The Magic of Datura

Poison medicine for the underworld times

Every once in awhile you will get an email from me sharing about the offerings I share in my healing arts practice Corpus Ritual and today I’m writing because a very beloved topical remedy for pain and so much more is back. I’m also still barellllyyyyy/ very infrequently posting on Instagram (and when I do— since I’m rarely there, the algorithm hardly notices and shows almost no one!) so it’s nice for me to be able to share about what I’m up to in my herbal medicine work.

Welcome back Datura balm! I first met Datura over a decade ago in Brooklyn through my kindred chosen fam B Love. We would walk over from their space to peek on the blooms and check on the pods and soon we were both growing them in our little city mini-gardens—mine actually on a fire escape (and in the winter— my windowsill!)

I fell in love with Datura the first time I met them. A poisonous plant— with a long, magical and medicinal history— that blooms with the most radiant, decadent blooms for one single night, I was immediately taken by the contrast of poison and medicine. So taken that poison medicine— and the poison path— became a tenant in my ongoing trauma healing, a touchstone to help me find my way through the horror show ongoing impact of abuse and trauma from childhood through adulthood. If a plant could be both poison and medicine, could I also view the trauma I experienced— and the massive healing journey I had undertaken— as both? From there I was devoted, visiting my favorite bushes all throughout Brooklyn, placing dried blooms and pods on my altars, growing from seed and starts on fire escapes and then in the high desert poison garden I planted once I moved to the mountains of the high desert in so-called northern New Mexico.

One of my favorite bushes was around the corner from my old apartment in Brooklyn. Each year the building managers would cut them down but they were never successful in squashing them fully. Datura, the self-seeding baddie that they are, would pop up— 5 new seedlings for every bush cut down. I appreciated their refusal, their insistence on thriving.

Some years after my first encounter with Datura, I was invited by photographer Frances F. Denny to be a part of her book Major Arcana: Portraits of Witches in America. Given the option to have the photograph anywhere I liked— of course I chose my beloved Brooklyn Datura.

After growing and building a relationship with Datura for a number of years and continuing my herbalism study, I began exploring making medicine— topical balms as well as flower essences. (Topical balms allow for safer use because of not ingesting and flower essences do not have the poisonous constituents— just the energetic imprint. The plant is indeed poisonous so I do not recommend making medicine from them unless you are a skilled and trained herbalist.)

A beautiful remedy for pain (muscle, nerve, deep tissue and injuries, joint, arthritis), headaches, depression, anxiety, and insomnia. Many, many messages over the years of people’s powerful experiences of working with Datura balm for pain.

And of course I have my own experience with this beloved friend often calling on a little tab on my temples for sleep support or my lower back when navigating muscle tension and pain.

Energetically there is much to work with too: blooming at night with the sweetest single drop of nectar the morning after, datura is a remedy for holding us between the poles of dark and light, a reminder that they are mirrors. As void medicine, it helps guide us through the emotional and energetic threshold and freewill or releasing what is no longer serving us. To allow for a death, or an ending, invites space for the new to bloom. The death needed can be parts of ourselves that need release, old narratives that bind us to the past, relationships and dynamics that don’t serve our growth that diminish or cast a shadow on love. It invites real, sustaining connection and aliveness that exists under all the wounding and old harmful patterns. It’s bold, firey, medicine of the underworld. It supports welcoming the open palm instead of believing that clutching tight is the only way.

It’s also fuck around and find out medicine. Datura demands respect and curiosity and moving slow with the medicine.

My love is deep for this remedy and each summer you will find me waiting at dusk for the perfumed blooms to erupt to my and the white lined sphinx moths delight. I’ll be planting my seedlings around the chapel at the orchard I now live at and with— can’t wait for the ancient rose bushes that surround the chapel and Datura blooms to be in relationship this summer. The rose and their thorns and the Datura and their poison protective medicine for these wild times.

Datura taught me about trust, about being in right relationship with something others have maligned and are afraid of. By respecting the magic, the medicine, and the poison, I’ve built a deep and sustaining relationship— one of my most cherished.

There is so much more to say about this plant ally but I will save that for another day. In the meantime— if you are feeling called to work with this topical remedy (and/or the flower essence), you can find them here. Start slowly with a dime-sized amount, or as small as possible to cover affected area and see how you feel over a little bit of time. There is no rush only alchemy. Additional info for use and contraindications available in the listing. Also hello check out there incredible seed pods.

Bless the poison, the thorn medicine, the protective spikes and shields that help us remember our edges, help us remember how to be in right relationship with the plant world and with each other too.