Myth and Practice on the Serpentine Road with Kat Harrison

The journey on this long and winding road can be both beautiful and very challenging. Myths and folktales of the Serpent abound, both metaphorical and instructive. Kat’s life of fieldwork has included the gathering of such tales, from Indigenous sources in the Americas, and from ancestral European cultures. Decades ago, a saga was shared with her, that of a great shape-shifting snake with many facets – medicinal herbs, Indigenous knowledge, protective tobacco work, the power of song, and the roles of intention, observation and intuition. Come listen to the tale and explore what it means for the seeker and the healer. 

We will invoke other signposts and beings whom we may meet, while traveling the wide, dusty path of awareness. We’ll examine the roles of memory and forgetting in staying on the path, and discuss what a real road brings and what it takes away from the wild, untrodden terrain – in terms both actual and symbolic.

Kathleen Harrison, MA, is an independent scholar and teacher of ethnobotany. Her work explores the relationship between plants, mushrooms and human beings—particularly in the realms that are often hidden: cultural beliefs, personification of species, rituals of healing and initiation, vision-seeking modalities, and artistic creations that illustrate the plant-human relationship. She also studies and teaches the deep history of humans in nature, encompassing the eras both before and since the advent of agriculture.

Since the 1970s, Kathleen has done recurrent fieldwork in Mesoamerica, the Amazon Basin, the West Coast subcultures, and the Pacific islands, and is a published author and photographer. In 1985, Kathleen co-founded Botanical Dimensions, and has managed its projects in Mexico, Peru, Hawaii and California. She hosted BD’s exceptional Ethnobotany Library and classes in Northern California from 2015-2020. Kat continues to teach classes on psychedelic perspectives and various branches of ethnobotany.

Host or Publisher The Berkeley Alembic Foundation