Some say they have seen her. Others swear they never have. Who and what exactly is she?
In the five years i have grown, cultivated, and sold the phsycial entity that Lady Salvia resides within, the great and amorous plant, Salvia divinorum, I have found a mystique that is hard to put to writing. I have asked the people that met her, in their clouded vision, "What did she say?" I wanted words of wisdom, the key to life, words from a distant god. They could never say exactly what she had said or if she had spoken at all.
when I have taken salvia d i was not aware of a Lady in great robes, flowing and glowing in silver embers. I had to lie down and shout how much i love the world. Perhaps she was there.
Over the years however i have collectd a multitude of stories, whether about Lady Salvia herself, or of the plant itself (are they one and the same?). One man was actually driving in San Francisco with a lady friend in the passenger seat. While he was flying around corners and feeling the greatness of the earth, his friend was shuddering with fright. What she saw she did not say, and the feeling she did not want to discuss, and has never taken Salvia d again. We are warned about these type of encounters. Will she welcome you? or will you be relagated to grasp for consciousness inside a dark hole? And let us not ponder how the man could have been driving on Salvia d.
A man i know of serious pscyhological disabilities, too much psyche drugs taken at a young age, given to him by his father, says he saw her immediately. Considering his lack of honest character i doubted his account but the picture of her robes, her peaceful if not terrifying expression resounded with a true encounter. How could this be? Does she choose at random, or is there a meticulous order in which she admits us into her house of knowledge?
Being quite troubled myself i was weary of meeting the light goddess. Would i see skeletons of my past, would they dance around me with helllish delight? I was surprised to find that when i smoked the cigarrette role, three to be exact, shared with two others, i was not affected in so much a way that i felt i had entered into a land of a different structure. There was a party of at least seven people which is ill advised if you want to meet the grand lady. One must have a dark room, concentration, purpose, intent, and a willingness to open your mind beyond any expectation. Could I do that? I was not sure. I soon found after the third and seemingly non-existent affects of the cigarrette, i found myself crawling to a bed wisely made on the floor. I could not stand, nor did i reason i needed to. And while i had distant recollections of fear, I only felt the waves of love and felt the range of its travel, from one end of the sphere to the other, and back out to space again. It was fleeting, it was indescribable. Perhaps i am romanticizing a simple anesthetic to my legs and forebrain.
Lady Salvia visited a priestess in California regularly and Salvia D grew in her garden with much vigour. The relationship was easy, Lady Salvia came, the priestess smoked, they communed, but perhaps not all visits had been cordial. The priestess, though acknowledging the gift of communion, also acknowledged the darkness, the secrecy, and terror she felt at times in the presence of the silver lady. So, Lady Salvia can be in a mood to frighten, perhaps those are moments she must tell us something, she must change the world just then and there, and do that by taking our pants right off us. For how else could a spirit entity physically move the living? What does the spirit have for tools to communicate with us? Memories, ideas and dreams we have stored, and while they might not exactly mean the memory or dream, can we take something with us, a message from the other world?
There are many that have claimed to have only met her once. And never again. And not because they had tried and she remained in the silvery shadows. No. They had never wanted to meet her again. And these people did not look damaged or ill begotten. Nor did they look like they had stalled in self-growth. They were normal individuals that could not align themselves with Lady Salvia.
And thats the point isn't it. If one were to read any Psychoactive plant book with the emphasis on shamans, their training, plant knowledge etc, one would find that every shaman has a different plant for a guide. Whether animal spirit within a plant, or the plant spirit itself, a shaman must be guided to the powers and message of each plant. This guardian is a protector of the psyche and body of the learning shaman. With the guide, the shaman can ask questions, make mistakes, learn not to eat a root or stem and how, most importantly, to cook and treat the plants for their medicinal properties. And some plants like Tobacco are purely ceremonial. (The first maintained crop of our ancestors, before food!) But how does a man learn to inhale, stew leaves, roots, and stems? In the book Plants of the Gods, a shaman speaks that it is the guide that shows the shaman. But only after years of communing with the particular guide, which the shaman had chosen or plant had chosen him, could the guide learn about OTHER plants. It may take the shaman years to learn all that his guide has to say, or in fact make his spirit align with the plant.
So if one were not endowed to speak with the lady, like myself, who felt the outer reaches of her kindness, perhaps Salvia d is not my plant guide. I have a thing for flowers. And while Salvia d has beautiful purple flowers very similar to its flower sage cousins, i am partial to a peony or a honeysuckle. My thoughts are simpler than world expansion to universal stars and big bangs. Although these thoughts have puzzled my ancestral soul. For the banalities of life, the comfort is that there is a higher spirit, a bigger calling than our concrete jungle. And Lady Salvia has an opening, quick and easy in which we can expand and answer our broiling questions about meaning, life, world, universe, and SPACE! Does she know it all?
Maybe. But this knowledge is base root. Our goddess is a powerful entity. She is to be reckoned with, or implored upon. But so do our roses and begonias. Our ferns and gladioulas. I have heard them moan too when water is scarce. Or rejoice with the bright sunny morning. Lady Salvia I'm afraid likes a cool misty dark mountain range. She recedes from the sun. Perhaps why it takes her so long to travel to us.
But if, one can imagine, one were to touch and nurture a plant, her plant for years and years with dutiful ears and soul, could she teach us how to speak with her? Could we learn to align our souls with the plant, her window to her soul? I have noticed after years of growing Lady Salvia, she is finicky, angry, quick, and aloof. But on the other hand, she has been kind, whispers of secrets float in the air, when she is in her canopy, her leaves and plant content.
I have not learned everything, nor do i think i have heard everything she has to say. And the only picture i have of her is from an account not my own. I have not learned enough. I feel like she is a puzzle and i am missing a crucial piece, but what is it?
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