The Bookery: Sophie Strand's "The Flowering Wand: Rewilding the Sacred Masculine"

Take the tunnel-like trail through the rhododendron. Notice your soft footfall, the earth absorbing your impact like a rich, musky sponge. The forest, it darkens. The sound of water following its gravitational pulls around bends and over rocks gets louder. Is the water a blanket being pulled downstream or a holobiont of many liquid narratives following various paths? And you, are you simply being pulled through the tunnel or are you a conglomeration of many narratives? Regardless, you move forward through the tunnel until it opens into evergreen wood, very little light slanting through the canopy of hemlocks. You can smell the humus--a word just as dark and rich as the forest--from which many fruiting mycelial bodies bloom. Yellows, reds, oranges, bright whites.

And what is that bright white being over there, bowing its head to the forest floor? A fungus? A flower? A woodland sprite?

What is that bright white being over there, its head blooming, fastened in tight, white robes? Robes that appear to have black-inked words inscribed on them?

They are the Ghost Pipe, not quite fungus, quite supernatural flower. Unlike their fellow flowers, they do not dine on photons, turning light into green life. Instead, they hang their chandelier head down to where they spreads their roots amongst the mycorrhizal network below the ground. Waxy and erect, they digest with their feet.

If you remove Ghost Pipe from the earth, they wither, turn black regardless of any vessel of water you may find.

Earth is their only healer. Sophie Strand wrote in her book The Flowering Wand that “Healing doesn’t have to be hard work. It can be romantic. It can be a bacchanal.”

Hard work. A constant trend in the healing industry is to do hard work which may include re-traumatization or constantly focusing on the self and its “improvement” or mimicking (“Here is my aesthetic morning routine. Check the caption where you can also buy these products!”). There is often encouragement to relive the darkness so to overcome or understand it. But once a thing has happened, it is a part of us. An eggshell being thrown into the compost. A banana peel with a sticker still on it. A hard rind of avocado--or even harder--its pit, which just doesn’t seem to break down so easily. That sticker will stick around for a long time.

Everyone heals differently. And sometimes I wish there were other words for it. I’m sure there are. If a rock falls on my head and hurts me, I do not feel the need to understand the rock. Instead, I will carry it with me. Maybe one day it will be in my pocket. Another day, on my dresser. Another day, in my hand as I plant my feet in soil/soul. Why do all the work when right here at our feet is a bacchanal of ripeness and newness and rot? Why not let the white mold of the earth break it down in time?

Sometimes looking in blinds one of what is right there at our feet, at our outstretched hands. Reach out towards awe, curiosity, and a willingness to love the ugliness.

Sophie Strand wrote about how awe and curiosity, like hallucinogenics, affects the ego:

“…the psychedelic does not always have to be a substance intervention. It is not a heroic dose or an isolated experience. Functional MRI studies of the default mode network of brains demonstrates how entheogens work to shut off the “ego” centers of our brains; we have also shown that other exercises produce similar brain scans…Overwhelming marvel. Astonishment. Awe. That dumbstruck laughter that lifts us up by the scruff of the neck like a mama cat transporting her kittens.

These moments are not focused on the individual. They are always a participatory involvement with the world. With landscape and breath and weather. With flora and fauna and fungi. This, I think, is the most transformative psychedelic experience we can have: repeatedly flowing into the ecosystem and letting it flow back into us. Awe isn’t the speedy experience of popping a tab or a pill. It’s about going on the same walk every day. Sitting under the same black locust tree every morning. Slowly, quietly opening to what is in front of our face.”

Humans, find your black locust tree. Find your closest sunflower face. Your closest puddle of sun. Your closest handful of dirt. Existence can be a bacchanal.

And like George Washington Carver once said:

“Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough.”

Sophie also wrote, “No one is coming to save us. But everyone is coming to save everyone.”

We can live life in eucatastrophe. The dark tunnel, although dark, can be beloved.