LINKING THE MAGICAL AND THE MATERIAL

The closest we've come to successfully linking the magical and material worlds in the past is through the Doctrine of Signatures. The Doctrine of Signatures is an ancient way of looking at plants that goes back at least as far as Plato, although in its simplest form, in Western botanical medicine, it was most developed by Jacob Boehme in the 1600s and by William Cole in The Art of Simpling (1656). It provided a direct link between the material and the magical, and magic workers of the past were familiar with it, as it was a prevalent idea in medieval society.

THE DOCTRINE OF SIGNATURES

The primitive version of the Doctrine of Signatures most frequently bandied about is that a specific plant part signifies its medicinal use by its resemblance to the body part it treats — the classic example being lungwort, which has spots on its leaves that resemble the holes of the bronchial tubes in the lungs.

The true Doctrine of Signatures is not as mechanical as that, however. The alchemist Paracelsus (1493–1541) extended the doctrine from plants to people, other animals, celestial objects like the moon, and features of the landscape like rivers. He wrote that any natural object with lines, veins, wrinkles, or colors can be interpreted as having meaning and can tell us something about its nature. He considered that the Archeus, the lowest aspect of the astral plane that pervades all things, created signs in everything and argued that the art of recognizing signatures (which he extended to divinatory methods like palmistry, geomancy, hydromancy, pyromancy, and so on) in nature is a part of astronomy. Perhaps that was true for medieval astronomers, who were more mages than scientists, but the art of reading signatures has been and continues to be the stock in trade for many magic workers today.

Paracelsus warned that these signs could appear in a confusing mix, which he likened to a council meeting where everyone wants to have their way and the resolutions adopted end up being foolish. As an example, a plant may have thorns (Mars) but also lush, sweetly scented flowers (Venus). It may be a perennial, which tends to indicate that it works in the long term (Saturn). It may like to grow in sun (solar), but with cool, wet feet (lunar). It may have small, hard fruits (Jupiter) and a dill-like smell (Mercury). A wise person knows how to sift through all these competing signs to choose which part of the plant is most apt for the situation at hand. So we must be careful when we make use of signatures to determine which of them is most appropriate, most "true" for our purpose.

This is precisely the point that those who mock the Doctrine of Signatures miss — anything can contain within itself multiple signatures. It is the skill of the interpreter that determines whether the plant part indicated is usable in a particular situation or not. Our power here lies in the ability to go through all the signatures of any plant and find the one that is the most fitting for the work involved. That ability to sift and sort through a variety of information about a plant is part of the magic practitioner's job.

Planetary Rulership and Tables of Correspondence

Today, practitioners of magic have come to rely, perhaps a bit too much, on tables of correspondence when dealing with plants. It is true that the characteristics of planetary rulership that are always a part of tables of correspondence tend to cross cultural boundaries in a way few other indicators do. People of all cultures all over the world and in every era have been able to see the planets. Many cultures have assigned values to them, and often these values are surprisingly similar. This, to my mind, points out an underlying verification of planetary characteristics.

Do these characteristics or this energy have anything to do with the planets themselves? I honestly don't think that matters. It's something we can chat about while sitting on the porch on a summer night, but otherwise ...? What matters in my experience is that these characteristics identify particular types of energy streams that we can grasp and make use of in magical operations.

Tables can be very helpful when you are starting out in magic, because they give you a sense of a general tendency — for instance, why a particular plant is associated with Mars and is therefore good for protection. But you have to be able to think for yourself and not be dependent on planetary tables of correspondence. You should be able to look at any plant — whether or not it is included in a table or even established in magical lore — and determine by examining its appearance and behavior which planet rules it. From there, you can hypothesize about which parts of the plant are good for which magical task, knowing that each part and method of preparation will yield different results.

Knowledge that has been handed down, whether by tradition or in books, is only a foundation. The superstructure of knowledge is built on this foundation by folks working individually and directly with the natural world, concluding and practicing based on that knowledge, and building more on their own conclusions in turn. In other words, the book of magic is written by each individual and is a combination of lore and that person's own experience. I think that, when we look at some common practices in magic, we see evidence of this type of building of a personal magical system in items like a magical journal, or Book of Shadows, or whatever we want to call it. These have become somewhat corrupted in our society, as some people simply copy spells from others. On a deeper level, however, I think these records represent a personal body of magic built upon a blend of received lore and lived experience in the garden and with the spirits. What I want this book to do for you is to show you how you can build on what you already know about the witching herbs from your reading or from tradition by getting you out there in the garden and observing and working to contact plant spirits. By doing this, you create your own personal magic that works best for you in the here and now. That is real magical power, in my opinion.

Where to begin, then?

BEYOND THE DOCTRINE OF SIGNATURES

The Doctrine of Signatures can be extremely helpful, but I believe that we can take it much further in order to get closer to understanding the spirit of a plant. We can look at the details and patterns of the plant in order to arrive at a deep understanding of the plant spirit. This approach assumes that everything about a plant means something — and probably more than one thing. Everything about a plant — the shape and color and smell of its flowers, how the leaves grasp the stalk, how it goes about...