The Calling of the Plants (My Own Road)

Mandrake was the nightshade that initially called out to me. One day, out of the blue, I just became obsessed with it.

Spiritually I come from a different background and wasn’t really familiar with the more Euro-based occult and witchcraft practitioners that had been working with it for years, so I did not have any prior information on it, accurate or not. I was never someone to watch movies or television series on such things either. The subject was simply not on my radar when I was deep into my walk on the Red Road and honestly a lot of these media trends happened after my time.

I had never heard of the Poison Path, but it wasn’t long before I did. The more I learned, the more I saw and believed that these nightshades were what the original Europeans were using for their own shamanic-type work when they were still tribal and did not seek out advancement. I believed, and still do, that these personal connections to these plants carried through to witchcraft and the other Euro-centered occult practices that developed as these societies continued to reach for progress and became more and more disconnected from who they once were.

Yet these practitioners still scrambled to stay connected. It made me finally start to feel connected to my own roots after a lifetime of not feeling that way and after finding my home on Indian reservations and with another culture entirely.

I’ve never known of an indigenous people who did not work with sacred plants as entheogens. Most still have practitioners who still haven’t let go. It gave me a new respect and hope for the culture I was born into to find and see this connection, this prescription to find our way back. Maybe I could finally find a feeling of belonging.

'Mandragora Mother' by NadiaTurner

I remember being dumbfounded when I realized that these flying ointments I kept hearing about were only used topically. It was so contrary to everything the plants were showing me. But that doesn't mean anyone was wrong. This was merely the message I got, that these plants needed to be given back to the people (the exact words are not a new message or one exclusive to me). People needed to ingest these plants for a more profound level of healing, a bigger healing. The Plants can heal in many other ways, but this was the way I kept being shown and it was so similar to my work with the Native American Church and other indigenous practices I had already been led to on my path.

It became very clear to me that I was to spread this news in order to give the plants back. I was aware that ingesting can be tricky (for safety reasons) and there was an abundance of misinformation out there that inflamed and hyper-enforced the dangers to the point that when I first introduced the truffles it was almost an unthinkable that I should do such a thing.

In many indigenous cultures different people have different gifts and callings. Just like other indigenous cultures, I think when we were more of a tribal people still and these plants were used as entheogens, that there would have been certain people who ran these ceremonies and specialized in helping people in these ways with these plants. It's not something lots of people would figure out and do on their own just like you don’t see that in today’s indigenous cultures.

I do think I have a unique calling for this, but I say that because I think we all have unique callings and each of our callings is different. I am on my road. I realize it is not the Poison Path, though I know many who walk that path that I call brothers, sisters, and friends. These plants can heal in so many ways regardless of your personal beliefs and I feel so good knowing that I have customers who work with my truffles from all walks of life including Christianity and locations all over the globe.

Whether you work with these truffles with ceremonies specific to your beliefs or from a place where science is god, or however it is you are called to work with them, then I am happy. These plants are calling to more and more people and to me it is beautiful how many different paths are called. I am just here to do what I was called to do and that is to make working with these plants in this way more accessible to everyone.

Originally posted March 11, 2019