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Renewing the Soul of Tobacco:

Nicotiana Flower Essence

by Patricia Kaminski


A Quality of Upliftment

Nicotiana alata is also known as “Flowering Tobacco,” “Jasmine Tobacco” or “Night-Scented Tobacco.” This species is native to the warm regions of South America and grows as a summer perennial in more temperate climates. The plant grows to about three feet (1 meter), and has tubular flowers that are typically white, although variations can be found in pink, red, and green flowers. (Nicotiana flower essence is made from the white-flowered varieties, although Green Nicotiana is also under research.) 

Nicotiana alata is night blooming, with a rich, sweet fragrance that permeates the night air. The leaves are resinous and like its botanical relative, Nicotiana tabacum, the plant contains nicotine. It has some history of medicinal use as a masticatory herb because saliva is increased when it is chewed. The N. alata species has a gentle, airy quality; in fact, alata means “winged,” and refers to the quality of the asymmetrical flowers seeming to take wing. While sharing characteristics of the traditional tobacco plant, it also has a unique quality that points to soul upliftment and transformation.

The Solanaceae Plant Family

Nicotiana is a member of the Solanaceae botanical plant family, also known as Nightshades. This extensive plant family contains many species native to the Americas, particularly edible foods such as peppers, tomatoes, eggplant and potatoes. It also contains many plants which are poisonous due to powerful alkaloids, such as Belladonna and Datura. 

Many notable homeopathic remedies are made from some of the

most toxic members of the Solanaceae plants.

The poisonous members of this family can be important medicines. Many notable homeopathic remedies are made from the most toxic members of the Solanaceae plants, including Datura stramonium (Jimson Weed) for terror and fear, Atropa belladonna (Belladonna) for violent tendencies, Mandragora officinalis (Mandrake) for manic-depressive episodes, Hyocyamus niger (Henbane) for wild and inflated behaviors. These same four plants were also used in medieval occult ritual to stimulate astral consciousness, such as the ability to fly in dreams. In homeopathic medicine, this family of plants addresses intense, typically covert psychic forces that may paralyze or overwhelm the consciousness.

Darkness and Interior Light

FES research into three members of the Solanaceae family points to a further refinement of these basic themes, when prepared as flower essences. It is significant that the two most common names for the entire plant family refer to opposite qualities – Solanaceae indicates a fire quality that is related to, or is like the sun (sol). Nightshade refers to the propensity of this family to bloom at night, or to be stimulated by darkness (such as potato heads that are able to sprout in darkness without any orientation to the sun). These seeming opposites can be integrated as one archetypal wholeness if we consider the manner in which darkness can be illumined by an interior light of the soul, a light which is not the external sun, but shines as the sun would.

Angel's Trumpet helps the soul transcend fear of the unknown.

Cayenne stimulates a part of the will clouded from higher consciousness.

The Angel’s Trumpet (Brugmansia candida) flower essence helps the soul transcend fear of the unknown at the time of dying, by learning to trust the light of interior consciousness. Cayenne (Capsicum annum) flower essence stimulates a part of the lethargic will that is clouded and opaque to higher consciousness. Nicotiana alata lights an interior fire, especially in the region of the heart and lung, and its relationship to the metabolic will. It is a quality that is both grounding and stimulating, helping the will to cultivate a calm and focused energy state that is infused with life force. 

The Heart of the Living Earth and the Human Heart

Nicotiana flower essence heals the craving for the false fire of metabolic arousal through tobacco addiction. Quite literally, the use of tobacco increases the physical heart rate, while anesthetizing and numbing the feelings of the heart. Life is felt more intensely as a sense of personal power and bodily stimulation, rather than as a relationship with a matrix of nurturing forces.

While Nicotiana flower essence can be beneficial for tobacco addiction, it also speaks to a general dis-ease that challenges the contemporary soul living in a technological culture. Native American sacred tobacco ritual aligned the human heart with the life pulsation or “drumbeat” of the living Earth. The user of the peace pipe felt the interior reality or “heart” of Mother Earth, creating a transcendent consciousness in the body and soul.

In modern culture, the genuine heartbeat of the earth is distorted in an automated, technological society that is hyper-stimulated, and out of touch with the natural rhythms of life. Surrender to the true healing powers of the night through sleep and a cadenced lifestyle are bypassed in favor of hyper-will force, artificially roused through electrical light and a host of mechanized conveniences and stimulants. As a result, both body and soul are compressed and hardened into an intense and isolated form of ego consciousness. At its extreme, the false macho persona of the “Marlboro man” uses the drumbeat of the living Earth for the drumbeat of industrial war, eco-violence and extreme power divorced from feelings. A living relationship to the rhythms of Earth and to the interior feminine light of the soul has been transformed into its very opposite.

Nicotiana flower essence helps the heart find life fire, which is not divorced from soul feelings
. The flower essence of Nicotiana re-instills the true spiritual teaching of the tobacco plant: radiant peace arises from being able to access the deep life chamber of the heart and through the path of the heart, find connection to the Earth and all living beings.

Nicotiana alata  has a gentle, airy quality. In fact, "alata" means "winged."

Further reading related to tobacco:


Soul on Fire by Patricia Kaminski

Grounding Myself Without Tobacco by Jyothi Rundel

Tobacco: From Sacred Plant to Addictive Drug by Patricia Kaminski

Yerba Santa: Another Key Flower Essence For Tobacco Addiction by Richard Katz    

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