Flower Essences and Plant Spirit Allies with Nicholas Pearson

#58  –  How do flower essences open a bridge for us to connect with plant spirits?

Join us for a wonderful conversation with Author, Teacher, & Flower Essence Practitioner Nicholas Pearson on the power of direct experience in working with the magic of plant consciousness in flower essences.

In this episode, Nicholas shares about a wide variety of ways that we can work with essences, ranging from practical situations in everyday life to magic and ritual. He offers practical tips on specific flower essences that help with anxiety, and how the physical aspects of plants offer a gateway for us to connect and deepen the conversation with them. He also shares about the three different kinds of plant spirit allies and how to directly communicate with plants from a space of clarity.

Nicholas Pearson is a flower essence practitioner and researcher whose love for plants grew alongside his love for the mineral kingdom. Best known for his work with crystal healing and Reiki, Nicholas is an internationally acclaimed presenter facilitating workshops on a wide range of topics. He is the author of several books, including Crystal Basics, Stones of the Goddess, and Flower Essences from the Witch's Garden.

You can find Nicholas at: https://theluminouspearl.com/
IG: https://www.instagram.com/theluminouspearl/
facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheLuminousPearl
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theluminouspearl
Links: https://linktr.ee/theluminouspearl
Books: https://www.innertraditions.com/author/nicholas-pearson

For more info visit Sara's website at: https://www.multidimensionalnature.com/
IG: https://www.instagram.com/multidimensional.nature/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/saraartemisia.ms/
Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/plantspiritherbalism
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@saraartemisia
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@multidimensional.nature
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/multidimensionalnature/

Learn how to communicate with plant consciousness in the free workshop on How to Learn Plant Language: https://www.learnplantlanguage.com/

Transcript

Sara Artemisia: 0:05

Welcome to the Plant Spirit Podcast on connecting with plant consciousness, and the healing wisdom of Nature. This podcast is brought to you by the plants and my deep collaborative work with them as a Plant Spirit Wisdom Teacher, Flower Essence Practitioner, Financial Coach, and Co-creator of Plant Spirit Designs. To learn how to communicate directly with plant consciousness, you can check out the free workshop at www.learnplantlanguage.com. For Nature inspired financial coaching, visit www.financialabundancecoach.com. And for herbally inspired clothing, that is an ode to the plants and the people who love them, check out www.plantspiritdesigns.com. I'm your host, Sara Artemisia and I'm delighted to introduce our next guest to the show today. Nicholas Pearson is a Flower Essence Practitioner and researcher whose love for plants has grown alongside his love for the mineral kingdom. Best known for his work with crystal healing and Reiki. Nicholas is an internationally acclaimed presenter, and author of several books, including Crystal Basics, Stones of the Goddess, and Flower Essences from the Witch's Garden. So Nicholas, thank you so much for joining us today.

Nicholas Pearson: 1:41

Thank you so much for having me on the show. I've been looking forward to this for a while.

Sara Artemisia: 1:47

It is so wonderful to be sitting with you here now and your depth and breadth of connection with both the flowers, the plants and the mineral kingdom is so incredible to sit with and learn from. And in our conversation today. I'm really excited to get into the flower essences, plant spirit allies. And so for folks who are just tuning in for the first time, I'm curious if we could start with, what really is a flower essence? And how would you define what a flower essences?

Nicholas Pearson: 2:20

Sure, I like to start with the material side of things so we can just kind of get it out of the way. If you go to your local health food store, metaphysical shop, order online and get this bottle, dropper bottle that's labeled flower essence, the contents of that bottle are going to be mostly water and some preservative to keep things from getting slimy or fuzzy or moldy inside. So really, we're not dealing with something that is like a tincture or an essential oil or no homeopathic remedy because it's not really tied to the material body of the plant. It's not any phytochemicals that are in there. Instead, with an essence what we're doing is we're inviting the spirit of that plant to collaborate with us and imprint its consciousness, its life force, its soul patterning in that water. In a way that's a lot like taking a photograph. So the water will hold that consciousness or as Dr. Batch the founder of modern flower essence therapy would describe contains the healing virtues, the heavens and virtues of that plant, so we can work with it. So Flower Essences are kind of working definition a lot of us use would be to describe them as dilute, energetic solutions that contain the lifeforce or healing qualities of a plant spirit.

Sara Artemisia: 3:45

Love that so succinct, so wonderful. And one of the things that I love so much about the essences is how we can work with them both from such a wide range of ways from the very practical to the very etheric. And I'd be curious to hear how you work with flower essences in everyday life?

Nicholas Pearson: 4:05

Yeah, so I mean, my everyday life is kind of hinging toward the most practical side of things. I have a lot of Earth sign energy in my chart, as we were chatting about earlier and so if something's not imminently practical, why am I doing it so as we record right now, within arm's reach are probably about 350 different essences so I can just take them at any point while working if I'm like, you know, I'm a little scattered maybe let's try some Bunchberry essence or I can't seem to put this worry to rest so we're gonna go further though White Chestnut or I just don't want to start my work today. It's time for Hornbeam. So I will take them straight down the hatches we say take them orally, add them to food or beverage, I will use them topically and that's the kind of I will say more therapeutic aspect of working with them. I partner with them. I collaborate, I co-create with the essences and the spirits, the consciousness that souls spark imprinted in them in other ways, too. They're wonderful to work with in meditation and dream work. They are phenomenal allies if we have a kind of ritual, magical spiritual practice of any kind, because it's this direct dose of plant spirit, energy and consciousness. And I find myself being really grateful for the subtle ways they work. And not just always necessarily reaching for the dropper, because I want to shift my own emotional state.

Sara Artemisia: 5:40

Yeah, I love that about the essences, how they provide such a bridge of connecting directly in with the plant spirit and love what you're just sharing there about the collaborating with the flower essences with the plant spirits, as well through meditation and dream work. And I'm curious, you know, shifting to that other end of the spectrum there. How can we work with flower essences in magic and ritual as well?

Nicholas Pearson: 6:06

So I mean, the name of the game is this kind of collaborative relational approach, we can, in a magical and ritual side of things, we can view the tools we use as objects of concentrating, directing, condensing, energy, force, magic, you name it, whatever the metaphor is that we like. And we can also view the kind of ingredients of spellcraft as just being material magic. They're just substances we use because of their elemental or astrological affinities. And, and that is true. But it's also not the whole story. And when we zoom out to look at the whole story, there's so much more going on here. So oftentimes, we find in any traditional spiritual herbal practice, whether that is making conjure bags or magical spell pouches and jars, or whether it is crafting, special incense that you burn to attract love in your life, or, you know, doing some kind of plant spirit journey. In all of these instances, as traditionally rooted and centered, we find that the material body of the plant is the least important ingredient, the soul medicine, the magic is not in that bark, or root, or leaf or twig. It's in the consciousness of the plant. And therefore, that botanical substance we're using is an entryway, a starting point for our conversation with that plant spirit consciousness. So when it comes to working with flower essences in that setting, for me, it was purely accidental. It was a situation where I was doing something really formulaic, and I didn't have all of the things the recipe required. So it's like, I have an essence of this plant, and I just don't have any dried. I wonder if, if we're really working with the plant spirit in either way, could I just make a substitution. So I tried, and I didn't fail. So then I tried again, and some more and some more. And in theory, any application for a dried botanical or any other botanical ingredient in magic and ritual, we can hypothetically substitute the essence if what we're going for is that plant spirit relationship. Now, obviously, if you're making an incense and you want the aroma, or the essential oil, and you need that scent for something, you're not going to get that out of the flower essence. But adding a small amount of the essence to those applications can enhance that relational side of things and help us really center the work we do on the plant spirit and not on the list of ingredients. We're not just chefs in the kitchen, following a recipe we are creating something bigger than just the sum of its parts.

Sara Artemisia: 8:58

Yeah, I love that about the essences so much. And what you were just sharing there about how with the essences in particular, the physical part of the plant is the entryway into the conversation and how the magic is in the consciousness of the plant. I love how you were just sharing that. And I'm curious if you could share a bit more about how you experience plant spirits working with flower essences. I'm always curious to hear about this for people who who work with flower essences because it is such, I found such an interesting, unique, energetic way to work with plants that is also incredibly grounded in the body. And so I'd love to just hear about your experience of that.

Nicholas Pearson: 9:41

Yeah, so admittedly, I started consuming essences. Almost out of a sense of obligation really was more trust than anything but a dear friend and mentor of mine right before he went away to college, offered to make me a custom blend of essences and watching this almost out chemical, clinical kind of preparation take place, I was almost disappointed to learn that. No, no molecules from any of those plants ended up in that bottle. There's like not not been any leaps or bounds, could they be even hypothetically present. So I was very skeptical. But I did my due diligence. Everything is worth an experiment I, I like to treat these kinds of lived experiences as just collecting data. And that satisfies my scientific mind. So we need a robust enough data set to be a healthy skeptic and go, Well, yeah, this didn't work. But I tell you what, the very first time, I put four drops of that, under my tongue. Instantly, I felt the relief, I felt the anxiety begin to lessen its grip, I started to feel a little less overwhelmed by the amount of change that was right ahead of me. So I continued, and wouldn't you know, flower essences work. So initially, it was just that kind of clinical relationship. There was no talk of plant spirits. And anything that we talked about. No, no part of that was in our dialogue. But I started to notice that the essences I came back to time and time again, and at this point, we were only working with the 38 remedies, created by Dr. Edward Batch, or Edward Bach for most of us in the States. And the ones that would show up in my custom blends over and over and over again, it was as if they had something to say that was a little bit deeper. And I, I wish I could tell you that I followed that thread, somewhere back then, but I didn't. And eventually, you know, I just I moved away that kind of let it go by the wayside. And I eventually came back to flower essences, not because I was buying them. But because I was led to make some almost completely accents, I had totally a different goal in mind for connecting to the plants in my region. And just dawned on me, after months of preparation, and nothing kind of moving. Oh, I think I need to make an essence. And the act of making my very first essence was an accidental act of plant spirit communication. I thought I knew what plant I was going to start with. For whatever reason, the ethos at the time of driving me involved only working with native plants. And I understand that's a complicated and nuanced and kind of artificial construct anyway. But that that was my motivating force, and I go to cut that very first flower. And the feeling in the pit of my stomach just drops out I get this strong like visceral no in my body. But but you're everywhere. You're abundant. You're in bloom, what's going on here? So I pull up my phone and I, you know, start the googling process. And it turns out this Lantana Camara is an invasive species. I'm like, Oh, this plant knew what my intentions were and said, No, no, I'm not the volunteer today. And I thought, Okay, well, someone's got to be. So I just started looking for things in bloom. And it was one exotic species after another, I am totally ready to give up. And I just kind of scrambled my way through thicket of other things not in bloom. And I like round a bend. And here is this meadow full of Sand Blackberry, one of our many native BlackBerry species here in Central Florida. And it is just brimming with flowers. And I felt this decisive action. Okay, this is it, we're just going to do this. And I made my first successful essence actually keep a dropper full of that in my medicine cabinet. So I can start the day with it if I feel like I need it. And I sat with the plant as the essence steeped, and I came back and immediately my research brain wanted to go, okay, let's look up everything everyone's ever said on BlackBerry essence. And I thought, no, the plant spirit has to teach me I have to have a lived experience. I'm going to collect data. So by the drop, I was exploring how it felt I, I started to notice that it wasn't just heart opening, but it was like giving traction to my heart it was you know, you didn't feel like you were fumbling around without a foothold anymore. Like things felt really more solid. And my decision making got a little bit crisper. And you know, so eventually, I open up the big blue book, the Flower Essence Repertory by Patricia Kaminski and Richard Katz, and I look at their BlackBerry essence and one of the first things that you will notice is that it's for in decisiveness, difficulty manifestation with manifestation it's, it's getting that kind of cerebral foothold and your ideas don't land gives you the ability to have this grasping quality to give a concrete end result to the process, and I thought, wow, didn't BlackBerry spirit literally do that for me in the manifestation of my first flower essence, but also I felt it rippling out in the rest of my life. So it is this kind of weird interplay between the the esoteric who the plant is communicating something to me, but then it's also a very visceral, you feel the change, and sometimes it is so subtle. And so almost like infinitesimally small at first that it's got a built in, you don't always notice these changes. At first, I would not have told you on day one, or three or seven of taking the essence that I felt less indecisive or quality that I was famous for, by the way. Instead, I would tell you that it felt like things were happening more easily. And maybe it was because I was making better choices. I wasn't vacillating, I was more aware of where my heart was, and where my heart was headed. So I could make a more informed decision much more quickly. I think that's part of the magic of, of that plant spirit relationship that I have.

Sara Artemisia: 16:12

Amazing, there is so much in what you just shared there. I loved hearing about the power of the direct experience that is so powerful, and how, even though you were tempted to go right to the books, you thought, No, first I'm going to connect, gather the data first directly. And so I'd actually love to start there with, with the power of the direct experience, how you were sharing, it's so visceral. And in your experience, how is communicating with plant spirits similar or different to communicating with humans?

Nicholas Pearson: 16:46

Well, you know, at the end of the day, everything comes to our personal filter. So if that filter is really clogged, we never get a clear message, whether it is a person, whether it is a flower, whether it is your pet, or rock, the sun, like it's all gotta come through that filter. So the thing about people is, rarely do they have the perspicacity to say to you, hey, I don't think your filter is very clear right now. So you're not getting this message, maybe you know, someone well enough, and they know you well enough that they can just say, hey, I don't think you're getting this. And we'll reframe and recontextualize. But plant spirits, very simply, it's coming through or it's not, if our walls are up, if our defenses are up. If the message is important enough, they're gonna find a way to get out there. Like, you want to hit the brick wall to get the message, they will help you do that. And in other times, you know, it's so tempting to render what they say to us in words, but you can't. How many of us who are plant people had this amazing time with this tree, this flower, this little bit of moss, and you tell someone that was just like the best meditation you ever had. They're like, okay, well, what happened and you're like, you see, because they don't communicate like us. So it's really a process of checking the ego, and learning to surrender, and settling into a comfortable silence, comfortable not knowing. And we can't do that with the average human being, especially when we don't know well. But the only way to do it with plants, is to engage that way. And to really just give up our preconceived notions of what we think communication looks like.

Sara Artemisia: 18:50

Do you have any tips for folks who maybe are interested in communicating with the plant and then go to sit down with the plant? And then there's the sense of, oh, wait, nothing's happening. Do you have any suggestions about dissolving that barrier?

Nicholas Pearson: 19:05

Yeah. So that's a great question. I think the very first thing to do when when we come to the place of oh, nothing is happening is just notice how you feel. Start by taking inventory of your physical body, like, Where were you before? And where are you now and it's actually a really good practice to take a little bit of self inventory before you start, generally speaking, spiritual practice, but especially when we do these kind of esoteric woo things that are very intangible. Definitely do it before then because then you get your baseline measurement. That's your control sample, you know, if we're going to speak in scientific terms again. So just notice, where's the tension or discomfort in my body? Is it in the same place as always? Where is the sense of openness in my body? And is it the same always we tend to think about problems better than we think about the opposite So we want to invite that, and then expand that awareness outwards, not just my body, but what about my mind? What are some words I could use to describe how I feel? What thoughts are coming in what might feel like, just remind rambling, like a bumblebee floating from flower to flower, passing from thought to thought might be the way that you're interpreting the messages coming from the plant. You might not expect that recurring daydream about this great time you had in your childhood, being at all part of this conversation, but it might be your mind's response to the energy presented to you. So we have to have a certain level of discernment to know, this is my own stuff. And this is my response to the plant spirit.

Sara Artemisia: 20:48

That's great. Thank you for sharing that. So helpful, and exactly what you're saying about taking that baseline inventory. Before starting, it's so helpful to have something to compare, to compare it to, as the experience is evolving. So I just love that you shared that. One thing also that you were sharing earlier in your own journey with the initial experience of working with essences. And then the continued one is, you mentioned working with flower essences with the blend that the practitioner was creating, was supporting some anxiety. And I was curious, because that is so up in the collective right now, what Flower Essences have you found are so supportive for helping to ease anxiety, symptoms of anxiety?

Nicholas Pearson: 21:37

One blessing of the age in which we live is we have no dearth of choices to us, there are just so many plant spirits, so many Flower Essences made in cooperation with them that address the kind of big umbrella of anxiety. So the great thing about flower essence therapy, as well as if we don't get it right. Nothing bad happens. So it's not like other ways of working with plants, we're really got to know our stuff. So you can do this process of experimentation and trial and error. But there are a few kind of classic ones that I think we could come to over and over again, we can work with something like White Chestnut for the kind of worries or anxious thoughts that play on repeat in our heads constantly. If we're really concerned for the state of others, we live in a strange and rather dangerous world and thoughts about our loved ones safety and well being is pouring into us who might go to the Red Chestnut from the Bach remedies, we could look at Mimulus for anxieties related to concrete things. While I'm worried that I'm not going to pay this bill on time, or that I'm gonna get stuck in traffic and be late for work or, you know, whatever it is, if it's a concrete thing, and Aspen, on the other hand is for the unknown fears. But if we go beyond the the batch system, there are a couple of essences that I have found amazing for my own journey with anxiety. One of them is Magnolia. The Magnolia family is primordial some of the earliest flowering plants in existence. And any transition the Earth has experienced in the millions of years they've been here. They have survived, thrived and carried on forward. So if they can do it, we can too if we learn to be more like them to learn to sink our roots in and, and stand our ground and reach toward our potential. So that's a good one for especially like anxieties related to our material well being because they're, they're built to last. Another one that I work with quite a lot for so many different reasons is Foxglove. Oh man, I have this ongoing love affair with Foxglove that started in earnest only just a couple of years ago. I worked with it as an essence earlier than that. But I grew some Foxgloves rather unsuccessfully. They didn't love Florida. Then I finally just bought some and pretended they were annuals. They were already in bloom, they weren't going to live longer than the end of the season. So I didn't have to be to invest in I still get heartbroken at the end of every season anyway. But the magic of that flower it is kind of a, we know it traditionally as being a heart medicine, a dangerous one at that not one to use on our own, but it is used medicinally things are made from its extracts and cardiac care today. So it is this kind of energetic tonic for the heart space. And there is a childlike wonderment that it evokes. At the same time. It promotes a state of better perspective. It lifts us upwards. It's got this strong vertical axis with its inflorescence it does the same for us so we can kind of take a step back, take a deep breath and look at things from the heart space and go, does this really matter in the grand scheme? Is this going to be my worry in one hour, one day, one month, one year? And it can be so good for that pause we need to respond meaningfully rather than react mindlessly.

Sara Artemisia: 25:21

Amazing, again, so much in there. So you were just speaking about the experience of wonderment. Could you share a little bit more about that? How is wonderment so important? Why is it so important in the experience with plants? in a rather unlikely source, I came to conversations about this

Nicholas Pearson: 25:36

So, notion of wonder. As part of spiritual practice, I was listening to an interview with chaos magician, like an old school chaos magician by the name of Phil Hine. I can't ever remember what show it was that he was on. But he was talking about all and wonder in practice, and my big takeaway from this, you know, man who's a quote unquote serious occultist, the old school kind. And he's talking about this kind of like childlike joy that wells up in us when we engage in practice meaningful and like, oh, so if there's no wonder I'm doing it wrong, full stop, whatever it is, whether that's working with flower essences, whether that is my crystal therapy, practice, my Reiki practice making music, I'm an amateur musician, whatever we're doing in life, it is devoid of wonder, we're kind of missing the point. And it is the missing ingredient in meaningful personal growth. If we cannot take a step back and look at the world around us with awe, then we aren't seeing things, we are truly seeing things. Yes, the world is kind of a dumpster fire. I'm not going to sugarcoat that it really is, at the same time, because more than one thing can be true. There are sources of beauty, and joy. We see movements of solidarity and healing and outreach and mutual support and all kinds of things that when you see the bigger motion of them rippling out through the world through the cosmos, like holy crap, this is an amazing phenomenon. And it's that looking better than I could put it in my own words, I can look at Antoine de Saint-Exupery is The Little Prince. "Only with the heart does one see clearly anything essential is invisible to the eyes". And that's for me, the magic of Foxglove is seeing through the heart and not trying to interpret with the head.

Sara Artemisia: 27:47

I just love that quote for The Little Prince to"only with the heart this one see clearly" it's so true. And what you're just sharing about Foxglove as well, has me thinking as well about how you work with such a range of different types of plant spirit allies, and one of the things that you talk about in your book. And actually, before we even go there, could you just define what plant spirit means? Because I'm just recognizing we've been talking about plant spirits this whole time for folks, you know, who maybe want a little bit more of that, grounded? What actually is a plant spirit? How would you define it?

Nicholas Pearson: 28:22

Oh, yeah, so here's the million dollar question. You know this, because you've seen the book, I spend a lot of words trying to tell you what a plant spirit is because the short version is the word, the expression, the phrase, plant spirit means different things to different people. So my attempt at finding a common denominator is that there really isn't a singular plant spirit involved in any of this. There are layers of consciousness, which we think of as spirits, spirits could be described as the prevailing tendency of something the animating force within the eternal immortal soul, all of these things kind of contribute to our awareness of what a plant spirit is. So in that sense of plant spirit is that incarnational, force, that underlying consciousness, as well as the collection of those prevailing tendencies, or forces or virtues, embodied in all aspects of the plant, and in a lot of traditional cultures, not all, but in a lot, we see that even the human soul is not singular. It is maybe made out of three or more part in different parts of the world. And there are also other kinds of soul forces that don't neatly fit into things. So we might view plant spirits in the plural as being a collection of an ecosystem of spiritual forces that conspire together to bring about the material and spiritual qualities of the plant. And that starts with our oversoul. The big overarching influence, it's the Deva, that container of the blueprint of that kind of plant. So you know, there's one Deva, one oversoul, for every Mugwort plant we're ever going to meet. We also have our just kind of loosely speaking, we can call them our elementals, and Nature spirits. And these are the kinds of forces that carry out the work drawn out by that blueprint. So if the oversoul is the architect, the Nature spirits are the builders and the elementals supply the raw materials, the best architect in the world, doesn't get a building, without those other forces contributing to the team. So no, no part of this is in will say, a higher Deva. It's not hierarchical in Nature, although our minds might conceive of it that way. Beyond that, we also have, you know, the individuated spirit, one being is incarnated here in this blade of grass, or that flowering plant, or this mighty trees. So all of these things together are the plant spirit and more. You look at an Oak tree, especially a very, very old one. It's not one organism, it's rooted in the Earth, it's touching the soil, it is part of the landscape it is in meshed in that mycorrhizal network. There are lichens growing on it, there might be mosses, there are birds, nesting, or micro organisms we can't see in every crevice in its bark. So plants are very communal, very relational. They are very networked. But our mind doesn't comprehend that as well as we might like. So we we use these terms like plant spirit in the singular, which could mean the big overarching container, it could mean the kind of collection of forces that result in the experience I'm having with this Oak tree. Or we could also mean, the individual soul that incarnated here in this plant when that acorn sprouted. So all of those things are plant spirits. And yet, I think all of those descriptions fall short, because I'm trying to render the ineffable into words.

Sara Artemisia: 32:32

Absolutely. How do you translate that into words, but you just did a pretty fantastic job. So thank you for that. And, yeah, I just love what you were sharing about how it really is an ecosystem forces and also that it's not hierarchical. This is so important in the plant world. And I have personally found that the plants operate and communicate in a very spherical way, which our human mind that is used to linear constructs, it takes a little while to wrap our consciousness around what that actually means. So you just shared that very well. And coming back to Foxglove, though, I'm so curious to hear about your experience of working with the different kinds of plant spirit allies, which is something that you also talked about in your book.

Nicholas Pearson: 33:19

Yeah, so some years ago, I would say it was probably 2017, I had the pleasure of sitting in a class taught by Christopher Penczak, that was based on his book, The Plant Spirit Ally, Plant Spirit Familiar, it's one of the two. And he talked about this kind of threefold classification of plant spirits. And I was immediately intrigued. He talks about the bombs which are the healing herbs, the beans, they're dark and treacherous siblings. And then also the trees who function like the wisdom keepers, the the high priests and priestesses and priests axes of the plant world. And he kind of lays out the Nature of these in his work, and then I ended up studying with him. He remains a big influence in my life and wrote the foreword to the book as well. But I asked his permission like hey, I really love what you've done with he calls the three kin the the beans, the bombs and the trees. And it really is the missing puzzle piece and some of the flower essence training I've had and some of the other plant work that I've done. Would it be okay to like, take that run with it. In the flower essence direction, he's like, Yeah, go for it. So I sent him the sample and he gave me his blessing. But ultimately, Nature is seldom black and white. We don't always get to put things in the nice neat little boxes that we devise in our sterile, clinical mental spaces, but generally we have these tendencies. So the bones are essentially the kinds of plants that Dr. Bach was seeking. The ones that have these beneficent virtues that he described as heaven send or God send are imbued by the Divine, and they have a kind of nourishing and uplifting action. These are going to be our classical plants that we use in herbalism, especially the ones that are we're going to say a little bit more at home friendly. So think of Rosemary and Sage, and also think of Apple and Rose. And so many things could be considered bombs, because they have this kind of nourishing quality. Their primary effect as essences when we work with a plant spirit, and that medium is bolstering us, helping us when we feel depleted, neglected, burnt out rundown, it's really this kind of uplifting quality that they have through and through. Now, the painful plants are poison plants. And, you know, I'm going to put both of those terms in air quotes retroactively, because poison makes the dose as Paracelsus said, everything is toxic in the wrong dose, including water, our cells cease to function, when too much water enters them. So when we think of the painful plants, we often think of things like Belladonna, and other night shades we might think of, Datura and Angel's Trumpet, which are so prevalent here in this hemisphere, we might also look at things like my beloved Foxglove, the Yew tree Monkshood, all kinds of things, that there is some other pretty wonderful plants that technically speaking, are quite poisonous. Think of tomato and potato, we eat the wrong bits of that. And I mean, it's you're in for a bad day. So the beans themselves, their primary action is transgressive. It is antinomian. It's, if the bombs build things up, that beans help break them down. And they can help us confront pain and trauma and other things that are swept under the rug, they can help us do that kind of union shadow work or even the pop version of shadow work that's out there today, by really facing what's there under the surface. They can be portal openers, in a sense, I mean, any plant can be but there is this connection to another reality. A lot of the painful plants are also considered in Theogenic or psychedelic in Nature. And the the quote unquote, toxins they've got are psychoactive. So we could put plants like tobacco and cannabis. And I mean, if we interpret it the right way, maybe even we put the humble grape there, right, because wine is derived from that. So again, we don't have these nice, neat black and white categories at all times that they are major consciousness shifters. And then we end up with our tree spirits, who by virtue of their own verticality represent the connection between the kind of Shamanic cosmology, that we see in core shamanism as well as in many Indigenous cultures that has this kind of vertical axis, it might be the World Tree, which of course, we want to lean into that symbol in the plant world. But you know, for some, it is a mountain it is a pole, it is the Pole Star, there's so many different ways that cosmic gram is expressed around the world and entries are connected to all those realms, the upper world, the underworld, the great between which is where we are. So in some senses, I think trees are the most relatable, they tend to be the longest lived they tend to dominate the landscape. I learned from a mentor who taught me about rocks many, many years ago, here in Florida, especially where the southern Live Oak predominates among long lived tree species that in any landscape if you want to find the energetic fulcrum, just look for the Oak that is the axis of that landscape in the major or the minor, you'll find it and if not, you'll find an analog to it in something else. And the trees are the transformers and containers of our reality based serving as that kind of collective anchor point through which those other forces meet and are mediated. And they remind us by virtue of our own vertical axis that we have the same job to fulfill. We just don't always remember

Sara Artemisia: 39:58

And I really feel that with trees, thank you for so eloquently expressing that, and, and just articulating the different realms that these plant beings are working in. You know, and I would be curious too, to hear, because you have worked so deeply, there's so many different realms that you're connected both both with the plants and the mineral kingdom as well. How would you say that the plant spirits and, and the mineral kingdom, all of Nature really supports you in your life's work?

Nicholas Pearson: 40:38

That's a big question. But I think the simplest answer that I can give is, at the end of the day, beyond the therapeutic relationship with God, like you know, Rhodonite is here for this and Foxglove shows up for that, or, I take this essence when I need to focus but beyond all of that, the rest of Nature has mastered the art of knowing thyself. And humanity could. We have that potential, and we tend to not exercise it on a daily basis, we strive for moments of that clarity, where we recognize that maybe the self isn't really here like what even is the self you know, we can get super esoteric with that question, but will, will stay grounded, Nature knows itself, Nature knows that there is importance in everything, that nothing is wasted, nothing is ever lost, all things are transformed, transmuted, reborn in some way that all parts collaborate to create the whole and that if even one of those parts is disrupted, we lose nuance if not lose the entirety of the bigger picture. And working with crystals working with plants working with flower essences, at the court level is about reminding ourselves of who we are and what we're here to do.

Sara Artemisia: 42:17

Thank you so much. Incredible mic drop moment right there. So tell us how can people find out more about you and your work?

Nicholas Pearson: 42:26

Thank you for that. So if anyone is interested, my books are available everywhere books are sold. There are currently eight on shelves. That sounds right with more on the way and hopefully you can find them in your local independent bookstore as well as online through all the normal retailers. If you want to connect with me, personally, I'm pretty active on social media you can find me at theluminouspearl on most things. Instagram, Facebook, TikTok with the Instagram being the place I spend the most amount of time can also find my website at theluminouspearl.com. Check out my upcoming events and see what I've got in the works.

Sara Artemisia: 43:12

Well, thanks so much, Nicholas. And yeah, thank you so much for joining us today. Just so wonderful to connect and, and sit with you here. It's absolutely amazing. So thank you.

Nicholas Pearson: 43:21

The pleasure is all mine. Thanks for having me.

Sara Artemisia: 43:25

And thanks so much for listening and joining us today on the Plant Spirit Podcast. I hope you enjoyed it and please follow to subscribe, leave a review and look forward to seeing you on the next episode.