Skunk Cabbage

I am taking a 9-week series of classes called Transformational Yoga. This week we were guided through a drum journey to find our plant allies, and I discovered skunk cabbage.

I went into the process with thoughts of sassafras and peonies. As a child, I loved the word sassafras. In the Michigan woods, I learned you can dig up the young plants and chew the root. I have considered getting a tattoo of the wavy mitten of a sassafras leaf. But it is a spare plant. It doesn't wrap you up. It doesn't hold you. The peony, on the other hand, has those overlapping petals, so you can stare into the heart of the flower and feel enveloped in a delicious cocoon of scent and color.

As I tried to stay in the peony garden, with my eyes closed, listening to the beat of the drum, my beloved departed husky appeared and led me to a stream bordered by skunk cabbage. Then my childhood dog and my current dog joined in, reveling in the mud and smell. I remembered spring in Virginia, spring in Michigan, powerful green leaves emerging so soon after the ice and snow.

My imagination fled to images of the red leaf maple and mulberry trees. I remembered my first bottle of perfume, eau de toilette of lilly of the valley. As a teenager, I picked lilies of the valley in France for May Day. I called it my favorite flower, before peonies. And yet, I kept coming back to skunk cabbage. The dogs were happy there.

The idea of the plant ally is to provide spiritual protection, protection from the "riff raff," as my teacher put it, "riff raff" of energy, thoughts, events, other people. What better than skunk cabbage? It takes up space, with it's smell. It generates enough heat to thaw the snow.

Researching it later, I learn:  "Bear and elk love the roots and are said to plow up entire swampy areas to eat them." Desire, appetite. The smell of the plant keeps some other animals away, so birds and lizards seek protection there. A forcefield. Native Americans of the Northwest used the leaves to wrap salmon for cooking and to hold other foods. A container for creating heat and transforming flesh. The root can be made into a tea to use "for coughs, as a blood purifier, a kidney cleanser, and to ease the pain of labor." Purification through hunger, fire, and purposeful transgression.

Sean Donahue, who writes at greenmanramblings.blogspot.com, shares:
"With fire rising from its body, roots deep in earth and water, and flowers and leaves giving off their musky scent, Skunk Cabbage combines the four elements of western magical traditions. With its paradoxical nature and its dwelling place at a boundary between worlds, Skunk Cabbage is a natural ally for shamans and midwives."

I do not pretend to call myself a shaman or a midwife, but I feel that I often inhabit some liminal space. I have always identified with water, embracing my Pisces sign, but I recognize my need for grounding, for earthiness, and a longing to stretch upward, toward fire and air. I swim in emotional borderlands, mine and those of other people, so it seems most fitting that my plant protector would be a borderland plant, container of all elements, using each element to transform and heal.