gave plants their magical power, what spirits they embodied, what was required to work with them, and the correct manner to make use of their properties. This body of knowledge, which we might call a magical philosophy of trees and herbs, I refer to as Occult Herbalism. Though much of this elder knowledge is lost, most of these powerful plants are still with us, and despite the wreckage of civilizations, some of their traditions have been passed down through millennia, sometimes in the form of writing, and sometimes hand to hand, from master to apprentice.
It is tempting to conceive of Occult Herbalism based purely upon the more lurid and profane depictions of the occult arts, as they appear in popular culture: plants used for drugs, murder, and magic. We reject this characterization in the first instance because of its context: with the vast exposure and wide acceptance of a thing, or its reduction to entertainment, it ceases to be ‘occult.’ Occult, meaning ‘hidden’ is by its nature umbral, immaterial, private, encrypted, ineffable, mystical, and, importantly, concealed from the eyes of those who would abuse it.
One may also argue that the concerns of the plant world, by their nature, are ‘occult’ or ‘esoteric’ given their distance and state of estrangement from most human hearts. To many, the greensward is something to walk across, not to contemplate as a haven of lore and occult power. The cornfield similarly is an agrarian concern, abstracted from daily life and only conceptually related to sustenance, and the roses bought from the florist an ephemeral spot of color and fragrance serving to make a statement that words cannot. All of these things, however, have ancient associations and a related retinue of invisible powers, interweaving the spiritual and religious currents which feed the present. The pervasive state of apathy which often attends upon all matters vegetal has created shadows about them, and, in part, this has nourished their occult or hidden nature.
There is also, despite the legacies of the Age of Enlightenment, the persistence of magic and religion in the world, the traffic with divine power, and plants form an important part of this. In religion, herbs are powerfully crystallized in complex symbolism and theological narrative, as well as serving roles in the various rites of each canon. In magical practice, the study of plants has immediate applications in several established occult streams. Among the most prominent of these are traditions of spirit healing, or indigenous practices which outsiders call ‘shamanism.’ In the occult heritage of Europe, the strongest strands of esoteric botany occur in Alchemy and renaissance Natural Magic, which have several important schools specifically focusing on plant work, as well as witchcraft and herbal folk magic preserved at the local level. These systems are usually part of larger magical frameworks that include many other non-plant practices, such as angelic conjuration, planetary magic, kabbalah, and the corpus of Solomonic spirit-conjurations. As a discipline unto itself, Occult herbalism itself may also form the singular marrow of esoteric study and practice, focusing wholly on plants. In such cases the older exemplars of these teachings often do not define themselves as ‘occult herbalism’, rather one learns to become an ‘herbalist,’ or ‘one who knows the secrets of plants’ or ‘herb-wise.’
In the course of study, the contemporary pupil of magic and occultism is often faced with plant references in the midst of a magical operation, even if it does not specifically concern plants; what is usually not apparent is the complex traditions which lie behind the herb and its acknowledged spiritual powers. In other cases, more cohesive bodies of occult plant doctrine present a bewildering array of teachings and lore, and the seeker naturally must consider how best to comprehend and implement this knowledge.
The model I propose represents an approach to learning, and it contains four essential features. The first of these are Pathways, of which I have for these purposes enumerated thirteen. There are also Gardens, for the purposes of this book accounted as thirteen, but their true number beyond count. The third feature of course is that of the seeker, the pilgrim in Elysium, and the fourth is the plants themselves. This formula represents a metaphysical model of a very physical process, a means by which the sublime power of plants can be approached in a meaningful and active way. The operation is dynamic, and ongoing, ever so much as the processes of Nature, which must be understood to unite its variables. In this, we resolutely identify with and thereby honor the axioms of Natural Magic.
The Pathways, as here exposited, are routes of approach to the mystery. Each presupposes a spiritual and philosophical stance, but also a momentum. In considering these pathways, it is important to note that each has a static emanation. Knowledge of the Pathway thus entails how it is expressed in motion, and also how it functions as a set of first principles. If we consider monuments in the landscape, the meaning of the Pathway becomes clearer: a mountain may be approached by many routes, affording different vistas; the mountain is singular but one’s experience of it differs based on the road leading there.
If the Pathways indicate essential philosophical routes, the Gardens in turn are the zones of knowledge the Pathways lead to. Many of these overlap each other, and share arcana. The Gardens, thus, are concentrations of specified power; the Pathways are the routes leading there. Any Garden can thus be reached by one or more Pathways; likewise a single Pathway may perambulate multiple gardens. However, as all pilgrims know, a path may be trod in pursuit of a destination without arriving there: the path may turn, stray, or, by the nature of its demands, forcibly drive one to other by-ways, or into the thorny tangle of the wayside thicket.
The Pathways
Κάθαρσις • Katharsis
THE PATHWAY OF THE VIRGIN
All roads have their beginning, and that which penetrates the gardens of plant-mystery is no different, having a point of origination and emergence, if only in the flame of desire and aspiration. The recollection of early or ‘first’ experiences is universal: smelling the scents of certain flowers, the sudden and unexpected puncture of a thorn, tasting one’s first cup of wine, and other altered states of consciousness brought on by plants. Aside from the innate characteristics of the thing encountered, the tabula rasa contributes power to this experience, the lack of individual epistemology more fully forming the experience of communion with the Other.
Thus is the Pathway of the Virgin—a road of our Art whose associated word katharsis, Greek for cleansing or purification, implies a state of the zeroth path, the point preceding all pathways. Admittedly the hallowed state of virginity is often scorned and ridiculed, regarded as naïve, inexperienced, and ignorant: these are but the bumptious out-gassings of the sexually atrophied. This fundamentally cowardly stance does not obtain within a magical framework, for it cannot admit that all things at one time or another are virginal. In the occult view, there is yet the Virgin in exaltation—the onset of maturity, of sexual ripening, desire, and most importantly, the state of all-possibility.
Purification or cleansing often presupposes a prior state of filth or defilement, but this is an imprecise and unnecessary position. All practitioners must examine their own relationship to such states as ‘purity’ and ‘impurity’ and discover whether these notions serve learning and personal evolution. All too often in such reflections, one discovers the taint of the religious, such as the Christian doctrine of Original Sin. The point is not that such concepts are useless in the work of esoteric circles, but rather that they are frequently present in the psyche of the practitioners without their knowledge, and thereby reverberate into their work without their conscious knowledge. The Pathway of the Virgin thus mandates rigorous self-examination to reveal exactly what one is composed of: points of past failure, as well as success, can be instructive in this process—if one is willing to learn.
For the present considerations of katharsis, let us consider the Pathway of the Virgin to be swept clean or cleared of previous spiritual states. Practically, this involves the dissolution of accreta functioning as unneeded admixtures to our communion with plants. Included among these are presumptions, suppositions, fantasies, and other psychological artifacts which often accompany exposure
