My work within Wise Herbal Ways is aimed at reclaiming the Wise Woman, but who is this woman? And why would we want to reclaim her?
The Wise Woman can be thought of as a historical figure, an ancestor, and also as an archetype. She represents the wild woman within us, the fierce warrior who understands her place in society, who embodies her skills and knowledge. She is the Seer, who connects with and sees the spirit, energy, and consciousness in the life around us, and as such listens deeply to the beings around her to hear their messages. She is the medicine woman who works with her plant kin and her internal medicine to bring forth a change in the people around her. She is the rebel who stands up for the people and beings without a voice, who brings her medicine to fight systems of oppression and harm. She listens to her ancestral guides as she knows that she is stronger when supported by her council of elders, the clan mothers, who have greater knowledge of the unknown and inknowable, who have been revered for generations. She is the woman who knows that there is more to the world than meets the eye. She learns about her ancestral past to know her present, to remember that a different way is possible, that although there have been many centuries of programming and oppreasion that it doesn’t always need to be this way, that there was a time before when God was a woman, and a time when all beings were equal.
Historically, women would have been the keepers of medicine. It would have been knowledge passed on through the generations – the art of cooking and healing, recipes for food, and medicine passed on by mothers and neighbours. Traditionally, as women gathered plants, they spoke to them the reasons they were gathering, they listened to any songs or charms that the plants told them, they gave charms to their “patient” (their family member, friend, neighbour etc) as a way to bring the spirit and the physical together to heal. This is how we survived for generations, centuries. The traditional Wise Women Way was through healing by nourishing the body, using safe plants, often “weeds” found within their area. I am using the term Wise Women tradition to honour the many years of oppression women have experienced, and to acknowledge the fact that the majority of healing done accross the globe is still done by women in their homes. As patriarchy and capitalism developed, women were slowly pushed out of this role as the guilds of apothecaries, guilds of surgeons and barbers, and doctors emerged to take over and carve up the buisiness of healing. Women’s role in healing was not only diminished and eroded, but the propaganda of the day eventually rebranded women folk healers as dangerous in their lack of knowledge, as quacks, and not to be trusted with healing. Their knowledge eventually became dismissed as “old wives’ tales.” The heroic medicine included more emphasis on things that could poison the body if used in high doses, on exotic ingredients, blood letting and purging. The scientific method of today is an extension of heroic medicine (but I can go into the 3 traditions of healing idea in another blog). This campaign was so successful that this mistrust has continued to this day as society still views herbal remedies (the main physical healing medicine of domestic healers) as ineffective and inferior to pharmaceutical medicine.
Centuries later, this campaign continued when cooking food was successfully moved out of many western homes and was handed over to companies to industrially produce food in huge commercial “kitchens” as “convenience” foods were created under the idea that it enabled women to go out to work. At this point in time, we have got to a point where some adults can say that they have never cooked a meal, something utterly unthinkable to our ancestors. Unfortunately, many of these ‘foods’ are made in ways and with ingredients unrecognisable in a normal kitchen and to the body itself. The various food manufacturers and industry experts have also managed to make food and eating so complex with various fads, diets, do’s and don’ts that we no longer know how to feed ourselves leaving us entirely at their mercy.
And so within the membership and circles, we work on awakening these different aspects. We journey to the medicine house to sit with our ancestors, we learn about our history to understand how we got where we are, within this we look at womens history, medicine, patriarchy, capitalism, empire, race and religion. We work with shifting our consciousness to connect with plant consciousness, the land, and spirits. We connect with the cycles of life, moon, and seasons, through rituals and ceremonies, and we develop our abilities to create sacred medicines and food as medicine, bringing the magic back into our daily lives.
Rox Madeira 