The foundations of working with plant spirits in magic, medicine, and ritual are surprisingly simple. The complexities come later as we journey into deep personal relationships with specific plant spirits and guardians of the green realm. For those folks new to spiritual work with the plants and for those who want a gentle reminder about the roots of our work, the essentials are offered here. From these roots one can nourish the tree of wisdom which will inevitably grow with time and loving attention. This tree, once grown, offers a protective canopy, a gateway to the green realm, and a living shrine where we can connect with the plant spirits all.

Plant Personhood

If the plants are not fully sovereign, conscious, and wise people, who is it exactly you’re learning from and working with? Our ability to not only comprehend the personhood of plants but to actively perceive if by working to clear ourselves of human exceptionalism is a crucial beginning step in the work. We must be able to approach the plants as a whole group and individual plants who attract us and truly engage with them person-to-person. This opens the path between us so that communication across the hedge is possible.

Sacred Reciprocity

Once we acknowledge and experience the potent personhood of the plants, we are invited to show up in new ways and engage with them as one part of nature to another.
Sacred reciprocity ensured that all the endless gifts given by the plant spirits are in some small way honored and reciprocated to the best of our abilities. At first, we may be giving back to the plants without fully understanding the deep green blessings they are always giving us. In time, we will be initiated into these mysteries and understand why entering a relationship of offer-receive-offer is pivotal for our magical and medicinal work in the green arte.

So, what can we human folk offer up in gratitude to the plant spirits all? First, your intent is crucial. Ensure that your heart, mind, body, and spirit are aligned and intent on laying a gift that will honor the plants and be received by them. Next, consider some of these offerings which are all eco-affirming and traceless in wild spaces after nature runs her course.

• Song, drumming, rattling, or poetry recitations
• Libations of wine, herbal tea, honey, maple syrup, or ale
• Small baked goods which are crafted from ingredients safe and supportive for the creatures around you
• Botanical incense
• Spritzes of handcrafted floral waters that are made without essential oils
• Laying on of hands and the projection of life energy into or around the plant

To make an offering, clarify your intent then place it at the base of a strong tree you can sit with for some time. An offering bowl on an altar also works.

Listening from Everywhere

The plants speak in a language that is closer to feeling than thinking. Their symbols and wisdom rush in through the heart center, the only organ we have which is capable of processing such refined language, and it trickles into brain and body from there. To communicate with plants is to connect with teachers who are rooted in the fullness of the otherworld and fruited in the very world we call home. They are living, liminal beings who are gateways between the worlds and protectors of the sacred dualities of life and death.

Your time sitting with specific plants or in the presence of many plants is an opportunity to quiet, slow down to tree speed, and listen from everywhere. The plants are always communicating, and you are always in communication with nature via the faculties of your heart. The invitation here is to slow and quiet enough that you can experience it all.

I offer advanced classes and courses on plant spirit communication, but many folks find that by following the previous two steps and then engaging with an open, quiet, and eager heart, messages begin to flow.

As a practitioner of green sorcery and a plant spirit path, I think there is no better arte than the ability to communicate with the plants. What better teacher do we have than those who are rooted in the spirit world and fruited in the raw nature of our own? Their perspective is one which has fascinated us since the beginning and continues to do so even as their voices are systematically silenced.

So, there you have it. Three simplified, intuitive, and approachable ways to start connecting with the mighty plant spirits all right now from wherever you may be. This soil is rich and fertile and with a good understanding of it, you can grow o towering heights in your plant spirit work.

If you’re ready to go into more immersive courses in the green arte, I invite you to explore them here...

As we take initiation into the wild green ways, many of us from non-animistic cultures or backgrounds struggle with really experiencing the personhood of the plants. On paper, we understand that they are fully conscious, thinking, feeling, engaged individuals with whom we can have deep spiritual relationships. But we may still find ourselves in a forest feeling all alone.

In this post I’d like to share a simple meditation you can do in a garden, park, forest, meadow, or in front of your favorite houseplant to help open up your faculties of perception, engage a lightly altered state of consciousness (one we inhabit full-time as an animistic perspective becomes our normal operating state), and experience the personhood and presence of the plants in a direct and meaningful way.

Here’s the thing about this work: we love to complicate it! The reality is that plant spirit work relies on the truth of living in a world full of people and in a world that is made up entirely of relationships. So, the connection is already there- we just need to slow down to tree speed and lean into it to really experience it for what it is.

To use this simple method, I suggest carving out 15 minutes of time or more. Again, you may find yourself seated comfortably before the long arms of a living room Pothos, doing laps around a local park, or wandering down a forest path. It doesn’t matter where you do this practice so long as you have plants you can engage with. In fact, I suggest trying this practice in many different spaces, times, and atmospheres to really flex your visionary muscles.

Hidden within every green leaf is a process of deep alchemy which catches the light of the sun in the form of photon particles and converts them into pure life energy- food and fuel. It is the very greenness of the plants that absorb light- a pigment called chlorophyll which is created in the chloroplast cells of most plants and is a temple of mysterious alchemy.

In my work, Chlorophyll acts as a potent sacrament which connects me to the plant spirits and allows me to bring in a medicine which is saturated with verdant power. Chlorophyll is connected to all the plant spirits, and by working with it I am able to attune ever more deeply to their world and their wild ways.

You can find organic, unflavored liquid Chlorophyll at most health food shops. This can be portioned out into a small dropper bottle, the rest being kept in the fridge for preservation. The small bottle, kept on plant spirit shrine, can be worked with to begin, end, or empower a meditation or journey. It can be used to call in blessings, feed the mighty dead, write as a magical ink, or even mark the body for ritual.

Green Realm Attunement Ritual with Chlorophyll

In order to perform this simple ritual, you’ll need liquid Chlorophyll that is unflavored. Most of them are pressed from Alfalfa and have a rich green, mineral taste. While the flavor can be intense for some folks at first, it quickly becomes something craved when needed.

• Create a space that is safe, sacred, and conducive for you. Music, candles, botanical incense, or anything else you enjoy are all encouraged. I perform this ritual in front of my plant spirit shrine before most all meditations, petitions, workings, or spirit flights.
• Spend a few moments just breathing, settling into the land below you and sky around you, and gently opening your heart center. You can place a hand gently over your heart, breathe into your heart center, or just focus your attention there to open it and begin an energy flow to this space which is liminal and magical- perfect for our work with the mighty plant spirits.
• Now, using your creative visualization, imagination, or senses, call forth an awareness of the green realm which both surrounds and saturates our world. Try to just feel the presence of all the plants, seen and unseen, known and known, who grow in endless circles around you. Feel their green energy flowing up and down from roots to fruits. Experience the gentle hum of verdant force that saturates our world as the plant spirits draw it up from the spirit world.
• As you become attuned to this green presence, take several drops of Chlorophyll. Roll the liquid around on your tongue, then swallow it imagining and sensing that it goes into your heart center.
• Draw in the deep green power of the plant spirits all directly into your heart where it is pumped to every fiber of your being.
• Sit and journey, watch, listen, and be present with the Chlorophyll medicine coursing through you. What comes up for you in body, mind, emotions, thoughts, feelings, or spirit? What messages lie in these experiences?
• Affirm with clear intent that you now carry the green realm within you.
• When ready, gently release the vision and return to your usual state of consciousness. Carry the green with you wherever you may wander.

Here’s a class I did on Chlorophyll. I hope you enjoy…

Since the beginningless beginning, visionary human folk have sought to understand the deep mysteries of nature and ally themselves to its power. The Green Arte is an expression of our longing to connect to nature as a whole and to the plant spirits in specific. It is a dynamic tradition of plant spirit work that helps us experience the personhood of the plant people while working with them to cultivate harmony within ourselves, our communities, and the world.

The Green Arte is fiercely animistic- experiencing the world as being filled with a variety of fully sovereign people who happen to not be human people. As animists, we walk through the world in an expanded state of consciousness which allows us to perceive and relate with animals, plants, landmarks, geography, weather, and energy patterns in a way that gives them the full honor of their personhood. We experience that they perceive us as much as we perceive them and that in this bidirectional perception relationship is possible.

As a path of plant sorcery, our work focuses on allying ourselves to specific plants in order to call forth their wisdom, power, virtues, and blessings. We do this in many forms from the crafting of herbal medicines to the laying of herbal magics and rituals.
The medicine we craft is rooted in spiritual herbalism wherein we avoid thinking of plants as ‘good for’ such-and-such disease or how they can be ‘used for’ a specific outcome of healing or magic. Rather, we engage with them through devotion and dedication to learn their secrets firsthand as they choose to teach and guide us. We are initiated into the plant spirit path by the plants themselves.

Since our work focuses on cultivating relationships of power with the mighty plant spirits, we practice many angles of green sorcery and seek a resonant green gnosis along the way. We communicate with the plant spirits via divination, dream, and spirit flight, work with them through the performance of rituals, honor them throughout the seasons and cycles, bring them into our bodies as food and medicine, call them into our lives with magic, and follow their wise guidance as we dance our individual paths.

The deities we work with are also rooted in occult herbalism. We seek out those mighty ones who have a natural affinity for the plants, the places plants grow, and the mysteries the plants hold. These deities can come from many traditions depending on our own ancestral roots and help to protect, guide, and open the ways for us.

We engage with many aspects of plant ritual which help us align to the shifting seasons, celebrate the cycles of life, journey to the primordial realm of the plant spirits, and connect to the medicine and magic of our green allies.