Red Madder Root: Reflections and Intentions of the Author
For ten long years while writing the tome Mother Food I took part in a professional writers’ group where we shared short stories, novels, and poems. This creative outlet helped me keep some balance while writing chapters on infant colic, food allergy and nipple thrush.
After Mother Food’s publication, I considered writing a novel. I knew that good ideas take years to ripen, and sometimes decades. I challenged myself to come up with a grand and unique concept, and then sat back and waited for inspiration to hit. But would it?
One of my strengths is my ability to see large historic trends and to think in terms of symbols and archetypes. Maybe I could do something with that.
When my eleven-year-old daughter pleaded with me to tell her “Old Stories” like Snow White, Red Riding Hood, and Cinderella, I felt a spark, the lighting of an ignition, deep in my brain. My daughter was entering puberty, yet she wanted to hear “Old Stories” that are told to young children. What could it mean?
I soon learned that these stories go back 50,000 years or longer. Their origins are in Eurasian shamanism. I was intrigued.
Disclaimer
Before I dig in further, let me say that this book, Red Madder Root, Tales of Initiation is not about shamanism or the use of hallucinogens or other similar phenomenon. Rather, these aspects are touched upon lightly, more like sketching the scenery, providing a background or framework where the main characters live and communicate.
Also, although the plant called Red Madder Root is an abortifacient as well has having other properties and uses, and although this use is mentioned in the book, this book is not about abortifacients or abortion. Rather, it is about the suppression of women’s knowledge, medicine and traditions, of which the suppression of herbal abortifacients is but one aspect.
Shamanism
Shamanism derives from humanity’s Paleolithic past but it lives on today in many indigenous societies. Although in the US we equate shamanism with Native American peoples, Eurasian shamanic societies pre-date peoples arriving in the Americas.
Simply put: I believe that shamanism is in all of our pasts. There is no genetic line that does not spring from humanity’s Paleolithic origins or that has not at one time embraced a shamanic world-view. It behooves us to rediscover its living principles – our capacity to feel a connection to the natural world, to intuit unseen realities, to use natural forms of medicine.
Healing Benefits of Altered Consciousness
Until recently, shamanistic experiences were dismissed as New Age and woo-woo by mainstream scientists. Now, studies on psilocybin and ayahuasca (psychoactive plant “medicines”) shine a positive light on this therapy. It turns out that in many cases, only one intense experience on a mind-altering plant preparation can resolve a lifetime of depression and addiction. At present, therapists are trained in how to guide a patient in this experience.
I confess that I have never tried this myself. Yet the effects are clearly described: the ‘patient’ discovers a strong sense-of-self and can build ownership of their life’s purpose, and take responsibility for the decisions that formed their life’s journey. We have seen the same kind of ‘waking up’ result from strong religious experience.
Shamanic skills are taught by a mentor to an apprentice through years of specialized training. This idea of generational teaching is at the heart of Red Madder Root.
Archetypes
Archetypes were first described by the Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung. He believed that all human societies draw from a pool of shared but forgotten memories which express themselves in our stories and dreams. An example would be the story of a great flood that is survived by a family in a boat. We find variations of this story around the world and, most likely, it was a true historic event. It is familiar to us as the Biblical story of Noah’s Ark.
Archetypes also represent biological imprints and patterns: they are keys to a network of instincts, responses and behaviors that guide us from the time we are born to the moment we die. The mothering instinct, for example, relates to patterns of the brain and body that condition a woman to nourish and protect children. These patterns are also referred to as genetic memories.
The concept of genetic memories and of biological memory is central to the Tales of Initiations and the Red Madder Root stories.
Mother Goddesses
When humans transitioned from Paleolithic (hunting and gathering) to Neolithic culture (agriculture, domesticated animals, living in settlements), our beliefs also changed. Instead of worshipping powerful animals, we worshipped a Mother Goddess. She gave birth to all that exists: stars, earth, rivers, mountains, plants, animals, and humans. She also controlled the weather and the seasons, enabling plants to come alive in spring and to die and disappear in winter.
In researching herbal medicine for mothers, I discovered that ancient peoples associated Mother Goddesses with specific plants with specific medical uses. The association took various forms. Sometimes, the goddess’s name is the same as the plant, for instance: Padma, which means “lily,” Demeter, which means “Mother of Grain,” or Hel, the goddess of the “Elder tree.”
Other clues appear in sculptures or engraved images, such as the goddess of Crete who is shown with poppy-flowers in her hair. Along with plants that support fertility and milk production, mother goddesses are associated with plants that end pregnancy, so-called “abortifacients.” Evidently, women’s desire to control their reproductive functions is as old as culture itself.
It appears that our foremothers encoded medical plants in stories, myths, iconography and statues, to remind us to pass this information forward on from generation to generation.
By the way, animals, too, use plants for reproductive means, especially primates and elephants. But that’s a story for another time.
Thou shallt not speak of Red Madder Root
The title “Red Madder Root” refers to Rubia tinctoria, a plant used from ancient times to impart a deep red color to fabric, wool, leather, and fur. Just three centuries ago, it went without saying that Red Riding Hood’s cloak had been dyed red with the madder root, as synthetic dyes did not yet exist. We, today, are blind to the code embodied in the story. We u and re-tell this story in multiple versions, but never mention the implied presence of red madder root, though it is visually and metaphorically smack-dab in the center of the story. Yet the mothers who told the story to their daughters over the course of centuries and millennia, well understood its significance.
The madder root was a known abortifacient.
Perhaps the significance was this: When a girl embarks on a journey toward adulthood—leaving the protected path and being tempted by the the archetypal ‘wild animal’ into new adventures—the properties of the madder root protect her. One might also suppose that the message of the story is “cloaked” or “hidden” in the red dye of the girl’s mantel, the central symbol of the story.
Again, just as in the stories and iconography of ancient times, we discover clues about woman’s medicine, coded within girls’ stories that are passed from one generation to the next.
Why it matters: Red Madder Root Revealed
This novel is not a story about herbal abortifacients, and it is also not about shamanism. Rather, it is about the general suppression of women’s medical knowledge from ancient times to modern times, and the attempts of women to maintain some semblance of that knowledge throughout changing cultures. While that suppression did aim to curb the use of abortifacients, it extended far beyond them to include herbs such as those to protect pregnancy, to speed childbirth, to help with healing after childbirth, and to bring in and support a mother’s best milk supply.
In suppressing abortifacients, the entire range of women’s medicine was under pressure. It became more and more difficult for women to recall and pass on their ancient knowledge.
We feel the consequences of this today in humanity’s widespread ignorance about natural medicine and lack of immune-supporting measures, in our subservience to and reliance upon modern medicine with its poor outcomes in birth and breastfeeding, rising numbers of C-Section births, and an increasing inability of women to produce a sufficient milk supply.
