Walking the Land: The Gift of Cornmeal and Why it is So Important

I grew up with a leather pouch filled with yellow cornmeal that my mother bought from a grocery store starting at five years old. Many Native Americans share a similar story about the Corn Mother, who gave of herself to feed the people with her gift of corn. They consider cornmeal sacred because it is life-affirming. The Hopi people of Southwest Arizona utilize blue cornmeal in their spiritual ceremonies.

There are different colors of cornmeal, depending upon the color of the kernels in the corn. One type of cornmeal is not better or worse than another. Yellow cornmeal is cheaper than blue cornmeal. There’s also white cornmeal. What varieties are available to you and what you have in your pocketbook will help you choose the one for you to use.

When I want to converse with a tree, I approach it giving my name, why I am there, and ask if I can speak to it. I give it a small handful of cornmeal as a token honoring the tree, that we stand with respect and equality with one another.

You can do it with a bush, a flower, a rock, to speak to a spirit of the stream, a river, a lake, or even Mother Ocean herself. As long as you conduct yourself with honor and come humbly with a good heart and intention, there is a great likelihood that the spirit of that plant, rock, or water source will connect with you.

Where we live in Virginia, half of our property consists of hardwood trees such as Oak, Maple, Chestnut, Beech, and many other varieties. The rear of our home has a nice lawn and a good fence to keep our dog inside so that she doesn’t wander onto the nearby highway. A stand of trees wraps around us in a womb-like U-shape around the rear and sides of our home. The first thing I did when we moved here was to take cornmeal as a gift, introduce myself to the woodland trees, and let them know I honored who and what they are. To this day, there is a feeling of being embraced by these mighty trees, some of whom are over two-hundred-year-old grandmothers, who have become our protection. They watch over us. We watch over them.

I have an incredibly old grandmother oak, the elder of the area, and I noticed the other day when the light was just right that she lost a huge limb some time ago. The area didn’t look healed. I went to her, offered cornmeal, and asked if there was any way I could help her. I called her attention to the wound in her trunk from where the limb had fallen away. She said yes, I could help her. She knew I was a family shaman through my father’s side of the family and asked if I could ask my spirit guides to perform a healing on her. I told her I would and that I would ask my guides.

This reminds me of another time, in Spring at Sycamore Canyon, near Sedona, Arizona, where there are Great grandmother cottonwood trees that are two to three hundred years old. One of them had contracted a black, pithy fungus. I had stopped, given cornmeal, and asked if I could somehow support her and try to cleanse the wound in the side of her trunk. She said yes. With her permission, I performed a journey on her behalf. My guides knew what to do to cleanse the fungus from her bark and did so. I gave her a gift of cornmeal afterwards, telling her I would be back in the Fall, and I would visit with her again. When I came back in October, I went up to her, gave her cornmeal, and to my delight, the fungus growth was gone, and her trunk was healing up and healthy once more. I hugged her and cried, my tears melting into her bark, so happy for her. She was the oldest Cottonwood tree in that fifty-mile canyon, and she was truly like a grandmother to me. Many times in the twenty years that we lived nearby, I would ask permission to sit with her and she would tell me stories of the area, or she would speak of the changes of energies in the area, or point out how many of her ‘children’ were around her, which made her happy.

Conversely, trees can heal us. They run prana energy from other dimensions through the top of their head, down through their trunk, and through the roots, feeding Mother Earth. And She sends up energy from within her planet body, through trees, and into the interdimensional cosmos, giving back as much as she receives. If you are in need of help, ask a tree if it will heal you or help you in some way. Just bring out your bag of cornmeal and ask.

Cornmeal is a door opener, in a sense. Trees know the protocol a human is supposed to show them to create an equality and heart connection with one another. I always carry a small bag of it in my purse nowadays, with much of my hiking days behind me, because I never know when I might run into one of my relatives and want to strike up a conversation with them. I’ve learned so much from them over my lifetime; they are our best teachers.