The Mexica New Year: Gateways to Expansion in 2022

Happy Spring Equinox and welcome to the Mexica New Year 2022!  

The Spring holds a large gateway of passage from the dreaming of Winter to the budding of energy and activity that signifies the renewal of life, both inside and outside of us.  It calls for a passage through release of that which no longer serves and purification as we greet new movement.   It asks for a recapitulation of the prominent themes or events in our lives, as we pass the threshold into new energetic possibilities.  In the Indigenous traditions of Mexico, March is therefore also the month of transition from one year’s cycle of prominent cosmic forces to the next, the new year based in the count of the Aztec Calendar.  At a specific time, annually, on March 6th, we enter a period of days that are out of the count of the year called the Nemontemi.  These days, between the 6th and the 12th are a time for quiet contemplation, rituals of cleansing, and taking stock of what the previous cycle has brought to light and what needs to be seen before moving on.  The Mexica New Year arrives on March 12th, moving us into a new cycle that can be interpreted by both a number and an archetype, together representing the opportunities and challenges of the coming year.  This is just one aspect of what the Aztec Calendar signifies, and its insights still provide us a glimpse into the cosmic observations and understandings of a culture that was and is dedicated to aligning with the largest view of our interrelationship with the vast.  And yet, these celestial movements come to bear in our earthly lives in the most personal and practical of ways, especially if we decide to take advantage of the moment before us.

This may be even more true in relation to the year that has just begun.  We are now entering a year of expansion, far more auspicious than the previous one, but what expands for us will greatly depend on how we meet it.  Coming from the past year’s energy of contraction, ruled by 9 House, which limited our ability to create and encouraged the expression of our human underworlds, as manifestations of fear, violence, rage, stagnation, and imbalance of power, it feels very encouraging to greet the year of 10 Rabbit.

Yancuic Xihuitl Mactlactli Tochtli:  New Year 10 Rabbit

Let’s break down the meaning of the number and archetype for this year.

Mactlactli means ten.  The way the Nahua traditions imagine this is through the metaphor of our two hands, with all ten fingers working together.  We think of our first five fingers as the talents, gifts, and interests that we inherit from our ancestors, yet with only five we may lack the discipline and focus to cultivate them fully in our lives.  With ten, it is like our hands coming together, joining the inheritance of talents with the what we need in the present to bring them to full flowering.  There is a saying in Mexican culture:  With our two hands, we make tortillas.  With ten, we can create in a beautiful way.  We take our inclinations and create beauty and nourishment, for ourselves and others.  This is how we accomplish what we feel most driven to do, and move it from the level of unconscious soul territory, or desire, to a blossomed expression in this time and place, giving it the nuances of our idiosyncratic natures.  

In the metaphor of our hands as a representations of the number ten, there is also the element of reflection, like one hand reflected in a mirror, creating two.  One is the compliment of the other, the gifts of our ancestors (perhaps quite distant ones) and the ability to execute them here and now.  With the mirror image comes the presence of a major force in the Nahualismo tradition, The Black Tezcatlipoca or Yauyauqui Tezcatlipoca, the force that rules the unconscious, dreams, duality, and the process of healing and retrieving ancestral knowledge and gifts at a deep level.  The beauty we create with our hands this year may also be the emergence of the themes of our soul that have been waiting to flower.  Are you ready to own what you feel most truly called to do and be?

Tochtli means rabbit, in Nahuatl.  Here we find ourselves, in both the year and the season of the Rabbit archetype, as Oestre/Easter awaits us in April and Spring emerges in full bloom.  The Rabbit, as an archetype, is dualistic, and provides us a great opportunity to either create joy and success or depletion and suffering.  The Rabbit represents fertility, abundance, multiplicity, our talents, creativity, and pleasure in our lives.  These themes can guide the year we are beginning, and will especially rule those born within a Rabbit year.  If we take the opportunity provided here, we will have the cosmic forces behind us as we manifest that which we want to create and expand.  There are four types of years within the Calendar that create a cycle of archetypes.  These are the glyphs that represent plants, minerals, animals, and humans.  They correspond with a cycle contraction and expansion, which alternates each new year.  In an animal year, we are under the energy of expansion, and as such is the case this year with Rabbit, the potential for expansion is doubled.  We need to consider carefully and intentionally what we will expand, however, because Rabbit has another side.

In Mexico, when someone is engaging in their habitual self destructive habits, whether this is drinking too much, choosing bad relationships, or something else they know doesn’t serve them but can’t resist, people say they are “in their Rabbit".”  Rabbit rules our weaknesses, our addictions, our repetitive patterns of self destruction and distraction.  Some of these may be relatively harmless, and yet they drain our vital and creative energies, and distract us from our deeper purposes.  The “Mother of Rabbits,” however, is addiction to suffering, and under this we may sabotage ourselves in enormous ways, creating dramas, health issues, and other problems that can serve to keep us busy or bring us some form of care, and yet do so at our peril.  Rabbit is deeply associated with the Moon, Meztli, another aspect of Tezcatlipoca, and an amazingly sacred and generous force that expresses her duality by either giving us everything or taking everything from us, here on the earthly plane.  For these reasons, we can’t allow our relationship with Rabbit to be unconscious.  We need to meet this energy with intention.  If we can do that, we have an excellent chance of releasing our addictions, healing our more self destructive tendencies, and manifesting what we wish to create, with abundance and blessed fertility.  To let go of something, however, we must truly want to.  If we don’t, we won’t fully succeed.  Another option is at least meeting our habits and addictions with awareness, and making clear steps to limit them.  This will not be a good year to let your Rabbit run away with you.  You may find yourself expanding what you don’t want to.

Sergio Magaña, sanctioned teacher of the Nahualismo tradition in Mexico, described this year as a portal, saying it is “like someone opened a gateway to the heavens, for those who are aligned with that, and also a gateway to the underworlds.  It’s the way you are vibrating that dictates what you’re going to get.”  This means that we need to choose decisively and to take steps to set ourselves in one direction or the other.  It’s a good time to recall and recommit to the strong practices that help you align with the best version of yourself.  It is an excellent time to bring yourself forward and advance your best dreams.  Maybe you will call on Rabbit to bless your art, your joy in life, your talents and vocation, your ability to create family, or your personal healing.  When we meet this archetype with intention, we may find the blessing of fecundity for all we are longing to manifest, and this can shift the balance away from the unconscious expression of our weaknesses.  Even if this takes some effort, it offers us more potential than the year we have just left, when our inner house was activated, called us to take stock of what was out of order, and perhaps encouraged us to hide away.  Who you are most deeply is invited to come out of the land of the hidden and forgotten.  It is invited to shine, to cultivate beauty, to expand, and to blossom.  What are you going to do about it?

Begin by asking yourself what you really want, what you have been waiting to create.  Then ask what has been standing in your way.

There is your first step.  Follow it all this year by honoring the cycles and rituals of the Moon.  Ask for her favor.

Together in friendship, guided by the cosmos, and embracing the opportunity to grow to our full soul potential, this is the meaning of the astrological eleventh house. 

May it be a good year for all of our community.

In Sacred Partnership,

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 19: Yarrow & Rose Quartz

In honor of the forces of purification, wildness, and love, that together rule February in unexpected ways, this month’s plant and mineral allies are both more than what they seem.  It’s likely that each evokes a sense of familiarity, yet with some examination, there is more than what is immediately visible.  Both Yarrow and Rose Quartz play a role in attracting love, but, like love, they can prove to be more transformative than anticipated

Yarrow

Yarrow is a plant much beloved by herbalists.  It is cultivated in gardens for its medicinal uses and can easily be found growing wild among the hills of Marin and the general Bay Area.  It has fern-like leaves, small white or yellow flowers that grow in wide clusters, and a very rich history.  Many people know about Yarrow’s relationship with blood flow.  It has been used on the battlefield to quickly treat wounds, even as recently as The Civil War, as it can be chewed and placed on broken skin with pressure to stop bleeding.  This ability to stanch bleeding is the source of its binomial Achillea Millifolium, after the mythic warrior Achilles.  Even today it is called on in the training of street medics and hood herbalists, who use it to provide emergency help in the aftermath of violence or accidents, where access to medical care might be limited.  True to the regulating nature of herbal medicine, Yarrow taken internally can also be a great support during variations of the menstrual cycle.  For those who bleed heavily, a tea or tincture of Yarrow can break up clots and slow bleeding, alleviating cramps.  Alternately, the same treatment can help to bring on courses that have been sparse or sporadic, perhaps due to stress or exertion.  Yet, as powerful and practical as this function is, it is only the beginning with Yarrow.

Yarrow has an affinity for healing sexual trauma and cleansing the physical and energetic body after boundaries have been violated.  It is used frequently in Curanderismo treatments for this reason.  Whenever we have sexual interaction with another, an energetic cord is formed.  This happens as well when we are very emotionally connected.  Yarrow can help to create the necessary cutting of ties between people on the unseen, energetic level, when what we need is to retrieve our energy and autonomy.  This is particularly important if boundaries have been violated.  When we have been through trauma or abuse in the arena of personal relationships and sexualized violence, our boundaries become permeable.  This can not only weaken psychic defenses, but can make it very difficult to sense when we are being pushed beyond our limits and to say no in general.  Yarrow can be a great ally for people in this situation.  In a gentle manner, this flower can help to cleanse the effects of this kind of trauma, drawing personal energy home to the body, while strengthening boundaries and empowering the ability to say no when necessary.  Herbal baths, steams, use of infused oils, and taking Yarrow internally as a tea or tincture will all help in this healing process.  Yarrow helps one to reclaim personal power after it has been violated, and strengthens the resolve to care for and protect one’s most vulnerable self.

The fact that Yarrow is a perennial, sleeping in the earth and returning to life year after year, means that there is much more to this plant ally than what we can see above ground.  Perennial’s spend more time in the Underworld than they do in the light, and have a deep relationship to it.  They make a tap root.  They store energy and nutrients there for when they will be needed.  They travel and spread out horizontally.  And, they reproduce on their own, duplicating themselves instead of relying on the germination of seeds.  They spend seasons in the dark spaces underground, working these mysterious processes with the earth and waiting for their time to renew within the world of the light.  Harold Roth, who wrote The Witching Herbs, 13 Essential Plants and Herbs for Your Magic Garden, compares perennials with The Hermit card in the tarot, describing them as traveling comfortably in realms “where The Sun and even The High Priestess cannot or will not go.”  This makes them a perfect herb for sorcery, as well as for reclaiming the hidden knowledge of the earth and the past.  He writes:  “When I look at the Hermit tarot card, I see a figure who holds memory and who looks into the past (generally the Hermit is portrayed facing left, where the past is located in our culture).  For me, this fits well with the nature of perennials.  This means that, if you are working on a spell that is dependent on memory, perennials can be excellent for sharpening memorization skills.  They remind us; they reveal secrets of the past; they bring the past into the present–exactly as they return from the Underworld every spring, remembering the previous year.”  This statement makes me wonder about what secret knowledge they may be preserving, and, as in the myth of Persephone, what depth of power and autonomy can be found or retrieved from an annual trip to the Underworld and a rebirth every Spring.  How else was Yarrow utilized in times past?  Here are a few folkloric uses I found listed in Scott Cunningham’s Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs:

• When worn, Yarrow protects the wearer, and when held in the hand, it stops all fear and grants courage.

• A bunch of dried yarrow hung over the bed or yarrow used in wedding decorations ensures love lasting at least seven years.  Yarrow is also used in love spells.

• Carrying yarrow not only brings love but it also attracts friends and distant relations you wish to contact.  It draws the attention of those you most want to see.

• The flowers are made into an infusion and the resulting tea is drunk to improve psychic powers.

• Yarrow is also used to exorcise evil and negativity from a person, place, or thing.

The idea that Yarrow can both attract loving connections and help to break them when we must cleanse and move on makes sense in terms of the mutable action of herbs, which often work to restore balance in relation to their area of expertise and affinity.  Yarrow has a long association with love, as well as with psychic empowerment and healing.  According to Harold Roth, there may even be a deeper layer to this connection that ties into the idea that it has a proclivity for keeping hidden knowledge and ultimately returning it to the light.  He shares the following Scottish poem in the previously mentioned book, and encourages readers to look at the language closely.  What appears as a kind of love charm, likely reproduced in the late 19th Century, along with other folk practices, may be an encoded teaching about something more mysterious and potent than attracting love.

I will pluck the yarrow fair,

That more benign shall be my face,

That more warm shall be my lips,

That more chaste shall be my speech,

Be my speech the beams of the sun,

Be my lips the sap of the strawberry,

May I be an isle in the sea,

May I be a hill on the shore,

May I be a star in the waning of the moon, 

May I be a staff to the weak,

Wound can I every man,

Wound can no man me.

Hmm.  Maybe this is about attraction and becoming a safe harbor for someone, but it sounds a lot more like a spell of glamour and empowerment, meant to mask a person of power in the facade of someone “benign” and appealing, while the work of helping those in need, or even harming an adversary, when necessary, can be done in a secret and protected manner.  Roth brings up a third possibility.  What if this is a spell for shapeshifting into larger, more abstract forces, such as an isle, a hill, a star.  When the witches of antiquity practiced lucid dreaming arts or deep trance states known as “flying”, and learned to send their energetic doubles beyond their physical bodies as something human or nonhuman that could appear before another, did they use Yarrow as an aid?  Yarrow carries quite a few folk names, but prominent among them is Tail of the Werewolf.  It may be that this comes from the historic association of witches with werewolves, from a former age of fear of the supernatural and those who held knowledge of it.  It may indicate a powerful hidden tradition of shapeshifting and invisibility practiced by those who had deep knowledge of the plant world and its magic.  If that’s the case, what is the full potential of Yarrow for protection, for psychic development, for the deepening of personal power and self preservation, and for transformation.  This is wild, potent territory for careful exploration.  Yet, even in the language of this spell is the intention to heal, to “be a staff to the weak,” while remaining impervious to wounding from another.  Yarrow is a healer, a protector, and a keeper of knowledge and power from the past and unseen realms. 

In this month of cleansing and awakening the wild of the soul, in this time of reflecting on love and its influence in your life, take Yarrow into your bath, into your rituals, and into your dreams.  Breath it.  Bathe with it.  Drink tea made from it.  Place it under your pillow.  Ask it for the help you require.

Rose Quartz

This seemingly soft, pink crystal is another ally that may feel familiar to many, without a full recognition of the depth of its power.  If this section is shorter than the previous one, it isn’t because this crystal offers less depth.  Rose quartz can be more transparent or more opaque, and though it’s often found in pale pink, there are also deep rose colored varieties.  There is a kind of humility found in Rose Quartz.  Its gentle, soothing quality is very helpful for calming stress, promoting love and peace within the self and within the home, and can increase one’s relationship to self love and self nurturing.  It is a very feminine stone that opens the heart and invites harmony and healing.  The type of healing it offers, however, is of deep importance.  Rose Quartz can help us clear that which we are carrying in the emotional body, cleansing us of the unconscious patterns and programming that we have absorbed through heartbreak, loss, abuse, and generational trauma.  It can dissolve heavy emotions, like anger, resentment, fear, and suspicion, clearing our minds and opening our hearts to receive and give love.  

When love is allowed to flow through us our whole sense of health and balance improves, and the law of attraction allows us to call more positive influences and situations into our lives as well.  Love is its own form of protection and healing, when we are able to connect with it as a universal energetic force.  If the emotional and energetic heart is unfettered, we can be nourished by this force and allow it to move through us.  If our sense of trust in others and in life is deeply wounded, however, we can unknowingly close the door to this force, leaving us more vulnerable to self destructive patterns, the traps of the ego, physiological and emotional dysregulation, loneliness, disconnection from the Divine and even from ourselves, and the intrusion of other forms of harmful influence.  

Rose Quartz can help to free the heart, and bathe it in the sense of interconnection and Divine light.  It is a good stone to wear on the body, to give to someone you love as an act of care , to keep in a room where a child sleeps and plays, and to tuck into the corners of your home.  Keeping it near can subtly promote harmony, love, compassion, balance, protection, and the transmutation of difficult energies.  You can use a sphere to help spread love and balance all around your space, or create a grid by placing a stone at each wall of a room.  

Like Yarrow, this crystal ally that can help to heal and harmonize, may have deeper implications as a tool for potent transformation when needed.  I found the following simple spell in Judoka Illes’ The Element Encyclopedia of 5000 Spells, the ultimate reference book for the magical arts.  Here, again, a few words conjure a possible history of glamour, protection, and transformation magic:

Rose Quartz Transformation Spell

Rose quartz transforms anger into love, or at least mild affection.  Wear it.  Give it as a gift to those who resent you.

Knowing the ways that this sweet stone might be able to transmute unfavorable feelings and energies within you and around you, it’s possible to imagine that its benign appearance is part of its power, just as with Yarrow and its hinted at historic uses.

Suggestion for working with Yarrow and Rose Quartz:

All of the suggested methods in this exploration are simple.  For most of our healing and protection needs, bathing rituals with Yarrow, joined with filling one’s home with Rose Quartz and meditating deeply with these feminine forces will be very helpful, as well as nourishing to the nervous system.  Make an infusion of Yarrow, and perhaps even an infused crystal water, to add into your bath.  You can also drink some of each infusion to fully bring it into your system. The practice of bajos, a full body steam, is also perfect for cleansing intertwined sexual and emotional energies, and rebalancing the autonomous self.  Yet, being as both of these allies hold a deep consciousness, below what is immediately perceivable, begin the practice you choose by connecting with them, looking within to see what is in need of balance and transformation, meditating with each to glimpse how they can act on your behalf, and listening for the secrets they may reveal.

Ometeotl.

May we feel bathed in balance, awakened to our own deep power, and surrounded by unconditional love and grace.  

With love,

the eleventh house

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

Dedication and the Soul: The Distance Between Lupercalia and Valentine's Day

Many people think of Valentine’s Day as holiday fabricated by the Hallmark company.  They aren’t entirely wrong.  Media, marketing, and the mass production of sweet sentiments has had a large influence on what we celebrate in February.  Amorous poetry given on St. Valentine’s Day seems to have originated with the influence of Chaucer in the fourteenth century, perhaps most notably with his story Parliament of Fowls, wherein the first “love birds” gather to choose a mate for the year, and even the narrator is pushed through a gate offering two possibilities for those who serve love, bliss or pain.  Love notes given as gifts acquired their ribbon and lace trimmings in the mid-nineteenth century, along with the transformation of chocolate, from a potent Aztec elixir to an ornately decorated assortment of treats, gifted in a perfectly Victorian memento box, as designed by Richard Cadbury in 1861.  The advent of the penny post, in 1680 London, had already allowed people to mail their fond feelings to loved ones.   Hallmark entered the scene in 1912, and quickly soared to the mass production of greeting cards, and before long Valentines, that we know today.  Valentine’s Day is a socially sanctioned, domestic kind of holiday, with the power to make people feel particularly special, or particularly lonely, depending on the circumstances.  

That is not to say that there is something wrong with celebrating love and dedication.  These are two of the most important forces on our planet, for the individual soul and the collective wellbeing together.  It is a theme at the heart of many myths and sacred texts, from Rama and Sita to Cupid and Psyche to Isis and Osiris to Inanna and Dumuzi, and far beyond, each story bringing its nuance of understanding to the mysteries we live within love, hardship, and wholeness.  It is essential to our collective consciousness to explore the trials and the virtues of love and dedication to another, but there are a few things about this holiday that make me wonder about the more hidden, or unconscious, aspects of what we celebrate on February 14th.  It isn’t only the odd history of Saint Valentine, stemming from Roman executions taking place on the date, or the dark legacy of the 1929 Valentine’s Day Massacre, both casting a shadow, but the fact that a lesser known ritual from the Pagan Wheel of the Year also occupies the date, or nearly so.  Lupercalia, a psychic purification ritual stemming from Etruscan, and later Roman, culture takes place on February 15th, though on the surface it bears little resemblance to Valentine’s Day.  In fact, the month of February takes its name from Februa, the ritual tools of purification used in this rite.  The Latin word Februa means “to cleanse,” and a more ancient festival of Spring washing called Februalia, or alternately Februatio, possibly from the Sabines, was ultimately incorporated into Lupercalia.

There is a lot of debate about whether Lupercalia is an origin for Valentines Day.  This is partly because what we know about how this ritual was practiced sounds brutal to our modern imaginations.  It seems that the festival rites included banquets, dancing, the sacrifice of a male goat and a dog, men drawing the name of a woman from a vessel, leading to a coupling for the duration of the ritual, and the lashing of women who wished to become pregnant by priests known as Luperci, who used whips made of goat hide.  If this festival is no longer practiced by new age Pagans, or if the Catholic Church took steps to abolish it, there can be little confusion as to why it was controversial.  There are certainly plenty of instances when a primal ritual was intentionally replaced with a tamer, more acceptable version, and Lupercalia was banned by Pope Gelasius in the 5th Century A.D.  The truth is, we can’t fully know the meaning and nuance of a mystery tradition we have not experienced in its cultural context.  We can, however, take a closer look at the imagery and history, in order to understand it a little better.    

Lupercalia rites took place near the Lupercal, the cave in Palatine Hill, which in Roman mythology is said to be the place where a wolf suckled the twins Remus and Romulus, who would grow up to be the founders of Rome.  Rome absorbed knowledge and mythic imagery from earlier cultures, one of the most primary of which was The Etruscan civilization.  In Etruscan religion, the she-wolf was an important figure.  She represents the wolf goddess Lycisca.  The founders of Rome are depicted as nursing from a wolf to represent that Roman civilization built their success on the foundation of Etruscan culture.  Lycisca is also the wife of Lupercus, who undergoes twelve trials to prove his cosmic worthiness of becoming the new Sun god.  It is on the day of the Spring Equinox that he completes these tasks and is given his reward.  Yet, on the same day, while hunting a deer, he is struck by lightening and dies, only to rise from the Underworld the following morning, as the Sun.  This myth, though much abbreviated here, has to do with the gradual return of the light which begins on the Winter Solstice, in the season of purification and renewal that occupies the space between Winter and Spring. 

Lupercus is not the only god born in and of the dark of Winter who represents the Sun, in its return to fullness, or who dies in order to return to darkness and be born again annually.  It is the story of the seasons, which is played out in the dance between Lupercus and his brother Cern, who represents Summer and takes over his reign of the earth realm, when Lupercus dies and sheds his wolf skin.  This skin, found later by another hunter, is discovered to have the power to transform people into wolves, and the first man to wear it becomes the first Luperci.  This is the start of the mystery cult, and many of its details are preserved in the Italian Strega tradition, by those who worship Diana as Queen of the Witches.  Diana, also known by the Greeks as Artemis, is the wild maiden huntress and a symbol of the moon, a goddess for whom the wolf, the stag, the forest, and the Centaur, the mythic creature whose bow shot the lightening bolt at Lupercus, are sacred.  The goat and dog are agrarian culture variations on the older imagery of the stag and the wolf, sacred representations of the power and fertility of the earth, and the instinctual wildness of the soul.  These larger mythic elements reveal this to be both a story about the journey of the soul throughout a season or a lifetime, as it cycles through darkness and light, struggling with its dual nature and desire to transform, grow, seek challenge, renewal, and ultimately knowledge or transcendence, and also perhaps an ancient fertility rite which is about more than physical fertility.  To what is the soul dedicated?  In Raven Grimassi’s Encyclopedia of Wicca & Witchcraft, I found the following quote about Lupercus:

“In the ritual of Lupercus the wolf within is released, that which is untamed and unowned.  Through this purging of the contaminations of modern domestic life the ritualist are realigned to their primal natures.  Once in tune with this essential connection to Nature, they can then refocus upon the journey toward enlightenment.  In this hunt for the true self, one is struck by lightening, and becomes transformed into a new light.”

What does it mean that Valentine’s Day now holds the place of this primal, ancient rite?  Do these forces and the psychic need they represent still exist underneath the surface?  Do we hunt for love, instead of for our truest self?  Is the soul still dedicated to wildness, experience, and ultimately enlightenment?  If we don’t acknowledge this in the light of day, will the unconscious ensure that we find these lessons through pain?  Or, can we make room to examine the duality within us and our customs, even the ones that seem the most tame, domesticated, and commonplace?  To what is your soul dedicated, and for what do you seek fertility this year?  

Whether you revel in the gestures of loving acknowledgement or not, how can you love yourself and your complexity in the fiercest, wildest, deepest, and truest manner this February 14th and 15th?  How can you give and receive love, while still releasing the “wolf within” to its most sacred purpose, and without asking it to be okay with being owned, tamed, or hidden under a facade?

May you truly love the wild within you, and give love from your truest self.

Ometoetl.

With passion for the mystery that we all are underneath,

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 18: Copal & Smokey Quartz

It’s so easy to become overwhelmed, especially when living in times of change and uncertainty.  Sometimes we know very well what is getting beneath our skin and making us feel out of sorts.  But, often, when we start to feel less like our usual selves, either more anxious or stagnant, unusually reactive, overly sensitive, or else shut down, we are reacting to the unconscious collection of psychic impressions from others in our lives and around us.  Being empathetic means that we can imagine ourselves in the situation of another, and it is an important quality to cultivate.  Being empathic, however, means that we are absorbing the emotional impressions and energetic conditions of others around us into our own psychic sphere.  There are plenty of people who are aware of living with this quality, and they can use it to understand and help others.  Yet, when we fall accidentally into this state of psychic openness, or when we aren’t aware that it is happening, we can quickly become imbalanced, even ill, and certainly depleted by this lack of energetic boundary.  Although for some it can be considered a gift or a special mode of perception, for many others it is a consequence of an energetic field that has become diffuse, violated, overburdened by all we try to hold, or weakened by neglect, to the point that we are not able to distinguish the line between our emotions or issues to solve and those that belong to people we love, encounter, or even read about.  This kind of blurring of boundaries keeps us spinning our wheels emotionally, feeling ungrounded and unstable, as well as less capable of focusing our energy on what what is important to us.  Most of us never received any kind of early instruction about how to take care of ourselves energetically, and we live in a culture with a lot of shared information and very little ritual to help us move what we collect, so it is no surprise that we fall easily into this state of imbalance.  Luckily, with a little self care and practice, a compromised energy field can be repaired and become the shield and source of vitality that it is meant to be.  In service of this, I’d like to offer some insights into two very potent allies for energetic wellness:  Copal and Smoky Quartz.

Copal

In Curanderismo, heavy emotions are named Aires, or winds.  This means that emotional states are seen as winds that move through us and between us.  Their purpose is ultimately to show us what is out of alignment with our deepest selves, meaning they bring imbalances to our attention by making us very uncomfortable.  Yet, they can collect within us and cloud our senses, creating illness and imbalance as well.  They can also be contagious, as we absorb heavy emotions that move around us, especially when many people near us are feeling similar things.  Think of how fear and panic spread so quickly among us.  This creates not only a form of emotional imbalance and overwhelm, but a psychic one as well.  Those who can easily see the aura, or energy body, can perceive the build up of emotional energies as color, for example.  In the last blog, I described some ways in which our energetic body becomes compromised or weakened, so that it doesn’t serve as the shield it’s meant to be.  There are certainly ways for us to heal and strengthen it through perceptual exercises and tending.  Copal smoke is a powerful vehicle for cleansing and rebalancing the energy body, as well as improving our emotional, psychic and even physical health.  This is why it is one of the primary elements of a Limpia ritual.  When the Copal is burning, we are cleansed by the smoke, and that which is in need of release is helped to move again, beyond our physical and energetic forms, and the spaces we inhabit.

Copal is a tree resin which comes from a family of trees known as Burseraceae.  It was used in pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures for healing and ceremony, and continues to be central to Indigenous practices and Curanderismo.  There are several different forms of copal, identified by color as well as shape and texture, and each has a specific purpose.  Unless you are visiting the markets in Mexico and Central America, you are most likely to come in contact with it in its two or three most common forms:  White Copal, Gold or Yellow copal, and Black Copal.  All of its forms have the capacity to cleanse energy and simultaneously elevate consciousness, helping us to align with higher frequencies in prayer, ceremony, meditation, and healing.  Copal can ground you, create movement and release of  heavy energies you may be carrying, empower your energetic field, and elevate you to a higher meditative state where you can interact with the realm of the Divine.  If you are more familiar with resins like Frankincense and Myrrh, imagine combining their effects together with a strongly cleansing herb like Sage.  This is the purpose and potential of a Copal smudge.  Of the three forms I’ve mentioned, White Copal, also known as Copal Pura or Sacred Copal is most used for high ceremony and meditation, while the gold variety often called Mayan Copal or Copal Oro is used more for healing and is especially good at psychic cleansing and clearing the Aires.  This is the form that looks most like Amber, and is often confused with it.  If your condition feels especially heavy, and you have the suspicion that you may be carrying a kind of lineage curse or psychic attack, Black Copal (Copal Negro) can be used to move more dense energies and to dispel darker forms of magic.  Copal Negro should always be burned outside, however, as it makes quite a lot of smoke.

The Mexicas (Aztecs) considered Copal an adaptive medicine, connecting it with the element of water, as well as with the earth.  This is because its form can be adapted to suit many physical issues as well.  It can provide cooling or warming, as required and can be used for many physical conditions from skin disorders to tooth decay to physical illness.  Even in its most commonly used form, as a smoke, it can be gently inhaled to help conditions such as fevers, headaches, congestion, asthma, stomach aches, joint and muscle pain, stress, anxiety, depression, overthinking or worry, trauma, PTSD, and grief, in addition to its metaphysical gifts of cleansing, protection, and connection with the unseen.  

As a folk remedy and sacred ceremonial aid, Copal is unparalleled, at least in my opinion, and what is written here is just an introduction.  There are many traditions surrounding being a carrier of Copal medicine, including how to burn it in a traditional vessel called a Popoxcomitl (or Sahumerio, in Spanish, the post colonial form), how to dispose of the ash, and the manner in which you smudge a person or a space properly, with reverence and gratitude.  For most who seek to burn copal for personal healing and energetic cleansing, a good place to start building relationship with this medicine is to begin with respect and clear intention, and to find a ceramic container that could hold a burning charcoal.  It will help to put some clean sand at the bottom to absorb the heat.  Most charcoals are somewhat toxic to breath, and should be burned outside.  For those who are sensitive or prefer something more natural, there are also coconut coals, though they will have to be relit periodically.  Copal can also be found in the form of an incense stick, which is less traditional, but still quite useful and easy to use.

Here are some of the energetic and ceremonial uses for Copal smoke:

• To cleanse and transmute dense energies and Aires

• To dispel dark uses of magic and psychic attack, and bring protection.

• To balance and restore a damaged energetic body

• To dispel heavy and cluttered thoughts

• To bring light to the soul

• To support a soul retrieval

• To help a soul to cross over

• To connect with divine and unseen forces

• To honor and connect with the Ancestors

• To honor and connect with Spirits of the Land

• To offer thanks and express gratitude

• To clear the mind and heart

• To cleanse and bless the home, work spaces, and ceremony sites

• To cleans and bless sacred tools

• To call dreams, visions, and psychic abilities

• To cleanse, ground, and rebalance the self after performing healing rituals, or experiencing events wherein you have absorbed too much 

Take the smoke in your hands and bring it to each time to different parts of your body in the following order:  your head, your heart, your navel, your sexual area, your legs and feet.  If you can, include your back as well.  When finished, give thanks, touch the ground, and bring your hands together.  Ometeotl.

Smokey Quartz

There are many protective stones, but Smokey Quartz is unique among them.  Smokey Quartz is perhaps the most powerful stone for cleansing the energy field, both the aura and the chakras or tononalcayos, and providing a strong sense of grounding, while still amplifying one’s connection with the realms of dreaming, intuition, and manifestation.  It seems to do two things at once, pulling negative energies from our field to transmute them and ground them within the Earth, and at the same time pulling our dreams and inspirations into manifestation, and the unseen and mystical beings closer to our perception.  This stormy colored, grey and black stone is a potent aid for those of us who are prone to becoming ungrounded, overwhelmed with information, and at times unable to integrate the insights or spiritual knowledge we access in an intuitive manner.  Acting to reconnect us with the Earth circuit and our innate ability to cycle energies within her depths, it enlivens the cord between us.  This allows us to release what we need to more easily, and to draw up energy for our rebalancing and the recovery of vitality and clarity.  

Smokey Quartz can help to ground that which is spiritual into the physical realm.  This can happen in several ways.  When we are overwhelmed with information and thought, it acts as a catalyst for finding a clear purpose and a means of acting on our thoughts and insights, allowing us to respond appropriately, rather than being frozen in the realm of mind.  It can bring a sense of clarity and organization to a dysregulated mind, because it works to regulate our whole energetic system, so that we are neither depleted or holding too much energy without a way to move it.  Because it is working with the Earth to transmute challenging and dense energies, it is essentially able to cleanse our aura and energetic system, ground the disruptive energies, and then make them into something that can be used in a new way, as simply energy for something else more beautiful to grow.  This kind of Earth power has a name in Nahuatl.  It is the power of the twin aspects of our Earth Mother called Tlazolteotl. and Tlazohtlateotl, the force which takes what we need to release, and the force which makes things grow in beauty.  They work together to transmute all that needs cleansing, healing, and renewal.  It is the special power of our Divine Mother Earth, and in Smokey Quartz we see her dual gift in the form of a beautiful grey and black crystal.  In addition to supporting this form of energy composting and manifestation magic, Smokey Quartz brings the spiritual into the physical by pulling beings from the unseen realms closer to our energetic field so that we are more able to perceive them.  Wearing or working with Smokey Quartz can increase your ability to see that which is usually hidden from our conscious awareness, including Spirits of the Land or Faerie realm, ghosts, Ancestors, and guides.  This is a strong ally for people who are more comfortable in the dream realms than in the everyday world.  It can help one embrace being embodied and feel more confident in creating change and manifesting goals in one’s worldly life, without dampening the connection to spiritual territories and high frequency energies.  In fact, it may well improve our ability to align with and integrate these energies, while offering us protection and an active system of purification.

There is also a special and quite rare form of Smokey Quartz called Morion Quartz that adds more nuance to the benefits listed above.  Morion Quartz is black, or nearly nearly black, instead of grey, due to the addition of organic impurities combining with the silicon dioxide mineral Quartz.  This addition makes a subtle difference in its energetic properties.  Morion Quartz is an excellent support for the kind of energetic issues that result from our own deep rooted negative emotions, as well as the thoughtforms they create and unconsciously direct.  It can help us to acknowledge and then release or transform feelings like fear, resentment, rage, anxiety, depression, defiance, powerlessness, shame, and grief.  It can also dispel the same kinds of dense energies, negative emotions, and thoughtforms that are sent to us from others.  It’s strong grounding energy can help us feel more safe in our bodies, in addition to balancing our aura and energetic system to cultivate a more healthy, positive outlook.  It works with our system or our environment as a whole, bringing in balance, calm, harmony, protection, and alignment with the Mother Earth.  When someone is upset, holding a Morion crystal can be very soothing and have a quick calming effect.  Working with it intentionally can support the cleansing of long held shadow issues, offering the courage and the gentle push needed to face what we don’t want to see, and remove it before it causes more harm.  Morion is also good at empowering other stones around it.

Smokey Quartz and Morion Quartz get their color from a natural form of radiation (though watch out for manmade versions).  They do not pose a threat to us in terms of radioactivity, and in fact can help to counter the more harmful effects of things like chemotherapy and exposure to radioactive materials or the electromagnetic fields we encounter in many aspects of our modern lives.  Though they are adept at transmuting energies to the Earth, the ease with which they absorb energy means that they should probably be cleansed now and then with water, smoke, or moonlight.

Suggestion for working with Copal and Smokey Quartz:

• Gather your copal and crystal allies.  Offer 4 breaths to these potent energies, offering with your exhales first the best energy of your dreams, second the best energy of your emotions, third the best energy of your thoughts, and fourth the best energy of your actions.  

• Light you charcoal and once burning add one small copal crystal, or a pinch if your copal is more close to a powder form.  (Or light your incense stick, if that is your preferred form.)

• Cleanse yourself with the smoke, as described above.  Take it in your hands to your primary energetic centers.

• With windows open, cleanse your home or ceremonial space, bringing the smoke to all corners.

• Cleanse your Smokey Quartz or Morion crystals, and any other sacred tools.

• Hold the crystal in your hands and focus on your intention.

• Use your intuition and perceptual skills to scan your energetic field or aura for diffuse areas, dark spots, holes, and threads that are attached to other people and places.  Use your breath and intention to bring your strands closer to your physical body.  Releasing what is not yours back to where it belongs, and calling all parts of you home.

• Sweep your aura with your crystal to feel for cold spots.  Ask your crystal to help repair all problem areas, and transmute the dense and negative energies.  Ask, respectfully, for insight into how to restore your vitality, balance, and positive outlook.  Breath and listen.  Allow the crystal to offer support, protection and grounding, while visualizing your energetic body whole, bright, and compact around you.

• Hold your crystal at your solar plexus.  Ask it to transmute all the negative emotional energy and thoughtforms that you might be sending into positive energy that is now dedicated to the Divine and aligned with the Earth Mother, so that it cannot revert to its previous state.  Pay attention to what you perceive as this happens, and release what you need to through breath, tears, sounds, or other somatic responses.  Trust your intuition.

• Bring your hands together to complete and offer thanks.

Ometeotl.

May we feel balanced, capable, serene, and safe in our bodies, minds, and hearts, regardless of what happens around us.  

With Warmest Winter Wishes,

the eleventh house

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

Tending the Energy Body in the Age of Information Overload

Happy New Year!   However you feel about the ritual of resolutions, this time of year is excellent for considering how you are what you need in order to meet 2022.

It feels as though this year started abruptly, like tripping on a crack in the sidewalk and launching into a jog that was unplanned.  Certainly the pace of the new viral variant, and the return to more pandemic restrictions are contributing to a feeling of pressure and intensity for many of us at the start of this year.  However, I’m not certain that it’s doing something, in particular, that is creating this sense.  In the process of following the news related to Omicron, and to other major issues we currently face as a world community, it occurred to me that the flood of information we have at our fingertips is far greater than what we are built to absorb.  We are able to track so much of what happens in the world, as well as within our extended families, and circles of friends and acquaintances.  We collect stories, and the feeling of responsibility and concern keeps us returning for new nuances and updates.  Yet, as we reach out energetically, intellectually, and emotionally, it is very easy to forget to return all the way home again, leaving us scattered, drained, or even amplified with the desire to act, when no clear way to respond is available to us.  This can, of course, create anxiety, and lead us to its close cousins escapism and denial.  But, there is a lot more happening on the unseen and unconscious levels.

The energy body is a complex topic, and though it is described differently by different cultures there is a lot of common ground.  It is the energy surrounding the physical body, which never the less holds a piece of our unconscious and emotional information, sense of vitality, and inner force needed to create in life and endure what comes our way.  When it is strong and bright, we feel better, more alert, grounded, capable, and clear minded.  When it becomes diffuse, or compromised, we aren’t at our best.  We become more vulnerable to intrusions, whether that be from stress, illness, other peoples’ will, or other problems and unwanted energies.  The energy body, or auric field around us, acts as a protective shield, as well as a reflection of our inner state and capacity to hold or move power.  The ancient Toltecs described it as strands of light in the general shape of an egg around us.  When these strands are compact around our physical bodies, and their light is bright and even, we have more energy to use in whatever manner we choose to direct it, in the everyday world and in the realms of dreaming, magic, and spiritual growth.  We are less vulnerable to the strong emotions and issues of others around us.  We have a higher capacity to navigate the uncertainties of life without becoming overwhelmed.  

Yet, when our own energetic strands are stretching out to other people, places, and situations we have been attached to, or when they become so widely spread that they feel like a general haze that reaches far from our bodies, then we are both losing our vital energies and absorbing more than we intend to from what is around us.  This happens when we have unhealthy attachments that have not been resolved with people from our past and present, particularly those with which we have had intimacy.  It happens when we travel quickly from one place to another, or when we are longing to return somewhere and never entirely left.  And it happens when we are so empathic that we cannot easily perceive the difference between our emotions and those of others.  It can both cause feelings of overwhelm, and be a result of an overwhelm of emotional, psychic, and intellectual information.  In any of these situations, we become more vulnerable to issues like anxiety, depression, addiction, illness, and other forms of imbalance, because we have spread ourselves too thin, literally, and don’t have the all the resources we should have for taking care of ourselves.  This doesn’t mean we should abandon feeling for others or ignore what’s around us.  It means that we need to take stock of what is happening to us on the unseen levels, as we interact with the world, to track how much awareness and intentionality we have when it comes to the use of our precious energy.  When we are overwhelmed, worrying, and feeling depleted, we aren’t at our most effective for anyone, and the practices we may be engaging to help ourselves through it may not be as effective either, if we have allowed too many holes in our energy field to develop, or too many strands to stretch us thin, both of which may leak, draw, or send energy elsewhere.  The level of energy one has is the key not only to personal vitality, but to how far one can develop the skill for arts like lucid dreaming, manifestation magic, and integrating the knowledge we encounter.  It is an important place to start when on the path of spiritual development, but no matter where we are in that journey, it needs to be tended.  There will always be challenges, temptations, and intrusions to potentially compromise our store of energy, and the effects of these will be felt, even if we don’t perceive what is at the root of the discomfort.

The system of Chakras, or Totonalcayos in the ancient Mexican lineage, is another aspect of energetic health and spiritual capacity, a topic for future inquiry.  These work like channels, each of which must be met, possibly healed or balanced, and strengthened, so that energy can move upwards through them to unlock our potential for true knowledge, growth, and special talents.  These can also become blocked and need some attention, but this system is distinct from the strands of the energy body or aura.  When we are considering the unseen, the picture of what we are and what effects us for better or worse is complex.  It is a mystery worth our investigation, especially since what we experience isn’t only esoteric.

Luckily the manner in which we can perceive and repair the health of our energy body is relatively simple.  We start by noticing when we are overwhelmed, depleted, or not all the way in our own skin.  The first thing to do is to stop doing, and stop taking in outside stimulation.  Find a quiet space to look within.  What is at the root of your discomfort?  Notice if the answer comes to you.  Trust your first impressions and write a brief note so you can return to this later.  There may be a specific problem that needs addressing or a pattern of behavior that you find you need to shift.  Close your eyes and try to perceive the strands of your own energy body.  Deep and rhythmic breathing will help you open your subtle senses.  Is your energy field compact, bright and close to your body? That is the goal, but if this is not what you see, notice how far you feel your energy is reaching beyond your physical body, and pay attention to the following nuances:  

Are the strands of your energy body generally diffuse and spread too thin?  

You may be empathic or perhaps just over stretched, but in this state you will certainly be feeling too much of the emotions of others around you, and vulnerable to taking in what is not yours to handle.  This is not an unsolvable problem, however.  It requires checking in with yourself now and then and doing a practice to bring your energy in to be more compact around you again.  Sit with your legs crossed, in the general shape of a triangle or pyramid.  Inhale through your nose, with the intention to draw your energy back home.  Exhale through your mouth, allowing the air to echo in the chamber in the back of your throat, and making a sound like “Hooooo.”  This is best done during the full moon, though any time is good.  It is an indigenous technique, and quite effective.  

Are there holes and dark areas?  

Holes and dark spots in our energy body can be caused by trauma or self destructive patterns, like addiction.  If you have trouble perceiving this on your own, a crystal can be helpful.  Many varieties will work, but smoky quartz, for example is a good choice, and sweeping the stone over your auric field will help you notice cold spots, an indication that a hole is present.  These areas leave us vulnerable to intrusions and our own energy may be depleted or violated when they are left unresolved.  If you notice this, self care is in order, not judgement.  Visualize yourself whole and imagine sewing up and strengthening these compromised spots.  Interactions, memories, and impressions may come to you while you do this.  They are likely to point towards areas where you need healing or support, or where a change of lifestyle is in order.  The more you trust your ability to perceive, the more you are able to address these things on your own.  However, everyone needs help sometimes.  Seeking out healing support, cleansing rituals, and therapy may be helpful.  Whether you decide to seek guidance or not, you can keep working on the psychic level to repair and brighten your aura.  Call on the power of the Sun as well.  It is the source of life and energy for all of us, and even without tremendous effort we can call on it to nourish us.  Spend time in the sun.  Drink in its light, literally.  Using this Toltec practice, you can consume its energy and direct it to your aura.  Take 13 breaths in the following manner:  Inhale through your mouth.  Hold the breath and swallow.  While your breath is still held, direct the energy to your energy field, strengthening it and repairing damage.  Exhale just the air through your nose.  This is done 13 times.

Are some strands reaching out to something, someone, some place? 

Sometime it is our own attachments that are draining us and leaving us not fully present.  It may be as simple as having traveled in a manner that is very fast for our system, and our energy body is struggling to keep up.  This happens, for example, when we travel by plane, or over great distances in a car.  It’s part of what we experience as jet lag.  It can also happen when there is somewhere we didn’t truly want to leave, and so part of us remains.  This can also apply to people we long to be with, or to whom we have an unconscious attachment.  It is one very good reason for taking care to cut the energy cords that tie us to former lovers, particularly when those relationships ended badly or involve a lot of unresolved feelings.  It doesn’t really help either person to continue to hold a piece of someone’s energy.  We can love them, without allowing energy to be drained in that manner.  Use your breath and intention to send back what doesn’t belong to you.  Then, as if sucking in air through a straw, draw back your own strands of energy, from wherever they are lingering.  Do this until you feel back to yourself and perceive that you are more compact.

Of course, you can also enlist the help of some tools of divination in this process, to better understand the root of the issue, or how to address it, and to check in on your psychic and energetic health.  However, the tools you need to listen to yourself and rebalance your energy body are mostly within you and in the natural world.  There are many ways in which the generous plant, mineral, and elemental realms can help.  Forest bathing, sun bathing, lying on the earth, spending time under the stars and the moon, observing the seasons, visiting a waterfall, and swimming in natural waters all have profound balancing effects on us energetically.  In fact, it may be that the less connected we are to these elements, the more vulnerable we are to being pulled too far by the stresses we must meet each day. 

May we all meet the new year with inner balance, resilience, and potential, no matter what challenges we face in the world outside.

Ometoetl.

With love and care,

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 17: Ivy and Aquamarine

Happy Winter Solstice. 

In the previous blog for this month, I wrote about the realm of hidden magic, those gifts inside of us have not been fully welcomed and are biding their time, perhaps in an atmosphere not conducive to their flowering.  This was in the context of the Goddess, or feminine force, known as Malinalli.  In considering herbs to explore for this month, it occurred to me that the first step towards healing the unconscious influence of generations of suppression and danger surrounding magic will be to address the fear, resentment, and rage that comes from the denial of something essential that has not been allowed full expression.  Just as feeling safe is critical to the acceptance of healing.   Cleansing ourselves from the poison of betrayal, fear, limiting self-beliefs, and resentment is needed in order to find and wield our inner power, and to tap into the boundless magical energies of the green world.  There are many plants that would align themselves to this purpose, but a few that are particularly harmonious with the season come to mind.  I was looking into Ivy, as the name Malinalli means Healing Ivy, or alternately Twisted Ivy, although there is much debate about what plant the name actually refers to and whether it is an Ivy at all.  The best theory I’ve heard is that the plant her name references had many magical and healing uses and was harvested to extinction.  Some say it was a form of Ayahuasca, or another psychoactive, others that it was an algae.  Still, the name of Ivy remains. 

Ivy

Ivy has a rich Pagan history, being associated with Dionysus/Bacchus, as the Bacchanals would become intoxicated from consuming it, seeking both visions and frenzy.  Ivy has the magical capacity to both bring about intoxication and trance, if consumed, and to potentially help prevent these effects, when worn as a crown or carved into goblets as a symbol, according to the lore.  It was also sacred to the Druids.  At Yule, it can be used for divinatory sight.  As a result of these associations, it was removed by the Christian Church from its proper place within the rituals of Yule or Christmas, because of fear of magic.  Its later use became as a protection against witches, planted to grow along houses and on walls, so that witches could not enter.  This comes from the idea that Ivy protects against negativity (as well as lightening).  Ivy was used in spells for divining health and love, for communicating with spirits, in love binding spells, in protection magic, in luck charms, and in bringing death to something, as well as in other forms of cursing.  Yet, today it is known as a commonplace invasive or ornamental plant.  I’m feeling the parallel with the story of Malinalli.   Ivy tends to send its roots down into the earth wherever it is able to touch the ground, and as most know it has the uncanny ability to climb and persevere in many settings.  This all makes a kind of poetic sense, especially as the plant who gave its name to the original sorceress and keeper of earth based magical knowledge

As I read more into Ivy, I found an interesting detail.  According to folkloric knowledge, Ivy is magically paired with Holly, even considered the corresponding good luck plant for women that Holly can be for men.  Holly and Ivy appear together in wreaths that are hung on doors and in homes during Yule, and in Pagan European myth concerning a battle between the Holly King and the Oak King, also known as the Ivy King, which has something to do with the binding of the last sheaf of harvest with Ivy, and a practice of foretelling luck on Yuletide morning.  I can’t help but notice that there is much magical lore about Holly and Mistletoe, both sacred Druidic herbs, involved in what became common holiday traditions.  Holly was perceived to be more chaste, than dream-inducing Mistletoe, and thus was more embraced by the church, even with its power for magical cleansing and bringing luck, but Ivy, the feminine counterpart, was mostly forgotten in holiday rituals.  Hmm.  Perhaps an appropriate magical act for empowering the Green Magic and Divine Feminine Mysteries of seeing, dreaming, shapeshifting, and spellcraft, in honor of Malinalli and the parts of ourselves that have not been fully allowed to shine in the light of day, is simply to bring Ivy back into the ritual celebrations of the Yuletide season.  Below are some of the traditional uses of Ivy during Winter Solstice and the following holidays.

Making Magic with Ivy:

• Plant or scatter Ivy wherever you need protection from negativity.

• Carry Ivy for luck, or as part of a bridal crown, a practice that is especially lucky for the female identified.

• Make a wreath of Ground Ivy vines and hang it on your front door to bless your home with love, abundance, and magic  Add Holly for color, extra protection, luck, and to increase your wise visioning and prophetic dreaming.  Since the two are paired magically, when together they create a stronger effect, as two opposite forces joining together create with power.  Add something to symbolize what you are hoping to bring into your life this New Year. Holly also has an affinity for transforming hostility, bitterness, envy, and aggression, so add it with the intent to heal any of these heavy emotions that may hang over your most magical self, and invite that aspect of you out of the shadows.  Ometeotl.

• Perhaps offer yourself or your wreath spell some Holly flower essence to soften the hard walls we build around us when the world feels more hostile to us than it is. 

• On the Solstice, Yule, or New Year’s Eve add fresh Ivy and Holly leaves to a hot bath by candlelight.  (Don’t include the berries, though, as they are toxic.)  This will help to cleanse old emotional wounds and the resentments they leave behind, related to all the times you were told to hide your true nature, as Malinalli was.  Then make a crown of Ivy, and celebrate the subtle parts of yourself that have been waiting to be seen.  Pretend it’s your birthday and the world is excited for your arrival.

• Place a single leaf of Ivy and Holly under your pillow to bring dreams of future love.

Aquamarine

In all of this consideration about aligning ever more deeply with The Divine Feminine, and healing past suppressions of the intuitive on personal and collective levels, one stone brought itself instantly forward to my awareness.  Beautiful, blue-green, soothing Aquamarine is a gentle, yet powerful ally for communing with The Goddess, and embracing her gifts both inside and outside of ourselves.  For those who have trouble expressing the truth of one’s emotions and sense of inner knowing, Aquamarine can increase access to and trust in the intuitive level, allowing one to the gain courage to self-express. 

When we are not used to feeling trust in our own sense of truth and intuition, or when others shut us down for expressing on this level, it is easy to become afraid and resentful.  Allowing that kind of harm to continue for long can lead to emotional numbness, as well as bitterness, vindictiveness, and passive aggressive expressions of anger.  These emotions can show us important imbalances in our lives, but they also poison the psyche, making the world seem smaller and meaner than it has to be.  When attachment to harmful states of mind, ways of living, people, and things seems insurmountable, Aquamarine can provide a sense of calm relief, a doorway to one’s own deeper consciousness, insight, clear voice, and ability to weather life changes.   

Aquamarine is perfect for healing the heavy emotions and stifling of the throat chakra that can accompany past experiences of emotional, verbal, and physical forms of abuse.  It is cooling and soothing, and gently but insistently calls us home from experiences of dissociation because of trauma.  When we have succumbed to unhealthy patterns as either the victim or the perpetrator of psychic aggression, Aquamarine reminds us to soften and receive the support of the Divine Feminine.  By encouraging the acknowledgement and release of self-limiting or abusive patterns in our histories, and empowering our ability to express our innate sense of truth, Aquamarine assists us in flowing with empowerment.  Power can be carried gently and with confidence, as is exhibited by water, which gracefully moves through the earth, carving a path where it needs to, in pursuit of its innate purpose.

Aquamarine offers an opportunity for deep emotional cleansing and rebalancing, a perfect partner for Winter Solstice.  When something sensitive and innate within us has been wounded, when we have had to hide, as Malinalli did, we must be sure not to perpetuate the harm by changing our own nature, or becoming lost in retaliation.  Instead, find that which will help cleanse what has been collected, and practice bringing the idiosyncratic nuances of your heart, your voice, and your soul forward to sparkle like the gem that you are.

Wear your Aquamarine jewelry close to your throat chakra and your heart.  Let it remind you and support you, as you begin the journey to shine each day with more of your divine, magical light, just as the Sun of this New Year begins its return to full strength and presence.

With deepest love and respect for the bold and subtle parts of you,

the eleventh house

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

Winter Solstice and the Birth of Malinalli: Magic Biding Time

To bide your time means to wait for something, in a state of readiness and expectation.  It implies a sense of being outside of right timing, in a state of holding, where the essence of something meaningful will not yet be received in the proper spirit.  It means, in many cases, preserving a potential reality, without revealing it, and without letting it flower.  Not forever.  Just for now.

There is a Winter Solstice story from Ancient Mexico that has been on my mind.  It has to do with the birth of magic, and with the Earth and Cosmos at odds.  When personifications of such large forces, and the relationship between them, are at play in myth, it often speaks to cycles of time, strong astrological influence, and how these shape the fundamental rules of collective reality.

So here it is.

Once, a very long while ago, the Mother Earth, known as Tonantzin Tlalli Coatlicue became pregnant.  This pregnancy was a surprise.  There was no father to her conception, and she was no longer young.  When her first children, the Moon and Stars, heard of this unusual pregnancy, they were scandalized.  They vowed in secret to attack and kill her during her birthing labors.  Upon learning of this plan, the Earth was deeply saddened, but just then she heard a voice from within which said “Don’t worry, Mother.  When the time comes, I will protect you.”  Before long, her labors began, and as she feared the Moon and Stars attacked.  Her child, however, was born quickly and with a large hook in his hand.  Huitzilopochtli, the force of warriorship, discipline, and overcoming weaknesses in order to make the impossible possible, who would later lead the Mexica (Aztec) people to their empire through dreams and symbols, emerged fighting.  He defeated the Moon and Stars in battle, slicing the dualistic Moon into its four phases, into the aspect known as Coyolxauhqui.  But, while this was happening and the attention of the Cosmos was distracted, a second child was born.  The girl child, and powerful feminine force known as Malinalli arrived almost in secret.  She was born the pure force of magic, the natural magic of the Earth, carrying the sacred mystical knowledge of the plants, of seeing, of shapeshifting, of the art of sorcery.  Yet, when her mother saw her, she did not celebrate.  She was worried.  She told her, with her first words from mother to child, to hide what she was.  She told her that the world was not ready for her gifts.  She told her to keep them quietly within, until a certain time, when a great shift would take place.

But Malinalli didn’t obey.  Long story short, it proved not to be her time.

This is a story of the Fifth Sun, the cycle of 6,625 years that just ended this year in May.  This “Sun of Injustice” or “Angry Sun” carried a theme of oppression and marginalization for the hidden arts and the Feminine Forces, among other minorities in our world.  That great shift the Mother Earth was describing, and for which Malinalli was told to wait, is taking place now.  The Mexica/Aztec Empire ended 500 years ago.  This vision of an impending world in which the cosmic alignments of the moon, the stars, the planets, and the earth would be in support of magic, of the Feminine Path of Knowledge, and of the secret power within plants, has been held for a very long time.  And, this is just one story, from one ancient culture among many that made predictions about our time.

And the ancients didn’t just wait passively for it.  They studied, prepared, preserved what they learned and developed, and trusted the cycles of time, as well as the future generations.  They did their part to contribute to a complex system of cosmic observations, measurements, and predictions.  They passed down theories, practices, and stories like this one, so that way out here in the future, we could perhaps wake up the parts of us that were not welcome to flower before, and think about our time in a different scope. What are we going to do?

To bide your time means to wait for something, in a state of readiness and expectation.  It implies a sense of being outside of right timing, in a state of holding, where the essence of something meaningful will not yet be received in the proper spirit.  It means, in many cases, preserving a potential reality, without revealing it, and without letting it flower.  But not forever. 

What opportunity are you waiting for, to bring your true gifts forward, to step into belief in yourself and the potential of magic that resides in our Earth?  How can you help to create the conditions you need?  The dark of Winter is a time for dreaming, preparing, gathering momentum, waiting, but not forever.  Within that quiet, hidden time within, what are you going to weave?  Light a candle, to represent Malinalli and all those who held the light of sacred knowledge, even when it would not be well received.  Gaze into it.  Ask yourself the questions:  What part of you has been biding its time, and for what purpose?  How can you create the conditions for that part of you to rise, flourish, and reveal itself?  Ometeotl.

With sincere belief in the magic inside of you,

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 16: Marjoram & Sodalite

We’re now in the season of magical cooking and ritual gatherings!  Though we might not always stop to consider the spiritual and mood altering qualities of our food, magic is present in our kitchens!  The foods and herbs we interact with all the time can also be the ingredients of many potions and magical meals.  Our homes, as well, can easily be transformed into ritual sites where harmony, nurturing, health, and balance abide.  All it takes is a little knowledge and intention, and the presence of our plant and crystal allies.

Marjoram

It may not be all the time that family, especially extended family, have the luxury or habit of sitting down for a meal together.  If your family is able to come together this holiday season and share good food, and especially if you are hosting, it might be a perfect opportunity to introduce the magic of marjoram.  Helpful as a culinary herb and medicinal aid, Marjoram (Origanum Majorana) is a member of the mint family and has a flavor similar to its cousin oregano, but gentler and slightly sweet in comparison.  With greyish, green leaves and small pink, violet, or white flowers, this richly fragrant, low growing perennial herb is pretty and pleasing enough to use in bouquets, dried arrangements, corsages and flower crowns.  It can be grown indoors, as well as in the garden, and is a very good friend to have in the home. 

Marjoram is an herb for harmony, for strengthening the bonds of love, not with passion, but with peace.  It has been used in spells for divining one’s future mate, for bringing harmony and compassion within marriage, and for ensuring peace within families both by promoting joy and banishing the energies of conflict and chaos.  Long used as a love spell ingredient, this plant originated in the Middle East and Mediterranean, has been used by the Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians, and is even reputed to have been grown by Aphrodite, who said it’s scent brought luck.  As an herb sacred to Aphrodite and Osiris, it has been used in both wedding and funeral rites, crowning couples at the altar and growing on graves to ensure the deceased will have a happy and peaceful afterlife.  Because of its antiseptic properties, it was also a strewing herb, meaning it was added to reeds or straw to cover the floor, so that it would produce a sweet smell when walked upon, and help to keep environments healthy.  Its scent is calming, so sprinkling it around the home, particularly in corners, creating a floor wash from an infusion, adding it to incense or burning the dried plant, and using the essential oil in baths and balms can all produce the desired pacifying effect, without ingestion. 

However, Marjoram is perfect for cooking.  It makes an excellent carminative tea or herb sprinkle, for better digestion after heavier meals.  The tea can also be very helpful for breaking up congestion, as well as for soothing frayed nerves.  It is a flavorful addition to soups, salads, potatoes, meat, eggs, and dishes made from a tomato base.  Adding Marjoram in the last 5-10 minutes of cooking brings out its best flavor.  It pairs well, both flavor wise and magically speaking, with thyme, oregano, and basil, though other good partners for increasing harmony with Marjoram are cumin, marigold, rose, and saffron.

If, beyond the promotion of joy and harmony, magic is needed to help dispel sadness from the home, opening the way for a return to joy after grief or periods of depression, Marjoram can be paired with thyme as a wash or smudge to clear the dense energies.  An oil made of Marjoram and Balm of Gilead buds can be used to anoint, bath, or massage someone suffering from grief to help this energy to move, providing some respite and promoting a transition from the stagnation that sorrow can bring.  Another traditional pairing is Marjoram and violets, which were mixed together dried and worn as satchels in the winter months to ward off colds and viruses, while lifting moods.

Magical cooking with Marjoram

When working with herbs for magical cooking and other uses, make sure to first touch them and communicate your desired intention.  It is enough to touch with your index finger while visualizing your intent, but taking the time to listen to your herb, taking in its scent and character, can also bring clearer understandings about how to use its medicine to best effect.  Light a blue candle in your kitchen as you begin to cook.  Instead of focusing on the problem, visualize the harmony and love you want to spread throughout your family overcoming any potential strife.  See your connection strengthen and your home radiate with peace, joy, and good health.

Marjoram Massage Oil and Salt Scrub:

• The Winter Holidays can be a time of stress for some, and the cold can bring up aches and pains in the body.  Make a massage oil with Marjoram to help alleviate pain and stress.

• Choose a carrier oil that is rich and warming.  Almond oil would be an excellent choice.  Add a little jojoba oil to increase the shelf life.

• For every 1 oz of oil, add about 25 drops of high quality Sweet Marjoram essential oil.

• Add 10 drops of chamomile or lavender essential oils to increase the scent and relaxing effect.

• Make enough to bottle and leave about a cup to use for a salt scrub.

• Take 4 cups of Pink Himalayan Salt (or Epsom Salt) and add 15 drops of Sweet Marjoram essential oil. 

• Pour your remaining cup of massage oil into the salt mixture and stir. 

• Store in a glass jar, and use frequently throughout the season.  This can be used after washing in the shower, turning the water off while scrubbing your skin with the mixture, then rinsing away to leave you with soft, moisturized skin and renewed energy.  It also makes a great addition to a relaxing bath.  Be aware though, the bathtub or shower will become slippery.

Sodalite

Because of its rich, blue hue, Sodalite is often mistaken for the better known Lapis Lazuli.  They share the enchanting deep blue of the sea, but they are not the same.  Sodalite has threads of white Calcite woven into it, visually reminding us of the origin of its name, which means “Salt Stone” in Ancient Greek.  Sodalite is a mineral with a high sodium content and an affinity for increasing calm, and cleansing the body and mind of toxic influence.  It can help one to detach from the anxieties and stresses of everyday living, and to access a more broad perspective, where one’s life path, spiritual growth, and self-insight can be seen more clearly.

Sodalite pushes us to recognize patterns in our lives and outside of us.  It can be an excellent ally for astrologists, philosophers, writers, psychics, and those engaged in ancestral healing.  It increases intuition, while uniting the mind and heart, in order to encourage self-trust, clarity, and emotional intelligence.  Helpful in lucid dreaming and dream recall, Sodalite opens the realm of the unconscious mind by removing the noise of worry and cleansing the mental poison that fear and guilt can create.  While supporting meditation, healing, and intuitive travels through our personal and ancestral histories, Sodalite helps to ground these inquiries in the present, emphasizing the need for learning the lessons we currently face and taking the next steps on our paths towards alignment with our most authentic selves. 

Increasing self-esteem and inner-trust, Sodalite can be a good support for those who need to feel more comfortable expressing themselves.  It has been called ‘The Poet’s Stone’ because of its encouragement of seeing the beauty in life and the best in others.  Well- being can be described as the combination of a clear mind, a sensitized heart, a fully present soul, and a calm nervous system.  Wearing Sodalite, or spending time in crystal meditation, can help in accessing and integrating this kind of well-being, especially for those who find the everyday world too overwhelming.  It helps in the recovery of hidden psychic gifts, while directing them towards positive thoughts, lighter emotions, and acts of healing, insight, and growth.  Sodalite is a perfect ally for the Winter months, when the impulse to dream and look within increases, the light retreats and leaves many feeling emotionally vulnerable, and the pressures and activity of holidays ask for serene, engaged presence.

Suggestion for working with Marjoram & Sodalite:

 Create a ritual of personal cleansing and self-adornment.  Create the massage oil and salt scrub described above and begin your Winter days with a personal bathing ritual.  A self-massage, moving upwards towards your lymph nodes, is a good way to move stagnant energy and support both physical and emotional health.  Follow this with a bath, allowing your skin to absorb the oil more deeply in the warm water.  Or, do the same process in the shower, using your salt scrub.  For this season, fill some small bowls with Sodalite stones and place them around your bathroom or home (where they will not get wet).  When you are finished bathing, adorn yourself in some form of Sodalite jewelry.  Daily attention to physical, emotional, and psychic cleansing, even in this very simple and quick way, often yields the best results.  We stay more in balance, when we take care of our mental, psychic, and emotional health, before difficult experiences and outside influences disrupt it. 

How can you create a rhythm of well-being this Winter?

With blessings for harmony and warmth,

the eleventh house

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

Complex Ancestral Legacies: What We Celebrate and What We Don't

Feliz dia de gracias.  My son learned this phrase in school this past week.  It means happy day of thanks.  It sounds so simple and clean in Spanish, and I admit to feeling a sense of relief that this how Waldorf preschool addresses Thanksgiving.  I’ve been thinking about this complex holiday, especially in relation to our evermore mixed lineage world.  It’s so healthy to celebrate gratitude and share whatever abundance we have.  Yet, this holiday, which allows for time and space to gather with family and friends, for sharing warmth and comforting foods, has such a dualistic origin that I am never certain that I want to celebrate it at all.  Is it more appropriate to wake up before dawn and join in the amazing gathering of Indigenous communities on Alcatraz for ceremony, remembrance, and solidarity, or to travel towards family with baked goods and the sense of gratitude for the chance to be together one more year?  It’s kind of hard to do both with equal zest.

Honestly, what may seem like a small decision about how to meet this particular day and tradition is reflective of a larger tension.  What do our mainstream traditions, the ones we likely grew up with, really mean to us?  How do we want to carry them?

It makes sense that this kind of questioning is happening in many areas of our culture.  It’s good to ask what part of our cultural heritage we are going to celebrate and what we are not.  We can consciously choose how to meet traditions, and engage or question their meaning, rather than simply doing them out of habit. 

Yet, as we become more and more a mixed race society, a similar conflict also exists inside of us.  With which aspects of our histories do we align and which do we disown?  Do we have more of a right to guilt than to indignity when we think about colonization?  Do we belong to a lineage at all?  I have met a lot of people who struggle with this sense of not belonging to either (or any) of the races that battle or blend in their bloodlines, and those who exalt one heritage, while feeling shame about another.  If we understand our world, and often ourselves, as somehow both colonizer and colonized, spiritually and emotionally aware yet wounded and forgetful too, perhaps both privileged and disempowered, then, as adults, what traditions, what rites do we actually need to perpetuate, to invent, to adapt with new eyes and hearts, or to cancel altogether, as we address the multiplicity of our time?

Just beyond the need for ancestral healing, the transmutation of our generational trauma and painful cultural legacies, is the reclamation of ancestral gifts.  We all have wisdom traditions and specialized knowledge to recover, if we look back far enough in our family lines and within our soul memories.  Feeling disconnected, feeling like you may not belong to your own heritage is a distinctly post-colonial and, perhaps, American experience.  Colonization has a system.  It separates a people from their connection with the past, their ancestors, their traditions, their spirituality, their language, and then it replaces what has been usurped with a new culture.  When this, and far more, has been accomplished, the colonizers generally leave to rule and influence from afar.  However, in our country, the colonizers stayed, creating a cultural expectation for other immigrants as well.  The U.S. became a place to leave behind cultural history, to blend in, if possible, and over time to forget. 

The reasons for this are complicated, but it begins with colonization.  In The Sibling Society, poet Robert Bly says “It’s possible that American culture now exhibits many qualities we associate with a typical colonialist society.  We know now from twentieth-century psychology, if from no other source, that, given the nature of human life, people and nations cannot practice destruction of tribal cultures without having it come back on them.”

This makes it all the more important to really think about the traditions we’ve been handed, and those about which we may only have been given fragments, perhaps in the form of stories, recipes, rituals, and dreams.  If I were a teacher, I would assign us all to use our intuition, deep listening, and investigation skills to find some aspect of how our families or ancestors have met the holidays of late Fall and early Winter, recover it, and then expand upon it.  I would suggest reworking this Thanksgiving holiday to include the sharing of food and of gratitude for our abundance, an acknowledgement and honoring of what it’s true history means, and a recovery of some aspect of our indigenous knowledge and practices, no matter how far back we have to look.  Add to that the nuances of family gatherings past that still have special meaning to us, and maybe we have the beginnings of creating our own tradition.  How can you consciously meet this complex holiday, while embracing the complexities of your own heritage?  What will you celebrate?  What will you not celebrate?  What have your traditions been, and what will they be?  Ask with the aid of the oracular arts, or just ask within.

May your holidays and your life be rich with meaningful ritual this season!

With deep gratitude,

the eleventh house      

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

Plant & Crystal Magic 15: Mugwort & Astrophyllite

Welcome to the high, holy holidays, in the Pagan Wheel of the Year.  This magical month hosts Halloween, and it’s spiritual origins Samhain, and All Hallow’s Eve.  October 31st is the eve of the Witches’ New Year, the Druidic New Year, and Dia de los Muertos, all of which take place on November 1st.  This is a time for ancestral remembrance, for embracing Autumn’s relationship with death and decay to help us move beyond fear and to acknowledge our connection to the Underworld.  It is a time for taking full advantage of the nearness of magic to the everyday world, to cultivate our extra sensory perception to see beyond the veils, while they are inviting us to look.  Deep ancestral healing can be done.  Seeing into your soul’s journey, patterns, purpose, and future pathways becomes easier than usual.  It still takes a bit of effort, but there are allies waiting to support those who are ready to learn about their innate, though perhaps hidden, capacities to see, dream, and engage with the mysterious.

Mugwort (Estafiate)

When I first began to grow Mugwort, I asked for plant starts or seeds at a local nursery.  They laughed, and said Mugwort is a weed.  They couldn’t understand why anyone would want to grow it.  It’s interesting how, as an Artemisia, named for the Moon Goddess Artemis because of it’s silvery luminescent leaves, along with it’s famous cousin Wormwood, it can be so commonly overlooked.

There is the common opinion, at least in the United States, that Mugwort has few medicinal properties, and a bitter taste, making it less inviting as a culinary or medicinal herb.  Though it’s scent is sweet and fragrant, it is bitter to the taste, but the rest of this impression not exactly true.  Mugwort has helpful medicinal uses, and is used in Mexico a lot, primarily as a remedy for gastrointestinal issues.  It is said to increase physical and energetic strength, and stimulate healing.

However, as many people in more metaphysical circles know, Mugwort is a botanical powerhouse when it comes to magic and psychic development.  It’s uses for enhancing magic, dreaming abilities, seership, astral projection, and the cultivation of hidden or latent psychic gifts is almost limitless.  There isn’t a plant with deeper associations with magic.  Mugwort will help you discover the psychic abilities and magical gifts hidden in your unconscious, and ancestral territories, and then support you in bringing them to their full flowering.  It is the primary ingredient in almost all herbal products meant to induce psychic seeing or dreaming.  The Moon is the ruler of dreams, magic, intuitive power, the unconscious.  She is the giver of fortune or misfortune, special favors, and visions, and Mugwort is her sacred power plant, hidden in plain sight.   

Once popular in Europe, and known as “Witch Herb,” Mugwort grows heartily and in abundance in the U.S. and Mexico.  Having been brought as a magical and medicinal herb, it was incorporated into folkloric medicine and spiritualism, particularly in Mexico, where it is known as Estafiate.  It has a chameleon-like quality, in that it may look and smell slightly different in different landscapes or climates, yet is recognizable by scent, leaf shape, and silver-green color.  If harvesting in the wild, however, be sure to know the difference between Mugwort and Wormwood.  Although they look similar, and share a strong relationship with the unseen, each in specific ways, Mugwort is safe to ingest as a tea, and Wormwood can be dangerously toxic if ingested, apart from very small doses.

The primary magical use of Mugwort is to enhance dreaming.  Mugwort brings strong and vivid dreaming, even prophetic dreams.  It can help in dream planting, the process of setting a dreaming intention to answer a question, receive insight or healing, or to manifest something.  It can be an ally for the practice of lucid dreaming, as well astral projection.  One of the uniquely helpful aspects of its effect on dreams is that Mugwort also improves dream recall.  Any practitioner of the dreaming arts knows that the first step towards intentional dreaming is training oneself to remember and track one’s dreams each night.  This is a key element in a dreaming practice, because it is the primary way to know if what you have planted has manifested, as you intended.  Dreams are always giving us information as well, whether we asked for something specific or not.  If we don’t remember them, then we are not integrating their teachings, insights and healing opportunities.

Mugwort is, in fact, so strong a dreaming herb that some people find it’s too much for them, because it makes their unconscious minds too active to actually rest during sleep.  When we dream actively, rest is somewhat compromised and it’s possible to wake up feeling like you didn’t sleep at all.  Sleeping with Mugwort in an herb bundle, dream pillow, or just the fresh herb under your pillow will stimulate dreams and help you remember them.  For those who find themselves sensitive to this herb, simply having it in the room where you sleep is enough. 

Mugwort is also an excellent psychic protection herb, which is very helpful when opening the psychic senses and exploring other levels of reality.  In Europe it was said to protect against elves and “evil” entities, when brought into a building, by preventing their entrance.  This lore is also found in China, where it is hung over doorways, to keep harmful spirits out.  In Japan, it was used to exorcise the spirits of disease when brought into a sick person’s room, with the idea that these harmful energies dislike the scent.  I like to make fresh mugwort herb bundles into faerie dolls for my son’s room, for protection and good dreaming.  I add other herbs as well, in particular chamomile, to dispel nightmares and encourage dreams to be sweet.

How to work with Mugwort:

For the most potent experiences with Mugwort, try taking it as a tea, before dreaming, divination, or other magical practices and psychic inquiries.  Add honey to sweeten, if desired, or compatible herbs, like lavender. 

If fresh, it can be tucked into clothing, to be absorbed through your skin, or inhaled for its fresh scent.

Make bundles or natural cloth dolls filled with Mugwort to place under pillows, within a child’s room, or in the room of someone who is ill to bring dreams or protection.  If you, or your child are prone to nightmares, add chamomile to balance it’s effect, making the dreams more gentle.

Bundle the dried herb to use as a smudge, or burn it with sandalwood (or wormwood, if outdoors) for scrying rituals

A strong infusion also can be poured into a ritual bath, especially before acts of magic and seeing.

For best effect, combine these methods.  If you take Mugwort into your system regularly, it will build a relationship with you over time, gradually awakening your inherent psychic abilities and guiding you towards the insights and experiences that will help you to develop them to their full potential.

Psychic Power Potions:

Here are two recipes from my favorite spell book, ‘The Encyclopedia of 5,000 Spells’:

Artemisia Potion:  Psychic Stimulation Tea

• One tablespoon dried mugwort

• One teaspoon dried melissa (lemon balm)

• One teaspoon dried peppermint leaves

• One teaspoon dried yarrow

• One-quarter teaspoon ground cinnamon

• One-quarter teaspoon ground cloves

Let it steep for approximately ten minutes, then strain and drink

(Note:  In this potion, the additional ingredients serve to improve the flavor of Mugwort tea, which will also be effective on its own.  Yarrow, cloves, and sweet melissa also stimulate psychic ability.  Cinnamon increases potency, and peppermint helps to keep one alert and clear of mind.  It is also effective to drink Mugwort tea alone.  I like the fresh herb, and enjoy the scent and flavor.  It is also good with lavender, rose petals, and chamomile.  Get creative and find your favorite combination.)

Artemisia Potion:  Psychic Potion

1. Beginning at the New Moon, soak one-quarter ounce of dried mugwort leaves               

in a bottle of the wine of your choice.

2.  Let this steep for seven days, ideally exposing the bottle to nightly moonbeams.

3.  Decant the wine, straining out the botanicals.

4.  Drink small quantities at a time, a glass here and there, to increase clairvoyance

(Note:  The next New Moon comes next week on Thursday, November 4th.  If you really want to work with Mugwort and the Moon together, you can follow up your potion preparations on the Full Moon by making a garland of fresh Mugwort and standing outside with it.  This is meant to be done skyclad, meaning nude, apart from the Mugwort and the Moonlight.  Place the garland over your eyes and face loosely, and gaze at the Full Moon through its leaves.  This is said to increase your clairvoyance, though it’s certainly most suited for the more adventurous lovers of folk magic.  It’s also okay to wait for next Summer!  Mugwort is supposed to be most powerful when gathered on Midsummer’s Eve.)

Astrophyllite

 In order to recover our full psychic potential, to consciously travel in dreams or the astral plane, and to communicate with, not only our ancestral past, but the teachings of other times and places, we need to have an energy body that is balanced and strong enough to contain such knowledge.  Astrophyllite is a unique mineral ally that can help us to do just that.  It can aid us in remaining grounded, while expanding our multi-dimensional self knowledge, and bringing sacred Light to the darkest inner regions.

Astrophyllite is a storm element black stone, with bursts of copper and gold tones, formed in star-like blades.  It’s name comes from the Greek words “Astron” for star and “phyllon,” which means leaf.  Stunning, rare, and somewhat fragile, this unique stone forms only in the inner cavities of igneous rocks, meaning inside rocks that are crystalized magma or molten lava.  Those kinds of stones contain the union of fire and water, making them innately powerful.  Obsidian is a potent example and Astrophyllite shares it’s affinity for the hidden territory of personal shadow, bringing to light what our unconscious has hidden, in order to clear, heal, and understand what has kept us from our true selves.  The nuance Astrophyllite brings to this work is the amplification of our latent truths, and of our interest in the deeper meaning of our lives.  It can help us when we need to cultivate acceptance of our shadow selves, in order to come into and express our fullness.  It can help us to come back to our true soul purpose, and the discovery of our gifts and life path, when we have fallen prey to self destructive patterns of unconsciousness, like addiction, depression, and disenchantment.  This stone will channel and shine the full spectrum of Light energy into our dark territories, and help us to express our own light more fully in the world.  It’s medicine is to illuminate our truest self, and bring this true reflection to our conscious awareness, and this may mean recovering the lost psychic abilities that have been compromised by personal, soul, and ancestral traumas.  This can be accessed through meditation, or by wearing Astrophyllite as jewelry and paying close attention to what emerges in everyday life, as signs, themes, and patterns will emerge.

One of the ways that Astrophyllite works to show us our most authentic selves is by activating all of our totonalcayos /chakras, from the Earth Star below us to the Soul Star above, making us a channel for Light, energy, and the potential communication with beings of different realms and times.  For those interested in astral travel, lucid dreaming, learning directly from ancient civilizations or even intergalactic allies this stone is an important ally for helping to open the way, and for creating the anchor that will allow for a safe and clear path home.

Like Obsidian, Astrophyllite offers protection against negative and harmful energies, and can assist in the removal of negative attachments or entities.  It can help one’s body to process electromagnetic pollution on the physical level as well.  When toxic emotions are turned against the self, and limiting beliefs of low worth have taken hold, Astrophyllite can help us to see that no one is beyond redemption and the path to realizing our true divinity is accessible.  If we can move forward with love, self-compassion, and the willingness to look deeply within, and perhaps beyond the self we have constructed, we are likely to find that knowledge, power, and mystery await us.

Suggestion for working with Mugwort and Astrophyllite:

 Sipping a cup of Mugwort tea before a session of crystal gazing or meditation with your Astrophyllite could be a very good start to your Samhain/Halloween/Dia de los Muertos magical practice or ritual.  For best results, make sure to have a specific question or intention in mind.  When we are focused and specific, the insights we receive will be so too.  However, when it comes to recovering latent gifts, healing shadow, and stepping into the fullness of your psychic and magical capacities, the process is much more gradual.  Imbibing, breathing, and sleeping with Mugwort, alongside wearing or regularly  meditating with your Astrophyllite, may take you to places you didn’t know you could go.

May it be so!  May we all come to know ourselves more deeply and expansively this season. 

Merry meet.  Merry part.  And, merry meet again.

the eleventh house

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