Modern Wortcunning
Something I catch myself doing a lot when teaching classes on Wortcunning and ancestral herbalism is speaking about these crafts in past tense. I think it’s just engrained in our brains to consider anything from the past and being trapped in the past- when in fact most of our modern herbal lore is vibrant survival of ancient cunning wisdom. To help remedy this in myself and in other folks as well, I’ve been using the qualifier of modern in my discussions about ancient herbal wisdom and practices. This seems to help clarify when we’re talking about historical applications and how people of old did things in the world they lived in, and then conversely how we do those things in ways that speak to the world we now live in and the people we are. Ultimately, I would love to have a distinct clarity between the terms wortcunning and modern wortcunning, so we shall see how that unfolds over time.
With all of that being said, I wanted to share some thoughts about my own understanding, experience, and practice of modern wortcunning. I think a solid definition would be helpful for a lot of people and writing things like this down tends to help me clarify my own thoughts as well. So, let’s get into the heart of what modern wortcunning is for me as a practitioner and a teacher.
Not Very Romantic
First and foremost, we have to set down all the romantic notions we might have about the people who came before us. Did English Heathens live in a simpler time, more connected to the land, and more engaged with Nature? Yes. Was their life easier than ours? No. The conveniences which have become mainstay for we modern human folk would have been inconceivable to people even 100 years ago- what to say of 1,200 years ago. They had things better than us in some ways, but we should not overlook or ignore their hardships. Wortcunning in all its many expressions came out of need, not novelty. While you and I have the luxury of studying this work knowing that we have access to effective healthcare when we need it, our herbwise ancestors relied exclusively on this medicine and took it seriously as a sacred arte.
Big World
What our herbwise ancestors knew of the world 1,000 years ago is limited and often confused. We know a lot more- not everything, but more. We have technology, science, and academia that gives us access to the how and why of many mysteries- things our forebears either didn’t know or never even pondered. One example of this is our understand of the Proto-Indo-European peoples and how they migrated from somewhere around the Caspian Steppes to lands as far as India and Ireland. Through archaeology, etymology, and comparative mythology we now know how these cultures are connected. Our ancestors would not have understood this outside of seeing similarities with other cultures which probably just felt quite natural and obvious to them.
Our awareness of the big world we live in means that we have access to insight and inspiration on a grand scale- all of which influences who we are as people right now.
Instant Gratification
The world wide web gives us access to information from all kinds of people, perspectives, and places- usually for good, sometimes for bad. What it would have taken years for our herbwise ancestors to seek out, study, and comprehend we can often do with a couple of blog posts or videos. Texts that would have been rare to find and incomprehensibly valuable can now be purchased and delivered next-day online. Questions about what might happen can be investigated thoroughly with some searches and even the support of AI.
We have to acknowledge and honor how much effort people of the past had to invest into learning even the most basic things. They had to be dedicated, willing to sacrifice time and energy, and passionate about what they were seeking in order to make any of it worthwhile.
Global Synchretization
For those of us who try to be good global citizens, we gratefully have access to the herbal healing traditions of many people, cultures, and places across this big world. Where we find holes or missing information in our own practice, we can look respectfully to other traditions and find inspiration. Similarly, we can hone our own craft and openly share that with those who seek to receive it respectfully. For our ancient herbwise ancestors, what was missing often had to simply be reinvented.
Involvement Based on Interest
For you and I, a simple passing interest or novel curiosity is all it takes to connect with more information than we could consume in 10 lifetimes. We have the privilege of being able to pursue interests simply because we like those things and have the expendable time, energy, and resources to follow them. Our wortcunning forbears did not have this luxury. To gain any worthy understanding of the cunning artes would have required years and decades of devoted study and practice- often to the exclusion of pretty much anything else. This is where our traditional mentor/apprentice model comes from. People who were called by the plants would essentially become plant people; dedicating their lives to the pursuit of verdant wisdom in service of community and cosmos.
Now days, we can have many hobbies, interests, and skills that we’ve built because we have free time to follow those things. While this is true, I always encourage my apprentices to approach the study of Wortcunning in a similar vein to how folks of old did as a respect to the traditions.
Learning & Teaching
On-demand videos, virtual workshops, blogs, books, conventions, and podcasts- we have so many ways to learn and share information; and all of it happens so fast! I can turn an idea into a blog post and make that available to anyone who wants it in under and hour. There are good and bad things about this. The good is that our wisdom has become more accessible and more easily shared between people across the world. We can help one another, inspire each other, and get information where it’s needed most in a very quick way. The bad side is that we have lost a lot of respect for taking our time, dedicating to the path, being patient, and letting things unfold naturally. People are impatient and short-attentive in ways that would have been exceptionally problematic for their personal development even 100 years ago.
While I lean fully into the conveniences of the internet and technology in pretty much every way I teach publicly, I try to always remember that when it comes to learning and teaching, the old ways will always be the best ways- they allow the wisdom to transfer with a quickening and convey something that cannot be shared through power cords.
Plant Diversity
Countless online shops exist that will send you organic, wild harvested, and conventionally-farmed herbs from around the world. We can have pretty much any herb we want at any time of year without leaving our homes. This is, of course, incredibly convenient- but it divests us from practicing bioregional herbalism which is crucial to good wortcunning. It is the plants we are in direct kinship with that make up our herbal repertoire because our medicine isn’t about rote memorization of what an herb is good for- rather it is a practice of connecting individual human people to the presence of plant kin through herbal remedy and ritual. I love that some of my most trusted small, organic farms can provide me with more Chamomile than I could ever grow in my gardens- but I base that purchase on my own connection to that plant where I am now.
Progress
One last thing I would like to add is that, as a practitioner of the green artes for over 25 years, I have learned many things from the plants, experimented with countless things, and actually figured some things out. Not all of this is part of historical wortcunning tradition or even particularly aligned to it in feeling- but it works, it’s mine, and I add it to how I practice and what I hand on to my students. We should always be willing, able, and excited (as our ancestors have been) to let our traditions grow- they are living, dynamic, and vital!
