Day 67: The Taste of Death

Do you know what this gorgeous flower is?

I’ve been mesmerized by aconitum species for decades. I love to watch the green tips rise from the muck as one of the first perennial signs of spring. And curiously, it’s the very last to bloom.

Yesterday I snapped this entrancing Halloween scene in front of my MD’s office. I was limping in for my first visit with my primary care doctor and I smiled with glee at nature’s ghostly presence cleverly planned by some creative soul.

I wonder if anyone else who passes into the door seeking healing, could feel the plant’s foreboding beauty? The colors of death are perfectly attuned. Monkshood or wolfbane is frightfully poisonous – a deadly plant to ingest. Folk history is full of poison arrows and deadly draughts and yet if used in carefully administered microscopic doses, this toxic substance becomes a healing potion. Halloween, Dia de Los Muertos, and the Celtic Samhain celebrate our fear of death in many weird and wonderful ways. It seems that approaching fear and stirring up the dark side of matter and spirit is a necessary potion for all ages. Approaching death and the dark side is what our human culture mostly runs away from in daily life. Certainly, in my upbringing, we resisted any celebration of this dark spirit as if it might poison us and our children.

I’m aware that being recently pushed into the arms of death and being rescued so profoundly from serious injury has altered my nervous system in ways that are still regulating. The closeness of death has been for me a positive experience of bodily regulation and attunement. Never easy – yet strangely essential. Life and death spanning spring to late fall bloom - we are more alike the deadly aconitum than we know. No wonder this image and nature’s many wild and fearful beings allure me into a deeper healthy embodiment!

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“Each person discovers a field of allurements, the totality of which bears the unique stamp of that person's personality. Destiny unfolds in the pursuit of individual fascinations and interests ... By pursuing your allurements, you help bind the universe together. The unity of the world rests on the pursuit of passion.”

Brian Swimme, The Universe is a Green Dragon

How are you repelled or allured by this season’s focus on death?

Consider your life-long, well-earned or birthright resources and how you are being called to take in a soulful portion of darkness and not get overpowered.

Next: Week 10

Back: Week 9