Welcome to the Path of Rivers
The river is flowing, flowing and growing
The river is flowing, down the to the sea
Oh Mother carry me, your child I will always be
Oh Mother carry me, down to the sea¹
As herbalists and plant folk, we track the flow of life, seeking vantage points from close and afar, following deer paths next to meadowed shorelines or taking to the skies along the flyways of crows. Rivers are the lifeblood of the land - their currents carrying water, nutrient-rich silt, and supporting countless species and the intersecting needs of life on our planet. Rivers themselves are as diverse as any other being on our planet. Groundwater bubbling up from deep below the surface and rainwater coming down from the skies brings our rivers to life. Some are wide and muddy, drifting slowly through meandering bends. Others rush and rumble, full of whirlpools and underground waterfalls, reminding us that the ocean is not the only body of water full of unknown-to-us places. Rivers are shaped by their environment, from rockslides to flooding to drought, from the work of creatures like beavers and alligators, to the human interventions of dams or straightening a river's run from its marshy meandering to enclosed thoroughways. Every river is shaped by the land it flows through, uniquely shaped when compared to any other, but the water that runs through them is pulled from a common well.
Rivers are fragile ecosystems and ones that we are exceptionally reliant on as a species alongside our beyond-human kin. To protect our riverways is to protect life. Moving along the path of the herbalist and witch is to encounter these lifeways and notice where they move freely through the land and where they struggle amidst the degradation of our environment. And we also learn to spot the diverse edges of many human and beyond-human kin working together to rekindle the sacred light of the river so that it is too bright to ignore. To beavers returning to riverways to help manage floodlands, Indigenous and old ways knowledge for irrigating crops, and to returning waterways back into public hands rather than private enterprises, we learn to spot, support, and name the practices which protect us.
We have our own riverways within the lands of our bodies, carrying the current of blood, lymph, nutrients, hormones, and water throughout our arterial paths. Like the rivers of the land around us, we rely on groundwater and rainwater to feed our own rivers. And like those rivers outside of us, we are also deeply shaped by our environments, our relationships, and our ability to flow freely. Carried in the riverways of our body, our blood is both a physical connection to our ancestors and an energetic one. For those of us with wombs, we carry cells from our mother (or gestational parent) in our bodies (and perhaps even our grandmothers). For everyone, our blood type is determined by the blood type of our biological parents. Even before there was a scientific understanding of how blood is shaped through genetic lines, our ancestors saw the connection between blood and family lines - perhaps simply by how bloody birth is. Terms like bloodline have existed in the English language for centuries, but centuries before that the word "blood" was used to mean family or relations (as in "we are of the same blood" or "she is my blood").
And much like the color of our skin, the (assumed and imagined) contents of our blood have been perceived through bizarre lenses of pseudoscience and patriarchal delusions for generations. Whether ideas surrounding sacred bloodlines and royalty or determining the "purity" of one's blood through the measurements of race theory nonsense or any other myriad of cultural and interpersonal weight we place upon the idea of blood and bloodlines, sometimes the riverways we are moving along are lined with the debris of supremacist beliefs.² These beliefs and their impacts are carried in the waterways of the land and our bodies, showing up in the way environmental pollutants are allowed to be carried into marginalized communities or the way our blood pressure rises and stays elevated by being minoritized in our daily lives. The waters can grow muddy in the consultation room as we follow the river of a client's story, seeming between the rocks of what has been inherited and the tidal pull of going a different way. It is no wonder that rivers are frequently places of prayer and ritual, helping us to release what is no longer needed, but to also call toward us what is wanted. We stand at the river's edge and let the rush of water tumble around us as we grapple with our fear of what it would mean to truly, wildly be in our flow beyond the dam walls of societal and familial expectation.
Herbalism is a path of vitality where we work with our plant allies and the energies of the land to find our flow, but not get swept up beyond what we can manage. One of the ways that herbalists might observe a client's riverways and circulatory health is by feeling or taking the pulse. There is a tradition of pulse-taking in traditional western herbalism stemming back to a variety of cultural sources including Greek, Indian (Ayurvedic), Persian, and North African medical traditions, which was disrupted at the turn of the last century but is slowly being revived, though now with a better understanding of the circulatory system. Pulse-taking, of course, is thriving within traditions like Chinese Medicine, Ayurveda, and Unani Tibb, where physical examinations were not disrupted in the same ways as in the global west where the body rapidly became mechanized and compartmentalized within biomedical spaces.³ Observing the pulse and other characteristics of the circulatory systems (such cold extremities or varicosities or light-headedness), is one of the ways that we can help those we serve find flow and ease in their life.
Standing at the edge of the river, between land, sea, and sky, we learn to spot our edges. As creatures of the land, rivers for us, like most waterways, are a lesson in limitations. There are limitations to how far and how fast we can expend our energy. Even if we argue about the vastness of our human consciousness and the fact that we are made of starstuff (and compost and rocks) we are not able to be everywhere at once. We are living in a world that our herbal elders - even teachers within our own lifetimes - did not grow up in or plan for. Within my own lifetime I've watched the scope of study for an herbal student grow from a handful of books, in-person classes and/or an apprenticeship with a local teacher (if you were lucky enough to find one), and perhaps making it to an herbal gathering or two to literally thousands of herbal courses (mostly online), hundreds of herbal books, open access to scientific research on herbs and beyond (it was much harder to get a hold of scientific reports as the general even two decades ago) and countless social media accounts focused on herbalism.⁴ If the river of knowledge that my herbal training drew upon was a robust and growing but contained waterway, the river of knowledge today still contains the deep, slow places of learning but more and more is becoming an ever-growing floodpath, shallow and fast. While I love the easy access to what had previously been tucked behind the walls of academic institutions and the greater diversity of teachers it can also be too easy to get caught up in the feeling of needing to know more instead of developing what you already know into resilient, communal wisdom.
I have had to remind myself many times along my path as an herbalist that I am not trying to run an endurance race. It can feel all too easy, especially as someone who spends a lot of time writing for the community library part of the internet, to feel overwhelmed with all the books I haven't read, all the things I haven't practiced, all the knowledge that is meaningful yet invisible to me. There is so much of the river I haven't seen! So many more rivers to explore! We can be convinced that just because we have access to so much more that we should therefore know so much more. But in an content-rich society where it is not ever possible to know enough, it is better to remain curious and adaptable, rather than trying to believe you can know it all. And, if knowledge has become so much more accessible, it is making sure that it remains that way, instead of overgrowing in only one part of our global culture while parching the lands in other areas.
River wisdom is not trying to know it all but to know enough to find your flow and get to where you're going. We are at once being carried by the river and the river is flowing through us. We are carried by the rivers of time, of culture, of family and all of its inheritances, of school and work and practice, of relationships, and all the ways our worlds shape our journey from rain to river to sea and back again.
How does the land shape the flow of your energy? Or your day-to-day life? Of your ability to sense or feel prepared for what is around the next riverbend? How do your relationships, spiritual framework of the world, your work, your cultural belonging, and more shape your energy? If you were to draw the path of your life like a river, what would it look like?
Our metaphorical boats and bridges help us manage the river of life - such as external tools like plant medicine, sensory support devices, community, and engaging hobbies which affect our environment for the better (including the environment of our body). The internal tools like breathwork and self-compassion reshape our landscapes, support our river system, and help us flow regardless of what sort of shore we've arrived on. These tools of our inner and outer world help us to notice when our river is overflowing its banks from too much pressure or when we're getting carried away by the current. They help us bring our rivers back to a place of peace.
As the Moon waxes from New to Full, pay attention to the currents in your life, from gentle shallows to swirling eddies to rapids and underwater waterfalls. Let these next few weeks be a time of paying attention to your flow - when it feels rhythmic and pleasing versus disjointed and disrupted. Rivers draw us towards somewhere and as we move along this path, being drawn towards the growing light of the Full Moon, notice what ocean of possibility you are being drawn towards through riverways of your life and the intuitive waters of your body. When thinking about a river's journey, both the wild rivers of the land and our own land-body⁵ riverways, I'm often reminded of the passage from The Charge of the Goddess: "For if that which you seek you find not within yourself, you will never find it without. For behold, I have been with you from the beginning and I am that which is attained at the end of desire."⁶ Rivers desire movement and return. What desires are drawing you onwards? What desires are returning to you?
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As a witch, rivers are currents of magick that we can draw upon in our magick-making, contributing our own wisdom to their collective waters.
As an herbalist, rivers remind us that for medicine to be carried to where it needs to go, the passage by which it moves must be supported and respected.
As a community, rivers carry our collective wisdom, passing through generations - sometimes at a roar and sometimes at a trickle - but always returning again to the common sea of our mutual dreams.
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Exploring the Path of Rivers, we'll connect with the energy of our arterial system and our blood as our own land-body riverways. We'll explore blood-tonics and other circulatory system remedies to help energy and nutrients move throughout our body, making connecting with our flow that much easier. During our Full Moon ritual we'll use an ancient technique of surveying the energy of the land to dowse the wisdom of our own bodies.
I hope you feel encouraged to participate in the ways that feel the most interesting and inspiring to your practice, reach out to your fellow journeyers, and bring what you learn and love back to the land you live with and the communities you love.
Remediation: If you find yourself getting caught up in a strong current of the past, you might find resources from the Path of Relics useful (available to download from the archive).
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Footnotes
There are some beautiful river-focused chants in the Pagan world, most well-known probably being The River Is Flowing by Diana Hildebrand-Hull. There are plenty of versions out there, but this version by Lindie Lila is a relatively common arrangement you'll find in Pagan and Goddess Spirituality circles.
If you are of mixed heritage, for example, you may have experienced being called terms like "mixed-blood" when people try to define your ancestry because even though being mixed is terribly common and normal in places like the US, so too is outdated terminology.
But this is rapidly changing. Pulse taking within traditional western herbalism is interesting. There is certainly evidence-based use to taking the pulses (such as getting a rough understanding of how functional cardiac output in pumping blood through the body), but I've observed quite a few pulse taking sessions where there is clearly an intuitive muscle at work. Much like interpreting tarot cards can be an outward expression of intuitive knowledge, so can taking a pulse become an opportunity to express intuitive knowledge as well (whether or not a practitioner's perceived intuitive knowledge is grounded in reality or is helpful is another issue). And I think that can be lovely as long as clients are informed ahead of time what is happening - that there is both a measurement of physical health occurring and an intuitive aspect to reading the pulse (if that's how you practice). I share this because I see pulse-taking within an western herbal context is becoming more and more popular in the years ahead (which is great!) and I want folks to be more informed and less confused by what they might be seeing.
And, not to mention, the growing influence of LLMs in knowledge systems...
I use body and land-body interchangeably to refer not only to the physical body, but our emotional, mental, and energetic bodies as well. When I write of bodies, whether our own individual and finite physical forms or bodies of land, I am speaking of bodies in their most expansive and complex forms.
Charge of the Goddess - traditional by Doreen Valiente, as adapted by Starhawk.
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