Witchcraft Medicine: Healing Arts, Shamanic Practices, and Forbidden Plants (20 page)

Our lives begin when the haploid chromosome chain of egg and sperm cells fuses. Our personalities, then, are the result of genetic heritage, but are shaped by natural and social influences. This is more or less how the schoolbooks explain it.

But what did the clairvoyant wise women see in the mirror of their souls when they sat at the hearth or spinning wheel pondering the depths of the mysteries of fertility and birth? What did the old crones know about the coming and going of human beings? Is there any way for us to know? If we listen quietly to ourselves, if we listen to the whispering wind and the sounds of the forest, then the submerged primordial memories will awaken in us as well. At some point, in distant times, in earlier existences, we were also there. We can add to this the traditions of folk medicine, fairy tales and sagas, superstitions and customs, which are like keys to the memory of a society. Language is also a refuge for primordial wisdom. It does not develop haphazardly but mirrors the contours of an ever-transforming eternal being. Language is—in the sense of Rupert Sheldrake—a “morphogenetic field”: We sense when it is “right,” when it fits with one’s being.

Although each tribe has its own particular access to the truths about the path each being takes on its way into existence on the earth and every shaman and every midwife her own particular perspective, we would nevertheless like to say something about what a glance behind the hedgerow or the lowest branches of the shamanic tree might reveal.

The Way into Existence

Hungry for a new body on this beautiful earth, drawn by the hopes of the tribe, by the love of the parents, but also driven by old deeds and seeking balance—guided by Skuld (guilt), one of the three primordial fate-weaving goddesses in northern mythology—the human embryo that had been spread out across the entire universe dives down to earth. It leaves the fixed stars—most primitive peoples consider the Milky Way to be the path of the souls—and wanders through the seven, nine, or twelve realms of the gods and spirits. It climbs down the branches of the World Treeor the sprouts of heaven’s ladder. The Babylonian astrologists identified it as the spheres of Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, and the Moon. During the descent the human child returning home to earth becomes ever more compact, ever smaller, ever more material.

As the child wends its way through the spheres of the planets, the gods bestow it with both good and disadvantageous qualities. They give it the soul-robe that was destined for that child alone. When the child reaches the damp sphere of the moon, it begins to suckle the milk of life
(soma)
from the breast of the moon goddess—she is also our mother. That is why in many traditions it is said that the children come out of the garden of the moon mother. (It is well known that the moon has a lot to do with fertility, sexuality, and birth; menses follows the rhythm of the syndic moon, if no longer synchronously. The reproductive systems of fish, amphibians, and other primitive animals occur in total harmony with the moon. Many children are washed ashore in this life’s harbor in the wake of the full moon. And every gardener knows that growth and germination are strongly tied to the moon.) The natal horoscope of an individual mirrors this descent from the stars and the path over the “seven-colored rainbow bridge” of the seven planets.

When the stories of the ancient Germanic tribes and many other traditional peoples relate how the returning soul matures deep in the interior regions of the earth, in the realm of the earth goddess, and that it gradually ascends through the springs, seas, lakes, and swamps, where it then lives as a little fish or frog, and where eventually a fisherman or a stork pulls it out—these are not contradictions. For in the regions beyond, our logical categories make little sense.
¹
The sunny green realm of Frau Holle is found “deep in the earth,” but at the same time it is found high above in the sky with Thor the thunderer and the wind and cloud spirits who make the weather. In archaic thinking the goddess who protects the souls under the earth or the ocean is often identical with Lady Sun.
²
As the sun she is a warm, kind mother in whose broad skirts the souls hide like little children. As above, so below—is the sky not reflected in the still sea?

After they have left the realm of the stars, the human seeds drift through the wilderness. They rest on clouds, in trees, on bushes, on flower calyxes, on ponds, and on stones, where they play amusing games with the animals, the elves, and the elemental beings. In the cool earth, in the springs, or in the algae-covered lakes and ponds they rest and suckle themselves full with the precious life energy that only the earth can give.

In traditional cultures it is still known that women can pick up the soul-seed of their children when out in the open countryside. A young woman could accidentally brush up against a stone or rock and a little child might swiftly slip into her. Sometimes the future mother need only see a frog or a rabbit, inadvertently slap a fly, or eat a fish, and the human seed that hangs around these animals will find its way into her and will find her womb a warm, comfortable cave where it makes itself at home. Countless child-seeds are found in springs, ponds, seas, and wells. Thus a woman can become pregnant while bathing or carrying water. In archaic ways of thinking water sites were considered to be the vagina of the Goddess, the entrance to the realm of Frau Holle. According to northern German sagas, Adebar is the stork who gets the children from the swamp, carries them to the house, and drops them down through the chimney.

But plants, in particular the trees, make good homes for the unborn. Vegetation is a reservoir of pure life energy. Sometimes the woman needed only to reach for a beautiful flower and the small spirit, caused by karmic love, was pulled to its future mother—bound to her. Often the little ones were in a fruit tree. The farmers’ wives who rested below it or the women who picked an apple or a cherry as they passed by might soon become mothers. In many places in Germany it is said that girls’ souls are gotten from plum or cherry trees and boys’ souls can be gathered from pear trees.

When women had difficulty conceiving, they went to the wise woman. She knew of herbs to help increase fertility. For example, footbaths made with infusions of mugwort warmed and energized the abdomen. Mistletoe, when used correctly as a tea or tincture with yarrow tea, could prepare the womb for conception. The Celts considered the waxy mistletoe berries to be drops of sperm from the cosmic steer. But when these plants and spells did not help, the wise woman had advice. She knew quiet places—crevasses in cliffs, ponds, caves—that teemed with the souls of children who were waiting for a mother. These places still exist, and even though it is not spoken about these days, they are often still visited. For example, in the Jura Mountains of Switzerland there is place called Vrenelis Lake—I will not betray exactly where it is for it is a sacred place, not something for curious tourists or sensational journalists. In our times, women still bathe secretly there in the stream that roars through the forest ravine. They light candles and offer flowers before sticking their hands in a hole in the limestone cliffs. For the expectant it is the contact with another dimension; they touch the beyond, the realm of the Goddess, who has been camouflaged under the guise of Saint Verena.

The Children Springs at Lolarka Kund

Power spots where children can be obtained are found throughout the world. One of the most famous is Lolarka Kund, a deep spring near Assi Ghat in Varanasi, India. “Once the sun stood still” above the lake—in other words, it touched eternity. A
naga,
a snake king, lives in the waters below. Before the childless couple descends the numerous steps into the damp, cool depths, they knot together the woman’s sari and the man’s dhoti. They go down to the spring to bathe and leave their old clothing behind. The woman breaks her glass bracelets and sacrifices her favorite fruit, vowing to do without for the rest of her life. Sometimes she sacrifices a round pumpkin, which symbolizes pregnancy. After the bath they climb back up the stairs holding hands and wearing new clothes. In the event that a baby is born, the couple vows to return one year after the birth on the Day of the Sun (Ravivara) and give some of the child’s hair to the deity as a demonstration of their gratitude.

Every year nearly ten thousand people go to Lolarka Kund on Ravivara, which falls on the sixth day of the waxing moon of August. The barbers have their hands full; whole mountains of children’s hair pile up around the spring. Lolarka Kund—like Vrenelis Lake—is actually a
thirtha,
or ford, over the stream, which separates this world from the other side.

Once there were regular “children-trees.” The
Salige Frau
(blessed lady)
^a
lived high in the Alps, in the ancient larches that were often decorated with images of the Virgin Mary. The “blessed lady” appears to perceptive mountain peasants as a beautiful woman with radiant golden hair. For many generations she bestowed children upon the dairymaids, the farm women, and the wives of the coal burners. And when they were too poor to afford a midwife the blessed woman helped them. Entire valleys have been populated by such children-trees.

The ancestral spirits of the Celts and the Teutons reappeared in the village linden, oak, ash tree, or rolling meadows. Such
Holle
trees and
Titti
firs are still found in many places. (
Titti
or
ditti
means “child” or “spirit.” Thus children were “fished” out of Lake Titti in the Black Forest.) At the beginning of the twentieth century, wedding parties still found reprieve under such trees; they feasted and drank, decorated the branches with ribbons, and watered the trunk with wine or schnapps. It is said that such trees bleed and scream when an ax is put to them. This saying is not foolish superstition, but is based on an extrasensitive understanding of nature.

Many children in England, France, and Belgium come from the cabbage patch. This is no surprise—cabbage heads are nearly bursting with excesses of life energy. The seeds germinate and grow quickly. A cut cabbage head grows roots again as soon as it is placed on the moist ground. A poultice of juicy cabbage leaves heals many injuries, not only because of its active ingredients (mustard oil glycoside), but also through the transference of pure life energy.