Reading Suggestions on the Poison Path

In all hon­esty, it has been real­ly hard to write this post: it has tak­en us more than 2 years. We have nev­er been real­ly fond of read­ing lists, and thus we expect this arti­cle will not be seen like that. We have received lots of enquiries regard­ing rec­om­mend­ed books in herbal­ism and the Poi­son Path so we have decid­ed to write this reflec­tion, but bear in mind that this is a real­ly del­i­cate matter.

We don’t find the books that change our life, but books find us, and it is no point on giv­ing you an exhaus­tive list on what to read or not, because, if you have to read a book, in the end, it will come to you just when it is nec­es­sary, and when you open it you will sure­ly know from page one that you are read­ing what you’re sup­posed to, as if you were accom­plish­ing your fate.

Thus, allow us to be a bit deceit­ful in this. We will just give you the cat­e­gories and types of books that might be use­ful in each of the stages of prac­tice and insight with some lin­ear rec­om­men­da­tions. This is some­thing we have been reflect­ing on for some time, and, of course, it is not defin­i­tive, so allow it to change and evolve as years go by.

 

First resources

Per­haps the first thing we should do is gath­er infor­ma­tion about the area we live in and  our nat­ur­al ter­ri­to­ry. To do so, it would be advis­able to get hold of a local com­pendi­um of the local flo­ra and fau­na, to know what kind of plants can grow in the area, their med­i­c­i­nal appi­ca­tions. Also a book on the cus­toms, folk beliefs, reme­dies and folk mag­ic, in order to see how the ancient inhab­i­tants of your area inter­act­ed with their surroundings.

The cat­e­go­ry would then include:

• maps on the local area
• books on local flo­ra and fauna
• books on local folk herbal­ism, herbal reme­dies, and magic
• books on local folk­lore, leg­ends, and folktales

These shall pro­vide you with an ade­quate mind­frame to approach your ter­ri­to­ry. Please, nev­er under­es­ti­mate the impor­tance of a local botan­ic com­pendi­um, as sim­ple as it may look, remem­ber it is the result of years and years of inter­ac­tion with the land.

Sec­ond resources

The sec­ond type of resources would include books on etnob­otany and botany, anthro­pol­o­gy, phi­los­o­phy, or his­to­ry. These kind of books allow you to place the infor­ma­tion you found in the local area into a broad­er con­text of ideas. They allow you to under­stand the rea­sons behind all what you have expe­ri­enced and under­stand that you are not alone, they give you the nec­es­sary resources to deal with the great schools of thought, with philo­soph­i­cal and spir­i­tu­al paths.

The cat­e­go­ry would then include:

• books on eth­nob­otany: Chris­t­ian Rätsch’s work, Ter­ence McKen­na, Schultes and Ott, Esco­ho­ta­do’s work…
• books on anthro­pol­o­gy: Car­lo Ginzburg’s work, Claude Lecou­teux’s, Emma Wilby’s…
• books on folklore
• books on spirituality

Third resources

Resources of the third kind are those which have a her­met­ic, mys­teric, or non-divul­ga­tive goal, those books and texts that do not intend to teach you any­thing, but they allow you to read some­thing you already know using some­one else’s words, and make it pos­si­ble for the inef­fa­ble to be expressed . These kind of books are hard to read, and even hard­er to under­stand, but they are not meant to be under­stood but to be lived. These are books like the Phar­mako tril­o­gy by Dale Pen­dell, some books by Daniel Schulke and by Andrew Chum­b­ley, old mag­i­cal trea­tis­es like Agrip­pa’s, Paracel­sus’, etc.

These books are not to be tak­en as dog­ma, these are books are the result of a deep, cru­cial, spir­i­tu­al work, and thus, they tend to give some pre­vi­ous train­ing for grant­ed. They do not need to jus­ti­fy their state­ments, they just tell you “THIS IS THAT THING”, and this makes sense, as those claims are often the result of enlight­en­ment and revelation.

All this may look pret­ty dif­fi­cult, maybe over­ly com­pli­cat­ed, but that’s what we get when deal­ing with books, they are but recip­i­ents of wis­dom and expe­ri­ence writ­ten by some­one that is not us. But that does not make them worth­less, as, in the end, books become spir­i­tu­al beings on their own, acquir­ing their own ani­mus, and that ani­mus may or may not be in tune with our spir­it, and so, the only impor­tant thing is know­ing when to approach them, and not forc­ing an organ­ic process.

We do not need to read books in order to learn, but texts just help us under­stand and organ­ise what we thought in the first place. The real wis­dom will be found if we dare to ven­ture in the unex­plored and still unwrit­ten paths of the woods, the coast, and the moun­tains, Nature will pro­vide you with the teach­ings you need. Books, like com­pan­ions, will make sure you won’t for­get those teachings.