AstroHerbalism: Medicine of the World Tree, with Kyle, Michelle, & Mario
Vibe Rant is back with the fan favorite AstroHerbalism team! Tonight's topic is the World Tree and the symbolism associated with this fractal cosmology. Herbalists Kyle Denton (Tippecanoe Herbs) and Michelle Lundquist (The Healing Home) team up to deliver doctrine of signatures correlations between medicinal plants and the cosmic center. Mario Garza of Symbolic Studies brings the gnosis on toroidal patterns, holy mountains, and the ever-relevant axis mundi, making this a can't miss episode!
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In this episode
Core themes
Hawthorn and the Central Axis
Kyle opened his Medicine of the World Tree class with a photo of a stone circle in Ireland, where he said a Hawthorn tree grew through one of the stones. He described the zodiac as a wheel turning around a central staff, and said the world tree, the tree of life and the tree of knowledge all pointed to a single point of stillness. Kyle called the thorn a symbol of protection and boundaries and said the tree's spread looked like a toroid. One of the speakers added that the stone, the sacred mountain and the tree each stood for both a pivot point and the whole cosmos.
Mercury, Maple Seeds, and Messengers
Kyle presented Mercury as the messenger who carried information between the canopy and the underworld, and he linked the caduceus to serpents and to the spinning quality of old trees. He described a maple seed that spun down near him as a sign of leaving the garden, with the seed carrying the pattern needed to return. Kyle said the botanical name Acer shared roots with words like seer, a link he credited to Chance. One of the speakers added that Mercury's tiptoe pose, with one finger raised, imitated the axis itself, much like a ballerina or a whirling dervish.
Serpents Guarding the Center
One of the speakers said serpents wound around the world axis as a cord or plumb line joining above and below, and described the Norse serpent that gnawed the roots as a protector of the tree. Another speaker said dragons and serpents in myth guard something precious at the center, and pointed to Draco circling the pole star. Gabe added wordplay of his own, saying a stone held the tone and semitone of music and calling Hydra an anagram for writing. The group also talked about raptors and Ophiuchus as keepers of the higher and lower parts of the tree.
Tree Medicine, Plant by Plant
Kyle moved through the trees one slide at a time. He said he saw beech as a food tree and a book tree, and that trees in general carried an astringent quality he described as pulling tissues back together. He said pine needles made an excellent anti-inflammatory tea, and described the olive leaf as a heart tonic in his practice. Kyle also explained that the banyan began as a seed in a host tree's canopy and ended as a hollow trunk. He offered these as his own herbal views, and the group tied each tree to a symbol of the center.
Wordplay and Weaves From the Crew
Gabe brought a letter that he said meant a prop or tent pole, and wove it into the idea of a sacred space held up around a center. Michelle brought runes into the discussion, saying the rune of the world axis came through strong for her and that she tied it to the yew tree, the spine and initiation. Mario described two new presentations, one on the Pleiades and Ursa Major and a Major Arcana series called Symbolic Secrets. Chance thanked the audience and Kyle for being a mentor in return, and the crew promised to meet again.
Quotes
“We've got everyone's favorite series returning for, I think, the 15th installment. So we've managed to squeeze a lot more life out of it than just 12 Zodiac signs.”
“This topic right here has been pulling at my heart for a long time. I've been researching it for a long time. As an herbalist, I've always been into the stuff on the ground and looking around at my feet.”
“The thorn actually is a symbol in the garden of Eden spaces. It's something that you can poke yourself on and you're on your own now. You're out of the garden. Cause and reaction have occurred. It's a symbol of protection. It's a symbol of boundaries.”
“Might be Pythagoras who says that a stone is but music that has stopped. And so the tone in the semitone, the S and the T of music is embedded in the word stone.”
“It's been acknowledged multiple times that the plumb line represents the world axis in Freemasonry, right? And so this idea of a chain that connects worlds or a bridge that connects worlds, a golden cord or golden thread that connects the above and the below, and I think the serpent really represents that too.”
“The seed contains the morphogenic pattern that will become the same exact thing as the tree that it left, the garden that it left, and it has the potential in it encoded to always return.”
“I wanted to bring some runes into the weave because they come through strong for me and they always come through strong with the world tree.”
“We are dealing with the secret wisdom right now. When we talk about this, these are hidden esoteric things that are not talked about very often, but it is so crucial to life.”
“Betrayal can just be a glimmer in your eye, betrays your intent when Odysseus comes back to his kingdom, his servant is washing his feet and she sees a scar that betrays his identity. And he entrusts her not to betray him by giving up his identity.”
“After a certain amount of time, that host tree has been strangled out and the banyan tree is this expanding walking tree that comes from heaven with a central trunk that is hollow, that is empty because the host tree is no longer there.”
“We don't even have to moderate people. The vibe is just pristine. We tuned everyone out of the room that didn't belong.”
“This is always a good time. I always learn a lot. You dropped some real gems tonight, Kyle. It's really cool to see you integrate this information with all that you do.”
Gabriel, known on air as Slick Dissident, co-hosts InnerVerse's Vibe Rant show and is a longtime recurring guest on the podcast. He teaches occult symbolism and tarot on his YouTube channel, ranging across the Major Arcana, the esoteric Enneagram, mythology and archetype, mystic linguistics, and the symbolism hidden in popular film. He is best known for Tarot-tories, his own system mapping the 22 Major Arcana and zodiac archetypes onto the geography of the United States.
See all Gabe episodes→Kyle and Serena Denton are community herbalists creating wild-crafted and organic plant medicines out of Milwaukee since 2015. I have used their teas and tinctures on an almost daily basis for years now. Kyle is a great friend of InnerVerse and has appeared on the channel more times than I can count. These products work, not in the allopathic "pharma-medicine" way, but in a terrain-support, consciousness bolstering plant-teacher sort of way.
