Tea Ceremony during the first Symposium of Spiritual Technologies (2020), at Rosendal Theater. Photo: Maiken Hauksdatter
The 2nd Symposium on Spiritual Technologies explores the history of witchcraft in Norway and Europe and the capitalization of health in the Middle Ages as well as its repercussions today. The symposium is curated by Invisibledrum Art Platform, an artistic research collective investigating holistic practices and spiritual technologies within the field of arts and new ecologies, founded by Amalia Fonfara and Nazaré Soares. All events are organized with Invisibledrum Art Platform in collaboration with Kunsthall Trondheim and the Norwegian Historical Association (HIFO).
Ethnobotanical knowledge is rooted in observation, interrelationships, needs, and animistic ways of knowing. The impacts of modern society on traditional cultures and natural habitats caused huge losses of individual plant species, and profoundly disrupted communities of botanical diversity. Paramedical industries have taken over traditions of oral knowledge of plant medicine, creating a contemporary society that is mostly blind to the medicinal wonders and allies from the plant world in our backyard. This closing ceremony of the symposium invites participants to open the senses to re-remember our sacred reciprocal connection with plant allies.
Click here for free registration to join Plant Ceremony in Trondheim
Closing Tea Ceremony with a Plant Ally
Mari Jerstad and Mai Løvaas
Tea ceremony
Duration: 90 minutes
Place: Kunsthall Trondheim
This ceremony is a meeting with plants through the body and senses. By listening and exploring the ways a plant can be experienced, we interact with it as an ally. Meeting a plant can be as simple as a walk in the park or a cup of tea. In this case, it is a cup of tea. The tea is served with a guided meditation, silence, creative tools, and finally the possibility to share reflections on the experience of the plant ally.
Mari Jerstad has wished to work with medicinal plants since her early teens. She studied organic farming at Sogn Jord og Hagebruksskolen, and later attended a three-year bachelor's degree in herbal medicine at Lincoln University, England (2014). Since then, she has worked as an herbalist, storyteller, herbal journalist with the radio program Ugress, as well as a course leader with numerous herbal events. She is a third-generation storyteller and appreciates that plants have their own valuable lives and therefore also stories. Recently, Jerstad completed a master´s degree at the University of Oslo in International Community Health. Her thesis on the topic of medical ethnobotany was a qualitative study exploring perception of plants in rural west Norway. Her findings were of embodied tacit knowledge of human plant relations, animal plant relations, and relations with the wider local land.
Mai Løvaas grew up in Trondheim and has recently returned to her home town after living in California for 18 years. She has studied clinical western herbalism at Berkeley Herbal Center, and har taken year-long herbal apprenticeships with Green Wisdom Herbal School and The Gaia School of Healing and Earth Education. She has spent numerous years roaming the hillsides, mountains, valleys and deserts of California looking for plants and mushrooms of edible and medicinal quality. Mai takes people on plant walks, facilitates plant meditations, leads workshops on topics such as medicinal mushrooms, herbal potion making, seaweeds, and mushroom ID. She is currently in the process of doing a master’s degree in Global Health at NTNU, focusing her thesis study on ethnomycology and people’s uses and perceptions of mushrooms. Mai spends her summers traveling, studying and harvesting plants and mushrooms all throughout Norway. www.maiwildmedicinals.com