Motherwort Plant Spirit Initiation
After driving several hours on the backroads of Vermont, I finally found Pam’s address. It was a long driveway to the house, flanked on each side by wide, open farm fields. We had never met in person before. Yet, we had been collaborating and co-teaching online since 2021. One of the bittersweet benefits of the pandemic; because so many of us couldn’t teach in person anymore, new friendships and collaborations were happening on the internet. There is nothing better than being in person, though.
We both teach Plant Spirit Medicine with non-psychedelic plants, each in our own unique way shaped by our respective decades of living and working with plants. We planned to co-facilitate the Motherwort Plant Spirit Initiation in person, at her teaching centre, way back in the winter. I thought about cancelling so many times.
My busy clinic and demanding teaching schedule are hard to step away from. Not to mention, the end of June is when my medicinal garden is ripe for harvest. It was tough to pull myself away for all these reasons, but especially with so much instability in the world, all I want to do these days is stay home.
Flying from Victoria to Montreal, then renting a car and driving 5 hours south on small backroads, gave me a perfect view of Vermont. The rolling green hills and small towns were breathtaking and so reminiscent of where I am from in Ontario.
Sweetwater Sanctuary
Her home and teaching centre, called Sweetwater Sanctuary, is in rural Vermont, tucked within five thousand acres of conservation land. The silence is deafening. The drinking water comes straight from the stream behind the house. The schoolhouse and accommodations, without plumbing. It was beautiful, raw, pure, and true to its name, a real sanctuary far away from urban life.
After two days of enjoying each other’s company and getting to know her wonderful husband, Mark, 25 participants from all over the US, and some from Canada, arrived.
The Ceremony
We cast the circle and went into another world, together. We began by stirring the elixir Pam and I made the day previous. A combination of fresh and dried infusions, tincture, and flower essence. Each of the 25 participants helped stir the elixir while we raised energy, and infused our brew with our prayers. We stirred fast and for a long time, the liquid creating a vortex of energy in which to catch our prayers. Then, we had our first drink. Every 2 hours for three days, a sacred pause would occur for Pam and I to pour a small serving of the elixir to each participant. And with each drink, we went deeper into communion with Motherwort. She became louder as we became infused with her medicine. We were fasting throughout the retreat so we could be enveloped in her teachings.
With my frame drum, I guided the group to meet her Spirit, and receive her teachings, and the rest of the weekend we continued with a shamanistic depossession, dismemberment, cleansing, dreaming, and healing. We walked the labyrinth while coyotes called and fireflies lit up the sky. We sang around the fire as thunder and lightning flashed and rolled through our night's ritual. Motherwort guided the whole process.
The Initiation
Why do we combine these shamanic practices with plants? We clear our vessel of fear, anxiety, and stuck energy through ritual so we can make ourselves available for Motherwort to initiate us. We make space within. Ritual allows us to enter into conversation with the world behind this world. Shamanistic practices move our energy centre out of our intellect and into our body, to the level of instinct, intuition, and inner knowing. When this happens, our nervous system moves at a slower, deeper, calmer frequency. This makes us more available to enter Nature’s field of consciousness. We move at the pace of nature. This in turn allows us to access a whole new dimension of wisdom and cosmic intelligence that exists throughout all beings. It’s always available. It’s just we aren’t always available. So many of life’s big questions are answered when we join our consciousness with nature.
The World Behind This World
Mystics, Tibetan Monks, shamans and spiritual teachers throughout time understand this; the necessity to join our consciousness with the natural world to become a receiver for the encoded wisdom within a flower, tree, rock, or birdsong. When we commune in this way, we can hear the rest of the world, such as plants, speak, but just not in the way humans do. Human beings and nature communing in a profound manner is not “new-ageism”. In fact, the separation of science and spirituality is the product of the New Age. Mechanistic thinking, scientific dogmatism and rationalism are only a few hundred years old. Plants are our Elders. They have been on the planet longer than we have. They are, in many cultures, the original teachers.
Pam says, “Initiation is an ancient form of ceremony that brings one into maturity taking up their place within the collective. In traditional society initiation was a coming of age where the young person became an adult stepping into their role within the “tribe”. The elders would perform the Initiations that sometimes took up to a year to complete but always culminating in a great ritual and then feast. In modern times the Initiation process has been mostly forgotten so that there are many adults who have never had the opportunity to come into their maturity bringing forth their gifts in order to serve the community.”
Messages From Motherwort
Plants have their own unique personalities, just like people. Their personality is expressed in part through their physical structure, their flowers, and their season of blooming and ripening, just like we showcase our personalities through our hairstyle, clothing, and whether we love summer or find the sun miserable and prefer looking for shade. Our personalities are expressed through the unseen, too. Through speaking, feeling, and through that ‘special something’ of our essence that you can pick up from someone by being around them.
Three of us had repeated dreams of ex-partners crossing our boundaries, and us yelling back at them. Others got messages of where they are leaky with their own boundaries. A few people felt anger, and rage recalling situations of conflict where they felt pushed, bullied, and challenged. Motherwort can be a harsh, or even direct teacher. Her personality is frank, honest, and she shows you where you need to grow. I got the repeated message, “Stand in your own stalk.” I can be overly empathetic, especially with my own mother. If she is hurting, I hurt. This is not unusual with loved ones, but I recognize I can carry her, and all of her problems, long past the point of what is reasonable given she is a vital, healthy, youthful woman living her own life. Motherwort kept reminding me of the power and strength of her stalk which is the strongest part of the plant. Most of us had the theme of mothering emerge. Not being a mother, and wishing they were. Miscarriages. Resenting being a mother. And, the entanglement between mother and daughter. And most everyone felt the theme (and exhaustion) of mothering so many people: colleagues, partners, friends, and more.
On the final day we were deeply relaxed and were able to receive the generosity of Motherwort’s big hearted reminders of love. That we can access this strong, vital love and the capacity to hold both grief and joy, together. One of the strongest teachings I received this ceremony was that life is hard. REALLY hard. But also, life is beautiful, too. And by allowing our hearts to be filled and receive every last drop of what is good in life, this helps us weather the storms for when the hard stuff comes by, yet again. This is the dance of life. The teachings of Motherwort will continue, as these plant Initiations always do.
Interested in Plant Initiation Ceremonies? I will be offering two Fall 2025, be sure to subscribe to my newsletter.
Learn more about Pam Montgomery, her books, and Sweetwater Sanctuary here.
Have you worked with Motherwort?
Share below,
Love, Seraphina
Such a lovely share. Though I wasn’t there with you all physically on that initiation, I was (and have been) exploring very similar themes in my own life. It always amazes me how the threads weave together. How the plants seem to have ‘the answers’ if we are just willing to listen. Thank you for sharing such a beautiful experience, I can imagine the elixir, feel the downloads arriving in their succinct clarity and am drinking it all in like a warm sip of tea.
Love you and Pam! 💚
Dear Seraphina
This was such a beautiful message. I really appreciate your openness about your experience. I just harvested my motherwort and I have a feeling it will offer me some wisdom on my journey with my daughter as I struggle to find a common ground for us to love each other. Thank you so very much for who you are and your work.
Love, Lizzy
Beautiful post. Motherwort hits close to my heart, my mother abruptly packed her bags and left before i hit my teen years. Her mother was an accountant of a major mining company that is doing immense destruction to the planet. Lifelong healing to be done in the mother lineage. I have only just started working with motherwort, the first journey was intense. It will be a long term relationship. Any suggestions welcome. I would like to do my own initiation, wondering if you offer online guidance for people OS? who cant make it over to Canada/US atm.
Im so glad you made it over there. I’ve studied with you and Pam, so excited you are working together on motherwort. blessings.
Wow, Katie, thank you for sharing a little of your background story, it is very potent. With Motherwort, I suggest taking small amounts daily. I suggest you review the Motherwort Monograph PDF in your Rose & Root Apprenticeship course materials from this year. You’ll see I have directions for how to work with her. I suggest reviewing the home practice for that Module as well. Basically, take small doses daily, with a clear intention. Keep in mind, Motherwort can be strong medicine, difficult feelings can arise at first. But, over time, they lessen and more freedom is available.
p.s. yes, on my ‘consultations’ page, you’ll see appointments. Since you’ve taken Rose & Root Apprenticeship, you qualify to select the “Mentorship” option, which is for any current or past students who wish for guidance personally or within their own practice.
Thank you. I reviewed the Monograph, you suggest 1 tsp in one cup of water 2-3 times a day, that seems a lot! perhaps 1 cup, taken throughout the day?
I love the idea of the triple goddess elixir, however I would like to work directly with Motherwort first.
If i need further support i will definitely book a session.
much gratitude
Katie
Dear Seraphina, I just received a motherwort plant. But when I read how it spreads aggressively through seeds and rhysome, could it be in a way not respecting our other plants boundaries, I offered the plant to another friend.
With warmth
Laure
Hi Laure,
Yes, it surely does spread. Once you have Motherwort in your garden, it’ll forever be there because it does spread very enthusiastically. However, with some modest weeding in the spring, before it flowers and then seeds, you can easily keep it under control. Yes, untended, it can overtake other plants boundaries, so to speak. But, In my garden these past many years, they all live pretty well together as long as I tend them before they seed.