Such scientific findings give new levels of meaning to indigenous understandings of “plants as teachers.” Compounds that may have originally emerged to facilitate communication of informa-tion within and between plant cells, now continue to serve as messenger molecules, transmitting information across multiple levels: the intra and inter-cellular, the inter-organismal and biospher-ic, as well as among multiple beings across different layers of the cosmos. By bringing indigenous understandings into dialog with biochemical insights, native and scientific concepts can illuminate one another, without privileging one perspective over the other. The empirical, sensory properties of plants can be seen, both by scientists and shamans, as concrete chemical signs that emerge with-in a complex web of information, transmission, communication and ultimately, relation between diverse beings, each with its own syntax, semantics, pragmatics and goals. The concept of plants as teachers is more than metaphor: it is a profound and accurate description of shamanic biosemiotics.
Spirit bodies, plant teachers and messenger molecules in Amazonian shamanism (80)