What I call my Datura plant is actually a Brugmansia, but by any name she is sacred. Several years ago I went outside during a mid-summer morning to see that a tiny new plant, recently pushed up through the soil and growing about six inches from the mother plant’s stem, had been cut down by a slug. During the rest of the season I could often be found fussing over the slow recovery of that child plant. Here in the Canadian northwest such a tropical cannot last the winter outside, and so the mature plant and still frail baby joined in a large pot inside the house.
The following spring I planted both outside again and soon after received a dream. A regal woman, dressed with dramatic tropical flare and shouldering a parrot, appeared with a child. Although she was too impatient to wait through my fumbling attempts to fix her a cup of tea, she said she would help me because I had saved her daughter.
Last November I became aware of a serious distortion in my energy due to a childhood trauma in my family, and went to Datura. However, before she would come I needed to give her a song. This song was found in the way described in the Journey Oracle divination story Buying a Song. The 23 stanzas of three lines each took 10 months to compose and had to be sung each day because of course I could not write down and therefore dishonor such a sacred gift. The work with Datura was completed on my 61st birthday and my singing of the song for her during the ceremony felt appropriate, but less potent than I had imagined.
On May 1st when I planted outside the Datura and her child, I found myself singing the song again. When I finished I realized that the song itself, not the singing, was the gift. I never sang the song again. The words and even the tune are gone now, into the ground that nourishes my sacred helper. Both plants bloomed lavishly during this summer, and to my surprise, I noticed yesterday that both are covered again with blossom pods.
