Psychic Geologies

Becoming an Archaeological Site: IUD, Copper Toxicity, & Learning to Read the Soil

August in Berlin brings an autumnal feeling of light and cooled air that reminds me of September. I am writing from our new home at the edge of the north of Berlin, overlooking a tall swinging pine.

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The Grasberg mine for copper and gold, Indonesia.

This essay is now published in Robida magazine, in the topic of Soils.

Psychic Geologies

Gravity is a harbinger of my connection with the Earth. It teaches me that there is no way to experience my own body, and the body of the Earth, if I don’t rest into it. So, I let my body rest on a moist ground for a while, until my clothes absorb the dampness. Grass and moss only ever seem dry in appearance. But wait till you lay in it for a while. A peaty smell reeks into my nose. These psychic architectures lay present beneath my conscious awareness.

I am an archeological site. 

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Becoming conta-mined

I don’t know which copper mine my copper IUD (intra-uterine device) came from. IUD is a form of birth control that is inserted into a womb and creates a hostile, inflamed environment, where no spermicide can survive. It is a set-and-forget birth control, used by more than 150 million women around the world. But no gynecologist goes the extra mile to explain any repercussions. 

Before the insertion of the IUD, no one said: the copper of this intra-uterine device was extracted from the womb of the Earth, and now it will be resting in yours, making you infertile soil. Not just physically. Disconnection from your womb will reverberate to the depletion of your ideas, will reduce the fruiting of your actions, and will somehow hinder the material realization of your creative projects. No one said: copper is able to kill off microorganisms and has a long history of being used as a pesticide or fungicide—and is often released to the environment for that purpose. Even ships were coated in copper paint to inhibit fouling. No one said: your nervous system will feel different—anxious, distracted, depressed, and flooded with intoxication like the surrounding areas of Roșia Poieni, the largest copper mine in Romania. That’s where the mine waste was dumped and found its way into a local landscape, destroying Gaemana town and hundreds of ecologies around it. Thousands of dead fish washed the shores, trees scorched with sulfuric acid.

So what is the ecology of my womb, if not the ecology of soil? If copper kills microorganisms in the soil, it will not make an exception to the microbiome of my womb. What is the ecology of my mind, if not the ecology of soil?

Persinger, M. A. (1987). Geopsychology and geopsychopathology: Mental processes and disorders associated with geochemical and geophysical factors. Experientia, 43(1), 92–104.

Robert Smithson, Broken circle/Spiral hill, 1971. Artwork created next to a sand mine.

For the past year, I thought something was wrong with me. Feelings of anxiety, hopelessness, and depression were rising without my conscious awareness, triggered by small things. These feeling states were coming and going, like huge waves and then receding again. As someone with a degree and training in psychology and trauma healing facilitation, my first instinct was to look at possible underlying resurfacing of past trauma. Then, I turned my attention to potentially undiagnosed ADHD (commonly missed in the female population). Later, I linked the possible causes of hormones: PMS or PMDD. I tried to understand my feelings through therapy and various healing modalities that treat trauma. It helped, but I felt as if my psyche and my body refused to heal. I felt I was at a standstill for several months.

But, slowly, through a process of following the breadcrumb trail of research, conversations with other women, and intuition, I was able to piece together what was actually happening. Throughout the 4 years I had the copper IUD, I have built up copper toxicity. This meant that the body, due to the overload copper, started depositing it in the liver and other tissues of the body (such as muscle, bones, or even the brain). I have learned that excess of one mineral depletes the other, so as a consequence, my body was lacking minerals that support nervous system function, such as zink (crucial for mental and emotional wellbeing). Copper also goes hand-in-hand with the hormone estrogen. We now know that the overproduction of estrogen is one of the biggest sources of female ailments, such as endometriosis, PCOS, fibroids, and even cancer. As well as many hard-to-explain, hard-to-treat conditions.

CUPRUM nativum var. dendriticum, Dendritical Copper

In the trauma discourse feelings of safety are paramount to healing. In physical and emotional safety we can start rewiring our patterns, our fears, our hurt. Yet excess copper in the body can prevent trauma from healing as it holds a nervous system in fight, flight, or freeze modes. Copper toxicity is also highly associated with postnatal depression, ADHD, episodes of rage, anxiety, depression, panic attacks, and many more mental health conditions. Copper toxicity, in many cases, gets misdiagnosed as a psychiatric disorder.

Yet, copper is essential to our bodies. In fact, we are mineral beings. We are stone beings. Joshua Schrei, in his podcast The Emerald, argues that we are but mere expressions of stone-aliveness. We are animate minerals. Our blood—iron, our bones—calcium, our nervous system—magnesium, zink. So maybe all these symptoms within our bodies are a copper’s way of saying: “I don’t belong here. I don’t belong in your womb. I belong in the womb of the Earth.“

Not once in this past year did I think something in my body, such as a deep mineral imbalance caused by a copper IUD could be causing so much unknown pain. I didn’t realize that the refusal of my body to heal is an invitation to understand the geologies of belonging and non-belonging. Extraction by definition creates misplacement and disrupts innate belonging to a place—excavating Earth’s composites to be rendered elsewhere, an aggressive evacuation of citizens away from mining towns, displacement and destruction of species and ecosystems, and even implantation of a foreign object (IUD) into a uterine lining, to me all speak of disruption of belonging and misplacement. 

Separating poppy seeds from dirt

During the process of trying to understand what was happening, I went through myriads of doctors and blood tests just to receive inconclusive results. No one could truly tell me what was wrong. A gynecologist whose job is to sell and insert an IUD will not tell you that it can cause copper toxicity. A government that profits from mineral extraction will not close down a profitable mine, just because it’s causing an ecocide. In hindsight, I realized that what will be able to lead me through a choir of ill-informed external authorities, is my own inner voice and ability to discern, incrementally leading me to a certain clarity of what is right and wrong for me — and my inner garden.

The wild feminine knows how to navigate a forest full of beings, riddled with various motives. There is a story, well-known in the Baltic region, Eastern Europe, and Slavic countries, called Vasilisa the Wise. This story paints a map of retrieving the innermost intuition, a psychic capacity that allows us to navigate the unknown psychic geologies and topographies of confusion.

Vasilisa outside of the hut of Baba Yaga, Ivan Bilibin. 1900

Something that Heals can also Kill

As the fire is dying out in Vasilisa’s home, her hostile stepmother pushes Vasilisa out of the house to go and retrieve the fire from the house of Baba Yaga. The stepmother and her ugly daughters hope that Vasilisa gets devoured by the old hag. The tale takes the girl out of the home of hatred and into the unknown woods of the psyche. As she wades through the dark forest, Vasilisa is guided by a tiny hand-made doll that her dying mother gifted to her. Here, the doll is seen as a guiding inner voice that tells Vasilisa which turn to take and how to act in the unknown territories. When Vasilisa finally meets Baba Yaga and asks her for fire, the old witch gives Vasilisa several tasks to complete before she can head back home. One of the tasks is to separate thousands of poppy seeds from a pile of dirt. Clarissa Pincola Estés, author and Jungian psychologist, writes that this is the demanding hag force within, asking us to learn the finest discernment and make fine distinctions in our judgment and intuition.

To pick mildewed from healthy corn, as the poppy seeds from dirt, there is a need for visual and tactile dexterity to navigate the nuances of every situation we are confronted with. When we stir against systemic oppression, when we carve escape routes out of lives that secretly rot us, when we listen to our bodies versus the voices of patriarchy echoing within, we sharpen our discernment of what needs to die (poppy seeds) and what needs to live (soil).

Poppy seeds, corn, and other grains symbolically allude to soul food and soul medicine, dating to the times of the ancient apothecary of ointments, salves, infusions, and cures. We can gather ourselves into the psychic and a physical dirt garden to integrate the power of intuition that knows: something that heals, can also kill. At the end of the story, Baba Yaga gives Vasilisa a skull, mounted on a wooden stick. Through the eyes of the skull shines a bright flame, illuminating Vasilisa’s every step home. When the young girl reaches her house, the flames within her skull intensify and burn down Vasilisa’s stepmother and her daughters, freeing Vasilisa of the poisonous family.

Baba Yaga, Ivan Bilibin. 1900

Young Vasilisa’s story is a story of initiation into a ripening of inner voice that strengthens as we listen. By reading the soil and by separating the medicinal weeds, we learn to brew the ointments that can kill the unfruitful, draining, life-sucking pollutants, and nourish those paths, relationships, and activities that feel right, feel alive, and induce flourishing. 

Reading the soil

Is there a way to read the underground? The process of sampling, feeling, and reading the textures, crevices, delineations, orbs, and patterns teaches us the language of the underworld. We learn to sense the contamination of the soil and invite remediation to the garden. This newly gained capacity can invite us to tend in this nuanced cadence to the Earth, too. 

There is a soil reading method called soil chromatography (SC), developed in the 20th century by the Russian botanist Mikhail Tsvet. Even though the scientific accuracy of SC is still under review, the method democratizes soil reading and is used by many biodynamic farmers around the world. It is a beautiful way to understand the life of the underground: what minerals, toxins, and microorganisms it contains–and what is potentially needed to start regeneration. Just like in the tale of Vasilisa, we work by collecting and sampling the soil, making solutions, soaking the paper discs, and learning to read the chroma, the eye of the soil. 

Scott Hunter, Soil Chromatography (source)

Each chroma lends itself as an iris of the soil: we peer into it and through it. The chromas are windows into the health of the soil. They are not painted by us humans, but by the chemicals reacting with compounds within the soil and millions of microorganisms that share the dwelling site. Like in the tale, we also learn to separate and compare the soils themselves: which soil is depleted and which is fecund. We learn to interpret colors and patterns that signal different meanings. There are three distinct zones indicative of mineral, carbon, and humus content. For example, a defined outer edge is usually seen as a sign of high soil fertility. It is associated with strong microbial action and the presence of small organic molecules.

Sometimes, when we read the literal (or proverbial) soil, we stumble upon an unexpected finding: something we have not seen in a chroma before. It might be an unknown pathogen, toxicity, contaminant, or depletion. This is a call for the remediation of the underground. The soil will not be recovered for further degenerative extraction. The soil needs what soil needs—healing into its new form and new ecology.

Remediating the psychic garden

Healing started with a decision to listen to my own intuition. Intuition as a way to tend to my psychic garden, and the gardener—as an inner authority. With a big support of my partner, I decided that the IUD had to be removed. There was a sense that I am moving against a stream of voices that were telling me otherwise. But my body felt one of the biggest reliefs. I was coming back to myself. My womb could finally release the tension. Something shifted energetically, as much as it did physically. Certain energy and creativity slowly came back, like birds landing back in the wild garden.

Afterwards, physical healing began. I found a way of detoxing copper out of my system, scattered across my soft and hard tissues. I followed a nutritional protocol that included a lot of beans (called the Bean Protocol). Perhaps it’s the most accessible and regenerative healing protocol I have ever encountered. The list of ailments it treats is quite incredible. The soluble fiber in beans binds with bile in our digestive tract and allows excess toxins, heavy metals, and hormones to leave our bodies. However, if we do not get to eliminate bile through our diets, it gets recycled back into the body. This means that all of our hormones and toxins continue to recycle, no matter how many “detoxes” and healing protocols we do. Funny enough, legumes, beans, and clovers are the plants of soil regeneration. We plant them in tired and depleted earth to bind nitrogen and enrich soils for other plants. This plant medicine extends into human bodies and soils simultaneously.

Refusal to heal is not an end. It’s an invitation to start a different conversation—to explore our psychic geologies and ultimately become an archeological site. To discover layers, systems, inner crystallization, and calcifications. To find relics, scriptures, mummified and well-preserved inner truths.

Sometimes, healing will show up as a refusal, disguised as contamination.

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