…This year, the symposium expanded into a new location at the base of Mount Rainier in the state of Washington. The Center for Sustainable Forestry’s Pack Forest Conference Center is nestled in a 4,300 acre Douglas-fir forest. It is among these trees that our community will connect with the Viridis Arcanum and with each other. These pages you hold are a small record of the many conversations and connections that emerge throughout the event; it is through them that this work may continue to spread into the world beyond this time and place, and perhaps one day encourage you to attend in person.

This anthology, for the first time composed of articles from all of the speakers at this year’s symposium, gives voice to the Viridis Genii itself—a spirit of diverse form that has many secrets and many more faces. The humble messengers of the green spirit have again expressed themselves here through the continued traditions and practices of masters, explorers, its guardians, and garden tenders. With this new volume, we continue our aim to give the Viridis Genii voice and share in its mysteries, so that those mysteries may perpetuate.

Our collection begins again with our keynote speaker. In his second appearance in our pages, Jeremy Bechelli takes us on an extended meditation on magical approaches to curing plagues and pox. From there, Julia Semproniana Carreras climbs with us into the Pyrennees, into the poison traditions inimical to a world of medieval witchcraft that has rarely escaped from those geographical and temporal confines. Continuing the theme of poison and curse, John Anderson introduces us to “Three Worms and Five Poisons,” a comprehensive esoteric exploration of Gu—“sorcery performed with a poisoner’s palate”—in its myriad forms. Our curse-work is rounded out by Demetrius Lacroix who flips the mirror on Haitian vodou, and provides essential context for the rhythms and botanica encountered in these practices, allowing us to expand our concepts of what we think we know about them.

In the middle of our volume, Janine Tyto Hagal’s piece opens with a thunderstorm, which unleashes a powerful transmission on the relations between runes and plants, coaxing us to see each in a new light and giving us important tools to sharpen our own gnosis of esoteric runic and herbal lore. Then, Rebecca Beyer returns to introduce us to an important ancestor of esoteric herbalism with her exploration of the herbal aspects of Hildegard von Bingen’s folk magic. Here we meet Apple, Mandrake, Beech, Fern, Betony, Myrrh, Cypress, as Hildegard used them. Next, Joyce Netishen takes us through her personal process as herbalist, a modern echo of the legacy Hildegard left us, replete with insights into the magic of Mugwort, Rose, Yarrow, Tobacco and Devil’s Club.

From there we move on to Karin Di Giacomo’s elemental experience with the Ponderosa pine as inspired by a Paracelsian approach resembling the call to action provided by Hagal earlier in this volume. Still in the realm of the arboreal, Jesse Hathaway Diaz introduces us to the lesser-known magical lore of Irokó. And our volume concludes with Cody Dickerson unveiling the diverse relations between realms virid and metallic. Dickerson weaves together metal and plant, throughout various traditions, and provides new inspiration for considering the links between these types of materia.

[…]

It is with continued humble pride and reverence to this great green work that we transcribe and transmit the voices of those who work with the Viridis Genii. With each volume of this anthology and each year that the symposium grows, it is our hope that the green mysterium tremendom grows, as do those who seek to perpetuate it in their own garden of dreams and magic.

Bloom true,
Marcus McCoy,
Catamara Rosarium,
& Jenn Zahrt, PhD
Shelton, Washington
May 15, 2018