Sacred Botany: Re-Seeing the Plant Kingdom

Catalog description

The plant kingdom is sacred across many cultures. We’ll explore plant worship, prayers, poems, plant lore, folk tales, plant spirits, the healing properties of plants and ethnobotany. The content of this course will be grounded in the basics of botany as well as practicing sensory awareness and disciplined observation exercises. Sensory, intuitive and imaginative relationships to trees and flowers around us will be introduced and practiced. The mythopoetics of trees will be addressed along with the theme of ecological restoration and how vital trees are in our current time and for the future. The class will culminate in creating a celebration of trees and flowers with creative expression and perhaps even tree-planting if the course takes place in the fall.