Plants Spiritualities

Plants
Spiritualities
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There has been a link between plants and spirituality throughout history
and in all civilisations. Plants act as messengers, symbols, channels for
good or evil, they make manifest our relation to the spiritual and to the
divine. They are at the origin of beliefs, they feature in prayers and worship
and both poly- and monotheist pagan ceremonies. Their medicinal or
deadly powers reinforce the symbolic beliefs which underlie our use of
them. These powers and the technical and aesthetic complexity of plants,
coupled with their longevity, resistance and adaptation, are often difficult to
explain scientifically simply by evolution. This may be why they offer
unparalleled spiritual enlightenment. Their roles in the landscape and the
perfect functional beauty of wild nature have often reinforced and
transcended the sense of a founding divine presence behind the creative
forces of nature.
We have set out to tell you about the place of plants in our world in relation
to the divine, sacred and spiritual in whatever form or of whatever
importance. We do this with respect even if certain beliefs and rites offend
our social, scientific and ethnobotanical sensitivities. Our account is not
exhaustive and undoubtedly contains assumptions and choices based on
our own encounters and voyages.
The line between science and parascience fluctuates through the history
and geography of our civilisations and societies. This is clear with regard to
the spiritual component of our lives. Fear of life, or of death, introduces
distortions, obsessions and neuroses which often obscure a scientific
explanation of ritual and its primarily utilitarian function.
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Spirituality has different meanings in different geographical and socio-political contexts. It is usually linked to religion which aims to put humans into
contact with a superior being (God), often in the hope of saving their souls.
It refers to the opposition between matter and spirit. Spirituality also
describes a quest for sense, hope and liberty and the steps to acquire them
(initiation, rites and personal development). More recently, it may embrace
an atheistic and naturalist spirituality without a god.
Some people see in spirituality a simple expression of the survival instinct,
even a method of avoiding the reality of our mortal destiny.
While all religion is founded in spirituality, not all spirituality is a religion.
According to some authorities the distinction, simply expressed, is as
follows: in religion the vision is collective but in spirituality it tends to be
individual.
We thought that it would be interesting to travel with you along our shared
spiritual history through the world of plants, leaving aside doctrine,
advocacy or atheism. The examples we have chosen are linked to the stories
of plants and to life and death, and they lead us around the world.
We cannot escape the decorative and symbolic meanings of plants in our
search for a relation to spirituality and to a divine world which comforts us.
From the first traces of naturalist philosophies, then religions, plants are
everywhere. They have occupied the earth for millennia. Without useful
plants, there is no life. Without this tangible and utilitarian relationship,
there is no salvation for humans on this planet and beyond. Plants often
embody divinity for man. The gods created, multiplied and selected plants
and gave them to man to eat, to heal and clothe himself, for protection and
shelter, to hunt and fish … in short, to live and then to die ….. as late as
possible.
Plants fascinated early man who thought that some of them possessed
divine powers. They seemed to nourish themselves without having to
move, they were autonomous. They must be aided by supernatural forces,
unlike man who had to labour and travel to earn his meagre living. The
semperviren (evergreen) character of certain plant species, their
regenerative powers, healing qualities and perfumes inspired incredulity
and fascination.
Offerings, often of plants, both introduce and complete the cycle of the
phytospiritual ritual. Resurrection, or the ability of the living world to
regenerate through the carbon atom which permanently forms and
re-forms all living things, demonstrates the cycle. Man has always needed
to believe in his future, his happiness and in paradise after death, without
emptiness and, if possible, without loneliness. The divine generates, in this
sense, evolution and adaptation. Plants are thus often the vehicle for
spiritual practices which turn the wheel of life.
A plant is in turn deified and acts as diviner, it brings together and divides,
it offers life and takes it away, it symbolises and materialises, it is
everywhere and cannot escape its divine destiny. Its evolutionary
perfection fascinates and leads observers to the frontiers of knowledge and
to the limits of what can be explained. It is at this point that the sacred may
appear and man exploits it. Plants are ideal for the materialisation of a
principle or as a symbol of a function. They guide users into the spiral of
spirituality and ceremonial.