What are the plants telling us?
Vera Froés is a Brazilian historian, ethnobotanist, and author of the book Santo Daime: Amazonian Culture. In her talk at AYA2019, Froés responded to the question: What are the plants telling us? She explored the relationship that healers and shamans have with the natural world and shared the key messages given to her by the plants.
Shamans, healers, and “herbeiros” engage in dialogue with the plant world, exchanging energy and feelings. Moreover, they learn from the plants about how to use and combine their properties. There’s an exchange of communication between different realms. For Froés, shamanism is an ancient art that is well understood by indigenous peoples.
Nature is part of their family. Shamans get in touch with the original essence and biomolecular dimensions to make a diagnosis and learn how to heal a disease, joining both the physical and the spiritual worlds.
According to Froés, there’s a wonderful enigma associated with ayahuasca, one described by many botanists, such as Richard Evans Schultes. How, from thousands of species in the rainforest, did the indigenous people from South America discover that the combination of this specific vine with specific leaf would make ayahuasca? This type of intuition and sensitivity, paired with cultural knowledge are the gifts expressed in the genetic code of each shaman. They can communicate with plants.
What are the plants telling us?
Within indigenous communities, communication between the visible and the invisible takes place through myths, chants, and songs. In creation stories we find Mother Earth – Pachamama, the female power – as well as wonderful beings, often symbolized by the snake. According to Vera Froés, “The word ayahuasca means the snake that seeks the light.”
In Amazonian mythology, enchanted beings become animals, people and plants, and live in an underwater paradise. The snake also lives there, in the primal water. In the Amazon, the Boa Blanca is the guardian of knowledge, bringing the power to heal and to gain knowledge.
Both the snake and DNA represent a ladder and appear as important symbols in all civilizations, linking heaven and earth. Gods use the ladder to come down to earth and men use it to go up to the heavens. There’s a portal that links heaven and earth, spirit and heart, providing access to higher levels of consciousness.
The alchemists and scientists, from Paracelsus to Narby, with their rational minds, know that we are all one. It took four centuries of research to prove what indigenous people already knew. For example, Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA, which is the snake in a spiral. Everything within the microcosm is also in the macrocosm.
All beings in the planet come from the same DNA, the same creative source, and if we are disconnected from it, the plants give us coded messages that enable us to reconnect to ourselves and Mother Earth.
Key messages
Over the years, Froés has received four key messages from the plants: accurate observation, interdependence, impermanence, and diversity. Accurate, focused observation is critical for being present in the here and now. The planet is a huge network wherein all beings are interconnected, even if they are not aware of it. Impermanence reveals that everything is in constant transformation. And lastly, diversity shows us that difference is essential – biodiversity is maintained through coevolution.
The plants therefore bring us an important message, according to Froés, and have gifts that will help us to build a network of cooperation that allows for sustainable life on planet earth.
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