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Published by Bear & Company
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
Table of Contents
About The Book
Consulting plant spirits for spiritual and psychological guidance and healing
• Reveals how, by communing with the deva or spirit of a plant, we can call forth its medicine without even needing to ingest it
• Includes wisdom from the devas of 13 herbs, such as rosemary, datura, and uva ursi
• Empowers readers with the tools to develop their own inner resources for healing in relationship with the plant devas around them
Each plant has a story to share with us, a healing story to guide us in trying times, a spirit medicine for the New Earth that is presently unfolding. Herbs are some of the most powerful allies we have for these transitional times--we just need to learn how to listen as they share their knowledge with us.
In Wisdom of the Plant Devas, Thea Summer Deer reveals a new dimension of herbal medicine, one where the plant’s spirit is consulted for guidance and healing beyond the physical. Examining the botany, modern and traditional uses, history, and folklore of 13 special herbs, such as rosemary, uva ursi, and datura, she shares divinations and messages from their devas, or plant spirits, explaining how these stories carry the herbs into our lives, letting them work their magic on us. Exploring herbal medicine from an energetic perspective, she reveals that by communing with the deva of a plant, we can call on the plant’s physical, psychological, and spiritual medicine and guidance--without ingesting it or even being in its presence.
Detailing the sacred space of a Medicine Wheel Garden, whether in a backyard or our imaginations, she connects us with the devas and empowers us to seek our own answers with their much-needed spiritual guidance and divinatory advice. Creating a bridge between botanical medicine and plant spirit medicine, she shows how by coming into community with the devas and co-creating with the world of nature, we can gain tremendous insights to help heal our hearts, our minds, and our spirits and consciously evolve as together we birth the New Earth.
• Reveals how, by communing with the deva or spirit of a plant, we can call forth its medicine without even needing to ingest it
• Includes wisdom from the devas of 13 herbs, such as rosemary, datura, and uva ursi
• Empowers readers with the tools to develop their own inner resources for healing in relationship with the plant devas around them
Each plant has a story to share with us, a healing story to guide us in trying times, a spirit medicine for the New Earth that is presently unfolding. Herbs are some of the most powerful allies we have for these transitional times--we just need to learn how to listen as they share their knowledge with us.
In Wisdom of the Plant Devas, Thea Summer Deer reveals a new dimension of herbal medicine, one where the plant’s spirit is consulted for guidance and healing beyond the physical. Examining the botany, modern and traditional uses, history, and folklore of 13 special herbs, such as rosemary, uva ursi, and datura, she shares divinations and messages from their devas, or plant spirits, explaining how these stories carry the herbs into our lives, letting them work their magic on us. Exploring herbal medicine from an energetic perspective, she reveals that by communing with the deva of a plant, we can call on the plant’s physical, psychological, and spiritual medicine and guidance--without ingesting it or even being in its presence.
Detailing the sacred space of a Medicine Wheel Garden, whether in a backyard or our imaginations, she connects us with the devas and empowers us to seek our own answers with their much-needed spiritual guidance and divinatory advice. Creating a bridge between botanical medicine and plant spirit medicine, she shows how by coming into community with the devas and co-creating with the world of nature, we can gain tremendous insights to help heal our hearts, our minds, and our spirits and consciously evolve as together we birth the New Earth.
Excerpt
Self-Heal
Prunella vulgaris
Unconditional Self-Love
The Story
While the name Prunella may elicit the image of a prissy princess or call to mind an Italian folk tale, Prunella vulgaris is a common perennial wildflower. The genus includes seven species that are all known by the common name self-heal. Self-heal has been used medicinally for centuries on practically every continent to treat just about every ailment. Perhaps it is Prunella’s little purple flowers that cause its association with little plums and prunes. The flowers bloom constantly from May to September.
Self-heal is a medicinal plant, or weed as some consider it, which is incredibly abundant, available, and found practically all over the world. It has a long history of folk use, especially in the treatment of wounds. Prior to World War II it was used to staunch bleeding and treat heart disease. Considered one of the fairy herbs in rural Ireland, perhaps because of its wand of delicate purple flowers and ability to heal, it inspired the young English artist Cicely Mary Barker. Cicely Mary Barker’s art elicited a sense of freedom of spirit that charmed a war-weary world in the early twentieth century with a vision of innocence and hope.
The herbal actions of self-heal are so many that it is usually considered to be an herbal panacea. Self-heal is used as an antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant. In addition, self-heal also exhibits the following herbal actions: alterative, antimutagenic, antispasmodic, astringent, carminative, diuretic, febrifuge, hypotensive, immunostimulant, stomachic, styptic, vermifuge, vulnerary, and tonic. It is used to gradually restore health, promote wound healing, stop internal hemorrhaging by contracting blood vessels, reduce fever, cause tissue to contract, relieve symptoms of indigestion such as hyperacidity and gas, strengthen and tone the stomach, treat edema, induce urination, lower blood pressure, and even expel intestinal worms.
Fresh-picked self-heal is used as a fresh herb poultice applied directly to a wound. Although the most common use is topically to treat sores, burns, and bruises, it is also used internally to relieve hemorrhaging, fevers, diarrhea, and swollen glands. In Chinese medicine self-heal is classified as cooling to the liver and used to treat liver and gallbladder inflammation and stagnation. There is also evidence to support the traditional use of self-heal in the treatment of some forms of cancer as well as type 2 diabetes. Its antiviral actions seem to slow cell division, making it a potential aid in the treatment of HIV and herpes simplex virus.
The Divination
Self-heal wants us to heal and has brought herself into close proximity, and relationship, with humans for this reason. She cools our livers, heals our anger, and teaches us how to heal and love ourselves unconditionally. Love is the greatest healer, and this plant loves us so much that she just keeps showing up—practically everywhere! Sometimes, when a person has been badly damaged or wounded through neglect or violence, we have to love them until they are able to love themselves. This is what the devas of the medicine plants are doing—loving us until we learn how to love ourselves. Take a moment to look around. Where is this plant growing near you? How will you honor her medicines? There is no imbalance that she cannot restore. You have only to open your heart and receive.
“Love thy neighbor as thyself,” implies that one must start by learning to love one’s self. If we look around at our neighbors in the world today we can see that we have not done so well with this lesson. Why is it so difficult to truly love our Self? Perhaps it is because of what we were taught about being born. Were we born in blessing, or born in sin? How were we raised? Were we loved and supported and encouraged to carry our gifts or told that we were bad and punished?
When we love ourselves enough to do the inner work of bringing back the lost soul pieces that keep us from being fully present, and we integrate those pieces into our third dimensional physical form, then we free ourselves, and others, to experience new levels of consciousness. We become present in love.
The Deva Speaks
What is this that you call love and to which you aspire with no conditions? The human has only ever known the emotion of love upon which there has always been conditions. Your condition for love is based on the elements for survival. The elements have always been here to serve your evolution, and it is their love alone that is unconditional on this plane.
It is a law in your dimension that there will always be this struggle toward the light of love: a struggle that will continue for as long as you take form in a dimension of duality and separation. For your notion of an unconditional love is actually a field of love emanating from a central sun that you have already begun to perceive. When the need to survive is no longer upon you then you will enter this vibrational field of love. No conditions as you presently know them exist in this field, for love is what is. It is in this field that I have grown my medicines for you, and through this field that we will walk together as I show you the way home.
Prunella vulgaris
Unconditional Self-Love
The Story
While the name Prunella may elicit the image of a prissy princess or call to mind an Italian folk tale, Prunella vulgaris is a common perennial wildflower. The genus includes seven species that are all known by the common name self-heal. Self-heal has been used medicinally for centuries on practically every continent to treat just about every ailment. Perhaps it is Prunella’s little purple flowers that cause its association with little plums and prunes. The flowers bloom constantly from May to September.
Self-heal is a medicinal plant, or weed as some consider it, which is incredibly abundant, available, and found practically all over the world. It has a long history of folk use, especially in the treatment of wounds. Prior to World War II it was used to staunch bleeding and treat heart disease. Considered one of the fairy herbs in rural Ireland, perhaps because of its wand of delicate purple flowers and ability to heal, it inspired the young English artist Cicely Mary Barker. Cicely Mary Barker’s art elicited a sense of freedom of spirit that charmed a war-weary world in the early twentieth century with a vision of innocence and hope.
The herbal actions of self-heal are so many that it is usually considered to be an herbal panacea. Self-heal is used as an antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant. In addition, self-heal also exhibits the following herbal actions: alterative, antimutagenic, antispasmodic, astringent, carminative, diuretic, febrifuge, hypotensive, immunostimulant, stomachic, styptic, vermifuge, vulnerary, and tonic. It is used to gradually restore health, promote wound healing, stop internal hemorrhaging by contracting blood vessels, reduce fever, cause tissue to contract, relieve symptoms of indigestion such as hyperacidity and gas, strengthen and tone the stomach, treat edema, induce urination, lower blood pressure, and even expel intestinal worms.
Fresh-picked self-heal is used as a fresh herb poultice applied directly to a wound. Although the most common use is topically to treat sores, burns, and bruises, it is also used internally to relieve hemorrhaging, fevers, diarrhea, and swollen glands. In Chinese medicine self-heal is classified as cooling to the liver and used to treat liver and gallbladder inflammation and stagnation. There is also evidence to support the traditional use of self-heal in the treatment of some forms of cancer as well as type 2 diabetes. Its antiviral actions seem to slow cell division, making it a potential aid in the treatment of HIV and herpes simplex virus.
The Divination
Self-heal wants us to heal and has brought herself into close proximity, and relationship, with humans for this reason. She cools our livers, heals our anger, and teaches us how to heal and love ourselves unconditionally. Love is the greatest healer, and this plant loves us so much that she just keeps showing up—practically everywhere! Sometimes, when a person has been badly damaged or wounded through neglect or violence, we have to love them until they are able to love themselves. This is what the devas of the medicine plants are doing—loving us until we learn how to love ourselves. Take a moment to look around. Where is this plant growing near you? How will you honor her medicines? There is no imbalance that she cannot restore. You have only to open your heart and receive.
“Love thy neighbor as thyself,” implies that one must start by learning to love one’s self. If we look around at our neighbors in the world today we can see that we have not done so well with this lesson. Why is it so difficult to truly love our Self? Perhaps it is because of what we were taught about being born. Were we born in blessing, or born in sin? How were we raised? Were we loved and supported and encouraged to carry our gifts or told that we were bad and punished?
When we love ourselves enough to do the inner work of bringing back the lost soul pieces that keep us from being fully present, and we integrate those pieces into our third dimensional physical form, then we free ourselves, and others, to experience new levels of consciousness. We become present in love.
The Deva Speaks
What is this that you call love and to which you aspire with no conditions? The human has only ever known the emotion of love upon which there has always been conditions. Your condition for love is based on the elements for survival. The elements have always been here to serve your evolution, and it is their love alone that is unconditional on this plane.
It is a law in your dimension that there will always be this struggle toward the light of love: a struggle that will continue for as long as you take form in a dimension of duality and separation. For your notion of an unconditional love is actually a field of love emanating from a central sun that you have already begun to perceive. When the need to survive is no longer upon you then you will enter this vibrational field of love. No conditions as you presently know them exist in this field, for love is what is. It is in this field that I have grown my medicines for you, and through this field that we will walk together as I show you the way home.
Product Details
- Publisher: Bear & Company (August 19, 2011)
- Length: 224 pages
- ISBN13: 9781591430858
Raves and Reviews
“What a fitting title for a marvelous book! From the opening paragraph when Thea enticingly invites us into the magical realm of the plant devas to the ending story about uva ursi, I was thoroughly and completely captivated. Though I’ve experienced this sacred relationship with the plants and have read about it in several other excellent books, Thea’s account is refreshingly unique, deeply authentic, and easily accessible to the reader. She makes what at times may seem unbelievable to some--the ability to converse with other life-forms--to be fully believable and accessible to anyone. Woven into Wisdom of the Plant Devas is Thea’s own wonderful story and heartfelt deep relationship with plant devas. My only criticism is that I was sorry when the book ended. I wanted more!”
– Rosemary Gladstar, herbalist and founder of United Plant Savers, author of Rosemary Gladstar’s
“The plants continue to turn up the volume urging us to listen to their guidance for our spiritual evolution. Wisdom of the Plant Devas is the next level of communication with the green beings, revealing important information not only about our personal growth and planetary transformation but also about our connection to the entire universe. Thea Summer Deer shares her communication with the plant devas, the architects who help deepen our relationship to the spirit of the plant, with amazing clarity, love, and light. This book is a must read for all people wanting to take up their rightful relational place in the vast web of life both earthly and beyond.”
– Pam Montgomery, author of Plant Spirit Healing
“Thea Summer Deer, a long-time teacher in the Wise Woman herbalist tradition sees the plants as sacred, their healing powers based on a personal and spiritual relationship between plant and healer. In her splendidly written new book she is a knowledgeable and impassioned guide not only to the spirits of thirteen important healing plants, but also to a special way of thinking about our healing bond with the spirits of all the plants with which we live.”
– Stephan V. Beyer, author of Singing to the Plants: A guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon
“... the book inspired me to cement my belief that nature has extraordinary healing power.”
– Beliefnet, November 2011
“Thea Summer Deer is actively working to birth a New Earth, full of light beings that evolve from this current existence toward one in which all of our needs are provided for simply through asking. The messages she conveys through the plants support this journey, reassuring us that they will help bring our bodies into wholeness, our minds into community, and our emotions into glorious balance with the energies that surround us. Wisdom of the Plant Devas is a beautiful, wonderful gift from the author (and plant allies) to the world.”
– Joan Kovatch, Sage Woman Magazine
“...it’s a good model for deepening relationships with plant totems and other spirits.”
– Lupa, Facing North
“Wisdom of the Plant Devas is a beautiful, wonderful gift from the author (and plant allies) to the world.”
– Joan Kovatch, Sagewoman Magazine
“Bravo! This is my new favorite plant book! To take it a step further, it is one I wish I had written. Wisdom of the Plant Devas is a rich and generous treasure trove of information and inspiration and an articulate expression of the power of spirit in medicine.”
– Nicki Scully, author of Planetary Healing: Spirit Medicine for Global Transformation and Power Anima
“In this lovely book, Thea Summer Deer takes us on a fascinating journey into the hidden world of the plant devas and shares their powerful message of Earth wisdom, transformation, and healing.”
– Nathaniel Altman, author of The Deva Handbook and The Honey Prescription
“The devas will tell you their stories, recite their poetry, regale you with pronouncements, and show you their portraits. You may fall in love. You may never return.”
– Susun S. Weed, author of Wise Woman Herbal series
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