05 // May // the Social Issue

i: Editorial

Let’s do the time warp Kyra Pollitt Welcome to the May issue of Herbology News. No, you haven’t blinked and missed an issue. Since we publish Herbology News at the end of each month, we had got into the habit of labelling each issue as that month’s issue. After a bit of reflection, we realised it would feel so much more positive— and probably be less confusing —to face forwards to the coming month, rather than looking backwards at the month just passing. So, we have reset our clocks. We hope this makes sense to you, and that our new labelling system will feel quickly feel natural.

Adjustments are going on in most of our lives now, as the year turns from Winter to Spring, and as we simultaneously move from a long period of restriction to one of greater freedom. Whether we keep many the new habits we’ve learned, or quickly revert to more familiar, old ways remains to be seen.

There is much to discuss and debate as we reflect on the extraordinary, global experience we have all just lived through. One thing that is unlikely to change, though, is our love of a good, sociable chat over a cup of tea. Camellia sinensis, the Tea plant, is the focus of this, our Social Issue.

In these pages, you will find much to enhance your enjoyment of Tea— however you prefer to take it —and much to scaffold you as you build back to socialising on a grander scale. And, to address those niggling doubts and concerns we all have as we emerge from our isolations, we take a good look at the lungs.

Do look after yourselves and each other and, as they used to say on a favourite old TV show, ‘Let’s be careful out there’.

Executive Editor Editorial team Artistic Director Illustrators Treasurer

Catherine Conway-Payne Kyra Pollitt Ella Leith Maddy Mould Maddy Mould, Hazel Brady Marianne Hughes

i: Contents

i Editorial Frontispiece Contents New Ways to Subscribe

Kyra Pollitt Maddy Mould

2 3 4 5

Artist of the Month

Tina Struthers

6

ii Herb of the Month

Marianne Hughes, Hazel Brady

9

iii Of Weeds and Weans Anthroposophical Views

Joseph Nolan Dora Wagner

12 15

iv Our Man in the Field….

David Hughes meets Erica Moore

19

v The Pagan Page The Climate Column Nature Therapy

James Uzzell Patrick Dunne Nathalie Moriarty

24 26 28

vi Past Papers

Marissa Stoffer

31

vii Notes from the Brew Room Garden Gems

Ann King Ruth Crighton-Ward

37 39

viii Foraging Through Folklore Botanica Fabula

Ella Leith Amanda Edmiston

42 46

ix StAnza Presents…

Barbara Davey

49

x Contributors Looking Forward

51 58

New wayst ogetHer bol ogyNews 1.A di gi t all i nkt oyouri nbox Justemai l‘ Add me’t o her bol ogynews@gmai l . com NEW! 2.A di gi t all i nkand adonat i on We’ dl ovei ti fyoucoul d suppor tourvol unt eer sby hel pi ng ust opayf oroursof t war epackages.To donat e,atanyt i me,pl easeBuyUsA Her balTea NEW!* 3.A payf or papersubscr i pt i on.

A har d copyofHer bol ogyNews del i ver ed t oyourdoor .

1year( 11i ssues)f or£35,i ncl udi ng p&p.

Exi st i ng subscr i ber s, emai lf i nanceher bol ogy@gmai l . com New subscr i ber s,emai l her bol ogynews@gmai l . com *Wewi l lneed ami ni mum of10subscr i ber s choosi ng t hi sopt i ont omakei tvi abl e.

Wewi l l ,ofcour se,t r yt obeasecol ogi cal l y sensi t i veaswecan.

i: Artist of the Month

Tina Struthers tinastruthers.com Tina Struthers is a Canadian textile and visual artist, born in Cape Town South Africa, now living and working in with Montreal, Canada.by She Marianne Hughes, illustration Hazel creates large-scale textile abstractions to map the unpredictability of humanity’s impact on global societies and environments. Combining fibre and textile elements, with a focus on detailed, hand-stitched surface textures, her works engage such themes such as multiculturalism, displacement, movement, momentum and change.

Her work has been exhibited regionally, nationally and internationally, and she has been selected for various international textile art biennales, most notably the 2017 and 2019 KPS International Textile Biennial in Belgium, and the World Textile Art Organization’s 7th International Contemporary Textile Art, in Uruguay, where she received a mention of honour. Her work has also been exhibited in the United States, Ukraine, South Korea, South Africa, Slovenia and Spain. She has presented at various conferences nationally and internationally, most recently at the 2019 World Textile Art Biennial in Madrid, and at Contextile in Portugal. The mask that graces our cover— ‘Harnessing the Power of Fear’ — won Fiber Art Fever’s art mask competition, 2020.

Tina’s artistic practice includes cultural mediation projects within the greater Montreal region, and a number of public art commissions. She is currently working on her MFA in Fibre and Material Practices at Concordia University, Montreal.

Tina writes: When you are born you inhale, and when you die you exhale… in between is the unfolding physical metamorphosis of our life. Growing from infant to adult, collecting scars, wrinkles and markings like a patina, we tread new ground and occasionally revisit old spaces. We change, we become, we evolve. Our constant connection with our exterior surroundings through breath forms the

Brady

basis of ‘Breathless’— my artistic exploration of illness and imprisonment in the body. I am exploring both the inhalation of freedom in mediative conscious breathing, but also the invisible and invasive limitations of breathlessness and illness.

In this way, I am interested in uncovering the role of conscious breath, mindfulness, and connection with our environment in the process of healing. In the practice of my creative investigation— through touch, connection with matter, repetitive actions, and slow stitching —I am slowing down the breath and heart rate. It’s a physical action of stitching and mending the self, allowing the body to slow and heal. I am imagining our bodies existing simply in breath, visualizing the lungs in abstraction, mutating beyond human physical restrictions.

These works fold in uncomfortable twists, mutating, challenging our reality, gasping for breath. Stitched surface textures, beads and embroidery draw the viewer in, and evoke the desire to touch… only to realize that what they have just touched may represent, for example, cancer cells. The goal is to create comfort and discomfort for the viewer.

I have created a sonic backdrop of conscious breathing and breathlessness for installations of the pieces, suggesting a moment to consider the air and atmosphere that we share.

You can find Tina on Instagram: @tinastruthers and on Facebook, Tina M. Struthers She is currently showing at the BIEN Bieniale in Slovenia.

i: Artist of the Month Images: All photography by Josiane Farand.

Cover image Harnessing the Power of Fear I Wire, wool, foam, velvet. 35 x 35 x 30cm.

2020 Image 1 Lung Mutation I Velvet, leather, ceramic beads, embroidery thread. 75 x 60 x 45cm. 2021 Image 2 Breathless: Lung Mutations installation MFA Gallery Concordia, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. 2020 Image 3 Lung Mutation II Lycra, sequins, beads, leather, cotton thread.

90 x 60 x 45cm. 2021 Image 4 Cellular Mutations I- IV Braids, velvet, knitting needles, Lycra, buttons.

Dimensions varied. 2020 Image 5 Lung Mutation III Velvet, leather, embroidery thread. 70 x 45 x 40cm. 2020 Image 6 Memento Mori I Bone, Lycra, buttons. 80 x 40 x 45cm. 2020 Image 7 Lung Mutation V Leather, beads, Lycra, cotton thread. 80 x 40 x 30cm. 2021 Image 8 Lung Mutation IV Leather, beads, velvet, cotton thread. 80 x 50 x 45cm. 2020 Image 9 Breathless: Lung Mutations installation MFA Gallery Concordia, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. 2020

Tina Struthers Lung Mutation I

ii: Herb of the Month

Green Tea (Camellia sinensis) Marianne Hughes, with illustration by Hazel Brady We associate drinking tea with sociability and hospitality— activities almost completely missing from our lives for over a year now.

Though the fact that we have wrapped up warm to meet one friend outside, perhaps with a flask of tea, is testament to the strength of human need this long-established tradition fulfils.

The plant we know as ‘tea’ is indigenous to south-west China, with over 350 cultivars. It has been drunk there for over 3000 years and before that, the leaves were probably chewed.

Its origin story is that once, after Buddha fell asleep while meditating, he cut off his eyelids and hurled them to the ground; where they fell, tea plants arose to bestow alertness.

Indeed, tea contains about 50mg of caffeine per cup (compared to coffee’s 85mg). It is also made up of 10-24% tannins. The tannins are thought to be a possible cause of oesophageal cancer, though drinking tea with milk eliminates this risk by neutralising the tannins.

In China, spring-harvested leaves are thought to have the best health-giving properties. Two leaf tips and a bud are picked (the bud is not an unopened flower but an immature, unopened leaf). The black tea, with which we are most familiar, is made through a process of fermenting the leaves before drying; for green tea, the leaves are steamed and dried.

Since ancient times, green tea has been used in Asia to treat any type of diarrhoea— an advantage of that tannin content —and also typhoid. In traditional Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine, Camellia sinensis was used to treat asthma as well as vascular and coronary diseases. More recent research (Shen et al, 2009) suggests that green tea can be preventative in osteoporosis, thereby reducing the risk of hip fractures.

In a wide-ranging literature review, Chacko et al (2010) comments on the complex chemical composition of green tea and its specific health benefits, bearing in mind that some of the findings reviewed were from animal studies and some from studies using green tea extract.

It would seem that the drying process of green tea preserves higher levels of antioxidant polyphenols than in black tea. This polyphenol content is 30% flavanols, known as catechins.

The most abundant catechin is EGCG— epigallocatechin-3-gallate —and it is this substance that has been the focus of many studies. The catechins appear to have a protective effect against heart disease, stroke, a number of cancers, and some degenerative diseases. These effects appear to derive from green tea’s ability to lower blood pressure, lower blood glucose levels, and act as a potent antioxidant. There are some downsides; green tea may have an affinity for iron and so reduce

ii: Herb of the Month

the bioavailability of iron from the diet, and aluminium can accumulate in the tea plant and be transferred to the body.More positively, Gilbert (2019) notes that new research into the mood-enhancing effects of tea drinking shows the EGCG content of green tea is associated with ‘quiet wakefulness with an increase in focus and attention’, and that all tea seems to reduce the stress hormone cortisol.

So, it is not just the ritual of making a cup of tea and seeing a friend that makes us feel better, there is something in the tea, too.

References Bown, D. (2002) Encyclopaedia of Herbs.

Dorling Kindersley, London Bynum, H. & W. (2014) Remarkable Plants That Shape Our World. Thames & Hudson, London Chacko, S. M.; Thambi, P. T.; Kuttan, R. & Nishigaki, I. (2010) ‘Beneficial effects of green tea: a literature review’, in Chinese Medicine, 5 (13) Gilbert, N. (2019) ‘The science of tea's moodaltering magic’, in Nature, 566(7742): S8–S9 Shen, C. L.; Yeh, J. K.; Cao, J. J. & Wang, J. S. (2009) ‘Green tea and bone metabolism’, in Nutrition Research 29(7): 437–456 Simmonds, M., et al (2016) The Gardener’s Companion to Medicinal Plants: An A-Z of Healing Plants and Home Remedies. Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Frances Lincoln, London

Tina Struthers Breathless: Lung Mutations installation

iii: Of Weeds & Weans

Tea and teens Joseph Nolan This month’s featured herb is Camellia sinensis— the Tea plant. I’m extremely fond of the Tea plant.

There areillustration just so many Marianne Hughes, with

by Hazel possibilities: Black, Green, White, Yellow, Red, Twig, Smoked, First Flush, Shade-grown, etc. I have even been fortunate enough to do a series of Tea tastings with Edinburgh specialist merchants Rosevear, and so have had occasion to explore the properties of Tea in some depth and to sample a wide variety from all over the world. Let me tell you, you can’t beat a delicate Shade-grown Gyokuro Green— although I do also love a partially-fermented Oolong, a properly aged (and phenomenally expensive) Pu’erh, a smoked Russian Caravan, a campfirescented Lapsang Souchong… There are so many delicious possibilities for getting that caffeine hit.

There are two main ways of processing Tea leaves: picking, steaming, and drying, which produces Green Tea; and picking, fermenting, and drying, which produces Black Tea. The two have quite different properties, both with respect to taste and medicinal value. Black Tea is most likely to cause agitation, and so is best left out of the equation for the purposes of this column. After all, we all know that caffeine is not great for children, and the younger the child, the truer this is. Indeed, even Green Tea can cause problems for the very young.

Children and Tea just do not go together well.

Adolescents, on the other hand, are a bit different. Adolescents and Tea go together very well indeed. Why, you ask? Well, here are a few reasons.

Zing As I have alluded to, Tea’s most famous constituent is caffeine, well-known as a Brady stimulant. It should be avoided by children, as it can cause hyperactivity, irritability, agitation, wildness, shouting and giddiness. Caffeine may also have a profound effect on sleep cycles in small and susceptible children, even at relatively low doses taken early in the day.

While the occasional chocolate treat or sip of Daddy’s morning brew will not wreak havoc, habitual consumption of caffeinated drinks and foods is a bad idea for children. Teenagers, however, can often use an extra bit of zing.

They are forced by antiquated societal expectations to get up early and start learning with the birds, at a time when, according to their unique circadian rhythms, they should remain blissfully asleep for several more hours.

Overriding these circadian rhythms is tough, and, when facing a long day at high school, having a little extra zing can be very important.

But, for teenagers as well as much younger people, taking caffeine has its pitfalls. These can include anxiety and exacerbated mental health problems, sleep disturbance, hypervigilance, agitation, irritability, mood problems, and behavioural outbursts.

Additionally, teenagers often turn to energy drinks for that extra zing, which are full of unnaturally high levels of caffeine, sugar and other stimulating chemicals. A large can of energy drink can contain up to 2.5 times the amount of caffeine found in a cup of Coffee (Coffea spp.), and up to five times the amount in a cup of Tea. Consumption of these

iii: Of Weeds & Weans beverages adds to the development of unhealthy reward systems in the brain: Arria et al (2010) have found links between risky behaviour and addiction in teens who ingest high levels of caffeine, with evidence to suggest that energy drinks can be a bit of a gateway to more extreme habits. High-caffeine beverages reinforce unhealthy reward systems in adults too, but in the developing brains of young people the effects can be deleterious.

However, Tea presents no such problem.

Containing a balance of both stimulating and relaxing compounds, unfermented Teas are an excellent alternative to those potentially troublesome high-octane caffeine hits. Plus, not being sweet, they don’t feed sugar cravings. In fact, research (Chako et al, 2010) shows that tea can help regulate blood sugar and can be useful in controlling diabetes.

Furthermore, Tea is much more than just caffeine.

Relaxation and brain power We know that caffeine causes the jitters and can lead to anxiety; we also know that teens are particularly susceptible to anxiety and emotional volatility. Letting an already anxietyprone group of people get hyped up on caffeine and sugar can exacerbate that predisposition. Tea— especially unfermented types like Green and White —is much less likely to cause anxiety and emotional volatility than the other caffeinated and sugary products so loved by teenagers. Its balance of stimulating and relaxing compounds enhances alertness and focus without causing the jitters. There is a good reason for the long association between tea and mediation, of which the famous Japanese Tea Ceremony is the best-known example. The calming compound in Tea is theanine, which, when taken on its own in supplement form, can give a serene stillness to the mind. Some over-the-counter natural sleep remedies contain theanine to help promote rest.

Camellia also contains myriad nutrients that support brain function, including precursors to many neurotransmitters like dopamine, serotonin, adrenaline, and noradrenaline. This means that teenaged brains, stressed by social and academic pressures and by lack of sleep,

can get a much-needed boost in brain power from a cup of Tea. Studies at the University of Basel (2014) have found that drinking Green Tea increases performance both academically and physically, whilst avoiding— at low to medium doses, anyway —the undesirable symptoms of over-stimulation. It also helps keep to the mood up, and to counter the brooding depression that is so common in adolescents.

Nutrients and antioxidants In addition to that stimulating alkaloid and those mood-boosting nutrients, Tea contains minerals like copper, selenium, manganese, calcium, zinc and fluoride, as well as vitamins A, B, and C. You’ll also get your antioxidant phenols, including flavonoids, catechins and phenolic acids, and also amino acids like tryptophan, phenylalanine and glutamine. In short, Green Tea gives you a phenomenal hit of antioxidants, and everyone needs antioxidants to stay healthy and prevent chronic illness. Teenagers more than most.

Adolescents typically eat a pretty shocking diet, heavy on processed and fast foods that are high in sugar and low in nutrients.

Antioxidants are essential for helping the body deal with all that rubbish. Here’s how they work. Food is broken down in the gut to become molecules small enough to be passed through the gut wall and into the blood stream.

They are sent immediately to the liver, where toxic chemical compounds— whether from food (preservatives, pesticide residues, flavourings) or from processes within the body (cellular waste, hormones that have served their purpose, the products of inflammation) — are converted into compounds that can be easily eliminated by the body, literally piddled away at the next trip to the loo. In order to render toxic compounds eliminable, many chemical reactions may be required— some of which involve intermediate metabolites that are far more toxic than the chemical they are trying to eliminate. It is during these reaction chains that antioxidants are necessary to protect the liver from the danger of its own work. You can think of antioxidants as putting little hazmat suits on liver cells— and teens’ liver cells typically need a lot of hazmat suits.

iii: Of Weeds & Weans Allergies Among the many other flavonoids that Tea contains, quercetin has been widely studied for its anti-allergic properties. It is consumed in great quantities by hay fever sufferers, and seems to help a good deal with the inflammation. Tea is astringent, meaning it has a tightening and drying effect on the mucous membranes, helping swollen, boggy, inflamed or drippy noses and eyes feel better. Going deeper, the immune system’s inflammatory histamine reaction is modulated largely by the liver, and so antioxidants in Tea can help to dampen down excessive responses. It’s a handy trick to have up your sleeve in hay fever season: a strong cup of Tea taken without sugar or milk can be an effective first aid measure for a hay fever sufferer caught short.

Home herbal helper: Green Tea toner Aside from Tea’s use as a gentle pick-me-up for tired teens, and aside from its wealth of nutrients, antioxidants and benefits for the brain and immune system, Camellia sinensis can also be applied topically.

Tea makes an excellent toner, shrinking pores and gently astringing the skin. Oily skin responds well to its cooling influence, and reactive skin is calmed by its anti-inflammatory and anti-allergic properties. Camouse et al (2019) also found that topical application of Green Tea can help prevent sun-induced skin cancer. This toner works equally well for teens and their parents. It’s an all-round winner.

Using a Tea bag: • Make a cup of Tea • Remove the bag and allow to cool.

(Meanwhile, drink the Tea.) • Use the moist bag to gently bathe the face, paying special attention to the eyes and problem areas. The bag gently exfoliates too, which is a bonus.

Using brewed Tea: • Brew strong Tea. • Allow to cool, and use to moisten a cloth or cleansing pad.

• Clean the face with the moist cloth, again paying special attention to problem areas and the skin around the eyes.

• Use daily. You can keep the brewed Tea in the refrigerator for up to a week.

Happy herbing!

References Arria, A. M; Caldeira, K. M.; Kasperski, S. J.; O'Grady, K. E.; Vincent, K. B.; Griffiths, R. R. & Wish, E. D. (2010) ‘Increased alcohol consumption, nonmedical prescription drug use, and illicit drug use are associated with energy drink consumption among college students’, in Journal of Addiction Medicine, 4(2): 74–80 Camouse, M.; Domingo, D.; Swain, F.; Conrad, E.; Matsui, M.; Declercq, L.; Cooper, K.; Stevens, S. & Baron, E. (2009) ‘Topical application of green and white tea extracts provides protection from solar-simulated ultraviolet light in human skin’, in Experimental Dermatology 18(5):22-6 Chacko, S.M.; Thambi, P.T.; Kuttan, R. et al. (2010) ‘Beneficial effects of green tea: A literature review’, in Chinese Medicine 5(13) University of Basel (2014) reported at https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/ 04/ (accessed 24.04.21)

iii: Anthroposophical Views

The healing gifts of warmth and air Dora Wagner If I could make a wish I think I'd pass Can't think of anything I need.

Sometimes, all I need is the air that I breathe ‘The air that I breathe’, Albert Hammond for The Hollies

"Learn how to float," my father told me when helping me to become a swimmer. This advice has stayed with me all my life. Now it lifts me up during challenging situations, reminding me to take a deep breath and, thereby, relax. The ability to hold my breath kept me very busy as a little girl, competing to see who could stay underwater the longest. Only when exhausted did I learn to value breathing and cooperation above competition. They say a person may survive three weeks without food, three days without hydration, but only three minutes without oxygen. Our respiration, along with warming and caring interpersonal affection, is the very precondition of our existence.

A healthy adult breathes about 25,000 times a day, and up to 15 times per minute.

Fortunately, we usually don't have to think about it. Even when we are stressed or excited, we are sometimes unaware that our breathing is changing, yet our cortisol levels shoot up, our muscles contract and our respiration becomes shorter, shallower and no longer comes from its

happy place, the diaphragm. Practising slow, deep, belly-breathing can turn our proinflammatory stress into calm. That is much harder when wearing an anti-Covid mask, so we need to learn how to keep our airways healthy and protect ourselves from infection, so that we can all breathe a little easier.

Anthroposophical medicine’s tripartite perspective describes the ‘rhythmic system’, the central part of our organism, constantly working to balance the ‘metabolic-limb’ and the ‘nervous-sense’ systems. It is primarily located in the chest area, regulating the rhythm of breath and blood circulation; the heart and the lungs sharing the task, down to the pulmonary bubbles which supply the entire organism. If we spread out the cell layer of our 300 million alveoli side by side, they could cover the floor of an average three-room flat.

Thanks to these 100 square metres of gasexchanging tissue, all cells of our body are constantly supplied with sufficient oxygen, even during hard physical exertion.

In anthroposophy, however, breathing is not only understood physically, but also emotionally and spiritually. In the rhythmic

iii: Anthroposophical Views change of inspiration and expiration, we interact in a figurative sense with the world outside: in withdrawal and encounter, dejection and elation, motion and standstill, rejection and affection, allowing and avoiding, holding and letting flow, keeping and letting go, receiving and giving away, excreting and ingesting, sleeping and waking.

Anthroposophy even describes a ‘sensory breathing’, where sight is understood as something that guides us into the world, hearing as something that leads the world into us. These two polar sensory qualities are visible in the archetypal symbol of Jupiter as ear and crosshairs (GAÄD, 2021). Tin, a very soft, silvery metallic element with the chemical symbol Sn (Lat. Stannum) is, according to occult tradition, one of the seven planetary metals associated with Jupiter. In anthroposophical hospitals, stannous preparations are being used to treat people suffering from severe Covid-19 conditions, with some success. Evidence shows the virus not only hindering our physical breathing, but also restricting our overall exchange with our environment and our sensory perception— for example, by making us less able to taste and to smell (Wilkens et al., 2021).

The rhythmic system is considered the most essential physical tool both of our emotional life and our language. Every mood change, every joy, every sorrow is reflected in a slight change in breathing, in an accelerating or decelerating heartbeat. Just as every physically induced change in breathing and heart rate is immediately reflected in our emotional life, so it colours our way of speaking.

In 1979, Antonovsky coined the term ‘Salutogenesis’, from the Latin ‘salus’, meaning ‘health’, and the Greek ‘genesis’, meaning ‘origin’. The term emerged from Antonovsky’s (1979) socio-medical research, in which he interviewed Israeli survivors of Nazi concentration camps. He reached to the unexpected conclusion that almost 30% of the women interviewed were in good health and enjoyed well-being, despite their unbearable experiences. He surmised that three basic attitudes seemed to promote overall health.

The first is the ‘sense of comprehensibility’: the ability to treat even unfamiliar stimuli as ordered, consistent and structured information.

The second— the feeling of manageability’ — describes a person’s ability to solve difficulties and to perceive the availability of suitable resources.

Thirdly, the ‘sense of meaningfulness’ is the extent to which a person is able to integrate the ups and downs of experience into a view of life as emotionally meaningful. Within Salutogenesis, health is not seen as being free of complaints, but as being able to cope with them in such a way as to consistently create subjective well-being.

Health is not a temporary state of well-being or an absence of disease, but an ongoing process of establishing one’s own well-being.

Antonovsky (1997) deduces a person can never be entirely healthy, nor entirely sick, but will always be constituted of both healthy and sick parts. He employs the metaphor of a ‘river of life’— one cannot stroll along the banks, but in moving through the midst of the stream we must each be met with forks, currents and even dangerous rapids and swirls. We are all just trying to become better swimmers in the waters of life.

Instead of the pathogenic approach, which treats us as drowning victims to be rescued at great expense, nothing strengthens our resilience and boosts our immune system better than interpersonal affection and compassionate warmth. Especially in these pandemic times, it is important that we care for and support each other, but also that we are aware of and share our creativity and resources to dispel the things that weigh us down and make us feel frightened. In the spirit of Salutogenesis, my 91-year-old mother started blowing up several balloons every day to exercise her lungs, while my aunt gargles a freshly brewed Sage (Salvia officinalis) tea every morning to strengthen her resistance.

Conscious care of the throat and everything that supports the self-cleaning powers of our respiratory tract can make a significant contribution to ensuring as few microorganisms as possible reach our lungs and cause inflammatory reactions there. The

iii: Anthroposophical Views respiratory tract has extremely effective selfcleaning mechanisms. Its walls consist of cells with tiny cilia, covered with a thin layer of mucus. These hairs move in a circular synchronicity, comparable to a conveyor belt, transporting the mucus slowly from the bronchial tubes upwards into the pharynx. To ensure this cell-driven conveyor does not come to a stop, the mucus must not be too viscous or the layer of fluid too thick (Vogel, 2020).

Mucolytic and expectorant herbal remedies can be very helpful here and can also be used preventively.

In anthroposophical medicine, extracts of Purple Coneflowers (Echinacea purpurea) strengthen human warmth, whilst Scotch Marigold (Calendula officinalis) and Sage (Salvia officinalis) enhance resilience against pathogenic microorganisms. Pneumodoron is an anthroposophical remedy for febrile bronchitis containing homeopathic extracts of Aconitum napellus (Monkshood) and Bryonia alba (White Bryony) that can also be taken preventatively to support pulmonary function (Soldner & Breitkreuz, 2020). Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) and Ginger (Zingiber officinale) are particularly suitable for external application as moist, warm compresses. An early afternoon or evening Yarrow liver compress, once a day, three times a week, is beneficial for exhausted people with weakened vitality, sleep disturbances, reduced appetite, and weak digestive activity.

Nervous, hypersensitive individuals, who tend to feel cold, appreciate a morning Ginger kidney compress once a day, three times a week. This not only helps to improve organ function, but can bestow a durable strengthening of inner warmth, clear relaxation and, sometimes, a reduction in anxiety (Soldner & Breitkreuz, 2020).

Since ‘all healing originates from breathing’ (GAÄD; 2021), it is of particular importance right now to inhale and exhale mindfully, to stay closely connected with nature and with one another, to breathe our manifold competences into a common treasury in order to creatively deal with the breathlessness and lack of warmth of our currently situation.

Possibly the most precious gift in times of physical distancing is to keep in touch with those close to your heart and, despite any obstacles that may exist, to be grateful for each and every positive response as you breathe into the world.

Images: Dora Wagner. Collages created from common, free materials and with kind permission of www.delft.care and innovationorigins.com References Antonovsky, A. (1979) Health, stress, and coping. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Antonovsky, A. (1997) Salutogenese— zur Entmystifizierung der Gesundheit.

Deutsche erweiterte Herausgabe von Alexa Franke, dgvt-Verlag Tübingen GAÄD (2021) Ostertagung (Easter conference) Soldner, G. & Breitkreuz, T. (2020) COVID-19’, online article, in Anthromedics www.anthromedics.org.

Accessed 26.04.21.

Vogel, V. (2020) ‘How to Further Reduce the Risk of Serious COVID-19 Infections’, Laboratory of Applied Mechanobiology, Institute of Translational Medicine, Department for Health. ETH: Zürich, Switzerland.

Wilkens, J. & Meyer, F. (2021) ‘Corona natürlich behandeln; Covid-19 ganzheitlich verstehen, vorbeugen, heilen’ (‘Treating Corona Naturally; Understanding, Preventing, Healing Covid-19 Holistically’). Pamphlet.

Aaarau: Switzerland

Tina Struthers Lung Mutation II

iv: Our Man in the Field On a pleasant spring morning, I’m heading to a rendezvous with Erica Moore; eminent tea enthusiast, founder and proprietor of eteaket— the foremost destination for all things tea in Scotland. I really couldn’t wish for a better teabreak buddy. Since 2008, she’s been sharing her passion for the power of proper leaf Tea, and through it she hopes to empower others to make connections, create moments of joy, and make every day better. And so, positioned in a prime spot on the promenade at Portobello, with the sun shining and pedestrians milling,

David Hughes meets Erica Moore clear views and the barest suggestion of a Marianne Hughes, with illustration by breeze, we get into it. Me (English Breakfast Tea with milk), and Erica (a necessary midmorning childcare coffee) diving headlong into the brave, somewhat stressful and mildly perilous tale of her personal Tea origin-story.

It begins with a trip to Japan, made some years previously, with the intention of immersing herself in a completely different culture: I remember landing in Tokyo at Noriko airport. I'd booked this little ryoken (where you go and stay in someone's house) though it turned out to be nowhere near Tokyo. I had no idea, and had packed the biggest rucksack— it was bigger than me! Rush hour in Tokyo— an absolute nightmare! I actually fell over because my bag was so big! People were stepping over me. Eventually, I made it to my train— heading for the right place —and off I went. But it just kept going and going— out of the city and into the country, past rice fields and farms.

The station names which had previously had English translations now only had Kanji. ‘Oh my god’, I thought, ‘what am I going to do?’ I had thirty seconds to try and look for some sort of clue before the doors open and closed. Thankfully, a kind lady noticed I was struggling and made sure I got off at the right stop. What stuck with me from that journey was the kindness

shown to me by complete strangers,

Hazel Brady who took me under their wing till I eventually found this place.

Obviously, I enquire if she was immediately given Tea on arrival: Oh, yes. Shoes off, the full tatami room with an entire ceremony. It was incredible. That was it, I was hooked from then.

Prior to meeting Erica— in an attempt to avoid coming across as some sort of Tea philistine — I’d spent my week cramming all about Tea. The more I learned about Tea, its origins and the various types, the more of it I drank. The more of it I drank, the more it occurred to me that every major event in my life has probably been preceded or closely followed by a cup of Tea. In my family at least, making Tea is an almost automatic response to the delivery of any news.

Beyond this, though, this subject is incredibly broad, its history fascinating and detailed.

There’s truly a wall of information on this, for those who seek such things. As Erica says: There are just so many details to geek out on. Pluck leaves from a plant over separate weeks and they’ll be totally different, and what you can get from the same leaves depending on how it's processed is fascinating. It's so similar to wine in that respect— and, funnily, we find a lot of our male customers gravitate toward the Gaba Oolongs, White Needles, or Chilli Rooibos for that extra kudos, or knowledge bragging rights.

Guilty as charged.

iv: Our Man in the Field

Tea plants can very much reflect the environment in which they are grown, and comparisons can be drawn to wine in the way they can capture and demonstrate a terroir or an elevation. And it’s true that the history of the cultural and traditional uses of Camellia sinsensis— an evergreen shrub from the THEACEAE family —is as vast as the regions from whence the plant originates. As with many of the earliest cultivated plants, pinning down this exact location is difficult— but its native range stretches across Eastern and Southern Asia, from Nepal in the West to Japan in the Asia, from Nepal in the West to Japan in the East. In these areas, many varieties of Camellia are grown and used— not just for making tea.

Camellia, as a Heliotrope, responds to high light intensities by producing copious levels of flavonoids and active medicinal compounds.

Camellia varieties have also been selectively bred over millennia to amplify certain chemical characteristics, not just those present in the leaves of the plant. Tea oil is a useful culinary resource that can be pressed from the leaves of the cultivars C. ‘Oleifera’ and C. ‘Japonica’.

It serves as the primary cooking oil for hundreds of millions of people, particularly in Southern China and Vietnam.

And so, Tea— with all its rich medicinal qualities — has become deeply entwined in the cultures and religions within its native range.

China, Korea and Japan, in particular, have their own ceremonial Tea heritage, steeped with symbolic meaning. In the first Chinese treatise on Tea, author Lu Yu’s method spans some 500 pages and requires 30 tools. These methods are worth taking time to appreciate.

The mindful taking of Tea is an opportunity, in itself, to explore elements of traditional Tea culture that have perhaps been overlooked in the West— until recently: I can see a sea-change coming with mind-body connection, as the West begins to adopt some of the approaches of Eastern and Chinese Traditional Medicine, where herbs and teas have been used in the prevention of ailments for centuries. Science is

catching up, and these ideas are beginning to propagate.

A mindful and positive ethos is clearly at the heart of Erica’s work at eteaket, and if you read her blog you’ll be invited to join meditation workshops and encouraged to frame yourself in healthier, more positive ways: A couple of years ago, I got interested in Transcendental Meditation— enough to go along and do the course.

Since then, I've done it morning and night. It has such an effect, and if I don't do it then I notice it straight away. It's so simple, though— anyone can do it —it's just understanding that you don't need to try, or get frustrated that you're doing it wrong. You just need to sit and let your thoughts come and go.

The biggest thing is stopping and pausing and letting your body reset itself. It knows what to do. We've just become so good at ignoring it. This is what the eteaket ‘Tea and Mind System’ is all about— it’s linked to the ancient Chinese Five Elements and focuses on connection, balance and harmony. I'm still discovering new stuff about this all the time, but different emotions tie in— different tastes, different seasons and different Teas.

What we're just working on at the moment is the ‘Thrive and Three’— the idea being in the three minutes you're waiting for your Tea to brew, you can do an exercise of pausing, to calm your mind and rebalance. A reset through Tea. Whether it's a breathing exercise or journaling— a moment to create space. Because Tea drinking is something people do habitually, throughout the day, you can use it as an anchor to attach other positive habits— whether that's meditation, or gratitude practice, three minutes of squats…whatever appeals to you.

The past year has seen much upheaval, people have been at home more so.

The opportunities to take these ritualistic moments have increased.

This is leading to people becoming

iv: Our Man in the Field more adventurous with their Tea choices and they're also finding new brewing styles. (Any removal from just dunking the tea bag is great.) It becomes a different experience, with these slight elevations. Get a little gaiwan— you can take it to the beach.

Take a wee flask of water with you. The experiential elements are so easy to add, and you get so much more out of it. Watching the Tea change colour, you find yourself relaxing— it's the same as watching a fire. Even if they just serve as a trigger to remind you to breathe, it’s something you can bring your awareness to— and that's the mission.

The views onto the East Nook of Fife steer our conversation to more local affairs. It turns out Tea plants are pretty hardy, and the most popular commercial cuttings can flourish here in Scotland. I was somewhat taken aback by this news.

Yes, I’ve a friend in Auchterader who has her own Tea farm. Totally off-grid: windyholloworganics.co.uk.

She’s coming down in a couple of weeks and we’re going to play about with Teas and explore some herbs, particularly native ones— because it’s not only leaf Tea that can make an impact. The ingredients of our Sea Buckthorn blend with Cranberries, Apples and Hibiscus, all of those can be found locally. Our Isle of Harris blend— a collaboration with Isle of Harris Distillery —is a gin tea made with Sugar Kelp handharvested on Harris and Lewis, and uses the same botanicals that go into their gin. It’s a simple botanical blend rather than a Tea. The Kelp gives it a really distinctive taste, and obviously brings with it a lot of medicinal components. I’ve been playing around

with Sea Buckthorn as well— making infusions of the leaves. They actually make a really interesting beverage. I think it would combine really well with Black Cohosh. There are so many things I want to do, though— the possibilities are endless. We are almost shackled by convention when there exists this whole other world of single estate speciality Tea and new herbal blends to explore.

Asked what her favourite tea was, Erica— in her wisdom —would not be drawn: It’s different depending on the time of day, what my mood is, what I’m feeling like. I have so many every day. I always start with a Rooibos before meditation, though— very calming, so as not to send the mind racing. That’s followed up with a Breakfast Tea, to kick off the morning. Thereafter, it’s a free for all!

You can discover more of Erica’s work at eteaket.co.uk.

Images: courtesy of eteaket

Tina Struthers Cellular Mutations I-IV

v: The Pagan Page

Beltane James

Uzzell

Festival of fire, connection and the start of Marianne Hughes, withofillustration

by Hazel summer, Beltane is one the four Gaelic seasonal fire festivals. Also written as Beltaine, Belltaine, Bealtaine, Beltain, Beltine, Bealteine, Bealtuinn, and Boaldyn, it loosely translates as ‘bright fire’, and is derived from the name of the ancient Celtic sun god, Belenus (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2014). As sure as the flowers rise from the earth, this time of year and the power behind it, resonate deeply with all cultures. Most Brits celebrate it on the 1st May— May Day —weaving ribbons around a maypole, Morris dancing, and crowning the May Queen with the blooms of spring. And I think we celebrate for exactly that reason— for all the magick that's in the air. From the hum of the bees to the moss on the trees, all forms of life celebrate this season, as the blossom rains down its scented speckles, gathering in the myriad colours emerging from the thriving green, as awe-inspiring as the flowering forest floor to a fox cub.

Beltane is the third and final of the spring sabbats within the neopagan Wheel of the Year, each date marking another key chapter in the love story between the God and Goddess, in all of their personifications. From the slow waking of the Goddess at Imbolc’s first stirrings, through the equinox’s sun-kissed balance, until the Maiden of Spring is crowned as May Queen, blooming into the sensual radiance of womanhood.

Abundance ignites prosperity which arouses growth. And this sacred arousal is the true magick of this time, for would this be any celebration of life without the creation of life itself? Delicate petals expose themselves to the eager insect, songbirds sing for the love of another, starlings murmurate. We wonder with lust, following our heart’s wanderlust. We lean to the Green Man’s sun-warmed kiss, to the primal green passion of his leafy caress. In this union of tenderness nests the ecstasy of life.

With harmony and wonder, we dream of all we wish to do with this life. The waxing sun is approaching its fullest, and so is our potential.

This time of year has a knack for rustling the

Brady feathers of those tired of their hibernation.

Conversations with my peers have acknowledged the blessing these longer days give our collective psyche, as we consider how our journey to the longest day of the year will reach its potential. So much of what we learn from Beltane comes down to, ‘what is life without passion, connection and love?’, and many of us have asked ourselves the same question over the last twelve months. We are left with an insight into our connection to nature; an essential energy, flowing through all things, driving our purpose and direction. Its reassurance has never felt so communally acknowledged, in my experience, as it is this year.

But this has always been a part of the magick of this time. Looking back, we see traditions using fire to channel this magick, to cast protection over all the life that thrives in this time. Shepherds would light fires and herd their animals through the smoke, to protect them before they were put to the fields. Leaping through the Bel Fire is still practiced in various communities across Europe— those that cross are said to be blessed with the fiery passion to live out their wildest desires and the crops to fuel it. Other communities would have danced around the fire together, praising its protection, as they celebrated life's fertility and promise. The Edinburgh Beltane Fire Festival, reignited in 1988, is the largest reconstruction of this kind of Iron Age celebration, and is filled with the primal energy we've been speaking about. It is the only example I've found that pays this sabbat the same respect as its sister, Samhain.

Over the years, throughout the tests of our civilization, May Day celebrations have been banned and reinstated many times. The tradition of the maypole started with a sacred symbol of Beltane, the flowering Whitethorn tree (Hawthorn, Crataegus monogyna).

Sometimes called the May-tree, the sweet white blossom on the bent and thorny arms of this spring idol, signifies the sacred journey of

v: The Pagan Page

the Goddess throughout the year— her seamless transition from maiden to mother to crone. All across these isles, the Hawthorn is still revered as a potent place for faeries to dwell; a warning to those who would cross them, a blessing to those who seek it. This led to the tradition of tying ribbons on its branches, with a wish for a blessing (Haggerty, 2021). As communities grew larger, this practice was brought into the towns, where dancing around the ‘Maybush’ praised the faeries for their work in bringing about spring. By the 14th century, many towns boasted semi-permanent maypoles. To Cromwell and the Puritans of the 17th century, these were ‘a heathenish vanity generally abused to superstition and wickedness’ and they were summarily removed and destroyed. Reinstated within the century by the ‘merry monarch’ Charles II, the maypole now signified the ‘return of the good days’ (Johnson, 2014).

And let those words ring true for this season every year, as the start of summer rewards our work. Let us live to our full potential, as nature never fails to do. On your blessed journey to

the Midsummer solstice of June 21st, try to check in with these reflections; tie a ribbon on a blossoming thorn, rub your face in the May morning dew of your nearest meadow to keep your youthful beauty. Or maybe it is enough to hear it in the ever earlier morning birdsong, to smell it in the Ramsons (Allium ursinum) and Bluebells (Hyacinthoides non-scripta) of the forest. Whatever you're doing at this time of year, may your fire stay bright, and your desire stay true. Blessed be, blessed Beltane.

Image: Martin McCarthy for Beltane Fire Festival References Encyclopaedia Britannica (2021) ‘Belenus: Celtic deity’, entry in Encyclopaedia Britannica Online Academic Edition.

[Accessed April 2021] Beltane Fire Society (2021) ‘Beltane’, blog article.

[Accessed April 2021] https://beltane.org/ Haggerty, B. (2021) ‘Beltane Bonfires and Nettle Soup’, blog article. [Accessed April 2021] http://www.irishcultureandcustoms.com Johnson, B. (2021) ‘Kings and Queens of England and Britain’, online article. [Accessed April 2021] https://www.historic-uk.com

v: The Climate Column

A blue pill for the planet Patrick Dunne Plastic. Perhaps the most successful man-made Marianne with illustration

by Hazel material of Hughes, all, and perhaps the most iconic product of the climate and ecological crisis.

Plastic is everywhere: from individually wrapped fruit, to pacemakers; from the Pacific Ocean, to human placentas. In many ways it is a tremendous success story of human innovation, a versatile and incredibly useful— and cheap —substance. Plastic has created innumerable diversions for our entertainment, contributed to the flood of disposable clothing, and protected produce in our vast global food networks. We don't seem to be able to do without it.

But plastic is made from fossil fuels and is increasingly a product of fracking. It has been found in microparticle form in every part of the earth, every food chain, organism and habitat.

It can choke, poison and corrupt. Plastic, as well as its by-products and production processes, has been linked to all manner of human health and ecological crises, from litter on beaches to cancers, infertility and illness.

Anyone who has attempted to identify, clean and separate their own household plastic knows how difficult it can be to dispose of.

Imagine that multiplied by seven billion people and you can see the challenge we face. Huge amounts of plastic are shipped to China, Malaysia and elsewhere, as we in the UK and other industrialised countries offload our waste to less economically and politically powerful parts of the world, often using this practice to mask our emissions. But even as we send it away, we can’t get away from it. Even our gardens are full of plastics: from pots, trays and labels to packaging for plants, seeds and compost. If you have used compost made from recycled garden waste, or dug over an urban allotment, then you will know how much plastic is now in the soil. It is in everything, everywhere.

Attitudes to plastic are changing. It litters

Brady almost every beach, forest and mountain on

earth, and as a result is the target of every litterpicking and beach-cleaning environmental action group. Campaigns against single-use plastics are popular and easy to communicate to an increasingly aware public. Plastic-free shops and products are springing up to offer meaningful alternatives to this poisonous (literally) and toxic (politically) product. So, will we see less plastic soon, perhaps?

Perhaps not.

The fossil fuel industry has no plans to put itself out of business. Nor do governments appear to have serious plans to address demand for plastic products or the consumption of disposable items (which themselves depend on plastic-choked supply systems). As oil companies look to a future with less demand for petrol, they are keen to identify markets where they can still sell their products, and plastics is a market they are investing in.

Heavily.

Fracking has made plastic production cheaper, and international supply chains, Western farming models, fast fashion and disposable consumerism are driving demand. Plastic is central to so-called ‘aspirational’ lifestyles, and companies are planning for increased demand in the coming decades. (Yet still they promote their Net Zero plans? More on this in future columns...)

v: The Climate Column Who, then, will be responsible for ending plastics? Who is going to dismantle the most powerful industry and lobbying force on earth?

It is not going to be the communities on the Niger Delta, or Parkersburg, West Virginia, but the politicians, CEOs and industry leaders in London, Washington and Beijing. Let’s remember that the vast majority of these powerful individuals are men. What could force such men to take action to both reduce plastic and profits?

Pink News ran a story this month with the headline ‘Human penises are shrinking because of polution’, stating: 'It all comes down to phthalates, a chemical used in manufacturing plastics.' Is this shrinkage the threat that will prompt some action at last?

After all, it is often said that, if men menstruated or experienced childbirth, there would have been medical, technological and social interventions generations ago to ease births and to manage period pain and endometriosis, and that our entire society from work to care would look radically different. The blue pill was developed for male sexual dysfunction at huge research and development cost, while female-centred medicine continues to lag behind. The pollution and plastic crises have been ignored despite threatening the entire living biosphere— perhaps a threat to global manhood will at last generate a global response. A blue pill for the planet would be an unexpectedly welcome outcome of toxic (or plastic) masculinity.

Of course, changing economic priorities, raising voices from the global south and prioritising the natural world over consumerism would be better than an ego-driven tech/pharma fix to really address the plastic problem, but perhaps this new angle will provide some stimulation to action.

v. Nature Therapy

Forest bathing with a baby Nathalie Moriarty In Forest Bathing, we slow down and use all our Marianne Hughes, illustration

by Hazel senses to engage with with the forest environment.

To me, what makes Forest Bathing special is that we can re-engage with a lost part of ourselves: our sense of child-like curiosity. As we progress through our busy lives, we forget to slow down and notice the small things. We take our senses for granted, heavily using the ones we need for modern life, and neglecting those we don’t. For example, many of us wear shoes as soon as we leave our homes; as children, we took our shoes off at the first chance we got, playing on fresh grass or running around water features in the park. I found as an adult that I had spent many years neglecting my feet and denying them the different sensations that can be found outdoors. Similarly, we increasingly use our eyes for close up work on a computer screen for many hours at a time, relying heavily on our near vision at the expense of our long-distance vision. Studies have found a dramatic increase in near-sightedness (myopia) in primary and secondary school-age children in Japanese and Chinese cities; while the exact reasons are debated, it has been noted that children are under pressure to perform well in school exams and are spending more time on small screens and less time outdoors. Eye specialists warn that the eyeball is not able to develop correctly when under constant unusual strain (Gardner,

2017); if we keep our focus up close, we limit

Brady our eyes’ capabilities. Getting outside gives us space to see further.

We may think that it would be impossible to do something as slow and meditative as Forest Bathing with a baby. However, babies’ openness to the world make them excellent participants. Babies are primed to use all their senses for learning, and do not give preference to one sense over the next. It also takes time for all their senses to develop, and not all mature at the same rate— a baby’s hearing, for example, is one of the first senses to develop, and we know they can hear the voice of their mothers while in the womb. I suggest that the key difference between taking adults and babies on a Forest Bathing walk is that the adults have to ‘un-learn’ the habit of only relying on one sense, or on duller versions of their senses. A baby, on the other hand, is open to using all their senses indiscriminately.

Before the last lockdown, I spent some time on an immersive winter walk in the woods with my sister, her partner and their one-year-old. We entered the space with purpose and calm, looking for opportunities to help a nonroaming baby engage her senses in the different elements of the woodland. To experience a rich sensory Forest Bathing walk, seek a woodland with a variety of elements.

Ideally it should contain some type of water feature, particularly running water, which introduces a new element and allows for different sensations. The walk itself should not be very long: a mile or so should suffice. The aim is to find different places along the walk which invite us to engage our senses in the woodland. The purpose of the walk is not to get to a location, but to be consciously experiencing a journey of the senses.

With a young baby who is not yet able to explore on their own, it is up to the adults to guide their engagement with the different elements of the woodland. We want to help the baby explore sights, colours, textures and

v. Nature Therapy sounds, using their eyes, ears, nose and sense of touch. On the walk with my niece, we found these ways to help her discover the woodland: 1. Leaning against a moss covered tree and touching the moss ourselves to encourage her to also touch it.

2. Stopping to listen whenever we heard birds, and either pointing at the birds if we could see them or signalling that we were listening.

3. Holding her close to the running water, allowing her to hear it.

4. Jumping into puddles and streams so she could recognise it as being a different texture to the forest ground.

5. Passing her leaves to touch.

6. Bringing her inside a hollow tree trunk to experience the change in light and temperature.

7. Walking through rustling autumn leaves on the ground, and showing her that we were listening. Also, sitting her down in the leaves and showing her how to bury her hands and crunch them up.

8. Taking a path where there is a change in the composition of species, to give her the experience of changes in light, temperature and ambience within the woods.

9. Listening to the wind.

Different seasons offer different opportunities for sensory exploration. Each woodland walk you go on will have different features of interest. As adults, our role is to slow right down and look at everything anew, finding those sensory opportunities to present to a young baby.

When going on your forest walk, remember to be prepared. You might want to consider using a baby carrier if the ground is not suitable for buggies; however, many wooded areas also have paved paths, particularly in parks. Do your research in advance and think about where you want to go and what route you want to take.

Bear in mind that babies are more vulnerable to temperature changes in both summer and winter, so make sure you have seasonally appropriate clothing and protection against

the sun. Remember also that a hot summer’s day can be a lot cooler in shaded woodland.

As an advocate of nature connection, I would always recommend starting Forest Bathing as early as possible with a young child. Indeed, new parents often find that they are outside a lot more than they were pre-baby. My sister found that only the soothing white noise of the wind rushing through the trees, or the pitter patter of rain on the cover of the pram, could lull her newborn to sleep. A simple next step is helping the baby to develop a connection with nature through her senses— something that many miss out on. For more on this, I particularly recommend Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods. Providing positive nature experiences to young children can have a lifelong impact— creating space for mindful connection with themselves and with the natural environment.

Images: Nathalie and Yvonne Moriarty. All permissions secured.

References and recommended reading Gardner, W. (2017). ‘Nearsightedness a cost of academic excellence.’ Commentary in The Japan Times, 10 January 2017. www.japantimes.co.jp Louv, R. (2006). Last child in the woods: saving our children from nature-deficit disorder.

Chapel Hill, NC, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.

Tina Struthers Lung Mutation III

vi. Past Papers

My life as a tree Marissa Stoffer The second in a series of excerpts from student papers, this article is extracted from Marissa Stoffers’ dissertation, submitted for the Masters in Painting at the Royal College of Art, class of 2020.

We are grateful to Marissa for sharing her work. If you have a past paper you would like to share, please contact us at herbologynews@gmail.com.

It is -20°C, January, Finland.

I am numb but my mind feels clear after so many thoughts.

Ctrl-Alt-Delete. Refresh.

I walk...

Like the frozen forest I am standing in, I am frozen— literally and creatively. I have come here to make art, or at least think about art for the first time in a year.

As an artist, I have come to question the very act of making, the materials I use, and the energy consumed for those materials. I believe it is important to unpick how we relate to the world around us because this affects how we live and act— our politics, our beliefs and ultimately our individual and collective impact.

This is the ‘human-dominated, geological epoch’ (Crutzen, 2002)— the Anthropocene; a time that stretches further back than we think.

If you search the internet for ‘world’s biggest environmental problems’, the top four categories are: deforestation, soil retrogression/degradation, human overpopulation, and extinction. The Western world has been in a coma of consumerism since the industrial era.

But anthropocentrism and the mechanisation of the mind and body began much earlier than this. For several hundred years the dominant orthodoxy has implicitly assumed that inanimate things are fundamentally devoid of mental qualities. This view has become integrated into our science, our literature, and our arts. Ultimately it has incorporated itself into our deepest social values, and thus

become reflected in our collective actions. We treat nature as an impersonal thing or collection of things, without spontaneity, without intrinsic value, without rights of any kind. Natural resources, plant and animal species have been exploited for maximal shortterm human benefit. These are mindless entities, deserving of no particular respect or moral consideration. They exist to be collected, manipulated, dissected, and remade. (Skrbina, 2017:265) And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on earth.”

Genesis 1:281 This is the problem. I will argue that the answer is kinship. It is biodiversity, heterogeneous, multi-faceted and inclusive. It is weird, dreamy, and refers to the mythological— yet it is practical and ecological. It evokes the Animistic.

The concept of Animism engages philosophical concepts of the soul and what it means to be alive. It is derived from the Latin word anima, meaning breath, life or spirit. As a term, it is wide-reaching and varies depending on culture and environment, but what remains coherent across cultures, is that Animism is both a concept and a way of relating to the world (Swancutt, 2019). It involves attributing sentience to animate and inanimate objects, including animals, the environment, plants, spirits, or even technological items such as computers, cars and robots. Western popularisation of the term was engineered by anthropologist Edward B. Tylor in his most noted work, Primitive Culture (1871), but Tylor borrowed it from eighteenth-century chemist George Ernst Stahl, who proposed ‘that spirits or souls of living things or beings control physical processes in the body’ (Swancutt, 2019).

vi. Past Papers

Tylor’s objective was to shift the meaning of Animism to encompass what he called ‘the groundwork of the Philosophy of Religion’ (ibid.). His concepts were inscribed into an evolutionary schema, ranging from the primitive to the civilised— in which few civilisations were deemed to have evolved, while the rest of the world’s people remained Animist ‘tribes very low in the scale of humanity’ (Tylor, cited in Swancutt, 2019).

Thus, Animism was effectively consigned as a relic of an archaic past, whilst the rational subject and the scientist were placed at the top of the evolutionary ladder. This anti-Animistic schema was incorporated into psychology when Freud recruited Animism to describe a stage where children ‘project their inner world onto the outer world, seeing it as alive’ (ibid.)

Tylor’s attempt to describe a hierarchy of human evolution points to colonial and Christian history. It reduced Animism into a naive understanding of the world, destroying the complexity and significance of some of its core elements, and marginalising human relationships with the ‘other’.

However, Animism has recently been making a comeback in anthropology, philosophy, art, and ecological thinking. The old Animism of Tylor et al. is now seen as a failed epistemology based on misguided interpretations of terms such as ‘spirits’ and ‘souls’, which become inappropriate when reconsidering Animist cultures through the prism of personhood (Hall, ???). Through this new lens, Animism is a sophisticated way of ‘both being in the world and of knowing the world; it is a relational epistemology and a relational ontology’ (ibid.).

Academics of New-Animism, such as Harvey (2005) describe Animists as ‘people who recognise that the world is full of persons, only some of whom are human, and that life is always lived in a relationship with others.’

All life is relational, and we should not collapse our intimate alterities into identities. Others and otherness keep us open to change, open to becoming, never finally fixed in being.

Alterities resist entropy and encourage creativity through relationality, sociality.

vi. Past Papers Animism is neither monist nor dualist, it is only just beginning when you get beyond counting one, two... At its best it is thoroughly, gloriously, unashamedly, rampantly pluralist.

(Harvey, 2012) What is often left out in the context of indigenous ontologies and cosmologies in the West is pre-Christian history, a time we do not often refer to or learn about. Perhaps this is because our history lessons focus on the modernisation of the West; its empires, and wars— a selective glorification of conquering, heroism, and modernity. However, it is important to recognise Europe was populated by its own indigenous peoples who were pagan; polytheistic, Animistic, and totemistic communities. After the rise of the Roman Empire and the spread of monotheism, Europe's small countryside communities lost their attachments to nature, with pagan communities obliterated or assimilated into the Christian world. This is when the last of the nature-believers perished and, no doubt, any writings or art were destroyed— much like during the Reformation.

It is 37°C, July, Amazon Jungle, Peru.

We wait till dark before we can start. I enter the house and lay down on a mattress on the floor and wait for night to fall. The smell of pure tobacco consumes the air, and the ceremony begins. The two men conducting the ritual sing songs they say come from the plants, whilst using instruments made from vegetation and seeds…

I go up and drink a cup of thick bitter liquid.

Time passes.

I feel a tingle in my fingertips. It crackles, slowly reaching across the rest of my body. I am both cold and warm, wet and dry. My eyes are closed, the sound of chanting travels and drips off the wooden beams of the thatched roof. I do not understand the words, but the songs help me navigate this journey as I weave through a wakeful dream.

I hear the jungle, the insects humming like a machine; it is metallic, futuristic, familiar…

I sink further and deeper into the recesses of my unconscious mind, surpassing geometry,

and physical form. I have entered through a door into another world. I look around and I see plants everywhere, but their forms are individual, animated into beings of their own.

Not human, not plant, but blurred between the boundaries of the two, this is the best I can describe it as there are no words to translate what I see. I am welcomed by them…

It is worth mentioning that the West used to be Animistic, and still is in some communities. Hall (2011:110) posits that surviving texts from preChristian Europe illustrate that pagans ‘recognised plants as kin and as persons’.

Rather than backgrounding plants and asserting human superiority, pagan material from a variety of traditions— Old Norse, ancient Greek, Anglo Saxon, Celtic and Karelian —represent plants as relational, volitional, autonomous, and living beings. This broad idea of kinship is inherent in the interpenetrating principle of human bodies and tree bodies that can be found in pagan Europe, often passed through oral tradition. The shared substance of human and plant can be found in the Poetic Edda. The Seeress’s Prophecy relates that the first human beings were formed from the early green plants of the Earth. Odin, Hönir, and Lódur used the wood of the ash and the elm to create the first humans. Here plants turn into humans, but in pagan Greek myths, the metamorphosis is reversed; Daphne turns into a laurel, Minthe into mint, and Hyacinthus into a flower. Unlike Christian origin stories, where all beings are made by an all-powerful, male, human-like god, Animist origin stories illustrate the shared substance of all living beings, and that this metamorphosis between life and death is interchangeable, like a loop.

Every living being on Earth originates from stardust. Created by explosions in other galaxies; of particles of dead stars which float through us to this present day and will do so for the rest of our lives. Quite simply, plants, rocks, humans, and animals have the same genealogical ancestry. Broken into elements, we could say that all beings on Earth are kin.

Mother is earth and Father is stardust.

Respectful pagan-plant relationships weren’t purely based on sacred ideas, but on

vi. Past Papers

connection and relatedness. In the old times, elders believed trees talked to each other, but the mechanisation of science deemed plants deaf and mute (Kimmerer, 2020:19). Although trees have been our evolutionary allies, providing us with fire, shelter, tools, and transport, the Western world has biopoliticised these into products of consumption and capitalist economies, to the point of unsustainable environmental crisis. The Cartesian paradigm locates capitalism outside of nature. Over the last 200 years, this outlook has resulted in the ‘Capitalocene’ (Moore, 2016:6), in which capitalism has become a way of organising nature. Haraway (2016:102) believes that environmental justice requires inventive thinking rather than cynicism. Artists have always questioned reality, time, life, and death. This impulse to hold time still, to conserve and resolve is as poignant as the desire ‘to animate, to recreate life, to gain access to the forces of creation’ (Franke, 2010:39). Stories allow artists to convey questions which can only be expressed through some sort of symbolism, exposing the boundaries between reality and fiction. As we are socialised into adulthood, we are taught not to believe in ‘childish’ anecdotes, to replace the weird and the dreamy with the objective and rational. These boundaries can

only be un-done through re-enchantment, reanimation, re-mobilisation, and metamorphosis— transforming a mute, cold, object-based world into one of different points of view, which can illustrate kinship.

I have been searching for artists who look at this connection, and as I look at my own practice, I wonder how I might form these relationships within my own work. I remember I went through an early phase of painting figures emerging from wood, or wood grain projected onto bodies (see image). This mimetic and morphological figuration blurs the boundaries of inside and outside, body and environment, difference and form, mind and physical space. Through principles of kinship, connection to nature becomes part of connecting to home no matter where you are.

Back to nature does not always mean you find yourself; you often lose yourself. But it is a process of being lost and found all at the same time. In the gallery or in the studio, we step out of the world, but in a forest, we step into a world. Céleste Boursier-Mougenot explored human-plant relations, plant agency, and perception in his work Rêvolutions, exhibited in 2015, at the Venice Biennale (see image). He presented a kinetic installation of three roaming Scotch Pine trees. The trees,

vi. Past Papers paradoxically displayed inside, were each on a wheeled base linked to a complex electronic system of sap-flow sensors which, via lowvoltage electrical currents, enabled the trees to move around, choosing their preferred place in relation to light, temperature, and humidity (Aloi, 2018:79). Boursier-Mougenot created a ‘posthumanist utopia in which cyborgian apparatuses enable different plant/human relations to arise’ (Aloi, 2018:80). What is interesting to me is how the artist foregrounded the tree’s agency, which we do not usually encounter. Despite the trees being the same age and of similar size, they preferred different places to position, whilst sometimes meeting (but it is unclear if this is incidental).

Ultimately, it points towards plant personhood; ‘decision making, active involvement in processes of self-sustenance, and perhaps even character’ (Aloi, 2018:79).

New-Animistic principles are beginning to be incorporated into the rights of nature movement whereby ‘legal personhood’ has been granted to nature. Ecuador has already recognised the personhood of ‘Pachamama’ (Mother Nature), in part based on the philosophical writings of The Natural Contract (Serres,1990). The Natural Contract in legal reality extends its jurisdiction to a multispecies population where both humans and nonhumans have equal rights as persons (Biemann, cited in Fischer, 2016). This ‘radical re-storying’ has taken root in popular culture, with increased attention being paid to plants (but specifically trees) in literature, science, philosophy, and art. Wohlleben’s (2016) book, The Hidden Life of Trees, for example, uses imagistic and Animistic language to convert the scientific processes of how trees live into concepts we can relate to and understand.

I wonder if, in the spirit of kinship, community, and social action to sustain life of all kinds, we can combine our indigenous knowledge of the living, animated Earth with our modern ways— if we can develop a language that combines science with imagination, bridge the gap to a deeper understanding of the Earth and our kinship.

Images: Marissa Stoffer. Alice. 2010. Oil on panel, 140cm x 110cm.

Céleste Boursier-Mougenot.

Rêvolutions.

2015. Installation. A project for the French Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale. Source: https://www.designboom.com/art/celesteboursier-mougenot-venice-art-biennalefrench-pavilion-05-06-2015/ References Aloi, G. (2018) Why Look at Plants?: The Botanical Emergence in Contemporary Art: 5 (Critical Plant Studies). Leiden: BRILL publications Crutzen, P. J. (2002) ‘Geology of Mankind’, in Nature, 415 (23) Fischer, P., ed. (2016) About Trees: Kat. Zentrum Paul Klee Bern.

Snoeck Verlagsgesellschaft Franke, A. (2010) Animism (Vol. 1). Berlin: Sternberg Press Hall, M. (2011) Plants as Persons: A Philosophical Botany. Albany: State University of New York Press Haraway, D.J. (2016) Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham, NC: Duke University Press Harvey, G. (2005) Animism: Respecting the Living World. London: Hurst & Company, 2005), Preface. XI. Harvey, G. (2012) ‘Animist Manifesto’, in PAN: Philosophy, Activism, Nature, 9: 2-4 Kimmerer, R.W. (2020) Braiding Sweet Grass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. London: Penguin Books Moore, J. W. (2016) Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism. Oakland: PM Press Skrbina, D. (2017) Panpsychism in the West.

Cambridge: MIT Press Swancutt, K. (2019) ‘Animism', in The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Anthropology.

Online.

Wohlleben, P. (2016) The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate— Discoveries from a Secret World. London: William Collins

Tina Struthers Memento Mori I

vii: Notes from the Brew Room

Three steps to heaven Ann King A sunny outdoor social gathering, with good conversation accompanied by an energising herbal infusion seems a pretty perfect way to spend free time this Spring. Cold or hot infusions are among the simplest and most effective ways of taking the benefits of herbs either— drunk, or used topically in a therapeutic footsoak or compress. Why not throw caution to the wind, grab a few blankets and enjoy one of these Green Tea infusion recipes, whilst indulging in a restorative and immune-boosting footsoak, and taking a breathing practice?

Green Tea leaves come from the same Camellia sinensis plant as ‘builders’ and other Black Teas, but the processing of the leaf is different— a little like the differences between Cacoa and Cocoa in the chocolate process.

Green Tea is dried or withered and then heated. Black Tea goes through an extensive fermentation process resulting in the oxidization that causes leaves to darken. Green Tea has been used medicinally for over 3000 years and is believed to aid the digestion of fatty or oily foods, normalising the metabolism.

It contains tannins, vitamin C, polyphenols— mainly the flavonoids catechin and EGCG — and the amino acid l-theanine. Recent research has linked l-theanine to the lowering of anxiety and stress, and to management of the symptoms of depression. Green Tea continues to be the mainstay of the traditional Japanese Tea ceremony, albeit in Matcha forms.

In the last few years, Tea has been grown closer to home— in Perthshire and other areas of the UK that enjoy acidic soil conditions. One of the slightly more unusual, but delightful combinations we have found is Green Tea, dried Hibiscus flower and fresh Ginger. The resulting drink is beneficial to the immune system overall and makes a thirst-quenching

iced tea in the warmer months. We developed a slightly more seasonal, local variation in recipe two, to include the Wild Raspberry leaves currently unfurling amongst the Brambles (Rubus spp.). To balance and complement, we added locally foraged and dried Rosehips.

One 1 tsp Green Tea (Camellia sinensis) 1 tsp dried Hibiscus (Hibiscus sabdariffa)— also called Red or Jamaica Tea, this contains vitamin C and is used as a cough remedy in Africa and Asia 2 slices fresh Ginger (Zingiber officinale)— as a general tonic and anti-inflammatory aid Two 1 tsp of Green Tea (Camellia sinensis) 2 tsp dried Rosehips (Rosa canina)— a source of vitamins C, B E and K, and a tonic 2 tsp finely chopped Wild Raspberry (Rubus idaeus) leaves— a natural source of potassium and magnesium Local Honey, to taste Three 1 tbsp sliced fresh Turmeric (Curcuma longa)— a known stimulant used externally for bruising and internally to relieve catarrh 1 tbsp sliced, fresh Ginger (Zingiber officinale)— used as a stimulant and rubefacient 1tbsp chopped Lemongrass (Andropogon spp.)— for its delicate and uplifting citrus fragrance Epsom salts (optional)

vii: Notes from the Brew Room

For our footsoak we settled on a blend of Ginger, Turmeric and Lemongrass as a good combination aimed at inflammation and congestion in the respiratory system. This blend also provides a soothing and warming fragrance to lift the spirit. Simply decoct the ingredients for approximately 20 minutes, strain, add to a large basin and top up with warm (not boiling) water. Add some Epsom salts for maximum effect and bathe the feet for 15-20 minutes. The aforementioned blankets can act as a tent to seal in the vapours and heat.

Alternatively, the same blend can be used as a compress, by wrapping the herbs in muslin and steaming the parcel gently to release the active constituents. Then apply the compress to the skin whilst warm (but not hot). Just leave in situ for up to an hour, or massage it over to the area, using circular motions to increase blood flow.

Note: the footsoak does turn the skin yellow temporarily, but this effect is less marked if fresh Turmeric is used. …and breathe…

For general lung health we can take an hour of aerobic exercise every single day— preferably outdoors —to get the blood pumping around the body, bringing oxygen to tissues and removing waste toxins. Perspiring helps with the elimination of toxins through the skin. A focused, deep and rapid breathing practice— like the ‘bellows breath’ (Bhastrika pranayama) can also support the excretion of toxins through the lungs.

Disclaimer No recipes are intended to replace medical advice and the reader should seek the guidance of their doctor for all health matters.

These profiles and recipes are intended for information purposes only and have not been tested or evaluated. Ann King is not making any claims regarding their efficacy and the reader is responsible for ensuring that any replications or adaptations of the recipes that they produce are safe to use and comply with cosmetic regulations where applicable.

vii: Garden Gems

Here they come…

Ruth Crighton-Ward April this year was full of weather extremes; sunshine, high winds and snow— frequently all on the same day. During the nights, there were some heavy ground frosts, with temperatures dropping well below zero. Then warmer, dry, sunny spells. As a result, the poor plants did not know if they were coming or going. Plants such as Hydrangeas (H. macrophylla), which are prone to frost damage, suffered. Those with early flowers, such as Camellias (C. japonica), saw their flowers turn brown and die in the cold. Deciding whether to harden off plants in cold frames, outside, or to keep them indoors was like playing roulette. The winds dried out the top surface of the soil and seedlings struggled to emerge. Hopefully, May will be more settled.

May is often regarded as the best month of the year; the days are longer, and the temperatures tend to be pleasant, often feeling like summer.

Watering now starts to be a necessity, so keep an eye on that. The best time to water plants is early in the morning, while the air is still cool.

This allows the maximum amount of water to drain into the soil without too much lost to evaporation. Life and work constraints mean it’s not always possible to water at specific times of day, but try to avoid watering when the sun is at its hottest, or at night when the light has gone and the air is noticeably cooler. If you can’t water early in the morning, then do so in

late afternoon or early evening while there is still plenty of light, and the heat has not fully gone from the day. If you’re going away on holiday, leaving the garden unattended for a while, then give the most delicate plants a good thick mulch around their base with organic matter and water thoroughly. This will help to keep the roots cool and is also good for water retention.

With the warmer weather come the pollinators, but also the pests. We can’t have one without the other. We want to look after the pollinators, such as bees, whereas we want to discourage the pests. I would strongly warn against using chemicals as pest control. Chemicals do not differentiate between the pollinators and the pests. There are several other means which can be adopted. In the greenhouse, I find one of the most efficient methods is by hand. For insects such as aphids I use a small brush and literally brush them off the plant, squashing them as I do. Check the undersides of the leaves, as they often lurk underneath.

Sometimes I use my fingers and rub them off the plant. This does involve one’s fingers getting rather sticky, and may not be for those of a more sensitive disposition. A Garlic (Allium cepa) spray will deter further infestations. If used outdoors, natural sprays should be reapplied at weekly intervals.

vii: Garden Gems

Now is a good time to make your own plant feeds. Comfrey (Symphytum officinale) leaves are in abundance in woodlands. Once picked, they should be covered with water and left for about three weeks. The strong odour will be an indication that the brew is ready. This can then be diluted with water, in a watering can, and given to the plants. Comfrey is rich in potassium (K), potash (P) and nitrogen (N).

Potassium is good for the development of fruit and flowers, potash for healthy roots, and nitrogen for leaf development. To further enhance the nitrogen content, add Nettle (Urtica dioica) leaves to your preparation. To buy a litre of liquid fertiliser from a garden centre costs around £10, so this is a great money saver.

Then there’s biological pest control— controlling pests using nature itself. For instance, putting ladybirds onto plants with aphids helps remove the aphids, and looks after the ladybirds. Adult ladybirds can eat up to fifty aphids a day, but their larvae can eat many more. Another way to foil the pests is a method known as ‘companion planting’. This involves growing plants next to each other which help each other out. An example is to grow Carrots (Daucus carota subsp. sativus) and Onions (Allium cepa) in between each other. The Carrots help to deter onion fly and the Onion smell helps to deter carrot fly. Garlic is well known as a companion plant and can be planted under Roses (Rosa spp.), Strawberries (Fragaria × ananassa), fruit trees and Tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum), to name a few.

Potatoes (Solanum tuberosum) and French Marigolds (Tagetes patula) work well together, as the Marigolds deter eelworms.

We’ll continue to look at pest control next month, when we focus on the gardener’s worst enemies— slugs and snails.

Meanwhile, happy gardening.

Tina Struthers Lung Mutations V

viii: Foraging through Folklore

Taking tea with a Highland Seer Ella Leith Reading tea leaves seems an innocent enough game, but predicting the future has been ascribed very different values by different communities. Interpreting omens was explicitly linked to sorcery and banned in Leviticus (19:26) and Deuteronomy (18:10-12), which led to fortune-telling being proscribed under some secular laws (e.g., the Scottish Witchcraft Act of 1563). Yet divinatory practices can be found peppering our everyday lives, from idly counting out cherry stones (tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor…) to throwing apple peels over our shoulders and looking to see if an initial is formed. Anyone can perform these acts; others require a little more skill. Tasseography— the art of identifying and interpreting symbols in the dregs of a cup of loose-leaf tea —is one of these; for this to really work, many people believe, you need someone who is a little bit psychic.

Despite sometimes being seen as uncomfortably close to witchcraft (Godbeer, 1992), clairvoyance is more often conceived of as a gift: a talent, but also, as Bennett (1995: 136) puts it, ‘an unsought handout’ that leaves the recipient ‘uncontaminated’ by it. They may even be revered for it. In a 1956 interview, Robert Lamb (1904-1972) tells that, in his native Banffshire,

any old caileach [woman] that ever I knew that was pointed out to hae the Second Sight, they were never put down, they were looked on with great respect.

Stiùbhart (2020) describes the Second Sight as ‘a primal, hereditary phenomenon involving involuntary visions of future events’, and the hereditary element conferred particular families with the reputation for clairvoyance.

Those with the surname MacGregor, says Robert Lamb, were “spoken of wi veneration, because often, by some strange means, they hed predictit the future.” One of the MacGregors “was supposed to be, as we would say, the Seer, the Highland Seer” and “a reader o cups”: Wan o the girls said wad he read her cup, and […] bein a favourite he wud read her cup. When he took it up, he looked at it and they said “whad’ye seein?” “I see the devil,” he says, “awalkin on the ground, and before we reach Torbain tonight there’ll be a sad disaster.”

A disaster there was: later that night, another local man’s pony shied at some imaginary thing on the road and he was thrown out o the gig an’ his neck was broken. […] That gave

viii: Foraging through Folklore greater emphasis tae the Second Sight of the MacGregors.

For Robert Lamb, the power of divination rested with the Seer and was only harnessed through cup-reading. But to A Highland Seer, the anonymous writer of the charmingly earnest instruction manual Tea-Cup Reading and Fortune-Telling by Tea Leaves (1881), cupreading may be practised ‘with success by anyone who will take the trouble to master the simple rules’ (1881:7). Whether this author was actually a Highlander— or even Scottish —is unknown, but they chose an appropriately authoritative pen-name. As Stiùbhart (2020) observes, ‘in modern English-language scholarship and popular discourse alike, Second Sight tends to be regarded as distinctive to the people of the Scottish Highlands’, despite a much wider geographical spread of belief in the phenomenon. Indeed, while the material in the book was collected ‘in a desultory manner’ from all across Britain, the writer romantically frames divination as fundamentally Highland in nature, evoking the Highlander … coming to the door of his cottage or bothie at dawn, regard[ing] steadfastly the signs and omens he notes in the appearance of the sky … [and] the 'spae-wife,' who, manipulating the cup from which she has taken her morning draught of tea, … deduces thence such simple horary prognostications as the name of the person from whom 'postie' will presently bring up the glen a letter.

(1881:10) A Highland Seer tells of mundane divinations woven into the fabric of everyday life, Robert Lamb describes cup-reading Seers as venerated for their skill, yet in interviews with elderly American women from ‘a middle-class suburb of a large northern town’, Gillian Bennett found that ‘delving’— i.e. ‘the exploitation of psychic gifts’ by actively seeking answers about the future from cards or cups, rather than passively receiving visions —was ‘the ultimate taboo’ (1995:137). Every delving story was cautionary; in one, the narrator is approached by a friend of her mother:

Whatever I said, she took for gospel. […] The last time she asked me, she said, “Oh, you must read my cup!”

And I looked at it and I said, “Oh!”, I said. “There’s nothing there!”

“Oh!”, she said. “There must be!”

I said, “No, there isn’t,” I said.

“Honestly,” I said, “there’s nothing there at all!” […]

Well, she was very, very offended about this. […]

[Later,] I said, “Look, mother! There was no future for her. None at all! […] I couldn’t see a thing in that cup,” I said, “and I got a queer feeling when I picked it up,” […]

Do you know! That next week, […] she’d been taken ill. She’d had a stroke. And she only lasted three days. (‘Alma’ in Bennett, 1995:137) Bennett’s interviewees felt that ‘any attempt to deliberately seek knowledge of the future is dangerously audacious, and retribution will surely follow’ (1995:139). But for our nineteenth-century Highland Seer, fortunetelling was an ‘innocent and inexpensive amusement and recreation round the tea-table at home’, cup-readers ‘suffering no harm in thus deriving encouragement for the future, even should they attach no importance to their occurrence, but merely treat them as an occasion for harmless mirth and badinage’ (1881:7,17).

So how should the amateur cup-reader proceed? The Highland Seer tells us to use China tea leaves, not Indian, and to choose an appropriate cup with ‘a wide opening at the top and a bottom not too small’, with a white interior with ‘no pattern printed upon it’ nor ‘any fluting or eccentricity of shape’ (1881:18).

The bottom of the cup represents the far future; the rim, the present; and the handle, the person whose future is being foretold. The Seer continues: The ritual to be observed is very simple. The tea-drinker should drink the contents of his or her cup so as to leave only about half a teaspoonful of the beverage remaining. He should

viii: Foraging through Folklore next take the cup by the handle in his left hand, rim upwards, and turn it three times from left to right in one fairly rapid swinging movement. He should then very slowly and carefully invert it over the saucer and leave it there for a minute, so as to permit of all moisture draining away. If he approaches the oracle at all seriously he should during the whole of these proceedings concentrate his mind upon his future Destiny. If, however, he or she is not in such deadly earnest, but merely indulging in a harmless pastime, such an effort of concentration need not be made.

(1881:18-19) The shapes formed by the dregs should be identified and interpreted according to the Alphabetical List of Symbols with their Significations.

Of interest to the tasseographically-curious herbologist are the following plant symbols: ACORN

APPLES APPLE-TREE CLOVER

IVY

LILY

MUSHROOM OAK

improvement in health, continued health, strength, and good fortune. long life; gain by commerce. change for the better. a very lucky sign; happiness and prosperity. At the top of the cup, it will come quickly. As it nears the bottom, it will mean more or less distant. honour and happiness through faithful friends. at top of cup, health and happiness; a virtuous wife; at bottom, anger and strife. sudden separation of lovers after a quarrel. very lucky; long life, good health,

PALM-TREE

PEAR

PINE-TREE ROSE

YEW-TREE

profitable business, and a happy marriage. good luck; success in any undertaking. A sign of children to a wife and of a speedy marriage to a maid. great wealth and improved social position; success in business, and to a woman a wealthy husband. continuous happiness. a lucky sign betokening good fortune and happiness. indicates the death of an aged person who will leave his possessions to the consultant.

Bubbling away in the background of the Highland Seer’s manual is the unspoken social aspect of the ritual. Not only does the writer encourage cup-reading for ‘badinage’, but they expressly forbid doing it for money: The moment the taint of money enters into the business of reading the Future the accuracy and credit of the Fortune told disappears. … No Highland 'spaewife' or seer would dream of taking a fee for looking into the future on behalf of another person. (1881:9, 11) You do this in the spirit of fellow-feeling, or not at all. Furthermore, ‘to read a fortune in the teacup with any real approach to accuracy … the seer must not be in a hurry’ (1881:26). The image conjured is of intimacy and leisure: friends sitting down for a cuppa and a chat about the future and the community.

Indeed, knowledge of the community is probably as crucial a ‘gift’ for cup-reading as any psychic skill. In a 1971 interview, an unidentified Tiree man reminisces about a fortune-teller who would read the cups of local girls and ‘see’ the boys they fancied— having

viii: Foraging through Folklore first ascertained this information from gossip.

For some, reading tea leaves may have given them a valued social role in the community, and perhaps bestowed other advantages: Katherine Dix, from Harris, recalls a local woman who used to read the tea leaves for anyone who asked— and would always tell them a good fortune, in hopes that they would visit her again and bring her more tea! I hope they did.

References A Highland Seer (1881) Tea-cup reading and fortune-telling by tea leaves.

New York: George Sully and Company. Full text available at: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/18241 Bennett, G. (1995) ‘“If I Knew You Were Coming, I’d Have Baked a Cake”: The Folklore of Foreknowledge in a Neighborhood Group’, in Out of the Ordinary: Folklore and the Supernatural, ed. B. Walker. University Press of Colorado; Utah State University Press.

Godbeer, R. (1992) The Devil's Dominion: Magic and Religion in Early New England.

Cambridge University Press.

Stiùbhart, D. U. (2020) ‘The invention of Highland Second Sight’, in The Supernatural in Early Modern Scotland, eds J. Goodare and M. McGill. Manchester University Press.

The interviews mentioned can be found on the Tobar an Dualchais / Kist o’ Riches website, the online portal for selected items held in the School of Scottish Studies Sound Archives at the University of Edinburgh: Robert Lamb: http://tobarandualchais.co.uk/en/fullrecord/44 04 & http://tobarandualchais.co.uk/en/fullrecord/44 08 Donald Sinclair, Hector Kennedy, Donald Archie Kennedy, and Unknown: http://tobarandualchais.co.uk/en/fullrecord/53 191 Katherine Dix: http://tobarandualchais.co.uk/en/fullrecord/60 460

viii: Botanica Fabula

Warm water and ancient wisdom Amanda Edmiston Gather the driest Pinecones first (Pinus sylvestris). Pile them up and inhale their aroma.

Sense the subtle effects of the pinene opening your lungs. Breathe a little more deeply.

Top them with the driest of the tiny twigs, tumbled from the branches over your head, and kneel to light a flame. Add a bigger branch or two. Now sit back and watch it flicker, grasping the oxygen it needs. As you watch, feel yourself start to relax. The terpine-scented fire slowly starts to warm you; its resin-rich smoke subtly relaxing your mind, opening memories of more sociable times than the last year or so has allowed. You find yourself taking deeper breaths— your 480 million alveoli expanding, collaborating to allow oxygen in — releasing the grief of restricted speech and social contact, the destruction wreaked by this lung-chastening pandemic.

These are tricky days to get through. We are only acknowledging the fringes of it— our fear of returning to more sociable, crowded times amidst the frenzied reports of outdoor drinking, of clamouring for intense, heady, peopled experiences.

Instead, just take a moment. Seek out a valued confidante or two— close friends you love and trust. Seek quiet, so you can hear one another.

Cook up a lung-nourishing dish to share— Sweet Potato (Ipomoea batatas), Garlic (Allium sativum) and Ginger (Zingiber officinale). Add a fresh Mustard leaf (Sinapis arvensis) or two. Set a kettle of clear water on top of your fire, and watch as it starts to bubble, to come to life with the warmth.

You are following the path of an ancient wisdom.

When I was sharing stories in China back in 2018, I spent days walking along dusty streets in Shanghai's French quarter, or along the seafront in Qingdao. I may love the heat but, when the humidity rises, I still harbour that British craving for icy liquids. It took a few days to embrace the cultural shift from cold drinks to sipping warm or room temperature, more fragrant fluids. But as I found my balance, learning from and embracing warm water's place in Traditional Chinese Medicine, I took the advice of a teacher whose class I was working with and settled into enjoying the white floral, gently uplifting energy of green Tea (Camellia sinensis) with a few Jasmine flowers floating on top.

The tradition of drinking green Tea dates back nearly 5000 years, to the days of the Emperor Shen Nong; also known as the father of Chinese medicine, Divine Farmer, Yan Di, the Emperor of Fire, and God of the Burning Wind.

This mythology-wreathed being is said to have been borne by the princess Nü Teng, conceived when she swallowed the vapour of a celestial dragon. Shen Nong was born with a transparent belly and internal organs which, as he grew, gave him incredible insights into healing plants and their applications.

Eventually, he became a respected and wellloved leader and— concerned by the famine and disease of his time —he took to travelling to find ways to alleviate the suffering of his people. As he travelled, he discovered many new medicinal plants and developed a divine understanding of farming, making discoveries in agriculture which became the foundation stones of Chinese civilisation.

Shen Nong was an advocate for the healthgiving effects of drinking boiled water— fresh water that had been heated, Qi-enhancing

viii: Botanica Fabula

water —allowing the body to not only be refreshed by a fluid with a temperature more akin to its own, but also ensuring any malignant bacteria had been banished by the heat. When he travelled, he would have his retainers build a small fire and boil water for his drink. It's said that he discovered the benefits of green Tea when they chose to build the fire from the fallen twigs of a Camellia tree. The leaves were touched by the flames, carried up by the smoke, and the draft dropped them back into Shen Nong's boiling water. Intrigued by the gentle, smoky flavour, he left them in place and, sipping the liquid, found it brought a calm, alert quality to his mind. His insights into the wonders of the plant he called Cha 茶 (Cha means to examine or check) were carried first to Japan, and then onwards. By the eighteenth century, the beneficial properties of the beverage were being enjoyed on these shores, by those lucky enough to afford it.

So, as the water resting on your Pine-fed fire builds to a rolling boil, add a few leaves of green Tea and set it to one side to rest and infuse. Once again in the company of people you care for, in the warmth, breathe deeply again, fill your lungs— feel them expand —and embrace a quiet, reflective moment. Then take a little wisdom from Shen Nong, and sip your Tea. Image: Guo Xu (1456–c.1529) ‘Shennong, the divine farmer', Shanghai Museum collection.

References Yang, Shou-zhong (1998) The Divine Farmer's Materia Medica: A Translation of the Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing (神农本草经). Boulder, CO: Blue Poppy Press An episode of The Very Curious Herbal Project for Chawton House Library, featuring stories of afternoon tea, is available on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CF0IBcgP f48&t=1116s

Tina Struthers Lung Mutations IV

ix: StAnza Presents…

Barbara Davey

Lungwort

Late flurries of snow settle on the lungwort, its leaves twice-blotched; the pink and blue flowers, soldiers and sailors, shiver in unseasonal cold.

Hunched at the head of the table my father sits, breathless and tense.

For weeks he’s been bed-bound, the children staying quiet, sent out to the garden.

We mess there for hours, making medicine, bashing up petals and leaves.

Barbara Davey is a gardener and a poet, living in a village in Fife. She has read at Platform Poetry Nights and most recently at a Poetry and Faith event hosted

by St Andrews University. Her work appears in the Transept 2021 Exhibition In/break and she is a committee member of StAnza Poetry Festival.

StAnza brings poetry to audiences and enables encounters with poetry through events and projects in Scotland and beyond, especially their annual spring festival in St Andrews. www.stanzapoetry.org Facebook: stanzapoetry Instagram: @stanzapoetry

Tina Struthers Breathless: Lung Mutations installation

x: Contributors

Hazel Brady’s background is in IT, but she has always loved plants and since retiring has expanded her knowledge, especially around herbs. She completed the Diploma in Herbology at RBGE under Catherine Conway-Payne. Retirement has also given her the opportunity to develop another of her interests— an artistic practice centred in drawing and painting.

Ruth Crighton-Ward has had a long interest in plants and nature, although her first career was in Stage Management. After 18 years working in a variety of Scottish theatres, she decided to go into gardening.

She took her RHS Level 2 in Horticulture, as well as a Certificate in Practical Horticulture at RBGE. In 2014 she started her own gardening business, which has proved successful. In 2018, alongside her full-time work as a gardener, she returned to the RBGE for a Diploma in Herbology.

Patrick Dunne is an Edinburgh-based community gardener. Since 2018 he has, with his partner Katie Smith, co-organised an International Fringe event staging readings of the 2018 IPCC 1.5 Degrees Global Warming report, made lots of flat sourdough bread and camped, marched and organised as an occasional environmental activist.

Amanda Edmiston was raised in stories; her mother is a professional storyteller, her dad was a toymaker, her grandfather a sculptor, her gran a repository of traditional remedies and folklore.

After studying law, then herbal medicine, Amanda began to blend facts, folklore, traditional tales, history and herbal remedies into unique works. Based in rural Stirlingshire, you can follow her on Facebook, @HerbalStorytell, and find more of her works at www.botanicafabula.co.uk

x: Contributors

David Hughes is an organic gardener, fruit and veg enthusiast, plant nutritionist, terpine whisperer, seed collector, green librarian and half decent in the kitchen. Most often found disturbing the peace in the woods of East Lothian, or more occasionally wandering in unimproved pastures looking quizzically at things, David looks to explore landscapes, people and their relationships with the plants that surround them by examining the esoteric sides of herbology through conversation, experience and silly wee stories.

Marianne Hughes began following her interest in complementary medicine after a career in Social Work Education and voluntary work in Fair Trade.

Starting with Reflexology & Reiki, she progressed into Herbal Medicine. The evening classes at the RBGE got her hooked and she completed the Certificate in Herbology and, more recently, the Diploma in Herbology. Her current joy is experimenting with herb-growing in her own garden, in a local park, and alongside other volunteers in the RBGE Physic Garden. marianne@commonfuture.co.uk Ann King has always dabbled in gardening in some shape or form is now a horticultural therapist and graduate of the RBGE Herbology Diploma. She is passionate about facilitating nature re-connection and enabling its therapeutic benefits by creatively adapting knowledge and stories for organised group sessions: either outdoors, incorporating exercise; or sedentary, indoor, experiential workshops. You can follow her on IG: @yourthymefornature or at www.thymefornature.com Dr. Ella Leith is an ethnologist and folklorist who studied in Scotland and now lives in Malta. She particularly loves folktales and the storytelling traditions of linguistic and cultural minorities. IG: @leithyface

x: Contributors

Nathalie Moriarty is an Accredited Practitioner with the Institute for Outdoor Learning and a graduate of the RBGE Diploma in Herbology. She works full-time for Scottish Forestry co-ordinating the ‘Branching Out - Positive Mental Health through Nature’ programme.

She is passionate about working with nature to help people lead happier and healthier lives.

Maddy Mould is an illustrator from Lancashire, living in the Scottish Borders. Her work is heavily influenced by her interests in the natural landscape, folklore, and history. She likes to illuminate the magic of everyday things, both through her art and through some simple kitchen witchery.

IG: @maddymould and www.maddymould.co.uk

Joseph Nolan practices Herbal Medicine in Edinburgh, at the UK’s oldest herbal clinic, and specialises in men’s health and paediatrics. He is a member of the Association of Foragers, and teaches classes and workshops related to herbal medicine making, wild plants, foraging, and natural health. You can find him on Facebook and Instagram @herbalmedicineman, and on his website: www.herbalmedicineman.com

Kyra Pollitt is a graduate of the Diploma in Herbology at the RBGE. When not editing Herbology News, she works as a translator, interpreter, writer and artist. She lives on the Isle of Harris, where she is busily planting and growing a garden. www.actsoftranslation.com, www.wilderorb.com

x: Contributors

Marissa Stoffer is a mixed media artist based in Edinburgh, studying her master’s at the Royal College of Art. Her practice centres on ecology, plants, and our relationships with them. She is particularly interested in the ontology of New Animism and methods of making with local materials through foraging for colour. Her work focuses on nature— modified and abstracted from both real and imagined images. Through these combinations she explores the peculiarities of history, mythology, and beliefs. Instagram: @marissastoffer

James Uzzell is a lifelong pagan who practices independently, and with enthusiasm. Working in mental healthcare, and educated in broadcast audio engineering, James is just trying to stay rooted and grounded in such an uprooted and unsettled world.

Believing in Faery Kingdoms and watching the sunrise are just some of the ways he finds some solace in the storm.

Dora Wagner is a graduate of the RBGE Diploma in Herbology, and a Didactician in Natural Science. She also works as a Naturopath for Psychotherapy, and as a Horticultural Therapist. She currently lectures in Medical Herbalism at the University of Witten/Herdecke, and is leading a project reconstructing the medicinal herb garden of an Anthroposophic Hospital in Germany. dora.wagner@t-online.de and www.plantadora.de

Her bol ogyNewshasgr ownf r om t he Her bol ogycour sest aughtatt he RoyalBot ani cGar densEdi nbur gh,undert he car ef uleyeofCat her i neConwayPayne.

A sui t eofHer bol ogycour seopt i onsi s avai l abl e,aspar toft hebr oad r angeof educat i oncour sesof f er ed byRBGE. Her bol ogyNewsi snei t herf i nanci al l ynor mat er i al l ysuppor t ed byRBGE,buti sput t oget herent i r el ybyvol unt eer sand i s cur r ent l yseeki ng char i t y/ not f or pr of i tst at us.

Advertisement

x: Looking Forward

05//21: The Fresh Issue Guest Editor, Ella Leith curates  A selection of your favourite columnists  Plus, Herb of the Month: Hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna)  Plus, Artist of the Month: Andrea Geile  Plus, we focus on the heart

And more….