Heroes Not Zombies

You can see lots of mistletoe around here throughout the year, but it’s significance is at a height at this time of year….Christmas.

The Romans associated mistletoe with peace, love and understanding, which seems especially relevant to me here where I live a few metres from a Roman aqueduct.

It has long been associated with male fertility in a variety of cultures and has been used as a medicine for a number of different complaints. It’s highly toxic….a feature which seems to be characteristic of so many different “medicinal” substances. I wonder why that is….why do we humans use poisonous plants to bring about healing? It seems a dangerous game and I often wonder how the first humans discovered that certain plants had both harmful AND beneficial powers.

We humans create a whole extra dimension of reality through our use of symbols and stories, seeing not just a cluster of leaves and white berries attached to a tree, but empowering those plants to turn our minds to love, to peace, to kisses and to protection from evil.