The Plant Delighteth

Abstract

Although numerous studies have identified animist practices invoking plants in non-Western cultures, limited attention has been granted towards similar practices present in Western cultures, whether historical or contemporary. In the study of Western esotericism, where research on alternative cosmologies and European Earth-based religions finds an academic home, discussions on plant personhood are curiously absent from many of the field’s foundational works. However, evidence of practices of interspecies intersubjectivity, i.e. the acknowledgment of relationality between humans and plants rooted in a sense of mutual agency, is documented in prayers, incantations, and agricultural traditions, often related to esoteric threads. These materials demonstrate that plant personhood has not only been historically present in European cultures but has continued to be an active form of thought and practice in the West from the Enlightenment through the Industrial Revolution into today, even in Christianized contexts.