In Part 1 I did some musing and rambling on the importance of this point along the year’s wheel, with the understanding that every season presents us with challenges and potential medicine. And here, I want to write a bit about a potent herb for this season, Devil’s Club, to which I owe endless gratitude.
For some, Samhain represents the last of the 3 main harvests, and as a herbalist and wildcrafter this is pretty accurate. Once we sink deeper into winter’s sleep, and the energy of plants has descended to their deepest roots or is nestled in the promise of seeds, the only medicinals I harvest are Usna (see here), lungwort and the odd conk (see here), until the early rising poplars begin to reawaken our senses in February with their resinous buds.
My last harvest of the season tends to be my Devil’s Club Harvest. If I can, I like to harvest Devil’s Club as close to Samhain and a new moon as possible— early in the morning is best. Harvest with restraint, seriousness and lots of gratitude.
The roots are harvested in Spring and Fall, but I only harvest in the fall, which produces a more grounding medicine. With Devil’s Club it’s specially important to only harvest what you need, which likely isn’t much. Devil’s Club is a sacred medicine to many indigenous peoples of the North West– a medicine to be approached with great respect, reverence and a keen understanding of it’s cultural significance. For this reason I only use small doses, 1-5 drops, in order to preserve it’s magic.
As always, there are multiple ways of working with Devil’s Club, some of these are energetic approaches that use small drop doses of medicine and work on the subtle energies of our physio-spiritual body; other approaches work more on the physical, embodied level. Because I live on Vancouver Island, and don’t have easy access to the places of Northern BC which are far more abundant in Devil’s Club, I work only with drop doses. To learn more about the physiological uses of Devil’s Club go here- it seems to be a pretty excellent resource.
With long limbed largeness, Devil’s Club stands it’s ground and stakes it’s place in the forest of things with it’s cathedral of leaves the size of dinner plates and long spiny reach. It smells of earth and bacteria eaten trees, and something unmistakable that I can never put my finger on, but makes me salivate. Devil’s Club has serious spikes, both large and small that demand a careful hand.
Devil’s Club is an ally for the hard stuff: the hard stuff that comes from outside us, and the hard stuff that occurs inside us.
For the hard stuff that comes from outside us, Devil’s Club is strongly protective medicine during difficult times, situations and spaces; this makes it excellent medicine for folks who are descending into the belly of the beast to do intense work. That said, it’s also a great ally for those whose very existence, due to racism, colonialism, sexism, transphobia etc. means always rubbing up against societal hostility. Devil’s Club not only offers protection, but it demands respect. It’s excellent medicine for those seeking to not only protect their personal space, but fully expand into it.
And so external defence gives way to internal workings. And here Devil’s Club is excellent medicine for folk’s who are wanting to get in touch with their greatest strength, power and magic. This is medicine which requires integrity and honesty, and for this reason it’s not necessarily kind medicine for those who choose to ingest it regularly; the noble path of becoming your biggest self can mean facing yourself in uncomfortable, if not brutal ways. It’s because of this quality of Devil’s Club that I use it first and foremost for matters of addiction; and you can cast the definition of addiction as wide as you like to include both addiction to substances, but also all the small ways our actions don’t always match our best intentions for ourselves (like when you find yourself scrolling away on instagram past midnight ahem *me*). Sometimes a sense of self empowerment and strength can go a long way in braving big changes, new chapters, and new versions of our selves.
I could go on, but really I think this poem by Mary Oliver sums up all I could ever say about drop dosing Devil’s Club in such beauty and simplicity that I won’t possibly try to replicate it through my ramblings, enjoy :)
The Journey by Mary Oliver
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.