Plants As Helpers

A shaman works not only with the power of the animal kingdom, but also with that of the plants. These plants tend to serve him as spirit helpers, mainly during the difficult task of extracting intrusions. While animals are accessible to everyone searching for them, plant helpers are only accessible to shamans.

Before attempting an extraction, the shaman must accumulate several spirit helpers. He can come to possess hundreds of them. This is necessary since different intrusions require different plant helpers.

The plant spirit helpers possess two realities, their ordinary and their non-ordinary aspects. Their ordinary aspect being the plant as it is in our reality, while the non-ordinary aspect may be in form of an insect, for example a giant bug, or a spider.
I will never forget my first plant helper. We had to go into the forrest and collect a plant which we felt attracted to and bring it back to our place of training. I found this wonderful white flower. After checking in a local plant book to make sure the plant was not poisonous (at the beginning it is better safe then sorry, but with experience one does not have to do this anymore; instinct and help from the alternate realities will take over), I had to eat a small part of the leaf to make contact. Then the journey began to meet the non-ordinary aspect of my plant. I do have to add that all my life I have had an extreme fear of spiders. Would you like to take a guess which form the non-ordinary reality of my plant took? Yes! It was a gigantic black spider. When I first saw it I panicked so much that I came flying out of trance. It took several tries to make peace with this creature which by now has come to be one of my most valuable and trusted helpers. An additionan benefit was that by overcoming my fear for the non-ordinary aspect of my plant helper, I also overcame my ordinary fear of spiders.

Once a shaman needs to remove a harmful intrusion, he calls upon his spirit helpers. The procedure than is very similar to that of undertaking a journey for the patient. Yet very early during the journey, the shaman encounters the intrusion in form of a dangerous insect, snake or anything reptile with visible fangs or teeth. He immediately stops the journey to deal with the intrusion, mostly by sucking (more under 'Extractions'). Only a shaman who possesses at least two spirit helpers identical to the spirit of the intrusion he has just seen should attempt do this.

If he does not possess the spirit helpers needed, he will return,or pass by the intrusion in order to gain a guardian spirit for the patient. He will not attempt to remove the intrusion since he could cause more damage to the patient as well as to himself.
If the shaman does possess the needed spirit helpers, he stops his journey immediately, calling his spirit helpers to aid him in the extraction of the intrusion before him. The spirit helpers are willed into the shaman’s mouth where they will capture and absorb the intrusion as the shaman sucks it out of the patient.
Once the shaman sees the two spirit helpers in his mouth, he calls upon his other spirit helpers to assist him in the sucking. Only now does he begin with the actual extraction.