Research into the ways psilocybin helps people navigate and heal from depression has taught us a great deal about depression itself. We will discuss this research and also how to balance this scientific knowledge with respect for the living intelligence of both people and mushrooms.
In the season of the ancient Irish fire festival of Imbolc, we will explore the myth, magic, and mystery of sacred flames – and how to work with the element of fire in our own lives, even in a burning world.
We did not evolve to live the lives our culture demands of us — and all of us reach points of emotional and cognitive exhaustion and burnout from trying to push beyond our natural limits. This hits neurodivergent people especially strongly — and often results in a reduction in or complete loss of the capacities we call "executive function" — the ability to plan, prioritize, and carry out tasks, to perceive the passage of time, to make decisions, and to assess our own capacities. People with chronic Lyme and long COVID face similar challenges as well. Through the lens of Autistic burnout we will look at ways of coping with the challenges of diminished executive function — including when to work with plants to push through these challenges and when to accept them as invitation to another way of being.
Around the world, across cultures, and throughout history, people have worked with the smoke of burning plants (and mushrooms) to purify their bodies, their homes, and their ritual spaces. Join us for an exploration of some of the medicine allies we can call on in this work.
The Milky Way traces its path across northern skies, seeming to bridge worlds. On the eve of Twelfth Night, when the Wild Hunt is said to lead spirits across the sky along that wild road, we will delve into the role the Milky Way played in the cosmologies of animist ancestors and how we can make meaning of those mythic understandings in our lives today.
The idea that the heart is "just a pump" is a dangerous deception that separates us from some of the most important ways of connecting with ourselves, each other, and the living world. The heart is the drum that plays the rhythms of our lives. And the heart is the organ of perception that allows us to experience what Stephen Buhner called "the touch of the world upon us." In this class, we will speak of the mysteries of the heart and how to cultivate heart-centered awareness.
Beauty invites us to fall back in love with the world, to come into deeper connection with life. On the day after the Winter Solstice, as light begins slowly returning to the world, we will speak of the ways in which beauty itself is medicine, and how understanding this can guide us in our work with plant medicines.
The oldest Irish stories speak of the Tuatha Dé Danann, the shining ones who came from the north where they had learned the great mysteries, and how in the face of the coming of civilization they descended into the síthe, the ancient burial mounds, taking their magic and their knowledge with them. On the Sunday before the Winter Solstice, the day when a shaft of dawn sunlight enters the most famous of the síthe, Síd in Broga (Newgrage), we will speak about the nature of the realm these people entered and its relationship with the hidden places within us and with the healing of the world.
There are gods of mountain and forest and earth and sea far older than civilization, far too wild to be contained by it. We will speak of some of these gods and their wild nature and what it means to engage with them in these times.
Hope can be hard to come by in these times. But there are plants that can help us rekindle the fire of hope when it has burned down into cold embers. Join us as we explore medicines that can help bring hope blazing forth again.
These are plants whose natural habitat is the place where disruption has occurred, whose ecological gift is helping to usher in new worlds amidst the ruins of the old. All of them are also potent allies for us in the wake of personal and cultural events that disrupt our "normal" way of life. We will explore the gifts these plants offer for individual, collective, and ecological healing.
