or just making things more accessible and, um, whatever your unique gifts

00:18:44.900 are, you know, that can apply to anything. And then two is if, you know, I love, um, I study

00:18:51.380 English and Irish and also German, uh, nations of foot magic. And I know I can't just take

00:18:58.100 Irish identity and say I'm Irish. Cause I'm not, I don't, if I went to Ireland, I wouldn't

00:19:03.620 probably understand certain grannies and like be able to even understand their accents like I 1.00

00:19:07.700 wouldn't even be able to speak the same language I don't speak Irish I'd like to learn you know

00:19:12.180 it's great to draw from your folk tradition of what your ancestors did but you don't have to 0.52

00:19:17.540 worry about being like I'm a perfectly formed Irish human because you're not you probably have

00:19:22.180 like eight different you know like me with eight different kind of similar but very also very

00:19:27.760 different cultural backgrounds and so taking inspiration from the historical context of like

00:19:33.280 folk magic and rituals of your ancestors the place that you actually live and directly interface with

00:19:38.760 and your own unique gnosis and I think that is what builds a like bio-regional witchcraft practice

00:19:44.360 that can help address cultural appropriation it's almost like studying our own folk ways but then

00:19:50.780 writing our own mythologies to have an access to some some kind of personal personal power yeah and

00:19:56.840 I think folk magic is really the gateway to that because folk magic is not such a strict system

00:20:04.680 that parts of it need to all be together to be workable and whole that's why I love Appalachian

00:20:11.940 folk medicine because it's indigenous it's African and it's European combined and not by choice so

00:20:19.900 it's also forged in like fire you know but it now it exists and it's powerful and it like its

00:20:25.420 existence tells its story and I think that's really really why I love it so much because it

00:20:30.380 is the magic of the land I live on today and so how did Hildegard find you in all of that or how

00:20:40.280 do you find Hildegard in all that so I think I mentioned one of my gateway drugs to witchcraft

00:20:45.980 was being obsessed with medieval history and fantasy literature as a kid love right yeah

00:20:52.000 are like gateway drugs so here for it all the way but um I started studying I actually majored

00:21:02.240 in medieval history in college um but then my second year and I love I went to Bard which is

00:21:09.160 a small school in um like rural upstate New York and that was also where I like living rurally I

00:21:15.060 never have lived in a city again since I moved at 18 to rural New York and I'm almost 35 now and I

00:21:21.400 think it's just funny I was like got the rural bug you know but in that time I was like I want

00:21:28.100 to live in a different place like I don't like living here I struggled with a lot of mental

00:21:31.760 health problems and I was miserable a lot I was very lonely but when I met my fellow nerds and

00:21:38.800 people just living their passion in college I realized not only one that I wanted to live in

00:21:46.060 community with people because i'm an extrovert and i love people and connecting and two i wanted

00:21:51.720 to like live in the middle ages and i was like i think i can do this if i live on like a commune

00:21:56.740 and that was like what led me to study medieval herbalism anglo-saxon specifically is my area of

00:22:04.080 study and i found hildegard through studying anglo-saxon histories a little later she's born

00:22:10.580 in 1099 um or like it's she's kind of in the midst of all that stuff but um the leech books that we

00:22:17.420 mostly have access to today are from the 1300s but they're influenced by her so she also used a lot

00:22:24.220 of um folk magic in her work she would never have called it that it would have been very offensive

00:22:29.920 to her but she couldn't help but be influenced by her community and i think i just thought she

00:22:36.080 lived as an example of how we can do kind of ancestral reclamation work by looking through

00:22:41.620 the lens that she looked through to see what was really going on that like Christianity had not

00:22:47.680 stamped out yet so I do a lot of that kind of forensic medieval digging to find pre-Christian

00:22:52.920 tidbits that I want to hold on to so can you tell us more about that the traces that you see this

00:22:57.820 is something I've read in biographies of her that we can tell from the recipes from the wisdom that

00:23:05.160 she's offering that she's talking to a large spectrum of different classes of people. She's

00:23:10.800 talking to fishmongers. She's talking to women healers. She's talking to a lot of different 1.00

00:23:16.460 people, but can you give us some examples of what that really looks like? Oh yeah. So I don't know

00:23:22.400 if you've seen, but I just did an online class on her and it's actually, I'm just going to leave it

00:23:26.320 open because it's been really fun and you can sign up anytime. It's not a video and it take,

00:23:31.980 each herb she uses most famously in these kind of magical charms has its own page. So you get to go

00:23:37.980 deep with it. And my favorite is her use of mandrake. So I think that's a good one to use

00:23:43.820 as her example. Cause if you say mandrake, most people might know what that is in a very plant

00:23:49.140 illiterate world because of Harry Potter. Yeah. I was like, is that not a fictional thing for

00:23:53.680 Harry Potter? No. So mandrake is one of the original, I would say like witchy five of like

00:24:00.100 poison plants of the soul and ACA family. Right. And it's native to the Mediterranean, but Hildegard

00:24:06.300 knew about it in 10, nine, you know, 11, early 1100s. And I, she said, if a man can never take

00:24:13.280 any joy in life and basically describes a person with depression, who's just can't get out of bed

00:24:19.460 and is miserable. She says, take a mandrake at dawn and wash it in free flowing spring water.

00:24:24.680 So there's no soil on it and say to the mandrake as this soil is cleansed off of me, I can't

00:24:31.520 remember her exact charm, but it's basically down to, I was made from clay, like Adam and

00:24:35.980 Eve and this mandrake looks like a person and I'm washing that primal earth off of it.

00:24:41.560 And so too, am I like this mandrake?

00:24:43.460 And then you sleep with the mandrake in your bed and you get all sweaty and suck up the

00:24:48.120 scopolamine and all the yummy chemicals out of the mandrake root.

00:24:53.440 and then you will know gladness again it's so wild to see that she did that it's so wild

00:25:01.940 I'll open it up now does anybody want to jump in I have a question I thought you might Sonia love

00:25:07.940 oh my gosh hi hi hey y'all um Hildegard is one of my beloveds and you know I'm a recovering Catholic

00:25:20.280 so it's so and you know like you said like it's so complicated because she came to me in a roundabout

00:25:27.420 way that I could write a book about but she's here right and so I read her and I pull and I'm

00:25:35.500 I am trying to I try to extract which is the worst word and maybe that's my problem and I need to

00:25:42.940 reframe what I'm trying to get from her. But I think I get so bogged down in the trauma

00:25:51.820 of Catholicism and women. And I was, I was raised in a, in a really beautiful community. Like I'm

00:26:03.320 an Irish Catholic. So like, and I'm from Nashville, Tennessee, and I'm a sixth generation Irish

00:26:08.720 Catholic. So like I can trace my lineage to like, you know, County Mayo and they showed up in

00:26:13.720 Nashville in the 1850s. Nobody knows why they were here, but we've just been here. And so it's like

00:26:19.860 been this like Catholic, we have a good time, but then like they're just screwing women over right 0.99

00:26:26.560 and left. But then I am the fourth generation of a, of attending a private Catholic school run by 0.99

00:26:34.540 the Dominican sisters who owned their own property. Like they own this. It's not part of 0.75

00:26:41.720 the diocese. And my whole, all the women in my family have gone to school through them.

00:26:47.060 My mother worked with them for years, worked for them. And, and as a single parent, like they were

00:26:54.300 so important, these, these sisters, these nuns, and they taught me so many beautiful things about 0.99

00:27:01.620 like women, like running shit. Like I grew up, I didn't grow up with priests. Like the priest 0.99

00:27:08.920 was at church, but like I grew up on the campus every day where these nuns dressed in the black

00:27:14.980 with the white and the full thing were just running the show. They were teaching, they were 0.94

00:27:19.780 running the schools. They owned this property, this huge piece of property. They owned three

00:27:25.340 schools and then I began working with them as an adult and they they have such possibility but they

00:27:34.700 just are so wrapped up in the patriarchal religious structure of the Catholic Church

00:27:41.400 because even though they own it and run it and they could like be better they're not ever gonna

00:27:51.480 do that as a system, as a community, because they are constantly like, you know, they're the threads

00:28:01.100 are constantly interwoven with the Catholic church and the expectations, you know, and that has been

00:28:07.080 so hard for me as an adult to separate. And when I read Hildegard, I know that I want to extract

00:28:15.060 the magic that what you said about how you dissect and you get the information or you get you connect

00:28:22.320 to her in that level where she was still alive she was alive in a time where she could pull in

00:28:28.020 those folkways and also twist it and she would have she would have been so angry if we were

00:28:34.180 calling her a witch and and so when I read it I see that and it is so hard for me because I pull

00:28:41.420 that trauma of these women that I have like grown up seeing and honoring, but then also like, 0.99

00:28:48.940 what the fuck are y'all doing? So excuse my language to the child I just heard in the 0.99

00:28:54.660 background, but, um, but anyway, but anyway, that like that juxtaposition or trying to

00:29:03.380 figure that out. Do you have any advice for me other than me signing up for your class,

00:29:08.840 which we're all going to do obviously but like and like do you do you kind of feel that or did

00:29:16.020 you feel that or did that ever kind of come up with you because I feel like it's a lot of trauma

00:29:20.260 work that I'm doing to connect to her but I need to do it that's thank you for sharing that like

00:29:27.240 really personal and beautiful story I really appreciate hearing you um I for me I was raised

00:29:32.220 Unitarian Universalist so I kind of like I went to let had a Wiccan Sunday school teacher when I

00:29:37.700 was 12 and I kind of, I don't have a lot of Christian trauma. So I wish I had more tools.

00:29:43.480 Cause when I read her, I read it from a like judgmental, like pagan perspective where I'm

00:29:49.060 like now Hildegard, that's not very nice, you know? But, um, what I, what I'm trying to do is

00:29:54.640 really look at like, rather than extracting inspiring, like if you look at her, because she

00:30:00.680 was inspired by divine light, like she received no training in medicine. And, um, they did a study

00:30:06.840 on her cures and said like how many of them actually would help and um i believe it was

00:30:13.800 like 60 percent of the herbal uses are correct um that she didn't necessarily have someone like

00:30:18.900 she probably heard and interacted with a lot of other people but she never studied it formally

00:30:24.100 and i do think that whatever we believe you know she was definitely inspired by something look at

00:30:30.480 her music i think it's evident as well and i think if we remove like there's no way we can remove our

00:30:35.760 own trauma of course but if we look at if we change the intention for which we're ingesting

00:30:40.940 the information maybe that could be helpful and feel more comfortable um to say like i don't you

00:30:47.440 know i have this shared identity with her as a person who experienced catholicism uh she didn't

00:30:53.240 consent to that either you know she was put in the church when she was eight it wasn't like she was

00:30:56.920 like hey guys you know what i want to be locked in an unnery thank you so i think about her more

00:31:02.920 as like a person subjected to her time that also somehow was so deeply entrenched and connected

00:31:11.240 she couldn't help but spew forth this like what we now would call magic but also respecting her

00:31:17.460 as an individual who's different than us and not trying to rewrite her history and being mindful

00:31:22.040 of that what do you think about Hildegard's um relationship with chronic pain the way she's

00:31:29.340 she's written about as maybe having experienced migraine or there's, you know, Oliver Sacks

00:31:35.000 wrote about the descriptions of the phonemes and that her experience of the auras and things as

00:31:40.240 being indicative that maybe she was experiencing migraine or that she said that she received the

00:31:45.960 spirit only through the pain in her body. Do you think, do you think about that at all,

00:31:51.360 about that relationship with how much chronic illness, how much chronic pain we have in our

00:31:55.040 world now and somehow finding a way to spirit through that is somehow a guide for us in that

00:32:01.820 wow that's really I love that question yeah there's a lot of her some of her direct writings

00:32:07.640 she talks about experiencing these blinding white light headaches of severe migraine pain I think

00:32:14.880 starting around when she was eight and she was too scared to speak about what she was seeing

00:32:19.320 because she probably feared it was something deadly frightening happening to her and then

00:32:24.420 her visions and things were eventually recorded by one of her compatriots who is a male monk

00:32:29.600 and were eventually confirmed as true by the Pope and I was just like what as a woman too you know

00:32:36.900 she was very powerful kind of like what Sonia was saying just about these women who were like 0.61

00:32:43.060 being boss AF, like very exciting. But I do think I'm also a person who lives with chronic illness

00:32:49.420 and a really rare, bizarre autoimmune disease. That's terrible, but I have a wonderful,

00:32:55.160 beautiful life and I'm grateful for being able to experience all of it. And I think she's

00:33:01.040 definitely one of our like low key patron saints of us who live with chronic pain and illness 0.89

00:33:06.200 because she, I don't know, she's extreme. She didn't really limit herself. And in fact, 0.98

00:33:13.120 her, you know, her challenge became her power. And I don't think that's always possible for all

00:33:18.980 of us in our unique bodies. But I think that if you've faced suffering and pain that is different

00:33:25.940 than your community is facing all the time, it kind of puts you in that like an altered space

00:33:32.280 where maybe different and new nuances and magic will come through. You know, if you think about

00:33:37.340 who are the wise people of the past and like the cunning people, they were often like people with

00:33:41.960 physical abnormalities or deformities who are very old or very young, who lived on the extremes of

00:33:48.140 health and sickness and beauty and ugliness and all these like really interesting and complex

00:33:54.780 extremities. So I don't know. I like to think that if you suffer chronic pain, you might

00:34:00.220 experience the world in such a way that perhaps you have a unique gift to share that you wouldn't

00:34:05.680 otherwise. And in no way does that mean like, yay, chronic pain. We're all mystical and cool.

00:34:11.400 That's not what I mean at all, but more like, can we find the unique gifts in the hand we've

00:34:15.980 been dealt? And I think, you know, for me, it helps me a lot with my mindfulness to deal with

00:34:21.320 my discomfort. So yeah, I don't know. What do you think? I agree with you. I, I, I don't know if

00:34:27.100 you know this writer Sophie Strand but she I interviewed her I'll invite you both back for

00:34:32.380 a conversation someday because I'd like to be a fly on the wall of that one would be really lovely

00:34:36.860 to hear but she also experiences chronic illness chronic pain and and she sort of said offhand

00:34:42.540 I think a lot of the time when we look closely at the wound we carry it's the shape of the wound of

00:34:49.480 the land that we're in love that that's beautiful yeah I'm badly paraphrasing it but it's such a

00:34:57.100 do you think that that kind of gives us the guidance when you're thinking about

00:35:00.400 staying really local with our magic and really local with our plant relationships for making

00:35:07.740 those kind of potions or medicines or taking guidance from the plants around us to make our

00:35:16.220 magic? Yeah, I love that. I think that fits right into that. Correct me. Terroir? I can't say

00:35:25.420 French help. The last one, terroir. Yeah. I think it really speaks, I shouldn't write articles about 1.00

00:35:31.120 words I can't pronounce, but this is a lesson I learned today. You got it eventually, Michael.

00:35:38.900 I think it's really part of that. You know, I, I think that plants like people and like animals,

00:35:44.980 like sometimes the cat will poop on the floor and not in the litter box, not because they hate you

00:35:51.460 want to hurt you, but because they're tricksters, right? When one of my first plant interactions

00:35:56.260 where I felt really called to ingest a plant randomly with no information about it for the

00:36:01.300 first time, it was Datura, which is deadly in certain doses. And I think about that plant,

00:36:07.780 kind of like the cat pooping on the floor, looking at you in the eye, like what are you going to do?

00:36:12.300 Cause like, there's a trickster spirit, you know, to a lot of different things. And I think

00:36:17.040 the medicine of the land is like beyond human and its sense of humor so sometimes it feels very cruel

00:36:23.680 or unfair or harmful but I think it's like a natural disaster you know like the fires there's

00:36:30.700 they have a purpose and like the cat was domesticated and is in the house and that's

00:36:35.660 why they pooped on the floor so I've probably used that a story to the end of its life but

00:36:41.020 I think it's really important to like look at the ways that the plant world calls for us to

00:36:46.180 interact with them and just never assume it's like from this human perspective I think I learned

00:36:51.460 that the hard way with my like burgeoning baby witch interactions with the green world you know

00:36:56.860 wow I think that's such an interesting idea I mean really funny but also so profound that

00:37:04.580 we anthropomorphize or we impose our whole way of thinking onto everything around us all the time

00:37:12.060 and it's part of what keeps us separate that's really beautifully said i think i i think about

00:37:16.480 the um there was a roman or greek deity who was the goddess of acorns and oak trees which were

00:37:22.820 kind of like one of the first staple foods before agrarian agriculture came in and then another

00:37:28.180 goddess i think her name was dodona another goddess came in who was the goddess of iron

00:37:33.100 and the plow that cut the earth and the grain and there was just this big shift in like the wild

00:37:39.720 acorn eating people to the like cultivated sedentary grain eating people and the way that

00:37:46.660 they worshiped a goddess that wasn't necessarily personified as a force to a person who wore a toga

00:37:54.220 who held a sickle who was a person i always love to think back to those d i don't work with a lot

00:38:00.360 of like deities because i like to think about our first animistic inclination to not give an

00:38:06.340 offering to you know poseidon but to leave an offering to the ocean not to the god of the winds

00:38:12.760 but to the wind itself because they are beings that we can palpate and experience i think it's

00:38:17.860 like kind of like a coming home as we like rebuild our animistic connections and our crafting

00:38:23.440 that's another thing i'm going to take with me that hit me heavy so what what are some ways you

00:38:30.060 give offerings to the beings around you to the to the wind itself or to the cedar grove I love that

00:38:38.420 I love that cedar groves I hear that they're probably really special to you I love I said it

00:38:42.700 twice yeah I have I do I do they're they're here they we live in a little mini cedar grove our

00:38:49.660 our little inlet on our lake is cedar I'm slowly starting to understand that that's why the mink

00:38:55.760 lives here and not on another part of the lake because I like the cedar and like that I'm slowly

00:39:00.500 trying to understand this half acre relationship that I have and why it's different than the

00:39:06.760 mountain over there or the trail over there or that other place we walk what's what's special

00:39:10.880 here and how do I make offerings to this life you know yeah I think you just ask them what they like

00:39:17.920 you know I like to use pendulums a lot of my work I feel like it's really like a clear

00:39:22.480 clearer way to communicate with spirits and i'll make like a little board that you can either do

00:39:28.420 yes no no up and down is yes left and right is no like a head saying no um or you can use the

00:39:34.760 ones with the letters on them and i've been using pendulum since i think i was 14 my mom actually

00:39:39.700 bought me one i was so excited it was a chandelier crystal and a piece of uh like twine that you used

00:39:45.680 to measure in construction and i was like this is itself a magical device like i thought the crystal

00:39:52.020 itself was was magic and I loved it so much I still have that chandelier but I I usually will

00:39:59.600 go out into a space that I want to petition working with the spirit and I will basically ask

00:40:06.160 like hey is there anybody that wants to hang out anyone want to come over for tea you know

00:40:10.740 and I might bring out some kind of classic things like meat or alcohol or milk or water or smoke

00:40:20.980 and see what I what answer I get or I'll even hold the pendulum over different objects and

00:40:29.240 ask if they want them that's one way there's so many ways you might have a divinatory system

00:40:35.460 you really love like tarot or dream work things like that I think you just ask the question

00:40:40.360 clearly and like listen for an answer and ask again if you don't hear back because I don't know

00:40:46.340 my ears are always really rusty if I'm not doing lots of sitting and looking you know so um for

00:40:53.100 soul well I have a pendulum that I have had for years that I tucked away and I found it right

00:40:58.320 before the holidays and was just kind of remembering because I hadn't seen it in years

00:41:04.380 um my eight-year-old Fern came in and she was like what is that and she's my little like

00:41:10.600 old soul um who teaches me about how to talk like I didn't know to talk to plants and then 0.60

00:41:16.060 one day, she was like, do not pull that weed. You need to talk to it and make sure it is okay with

00:41:21.740 you pulling it out. And I was like, I am so sorry. Like where did you learn that? It wasn't for me.

00:41:27.480 Okay. Listening to you. But anyway, so she loved the pendulum. And so I, she just kept coming back

00:41:34.540 to it. And like, I would come into the room and she'd be, you know, once I taught her what to do,

00:41:39.580 she'd be asking questions. And so I went and found her one for solstice and she got it and she

00:41:45.480 loves it it's like now hearing you say that I'm like oh and I'm gonna go and talk to her about

00:41:50.800 that because she's always like I want more information on how I can work this and I'm like

00:41:56.380 eight years old you can't I mean it's just beginning and that's like it's like the descendant

00:42:01.560 work that we're doing as as we're learning these things and like opening ourselves up to all these

00:42:07.380 possibilities then we just you know allow it and they come they want it these babies they want it

00:42:15.060 thank you so much for sharing that i'm a jeweler so i'm always interested in what kind of stones

00:42:20.220 and metals people like to use so as everyone's talking about different pendulums what for the

00:42:26.940 one that you have did you make it yourself well it's the one i have i've actually had since i was

00:42:31.680 a kid it's an amethyst one um i think it's one my mom just got from like a new age shop or something

00:42:37.620 and it has a triangle amethyst that's faceted that you hold on to and a silver sterling chain

00:42:44.020 and then a solid amethyst bottom piece and I love it it's so beautiful I don't have a strong

00:42:49.700 connection to stones anymore but I actually often use an acorn that I glued to a string that's one

00:42:56.700 of my favorites and or I'll use necklaces that I'm wearing like these are sheep's head

00:43:01.340 fish teeth and I'll hang whatever necklace I'm wearing and use it as a weight so I think I love

00:43:08.220 the copper ones though we do a lot of dowsing in the mountains and a lot of people use copper

00:43:12.960 dowsing sticks so I've always loved to use copper for pendulums as well if I was to make one I would

00:43:19.580 probably use copper what about you Sonia well I have the one that I found here because I keep it

00:43:26.740 on my desk and it's just the chakras and it's so funny you know how you forget who you are

00:43:31.860 like you have so many iterations of yourself and like in my 20s I had this and then I you know

00:43:39.040 had a life and now I'm 44 and forgot that I even had it but and I and I'm just now like oh it had

00:43:47.460 chakras on it I thought I didn't even know what a chakra was until about five years ago so here we

00:43:52.800 are like our lives and so but Fern loved these and I kind of taught her how to like when you

00:43:58.440 balance it to like run your run your hand over all of them to secure it before you start working

00:44:05.860 it and so she loved that and she loved like the tech you know that feel so when I found her one

00:44:12.180 I just went to my local botanica and I looked around and there were they had tons of them

00:44:17.440 and the one that I got had an amethyst um Rebecca will you tell us a little bit about your beautiful

00:44:25.320 book oh sure thank you um it's kind of I only recently I sat down and my very good friend

00:44:32.260 John was like, Peggy, you wrote a book. I was like, Oh, you're right. I did. I totally wrote

00:44:36.900 a book after months of working on this project and like the pandemic and stuff. Um, I was like,

00:44:45.080 had forgotten that I like wrote a book and it's like very exciting. And I'm so stoked about it.

00:44:50.440 It's called wild witchcraft. And it's, uh, it's really about how to start. You were saying you

00:44:57.440 feel like overwhelmed I tried to write something concise simple and fun and also serious about

00:45:05.500 how to get into a relationship with plants growing them or foraging or both and if you didn't want to

00:45:13.940 do either a nice you know commendium of plant lore based in history that also has rituals and

00:45:20.980 recipes that go with the wheel of the year. So you can really sink into like plants in the seasons

00:45:27.640 and the kind of seasonal plant practices that will bring you into a direct relationship with

00:45:34.460 the green world instead of just like an armchair relationship. Can you give an example of a recipe

00:45:41.500 and did you keep it really local to Appalachia and the plants and stuff there or can we all dig

00:45:48.740 in from our strange locations yeah I wrote it um with zone maps and stuff in it so if you

00:45:55.260 unless you live in like a very desert climate it might not be super fun um you'll probably be able

00:46:01.200 to relate to like at least 25 percent of the plants um and a lot of them are common weeds

00:46:06.940 that grow all over the U.S. now and throughout North America into Canada so and down into South

00:46:12.440 America I have so many recipes in it some I have basic ones like how to make a salve and then you

00:46:17.780 you know, customize it in any ways like evergreen salve for chest rub or for pain. One of my

00:46:23.860 favorite recipes is for violet syrup, the blue violet. They're actually purple. I don't know

00:46:28.580 why they're called blue. The common blue violet or the dog violet to steep their flowers in boiled

00:46:35.920 water for overnight and then strain them in the morning and mix them with two cups of sugar per

00:46:42.800 one cup of liquid on the stovetop without boiling until you make a simple syrup and then squeeze a

00:46:48.740 half a lemon first i would say pour it into a clear jar so you can see what's happening

00:46:53.420 pour your syrup in after you've strained all the flowers out and put a half a lemon in there and

00:46:58.960 watch it go from indigo blue to a pink purple and like a magical potion performance that children

00:47:05.840 and adults i think equally love it every year i'm like so tickled and i get squeezed that lemon in

00:47:11.900 there oh that sounds delightful I'm going to do that for sure we have we have the wild violets

00:47:17.820 popping up we did it with something similar with our lilacs I made my first like lilac syrup this

00:47:24.920 year I'm obsessed with lilac we make a lilac pasta every year where we soak them in cream

00:47:30.760 and then make like a custard dessert it is absolutely bonkers it's not it's not okay

00:47:37.560 are you somebody who thinks that thinks about putting intention or magic into everything you

00:47:44.700 cook is that always a part of how you are you just sort of kitchen witching all the time

00:47:49.280 I do cook every day and I love to cook and we um my partner and I hunt and fish so we have a lot of

00:47:55.800 like animals we're working with that sometimes I have to like process an entire deer or like

00:48:00.640 a pig or something and so sometimes it's like very visceral other times it's you know I tattoo

00:48:07.040 for a living mostly now and I get home at midnight often and I'm like it's now a half hour drive we

00:48:12.480 live so early and I'll just like slap an egg into a pan and then eat it with a little ceremony I

00:48:19.240 think our ancestors probably were the same way right yeah to me it feels very natural but if

00:48:25.560 I'm gonna make like a nice dinner I often light a candle and do it in a space of intention but

00:48:30.460 definitely not always no and if you're gonna go all the way like for for Sal and I say you've done

00:48:36.880 some really beautiful ritual celebrations if you're going to go all the way to make a meal

00:48:43.100 that is a potion what's your what's your material practice like around that or your spiritual

00:48:48.320 practice like around that i love that i love making actually tonight i'm going to meet with

00:48:53.100 my partner and i are going to have dinner with our three close buddies uh who i've been practicing

00:48:58.600 with some of them for the past 12 years or 16 in the case of my best friend but we like go all out

00:49:05.520 for ritual meals we put flowers on the table we decorate with all kinds of things make an

00:49:10.940 ancestor altar probably make some deer that my partner hunted this year or some of another animal

00:49:17.840 or squirrel or something and it just feels really nice to do that and we have a lot of foraged food

00:49:23.000 that we put up and we'll usually tell a great way to do this with any food that however you acquire

00:49:28.360 it is to tell a story of the food as you present it before you eat it like whenever we go to a lot

00:49:34.980 of our friends are forager hunter foodie people and we'll be like this mead was made on june 21st

00:49:41.400 2018 when i was having a fight with my boyfriend and we went to this mountaintop and this flower

00:49:48.160 isn't it and you know or they'll say i hunted this you know this deer is from west virginia

00:49:53.460 and was this it was a doe and she was this big and she looked like this and this is her hunt story

00:49:59.120 so I think telling the story of the food you eat is like a really beautiful way to cast like the

00:50:05.540 ultimate Sabbath circle and so we always make a spirit plate and things like that too which I

00:50:09.700 love that practice I think it's really special it's interesting you mentioned the telling the

00:50:13.920 story because that was something I really connected to when you were talking about the

00:50:18.040 in some of your writing about the the why of folkways or ethnobotany is like it's not just

00:50:23.860 to try or that maybe we have access to more knowledge about what the plants can do if we can

00:50:29.920 learn the stories before the stories disappear the stories are sort of integrally part of what

00:50:35.660 the plant is yeah I think I've always loved you know I can't really say I'm like a forager or an

00:50:42.220 herbalist or a ethnobotanist because I love all three of those things about plants but there is

00:50:49.420 like being a plant folklorist like that is where I like just love to sit because I do love knowing

00:50:55.880 how did a plant get here why do we even know about it who first used it that we know of

00:51:00.780 how did it get where it is now I want to know all those things because like when I teach plantain

00:51:06.360 do you know the plant plantain planta major so that plant is not from here there is a native

00:51:12.100 species but it was brought here by settlers it was called Englishman's foot and it's a very like

00:51:16.880 you know a story we tell like a lot of european lore about but in the 1700s in south carolina

00:51:22.420 there was an enslaved man named caesar who created a cure for snake bite with the root of plantain

00:51:29.060 and was actually freed from slavery and given a hundred pounds in gold for his discovery and

00:51:34.120 teaching other people how to use it so it's also a plant that has a black story no one ever tells

00:51:39.800 that story so i think it's important to learn ethnobody because you have to tell like all the

00:51:46.340 aspects of a plant's story to like claim I think to like really claim a deep relationship with it

00:51:51.100 and realize that maybe more of us are invited to those relationships than they feel at like

00:51:55.960 first glance thank you for that that's a really really grounding piece of knowledge that you're

00:52:03.720 dropping oh yeah there's actually on my blog I found a picture of the original gazette from

00:52:09.920 South Carolina that mentions his story there's a photo of it if you look of plantain on my blog

00:52:15.160 bloodandspicebush.com and i was like shocked to see i was so happy somebody made a facsimile of

00:52:20.640 that wow well we're all gonna go dig into bloodandspicebush.com spend hours on the blog

00:52:28.740 and then the story's there yeah stay in touch yeah we're all gonna do our hildegard class

00:52:34.180 and pre-order wild witchcraft thank you so much for everything you shared thank you to 0.97

00:52:43.540 you know pre-teen medieval new jersey suburban you because we fucking love that little witch 0.82

00:52:51.840 thank you for honoring my my wounded child i appreciate you so much yeah we love her thank 0.92

00:52:57.900 you for getting us all here thank you for your time today thank you everyone for being here

00:53:02.860 my pleasure it's wonderful to meet you reach out to me anytime it's never a bother

00:53:07.060 stay warm be safe or stay cool depending on where you are 0.93

00:53:13.540 you must be a witch

00:53:15.360 the missing witches podcast is brought to you by the missing witches coven

00:53:21.700 join us right now on patreon.com slash missing witches

00:53:26.040 blast if I can be

Missing Witches - January 27, 2022

WF： Rebecca Beyer - You Can Know 10 Plants Deeply And Be A Wonderful Healer

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