Plants are people that participate in our world in wondrous, mutualistic ways. Plants serve as the foundation of our human lives, in so many ways, grown by Solar rays of a very high Source. Plants bridge us and the Sun. How can we serve plants? A mystical practice, known as a type of theurgy, is one way to empower plants to give greater gifts as they go forth in life, using the power of human mind to imagine and visualize colors and light.
Definitions of theurgy tend to be vaguely described, as hints of it seep out from the mysticism of various traditions. Definitions often include compelling or querying supernatural beings and deities. I offer this definition based on my learnings and experiences on alchemy:
Theurgy is the mental animating of matter, so to bring out more of matter’s inherent qualities and potential capacities, without imposing a state or process on the matter that is not in harmony with its nature and natural laws of cause and effect [1].
There could be a lot to unpack here, but I will leave that to your own inner and outer inquiries. I raise this work to share an ecological application of it. Based in imagination, it is the use of visualization and color to enliven objects with their vital three-part nature.
Be Careful
This is an idea and a practice which should be applied in service to plants and then non-human animals first. It is a type of ‘energy healing’ exercise, not to be applied to humans except by experienced and capable healers.
As with other ‘energy healing’-type exercises, the healer can ‘take on’ the weight and challenges of the healed. That transfer of trauma can a) hurt the healer if they are not capable of healing themselves from the newly taken trauma, and b) be inappropriate intervention in the karmic cause-and-effect relationships which beings intertwine themselves in. Karma of minerals, plants, and animals are in full harmony with nature, whereas human minds have more agency and are not necessarily synchronized with the rest of nature’s trends and rhythms. Work humbly in service to all nature, and with that be careful of intervening in the agency of someone else, especially as their agency and their own interventions may be out of alignment with nature. This is related to a concept I understand is part of Greek alchemy, depicted below as the “hierarchy of creation”.
Context for Ecological Theurgy
Before more details on theurgic practice with plants, it is helpful to have a foundation about certain topics:
- Ecosystem restoration with imagination and love.
- Point Pros of Animism, and A Prayer for Food.
- All is Mind.
- Colors and symbols affect subconscious. An example and good tool for any practitioner of theurgy: Elemental Organ Healing Exercise.
- The formative world is subtle like subconscious mind (dreams); coming to life in conscious mind (imagination).
- The theurgist in the Renaissance.
With that understanding, theurgy can come in a practical and uplifting form. Align mind with act, and bring about the best hues of oneself, of one plant, of one ‘inanimate object’ that is made of the same physical (and mental – a la consciousness as a state of matter and/or fundamental force) substrate as stars and dung. Envision objects in radiant colors, uplifting their presence, with love and appreciation for Source, Mind and All.
Practicable Planting Example:
I am potting a plant. I know this plant will go out and live its own life. I intend to be close with it for much or all of its life. Will it leave my hands somehow? Will I leave its stomata?
My physical interaction with this plant will affect its tendencies and success, like how we are each a product of not only our own nature but also how we were nurtured (or not) by one another. With this in mind, I try to pay attention to the process. I could be distracted. I often listen to digital audio as I work, and that can take my mind elsewhere. But I try not to be too distracted.
At times I focus deeply. My mind follows phenomenon to their depths. What are these stomata like in their form, their feel, their breaths? These threads can be followed to varying lengths, to varying benefit.
At times I focus with theurgy. I emptily perceive my senses with care. The sight: What are the colors and textures this one [plant] appears to have, based on the same universal photons finding it and then finding my eyes? What sounds do I hear subtly vibrating through my ear (water, air), interpreted by my brain’s signals and signal processing? Aromas and tastes. Touch, as my body connects with the foundation, the air, and the being itself that I come together with. Yet in the physics of chemistry, I know we are ever so far apart, amid empty space as am I within. Deep experience, vast emptiness in matter and mind.
In this emptiness I plant a seed.
I apply imagination to an object, envisioning red and blue light glowing, radiating, filling an object. The object continues connecting with me through photons, vibrations, aromas; as I connect with it through the same and mind. Red and white may slowly alternative or fast flicker, complementing one another. Brilliant white light, alike Sol, fill and form the object. As gravity of the Earth draws the object and I to it, so too the gravity of the object and present draws the imaginary colors to the object. Grounded in gravity, this mind offered – or ‘attention paid’ – to the object may empower it, enliven it.
The effects are occult. This is theurgy.
Color Triangles: PHIre for Visualization
Red, blue, white.
Fire, water, air.
Mind, body, spirit.
Cardinal, fixed, mutable.
Adjective, noun, verb.
Sulfur, salt, mercury.
L.V.X.
[1] Natural Laws, regarding Theurgy
What are natural laws? Are computers magic: using transistors as logic gates to build the binary, fast-but-finite, dynamic experience of silicon-based connectivity you’re engaging now? I wiki-linked one word in that sentence, while most of them have a depth of history and phenomenon to consider. Computers would seem magic at some places in time. What about a candle, with its brilliant flame – is it magic? A light bulb?
In this context of thinking, is your imagination magic? What is mind?
The world is vast and there is much of it we do not understand or are not aware of. We as a species have observed it for a relatively very short time, and even with all our Earthling ancestors, the universe spans magnitudes more time than we’ve known. I recognize natural laws we understand through the empiricism of science (alchemy), and these are first principles which get priority in critical thinking. I recognize the vastness of mind we understand through the subjective experience of life (ecology), and these are first principles which get priority in metaphysics.
A metaphysics of mentalism. All is Mind. How does the mind operate? How does the formed world of physicality relate to the world of formation that has a similar subtle nature as one’s imagination?
Mysteries of the universe. How does this practice affect oneself? Know thy self.