Winter Solstice, Dreaming, and The Return Of The Light

Pagan holidays have lasting power in our collective unconscious.  I think it’s because they are based in palpable shifts in both our outer world and inner psyche, throughout the wheel of changing seasons.  If you think about it, the rituals of the Winter Solstice, or Yule, meant to renew light and hope in what was the darkest and most frightening time of the year (especially in Celtic, Norse, and Germanic Northern Europe), held people through darkness on many levels in generations past.  Even this year, with its constraints, palpable sense of danger, and loneliness for many, it’s difficult to imagine the Winters of old, when food was dangerously scarce, light lasted for only a few hours a day, nights were warmed by hearth fire, and illness remained a constant threat.  Somehow, in that atmosphere, people found a way to mark the return of the light, on the longest night of the year.  It was considered a night of labor for the Great Goddess, as she gave birth to the sun each year.  People stayed awake in vigil, while the Yule log burned, singing songs and telling stories until sunrise, when the sun god was born again.  They brought evergreen branches into their homes to remind them that life and vitality can be preserved, even in harsh conditions.  From that point, the days would grow longer, taking people towards the fertility of Spring and the warmth of Summer.

Here, in Northern California, December 21st often feels more like the start of Winter than its relief, but the metaphor of pregnancy and birth still has relevance.  During the months of gestation, before we are born, we exist in a dream state, In this liminal space, we create much of who we will become, as our bodies and minds develop and our souls attune to the life we are entering, informed by all we inherit from where we have been before, and the family we are joining.  It is a sacred time, when many possibilities lay ahead of us, largely unwritten and fluid.  

When our brains enter the delta waves of dreaming, we recall this pre-birth state of formation.  That is one reason why dreams and the hypnogogic state are such fertile ground for deep change in our psyches and our lives.  We begin to create again, to allow things to come into form, leaving behind the rigidity of who we think we are in the waking hours.  In Winter, when life slows down, and we naturally go within, this process is even more pronounced.  Winter is the dreaming time of year, and in that sense the Winter Solstice is also a time of gestation and labor for the dreams we will birth into manifestation, the light we will bring forward to plant in Spring, work to cultivate in Summer, and harvest in Fall.

The question is, will we dream unconsciously or consciously in the dark of Winter?  If we let our unconscious take the reigns, its compulsion is to replay the thoughts, emotions, and impressions that we have encountered in waking and psychic life, especially that material which is harder for us to digest.  For this reason, the Winter Solstice is an ideal time for purification, cleansing ourselves on the conscious and unconscious levels.  If we allow our dreams to repeat the fear, violence, unrest, and compulsions that preoccupy us, then what will we be creating in sacred liminal space? 

This Winter is requiring us to slow down even more than usual, so perhaps there is another approach.  Assuming we are not in the midst of a personal trauma or unsafe circumstance, when instinct tends to take over, we can do our best to be intentional about what we feed our psyches.  We can attempt to direct our dreaming towards what we want to cultivate, perhaps planting a suggestion as we fall asleep, or even writing a theme or question on a slip of paper and placing it under the pillow.  Then, when first waking in the morning, we can take a brief moment to look back to the sequence of dreams we can recall, and write them down or record them, while the memory is still with us.  Engaging our dreams, even in such a simple manner, transforms them.  It is another way of bringing light into darkness.  It may come quickly or take time, but it is natural to us, like a forgotten talent that has been waiting to be rediscovered.  Creating ritual is a good way to prepare for conscious dreaming.  Even a brief moment of clearing the unwanted influence, calming the mind, and focusing on an intention is a powerful act of moving away from the dark of unconsciousness and towards lucidity.  Lucidity literally means not only clarity of thought and expression, but luminosity. 

Here are three questions you can take into the dreamtime this Solstice season, if you are so inclined:  What part of your life or psyche has been in Winter too long?  What will help you to cleanse your unconscious, and your waking life, of harmful input?  On the longest night of the year, what is the light you are hoping to birth?  For the last, we invite you to carve that intention into a candle, place it in a jar, and let it burn through the long night of the Winter Solstice this year, to guide your dreams towards the coming Spring.

With love and light,

the eleventh house

-This blog was written by Melusina Gomez.  You can learn more about her work and healing practices at www.metzmecatl.com

Plant & Crystal Magic 4: Cinnamon & Amber

Cinnamon

Cinnamon is a beloved and important spice for the Winter months.  It’s general warming effects, the memories of special holiday deserts and sweet drinks, and it’s deliciously uplifting aroma make it nourishing on many levels, even if one is unaware of its medicinal and magical properties.  The botanical name for Cinnamon is  Cinnamomum Seylanicum, and it generally comes from the forests of Indonesia and Asia.  Usually it is available in either tan Ceylon or reddish Cassia forms, though in general Ceylon is said to be the more medicinal and Cassia the sweeter of the two, often used for baking.  Either form is good for magical uses.  Despite its exotic origin (and dark history of plantations, slavery, and spice wars), in our day it is very common and easily found at any grocery.  However it’s important to consider that the better the quality, and the more fresh, the more potent.  Cinnamon is an inner bark and can be found and used as sticks, nibs, and powder, as well as in essential oil or extract form.  The general rule is the stronger it’s scent, the more likely it is to be fresh and powerful in effect.

I would be remiss in not listing the many health benefits of cinnamon.  It is highly medicinal and has the ability to help lower blood sugar, and the harmful LDL cholesterol, acting as an agent in managing or reversing the onset of Diabetes, and lowering the risk of heart disease.  It is anti-inflammatory, anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, anti-viral, carminative, and expectorant, just to name some of its major properties.  It can be used to support the immune system at the start of a cold or to clear congestion, coughs, and sore throat, especially when partnered with ginger, as a sweet and spicy tea.  I have heard it said that cinnamon is to the lungs what ginger is to the digestive system, information that might be very useful this cold and flu season.  Cinnamon, in tea form, also can be very helpful to women who suffer from menstrual cramps, as it calms uterine spasms.  It increases circulation, warming the body, and helps with digestion, especially of fatty or colder foods.  This is one reason why it is such a common cooking spice, and part of a long tradition of folkloric medicine.  Cinnamon is energizing as well, and has long been used as a sexual stimulant.  It is full of antioxidants, making it a general tonic.  It can even be used as a mouthwash or natural treatment for gum disease, though the dark color can also be staining for the teeth.

If the medicinal properties of cinnamon, and its naturally sweet flavor weren’t enough to make it a favorite kitchen staple, this potent herb also has a rich history of magical lore and ritual uses.  It has long been an ingredient in an ancient Hebrew anointing oil, and in various natural versions of Agua Florida for energetic clearing.  Wreaths of the cinnamon tree leaves adorned ancient Roman temples, and ancient Egyptians used the oil in the process of mummification and the spice as offerings to deities.  In ancient Greece, cinnamon was used processions to Dionysus.  Cinnamon is considered a love spice, largely because of its warming properties, though it is also an enhancer of psychic awareness and abundance magic as well.  It raises the spiritual vibration of the home when used as an incense, and supports healing and protective energies.  In addition to all of its own properties, cinnamon acts as a magical amplifier, potentiating the effect of other herbs, and the charged magical intent.

Ways of working with Cinnamon:

• Make a decoction of cinnamon bark or nibs, boiling them for about 40 minutes, in order to release the medicine from the thick bark.  This makes a lovely tea by itself.  Cinnamon can be boiled in the same manner with ginger and/or reishi, for a strong and tasty tonic. 

• Cinnamon is a key ingredient in chai tea, which can also include other warming spices such as cardamon, clove, ginger, star anise, pepper, fennel, nutmeg, coriander, and black tea.  

• Burn the powder as an incense or use cinnamon oil in a diffuser to fill your home with the aroma and strong protective and spiritual vibration.

• Use cinnamon in magical sachets, herbal charms, and magical candle anointing, 

• Use cinnamon as a key ingredient in your magical baking and cooking.

• Keep cinnamon on the table at mealtime, as a sprinkle to aid in digestion.

• Make a cinnamon herbal honey as a sweet remedy for coughs and congestion.  Buckwheat is best for this.

• Boil cinnamon tea to use as a rejuvenating foot bath.  (It can be used as an herbal bath in tea form, but be careful of the essential oil for this, as it is hot to the touch in sensitive areas.)
  

Amber

Wear Amber for warmth in Winter.

Oh Amber, unique in the realm of crystals, it’s actually not a mineral at all, but rather the fossilized botanic resins, or sap, of a tree, most often Pine.  (Baltic Amber, considered the finest form, is said to be formed from coniferous trees that lived up to 60 million years ago!)  Let’s break that down.  Trees are magical to begin with, reaching up to the stars, while rooted deeply in the earth.  They take in our waste energy of carbon dioxide and transform it into oxygen.  They consume the light of the sun and the energy of the rain and store it internally through the stark Winter, and continue this cycle of transmutation and renewal through all the seasons of their long lives.  The sap of a tree is the cumulation of this stored energy, the life blood of these sacred beings.  When an Amber stone is rubbed, it develops an electric charge, and creates actual warmth. Wearing it on the body is like bringing the light and warmth of the sun and the nurturing soul of the earth into your inner being, where they can nourish you.

Wearing Amber has long been recommended for the treatment of physical and emotional issues.  It is said to support anyone who is suffering from seasonal affective disorder, those who sink into sadness and stagnation in the Winter months, when the light retreats.  It is a grounding and nurturing stone for times of physical illness and recovery, and even has a reputation for alleviating pain.  There is research into the properties of Baltic Amber, in particular the succinic acid it contains, that suggests that it stimulates the thyroid to regulate its function and thereby can help in soothing inflammation, pain, and in boosting the immune system.  However, the amount of this substance released onto the skin may be small, and the sensitivity of the individual would certainly be a factor in feeling these physical effects.   Amber is also reputed to calm anxiety, cultivating relaxation and balance.

Because of its relationship to trees and their transmutation of carbon dioxide into oxygen, Amber has the ability to support in energetic purification.  It helps us to clear the aura of negative intrusions and toxic emotional energies, transforming them into more positive energies.  In this way it is both grounding and protective.  The sun relates to the pathway towards our greatest destiny, and wearing a piece of that essence in the form of Amber jewelry can help to keep us aligned with our highest self, our true purpose, and with the sacred light, especially when we charge it with our intent.  This makes us less permeable to negative influence from both within and without.  There is a regality to Amber as well, and its golden beauty, in all of its color variations, can remind us to hold our bodies and souls in a sacred light, even in very hard times.

Because Amber is a fossil, and can be quiet ancient, it also has a strong relationship with the past.  It may even include fossilized insects, captured forever in its depths.  Working with Amber can help one to connect with soul memories, lineage medicine, ancient knowledge, and the legacies of ancestral trauma that need our attention and healing, so that we can free our ancestors and ourselves from the destructive patterns and events that we have lived and are compelled to repeat.  In addition, because much of the amber jewelry available is vintage, and beloved through different eras, be sure to cleanse it before wearing, especially if it is set in metal.  Placing it in the earth overnight, and then in the sun to charge, is a good method.  Wear or hold Amber to increase your vitality and lift your mood through the Winter season, and to promote well being on all levels.

Suggestions for working with Amber and Cinnamon together:

1. When and if the holidays and Winter months feel stressful, lonely, or cold, remember to celebrate what is sacred in small and nurturing ways.

2. Wear amber on your body through the Winter, when creating/recreating your personal and family rituals, and when engaging with magical cooking, to call the benevolent energies of earth and sun into your creations.

3. Diffuse cinnamon essential oil in your home to create a warm, energizing, and protective environment.

4. Serve cinnamon tea, or a blend of cinnamon, ginger and even reishi, to promote health.

5. Engage in magical cooking featuring cinnamon.  Perhaps make a pumpkin pie with fresh cinnamon, an apple pie with a protective lattice crust, or even simple cinnamon toast.

6. Create a cinnamon, cardamon, and damiana cordial to serve in later Winter months when you might need a boost of sensual warmth.

7. Rub your Amber and gaze into it the way you would gaze into a flame.  See the variations glow and ask your ancestors or soul lineage for guidance, healing, clearing, and support.

May your Winter be warm and bright.

Sincerely,

the eleventh house

-This blog was written by Melusina Gomez.  For more information about her work and healing practices please visit www.metzmecatl.com 

Spiritual Nourishment and Magical Cooking

November places us at the gateway to Winter.  The nights are longer and the dark comes early.  The air is crisp and already there have been glimpses of frost.  It is a time to be inside, to eat warming foods, and to bring light into our hearts to carry us through until Spring.  I think that is why people gather with family and friends, create large feasts to share, and potentially think about what they have to be grateful for.  

Thanksgiving is a dualistic holiday, simultaneously providing a reason to come together in love and gratitude (one of the rare moments in the wheel of the year when our culture will stop to honor time with family), and an unconscious observance of this country’s history of betrayal and exploitation of Indigenous Peoples.  If you’re not sure how to feel about it, you’re not alone.  This year, of course, brings another level of complexity, since it may not be possible to travel to see family who live far away.  Questions of safety have to be considered, even when it comes to gathering with our local family members and friends.  Yet, however we choose to honor traditions involving family, spiritual history, and the transmutation of oppression, sharing the foods that make us feel like we are held, abundant in the ways that matter, and at home on the earth will likely be at the center of our holiday rituals.  

How we eat, in many ways, reflects how we honor ourselves as spirits having a corporeal experience, dancing to the song of the earth for a short time.  We can celebrate that experience by caring for our vitality, and engaging with the medicine, sensuality, and magic of food, or we can be unconscious about it.  I am grateful to my lineage in Curanderismo for the precolonial lessons I received about eating.  The Mexicas (or Aztecs), for example, ate a diet that was primarily vegetarian, apart from ceremonial feasts where meat would have been specially prepared and the animal honored for its sacrifice.  They believed, in general, that freshly harvested plants and flowers were high in life force energy and kept the vitality strong and the mind light for dreaming and seership.  From Curandersimo, I learned to reinvigorate living foods by soaking them in water before preparing them, to serve chocolate at all family occasions to promote happiness, and that tamales must be made within a joyful atmosphere of music and laughter, and wrapped in their corn husks with love, like babies.  

The world is full of rich traditions of food magic and folklore.  It can be fun to learn the roots of family customs, stemming from both tricks of survival and remnants of ritual.  Perhaps along with, or in place of, sharing time with relatives and spiritual family, we can share stories about the origin and meanings of our recipes.  This is one way to create the warmth of placement and connection, and to nourish ourselves and each other, whether physically together or not.  In addition, here are some things to consider about magical cooking this holiday season.
Preparing and sharing a meal is a sacred act that creates a bond, and brings both physical and energetic nourishment.  When we consider the medicinal and magical properties of our food we awaken its spiritual aspects.  When we cook with love and intention, we direct these energies toward a purpose.  Magic can be simple like this, and simple is often very powerful.  It is about creating relationship with the world around us and focusing our will, in partnership with these elemental forces.  Begin by quieting the mind and creating sacred space in your kitchen in whatever way is right for you, perhaps using scent, candles, flowers, or whatever you prefer.  Consider the effect you are hoping to create and choose foods and herbs that resonate.  Always take time to touch and interact with the chosen ingredients, charging them with your intention.  If you can, use wooden cooking utensils instead of metal or plastic.  Clay, glass, or copper pots and pans are best as well, but not essential if you don’t have them at hand.  The most important thing is to use your visualization to focus on the desired outcome, and to cook with the emotion you wish to imbue, as you chop, mix, layer, and stir your creations.  

Another important aspect is to connect with the foods of the season, in order to align with the earth’s changes and the needs of body and soul as the weather and life rhythms shift.  In the late Fall, root vegetables like potatoes, yams, sweet potatoes, carrots, and beets become abundant and help us to ground, and to warm ourselves as we adjust to the colder months.  Squashes, and pumpkins in particular, are symbols of the Fall season and the abundance of the Divine Feminine.  Pomegranates appear and remind us of our relationship to the underworld, while persimmons bring the joyful light of the sun, stored from the summer months, to our bodies and homes.  Apples are prevalent, with their cross cultural relationship to folk magic for love and health.

The holidays are a perfect time for baking.  Baking, with its special kind of transmutation of simple ingredients into fragrant and delightful treats, is its own form of magic, especially since for most it is not an everyday act.  At this time of year, pies are a common staple of traditional celebrations, and one with a rich history.  In Scott Cunningham’s Wicca In The Kitchen, a delightful resource book that was originally titled The Magic Of Food, there is an interesting description of the history and symbology of pies.  He explains that the round pies that we are most familiar with are an American adaptation of the European tradition, which favors a deep square or oblong pan.  Fruit was more scarce in the colonial United States, and so a more shallow and round version was created.  He suggests that the round shape signifies spirituality, whereas the more square form symbolizes abundance, and that the lattice work of crust on top represents protection.  Cultural nuances like these offer suggestions for how to make your magical feasts creative and specific to your needs.

Even if you are cooking for yourself alone, the onset of the Winter months is an important time for rituals of nourishment.   In this transitional time, we prepare to go inward towards a season of dreaming and relative quiet.  Enlivening our food with intention can help us to fortify ourselves both physically and emotionally.  It is a gesture we make to ourselves and those we care for.  When we cannot be outwardly expansive, with the large gatherings and the travel across distances we might be used to, we can take the time to cultivate depth in the simple acts of care we perform for ourselves and those in our immediate surroundings.  Begin now with a moment of reflection, with your oracle cards or inner voice of guidance.  What inside you needs nourishing?  What most needs to be cultivated in your heart, your family, your home this season?  Cook, bake, create with this intention.  And, when you sit down to enjoy your small feasts, take a moment to honor and receive the magic you have shaped from the blessings of the earth.

With love and gratitude,

the eleventh house    

-This blog was written by Melusina Gomez.  You can learn more about her work and healing practices at www.metzmecatl.com

Plant & Crystal Magic 3: Marigold & Obsidian

Marigold

Marigolds are a species of flower with many varieties.  Brightly colored, in oranges, reds and yellows, they represent the sun, and have the general lore of bringing protection, prophetic dreams, and psychic abilities.  Two of the marigold, or tagetes, family stand apart this season, however, as strong allies for healing and honoring the ancestral realm.  These are Flor de Muerto, or Xempaxochitl in the Nahuatl language, and Pericón, also known in latin as tagetes lucida and tagetes lemmonii.  

Flor de Muerto/Xempaxochitl is the largest of the family, a bright orange flower featured on traditional altars for Dia de los Muertos, hence its common name which means the flower of the dead.  Xempaxochitl has the spiritual medicine of bringing light to darkness.  Related to the energy of the sun, Xempaxochitl is used traditionally to create a bridge from the world of the dead and the ancestors to the world of the living, on the sacred days and nights of Dia de los Muertos, on November 1st and 2nd.  This bridge is quite literal, as large and stunning altars are created in homes, cemeteries, and public spaces, featuring large amounts of the bright flowers in sacred designs, with many placed carefully together to create a dense pathway of light moving towards the altar.  This is to guide the spirits of the beloved dead to the altar their families and friends have prepared for them, so that they may be honored and nourished during the special time of year when they may visit freely and again enjoy the physical pleasures of food, drink, indulgences, and the people that they loved most in life.  The flowers act as a light in the dark, guiding the ancestors home, and help to brighten the atmosphere of loss, transforming it to the sacred celebration that it is meant to be.  Marigolds have a healing, nurturing and uplifting quality.  

The healing aspect of the marigold family is perhaps most palpable in the fragrant leaves and flowers of the plants given the common name Pericón.  The original plant to carry the name pericón is tagetes lucida.  It grows in Mexico and is used for moving heavy emotions and trauma from body and soul in the somatic spiritual treatment known as the limpia.  Plants and flowers, dipped in water, are at the heart of this form of healing, and sweep the body to cleanse that which is energetically stagnant, attached, and causing physical and emotional imbalance.  In the Bay Area, a local native cousin to this plant grows abundantly, and has the latin name tagetes lemmonii.   It is easy to find because it is a popular ornamental, which grows easily.  Both forms of pericón flowers are small, and more of a dark, golden yellow color.  They are aromatic, a key aspect of their healing medicine, however the more local tagetes lemmonii is far more fragrant, carrying a rich, sweet scent that is immediately grounding and soothing.  Pericón is therefore also known as the grandmother plant, because its nature is to gently, yet powerfully, push what needs to be acknowledged and released for one’s healing, while providing a loving, supportive energy, as a grandmother might.  Sleeping with this plant is also known to bring dreams of a grandmother, an ancestor, or a grandmotherly type of energy.  It has an aspect of protection, offering nurturing alongside its ability to clear unwanted energies, and for this reason is central to the healing principles and practices of Curanderismo, in Mexico and the U.S.    

Ways of working with Marigolds:

• Plant Marigold flowers of any variety to uplift the mood and energy around your home and garden.

• Create a wreath or garland of Marigolds to place on your doors or windows for energetic protection.

• Bathe with Marigolds, bringing the bright flowers into the bath whole and allowing them to infuse into the bath water.  Use the flowers to scrub your skin, cleansing away aspects of darkness and heavy emotion you want to release.  The Pericón leaves can be used this way as well.

• Breathe the rich fragrance of Pericón and hold it, or tuck a sprig or flower into your clothing.  Listen to the images and thoughts that arise from the wisdom of this plant elder.

• Sleep with Pericón under your pillow or in your hands, and ask for a healing or prophetic dream.

• Scatter Marigold flower petals under your bed for protection and prophetic dreaming.

• Create an altar of Xempaxochitl flowers this season in preparation for Dia de los Muertos.  Make a bridge or pathway to your offering for your beloved dead, whether they are your ancestors, those you seek to honor and remember, or even lost aspects of yourself that you want to call home.

Obsidian

Obsidian is a silica rich volcanic glass stone, created from the union of molten fire lava and cool water.  The union of elemental opposites, and the auspicious birth from a volcano, makes obsidian a powerful stone.  In the Nahualismo tradition of Mexico, obsidian is considered to be the dream of the volcano, because to see how something dreams we need only to see what it becomes.  For this reason, obsidian is used for significant practices in magic, scrying, and healing, in the ancient tradition.  

Obsidian comes in more than one color variation, though the most common is black.  Black obsidian is a protective and cleansing stone, which has the specific action of pulling from ones aura, energetic body, and even physical body intrusions of negative attachments, heavy emotions like anger, fear and resentment, repetitive destructive emanations and patterns, disharmony, and even physical illness.  It acts as a psychic vacuum cleaner, pulling from us that which does not serve health and energetic well being.  Because of its strength and nature, it will also bring to the surface negative thoughts, patterns, and influences, often from trauma and abuse histories, and self destructive tendencies, in order to reveal what the unconscious is holding and help it to clear.  This aspect can make it an intense stone to wear regularly, though it can also be a great ally for healing and for psychic protection, particularly for sensitives and empaths.  

When working with black obsidian, pay attention to the thoughts, emotions, memories, dreams, and life events that arise.  It has an affinity to reveal and absorb the inner darkness we carry and pick up from our environment.  Because it absorbs, rather than transmutes, obsidian needs to be regularly cleared.  This can be done with moonlight, sunlight, or by the traditional practice of using one’s left hand or a red cloth and making four spins to the left on your stone, followed by one equal distance cross, to stop the action of pulling, and clear what has been absorbed.  In addition, it is advisable to not wear black obsidian too regularly, as it can eventually begin to pull one’s own energy, if kept on the body long past the intentional work of clearing and protection. 

Black obsidian is also a stone of magic and scrying.  It is the material of the original black mirror, the famed obsidian mirror of ancient Mexico, which was later replicated by painting glass.  The dark, reflective surface of obsidian can be used for seeing into the unconscious and the unseen realms of the cosmic, the ancestral, and the dream territories.  Traditional practices for this kind of scrying are quite specific in terms of the size of the mirror and the techniques used, though gazing into the black depths with concentration to see visions and messages has been practiced in many cultures.   Themes that may be forthcoming relate to areas of blockage in ones energy body, physical imbalances, self abuse and negative patterns that need to be revealed and addressed, and messages from the ancestors or past lives.

Other color variations of obsidian all have healing and protective qualities as well, though they each have different energetic specialities.  Golden sheen obsidian helps one claim and direct personal power, healing abuse of power while uncovering hidden gifts.  Rainbow obsidian, with its bands of rainbow colors, helps in recovering from emotional trauma, old wounds, and in following descent through darkness to light and new strength.  Mahogany obsidian is grounding and helps to clear inner limitations, ancestral patterns, and low self worth.  The black and white snowflake obsidian helps one to access insight, guidance, spiritual support, courage, and hope to persevere, while clearing self defeating attitudes.  Peacock Obsidian can appear black in low light, and then blue, green, gold, red, violet or orange in strong light, and is known for accessing the extra sensory perception, promoting visions, lucid dreaming, spiritual journeying, and astral travel, while providing protection and psychic clearing in these realms.

Suggestion for working with Obsidian and Marigold together:

This time of year is perfect for working with magic, as well as for engaging and honoring the ancestral realm.  

1. Create a beautiful altar, honoring those you wish to remember and/or communicate with.

2. Make a bridge of marigold flowers, using Xempaxochitl/Flor de Muerto if you can.

3. Create a circle of flowers and small obsidian stones of your choice.

4. Choose one obsidian stone to work with intently, and cleanse it with reverence.

5. Hold it in your hands and focus on your intention for seeing into the psychic and ancestral realms.  Articulate your intention for healing and ask for its support, as well as to see the root of the issue.  

6. Breath your intention into the stone.

7. Gaze into the obsidian, then place it on your heart, or any area you feel called towards.  Breathe deep and listen to the thoughts, impressions, and guidance that comes.

8. Let your stone absorb the influences of the past that limit you and offer insight.

9. End your process by drawing a hot bath (or shower), bringing some of your marigold flowers to steep in the water and use them to wash yourself, releasing grief, fear, trauma, limitation, negative influence, or whatever you need to remove.  You can bring the obsidian into the water as well if that feels right.  

10. Clear your obsidian, and plant an intention for dreaming, taking a bit of Pericón or other marigold flower with you to bed.

May your dreams be vivid and healing.

Ometeotl.

-This blog was written by Melusina Gomez.  For more information about her work and healing practices, or to join her upcoming training on the obsidian mirror practice, please visit www.metzmecatl.com 

Samhain, Ancestral Magic, and Becoming the Ancestors of the Future

This is the season of magic.  Though magic is with us at all times, if we choose to look for it, October and the start of November make it palpable around us.  Maybe it’s because of the beauty of the changing leaves, the rich scents of Autumn, and the return of the dark evenings, while the weather is still warm enough to be out in nature’s enchantment.  Maybe it is that the veil between our reality and others is in fact thinner at this time, as folklore and magical traditions have well described.  And, certainly, the holidays of this time of year bring out our secret love of the supernatural, as well as a rare moment of cultural permission for make believe, wildness, and ritual, followed by reverence for the unseen and the ancestral.  All of these elements of the season make it a special time that I look forward to all year, and I know I’m not alone in that.  

In some ways, this year, in its necessary minimalism of Halloween and Dia de los Muertos events, gives me the sense of a time past, when celebrating the energies of the season was less a balance between the parties and public ceremonies and more of an everyday relationship with the Mysterious, as it pulls back the curtain some and beckons us to slow down, communicate, vision, and dream.  This Halloween falls on a full moon and blue moon, meaning it is the second full moon of the month, a rare and auspicious omen in itself, making it hard to not take notice.  Of course, with the uncertainty, and heightened stakes of our time, it also feels more urgent and important to observe these rites deeply, and to cultivate an understanding and a relationship to them for the children who will inherit our traditions, as well as our problems.  Children will be missing some of the most anticipated festivities of the year, along with so much of their normal opportunities for socialization and development.  Parents are getting very creative in their attempts to replace that excitement and whimsy, while staying safe.  Perhaps there is also an opportunity to bring back some old ways of observing these holidays and the meanings they hold.

Halloween is an age old pagan holiday, stemming from the Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced “Sow-when”).  In the wheel of the year, which honors the cycles of death, rebirth, fertility, planting, and harvest, Samhain is the new year celebration.  It is a time when we honor all that has passed in the year previous, our beloved dead, our losses, both individual and collective, and our new births as well.  It is a time when the dead and the spirits of the unseen world move among us freely, for a short time, an element we now celebrate by dressing in masks and costumes of fantastical and frightening characters.  It is a time to make offerings and appeasements to the world of the dead, the unfathomable, and the Fey, a tradition now represented by giving candy and treats to children dressed in their guise.  It’s a time for divination, communion with the underworlds, where we dream and where we journey when this life is finished, and a time to receive guidance from our ancestors and unseen allies.

This honoring of the ancestral realm becomes even more palpable in the Mexican tradition of Dia de los Muertos, a major event in the cities of Mexico and Central America, as well as in some Bay Area neighborhoods.  Beautiful altars of flowers, candles, and offerings are made for the dead on the 1st and 2nd of November, created in homes, cemeteries, and public streets, followed by processions, rituals and family meditations.  It is considered a time when the beloved dead may return to the pleasures they knew in life, and to their families.  They are greeted with careful preparation, marigolds to bring light to the darkness, photos, special foods like pan de muerto, representing the human body, and their favorite meals and vices, including alcohol and tobacco.  It is a time to say thank you to our ancestors who sacrificed and endured, allowing us to be here now, and who preserved the gifts and teachings that benefit us.  It is a time to honor where we are as a culture, to grieve and celebrate together.

This is a time to listen to our history.  I can’t help thinking that our ancestors, from many various lineages and many generations, knew a lot more than we do about enduring times of great change, unrest, loss, and fear of the unwritten future.  They also knew about creating security, warmth, and inspiration, with much less to work with than many of us have.  Many of them knew how to think and behave as a collective, feeding each other and working together in times of scarcity.  Some of them knew how to protect themselves and their communities in times of danger.  Some of them knew about cultivating power and resilience in secret ways, in times of oppression.  It is not as though all of our ancestors were enlightened, or even kind, but they were resilient enough to get us this far, and they may have wisdom to share, as do the ancestors of our soul paths and sacred traditions, though they may not have been our blood relations.

Ancestral magic is different than ancestral healing, though it may begin there.  When we look back at the patterns of our family line, what we know of our history, we will likely find a mixture of destructive patterns, limitations, gifts, and legacies.  Ancestral healing involves identifying the difficult patterns that repeat in our lives and in the lives of our relations, including addictions, illness, violence, areas of lack and suppression of certain aspects of our soul life or work that we want to grow but don’t know how.  What our ancestors did or never could do creates a kind of groove in the road of our lives that we unconsciously follow, and it takes a lot of energy to move ourselves out of that well worn path.  However, when we use our deep psychic listening to follow those lines back to their stories of origin, we might find that we have the power to bring new eyes and hearts to those old stories.  Looking at the full historical context of previous times, and coming from a place of love and forgiveness, while acting as a witness for our ancestors’ traumas, failures, and impossible choices, can free us from the curse of repeating these themes in our own lives, again and again, and frees them, ourselves, and our future generations.  

When we work deeply in this way, we may find something else that is equally important.  What gifts, lineage medicine, or sacred teachings are written in our ancestral lines?  These may be clear to us in the talents and interests that repeat over generations, or they may be quite hidden.  All over the world, magical heritage had to be suppressed at some point, when it was too dangerous to practice or speak of publicly.  In addition, colonization (however far back it occurred), immigration, assimilation, and secularization contributed heavily to forgetting what once may have been held as sacred or essential to who we were and are.  Some peoples encoded stories and songs with the teachings and values that they wanted to preserve for their descendants.  Some passed down teachings, practices, and prophecies for the times we are living now.  Many made sacrifices so that we could have the luxury to live, look back, and reach for understanding and integration this way.  And, some of what was left to us sings inside our veins, able to be reached at the right moment, when we can become quiet and open enough to listen.

How do we become the ancestors of the next generations?  How do we learn to think in a manner that spans time and sends resilience and guidance to those who come after us?  Maybe if we look back to the past, listening to the wisdom, warnings, and regrets of those who came before, we might be able to rise and fill that space.  Even committing ourselves to healing our own destructive patterns, or reclaiming and developing our gifts, paves the way for a future generation to be able to go beyond that work, towards something we may not have imagined.

So, this Samhain and Dia de los Muertos season, while finding the ways to reimagine the wonder and transgression of Halloween, maybe we can use the quiet of a slower than usual time to create a beautiful altar to what and who we want to honor from the past.  Maybe we can make a sumptuous and meaningful offering to the earth and her more ethereal inhabitants.  Perhaps we can tell some ancestral stores from our family history or the history of the collective and think about what they are trying to teach us.  Perhaps we can grieve with our loved ones of all ages for what we may have lost, and at the same time celebrate that which we have preserved or gained in this past year.  And, most of all, maybe we can engage the ways we know, or can learn, to see, to scry, to journey, or to divine with the tarot, the messages that our ancestors may be longing to send us at this time.  

Here is one suggestion.  Ask yourself where you may feel trapped in a negative cycle or by a limitation in some area where you have the desire to blossom.  Ask your ancestors what the root of this problem is and listen with a forgiving heart.  Ask them what they need in order to be released from this, so that you may all be free?  Then ask your ancestors what unrealized gifts you have inherited that you may need or want for moving forward with grace.  Ask them what they have been waiting to share with you.

With love and gratitude,

the eleventh house

-This blog was written by Melusina Gomez.  You can learn more about her work and healing practices at www.metzmecatl.com

Plant & Crystal Magic 2: Hyssop & Black Tourmaline

Hyssop and Black Tourmaline

This month’s plant and stone magic exploration is all about purification, cleansing one’s energy body and home of heavy emotion, negative influence, illness, or psychic debris.  This topic is rich and there are certainly many options, but in the wake of the fires, smoke, and the ongoing pandemic, what stands out as appropriate allies for our times, at least to this practitioner, are hyssop and black tourmaline.

Hyssop

Hyssop has a fascinating magical history.  There are actually two very different plants that share the name, and though different in color and characteristics, both have been used effectively for the same purpose for generations.  The first is the hyssop of the Middle East, or Origanum syriacum, which is famously mentioned in the Bible, Psalm 51:7 (“Purge me with hyssop till I am pure; wash me till I am whiter than snow.”), and in an earlier Hebrew biblical text, as part of the complex purification Ritual of the Red Heifer.  This is the origin of its use as an asperger, with a branch being dipped into a mixture of spring water and the combined ashes of its pink flowers, a sacrificed female heifer (considered red because of the blood association with the female sex), and scarlet wool, and then sprinkled on people, spaces, or objects for purification.  So began a lore and magical tradition that carried on through European witchcraft, though not with the same exact plant.  

Hyssopus officinalis, a member of the mint family, is the plant most European and American herbal grimoires  describe, with tall stalks of lavender-blue, aromatic, and camphorous flowers.  This is the hyssop whose offerings will be described below.

On the physical level, hyssop has many potential medicinal applications, and is said to settle an upset stomach, clear illness from the lungs, alleviate the pain of arthritis and rheumatism, and help wounds and bruises to heal more quickly.  In 16th-century England and Colonial America, it was also sprinkled on dirt and brick floors that were otherwise difficult to clean, in order to drive away germs and insects.

Energetically, it was used in a similar manner to chase away negative intrusions, in particular depression, envy, unwanted spiritual entities, and the residue of illness and death, through rituals of bathing, asperging, and house cleaning.  In 17th Century England and Wales, it was used as a protection charm ingredient, and hung inside school doors to safeguard children from harmful influence and sorcery.  It even has applications within binding love magic, driving out other love interests, for better or worse.  This ability to cleanse, and to both ward off and push out unseen forces that cause harm and stagnation, make hyssop ideal for a magical house clearing during this Fall season, in preparation for a Winter that may require more time inside than usual. 

There are several options for how to work with the magic of hyssop, however a few considerations should be made.  Though burning dried hyssop can raise the spiritual vibrations of a home, the smell is strong and not pleasant to all, unless made into a tincture and then used to dress other dry incense ingredients.  In addition, the essential oil, though popular is some spiritual communities, contains chemicals that can lower the seizure threshold in humans and animals who may suffer from seizure disorders, so it’s probably better to avoid. 

Suggestions for working with hyssop:

• Create a magical broom of hyssop branches tied together and use it to sweep your home of negative energy or spirits.

• Add at least 1/2 cup of hyssop tea to your mop water to cleanse your floors.  You can use two tablespoons of the dried herb steeped in 2 cups of boiled water.  Make sure to let it sit for 15-20 minutes for a strong infusion, and never boil your leaves and flowers.

• Make a larger amount of the tea to use within your bathwater, pouring a cup to drink and adding the rest to your bath, to cleanse yourself of depression, feelings of envy, or lingering illness.

• Use your tea or cold infusion (the herb and spring water refrigerated overnight in a closed container) with a bundle or branch of hyssop leaves and flowers to sprinkle over objects and around your home.

(*See the end of this article for a suggestion combining hyssop and black tourmaline.)

Black Tourmaline

The Tourmaline family is a uniquely energetic variety of crystal that combines aluminum silicate minerals and metals, creating transparent stones of many colors.  They posses electric and magnetic properties, similar to quartz, but potentially stronger, and even have applications as sturdy electrical tuning circuits.   Old world uses include pulling hard to reach dust, because when activated by rubbing, and its heat generation, they become electrically charged, with one end positive and the other negative.  These physical actions, working alternately as a conduit and a vacuum, are the base for the spiritual properties of this metaphysically powerful group of stones.  As with all stones, the color variations bely the nuances of their medicine.

Black tourmaline is a powerful stone for purification and psychic protection, particularly for those living and working in challenging environments full of stress, hostility, fear, negativity or psychic vampirism.  These stones can help clear negative spiritual and emotional intrusions or thoughts from the energy body, reestablishing balance and clarity and regulating the nervous system, making them a strong ally for our current time of uncertainty, disruption, and disharmony.   

Black tourmaline acts as a conduit with the Tlazolteotl, the aspect of the earth energy that takes what we need to release and transforms it, and can cleanse a space or an auric field, without simply absorbing the energies and needing to be cleared often.  Placing the stones on the earth in sunlight or moonlight is still a good practice for recharging on occasion, but black tourmaline has a gift for transmuting heavy energy by grounding it with the earth, making it self cleansing to some degree.  It is also best not to cleanse this stone with water.

Because of its ability to create a grounding cord with deep earth energies, black tourmaline is an important stone to work with in times when the earth is in cycles of change.  It can help us to harmonize with the shifting electromagnetic field of the earth, clearing the emotional stress that these changes can cause on an unconscious level, as well as helping to clear the effects of EMF radiation and other kinds of pollution in our environment.  In addition to its ability to purify and protect, black tourmaline assists in creating a pathway for higher spiritual energies to ground.

Suggestions for working with black tourmaline:

• Wear it on your body in a medicine bag or as jewelry, especially when dealing with difficult situations, or toxic relationships and environments.

• Sleep with a small stone under your pillow to cleanse your dreams and your auric field.

• Use it as a healing stone to transmute heavy energy, and ground spiritual energy into matter, particularly if you have a double terminated stone.

• Hold it in your hands or rub it to activate its magnetic, electrical aspects, and place it where you need it to pull harmful energies from your body or environment.

• Place stones in the corners of your home, creating an energetic grid of purification and protection.

Ritual for Fall Hearth Magic with Hyssop and Black Tourmaline:

1. Make a bundle or broom of hyssop branches and flowers, or tie an herb pouch of dried hyssop to your broom.  Open your doors and windows and sweep your home, with the intention to clear all stagnant and heavy emotional and psychic debris.  Give special attention to corners and to your front door threshold, both inside and out, sweeping outward first, then side to side in front of your door, banishing harmful energies from entering your sanctuary.

2. Make an infusion of hyssop tea, allowing the herb to steep for 20 minutes.  Make enough to use for cleaning, bathing and drinking, at least 4-6 cups worth.

3. Add two cups of your hyssop infusion to natural floor soap or an essential oil mixture for cleansing and mop your floor with intention.  If you have a carpet, you can sprinkle the powdered herb onto it and then vacuum.

4. Take your hyssop bundle, or use flowers, bay branches, a sacred instrument, or your hand to sprinkle the infusion around your home, including on yourself and others who live there, and on furniture and objects that you want to cleanse.

5. When the floor is dry, place black tourmaline crystals in the corners to create a protection grid, making sure to hold them in your hands first and breath into them your intention, in order to activate their medicine.  Or, place the stones in key areas in your home, including your bedroom.

6. Reheat your infusion and draw a bath or prepare a shower.  Drink a cup of the tea and pour the rest into the bath or into a bowl that you can use in the shower to pour over yourself.

7. Go to bed that night with a small black tourmaline crystal under your pillow.  Hold it as you prepare to sleep, and breath in your intention to cleanse your auric field and dreaming body while you sleep.  You can also create a pouch with hyssop and black tourmaline combined.  Listen to the stone and the plant spirits to learn more specifically about the medicine they are offering you, engaging with their subtle communication through meditation and perhaps in your dreams.

Perform all or just part of this ritual, as feels best for you, remembering that magic is for infusing everyday life with clarity and intention, as much as it is for cultivating ecstatic and transforming experiences on a larger scale.

With love and enchantment,

the eleventh house

-This blog was written by Melusina Gomez.  You can find out more about her work and healing practices at www.metzmecatl.com 

Resilience, Harvest, and The Feminine Fire

It’s September, the month of harvest and home, of returning to the rhythm of work or school, after the excursions of summer, and of preparing the hearth and the family for Winter months.  This year, all of that may look different than in previous seasons.  Work and school may be online, at least in part.  Northern California is still tense, with wildfires that came early and burn on, creating a lot of devastation, and the dark smoke that comes and goes in our skies.  Many hearts are heavy with loss of home, of sacred forests, or even of loved ones, as tragedies unfold.  It becomes more and more clear that a sense of normalcy is not exactly around the corner. 

How do we find our resilience when facing this uncomfortable time?  Perhaps seeing danger and loss around us can also activate a sense of gratitude for the security and connections that we do have, in the midst of so much uncertainty.  Now is a good time to give attention to home and hearth, to tending whatever sanctuary we are afforded.  

Grayish days spent inside, when the air was not healthy enough for outings, may have stirred inklings of what cold or rainy weather days, during shelter in place, will feel like.  For anyone pondering the potentially difficult dynamic of one’s household when stuck indoors together, or looking for a way to make home life feel more nurturing, warm, and harmonious, whether you live alone or with others, now may be a good time to work with the magic of the feminine fire.

Fire, in its feminine aspect, is not about destruction, but that which transforms the element of earth into nourishment and medicine.  It is that which warms, protects, and creates the hearth for a home or community.  It can also be the transformative force of healing, of love, and of creativity, embodied in many goddesses and sacred rites.  

Of course, even to consider working with fire to create harmony may feel counterintuitive during wildfire season, with its threat of annihilation to our beloved wild places and homes.  However, to connect with the Divine Feminine forces, in fire or otherwise, one needs to disrupt ideas of the all good or all bad polarity that has been ingrained within us from Christianity’s influence, and to embrace the older worldview of duality.  That is to say, we may need to appreciate the darkness in light and light in darkness that is the nature of the Goddess, as both mother creator and destroyer, complete.

Looking out the window this week and witnessing the surreal orange light and daytime darkness, created by the heavy smoke drifting above the fog belt, can actually help in this regard.  The sight of this odd light can act as a visual reminder of the sanctity of earth’s cycles, even when they are hard to endure.  The sky is strange and beautiful, even magical, in the wake of the fire’s destruction.  The light that normally counts the days and seasons for us is held in an in between state, like suspended twilight.  And twilight is a time when the veils are thin, and subtle, elemental magic is magnified.

This waiting time, when our normal lives remain disrupted, can also be a kind of twilight, and similarly fertile.  Unable to move forward with the usual pace, hardships will certainly be presented, but so may be gifts, like the quality of time and attention given to loved ones, to neglected soul needs, and to creative longings.  Perhaps this is a good time to bring enchantment back into daily life as well, infusing the mundane actions of caring for home, relationships, work, and nourishment with magic and intention.  This month’s theme is invoking the feminine fire of nourishment, healing, harmony, and creativity into the rituals of everyday life.  

In the tradition of Indigenous Mexico, there are four fires.  When a fire is lit, any one of them may arrive, unless they are specifically called.  The one we see around us, that expands quickly and destroys relentlessly is the young fire.  One of the ways to balance its force is to temper it by invoking the feminine fire instead.  The specific name for the feminine fire, in Nahuatl, is Chantico, though perhaps there are many names by which you can know her.  This is the fire that can be called into a cooking flame, a candle for a ceremony, or a woodstove or fireplace, to transform the everyday needs and gatherings of the home into a spell for increasing health, harmony, nurturing and love.  

The process is simple.  It begins with an offering of your breath and intention four times, giving the best energy of your dreams, the best energy of your emotions, the best energy of your thoughts, and the best energy of your actions.  Then call her name and say “xihualhui” or “come” four times.  This is done just before lighting the flame, to ensure that the fire that arrives is the one aligned with your intention.  Once the feminine fire is present, your intention can be articulated and directed as you work with it.  This simple practice can change the essence of the warmth, food, and interaction created with the fire used in your home in a positive way, amplifying health and harmony.  May it be an easy way to empower that which you are harvesting and preparing to carry you into the Fall and Winter months, and may the fires in your life be safe and nourishing ones.

And what are you harvesting?  On the 22nd of the month it will be the Fall Equinox, the pagan holiday of Mabon, when it’s appropriate to acknowledge the gifts of your personal harvest, to give thanks, and to seek nourishment and blessing for the coming seasons.  We invite you to draw an oracle card, or engage the form of divination and reflection you love best, to ask the questions:  What is your personal harvest from these strange months of Summer?  And, what do you need in order to prepare for the shift into Fall?

Please feel free to share your insights and reflections below.  Stay safe and nourished, both physically and mentally.  For those who have faced this danger personally, our hearts reach out to you.

With love,

the eleventh house

-This blog was written by Melusina Gomez.  You can find out more about her work and healing practices at www.metzmecatl.com

Plant & Crystal Magic 1: Chamomile & Citrine

As we continue to balance on the frayed seams of a changing planet, it is easy to become overwhelmed by the fear and stress cycling rapidly through the collective. According to the ancient tradition of Indigenous Mexico, the earth has a language to express imbalance in our relationship to her, and this expression manifests in three primary ways: health issues (mainly through virus and bacteria), contractions in abundance, and natural disaster. And here we are, in the midst of a pandemic, and in economic uncertainty, with wildfires burning all around us, here in Northern California, a lightening storm having literally descended in a heat wave, during the dry season.

Let’s take a breath. (Indoors probably, since the air quality is currently compromised) We are going to have to adapt, both within our nervous systems, and within our relationship to the earth.

Whether the most immediate concern is health, separation from loved ones, rebuilding work and income, or potential evacuations and losses, we are likely to be in survival mode, an extended fight or flight state of mind. Any one of these areas of threat to survival and well being can produce tremendous stress and overwhelm. When fears from many aspects of life collide, it is all too easy to panic and act without clear thinking and engaged intuition, or to shut down, without taking action at all.

However, as we work through the challenges of this time, bit by bit, with one foot in front of the other, we can call on our plant and mineral allies to help us release and begin again. Excessive emotions, which may be building up, can prevent our clarity and access to inner guidance, block our ability to manifest, and even make us emotionally or physically ill. For anyone feeling anxious, numb, or stuck, this month’s suggestion is to work with the golden light medicine of chamomile and natural citrine.

Chamomile

Though most know it mainly as a calming tea, chamomile is a subtle and powerful healing herb, with many applications, from pain relief and digestive aid to brightening a dark mood and changing how one dreams. With bright, sun like flowers, and a sweet, soothing scent, chamomile is a nurturing and uplifting flower.

Chamomile is one of the primary herbs used or healing in the folk tradition of Curanderismo. It is a flower with an affinity for trauma, for helping one to feel safe enough to release traumatic experiences, fear, shock, and post traumatic stress. It can aid in returning soul to body, after dissociation, and can restore a sense of vulnerability and trust, softening the walls around an overwhelmed and guarded emotional heart. Because of this restored lightness, it can even make one feel giddy or in an altered state, especially when breathing the aroma in steam, so be aware.

Chamomile is a well known soporific, and will assist in calming and bringing restful sleep. It can help in preventing nightmares, and is a good ally for children in stressful situations, or for anyone in need of feminine nurturing. It’s gentle nature and slightly sweet flavor make it accessible, allowing us to easily invite it in to do its powerful work.

Some ways to work with chamomile:

• Find fresh or recently dried flowers. If they don’t have the sweet scent, the medicine is no longer potent.

• Touch and smell the flowers with closed eyes. Ask them for their gifts, and for the help you specifically need. Listen to the thoughts, emotions, memories and insights that may come.

• Make an infusion in hot water to drink. Make sure to steep for 20 minutes. German Chamomile is most often used for tea.

• Infuse in water for an herbal bath or steam. (More on this process at the end, though there is much more to say about herbal baths and steaming.)

• Make an herbal infused oil or add essential oil of chamomile to your body oil or lotion. Roman Chamomile has the stronger scent for this purpose.

• Wear a small satchel of fresh or dried flowers on your body, tucked into clothing or as jewelry.

• Bring fresh or dried flowers to bed with you. Hold them and breath as you fall asleep, or place them in a cloth bundle under your pillow. This will allow the plant spirit to interact with you in your dreams, making relationship, and possibly bringing its subtle medicine and insight.

Citrine

Citrine is a stone of light, manifestation, grounding dreams in reality, inspired creativity, and physical and emotional stamina. Working with its energies is like working with the sun, lifting the mood and moving one towards a positive path of creating. In The Book of Stones, Naisha Ahsian states the following about its spiritual gifts:

“Natural Citrine is the great manifestor, allowing one to purify the manifestation channel and bring Divine energy into form through intention and action. It assists one in maintaining one’s direction when the going gets difficult, or when obstacles appear in one’s path.”

Natural Citrine is an important distinction to make, because not all citrine on the market is natural. It is more common to find the lemon colored, or translucent, heat treated citrine, and though it may have some similar influence on creativity and mood, the energy is far more diffuse. It is best to work with the darker orange, golden, and more opaque, unprocessed citrine, which comes from the smoky quartz family.

Natural Citrine is a perfect manifestation stone for troubled times. It can help us to heal our sense of powerlessness, and any feelings of being undeserving of abundance, while energizing our will. It can help to connect our upper energy centers, responsible for inspired ideas and spiritual vision, with our lower chakras, to ground us and strengthen our ability to create. While uplifting our spirits, citrine can help us to keep our efforts going during moments of uncertainty and discouragement. Its influence can also help us to adapt to adversity with new eyes and to take decisive action when necessary.

Citrine is also safe to use in water, and can be infused into drinking water, as well as held or worn on the body for crystal meditation, and to absorb the helpful energies. Remember that crystals generally need to be cleansed and charged before accessing their guidance and medicine. This can be done with water, salt, copal or sage smoke, sunlight or moonlight.

Furthermore, with minerals as with herbs, making a relationship is key. Minerals are the oldest of earth’s wisdom keepers and have a lot to give if approached with reverence. Hold them. Wear them. Pray or meditate with them. Ask for the help you need. You can even dream with them near your bed or under your pillow. This is how we form deep allyship.

Below is our suggestion for working with the light filled, magical properties of chamomile and citrine together.

Herbal and Crystal Healing Cleanse with Chamomile and Citrine:

1. Soak your citrine in water and a small amount of salt for 3 days. Set it under moonlight or sunlight, if you are in an area unaffected by smoke and ash. Pour out the water and rinse your stone.

2. Hold your citrine and ask for its help in the areas you most need. Be clear about your intention and blow it into the crystal.

3. Take your stone and place it in a ceramic or glass bowl, then fill the vessel with spring water or purified water.

4. Offer a song, a prayer, or something else that is sacred (like tears, for example). Then, ask the stone to infuse its medicine into the water.

5. Let it soak there and walk away.

6. Take your fresh or dried chamomile in your hands. Touch, smell, and notice the feelings, impressions, and memories that arise.

7. Make an offering, as above, and ask the flower for the healing and soothing you need.

8. Heat a large pot of water. Turn the flame off, once at a boil.

9. Add your chamomile to the water, without a strainer or bag, and let it infuse for 20 minutes.

10. Pour yourself a large cup of tea and add some of your citrine water into it.

11. Draw a hot bath or prepare a shower.

12. Warm the remaining chamomile infusion to a boil and then turn off. Take this, your citrine water and a towel to the bath.

13. In the bath or shower, breath in the steam gently, for as long as you can, with the towel covering your head and the pot or bowl.

14. Mix the citrine water with the chamomile infusion. Pour it into the bath, or use the bowl. Use a cup or gourd to pour the herbal water over your head and body repeatedly, flowers and all. (You can strain them later, so they won’t clog the drain or have something there to catch the plant material.) Release as needed, without holding onto the emotions. Allow them to express. Keep breathing deeply or nothing is able to move. Drink your tea slowly as you move through this personal ritual. Let yourself receive light, inspiration, soothing, and insight, as it comes. Rejuvenate and come home to yourself.

15. Afterwards, wrap yourself in something warm and cover your head. Treat yourself kindly. Strain the flowers from the bath or shower and return them to the earth, while repeating your intentions for healing and manifestation, asking her favor to complete the process.

May a gentle return to yourself bring clarity, and energy, to keep you going, as we all move forward.

From, the eleventh house

-This blog was written by Melusina Gomez. You can find out more about her work and healing practices at www.metzmecatl.com

Pan, Isolation, and Communitas

The Greek God Pan lingers in our consciousness, these strange summer days, as the root of the all too familiar words panic and pandemic. Language carries for us the codes of ancient cultures, just as myths and stories provide us with a map for understanding our human experiences, in a larger archetypal fashion.

Pan is the god of wild nature, as you may well know (or at least recall, vaguely, from high school). Half man and half goat, with a generally jovial disposition, and a love of music and sensual pleasures, he was a delight to the gods from the moment of his birth. However, his presence and appearance were considered far less comforting to humans, both in the ancient Greek culture and since. The wilds of nature, and the god himself, long ago came to be feared and demonized.

However, an interesting, and somewhat less known, nuance of his myth is Pan’s love of naps, and the terrible shout he gives when awoken or otherwise upset. When disturbed, he was said to unleash a horrible cry of anger that would conjure a sense of terror and anxiety in all those who heard it. Even unseen, just being near his terrain, in lonely, wild places, could cause a sudden feeling of unease and agitation, a “panic” with no discernible cause. Along with mirth, Pan is also a god of frenzy, fear, and madness.

Why bring this up, other than for pure intellectual and archetypal satisfaction? There is certainly a lot to be said about our current culture’s disowning of the wild, the death of Pan in the ancient myths, and his reawakening in this time of fear and of the earth’s response to our imbalanced relationship with her, but there is something else as well. Anxiety and despair expand in isolation, becoming evermore powerful in the lonely, wild landscape of disconnection. We are stronger in facing the unknown of our times, and the underworld of fear, when we are in community.

Still, how can we maintain community when we are distancing ourselves for our safety, and the safety of our loved ones? It’s easy to sink into our own shadows, to check out, and to quietly suffer alone. There is no shame in that response to this unprecedented situation, but, as time goes on, without a clear sense of how long we will need to adapt our way of living, it is necessary to find the ways in which we can be, and are, a community. It is time to counter fear and isolation with communitas.

Communitas is the bond, or intimacy, that is developed between people in a shared experience. It especially refers to the shared experience of liminal space, that subtle territory between dreaming and waking, where we meet with our unconscious minds, our deeper intuitive and soul aspects, and where we connect as a collective. The word is often used in a ritual context, describing the process of ceremony or rites of passage, though we can also find communitas in the dark of a theatre, when we are moved by the journey of a performance or story, and certainly in the dark of a shared time of uncertainty and change.

And, maybe, where we are now is a rite of passage too, the twilight at the cusp of a great change of ages. Or, maybe, it’s a time of meeting our underworlds, feeling alone with fear, anger, regret, or loss, as we sit with ourselves in limbo. Either way, or perhaps in both ways at once, we are together in the unknown wilds of its unfolding. We may have temporarily lost the ability to gather in the circle, but we are finding new ways to do so as well. May the start of this blog, for our extended community, be one more place to become stronger in communitas than we feel when we are isolated. Let it be a place to share and make offerings of care and inspiration.

In that spirit, we invite you to drop in and pull a card today, from whatever deck you have and love, or to access your intuitive guidance in some other form. We miss you. We ask this question: What will nurture all of our hearts and give us the resilience we need during these times of change?

Please share the messages that come through you, and your sacred instruments, below.

And check back on August 22nd, for part two of this month’s theme, which will emphasize self care tips, working with chamomile and citrine.

With love, divine light, and communitas,

from the eleventh house

-This blog was written by Melusina Gomez. You can find out more about her work and healing practice at www.metzmecatl.com