The Wilderness and Wellness Podcast · Ron Waline

John Slattery: Intriguing Ideas on European Indigenous Nature Spirituality

·1 hr 52 min·5 clips

John Slattery describes a psilocybin-induced vision of Jesus in a Guatemalan hot spring, revealing a deep spiritual connection.

Ron Walleen opens with context for why John Slattery is making a return visit — noting he is the first repeat guest the podcast has ever had — and explains that the episode's focus on European indigenous spirituality grew out of his own personal journey. Walleen spent years immersed in and learning from Native American traditions through his marriage into a full-blood Navajo family, but gradually came to recognize that a practice must be rooted in one's own ancestry to be fully claimed, and began searching for what his own tradition might be. Slattery's introduction, which Walleen reads from Slattery's own LinkedIn profile, establishes him as someone whose knowledge comes primarily from direct experience and twenty-plus years of practice rather than academic study: starting with Chinese cosmology in his mid-twenties, applying herbs to himself to observe effects, then moving through indigenous herbalist mentorships across the Americas before establishing a Sonoran Desert-based practice in vitalist herbalism. The concept of bioregional herbalism that Slattery describes is rooted in intimate relationship with the specific landscape, plants, elements, and seasonal rhythms of a given place — a practice that he connects explicitly to ancestral healing and what he calls returning to the web of life. The episode then turns to the question of European indigenous nature-based spirituality: what pre-Christian European animism looked like, what traces of it survive in folklore, folk medicine, and place names, and what the process of reconnection looks like for people whose ancestors' practices were suppressed over centuries of Christianization and colonization. Slattery approaches the subject with the same empirical and experiential orientation he brings to herbalism, drawing on his own spiritual practice rather than academic reconstruction. Walleen notes a slight audio delay issue that was smoothed in editing, asking listeners to forgive occasional hiccups. The conversation models a form of spiritual inquiry that takes tradition seriously without requiring indigenous identity, and that situates personal healing within the broader context of ecological relationship.

As heard by us

A patient, reflective conversation about ancestry, nature spirituality, and older roots.

John Slattery and Ron Walleen settle into a reflective conversation about European indigenous spirituality, ancestry, and older nature-based traditions.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Press play if you want a reflective conversation about spiritual roots and herbalist teachings.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from The Wilderness and Wellness Podcast