I Talk to Plants. The Cannabis Plant Talks Back.

This article originally appeared in High Times’ 50th Anniversary print issue. Get yours here.

A three-week experiment in channeling the cannabis plant, what she said about a century of stigma, prison and disrespect, and how to start listening yourself.

There’s a hypothesis that’s been circulating in the science field for some decades that has, in recent years, grown legs: Plants, and trees, are sentient beings. They have consciousness. Perhaps not the same consciousness as humans or animals, but one that exhibits complex behaviours and communicates all the same. The entire plant body has even been likened to a human brain, a network of receptors and cells that uses chemical and electrical signals, which enables the plant to have short and long term memory, sense their environment and communicate not only with each other, but other organisms too.

It turns out one of those organisms is me. I talk to plants. There, I said it. When I say talk, I’m not saying I hear voices as such, nor am I often speaking out loud (although by all means, do speak kind words and play music to plants, we must have all seen or heard of the studies demonstrating the benefit that has to offer. Some even suggest plants may have specific taste in music). It’s more of a knowing in my body and heart, almost like someone has just said something, and now there’s silence, the words still echo somewhere inside.

I realise, maybe more than anyone, how crazy this sounds, but it’s the truth. A truth I’ve learned is largely accepted among indigenous people who remain connected to nature to the extent humans should, including my own ancestral lineage of the Celts and Druids in the U.K. I was delighted when on a trip to the Amazon last year, a member of the group I was with asked a man who had grown up in a jungle village how people there knew which plants were medicinal and which were poisonous. With a look of total incredulity, he simply said “they told us”.

The Three Weeks

This journey of mine all started with cannabis. No, not when I smoked enough for it to become an honorary psychedelic. That’s another story. In fact, although I sat and meditated with two growing plants, I abstained from all drugs (including alcohol) entirely for the whole three weeks I participated in the group channelling of her spirit. During this time, me and 6 others shared thoughts, feelings, dreams and experiences that arose as we worked with her. And she is, most definitely, a ‘her‘.

What came through was unexpected, and at times emotionally painful to feel, but a message that needs to be heard and heeded by anyone who loves her, works with her, grows her or uses her. I’m assuming that means you.

Cannabis is a mother, a healer and a protector. Playful and joyful, nurturing and nourishing, sensual and sensorial; a powerful medicine, both spiritual and physical. But the abuse she has sustained, in the twisting, manipulation and imprisonment of her loving nature and gift, which has in turn caused so much suffering across the world, has left her expressing a level of rage and hurt I never imagined possible for a plant. She showed me that the fire with which cannabis has been burned, in words, in actions, in shame and disgust in the face of her beauty is no different to the fire used to burn women at the stake. Healers, mothers, sisters, midwives. ‘Witches’. And it comes from the same source, a fear of something so powerful that it might change us and what we think we know.

For 100 years we have witnessed a relentless assassination of her character. We, as a collective, have been trained to see cannabis as our enemy or, at best, a novelty drug. In reality, she is so much a part of our story and evolution in mind, body and spirit that we have developed a physiological system, the endocannabinoid system, over millennia, which allows her energy to merge with our own. This deep relationship is what allows her to heal: to stop seizures, shrink tumours, alleviate pain and offer expansive insight. But when used without respect or understanding of her power and potential as an ancestral spiritual medicine and ceremonial tool, when we’re greedy, this is also where the danger lies. Anxiety and paranoia arise in response to total overwhelm when we unknowingly, and unpreparedly, enter into something we have been very deliberately so shut off from that we no longer know how to comprehend or process it.

Cannabis gives and we take too much. Breathing in everything she has and more, drowning our sorrows, hiding in a haze and soon finding that the cold light of day is too much to bear without her. But this is not her abuse of us. She is not the harmful one. We are. We have belittled her magnificence, farmed, imprisoned and poisoned her. It’s time for this trauma to end, for us to be intentional and respectful in how we use her, to continue to fight for her until she is free and to show the world who she really is, by deepening and redefining our own relationships with her, and seeing her in her true light.

This gift of communicating with plants like cannabis is not something unique to me. It’s something I believe many, if not all, of us have the ability to do, should you allow yourself to accept it as a possibility. On a scientific level, we know that plants ‘talk’, albeit without words or vocal chords. Music has even been made using electrical signals produced by plants through attaching instruments to their body, which can translate the signals into sounds that we can actually hear (you can try this at home with a device called Plantwave). It’s been found that these signals, even without sound, elicit responses between plants and even other species. That’s a conversation. On a spiritual level, across continents and throughout most indigenous populations, an understanding that we are in constant communication with nature as a whole is pretty standard. Whether we in the West remember or not, we are a part of nature, not apart from it.

How Druidry Sees It

To gain some clarity on my own experience on Scottish soil, I spoke to Philip Carr Gomm, one of the world’s most highly regarded modern-day Druids, recently retired leader of The Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids and now a member of the ACER psychedelic integration team.

“One of the key ideas in Druidry is that nature communicates, that includes trees and plants and the landscape and so on,” says Philip. “This is an understanding that humanity has had for thousands of years, but we lost it at some point. In the UK, Christianity had this monopolist agenda that repressed everything, so anyone who continued to work with plants had to go underground. Now we’re regaining this wisdom, and this is really one of the values that psychotropic plants like cannabis and classical psychedelics have, they can help us re-establish those connections.”

In recent years, one of the messages deemed most important by spiritual leaders and indigenous elders is that plants and trees are trying to help us. They’re trying to communicate. This has been shared and discussed time and again in conferences like the Mother Earth Delegation of United Original Nations (which anyone can listen to on YouTube, and I strongly suggest you do). But they can only do that if we remember how to listen.

“When you recognise that plants and trees are trying to help us, you’ll start to realise that they’re our sort of brothers and sisters,” says Philip. “We can’t actually live without them. Our destinies are completely entwined. Any approach that enhances a sensitivity to the natural world and to plants and trees is bound to be good for us because it helps us to become more environmentally aware and sensitive, rather than seeing nature as a separate entity we can control. It’s important for our own sanity, health and development that we know we can receive wisdom guidance from nature in a way that really helps us in our lives.”

Cannabis is now one of many plants and trees I’ve communicated with, but she remains one of the most remarkable beings I’ve had the privilege of meeting. If I loved her before (and I really, really did) it’s nothing compared to the respect I have for her now. But this connecting of spirits is just one benefit of reaching out to nature in this way. There are many gifts to be discovered, from information about how to move forward in a challenging situation, or to access healing. This might be energetic, as with South American Icaros; or physical and pragmatic, with messages of which plants to work with and how to use them. So, how can you try communicating with your cannabis plant, or any other nature being for that matter?

How to Try It

“Oh, it’s really coming out of love. Love is at the heart of everything,” explains Philip, in a way that I strongly resonate with. In my experience, I can feel the entire stream of communication coming from the heart space. I’ve even seen this working by trying out the Wyrd Experiments in Broughton Sanctuary, Yorkshire, which aim to prove, in a visual and tangible way, that consciousness exists outside the body.

“Communication with nature comes from really loving it. You can just sit next to a plant, touch its soil with reverence and tune in as you might with a little child, in the sense of not imposing yourself, not being a heavy-duty human, but just trying to be as open and as loving as possible,” says Philip.

The first step is to close your eyes and try bringing your attention here, into your heart. Learn to know how that feels. And, if you need more science to help you feel less hippy about the whole thing, do a little research into the heart’s magnetic field, which reaches about 3 feet outside the body and is estimated to be about 60 times greater in electrical component and 5,000 times greater in electromagnetic energy than the brain’s. But, of equal importance: adjust your perception of what communication is.

“We’ve fallen victim to the false belief that understanding can only come through the mind, and I think that’s the biggest hurdle to get over, that all information comes through the mind and through language,” says Philip. “If you actually take a moment to drop into your body, you’ll know that the heart and body have their own kind of wisdom too, that operate in very different ways. Once you kind of let go of that particular paradigm, you can then start listening to the wisdom of the body again and receive information in these subtler ways.”

It’s likely to take practice to re-familiarise yourself with this, and to be able to interpret the messages that come through in this way without overriding it with the mind. But it’s worth it.

How to Try It

A short field guide to listening to a cannabis plant, distilled from this piece and Philip Carr Gomm’s guidance.

1. Drop the mind. Start in the body.

“Understanding can only come through the mind” is a Western belief. The heart and body have their own wisdom. Close your eyes, bring attention to your heart.

2. Approach from love, not curiosity.

“Communication with nature comes from really loving it,” says Carr Gomm. Sit next to the plant. Touch the soil. Treat it the way you’d approach a small child you want to listen to.

3. Don’t impose yourself.

“Not being a heavy-duty human, just trying to be as open and as loving as possible.” Receive, don’t broadcast.

4. Redefine what communication means.

It won’t arrive as words. Expect a knowing, a feeling, an echo. Practice will make the signal easier to read.

5. Be patient.

It takes time to interpret without the mind overriding. The author’s deepest moment came at the end of three weeks, not the start.

At the end of my three weeks of communicating in this way with cannabis, I went into a final meditation where I felt her energy enter into my body and give me healing. She reminded me of who I really am and settled my nervous system. She told me: “You have done something for me, now I would like to do something for you”. I have dedicated years of my life learning about her, writing about her, and fighting for her and the people who need her, because I love her. This had not gone unnoticed, and nor will your love and appreciation. Next time you’re having a smoke, tending to your grow or simply finding yourself with a little time to sit in peace and quiet, why not invite cannabis to communicate and see what happens? Tell her you love her, show you’re aware of her and open. You’ve got nothing to lose, but everything to gain. It might just change everything you think you know about the world, and if there was ever a time to shift our perception of reality and what we believe is possible, it’s now.