Plants, just like everything else have Spirit - or are a part of Spirit depending on how you want to view it. Some people call that a "soul", but that word is illdefined for me and so I don't use it.
Awareness? Absolutely. When you practice spiritual communication, you can communicate with the spiritual essence of anything.
In preparation for High Ceremony, the Medicine Men and chief initiates will gather things necessary for the event. They will go out and "ask" if there are Stone People who are willing to help them in their ceremony and they will wait for an answer. They will go out and "ask" for volunteers from the Standing Ones who are willing to sacrifice a part of themselves that the ceremony may be made in a good way; and they will wait for an answer.
I have done this many times and have never failed to recieve an answer. And it has not always been a positive one. When I seek along a hillside for Stone People to come home with us for a Purification Lodge, I open myself to the spirit of the area and ask with my heart for volunteers. When I close my eyes, those that are willing to come with us will glow with a brilliant white light. I can actually see the hillside with my eyes closed because of all the little glowing spirits on - and slightly under - the ground.
Same goes for the Standing Ones. When we need wood or pine needles or boughs for the sacred fire, we don't take without asking permission.
I have a white pine in front of my house that actually "giggled" at me when I asked her if I could use her needles for our lodge fires.
Certain plants have very strong medicine that they share through their spirit. Tobacco, Red Willow, Mugwort, Mescalito, Chamomile, Cedar, Sweet Grass, and Sage are just a very few of the very many that when treated with respect and care will offer great aid to us Two-Leggeds.
In the world of the Shaman, ALL things have and are of Spirit - the same spirit that we ourselves have and are of.
In the Lakota tradition, the phrase "Mitaque Oyasin" translates literally as "all my relations" but it MEANS so much more. Mitaque Oyasin is an acknowledgement that we are an integral part of this world and this world is an integral part of the Spirit World and therefore we "are all related".  |