The Intensified Trajectory of Consciousness in Odysseus' Vision in Hades Author(s): Robert Tindall and Susana Bustos Source: Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Spring/Summer 2014), pp. 107-130
This one is a little strange, I suppose. The authors compare certain scenes in the Odyssey to the traditional lore of an Ashaninkan shaman working in the Peruvian Amazon.
Among the vegetalistas of the Peruvian Amazon, relations with plants can be of such intimacy that a practitioner may be granted a song, which “represent[s] a transference of the spirits of each plant, with all their knowledge and theriomorphic and anthropomorphic manifestations, into the body of the shaman.”
Such conversing with the anthropomorphic manifestation of a plant spirit is given a solid illustration [...] Hermes gives Odysseus exact instructions on how to use the plant and even harvests it for him. This episode also illustrates how, in an animistic cosmos, the potency of a plant may lie in “the physical plant itself, or the physical plant as a substrate of magical power, or the spirit of the plant, acting independently of the physical plant.”
Of course, in other indigenous perspectives like that of the Huichol, the moly may serve as a cosmic portal through which the spirit of Hermes manifests—as in the abduction of Persephone through the narcissus blossom by Hades. The essential point here is that the moly is an intersection between the spiritual, human, and vegetal realms as experienced within a state of permeable consciousness.
Hermes’ manifestation in the locale of a powerful medicinal plant is nothing to write home about [...] As ethnobotanist Kate Harrison explains, while there “are many approaches to recognizing this ‘plant spirit’ in different indigenous cultures, all are characterized by an attitude of deep reverence,” much as Odysseus expresses when he states, “Dangerous for a mortal man to pluck from the soil but not for the deathless gods. All lies within their power.” (Odyssey 10.339–41).
In a way analogous to the mushroom, whose real vegetal being can extend for miles underground, the plant is only the visible aspect of a much greater being. Indigenous cultures “view each species as possessing a distinct spirit or of being a spirit that has dressed itself in matter and taken on a certain form and appearance and chemical signature.”
This one is a little strange, I suppose. The authors compare certain scenes in the Odyssey to the traditional lore of an Ashaninkan shaman working in the Peruvian Amazon.