Introduction

“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” (Exod. 22:18) is the Biblical injunction most often used to condemn those who practice the ancient Earth religions. Biblical scholars, however, will attest that before the King James Version of the Bible, scripture would have read “thou shalt not suffer a poisoner to live.”

Imagine the course of history if that injunction had been heeded. Instead of burning helpless women and men, the inquisitors might have gone after the industries and individuals who poison the water, the air, and the Earth and her children.

Modern folk have at last begun to contemplate the effects of ignoring nature in science, in daily life, and in religion. Too long have we been viewing the Earth as “God’s footstool.” Human civilization begins to look like a creeping cancer: cells out of control, each person going his or her own way ignoring the needs of other living beings. It is time to stop and begin again to honor the Earth and her rhythms.

How to begin? Sometimes the most moving ritual is one performed alone, sitting on the Earth, singing to a tree or a stone, dancing beneath the moon and sky, offering a gift of herbs to the sacred directions.

This is a book designed to inspire solitary and communal activities. My belief is that the Old Way must and will be the way of the future, if we are to have one. May these pages go forth as a blessing to the sun kings and queens, the fully illumined ones. May our efforts reopen the walls between the worlds until these, our elder brothers and sisters, walk with us again. May their light pierce the dark of the shadows that have too long held us apart. By the Three Worlds may this be so.

The central myth of the herbal healer is the story of Diancecht and his son Miach. Diancecht, the God of medicine, became jealous when his son’s reputation as a healer eclipsed his own. Diancecht called for his son and hit him on the head with a sword. Miach easily healed himself. Diancecht struck him again, cutting him to the very bone. Miach cured himself a second time. Then the father struck his son’s skull through to the brain, but Miach was able to heal himself once more. Finally, Diancecht cleaved Miach’s brain in two, and this time the son died.

Diancecht buried his son, and thrice hundred and sixty-five herbs emerged from Miach’s body. Each one was a cure for the illnesses of the three hundred sixty-five nerves of the human body. (This is probably a reference to a now lost astronomical plant classification system.)

Airmid, Miach’s sister, carefully gathered the herbs and arranged them on her cloak in the shape of a human to denote their properties and show where they were useful in the human body. Diancecht, ever jealous, kicked the cloak and scattered the herbs, confusing their positions. If it hadn’t been for his actions, we moderns would know the cure for every illness and we would be immortal, according to the ancients.

Hidden in this mystery lies the mystical secret of the herbal healer’s art. The green herbs of the fields represent the body of the God (the Green Man), which is sacred and immortal. When an herbalist gathers herbs, she or he is dismembering the God, and when administering them to the body that is sick, she is ritually reuniting the lost pieces of the God and bringing the world back into wholeness.

Written on the full moon in Cutios (March) 1991 c.e.