They Eat Light. Isn’t That Enough?

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July 15, 2024

 

When we honor the wisdom of Ériu, walking the land,
living her rhythms, and knowing her patterns…


A very dear and long time friend, now living in England, was inspired by the hollyhocks growing beside his cottage door to explore their symbolism. Apparently they symbolize abundance in life and people planted the hollyhock flower near the front of homes to encourage positivity, prosperity, and good tidings to the household.

How many of us have explored the meaning of plants? How many of us have explored a relationship with their healing and even mind expanding energies? Yet it seems that in this we are only barely touching a relationship with plants that was very familiar to our ancestors. Virtually all indigenous cultures around the world had an intimate relationship with plant life, many ascribing personhood to plants.

Of the Great Lakes region traditional Anishinaabe culture and teachings, Mary Siisip Geniusz writes that the primacy of plants is central. Plants are the world’s second brothers, created just after the elder brother forces of wind, rocks, rain, snow, and thunder. Nonhuman animals are third brothers, and humanity is the youngest brother, the most recently created of all the beings.

To ask humankind what being in the world means . . .
is to reproduce a very partial image of the cosmos.
Emanuele Coccia

In those lost traditions there is lost wisdom. All that symbology we find in our searching and exploring, where did it come from if not from a vibrant and vital relationship with the plant nations? Is what we find today only a remnant of knowing from that relationship?

We are so estranged from this wisdom relationship, even though the plant nations are all around us. We have lost our ability to see and hear and know that wisdom.

It seems we have generally  lost our ability to learn the lessons hidden in every leaf and rock.

But that is changing. For many of us the wisdom comes in merging with the plant nations. For others it is coming back through scientific study. In her new book, The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth, Zoe Schlanger explores the latest research on plant consciousness, intelligence, and communication. Its scientifically dense, but therein lies its credibility. It’s a great read. In upcoming posts, I will share some of her writing. The title of this post was inspired by the book’s opening quote. Yes, for those of us who enjoy breathing, we might consider plants eating light to be enough. But they do more. So much more.

Nature everywhere speaks to man
in a voice that is familiar to his soul.
Alexander von Humboldt
Nineteenth-century naturalist.

It’s time for us to listen.

Beannacht,
Judith

3 thoughts on “They Eat Light. Isn’t That Enough?”

  1. I I’m so enjoying your poignant insights and the way they are reminding us to live in right relation.

  2. I wish I knew more about plants and about nature overall. The beauty of plants when I see them gives me pause, their fragility more so. My favorites seem to be the iris, tiger lily, and chrysanthemum. (Just to say.) I’m looking forward to learn more from the excerpts of the book you’ll be sharing. And I trust, I hope, you’re very well.

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