May, Beltane, and the Season of Fertility

It’s May, the season of Beltane, of Mother’s Day, and of flowers.  This is the time of year when the earth is most fertile, and most active.  Flowers are in bloom.  Seeds are sprouting and plants are growing.  The earth has had it’s first explosion of green life, and the days are getting warmer.  What does it really mean, for dreamers, spiritualists, and magical practitioners?  It means that this is a very potent time for magical acts and the fulfillment of wishes, hopes, and intentions.  This is the season of fertility on all levels.  What were you dreaming this Winter?  Now is the time to bring it forth into action.  The tangible steps you take to create, and the rituals you perform, will be empowered by the agreement of the earth forces, eager to create with you.  This moment is the most that they will be with us all year.

In the ancient Mexican tradition, we call this aspect of the earth Tlazohtlateotl, from the root word Tlazohtla, which means ‘precious essence’.  It is the creative aspect of the earth, whose blessing we need in order to create, that which makes all things blossom, from flowers to miracles of healing and manifestation.  One of the gifts of of understanding, coming from ancient cultures across the world is the law of reciprocity, the principle that if you want to ask for a favor from the forces of life, you must also give something.  The offering you make should come first, along with the time spent in reflection to be very clear about the essence of what you’re desire.  When this is done with reverence, the act of creating with the earth can be a joyful exchange, a time of celebration, sensual delight, and beauty, as in the customs of Beltane, which offer everything from flowers and dance to sexual coupling, increasing and honoring the fecundity of Mother Earth.  In my tradition, as within others, we have the sense that what we have to offer is what belongs to us on the most basic level, our blood, sweat, tears, and breath.  These are sacred elements within us, and they are what we have to give of ourselves.  When we give them with intention, it is a powerful offering, appropriate for requesting the blessing of Tlazohtlateotl for our intended creations.

Mothers, for example, give all of these offerings and more, in the process of bringing a new life into creation.  It makes perfect ritual sense that we celebrate Mother’s in May, and offer flowers in remembrance of the act of fertility, sacrifice, and earth magic that brought us into this world.  Even mothers who did not physically give birth are likely to have made most of these offerings, in the process of protecting, nurturing, and guiding their adopted children.  The earth too is the sacred Mother of us all.  In Beltane customs, devotion and resonance with her mysteries are joyfully expressed, and in the process fertility is increased, whether that’s to be directed towards conception or towards the creation of other projects and magical workings.

The Celtic holiday Beltane is celebrated May 1st, and on the evening before, most often with the lighting of special bonfires, which individuals or couples jump in order to purify the past and revitalize themselves or the pledge between them, bringing new fertility.  In the old days, this was a literal cleansing of the illness and parasites that could accumulate in Winter, and even farm animals were driven through the smoke to protect them from disease.  The root of the word Beltane is ‘Bel,’ in reference to the Celtic God, whose name means bright one and signifies a special fire.  The fire of this ritual was called ‘Tein-eigen’ or ‘the need fire.’  These fires were once followed by the Heiros Gamos, or Sacred Marriage, the union of earth and sky that was played out by sexual coupling in forest and field, through the long celebratory night.  In the morning, women collected dew to wash their faces, and households brought home Hawthorne flowers, strongly associated with the fairies, and only gathered this time of year, to decorate their homes and make crowns or basket bouquets.  Later came the tradition of the Maypole, which enacts this union in a more measured manner.   A long stick, ideally Birch, is planted in the ground to represent the phallus and the God principle, and a ring of flowers is placed on top to honor the Goddess.  Strings are tied to the top and then held by the community as they dance a weaving spiral dance, entwining green ribbons for fertility and abundance, red for strength and vitality, and white for purification, though other colors may be used.  A small (well-contained) fire or a broom placed on the ground may be jumped as an act of leaving one mode of life for another, particularly for couples making a commitment.  These expressions of Spring’s new potential are ecstatic and still take place in many Pagan communities and families, in one form or another.  However, there are many ways to engage this fertility and creation magic throughout the month of May. The following is one simple suggestion:

Flower planting spell

• Begin with a little self inquiry and research.  Look to find the lore of flowers in herbal grimoires, or even to The Language of Flowers, to find the flower allies that will most align with your intention.  All flowers are a symbol of manifestation in beauty, but there are many nuances.  Though I love roses, the tradition of Nahualismo has taught me not to use these for planting intentions, only because they have thorns which could possibly mean that the manifestations come with complications.  (However roses are still powerful healing allies!)

• Once you have chosen what you would like to plant and which flower matches your intent and will grow in your home climate, save a compostable egg container or purchase a compostable pot for starter plants. 

• Bring the following materials together:  the container that can go directly in the ground or a planter, soil, water, seeds, flowers for offering, incense to burn

• Light your incense or sage, and use the smoke to cleanse yourself and your materials.  Enjoy the scent.

• Make 4 offering breaths to begin, offering the best energy of your dreams, the best energy of your thoughts, the best energy of your emotions, and the best energy of your actions.  Then call to Tlazohtlateotl, or the earth fertility Goddess of your choosing, introducing yourself to this force respectfully and with intention.

• Touch the soil with your bare hands.  Ask or pray for fecundity in your life and for your spell to manifest in the most nourished way, in alignment with your highest destiny.  Add flower petals, water, and perhaps your own personal offering to the soil, as described above.

• Into this charged soil, plant your seeds, each with an intention. Blow an intention into each seed. If it helps you to focus your energy, you can also write your overriding magical intention on a slip of paper and tuck it into the soil.

• Create a chant or song to raise and focus the energy.  Perhaps:  “Soil and flowers live and grow, bless the intentions that I sow.”  (I just made that up, but you get the idea.)

• Add water gently.

• For one night, cover your seeds with a special cloth, so they can dream for you.

• Remove the cloth the following day. Be sure to nurture your plant as it germinates and begins to grow. When it’s large enough, give it a permanent home by transferring the compostable pot or egg carton (after removing the bottom circle) to the earth, or to a pot or planter box.  Care for and believe in your manifestations.

Before you begin this process, make sure to think about what longings, hopes, dreams, and needs you carried with you throughout the Winter.  What have you already begun to sow? If it helps, engage in an act of divination, or pull a card from your favorite oracle deck, and ask:  What am I now ready to manifest that I have longed for in Seasons past? 

May all your magic be fertile.

In the fullness of flowers,

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 9: Golden Poppy & Rainbow Fluorite

The wildflowers are in perfect bloom all over our county.  It’s an exciting time of year for herbalists and nature lovers.  It’s also an intense moment in time, socially speaking.  With all the news of violence and unrest permeating the news, it is easy to begin to feel agitated and overwhelmed, without consciously knowing the source.  Whatever your level of engagement with the political and social realities of our time, we are an interconnected whole, and pervasive violence has an affect on all of our nervous systems.  In light of that, it can be helpful to connect with the calming earth medicine that surround us.  This month, we will explore the calming and balancing magic of California Golden Poppy and Rainbow Fluorite.

Golden Poppy

Many herbalists and folk medicine makers like to say that the medicine you most need has a way of growing right near you.  Conversely, paying attention to what grows right near your home may attune you to suggestions from our Mother Earth for living in better health and balance.  For those of you who live here in the Bay Area, and especially in West Marin, it is hard to miss the bright explosion of orange poppies.  These are Eschscholzia Californica, or Golden Poppy, the gentle cousins of the more infamous opium poppy, Papaver Somniferum. 

Golden Poppies are annuals that can be found wild and easily encouraged to grow in home gardens by sprinkling seeds on the ground in Fall.  Without much attention, after Winter rains, they will burst forth in Springtime, and continue to flower until the Summer sun becomes too hot for them.  They are native to our area, and the official California state flower.  It is illegal to pick them in the wild or on other people’s property without permission.  Most people think this is because they are the state flower, but the law against harvesting actually can be applied to any flower or plant.  Be aware of it, because getting caught could mean a $1000, and even possible jail time.  It seems outrageous, but it’s something to keep in mind.  Plant preservation is listed as a reason.  State forests require a permit for foraging.  National forests allow for small amounts of harvesting for edibles.  Wilderness and private property is prohibited.  Roadside harvesting is never a good idea, as these plants have absorbed significant pollution.

Golden Poppies have many medicinal applications.  They are cooling, have a mildly sweet and bitter taste, and act in a manner that is nervine, sedative, hypnotic, analgesic, soporific, anti-spasmodic, and anodyne.  Their primary uses are calming the nervous system, relaxing the skeletal-muscular system, inducing restful sleep without difficulty waking the following morning, reducing stress and anxiety, and acting as a mild sedative, gentle enough for children who struggle with sleeplessness or hyperactivity.  They can also help with pain, but not as dramatically as the Papaver Somniferum species, from which many of our pain medications are made or replicated.  Golden Poppies will also not get you high or create problems with addiction, though the body can develop a similar tolerance over time that requires increasing dosage or taking a break, when used long term.  For most people, they are a gentle aid for stress, insomnia, and anxiety, or nervous agitation.  Other possible uses include help with depression, especially when combined with other herbs, bladder and liver problems, bed wetting in children, and nerve pain.  The Chumash used Golden Poppy pods as a poultice to stop breast milk production, and as a root decoction for toothache or flower infusion to kill lice.  Note:  the root seems to act differently than the flowers and leaves, and may contain natural latex, so it is wise to use with caution, especially if allergies to latex are present.  To get the full nervine effect, consider combining with Valerian or Passionflower.  A higher dose will also yield more of the relaxing, and sleep inducing effects.  A lower dose will bring out the anxiolytic effects more, meaning it will reduce anxiety.

There are some contraindications to be aware of with Golden Poppy.  Because it can slow down the central nervous system it is not a good idea to combine it with anesthesia and medications, especially during or after surgery.  It’s wise to stop using this herb two weeks before a surgery.  Because it can induce sleep and relaxation, it is best not to take before driving or operating machinery, especially if you are sensitive to its effects.  Poppy can absorb heavy metals, so be careful to harvest it in a clean place, and not too close to a road.  Pregnancy and breastfeeding are also a question, as with many herbs, and since it may have an effect on breast milk, it is probably best avoided at this time.

In general, however, Golden Poppy is a gentle and helpful flower for anyone who is overwhelmed with stress, anxious, agitated, or sleeping poorly.  Most sources consider it safe to take as a tincture in alcohol or glycerin, or as a tea, and it is a common ingredient in tinctures for sleep and stress reduction.  As a tea, it can be bitter, but during the Spring season the flowers have a more mildly sweet flavor, and with a little honey, lavender, or mint, it can be very pleasant.  Later in the Summer is when the bitterness comes on a bit more strong.

Ways of working with Golden Poppy:

•  Make a tea by boiling water and removing from heat, then adding the flowers and letting them infuse for 20 minutes, covered.  This is best with fresh flowers.  Leaves and stems are also fine.  Poppies can be dried, but they disintegrate in light and need to be stored in a dark glass container.  Drinking the tea 3 times a day can have a good medicinal effect.

•  Your infusion can also be used in an herbal bath to calm the nervous system and help with restful sleep.

•  Make a tincture in 50% alcohol.  For fresh herbs the ratio is 1:2, flower to alcohol, for dried it is 1:5.  Take 30-60 drops 4 times a day for anxiety or other issues.

•  For children or those avoiding alcohol, the fresh flower, leaf and stem can be made into a glycerite.  The ratio is 1:2, herb to 50% glycerin.

Rainbow Fluorite

The term fluorescence comes from the calcium fluoride crystal known as Fluorite.  When held in ultra violet light, Fluorite glows.  I hear that in some cases, this effect is activated by the warmth of your hand, but I haven’t seen that yet.  The first time I saw Rainbow Fluorite, it was in a beam of light in a dimly lit room.  It literally shimmered with all the colors of the rainbow, a light prism in solid form.  I felt like I was in a dream or had stepped into the Faerie realm, but it was there for anyone to see.  I’m not sure if there is a more clear way for a stone to signal that it is a beacon for magic and the uplifting of mind, heart, and soul.  Even in regular daylight, when Rainbow Fluorite presents itself in bands of primarily green and purple color, the sight of it is grounding and enchanting at once. 

Fluorite, in general, has a calming, clearing, and protective nature that can aid in mental and emotional clarity.  My three year old son, after a moment of frustration or tantrum, will go find a particular green Fluorite stone and put it on his navel to take all of the bad thoughts and feelings out.  Children have an innate wisdom, and it’s good to pay attention to their instincts.  For anyone dealing with stress, mental overwhelm, or negative intrusions to the psyche, Rainbow Fluorite is an excellent ally.  Rainbow Fluorite brings deep psychic cleansing to one’s energy centers, uplifting the soul and clearing the mind of confusion.  It can transmute negative energies into positive ones, and enhance psychic ability and clear decision making.  When our minds and hearts are mired in worry, our intuition can become blocked, perpetuating a cycle of confusion, poor decision making, and negative outcomes, with the stress and vulnerability to negative influence that follows.  Rainbow Fluorite shines its rainbow light on this inner storm, rebalancing all the energy centers, repairing the auric field, removing negative attachments, and connecting mind to heart to soul.  It is at once grounding and uplifting, and can help people who are energetically sensitive or who have been through emotional and psychic abuse to think and feel like themselves again, shedding the lingering effects of psychic attacks.  Rainbow Fluorite is the most powerful of the Fluorite stones for auric cleansing and repair.  Because of this action, it will also need regular cleansing in water, and ideally also in sunlight or moonlight.

Nicknamed The Genius Stone, Rainbow Fluorite can increase creativity, mental clarity, psychic perception, and confidence.   It is a perfect stone for inner Spring cleaning, especially for those who feel stuck in confusion and negativity, drifting without clear direction in life, or who are recovering from various forms of violence.  It will help to order and rebalance the discordant energies within, while removing what does not belong.  It can aid in harmonizing the use of both hemispheres of the brain, improving our capacity to dream, use logic to its best effect, and with both aspects to manifest our true purpose and and path with more harmony and less anxiety.  Rainbow Fluorite will encourage you to confidently choose what you will allow entrance into your inner world and help you to see with more clarity in to the brightness of possibility.

Suggestion for working with Golden Poppy and Rainbow Fluorite together:

1.    Prepare an infusion of Golden Poppy.  Perhaps consider adding other Spring flowers that can add to the calming, cleansing effect, like Dandelion and Lavender, for example.  (make sure they are appropriate for consuming and not sprayed)  My son and I call this collection of available wildflowers “Pocket Full of Flowers Tea”

2.    Pour a large cup to drink, adding the tincture form if needed, and pour the rest into a ritual bath before bed.

3.    Bring your Rainbow Fluorite into the bath and place it on your throat.  Allow it to clear all past abuses, stress and negative influences, rebalancing your center of power and self esteem.  Bring it to your heart to restore balance and emotional calm.  When you drain the water, actively see or intend that all the energies released go with it.

4.    Plant flowers in your dreams, by visualizing Spring wildflowers as you drift off. Sleep well.

May you move through this season with ease.

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

April Showers Bring May Flowers

Spring is in full bloom and it’s hard not to notice the abundance of flowers emerging.  I have been thinking about the phrase “April showers bring May flowers,” and decided to look up its origin.  The phrase seems to originate from a poem by Matilda Blind in the 1800s.  It’s worth sharing, so here it is below:

April Rain

The April rain, the April rain 

Comes slanting down in fitful showers,

Then from the furrow shoots the grain,

And banks are fledged with nestling flowers; 

And in grey shaw and woodland bowers

The cuckoo through the April rain

Calls once again.

The April sun, the April sun,

Glints through the rain in fitful splendour,

And in grey shaw and woodland dun

The little leaves spring forth and tender

Their infant hands, yet weak and slender,

For warmth towards the April sun,

One after one.

And between shower and shine hath birth

The rainbow’s evanescent glory;

Heaven’s light that breaks on mists of earth!

Frail symbol of our human story,

It flowers through showers where, looming hoary

The rain-clouds flash with April mirth,

Like life on earth.

by Matilda Blind (1841-1896)

Do we ‘flower through showers,’ our rainbow-like spiritual light shining more visibly after the trials we face have cleansed us and brought us down to our essence?  Are we like Persephone, more powerful and able to move with grace between the realms, only after we have been touched by trauma or at least by the loss of our naiveté?   If we are, then after this period of collective trauma, as we move forward with vaccinations and emergence in to public spaces (hopefully soon), we will likely not be exactly as we were.  It has been a full year now of varying degrees of isolation, fear, loss, and intensity, of looking within, as the outward life contracted, and of rapidly adapting to new and changing circumstances.  As we watch the flowers of Spring bloom, we might also ask what is new within ourselves.  What have we seen in ourselves, during this time of underworld?  What new aspects have grown within us?  What has changed?

In the Nahualismo tradition, rain is not the symbol of strife, but of healing and renewal, as in many cultures.  This is logical, as rain is the element that washes the earth and allows for things to grow in beauty.  Of course, that washing can be destructive in its process of cleansing and nurturing new fertility.  Flowers are our image of enlightenment, or something close to what that word denotes.  They represent both what we create in harmony with the consent of the earth, and the complete system of recreating ourselves by changing the way we dream, healing our ancestral influences, balancing our emotions, recovering our discipline to do what seems impossible, and reaching down to heal the underworlds of our unconscious and up to co-create, with the heavens, our highest possibility.  Now is a good time to consider what the circumstances of this year have created in us.  As we begin to walk forward, how are we different within ourselves and with each other?  There may be more time to wait, and there may be more healing to do, but ultimately we will be moving forward soon.  Since we can’t go back to what we were exactly, and will not likely feel as invulnerable, how can we go forward as something more?

In the meantime, it is Spring and the flowers are blooming.  The world around us is alive with new possibility and expansion, and we are not separate from it.  In Care of the Soul, Thomas Moore talks about animus mundi, the important cosmovision that holds all the elements in our world as alive with soul.  He writes of the need to feed our own souls with this sense of interconnection and with beauty.  He says, “We assume that our loneliness has to do with other people, but it also comes from our estrangement from a world that we have depersonalized by our philosophies.” (p. 271)  He is referring to our way of prizing progress and usefulness above all things, thinking of the body as a machine and our modern world as a marvel of thought, technology, and engineering, rather than a mystery with a soul that can teach us, feed us, and reflect to us our deepest nature.  The soul longs for beauty, meaning, and connection. 

Right now the flowers are singing these songs to anyone who will listen.  Our suggestion this month is to step outside.  Take it in.  Feed your soul with beauty and expansion.  And, listen to what they might have to say to you.  Ask them what inside you is ready to flower.  Ask them what new possibility is now able to emerge?  Ask them to help to heal your heart where it feels darkest and most tender.  Stretch what feels contracted, and receive it.

Thomas more says:  “The word passion means basically ‘to be affected,’ and passion is the essential energy of the soul.  The poet Rilke describes this passive power in the imagery of the flower’s structure, when he calls it a ‘muscle of infinite reception.’  We don’t often think of the capacity to be affected as strength and as the work of a powerful muscle, and yet for the soul, as for the flower, this is its toughest work and its main role in our lives.”  (p. 280)

This month, when you draw a card from your favorite oracle deck, or turn to your best mode of sacred divining, ask how you have been affected by this uncanny, often difficult, possibly traumatic year?  What needs tending now?  And conversely, what might be possible that wasn’t before?  We won’t be able to just return to what we were, as if nothing had happened, but what can we find if we ask what we can be now?

May you flower, in all the ways you most need.

-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 8: Vervain & Lapis Lazuli

Happy Spring Equinox, and Astrological New Year!  In considering what is appropriate to do, ritually speaking, at distinct times of year, or as the daily influences of the cosmos bring energies that support or oppose our purposes, we enter the realm of electional magic.  This is the art of aligning one’s purpose and spiritual workings with the movement of the cosmos.  It is a strong basis for the practices of Nahualismo, for Astrology predictions, for many ancient magical traditions, and even for the gardening and use of magical plants.  This month’s blog is about aligning with the stars, even as we ground and direct that magic with our plant and crystal allies.

Vervain

Spring is the time to plant what we want to flower in Summer and beyond.  And, as you are planting this Spring, you might consider growing Vervain, a powerful herb, with a long history of sorcery and multiple planetary associations.  Vervain has two primary forms.  The first is Verbena Officinalis, an herbaceous, woody perennial with small flowers that may be blue, purple, pink or white, originating from Europe, from which most of the lore about Verbena comes.  The second is Verbena Hastata, or Blue Vervain, a native to North America, self-seeding perennial, with bright blue flowers that grow in long-lasting spikes on a reddish plant base.  This plant, which is also known as False Vervain, Swamp Vervain or Wild Hyssop, shares many of the attributes of its European relative.  Both plants produce hearty flowers that require little care, and bring beauty and magic to the home garden, though neither has a strong fragrance.  Bees and butterflies love it too.

Vervain has been so prized in magical heritage that it has many folk names, including Herba Sacra, Enchanter’s Plant, Herb of Enchantment, Holy Herb, and Van Van.  It has been traditionallty used by many varieties of sorcerers and magicians for sacred rites, divination, protection, banishment, purification, charging magical tools, lucid dreaming, and healing.  Its amazing versatility is at the root of its prized position in magical herbalism.  The following is a short list of specific ways in which this sacred flower has been utilized by knowledgeable practitioners and folk medicine makers:

•  As a folk remedy for kidney stones.  Its name may have come from the Celtic word “ferfaen,” which means to drive away stones

• As a tonic tea for nerves, stress, menstrual discomfort related to stress, insomnia, gallbladder and liver issues, and general lack of joy or hopefulness in life (This is because of its iridoid components, precursors of alkaloids in the body, in particular the verbenalin in its flowers and leaves that are nervine, tonic, sedating and neuroprotective, however drink the tea in small amounts to avoid nausea, and don’t ever consume in you are pregnant.  The tea is also said to ward off vampires!  That might sound funny, but perhaps it is also a metaphor for the more energetic variety as well.)

• In the initiation rites of daughters in the Druidic tradition

• As an herb bundle dipped in water to asperge the ritual area in Hellenistic rituals

• As a fresh herb charm, bruised and worn around the neck for protection against harmful magic cast against you, or for uncanny help in escaping a bad situation  (It is also said to protect against headaches and snakebites in this manner)

• Infused into water for the making of Lustral water (blessed or holy water), which can be sprinkled on an altar, in a home, on food, or on a person for clearing or in exorcism rituals.

• Burned as an incense or sprinkled on an altar as an offering, or around the home for protection from intrusive energies

• As a crown to wear for energetic protection when invoking spirits

• As a wash to rid a home or person of negative energies (The fresh squeezed juice can be rubbed on the body directly for most powerful effect, but an infusion into Brandy or Vodka for a floor wash or into water for a bath also works well.)

• As a love spell ingredient to rekindle a dying love, woven into bridal bouquets or wreaths to promote lasting love, or conversely as a 7 year lust suppressant for a when one consumes the fresh juice on the dark moon (something once done by priests and mystics in preparation for certain rites.

• As an abundance spell ingredient or attractant for wealth when the leaves are burnt or sprinkled

• As a folk protection from lightening, when planted, placed or sprinkled around one’s home or property

• As a salt infusion, adding its properties and flavors to food, though the flowers should be strained out of the salt after a few days and before consuming

• As a less toxic, but effective, ingredient in flying ointment, and some other very archaic recipes that it’s probably not responsible to describe here.

• As a tincture for vivid or lucid dreaming, just place a dab of this on the back of your hands and rub together before bed  (Like clary sage, it gives the strong dreaming effects without the next day tiredness that mugwort can cause in some people, however drinking an infusion or the fresh plant juice is said to produce a sleep without dreams or intrusion from negative entities, as a remedy for nightmares and terrors.)

• As a charm hung over the bed for youthfulness or recovery from illness

• As a divination tool, held in the hand discreetly when touching one who is ill and asking how they feel  (It is said that if they are hopeful, they will live, and if not, it may be a different outcome.)

• As a magical remedy, or charm, to help one not feel dragged down by life circumstances (With so many sorcery possibilities, I can see why!)

Vervain will flower in midsummer and produces flowers that last long.  It is said that Vervain is strongest magically when gathered after sunset on the night of the dark moon, or before dawn on the first day of the new moon.  Both leaves and flowers can be used, though leaves should be harvested before the flowers bloom.  Its properties are strongest when fresh, though the dried herb also works for most purposes.  When harvesting, remember that this is a sacred herb with a long magical history.  Leave an offering for the plant spirit, and ask its permission before taking.  The best practice is to let the plant know the need you have and ask which flowers and leaves will volunteer to be harvested for it.  That gives the plant time to move its needed resources and apply the specific magic to the area it offers you. Vervain will flower in later summer and produces flowers that last long.  It is said that Vervain is strongest magically when gathered after sunset or before dawn on the night of the dark moon.  Both leaves and flowers can be used, though leaves should be harvested before the flowers bloom.  Its properties are strongest when fresh, though the dried herb also works for most purposes.  When harvesting, remember that this is a sacred herb with a long magical history.  Leave an offering for the plant spirit, and ask its permission before taking.  The best practice is to let the plant know the need you have and ask which flowers and leaves will volunteer to be harvested for it.  That gives the plant time to move its needed resources and apply the specific magic to the area it offers you.  A traditional offering for Vervain is honey, honeycombs, or a fairie offering, such as milk and honey, though you can also offer water, breath with intention, or ask the plant what it would like in return.

Planetary Alignments for Vervain’s Properties:

•  Venus: skin ailments, love magic, suppress sexual desire during dark moon, purification rituals involving water such as baths, Lustral water, asperging, and floor washes

•  Mars:  stanching the blood when healing wounds, fortifying weapons, especially instruments made of iron, and empowering ritual tools, theft protection, lightening protection, spiritual protection, including from sorcerers and demons, home cleansing, banishing bad dreams, exorcisms

•  Jupiter:  Increase of good luck, intuition, creativity, miraculous intervention, healing and expansion of abundance 

•  Mercury:  the acquisition of magical skills, the increase of luck and creating one’s own luck, which also relates to the empowerment of a magician’s tools for energetic projection

•  Sun:  the rituals of midsummer, Sirius-the dog star and the dog days of summer, fire purifications and fire rituals, particularly when smeared on the body (as Zoroastrian Priests did when approaching their altars for fire worship.)

Lapis Lazuli

When one gazes into the deep blue of Lapis Lazuli, with its flecks of golden or white light, it is hard not to think of the night sky and the vastness of the cosmos.  Lapis Lazuli is a Latin word, which means blue stone, though it is not the first name given to this mineral, as it was once classified as a sapphire.  There is a regality to Lapis Lazuli that comes from its history as a prized mystic tool and sacred, or royal, adornment in many ancient cultures, including Egypt, Sumer, China, Afghanistan, India, Peru, Atlantis, Greece, and Rome.  Michelangelo ground it to a pigment powder to make the blue of the heavens in his famous work in the Sistine Chapel.  Ancient Egyptians used the pigment for a striking eye shadow, and embedded it as jewels in adornments, scarabs, and burial ornaments.  Even Catherine the Great decorated a palace room in Lapis Lazuli, including the walls, doors, mirror frames and fireplace.  Wearing this stone, even in modern times, can encourage one to stretch into the full regality of what we can embody.

I think the reason for this has to do with its relationship with knowledge, both inner self knowing and recovering the forgotten sacred knowledge of ancient civilizations.  Called The Stone of Wisdom, Lapis Lazuli is a strong activation stone for psychic ability and communion with the Akashic realm.  It can catalyze our higher and more subtle awareness, activating the Sixth Chakra, or third eye, the area of psychic perceptions.  Not only does it help in the ability to see on these levels, but it can initiate the process of retrieving knowledge from past lifetimes, both personal and collective.  The stone also has a relationship with truth, not only how we perceive it, but how we speak it, and can increase one’s personal confidence, empowerment, clarity, and the ability to speak what one truly perceives and believes. 

Because it invites us to see and understand our full history, our beliefs, and our sense of truth, it enables us to look at our lives in a larger scope, seeing the gifts, potential, limitations, and opportunities of being in human embodiment.  It can help us to feel our lineage, from what is present to past cultures of knowledge, to our origin with the stars.  Being able to hold this longer perspective and sense of interconnection brings richness and dignity to our short and often humble lives.  This can help us in bringing our own cycles of life and death into consciousness, assimilating the lessons and growth of our journeys, while retrieving lost gifts, and in dispelling fear of the unknown. 

In addition to the higher consciousness activation and sense of dignity Lapis Lazuli brings, it is also a calming stone that can have an effect on emotional conditions like depression, insomnia, or built up frustrations.  It encourages us to stand in the essence of soul and the legacy of history, and gives us courage to choose our paths with awareness, as opposed to our habitual unconscious patterns of self-sabotage and limitation.  It can help in seeing, honoring and acting from our more divine nature.  As we step into this space of power, Lapis Lazuli can also act as a protection against psychic attack, and support our workings in magic and dreaming.

Suggestion for working with Vervain and Lapis Lazuli together:

1.    Both Vervain and Lapis Lazuli have deep relationships with the realm of seeing, dreaming, divination, and magic, and when combined can certainly create a setting for deep spirit communication that calls on our highest selves and creates an atmosphere of cosmic connection and psychic protection.  Now that we are at the beginning of a new season and a new Astrological year, perhaps it is a good time to identify what from the last cycle you don’t wish to carry forward, and to choose what element from your Winter dreaming you wish to take into action, and to plant with the budding Springtime.

2.    Bring Lapis Lazuli and dried Vervain to your altar and create sacred space.  Infuse your Vervain in salt for 3 days ahead of this ritual time, then strain the herbs out and add oil to make a salt scrub.

3.    Give yourself a ritual bath or shower to dispel the heavy energies of Winter and of the last year, particularly focusing on your intention for release.  Sprinkle a Lustral water or the dried herbs around your home to clear the energies there too, or burn the herb on a charcoal for a clearing incense.

4.    Wear or hold your Lapis Lazuli and gaze into its night sky depths.  Ask what knowledge you need to retrieve from your soul history.  Ask what inner truths and gifts inside you need to be more honored and embodied.  From this meditation, create a phrase you will take into your dreaming, asking for a clear vision of the pathway towards what you want to create now, and stating “Show me how I can…”  Repeat this as you fall asleep, like a prayer to your dreams and your higher self.  In the morning, recall what you have dreamt before you allow yourself to move or think of the day ahead.  Write down the images and messages without judgement.

5.    Create a magical act for your intention, perhaps including the creation of an amulet bag with both Lapis Lazuli and Vervain.  Charge it under the stars with your intention.  Or, choose from the many archaic suggestions above to plant what you want to sow in your dreams and in your life.

May you recover the lost knowledge of lifetimes.  May you dream yourself with the magic and dignity of the stars.  May you flower with the Springtime.

Ometeotl.

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

The Mexica New Year, Themes for 2021, and the Dawn of the Sixth Sun

Happy Mexica New Year!  Mah moyolihcatzin.  May your venerable heart make itself present.

The Mexica (Aztec) calendar, based on the cycles of the sun, celebrates the start of 2021 on March 12th.  Whether or not this event is one with which you are familiar, the complex system of astrology and prophecy, coming from the more Southern regions of Anahuac has much to offer us in terms of illuminating the themes, opportunities, and challenges of each year.  Though this is the case every year, it is especially true in 2021,  because the oral tradition and calendar hold well over 500 years of planning and preparation for the exact moment we are living now. 

This is the same calendar passed down from the earlier Mayan culture, however the Mexica were the last group to make adaptations and corrections, based on a continuous discipline of observing the movements of the cosmos and making detailed interpretations, over the course of generations  Most people have encountered some reference to Mayan predictions about the end of the world in 2012, and some were even disappointed when life as we knew it continued, after that date came and went.  The predictions, however, were not describing a final end to life on earth, but rather the end of a 6,625 year cycle, known as a Sun. and the start of a new one, with contrasting themes.  The Mexica understood this particular change of Suns as a process beginning in 2012, to be followed by nine years of movement through our collective Underworlds, nine distinct areas of our unconscious where our mind and energy can become trapped by problems such as repetitive-destructive patterns, ancestral traumas, fear of change, heavy emotions, and addiction to suffering, compelling us to play out these themes in our dreams and in our lives, thereby perpetuating the cycle.  Though each year of the nine has presented a particular challenge to acknowledge and heal within ourselves, and within the collective, the years predicted to be the most difficult of the transition between Suns were 2020 and 2021.  The lunar eclipse of May 2021, however, is also the moment that we move fully into the influence of the Sixth Sun, and begin to experience the profound energies that it brings, including the rise of the feminine forces and the opportunity to awaken to the gifts of inner knowledge, dreaming, and the re-enchantment of our world.  This time we’re living is a change of the dream of the earth, a cosmic event wherein a new evolution for humankind becomes possible.  Transitional times are not easy, but neither were the aspects of the Fifth Sun, which ruled almost all of our recorded history and the reality we have known all our lives.

Before describing the themes of the year and the new Sun, it is respectful to acknowledge that so much of what survived from the Mexica culture did so because of the selfless, and intentional sacrifice of a people who believed the knowledge they had collected was more important than their individual lives.  When the Spanish invasion, and the new illnesses it introduced, had all but decimated the warrior culture, the last, and still quite young, ruler-priest of the Mexica saw that to continue fighting meant certain death to their lineage and culture, and urged the people to surrender, accepting the degradation of their way of life, in order to survive.  He urged them instead to hide their true treasure, their sacred knowledge, and to pass it down in secret from father to son and mother to daughter within the oral tradition, in order to make it available in 2012, nearly 500 years in the future, when the transition to the Sixth Sun would begin, and the descendants of all races, having lived for generations in a Sun that did not look to what was hidden to the light, might benefit from the knowledge and spiritual practices of the past.  He made a powerful speech to the people, and they consented, knowing that the Spanish saw them as animals without souls, and all that they were would perish externally, to be kept alive in memory.  And still, the tradition almost died too, as women and men of knowledge and practitioners of mysticism were hunted, under the laws of the Inquisition, during the time that Catholicism was enforced.  What I’ve referenced here is illustrated in the poetic words and predictions of the last Tlatohuani, the Mexica social and spiritual leader, or “bearer of the word,” Cuahtemoctzin, who at the end of the Mexica empire predicted that the Indigenous nations of the Americas would sleep for 500 years and then reawaken at the significant change of epoch called the Dawn of the Sixth Sun. 

The following is an excerpt from his words, carved into stone and available to be seen in the main square of Mexico City, El Zócalo, the place where remnants of the primary Mexica temple still exist.  Though it’s too much to explain here the full meaning of the cycle of Suns, or to include the entire poem, in these words we may see a mirror for our own times, and certainly an inside expression of the story of colonization and the perseverance of Indigenous mind that we know from the lens of observed history: 

            ...The shadows of the night descend. 

        The moon and the stars are the winners of the cosmic battle, in their fight against the light of the day. 

            Abysses of destiny, the life of beings in labyrinths of inescapable mystery.

            Let us all go and leave the streets deserted, disappearing from the marketplaces and from their paths.

            Let us lock ourselves up in our houses, turning our eternal ideals into fortresses, lost in this deep solitude, in a pointless dialogue inside this great void.

            Let us preserve in our hearts the wisdom and love contained in the códices (the    scriptures), the teocalli (the temples), the tepochcalli (the pelota/sacred ballgame          courts), the cuicacalli (the buildings for dancing, singing, and the arts),

            until the Sixth Sun appears again, from the bosom of our future women.

            Mother Tonantzin Iztaccíhuatl (the Mother Earth in the form of a sacred feminine mountain and extinct volcano), asleep today with white mantles and green forests, shall awaken tomorrow between thunderclaps and redeeming lightnings of authentic freedom.

            She will resurrect amidst whirlwinds, emotional currents, and burning flames of light.

            The mother country that was once burnt shall shine with the new Sun that will save Mexico (the place of the navel of the moon).

            She will be born from the blood spilt across green lands and white cotton fields; the hope in the One Life shall shine, far beyond our temporal death...

                                              (from Dawn of the Sixth Sun, Sergio Magaña Ocelocoyotl)

In this emerging year, we come fully into the influence of the Sixth Sun, which has some very promising aspects, not unlike what has been described within the predictions for the Age of Aquarius, yet with some significant nuances.  We have just passed passed through the Nemontemi, the 5 days out of the count of the solar year from March 6-11, meant for fasting, ceremony, and recapitulation, a cleansing of that which we do not want to carry into the next cycle.  We have now left the year called 8 Tecpatl (Flint or Obsidian Knife),  which signified both healing, and meeting the hard consequences of our past actions, pushing us to see and to live what we have created with our words, thoughts, and actions, on individual and collective levels.  The transit between Suns this past year also moved us through the 8th Underworld, called the Complete Darkness, where we are forced to stop our movement, to face uncertainty and what is hidden from the light to us, and where we cannot see the path forward in certain areas, meaning we are limited from creating there.  Furthermore, there was a prediction of expressions of imbalance from the earth in 2020, which can manifest in the areas of virus and bacteria, natural disasters, and contractions in abundance, as we well know.  We are now entering into a year called 9 Calli (House), which signifies an emergence of our underworlds, or shadow aspects, in the territory of our human structures: our bodies, families, countries, and earth.  What it suggests is that we are moving into a year where the emotional consequences of the traumas and division of this past year may catch up to us individually and collectively, wherein humans face or play out their shadow aspects in the collective arena and in family structures.  

In terms of the transit of Suns, we have moved into the 9th Underworld, the one called the Complete Peace.  This can be positive, signifying the level at which one has solved the other 8, or it can manifest in its shadow side, as a forced peace, when one is trapped, as in a cage, and therefore must surrender.  Doing one’s inner work to see clearly and cleanse the more destructive aspects of the unconscious will determine which face this Underworld shows us.  Furthermore, there is a prediction that solar waves will move closer to the earth this year, interrupting the reliability of the technologies on which we currently lean.  This may be meant to push people who are gazing into the virtual realm, as a half step towards internal examination, to truly look within and embrace, not just the virtual, but the dreaming layers of reality.  Within these two years, divisions in society between those who embrace the energies of the new Sun and those who resist are said to manifest as social protests and violence, and this continues to unfold. 

The Fifth Sun was called the Sun of Justice, or the Angry Sun.  It was a Sun of the Tonal, or day influence, of the Masculine, of one group dominating or exploiting another, creating rage, and of the search for satisfaction and power outside of ourselves.  This was a time, not of spirituality, but of the power and influence of religion, imperialism, materialism, and of the degradation of the feminine forces, as well as of women, plants and animals.  In this Sun, magic, mysticism and the unseen aspects of life were suppressed, and during this time we have seen colonization, inquisition, war, genocide, industrialization, slavery, racism, sexism and capitalism, as some of the predominant forces.

The Sixth Sun is predicted to be just the opposite.  Named the White Sun, The Flower Sun, and the Sun of Quetzalcoatl, It’s influence is entirely of the night, of the Nahual, or dreaming aspect of life, of the Feminine forces, of magic, mysticism, and looking deeply within for meaning and satisfaction.  In this Sun, the power that we have put outside of ourselves is meant to come inside, and the sacred knowledge that was once held in the hands of the people in power, and the few chosen for a life of mysticism, becomes available for all, moving humankind towards spiritual evolution.  This is the meaning of the prophecy described as the return of the Quequetzalcoatl, the time where many will choose the path of the feathered serpent, the essence of awakening one’s energy centers and embracing knowledge and growth towards enlightenment. We are also meant to see the rise of the Mamalinalli, the ones who will relearn the mystic traditions of the Feminine, including the medicine of plants, magic, the Obsidian mirror, intuition, and dreaming, which will now be supported by the Earth and the Cosmic Order, in a manner that it had not been in the past. This change has been building gradually, the way that night gives way to dawn and day fades into night, yet it is also described as a sudden and definitive transformation, wherein everyone will change, a metaphoric, if not literal, earthquake.  These are the energies that we will be stepping into more fully this year, starting in mid May, as we leave the transitional time and enter the Sixth Sun, a movement which is predicted to intensify even more in 2026. 

May you live and dream in alignment with the beautiful qualities of the Sixth Sun, walking hand in hand with the earth, the moon and the night.  May the final stages of the transition treat you gently.  And, may the predictions and sacrifices of the past illuminate the path ahead in a sacred manner.

Nimitztlazohtla noicniuhtzin.  I love and appreciate you my venerable relative.

With love and care,

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 7: Cardamom & Ruby

The first signs of Spring are here!  It is time to start feeling good and to bring our attention back to our bodies!  With that in mind, here are two luscious, vitality increasing gifts from our ever generous Mother.

Cardamom

Cardamom is one of my favorite spices.  Commonly used in pastries, teas, and savory dishes, especially in Indian cuisine, it’s spicy and aroma and flavor is instantly warming and uplifting.  I like to use the essential oil to make my hair fragrant, along with clove, and it’s a time tested ingredient in the art of perfumery.  Cardamom, however, is more than just pleasing.  It is a powerful carminative, meaning it supports digestion, and can be especially helpful when eating heavier meals.  This is why it is often used in recipes involving rich foods.  When the body has to work hard to digest our food, it takes a significant amount of our energy, often making us feel tired and sluggish after eating.  When used in cooking or as a sprinkle added at mealtime, Cardamom helps activate the digestive system, avoiding gastrointestinal distress, gas, bloating, or stagnation.  As with all carminative herbs, this small and flavorful addition to a meal can help your body increase the flow of oxygen and blood to your digestive system, allowing for more conversion of food into usable energy, without indigestion and elimination issues.  This simple action can have a powerful effect on your everyday vitality, and at the same time will increase the sensual pleasure of eating.  Cardamom can be purchased as a powder, but might be more potent when found in its green seed pods.  These can be opened to access the small black seeds, which can be boiled or ground, or even left whole and added to rice, soups, stews, or any dish that will be boiled or heated slowly, to release the flavor and medicinal properties.  Afterwards, the whole pods are easily removed, as they are not digestible themselves.

Cardamom is antibacterial, antispasmodic, anti-inflammatory, nervine, and expectorant.  Cardamom is also a decongestant and anti-catarrhal, and helps to move mucus from the lungs, ear, throat, and digestive track.  This can be a good medicine for coughs, especially the kind that produce phlegm, and for conditions involving dampness and cold within the body.  A simple, but effective cough medicine can be made by adding powdered cardamom to buckwheat honey, ideally allowing it to infuse for three months, turning the jar everyday so that the ingredients mix thoroughly.  If needed sooner, a simple mixture will do, and a tea can be made by adding a little hot water, or by boiling the cardamom seeds for around 40 minutes.  As we move through the transition from Winter to Spring, and the body desires to move out the stagnation and chill of the darker months, colds and flus are common, even without a pandemic that attacks the respiratory system.  It is a good idea to have effective herbal remedies at hand, and for those with children, this is an easy one to administer, as it is gentle and sweet to the taste.

In terms of magical purpose, Cardamom is all about love and sensuality.  It is a feminine plant, ruled by Venus and the element of water.  It is a very common ingredient in aphrodisiac elixirs, cooking, and baking.  It’s sweet, peppery scent and taste awakens the senses and warms the body, allowing for openness and sensual response.  The fact that it increases circulation and vitality is a key reason for its power as a love and sensuality herb.  One has to feel good in one’s own body before being truly open to the shared experience of sexuality and love.  The ground seeds have been traditionally added to wine, another warming agent, to promote lust.  Cardamom is also often paired with apples, a fruit with a magnificent amount of love magic lore, and baked into pastries.  Even without the flour, try sprinkling powdered cardamom onto apple slices and baking them in butter, or coconut oil, cinnamon, and honey.  To make this a spell, all you need is a clear intention, and to take the time to connect with and talk to your ingredients while you prepare them.  What if you also add a little of the earthy, sweet essential oil to your hair, body oil or lotion?  Enchant responsibly...

Ways of working with Cardamom:

•  Boil the seeds or pods for 40 minutes to make a strong decoction and drink as tea.

•  Add the whole pods to your rice cooker, with a touch of coconut oil, to make a fragrant, tasty and easier to digest rice dish.

•  Add essential oil of Cardamom to your body oils, lotions, perfumes or bathwater.

•  Sprinkle powdered Cardamom on foods that cause congestion, like yogurt, frozen blended drinks, ice cream, bananas, and on heavier meals.

•  Use Cardamom in cooking and baking. 

•  Make fresh chai tea, for better digestion, circulation, and to ward of colds.

•  Infuse into buckwheat honey for a natural and sweet tasting cough medicine.

•  Increase your love magic with Cardamom powder infused in warmed red wine, or use your imagination for creating sensual treats.

Ruby

There aren’t many gemstones you can wear that will make you stand taller and feel more regal than a Ruby.  A deep red, polished Ruby is a sight to behold, but what it brings the wearer is far more than beauty and a sense of nobility.  Regardless of whether you invest in an authentic gemstone or choose a natural raw Ruby, this stone is a powerful tool for embodiment, vitality, and power.  Many spiritual people struggle with embodiment.  It can be difficult to ground the higher spiritual energies that seers, empaths, light workers, and healers access.  It can make for a sense of overwhelm, spaciness, discomfort in the body, or even disdain for the physical.  Ruby empowers the root chakra, increasing life force energy, physical vitality, and grounding spiritual gifts in the strength and manifestation power of the earth plane. 

Though it sometimes gets a bad reputation as a lower chakra, one in which we don’t wish to become stuck, a healthy root chakra is critical to our health and our spiritual effectiveness.  When it is weak, we cannot hold or easily integrate the true magic of this world, our health suffers, and we don’t manifest with ease.  In the Nahualismo tradition, it is said that we cannot access higher spiritual development fully until we have taken care of our more basic needs, because otherwise our mind and energy is too occupied with the elements of survival.  It is not an area of development we can skip without consequence.  Furthermore, we live here in the earthly plane, and part of this experience is the joy of embodiment.  We deserve to access this sensual vitality, and Ruby helps to make physical life rich in this way.

Ruby activates and energizes the physical, mental, and emotional bodies.  It clears the internalized sense of hopelessness, defeat, and depression, and replaces these heavy emotions with optimism and empowerment.  Wearing or working with Ruby can help increase self confidence, lust for life, adventurousness, and courage, replacing fear, timidity, and feeling stuck with the ability to take risks and pursue dreams.  It makes what was stagnant move, enhances life force energy, and pushes one to overcome limitations, earning its reputation as a stone of courage. 

Ruby holds the activated, higher vibration of the root chakra, meaning it can initiate Kundalini awakening.  This awakening allows for the energetic flow that can empower the full chakra system, taking one towards wisdom and the ability to manifest.  With the power of the earth element, Ruby helps in the manifestation of intention and brings unseen support towards one’s goals.  When worn on the body, be conscious about your thoughts and desires, and use it carefully to channel physical, psychic and emotional power.  Direct its energy towards your highest dreams and the enchantment of your embodied life.

Ruby also offers deep healing for issues of sexual trauma, dysfunction, and the lack of self love.  In these sensitive areas, call on Ruby to help in returning to the physical body and recreating a harmonious relationship with the physical self.  It has a reputation for improving fertility and increasing circulation and sensuality, which makes sense in terms of its cultivation of physical embodiment and the joy of incarnation.  Magic is not only in the realm of spirit.  It is infused everywhere in our earthly world.  We only have to embrace it and look for it in nature, in the mundane, in our relationships, and in ourselves.  Ruby will help in awakening the passion and power of the physical, grounding our spiritual energies, and directing our power towards purpose.

Suggestion for working with Cardamom and Ruby together:

1.    These are two very grounded earth allies.  Use them in an everyday manner.  Wear your Ruby with intention, and add Cardamom to your cooking.  Empower your self care and vitality.

2.    Create a ritual for higher magic by bathing in a Cardamom essential oil perfumed bath, while sipping a Cardamom infused elixir or tea.  Feel the warmth grow in your body.  As you relax, get clear about your desired intention for manifestation.  After emerging from your bath create sacred space, and place the Ruby on your body, asking for its healing, grounding, or activating energies.  Blow an intention into your stone and wear it for a moon cycle.  Do this on a full moon for releasing work, and on the new moon for creating something new.  Cleanse your crystal after this cycle, unless you are still looking to see and feel the effects.

3.    Offer a ritual of healing and sensual enlivening for a beloved.  Prepare by scenting your hair oil, body butter, and/or lip balm with essential oil of Cardamom.  Engage in magical cooking with Cardamom.  Include the herb in your savory dishes, desert, and special drinks for the evening.  Wear a ruby with intention.  Prepare a Cardamom scented bath.  Pour the water over your beloved with a bowl, continuously, while repeating a soft chant or phrase, calling them to awaken to love of self and other, to heal, or to empower.  Both partners breath deeply and follow the senses and heart.  Offer a massage, using the infused oil or body butter, and placing the stone at their lower chakra area.  This kind of pampering doesn’t have to come just once a year.

May you love and live with passion and purpose.

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

What Imbolc and Valentine's Day Might Have in Common

Happy February!  We are in the last month of Winter holidays, and already the signs of early Spring are emerging, here in the Bay Area.  Those first inklings of flowers and sunlight are the essential meaning of February’s holidays, even though one comes to us from the ancient Pagan wheel of the year, and the other is arguably a Hallmark invented occasion.  It seems wise, actually, to observe the subtle changes in the Winter months, and to create holidays that offer a sense of warmth and light, during a time that can be emotionally and energetically heavy, or stagnant.  During the darker months, when we are dreaming, resting, and looking within, it is important to maintain our connection to the larger cycles, and to one another, while we reinvent ourselves and our lives, in large or small ways that will blossom in Spring, and flourish in summer.

Imbolc is the Celtic Goddess Brigid’s rite, celebrated from the eve of February 1st through February 2nd.  Brigid rules both holy well and sacred flame, the place where we heal and renew, and the place where we move towards inspired action.  Her arts are healing, poetry, divination, and the forging of intention or pledge.  This moment in the year is about beginning to move towards the action of the coming seasons by preparing our minds and hearts.  During this time, our charge is to renew ourselves, cutting away what has died within us during the Winter darkness, what we have become ready to shed, just as we cut back the plants in our gardens so that they will be able to grow strong and healthy in the Spring.  It is a time to sweep out the cobwebs, dust, and stagnation from inside ourselves and our homes.  To purge what we don’t want to carry forward.  When we are empty, we have room to receive or clarify the vision of where we want to go.  Then with that openness, we can make a pledge to ourselves and to the Divine Feminine force of creation and creativity, for what we will work to weave in ourselves and in our worlds. 

It may not seem to have a lot to do with love, but I think it does.  We have to love ourselves within this space, because change at this level is hard work. One thing that I have learned from the tradition of Curanderismo is that people don’t release or heal unless they feel safe, which is why nurturing is crucial to the process of transformation.  We all have the ability to block healing and resist change.  It is far easier to embrace fear and inertia, though certainly not more comfortable in the long run.  Yet, discomfort with uncertainty often motivates us to skip the part of our inner work that involves deep pruning, and so we attempt to add what we want to manifest to a vessel that has very little space to hold our dreams.  It is hard to allow for clearing or loss, even of what doesn’t fit or serve us anymore.  But, we will need to make space in the garden in order to plant the new seeds of our intention, especially if we want to grow more fully into ourselves.  Old wounds, grief, and the stories that make our identity may inform who we are, but they don’t need to become an armor.  This time of year presents us with an opportunity to cut away the outdated and withered aspects of ourselves, and to clarify our vision, so we can begin planting seeds.

Wouldn’t it be beautiful if we approached Valentine’s Day with this spirit?  Instead of creating the pressure of romance versus loneliness, what if we built on what is sweet about this Hallmark holiday and then deepened it.  What if we said to ourselves: “I love you for all that you’ve been through, and all that you’ve become because of and in spite of it.”  What if we said those words to the people we love and want to make feel special?  How would it change things to add something like:  “Now, take my hand, and let’s promise to hold true, not to an image of perfection, but to loving ourselves and each other fiercely through the unfolding of our sacred work this year, both the work within and the work of contributing to beauty and depth in the world.  Let’s promise to see and honor who we were, and then let that person go, in order to become who we are more able to be now.”  Can you say these words to yourself first? 

Then, what if instead of just giving or receiving flowers once, we planted flowers, each one with an intention that we pledge to create in ourselves and in the world, remembering that a pledge is not a wish, but a promise?  What garden will you grow?  Sow the seeds, and bath yourself in the rains.  May they be abundant and nourishing for all of us.

Our suggestion for this season is to call on the Divine Feminine, whether Brigid, Aphrodite, or any aspect of she who renews herself and carries the power of both destruction and creation.  Take a fragrant bath, charging the water with the intention to clear and heal.  Light a candle on which you have carved your pledge to yourself and to the Divine.  Allow Winter to dissolve and make way for Spring.  Draw a card, asking your Goddess to speak to you about what you need to leave behind, in order to grow into your larger dream.  Ometeotl.

With sweetest love,

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 6: Clary Sage & Lemurian Seed Crystals

Clary Sage

Clary Sage is a biennial flower, ruled by the Moon, and deriving from the mint family.  Though many people know it as an uplifting essential oil, it is also a complex and dualistic plant with special talents for the magic of dreaming, prophecy, glamour, euphoria, revealing the hidden, and traversing the Underworlds for knowledge and nourishment.  Its magical uses have fallen away from collective knowledge in our time, but the flower gives a clue to its nature in its shape signature.  Unlike the sunlike shape of most annual flowers, the Clary Sage flower has a shape that belies its prophetic nature.  It looks like a mouth that is speaking, but speaking what?  So much of its nature is revealed in the interesting way that it grows.

Clary Sage is a plant that knows how to walk between worlds, comfortable in both the darkness and the light.  In the first year of its its two year growing cycle it aligns itself with Winter, projecting an image of death above ground, while living underground, using its rosette of large, flat leaves to funnel sunlight down to its roots.  Attuning to the dark and protection of the earth, it stores enough energy to transform itself into a seemingly different plant in its second year, sending stalks up tall towards the sun, with subtle blooms that make themselves appear larger and more nectar rich to pollinators because of their big, flower like leaves, which create a glamour effect.  Because it plans for and engages both Winter and the Underworld, as a time and place for activity, rather than dormancy, Clary Sage is an excellent guide to the realms of the hidden, dreaming and intuitive revelations, and to the ultimate action of breakthrough.  Its ability to cast a glamour of dormancy, and then of abundance, is an indicator that it can help teach not only the art of masking one’s appearance for protection, when vulnerable, and advantage, when needed, but of seeing the truth behind illusive appearances.  It’s “clary” is not related to increasing physical sight, but seeing true, beyond the veils.  In folk magic, the flower was rubbed on the eyelids of a bewitched person, to clear the inner sight and cast away all spells.  Even in scent and taste, Clary Sage has a relationship with glamour, and is often used as a plant-based, but effective, substitute for ambergris in perfumery, and as a means of adulterating wines to taste as if made from muscatel grapes, when they are not.  It also potentiates alcohol and herbal wines, to create either an increased stupefaction or a euphoric frenzy, again expressing its dualistic nature.  It holds the energy of the full moon, which gives it its relationship with lunacy, euphoria, night activity, disguises and dreams.  Clary Sage has a feminine nature and not only raises spirits, but regulates estrogen, encouraging hormone production.  For this reason, there is need for caution for those with estrogen promoted cancers.

As a plant that begins its life in the Underworld, Clary Sage can help us to increase our ability to see the mysteries that are hidden, and to utilize them for our growth into our most powerful selves.  That means that working with this flower can increase intuitive insight, prophetic knowledge, dream potency, recall and understanding, and in dispelling the illusions and glamours that keep us from seeing with true clarity.  These actions, in addition to uplifting the spirits, and teaching comfort within the dark, make Clary Sage a perfect plant medicine for Winter spiritual work.  Furthermore, it increases the dreaming faculty, similar to Mugwort, but, interestingly, it provides a pathway to this work that feels more protected.  It increases the vivid quality of dreams and promotes divinatory aspects, but unlike Mugwort, it doesn’t come with the side effect of tiredness the next day.  It doesn’t increase dreaming by keeping the mind partially awake, as Mugwort does, and so does not make one feel that restful sleep was missed.  In addition, because of its relationship to shapeshifting and glamours, it helps one to do this psychic work subtly and unseen, so as to provide energetic protection in dreaming realms, and helps in distinguishing between false and true visions.

In ritual, magical practice, and stress management, the scent of Clary Sage can be very useful.  As an essential oil, infused oil, incense, or fresh flower, the scent is relaxing and lowers blood pressure, though some find it too strong.  It works like a key to open dreaming states of mind in waking practice, as well as in sleep.  It has aphrodisiac effects, and helps to relieve pain.  Its scent is musky, smelling something like female sweat, and thus is is sometimes referred to as the sweat of Mother Earth.  Clary Sage can be a powerful tool for aligning with the Earth, the Divine Feminine, and the Dark Goddess, whose realm is the deep magic of creating with the forces of life, death, and renewal.  Though it is not actually a Sage plant, it shares some properties with Sage, without the thujone toxicity that can create skin irritation, so it is a good ingredient for anointing oils, salves, and lotions, and can also be used as an effective scent fixative for perfumes.   

Ways of working with Clary Sage:

 •  To promote visions, vivid dreams, or ritual states of mind, make a tincture with 95% grain alcohol, 151 rum, or cane spirits.  After the infusion time, this can be diluted with rose water and taken directly, or added to warm water or white wine.  For best effect, take it on an empty stomach before sleeping, meditation, or magical practice.

•  Make a herb bundle of fresh or dried flowers.  Place this under your pillow or on your body while sleeping, so that you can breath its scent.

•  Add essential oil of Clary Sage to your body oils, lotions, perfumes or bathwater.

•  When processing the fresh plant, save the stalks to grind for powders and as an incense ingredient.

•  Use Clary Sage in an herbal bath by infusing into hot water for at least 20 minutes, and pouring the infusion, flowers and all, into the bath.  Breath the steam and pour over your body until the dream and visioning state is achieved.

•  Create a salve or spray for support with pain, relaxation, and improving clarity in stressful circumstances.

•  Do a plant meditation, listening to the voice of this plant spirit, and ask a specific question or for guidance in the territory of personal Underworlds and breakthrough to growth and clarity.  Try this before falling asleep, as well, and allow your dreams to answer.

Lemurian Seed Crystals

Lemurian Seed Crystals are truly fascinating and palpably magical.  They are a kind of quartz crystal, but can be recognized by their cloudier surface appearance, with a clear center, and their notable etchings or horizontal lines, which look something like the steps of a ladder.  The lore of the Lemurians is that they were an early civilization, existing in the time before the Atlanteans, who are said to have possessed knowledge, psychic abilities, and technologies far exceeding what we understand today.  Oral traditions describe them as a predecessor to modern humanity, which had complete use of the right hemisphere of the brain without use of the left.  This means that their knowledge was based on a oneness with all life on this planet and with the essential cosmic energy.  They communicated through telepathy and had no need for other language.  Learning was from direct transmission and their deep connection, sense of oneness, and harmonious resonance with all energies, especially the Divine Feminine, allowed them co-creative power with the cosmic order and the earth.  Their society is said to have created many unbelievable advances, and is rumored to be the basis for our myth of the Garden of Eden, where humanity lived in oneness, a form of paradise we have longed for since.  However, some form of catastrophe affected them inside and out, eliminated their culture, and forced them to flee or to perish.  Those that survived may have been the ones to start the civilization of the Atlantis, though there is not an exact recorded history.  Atlantis is known to have attempted to recreate some of what had been lost, but lacked the essential heart centered sense of oneness that was the soul of Lemuria, and this difference ultimately brought about their own destruction.  Before the devastation of Lemuria and its way of life, an attempt was made to preserve their knowledge for future generations by encoding certain quartz crystals with pieces of their teachings, in hopes that what they knew would return to the world to support the growth and healing of humanity in future times.  These crystals, however, were lost within the earth, and have only recently begun to emerge.  Perhaps it takes a leap of faith, or an intuitive sense of knowing, to believe this version of history, but if you have the chance to hold and meditate with one of these crystals, you may find yourself recalling lost knowledge and divine connection, both that of the ancient culture which planted the messages, or from your own soul memories.

Here is what I have learned about it from the oral tradition of Nahualismo.  The story of the Lemurians also has to do with the development of the human brain.  Today we become accustomed to using the left hemisphere of the brain almost exclusively in general society.  The territory of the right, which rules intuition, dreaming, and magic, we leave to the realm of the mystics and witches, the saints, the mad, and the artists, most of whom we disenfranchise and belittle in modern times.  However, oral traditions tell of a slow progression of loss of these right hemisphere faculties each time changes in our culture developed more and more aspects of the left.  The discoveries relating to division within our social order, including the acknowledgement of unequal distribution of talent, blood lineage in relation to gifts and talents, specialization in the gifts of one race distinct from others, separatism to protect race purity and eventually the impulse to conquer, oppress, and even eliminate other races, and the development of hierarchical rule by divine right all contributed to the loss of right brain talents and ordered the world according to left brain organization and logic.  Having lost the ability to move matter and interact with creation, we created a mechanized world, where our control stems from left hemisphere logic and technologies.  No wonder the knowledge of ancient cultures seems impossible to us.  Yet, we know we do not use more than a small fraction of our brain’s capacity, and even the sciences of our time are confirming the complex nature of our relationship with reality, that which the ancients espoused in more metaphoric language.  Perhaps Lemurian Seed Crystals have a role to play in our remembering and evolution.

On a more basic level, Lemurian Seed Crystals can be tremendous tools for healing and growth, particularly for those looking to increase intuitive awareness, heart centered living, and reconnection with the inner soul, the Divine Feminine, the astral realm, the earth, and the stars.  They help to cultivate a feeling of wholeness, of truth regarding who we are, and of the elation of oneness that so many of our spiritual traditions seek.  They expand our consciousness, and teach us to recover the gifts we have lost over time, while opening the gates to communication with our own highest guides.  They can help to open our hearts and minds, and can be used to facilitate this kind of opening for those we are attempting to heal.  Their energy brings a sense of joyful relief, remembering that which we are at the level of heart and soul, and beyond the world created by mind.  When working with them, place them on your forehead, crown or heart.  Hold them before your eyes and gaze into the lines, following the steps like a stairway.  Listen.  Dream.

Suggestion for working with Clary Sage and Lemurian Seed Crystals together:

1.    These two special gifts from the earth work beautifully together, so the simple action here is to combine them, bringing in Clary Sage first to increase your intuitive capacities and then entering a dream state with your Lemurian crystal to access messages and healing.

2.    Begin with an herbal bath of Clary Sage, and/or rub a Clary Sage infused oil onto your skin.  Take a dropper full of tincture in a glass of warm water or white wine. 

3.    Create sacred space for ritual meditation or dreamwork.

4.    Use your breath to calm and center yourself.  Make an offering to the Divine Feminine, using your breath with intention, a song, a poem, a dance, an altar, as you like.

5.    Sit or lay down comfortably with a blanket around you for nurturing.  This is a feminine and heart centered pathway.  Be gentle with yourself.  Hold your crystal and gaze into its lines or etchings.  Breath and listen.  Follow your intuition to take it to your body, placing it on your third eye, your crown, your heart or elsewhere.  Breath.  Listen.  Ask for both allies to guide you.  Focus on an intention or a question.  Perhaps allow yourself to fall asleep.  When you wake up, write down what you remember right away.  The more we honor the messages we receive, the more we open the channel of communion and sacred guidance.

May you dream deeply.  May you remember.  May your most precious gifts flower.

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

The Perihelion and Bringing the Unconscious to Light

January 2nd, 2021 was the date of this year’s perihelion.  A perihelion is the moment in the earth’s year long orbit when we are closest to the sun.  It’s interesting that, for this part of the world, it is the middle of Winter, just after the longest night of the year and at the start of the returning daylight, that is the setting for this phenomenon of light.  It is in fact the juxtaposition of the closeness of the light and the presence of darkness that makes this day, and this time of year so special.  This is the time when that which is submerged in the unconscious can more easily be brought forward to our conscious attention.  This action may happen in several ways. 

One way that what is hidden to the light emerges in the time of the perihelion is through potential revelations and big events within the collective.  Hidden influences and themes in our collective unconscious may become more obvious, or may erupt in a manner that makes us look at what truly exists beneath the surface of what we want to believe.  In the past weeks, violence, racism, privilege, and inequity between how different groups of people are treated when expressing dissent surfaced yet again.  The division and unrest in our country continues to rise to a level that is frightening to many, and surprising to those who have not felt themselves in the middle of the ongoing strife.  Though uncomfortable, this process of revealing the lasting legacies of racism, classism, and disharmony in our country may be critical if we are to find a way of moving forward into a new era, without illusions about who we are as a country, and in a manner that reflects the espoused ideals that have drawn people here, such as freedom and equality.  If we are unable to see and shed some of our collective shadow, it is also conceivable that the changes within the earth will continue to push us to work together as a country and as a world, but being forced is always the harder path.

Of course, the themes and situations of our personal lives also present us with information, especially in times of intensity.  What emerges as depression, frustration, anxiety, regret, longing, or other challenging emotions, is also a kind of message from the unconscious, letting us know when our lives or choices are out of alignment with our deepest selves.  At this time of year it is natural to go within, to feel a sense of quiet that invites reflection, just as the passing of a new year invites the setting of goals and resolutions.  This can take many people by surprise, once the energy of the holidays is past.  Strong emotions can be absorbing, and it takes energy to step back and ask what is being called to our attention, rather than feeling stuck or identified with our heaviest moods. One of the major teachings of Curanderismo is to address our Aires, the emotional winds that move through us and sometimes become stuck, as teachers, rather than permanent conditions, diseases, or monsters.  If we find ourselves under the weight of heavy emotions, especially this year when, collectively, many of us sit in relative isolation, surrounded by news of fear and violence, perhaps it is a good strategy to act as we might in a nightmare.  When chased by a monster in the dream time, the best action is to cease identifying with the dream enough to stop running and ask what the monster wants.  More often than not, this direct inquiry transforms the storyline and the monster reveals more directly who or what it represents.  Waking life is not so different from dreams.  Engaging what we feel, what we dream, how we are talking to ourselves in our minds, and what is emerging in our life situations can give us many clues about what needs healing and change on a deeper level, so that we do not keep creating the same difficult situations for ourselves unconsciously. 

Perhaps the best way that the energy of the perihelion can be engaged is for us to choose to use this time of light in darkness to cleanse ourselves of the problem aspects of our unconscious.  This happens by looking deeply within and intentionally calling forward what our unconscious mind is weaving for us, in the darkness of unawareness and without our conscious consent, in order to change it.  What is our unconscious material?  It’s beyond just our emotions, though they are included.  It is what we speak to ourselves and others, our self concepts, our dreams, our repetitive destructive patterns, our ancestral inheritance, the consequences of our thoughts and actions, our addiction to suffering and to distraction, our traumas, our fear of change, and all that remains unresolved.  Most of us have aspects of ourselves trapped in these and other underworlds.  Because of this, we find ourselves meeting the same situations in life, and in lifetimes, repeating difficult themes, relationships, and characteristics.  This cycle can be considered a very slow form of healing and working out our issues, but it doesn’t have to play out this way and should not be the goal.  In the tradition of Nahualismo, it is considered a kind of invisible prison, one that keeps us from realizing our true potential, as it keeps us endlessly distracted with the issues of our lifetimes and of our ancestors.  Cultures around the world have predicted this time to be one of rapid evolution for humanity in many ways that are beautiful, though the process of realizing that dream may not be easy.  We can prepare ourselves for the possibility of growth, of becoming people of the Sixth Sun or of the Aquarian Age, by bringing our shadow to the light, where is has less power, and dispelling the destructive tendencies that it has been creating in the dark.

So, to begin, you are invited to explore some divination modalities this month.  Choose your favorite oracle deck, take a journey to hold counsel with your allies, or sow a divination dream sequence over several nights.  Ask your deepest inner guidance to bring your unconscious to light.  Identify one area of emotional imbalance or a repetitive destructive problem active in your current life.  Consider these questions:  What is the primary aspect of your unconscious material that is creating this?  What is the root from which it began?  What can you do to heal, reconcile, and clear this piece of your unconscious?  What aspect of yourself or your energy would you retrieve by solving it?  What new idea will you be able to put in its place, to bring a more healing outcome in your life? Once you have looked deeply into one shadow area, perhaps choose another.  How many can you bring to the light?  Once they are uprooted, the work of healing has begun.

In darkness and in 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 5: Pine & Selenite

Pine

The Pine tree, so central to many gatherings and much lore this time of year, is actually a family of trees with many varieties that share the quality of being evergreen.  In the dark and cold of winter, when many trees lose their leaves and display a barren look, evergreens remain green and lush, reminding people for centuries of the perseverance of life and hope in times of constraint.  There are many myths, and even more folk associations related to Pine.  The Spirit of the Forest is said to dwell in the oldest, largest tree in the forest, and is often associated with a Pine tree.  The thyrsus that Dionysus carries is made of a fennel stalk, on which Pine cones hang from the end.  In the myth of Cybele and Attis, when Attis dies and is lost to her, Zeus turns him into a Pine tree, so that he will have eternal life and beauty.  In the Noh theatre of Japan, wherein ghosts and demons tell their stories and are thus purified from the emotional attachments that transfigured them, Pine trees on the stage always line the path of their journeys, representing the immortal and the spiritual themes.  In Orthodox Jewish culture, the Pine is the only tree considered suitable for the making of coffins, and fresh Pine boughs are placed on top.  Northern Europeans brought branches of Pine into the home, during the Winter Solstice season, to remind them of the flourishing of life, even in Winter, and of the coming Spring.  Romans made wreaths for inside festivities, and decorated trees outdoors with ornaments.  From these, and many more world traditions, we have inherited the custom of the ornamented Christmas tree, so Pagan in nature, and a consistent reminder of the endurance of life. 

Pine trees have many medicinal applications, in addition to their folkloric legacy.  There are variations between the different species, but in general Pine is antiseptic, expectorant, strengthens the blood vessels, stimulates the skin, and supports kidney and bladder function.  These qualities make it an excellent remedy for many of the physical complaints of elders, and a tea of Pine, or an herbal bath with the same infusion of needles, are simple and effective ways to access its medicinal support.  The tea can also help to reduce fever.  The distilled resin, as a tar, can treat lung conditions or parasites, when used internally.  Chewing the resin is also said to help a sore throat.  Used externally, as an ointment or liniment, it can help skin conditions like eczema or psoriasis, as well as bruises, sprains and rheumatism.  If the resin is dried and powdered, it can be warmed and spread on a cloth, as a plaster, to treat lung issues, sciatica, and sore muscles.  Finally, the flower essence of Pine can help with self-reproach, guilt, despondency and depression, all common maladies in Winter and holiday months. 

In magical practice and folk ritual, Pine is is used for protection, healing, fertility (especially the cones and pine nuts), exorcism, and money spells.  Burning Pine needles in Winter months purifies and cleanses the home.  The burned needles exercise area of negativity, sending it back to source.  Burned needles can also reverse or send back spells.  Alternately, for energetic clearing, the pine resin can be burned on a coal, or an incense can be made of the sawdust, adding Juniper and Cedar for best effect.  There is a folk custom of scattering the needles on the floor, as another means of driving away evil, or even making a cross of the needles before a fireplace to keep negative energies from entering.  In Europe, Pine branches were used to sweep the forest floor or home before a ritual, hung over beds to keep sickness away, and In Japan, hung over doors to ensure joy within.  Pine cones have been carried for fertility, and for vigor in older years, and the nuts are prized in spells of fertility and abundance in both Europe and Mexico.

Ways of working with Pine:

•   Simmer fresh needles and twigs into olive oil, or another high quality oil, and strain for an excellent massage oil.  

•   Make an infusion of fresh needles for tea and for an herbal bath, to sooth muscles, lift spirits, and stimulate the skin, blood vessels, kidneys, and bladder.  This is especially helpful for elders, but can benefit anyone in the colder months.

•   Burn Pine in your hearth from November to March 21 to purify the home.

•   If you have a Christmas tree, make use of fallen needles and scatter them on the floor in the shape of a magical symbol, or burn them to reverse any mental curses you have unconsciously place on yourself, or absorbed from the collective this year.  If you can, cut up the tree trunk, burn the logs in a fireplace or wood stove, and/or save the dust for making incense.

•   Create an herbal remedy for coughs and lung congestion to support you this Winter.

Selenite

One of the most magical aspects of the Winter Solstice time of year is the brightness and clarity of the moon and stars in the night sky.  This is especially true this year, with the great conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter, which has created the appearance of an abnormally bright star, the likes of which hasn’t been seen for some 800 years, and which ushers in the Age of Aquarius.  While many stared at the sky in hopes of seeing this special cosmic event, the wonder of the cosmos, in the form of twinkling Sirius, the constellations, and our beautiful moon were also there in full display.  To access this special light and the purification and elevation that it feeds us here on earth, there is Selenite.  Named for the Greek moon goddess Selene, Selenite is a beautiful translucent white stone, a form of gypsum, with a relatively fragile consistency (similar to salt and soluble in water), but a powerful energetic impact.  Selenite has strong amplification powers, like quartz, but goes further.  It activates the third eye, crown and Soul Star chakras, creating a link to the celestial forces, especially the moon and stars.  As such, like the moon, it has the power to create and to destroy.  It can help to clear and transmute heavy energies, fatigue, stress, emotions, cleansing the auric field, while amplifying the intuitive sight and energetic centers.  It can be used as a magic wand, and tends to grow in long strands, making it naturally disposed to the wand shape.  Selenite is excellent for creating a clearing and protective grid for ones home or ritual space, and can also clear other stones, jewelry, or objects, just by physical contact.  Many people use a selenite bowl or slab for cleansing sacred tools or often used jewelry overnight.  It can clear blockages in a person’s energetic field, while also revealing the origin of issue, making it a special tool for healers.  It has the ability to give one a push towards actions in line with the higher self, while dispelling stagnation and illusion, like a spirit guide.  In this time of transition to what in the ancient Mexican tradition, we call the Dawn of the Sixth Sun, and what is also known as the Age of Aquarius, Selenite is an excellent ally.  It can ground the light essence, and the higher energetic body into the physical reality and support the rebirth of humanity into the next phase of our spiritual evolution, as empowered beings of the sixth sun, able to access the gifts of spirit, dreaming, and magic that are now becoming more supported by the dream of the earth and cosmos.  Powerful and gentle at once, Selenite also has a special affinity for protecting pregnant mothers and their unborn children, as well as all of those in deep growth and spiritual transition.  

Suggestion for working with Pine and Selenite together:

1.     Wear Selenite for protection and to empower your highest self and spiritual evolution.

2.     Create a Winter home cleansing ceremony by burning pine needles for smudging and then setting a grid of Selenite, placing one wand on the floor in the center of each wall of a room.  Repeat this for each room in your house, but especially for areas where you sleep and practice ritual or meditation.

3.     Bring in the essence of light, enduring life, and hopefulness by adorning your home with fresh Pine boughs, branches, or wreaths, and the glowing white Selenite stones.

4.     Dispel Winter despair by allowing your intuition to open and dreaming your highest possibility into reality this season.  Fill the your home with the clearing sent of Pine incense or diffused essential oil and gaze into a selenite crystal sphere or wand.  Ask for the help of the celestial and earth forces.

May your Winter home be a bright and clear place to inhabit.

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