Books don't cover everything.
One day I was walking around the city with a friend, and they randomly asked me about a weed growing through the pavement. They wanted to know what “occult use” the plant had.
I crouched down and asked it. It gave me a very casual speech about it’s habits and adaptability in an urban setting “I eat the dust that gathers in asphalt and from it I bloom. I spread my children on the tires of cars, and they do the same as me. I subsist on skin cells, spilled drinks, and the precious rain of the gutters.
So I roughly translate: Plant says it survives and thrives. Could show you how to skirt by on nothing, subsist on little, live in urban environments and still keep your connection to the dirt. Maybe even how to better-tolerate living in an apartment complex with noisy assholes. It grows along sidewalks almost ALWAYS. So there’s something about traffic and movement that applies as well - maybe a good plant for getting your ass out of that roach-hovel on 12th and into better digs on 24th.
My friend looked put-out, and expressed disbelief that I had to “ask a plant” what it did, rather than having read about it somewhere. The idea that the knowledge was “new” was unpleasant to her.
I got a little put-out, too. Because 90% of occult books 1: talk about European plants, or Biblical plants. 2: Talk about extremely common, widespread, or culinary plants. They don’t often talk about a wild, native, forb from the Mid-South region. You can’t buy that plant from Azure Green in bulk. Nobody’s going to talk about that plant.That random, wild, hardy, native forb isn’t something that is opined about in extremely expensive hardcover books, or cited in medieval recipes. It’s a new and “unknown” element in European-styled Craft.
Southern Conjure and Rootwork might cover it, but then again… might not. It might be one of those plants that’s too far North, or West to apply to the “Deep South” region’s biodiversity.
Even if they talked about the species, they’re not going to talk about what THIS plant, and the similar plants in the city can teach you. They’re going to talk about elements, planets and general correspondences. It’s going to be vague, like an astrology report, and softly-worded.
It’s not going to say “This plant makes you care a little less that your neighbor is an asshole, because we’re all trying to get by here, goddamnit.” Because that doesn’t really sell. Practicality isn’t really the order of the day when the book could waffle about the psychic alignment of Lavender (it’s PURPLE after all) or the intense vibrations of the Yemeni Myrrh that had to be trucked out under gunfire.
Take books with a grain of salt. Learn your region. Welcome to a gigantic, new, world of information and witchery that knows your dirt, and knows your people, and knows how to make all of it work with the sun and rain that falls there. Yes, even in the city. Even in the cracks in the pavement.
*(It is/was a “Croton” species, Likely a large, mature, One-Seeded Croton. Looking for a “Biological Survey” site for your area, preferably with pictures, is just ever-so-goddamn-helpful in getting to know the neighbors.)
