Meaningful Offerings & Potent Poppet Spells: Energizing Your Harvest at the Autumnal Equinox

Happy Autumn Equinox!  What a blessing the rains have brought, ushering in the change of seasons in such a cleansing way.  We stand at the threshold to the most liminal time of year, balanced now with the forces of day and night in equal proportion.  Our outward waking personality is busy harvesting and preparing the abundance that will carry us through Winter, as the dreaming side of our nature moves to the forefront of our awareness, preparing us to receive the visions and clarity that will guide our next year of growth.  This is also Mabon, the second harvest ritual of three within the Pagan wheel of the year, the final being Samhain, an official end to the harvest and the turning of the year.  Mabon is the Pagan Thanksgiving, the time when our harvest, along with all that went into its cultivation, is acknowledged, celebrated, and appreciated.  In the times when abundance related more to the food we were able to cultivate and preserve than to the money we use now to purchase it, it was understood that our success depended on a combination of careful planning, hard work, and a strong relationship with the Earth Mother, who holds our lives in her hands and rules over what may blossom and what will wither, or never germinate.  Reciprocity is the key to balance within relationship, and the same is true when we are considering our relationship with the earth, and to the abundance she grants.  When we express our gratitude, and offer gestures of loving respect in return for our personal harvest, we are making sacred relationship with the natural world and her rhythms, as well as with the part of our own psyches that understands how to be satisfied with what we have.  Like a sacred pact, this reverence blesses the path before us with joy, interconnection, and trust, preparing the ground for the new seeds we will surely need to plant in the next cycle.        

Let me tell you a story about what may happen when we skip this step.  This folktale was written in 1979 by Terry Jones, and adds an interesting spin on the tradition of the Corn Dolly as a presence and offering at harvest time.

“A Farmer was cutting his corn, when he thought he could hear someone crying fear away.  Well, he kept on cutting the corn, and the crying got louder and louder until he had only one more shock of corn to cut, and it seemed as if the crying were coming right from it.  So he peered into the last bit of corn and sure enough, there was a little creature made of corn stalks, sitting sobbing its heart out.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ asked the farmer.

The little creature looked up and said:  ‘You don’t care,’ and went on crying.

The farmer was a kindly man, so he said:  Tell me what your trouble is, and perhaps there is something I can do.’

‘You farmers don’t care what happens to us corn dollies,’ said the creature.

Now the farmer had never seen a corn dolly before, so he said:  ‘What makes you think that?’

The Corn dolly looked up and said:  ‘We live in the standing corn, we keep it safe and do no harm to anyone, and yet every year you farmers come with your sharp scythes and cut down the corn and leave us poor corn dollies homeless.’

The farmer replied:  ‘We have to cut the corn to make the flour to make the bread we eat.  And even if we didn’t cut it, the corn would wither away in the autumn and you corn dollies would still be homeless.’

But the corn dolly burst into tears again and said:  ‘Just because we’re small and made of straw, you think you can treat us anyhow, and leave us with nowhere to live in the cold winter.’

The farmer said:  ‘I’ll find somewhere for you to live.’  And he picked up the corn dolly and took it to the barn and said:  Look!  You can live here and be snug and warm all through the winter.’

But the corn dolly said:  ‘You live in a fine house made of stone, but just because us corn dollies are small and made of straw, you don’t think we’re good enough to live in a proper house.’

The farmer said:  ‘Not at all,’ and he picked up the corn dolly and carried it into his house and sat it on the window-sill in the kitchen.

‘There,’ he said, ‘you can live there.’

But the corn dolly scowled and said:  ‘Just because we’re small and made of straw, you think we’re not good enough to sit with you and your wife.’

The farmer said:  ‘Not at all,’ and he picked up the corn dolly and carried it to the fireside, and he pulled up a chair and sat the corn dolly down between himself and his wife.  But still the corn dolly was not happy.

‘What’s the matter now?’ asked the farmer.

‘Just because we’re small and made of straw,’ said the corn dolly, ‘you’ve sat me on a hard chair, while you and your wife sit on soft chairs.’

‘Not at all,’ said the farmer, and he gave the corn dolly a soft chair.  But still the corn dolly was not happy.

‘Is there still something the matter?’ asked the farmer.

‘Yes,’ said the corn dolly.  ‘Just because I’m small and only made of straw, you’ve sat me over here, while you and your wife sit next to the fire and keep nice and warm.’

The farmer said:  ‘Not at all.  You can sit wherever you like,’ and he picked the corn dolly up and put it next to the fire.  And just then a spark flew out of the fire and landed on the corn dolly.  And, because it was only made of stew, it burst into flames, and, because it was only very small, it was all gone before the farmer or his wife could do anything to save it.”

I love a good story, and this one sheds light on some important aspects of harvest in our lives.  First, the tradition of the corn dolly is an old one that has made a resurgence with the craft movement of the1960s.  It stems from Pagan rituals honoring the end of harvest and the energy of the God principle, the grains that grow and are cut, sacrificing their lives to nourish us and the soil, so that its fecundity and nurturing sustenance can continue for another year.  The last stalks of corn, or sheafs of grain, were often cut by the throwing of a scythe, and the one to succeed in making the final cut was said to gain luck, or in some cases a marriage in the coming year.  The straw and the soft, feathery stalks that emerge from the top were saved, taken to the farmer’s house where they were given in exchange for a meal, and then plaited into intricate designs, often fashioned to look like a doll.  The doll was a representation of the harvest and would either be hung above the door, or in the entrance to the barn, as an abundance charm, or paraded and used as a centerpiece for harvest celebrations.  It could also be “put to bed,” until the following Spring.

In looking into the notion of giving the corn dolly a place for Winter, I found two interesting ritual aspects.  One is the Scottish folk tradition of the Cailleach, a hag that has origins as a crone Goddess.  This merges with the meaning of the corn dolly when the harvest is collected late, near Samhain, and it is given to the farmer who is last to complete the harvest.  The Cailleach has to be cared for through the Winter to ensure that the land will revitalize with the Spring.  It is something like an insult or burden, but as well an important task.  When the harvest was collected by all on time, the corn dolly would be made in the form of a maiden instead of a Cailleach.  In the Americas, the tradition of corn dolls also has a strong history, both within the Indigenous cultures and with farmers.  The American corn husk dollies are meant to bring protection to the home, the family, and the livestock.  The doll becomes the home for the spirit of the harvest, based on the notion that when all the grain has been cut this spirit becomes homeless and lost.  This is another reason why the doll is made after the last crop has been claimed.  It is meant to be brought into the farmer’s home and cared for indoors through the wintering over of the fields.  Then, in the early Spring, it is gently given back to the land, as an offering to help revitalize and fecundate the next planting season.

What is the purpose of an offering?  Simply defined, an offering is an expression of reverence and gratitude made to the unseen forces that preside over the rhythms of life on which we depend.  It is one way we can strengthen our relationship with the Divine and especially with the Earth Mother, whose permission we lovingly court, so that our creations come to full blossom, and that which we release is transmuted.  It is the respectful gift we give first, before asking for favors, and the gratitude we share in celebration when we acknowledge how our needs and hopes have been kindly met.  In this way, we engage with the sacred as family, and make our interconnection more visceral.  This helps us to remember that we are part of a larger dream, and makes it personal for us rather than abstract.  It is an act of magic and reciprocity, allowing us to shape and feed our intentions.  Poppet making is a powerful practice for this kind of magic, making material and personal that which we desire to create.  It’s like taking a dream out of the realm of imagination and making it more concrete in our everyday lives.  We do this through the patient work of our hands and hearts, partnered with choosing the living natural elements appropriate for our purposes.  Dolls can be used to manifest, holding an intention and directing it in a specific direction, or to absorb what we need to release, providing a safe form of sacrifice to return unwanted energies to the earth.

This work is also a way of tending to our cycles of ebb and flow with more awareness, while making alliance with the principles of creation.  It helps us to acknowledge the abundance we have and to separate desire from need.  When we do this, we feel more abundant and satisfied.  When we don’t take the time, it becomes easy to remain in a state of constant dissatisfaction and hunger for more, an energy which often leads us to miss out on enjoying the wealth we do have.  Not so long ago, the stakes of the harvest were high enough to mean survival through Winter or not.  In many places, where food is accessible in a grocery store and people generally have enough to get by, it is easy to forget this.  Yet, whatever we are harvesting, the fruits are sweeter when we take time to notice what we’ve earned and what we’ve been given.  Without this, we can remain hungry and dissatisfied, even with riches surrounding us.

And this is the other issue that is well represented in The Corn Dolly story.  The little lost creature spends so much time lamenting what she doesn’t have, and longing for what others possess, that she forgets to consider what is right for her and what is not.  She cannot be satisfied, and her striving keeps her from acknowledging the wealth she is offered.  Perhaps one cannot change one’s soul fate ultimately (and hers was to be an offering), but her desire burned her up before her divine purpose could be truly fulfilled.  She was not even able to enjoy the care she was given.  I wonder how often we also find ourselves in this position, in one area of life or another.

So here are some modern Mabon questions to consider:  In what aspects of your life are you experiencing a harvest of that which you have been carefully cultivating?  How might you offer an expression of gratitude and acknowledgement for this abundance?  In return for what you have received from the Earth Mother this season, how can you give care to the spirit of the harvest when you enter the quiet dreaming of Winter?  Perhaps it’s as simple as making a gratitude altar to remind you to savor and celebrate your abundance, or having a Mabon season feast with loved ones.  Perhaps you can make you own corn dolly from corn husks and braided grain sheafs to hang above your door as an abundance blessing or protection charm, and as an acknowledgement that we are in relationship with the land at all times and sacrifice is inherent in our nourishment.

Or, if you are still cultivating your harvest, spend some time visualizing what you truly need, and find or create a small object to represent it.  It could be a dollar bill, a drawing, or a natural object that holds your meaning.  Make a corn dolly, braiding or shaping corn husks and sheafs, and tying into her this object, as if she were pregnant with the abundance you intend to manifest.  Visualize her growing this intention for you.  Wrap her in a soft cloth and place her in a dark place close to where you sleep, where she can be comfortable and cared for all Winter, as she grows your dream.  In the early Spring, return her to the earth with prayers, song, poetry, or whatever supplication feels right to you.  Perhaps add to your offering the most precious elements we have to give as humans, our own tears, hair, or even a drop of blood.  Plant flowers on this spot if you can, and as they bloom, trust that what you most need will be provided.

May your harvest provide you just what you need, and the best of what you desire,

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 24: Cacao & Mookaite Jasper

This month’s theme is rejuvenation on the psychic level, inviting radiance and energy to rise from within and light us up with renewal in all areas of life.  Rejuvenation practices are best done in an ongoing manner, to help us maintain clarity, hopeful enthusiasm, and vibrant energetic and physical health.  However, there are times in everyone’s lives when depletion and discouragement creep in and cloud the sight.  In these moments, a potent energetic ally is in order, one that can lovingly give us a push towards the renewal of our inner resources and outward sparkle.  Joy, inspiration, clarity, and physical vitality move together, and can feel elusive when our resources are exhausted, yet each can be courted and replenished.  Here are two beautiful allies for keeping the heart open and awake, while revitalizing our inner light, fortitude, and sense of wholeness.

Cacao

Have you noticed how profoundly the Sacred Cacao plant medicine has been emerging in the past few years?  It seems like Cacao Ceremonies are showing up in many places and being offered by a variety of devoted practitioners.  Ten years ago, I don’t recall being able to say the same thing, but as we stumble through the gateway of the large shift of epoch we are currently traversing, it seems like this powerful plant spirit has been gracefully stepping into the light of our conscious awareness, in order to help us along.  One thing I have noticed from listening to people talk about Cacao and from my own personal experience, is that this previously overlooked entheogen seems to be tapping people on the shoulder and teaching them by direct transmission about the importance of its medicine for our times.

About seven or eight years ago, I was in Oaxaca, Mexico, with my Curanderismo Maestra Estella Roman and her teacher, Doña Enriqetta Contreras.  It was one of several learning intensive trips where I was immersed in the principles, practices, and sacred land places that deeply inform the work of Curanderismo.  While in this beautiful learning time, I had many vivid dreams wherein the ancestors and spirits of land and cosmos taught me directly.  One of these dreams was especially curious to me, because it came unbidden by anything I was thinking or inquiring about, and was immediately recognizable as a medicine dream.  In the dream, my teacher Estella appeared to me at the edge of a jungle and a city.  She had an air of mischief and secrecy about her, and was very light in spirit, as she is in real life as well.  She called me to her with a gesture and said to me quietly, with a sly smile “I know a powerful plant medicine, an entheogen.  She beckoned me with a wave of her hand, to follow her into the jungle.  I recall being surprised, because Estella comes from a lineage that does not use plant spirits as a vehicle towards opening to the divine or the hidden layers of life, but rather favors energetic practices, and the discipline of intentional eating and living to maintain psychic awareness and connection to the spiritual.  I was curious and excited to have her show me something clearly powerful and kind of hidden in plain sight.  I followed her into the jungle and we walked for a ways until finding a clearing that was like a circle.  There she showed me something growing that looked like a large seed and she whispered in my ear “It’s Cacao.”  I suddenly felt so happy and giggly, a sense of elation and lightness, but also like I was witnessing something old and being given a forgotten gift.  I heard another voice say “I am a plant medicine too.”  That is all I remember of the dream.  When I told Estella, she smiled the same way she had in the dream.  She later taught me some things about Cacao in Mexican Indigenous culture.

I have always been taught that when you dream about a plant, it is an invitation to learn how to engage or perhaps carry its medicine.  I have had two dreams of Grandfather Peyote, or Mescalito, and both times the dream invited me to come to a traditional Native American Church meeting, and even told me in how much to take and in what manner.  With this guidance, my experiences were both potent and gentle, and I didn’t feel the impulse to go again without being called.  But with Cacao, it was different.  What I learned initially was not about leading or engaging in a Cacao ceremony exactly, but about making an everyday alliance with the plant medicine.  I learned from Estella that the Mexica (Aztecs) strongly believed that we become part of the vibration of what we eat, and for that reason found it important to only eat foods that contained a strong life force.  The did not favor eating meat, as this was an energy of death, but saved this for particular ceremonies or special occasions where it would be prepared with proper care and respect.  Instead, their diet was primarily plant based, and leaned towards things that were freshly harvested, also taking care to soak their foods in water to reinvigorate the life force within  They also had a deep and integrated understanding of herbal medicine and medicinal gardens were large and central to their capital city, Tenochtitlán.  It was not until colonization that the cultural food of Mexico became more heavy with things like lard, cheese, beans, and rice.  This style of eating was born of necessity and poverty, for workers facing long days, little pay, and hungry families.  Before this shift, the favored way of eating was more on the light side, so that the awareness was kept in the state of openness to dreaming states, and the body remained a healthy, strong vessel capable of being a container for spiritual warrior ship and the path of flowering.  This is also true of many other Indigenous tribes of Mexico who shared knowledge with the Mexica, and it’s one part of the cultural identity that was lost post colonization.  The Mexica absorbed and preserved many precolonial teachings and practices, and passed them down within the oral tradition.

Cacao was both sacred and practical in Mexica culture.  As many know, it was engaged as an elixir for energy and health, often mixed with chiles, making it a potent drink to increase the inner fires and even sexual potency.  This is still the style of drinking chocolate in Mexico, though I imagine modern times call for more sweetening than the original version.  But chocolate has more of a role in lifting and cleansing the heart than may be obvious to those who don’t know it in a ceremonial context.  In Mexico, this is still interwoven with important cultural events like weddings, during which chocolate is traditionally served so that the hearts of all will be lightened and filled with love, regardless of what their personal circumstances may be.  At a wedding, it’s important that everyone feel happy and that love be an energy all can share in and bless.  Similarly, at large holidays, like Christmas, when whole families gather, chocolate tamales are served to increase the love and harmony amongst the group.  These forms of energy medicine have a strong effect on us, even when we perform the customs without remembering why.  That is part of the power of tradition.

When we engage Cacao in ceremony, of course, we are able to meet the plant spirit in its most direct and powerful form.  A ceremonial dose is much stronger than when we use chocolate in cooking, and the quality of the Cacao is higher as well.  If you have not experienced Cacao in this way, it is a beautiful experience worth seeking out and repeating often.  Life asks a lot of us, and our hearts need renewal and remembrance of what is truly sacred within us and within our world.  As an entheogen, Cacao is unique.  It will not take you on a plant medicine journey like Peyote or Ayahuasca, or blast open the veil between this reality and those that exist just beyond its boundaries.  Its effects are more subtle.  What it cracks open is your heart, and what it breaks through is the barrier to your most authentic sense of soul, which can get forgotten in the pressures and wounds of everyday life.  It helps to awaken the sense of ecstasis that is core to the experience of wild magic and deep mysticism.  And yet, it acts in a gentle and nurturing manner, leading a healing journey of renewal into the self, while refreshing the capacity for happiness and self knowledge.  It reminds me of the soul retrieval portion of a limpia ritual, a sweet and joyful remembering of what is real, allowing for healing and integration through love.  Perhaps this is the medicine for our times.

This alchemy is the work of the plant spirit in partnership with its main chemical components.  Theobromine blocks adenosine receptors, which can keep you from getting tired and uplifts the energy.  This action is similar to caffeine, but feels more gentle at the onset and lasts longer.  Cacao also contains phenylethylamine, which is known as a love drug.  It increases dopamine levels, which elevates moods and gives that feeling of elation and motivation.  At the same time, it acts as as a vasodilator, increasing blood flow and widening arteries, which leads to an overall feeling of warmth and well being in the body.  It stimulates the physical heart, improves concentration, and acts as an aphrodisiac.  The body uses another major component of Cacao, tryptophan, to produce serotonin, also known as the happiness hormone. Somehow the insulin released in response to the sugar in chocolate can help move tryptophan to the brain, where it creates a feeling of happiness and well being.  A sense of euphoria and a more positive outlook are the gifts of the endorphin production that Cacao stimulates as well.  All of this is just a brief look into the science of Cacao, but even more important, and certainly more mysterious, is making relationship with its spirit.  Where do you need emotional and psychic renewal?  In what ways do you need to return to yourself, and your most present and sacred relationship to the mystery of your journey here on this Earth?  Perhaps bringing these kinds of questions to your next Cacao ceremony, into your dreaming, or into the creation of your own practice of drinking ceremonial grade Cacao on a regular basis at home, will create the heart opening that is key to the deepest levels of rejuvenation.  And, maybe at the next gathering of your given or chosen family, you can bring in the subtle magic of serving chocolate to awaken and lighten the hearts of those you care for.  It certainly seems that this generous plant spirit wants us to remember and make use of its medicine.  In the midst of intense and challenging times, it is critically important to our sense of sanity to slow down, to wake up to our inner reality, to feel, and to restore what is essential within us.

Suggestions for working with Cacao:

All plant medicines need to be approached with respect and care.  Be sure to engage the spirit of Cacao with a prayer and an offering.  Your breath with intention, a song, or some of the chocolate poured on the ground will all be good offering options.

There are some counter indications to consider because of the chemical components within Cacao.  For example, Cacao contains tryptophan and MAO inhibitors that may cause issues when combined with antidepressants. You should check in with your doctor first in this situation, or similarly if you take hypertension medication or have a heart condition.  Pregnancy is also a time when it may be best to check with your doctor or midwife, or use a lesser amount (perhaps half the ceremonial dose), although women drank Cacao specifically during pregnancy in the Aztec culture.  There are certainly varying cultural ideas.

The ceremonial dose is around 40 or 42 grams, though some of the physical, spiritual, and emotional effects can be felt at 25 grams.  Going higher than this can result in nausea, headaches, sweating, and heart palpitations, similar to the over consumption of coffee.  Cacao is best taken with plant based milks, because animal milk can interrupt some of the benefits.  Oat milk or freshly blended cashews can be very rich and creamy, and make good options.  The highest nutritional benefit will be found in the powder form, but as a paste the powder is combined with the fat of the Cacao butter, which helps the body to absorb the medicine and allows for it to last longer in the system.  The paste is what is used within Cacao ceremonies.  The paste and powder forms are not sweetened usually, so you may want to add honey, maple syrup, or sugar to your taste.

Mookaite Jasper

Known as “The Mother Earth Stone” to the Aboriginal people of Australia, Mookaite Jasper holds potent healing energies and a very interesting origin story.  It is only found in Western Australia, from a region which gave it its name.  It seems to have formed from the fossilized remains of many microscopic aquatic creatures called Radiolarians, who lived and died over a hundred million years ago during the Lower Cretaceous Period.  The shells and skeletons of these tiny creatures, after sinking to the bottom of a sea bed, were joined by other fossils, minerals, and silica rich ground water, forming a sediment that over time took on the varying colors, patterns, and unique energetic composition that we call Mookaite Jasper.  These gradually developed layers are responsible for the lovely variation of colors and patterns visible, and perhaps are the reason for its intergenerational healing properties and restorative influence on the progression of time.

Mookaite Jasper has a strong relationship with the stories and patterns we carry in our genetic lineage, and within our thoughts, conscious and unconscious.  It can help us to uproot and identify the well worn tracks we unconsciously follow, giving us the opportunity to interrupt unhealthy cycles and bring healing to generational traumas and limiting mindsets, even when they are buried beneath our conscious awareness.  When we do this work, we not only free ourselves from difficult patterns, but we release future generations from carrying the burden of repeating and resolving these problems and limitations as well.  When we want to do things differently from our ancestors, it is important to notice what themes repeat within the family, and within our own lives, and find a practice that reaches the most unconscious levels when clearing them, so that we aren’t driven to recreate the constraints and hardships of the past.  If we can do this kind of healing, it won’t be necessary to play out the scenarios again and again in our lives and relationships.  In addition, it can support us in making deeper relationship with our ancestors, where many gifts and teachings can also be retrieved.

A powerful tool for rejuvenation, Mookaite Jasper can shed its light on our emotions, beliefs, and unhealthy patterns around aging and degeneration, so that they too can be changed.  It can be a strong ally for cultivating the positive thinking, and higher vibration of body and mind that allows one to resist the impulse to slow down and comply with aging.  Our resilience increases when we retain a fluid mind and a youthful heart, open to the changes life brings, and unfettered by consistently counting the wounds of the past.  Call on Mookaite Jasper for support in this work.  It takes energy and vigilance to interrupt personal and cultural programming around aging, and the boundless, ever changing, and renewing energy of the earth is our best teacher in this art. 

Mookaite Jasper has a relationship with the electromagnetic energies that flow like currents within the earth.  Connecting with this stone in meditation can help to cultivate the ability to perceive and direct these energies in order to increase intuition, instinct, and will.  It is a grounding stone, but one that grounds and connects us to the earth’s deep energetic resources.  The deepest Earth energies can clear, ground, and empower, and Mookaite Jasper does so in the manner of a mother, with a sense of nurturing and the message that we are not alone, even when we feel lonely.  We are bound by the cycles of time and by the law of movement, which always must bring change, but like this stone, time can recreate us in a beautiful way as well, imbuing us with nuance and power.  We can change with grace, allowing our layers to coalesce into something beautiful and new, when we work to rejuvenate from the inside out.  When we allow our old notions and heavy feelings to be broken down, returned to the Earth, and infused with her precious essence, we can shine with the rich colors of our experience and yet find that we are renewed.  Maybe this is what it means to become ageless, even as time carries us around the wheel of life.           

Suggestions for working with Cacao and Mookaite Jasper together:

Because Cacao is stimulating, it is a beautiful addition to a morning practice.  Mookaite works well as an aid for rejuvenation while sleeping and dreaming, the place where our unconscious mind becomes prominent and both reveals and creates elements of our life from the hidden territories of psyche.  Choose a day to dedicate to rejuvenation, perhaps the next new moon.  Begin the day with your own Cacao ceremony, or with a strong cup of drinking chocolate.  Watch the sunrise, or enjoy the energy of morning and ask your heart to open and renew itself, with the help of your allies.  Follow your instincts for self nurturing throughout the day.  Find time to meditate with your Mookaite and ask what beliefs and ancestral patterns need to be released or transformed.  End the day with a bath or ritual cleansing.  Mookaite can enter water as well, so you can infuse your bath.  Place the stone under your pillow to allow it to help you renew while you sleep.  Dream well and notice how you feel the next day.  Can you hold this openness of mind and heart?  Can that simple intention be your act of loving warrior ship, as life continues around you in its usual manner?  Sometimes changing our reality is changing ourselves.

May you renew and rejuvenate yourself on the levels of heart, mind, soul, and body, always and with ease.

With gentle and loving care,

the eleventh house

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

Psychic Rejuvenation: The Importance of Gratitude and Celebrating First Fruits

It is said that the physical heart is like a clock, rhythmically beating and keeping the count that measures a lifespan.  Time moves us forward on its currents, without missing a beat, but this isn’t the only principle that governs how we age and change within the seasons of our lives.  The more metaphoric aspect of the heart, meaning our emotions, our memories, and the stories we tell ourselves based on them, have a strong impact as well.  There are many ways to approach rejuvenation, from the standpoint of health, yet addressing it on the psychic level can impact the way we dream our lives and ourselves at the deep unconscious levels.

This work begins with inquiry.  What is rejuvenation?  Or better, what creates the youthful inner glow and outlook that makes life feel like an open book of possibility, adventure, and soulful learning?  Because, if we can preserve or recover this, we are more likely to naturally renew ourselves again and again, emotionally, psychically, and to some degree even physically.  Preserving the child-like wonder of the heart, and our engagement with the mysteries of life, allows us to notice the beauty within and without and to find more enchantment and serendipity in our paths.  Think of the Fool card within the Tarot.  We dream best when we move through the world light as a feather, and full of trust.

But, it’s not so simple.  Lightness isn’t easy to preserve, as we meet the challenges, wounds, and disappointments of life, perhaps again and again.  We gain wisdom as we mature, through these experiences, but they take their toll as well.  When we have collected too much heavy emotion, too many self-limiting beliefs, and a running tape of inner talk that tells us what to fear and avoid, then we begin to expect difficulty, lack, and even decline.  We can dream this way too, even when we don’t mean to, and how we participate in the creation of ourselves and our lives will be deeply affected on an unconscious level.  We may become tired, feel tempted to slow down to the point of stagnation, or even give up on what is still essential to the soul’s journey.  Then how can we return again to the open eyes and trusting heart of the Fool, holding again our potential flowering, and walking a path that feels guided?  How do we mature into the Chariot, taking the reins of our lives with energy and clarity, or into the Priestess, trusting our intuition, inner power, and connection to the Divine?  Perhaps it’s not a straight line towards a goal of maturation, but a cycle.  The truth is everyone needs rejuvenation from time to time.  We all collect too much.  We all have moments of losing our inner Fool and no longer seeing our way to growing into Strength or the Magician or other sought after states of being.  It doesn’t help us to stay above the fray of life and its potential wounds, but there are some principles that can help us to renew ourselves, when be become psychically depleted.

The first principle is to have a regular practice of releasing and cleansing.  Sometimes it’s hard to tell how much we are collecting.  Most people move at a fairly fast pace in life, and we receive a lot of input without the spaciousness to process it all.   Psychic or emotional impressions from the people around us, from the media formats we engage, and from our own varied experiences build up within us and can easily cloud our more natural way of thinking and feeling.  If we wait until we are overwhelmed before we do something to help clear this, it may be more difficult to motivate ourselves towards this kind of self care.  In more desperate states, it’s easier to reach for something to make you feel good quickly, even if it’s not the most helpful tool.  This is how downward spirals of unhealthy choices begin.  Having a regular rhythm of clearing, whether it’s ceremony, personal bathing rituals, time to ground in nature, or a disciplined spiritual practice ( like meditation, yoga, or working with the obsidian mirror) can help us to clear what we may have encountered or have emerging from within, even if we are not consciously aware of what’s affecting us.  This can help keep us from sinking into heavy emotional conditions and depletion, and avoid its more physical manifestations in our lives.  Purification rituals, at any stage of perceiving imbalance and stagnation, are a powerful way to rejuvenate ourselves at the deepest levels, while providing us with some needed self care time.

Gratitude, as a mindset or intentional practice, can also be a potent rejuvenation method.  It helps us to tune our perception towards the things that are going well in our lives, and to notice and appreciate the blessings we have.  This counters our negative bias, the very old survival mechanism in our brains that encourages us to be hyper aware of negative experiences and to retain the memory of them more strongly than anything else.  We have negative bias in order to remember what may be harmful to us, so we don’t accidentally repeat it, but we have to train ourselves to keep noticing and remembering the positive.  Naming our blessings can train our brains to stay more alert to and expectant of positive outcomes, possibilities, and contentment, but it is also a spiritual exchange with the Divine.  When we offer gratitude, even for the things we are in the process of developing, we are also making a kind of contract of faith with the Divine and with our highest selves, acknowledging the blessings we’re given and our own efforts, while putting forward the energy of trust.  This allows our work of manifestation to flow more easily and our sense of hopefulness to be renewed.

Another principle that may not seem obvious is taking time to feed the dreaming side of our nature.  If we want to be light as a feather for dreaming in our highest capacity, that too takes practice.  If everything we do is for a practical purpose, meeting responsibilities and solving problems, then the dreaming side of ourselves begins to feel distant to us.  We need beauty, wildness, the arts, whimsy, ecstasis, mystery, and our own idiosyncratic creativity to be alive in our daily lives in order to feel consistently connected to the magic and possibility of life.  We need to honor our own forms of respite and inspiration, and to allow this side of ourselves a seat at the table.  Nurturing and trusting these aspects of ourselves is one of the most joyful and nourishing ways to rejuvenate psychically and emotionally.  It also helps us to dream bigger and maintain a sense of youthful wonder.   

Finally, especially as we are now in the early phase of the Harvest season, there is much inspiration and rejuvenation to be found in celebrating our first fruits.  We don’t always need to wait for the full flowering of our projects and dreams, or for perfect final results, in order to acknowledge our efforts.  It is also important to celebrate progress, our small successes along the journey, and the first fruits of our labors.  Taking time for this helps us to see the process that is unfolding, renew our energy, excitement, and hopefulness, and refocus on the work ahead with more joy.  It is a practice that combines gratitude with feeding the dreamer within us, so that we can return to the path with lightness and trust.  Forgetting to take stock of our first fruits can leave us feeling more hopeless, or burnt out, than we need to be, while likely missing the beauty and magic of the moment we are living.  Taking time to enjoy how we have grown, and what we have created thus far, can refill our inner well when it feels dry.

It’s quite possible that no one else will do this for you, so are you willing to create this acknowledgement and celebration yourself? Here are few questions to bring to your individual practice of spiritual and emotional inquiry this early Harvest season.  Use your journal, your tarot or oracle cards, or your other forms of sacred seeing, and ask yourself the following:  What aspect of yourself feels dry or depleted this season, in need of rejuvenation?  What renews you at the deepest level?  What practices help you to cleanse and release, while nurturing your heart?  What dreams have you been building this year?  What first signs of growth, change, or manifestation are becoming visible now?  What acts of gratitude feel right to offer at this time?  What would be the most meaningful and joyful way to celebrate your personal first fruits, and to encourage their blossoming to the fullest potential harvest?

May you sparkle inside and out this season,

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 23: Rosemary & Mahogany Obsidian

This month we have been looking at how to move heavy emotions and to restore the sense of movement and balance that should be our natural state.  When we reach a point of overwhelm or stagnation, and particularly when we have stayed in this state for too long, the challenge is that it becomes difficult to know where to begin.  Sometimes we feel hopeless or too identified with the emotions to see a solution, or a particular cause.  We know we want to feel better, but we don’t know where to begin.  This is a moment when our plant and crystal allies can be of deep service to us.  Though we may think of them as medicines and tools to use, it is helpful to remember that they are also our elders on this planet.  Though their consciousness is different than ours, these are generous beings with their own intelligence, and in many instances they are more than willing to pick us up and return us to clarity when we are down.  The two allies we will discuss below are good examples of this.  Both are central to the emotional healing practices found within Curanderismo, and as such are both potent and easy to engage, even when our energy for ritual feels limited.

Rosemary

In my time of studying folk herbalism with Atava Garcia Swiecicki, of Ancestral Apothecary, she often would emphasize that the plants we need most for our personal healing tend to be found right in our own backyards and neighborhoods.  There is a synchronicity that happens between us and the plant world wherein we are drawn towards living near what we need, or they are drawn towards growing where needed.  It makes sense when we consider plants as a kind of collective consciousness rather than individual beings.  A deep dive into the science of botany will reveal how plants communicate, sharing information and resources between them.  Plants survive and thrive in our ever changing world by communicating, sharing resources, and even transforming the environments in which they live.  They produce a language of sound, chemicals, and other subtle methods, beneath our conscious perception.  They perceive their environments and make decisions intentionally, including where to move.  Perhaps, though we are coming to understand this in one way, we are still just scratching the surface their consciousness and interaction with us.  I mention this because Rosemary is a very good example of a powerful healing plant that has become so common to us, growing easily and abundantly as hedges and garden staples for example, that we may not even notice it.  Rosemary is definitely all around us, if not in the wild, then within cultivated gardens, schools, and neighborhood parks.  It is common in our food, easy to find fresh, dried, or within salt.  Yet, even if the sight of it is common to us, it’s scent is transportive, giving us an immediately sharp and sweet fragrance that at once awakens us, like a cleansing breath of fresh air.  As I write this, I’m thinking that Bay, Lavender, and Sage are similarly present, medicine plants hiding in plain sight.  Perhaps this is no accident.  Aromatic herbs are potent and work quickly to shift how we feel, as well as how our auric field presents itself.

Rosemary is well known as a cleansing and protection plant.  It came to Mexican Curanderismo from Europe, as part of the blending of cultures and medicines that came after colonization.  It has a long legacy in Europe as an herb with many folk and magical applications, from cleansing to love and fertility.  Its name derives from the Latin words ros and marinas, meaning “dew of the sea.”  This is because of its ancient association with the fertility cult of Aphrodite.  In Europe, twigs of rosemary are still traditionally woven into the bridal wreath to bring blessings of love and fertility to a marriage.  Yet, its use in Curanderismo has more to do with its physical properties as a stimulant of circulation.  Rosemary wakes up our energies and our blood flow.  This increases clarity of mind, and can shake us out of the fog of emotion and energetic stagnation.  It is traditionally used in morning baths, or in any bath meant to cleanse energetically and restore balance and clarity.  The scent of the fresh herb when touched, or within the essential oil can have a similar effect, entering the system quickly for an immediate shift.

Rosemary has strong associations with purification and protection, even in rituals of exorcism.  It is easily dried and can be burned to cleanse a space of negative influence, or to consecrate before ritual.  It has a long history as a natural incense used for this purpose, as well as in mixtures to increase love and lust.  There is folklore about using a sprig of the fresh plant to ward against nightmares, when placed under the pillow, against harm in general when placed under the bed, and against thieves, intruders, and illness when hung on the porch or outside the door.  An old custom which remains strong today is to grow Rosemary at the entrance to one’s garden or front door, on both sides as protection from negative energies, or people, intruding.  When someone walks through this gateway, if they are not warded away, they are cleansed of the heavier energies they have been carrying, before bringing them into the home.  Next time you are walking around your neighborhood, take a look around to see how often you notice hedges or smaller Rosemary plants growing on both sides of an entrance to garden or home.  It’s interesting to wonder if this was once done intentionally, or if it has become an unconscious cultural impulse.  I have noticed this Rosemary gateway to be very common in Mexican American neighborhoods.

In terms of its curative legacy, rituals of bathing with, burning, and carrying Rosemary are common.  It is said that wearing Rosemary improves memory, or “remembrance” if you recall Ophelia’s famous speech in Hamlet.  The scent of the wood, or its infusion into bathwater helps to preserve youthfulness, which may be another way of describing its ability to clear what weighs us down.  When our clarity is returned, we are able to look again with the fresh eyes of youth, and our internal count that governs aging slows.

Cunningham’s Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs describes an old remedy for depression that involves making a powder of dried leaves, wrapping them in linen, and binding this around the right arm to lighten the emotions.  As mentioned above, Rosemary is one of the herbs beloved in Curanderismo, particularly for its emotional cleansing and clarity stimulating effects.  Herbal steaming and bathing in an infusion of Rosemary, while using the fresh plant to scrub the body is a potent treatment that is easy to do at home.  Rosemary is also a common ingredient in Limpias and within herb bundles used for cleansing in the Temescal, the Mexican version of the more widely known sweat lodge ceremony.  Cooking with Rosemary is also an excellent way to bring it into everyday life.  As the spirit of the Rosemary plant has lended itself to accessibility and become a common feature in our modern lives, perhaps the hint is to keep it near and use it abundantly.  Within our everyday interactions with people, media, and the pace of living we collect a lot of heavy emotions.  Here is a plant that seems to want to provide us with an easy form of protection, cleansing, and the renewal of emotional health and clarity.   

Suggestions for working with Rosemary from magical folklore:

• Women’s power is said to thrive in the presence of living Rosemary.  Plant it around your home and garden, especially at the gateways.

• It is traditional to use an infusion of Rosemary to wash hands before a healing, to clear and empower oneself before helping another.  It’s also possible to use water and Rosemary essential oil for this.

• Make a tea for psychic energy replenishment when physically depleted.  Since this is not a common flavor for tea, it helps to add lemon balm, peppermint, and honey.

• Make an infusion of Rosemary, Lemon Balm and Spearmint to pour into a psychic replenishment bath.  Essential oils can be added too.  These uplifting herbs together will be a great treatment for Depression.

• If you need to repair your aura and desire to stimulate psychic perception, try creating a psychic bath by blending the essential oil of Rosemary with the essential oil of Mastic.  This will help you to increase psychic impressions and to retain the experiences as well.  If you have an oil burner, you can also put these scents in the air while you meditate or dream.

• Here is a great spell a deep home cleansing, from The Element Encyclopedia of 5000 Spells:  “For house cleansing and curse breaking in the home, add nine drops of rosemary essential oil into a glass of rainwater.  Add to this nine drops of uncrossing oil if you have it.  Sir and place in the window for three days.  On the fourth day, sprinkle throughout the home wherever you perceive dark spots, corners, or uncomfortable areas of energy.  On the same day add rosemary essential oil and uncrossing oil to your bath.”

• Remember, when you are bathing with Rosemary to move energy that is stagnant, you will want to make a strong infusion.  Use 1-2 cups of dried herbs, or 3 cups of fresh to 6 cups of water.  Boil the water in a large stainless steel or clay pot, then turn off the heat and add the herbs.  Cover and let them steep for 30 minutes or so.  You can add the tea to your bath while straining out the herbs, or leave the herbs in to rub onto your skin and strain them out with a mesh strainer, before draining the water.  If your nervous system has become frazzled and you need extra relaxation, you can add lavender essential oil.  The scent pairs very well with Rosemary.

Mahogany Obsidian

I have written previously about Obsidian, the powerful black stone which is so central to the sacred arts of Nahualismo, but not about its variations.  To begin with, we should remember how Obsidian is formed.  When the molten lava of an erupting volcano meets the water, or air, and suddenly cools, it becomes the shiny volcanic glass we know as Obsidian.  Its energetic strength is formed in the intense meeting of elements, and because of this uncanny transformation, the Indigenous traditions of Mexico say that it is the dream of the volcano to become Obsidian.  This is a powerful phenomenon, and the substance it creates is unique.  When the glass forms into the deep black we’re most familiar with, then it is associated with the potent force known as the Black Tezcatlipoca, and with the arts of the mirror and other sacred healing tools, which provide access into the unknown and the unconscious realms where we can observe what is hidden, extract harmful influences, and reprogram our deepest patterns of thinking and dreaming.  When the volcanic rock is more silica-rich and contains undulating parts of oxidized Hematite or Magnetite, it forms in shades of brick red, mahogany, and brown, interspersed with the shiny black.  This is known as Mahogany Obsidian, or sometimes as Red Obsidian, and it is associated with the Red Tezcatlipoca, the force that rules physical healing, shedding what needs to be released, and renewal.  Like Black Obsidian, Mahogany Obsidian is a deeply protective stone, but it’s area of specialty is different.

Mahogany Obsidian focuses its healing and protective gifts on areas of personal wounding and negative influence.  It is an excellent protector of the auric field, particularly when psychic intrusions are limiting one’s self concept and feelings of agency in life.  This stone can help to heal the long term effects of emotional, sexual, and physical abuse, and dissipate the sense of shame, fear, and insecurity that these harmful experiences leave behind.  In The Book of Stones, it is suggested that Mahogany Obsidian has a special relationship with he second chakra that rules sexual energy.  This is a very important area within the energetic system to clear from wounds and intrusions, because it not only affects our relationship to personal sexuality, but to the creative energies we have within that allow us to create in our lives.  If this area is blocked, we are limited.  Our energy is not able to easily root us into the earth, the place where we live and which allows for energetic renewal.  It is also not able to fully rise through the rest of our energy centers.  This affects our ability to dream with lucidity and intention, to awaken our more mystical abilities, to manifest what we intend to create, and to rise the feathered serpent or kundalini energy that allows us to awaken to our full potential.  If our energy is trapped in this region, we continue to feel unsafe and limited in power, possibly repeating cycles of abuse, toxicity, lack, and trauma.  The sexual energy tonalcayo (chakra) is also the place of addiction, a subversion or squandering of our creative impulse.  Mahogany Obsidian is a potent aid for those experiencing addiction and Depression.  It can help us to understand and cleanse these harmful influences from inside and outside of us, acting as a healing catalyst and a psychic shield, while reinvigorating our sensuality and energetic flow.  In this manner, Mahogany Obsidian can be understood to have a strong cleansing and rebalancing effect on our whole energetic system, rooted primarily in the restoration of the first three chakras (or totonalcayos).

It is important to note that Obsidian works by pulling these problematic issues to the surface of our awareness.  We do need to be ready to meet these painful influences within us and to heal.  Yet, Mahogany Obsidian is a bit more gentle in its approach than the pure black form.  It can be worn as jewelry and when used this way it is an excellent protection talisman and manifestation aid, helping one to reclaim the inner power and energetic movement needed to create abundance instead of scarcity, creating feelings of empowerment instead of unworthiness.

Mahogany Obsidian can also be used to remove energy cords that form between people in intimate relationships.  When these relationships have been toxic, violating boundaries and draining vital energy, this stone is a strong ally for breaking the link and restoring sovereignty.  It is an excellent protection against psychic attacks by those who intend to wield control or cause harm, as well as against those who may not intend harm, but allow their energy to operate unconsciously in a negative or aggressive manner, causing harm nonetheless.  Mahogany Obsidian is an effective tool to use when one’s energetic system has become wounded by personal and ancestral traumas, and is no longer holding off harmful intrusions or creating in a grounded and self-supporting way.  It can help in accessing one’s ability to shed what has been and continues to be harmful, and when guiding others in this kind of healing process

Suggestions for working with Rosemary and Mahogany Obsidian together:

When flooded with heavy emotions, the key is to take the action that you are able to take, in order to begin to turn things towards a better direction.  Take a Rosemary herbal bath.  Buy some essential oil to add to your hair or base oil and smell it throughout the day.  Wear some Mahogany Obsidian jewelry or carry a stone in a medicine bag.  Begin in these simple ways and let them grow.  Listen to your allies, and rebuild your clarity and strength, knowing movement is the primary principle of our Cosmos.

May you renew yourself and dream your life in beauty and clarity.  May you be who you are most meant to be.

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

The Aires, Addressing Heavy Emotional Winds

The wind is blowing gently today, as I write this.  I’m thinking about how to begin this exploration of the heavy emotional winds, known as the Aires, with a sense of respect and gratitude.  Sometimes the teachers of our lives, the ones that really help us to grow, are in fact the challenging conditions that make us uncomfortable.  Though it is not easy to recognize these circumstances as allies, deep discomfort can serve to wake us up to changes that need to be made or integrated, even when we would not otherwise want to do so.

Many people within the realm of holistic healing and spirituality are aware that the body will eventually find a manner in which to express the ailments of the mind, heart, and soul, if they are not addressed directly, and that physical symptoms can provide clues to what lies at the root of imbalance.  Most cultural systems of healing approach human ailments in this way, with the assumption of interconnection between what is visible and what is not.  This is one of the primary underlying principles within Curanderismo as well, the post-colonial form of physical and emotional healing developed from Indigenous and European folk influences in Mexico, as a means of treating trauma and imbalance on all levels.  If one has an issue within the lungs, for example, in addition to looking for physical causes and treatments, it is not uncommon to also look at unresolved grief and sadness, and perhaps at family history to see what has been repeating within the bloodline in similar ways.  But what about the sadness, grief, or depression itself?  Heavy emotions like this are also a symptom with a root cause, and may act as an ally pointing our attention towards something.    

It seems that our current culture has some difficulty looking at emotions in this way.  The movements of mainstream Psychology have turned us more and more away from this kind of inquiry and towards a diagnostic approach, wherein some emotions in particular are seen as permanent conditions, requiring medication and other long term treatments.  Having a diagnosis of Anxiety or Depression, for example, is very common, as is being taught to manage it in various ways, long term.  This makes sense considering how serious and life altering these issues can be, and there are certainly times when that form of help might be necessary to avoid creating further harm.  Yet, from this alternate cultural perspective, accepting an emotional condition as permanent is an approach with many consequences.  The more we internalize the diagnosis, and identify with feeling that way, the more we hold it in place, fusing it to our sense of self.  We can easily come to believe we are the sadness, the anxiety, the anger, or whatever emotion has us in its grip, and resign ourselves to that identity.  Here is one other way to think about emotional imbalance, particularly when we are feeling overwhelmed.   

The concept of the Aires is that they are emotional winds that travel literally and figuratively as winds through our systems, in our world, and between us.  There is more than one form of Aire.  Aires de la Tierra are energies that dwell in certain wild places where humans are not meant to casually trespass, and which may attach to and cause problems for anyone who does.  (It is not unlike the warning attached to stories about Faerie places, where one should not enter without knowing the customs.)  Inorganic beings and sacred places do not always welcome us, though often we don’t perceive the subtle boundaries.  The kind of Aires that relate to emotions, however, are called Aires Cosmicos.  These are larger forces that act as challenging teachers, showing us areas where we are out of alignment with ourselves on the level of soul.

The Aires Cosmicos were named during the early years of Colonial Mexico by the first Meztizos, the mixed race people who were not embraced by either the Indigenous or the Spanish cultures.  Outsiders on both sides, the products and the witnesses of much pain, this group of outcasts gave names to the emotional conditions that were prevalent in their time.  They also formed theories and treatments to address them, bringing together the knowledge of all sides of their heritage.  The Aires they named are not only relevant to one place and time, however.  They are the emotions connected to colonial and post-colonial culture, where oppression remains in many overt and subtle forms, and the sublimation of soul, earth based mysticism, oral history, ritual, and cultural identity flourishes in our systems.  We still live in the shadow of colonization, and the displacement that is central to the colonization process has made a lasting contribution to the troubled emotional health of our culture.

There are 13 Aires Cosmicos and they are as follows:

Miedo- fear, timidity

Susto- shock, usually involving dissociation

Espanto- sudden fright or terror, as of the supernatural

Tristesa- sorrow, sadness, depression

Pena- grief, holding onto pain

Verguenza- shame

Culpa- guilt

Angustia- anxiety, worry

Coraje- anger, rage

Resentimiento- resentment, bitterness

Celos- jealousy

Envidia- envy

Egoismo- egoism, self-importance

Each of these is considered a kind of energetic force, one that may visit any of us, often disrupting our usual way of living in a manner that makes us uncomfortable or causes enough problems that we are forced to slow down and look within.  If we are able to notice that an Aire is in the forefront of our lives, then the idea is for us to listen to what it is showing us.  If we are shut down by grief, for example, perhaps we know what loss has caused this and the only work to do is to allow ourselves time and space to grieve.  However, if we are caught in a state of rage or shock, then it may be a sign that our soul is trying to regain a sense of power or protection in a situation where it feels compromised or harmed.  If we are consumed with guilt, then it’s likely we have done something that feels out of sync with who we believe ourselves to be.  Once the core problem has been recognized, the Aire should be able to move again, like a wind that passes through us for a time and then releases us to integrate the self knowledge, healing, or growth required.  However, because emotions can be blinding as well, sometimes we are not easily able to step back and understand them as sign posts in this way.  Often, we identify with the emotions, and they remain with us too long, becoming stuck and creating more imbalance, both emotionally and physically.  At that time we may turn to herbal remedies, ceremony, a limpia ritual of cleansing, and other healing processes intended to release what we have collected.                         

The Aires also move between people as if they were contagious.  This is most evident when we consider any of the four kinds of fear named, as it passes from person to person in moments of real or perceived threat, or in instances of rage escalating within a group.  Being surrounded by others in a strong emotional vibration makes it hard to resist, whether in a crowd, or even when we are hearing the genuine emotion in a voice or voices on the news.  And, we are particularly susceptible to the Aires that we are most familiar with, where our personal vulnerabilities lie.  The more empathic we are, the more vigilant we need to be about identifying what belongs to us and what doesn’t, as well as in doing the practices that help us to cleanse, ground, and protect our energy bodies.

Tracking the emotions within and around us is not only important for our mental and emotional well being.  If these emotional conditions are looking to gain our attention at the soul level, they will continue to present themselves in more intense ways, including finding physical forms of expression.  When too many Aires have been collected, sometimes all we feel is numb, or else blocked in certain areas of our lives.  In this confused state of mind, our actions may take us further and further from our truest selves.  The art of working with the concept or presence of the Aires is to recognize them as cosmic forces outside of ourselves, not as part of us, to see their influence as early as we can, and to detach them from our self concept, unravelling their influences and deciphering their messages with patience and self compassion.

Of course, we do have circumstances in our current culture that are very new in human history.  I often wonder about the Aires in the context of the Age of Information.  Our awareness is so flooded with information on all levels that many people find themselves alternately overwhelmed and numb, either running into every fight or flying away in detachment.  Sensory overload makes it harder to feel the forces at play both within us and around us.  We learn to mistrust even our own instincts in this state of mind.  It’s no wonder that pharmaceutical solutions and self-medication, in its many forms, are so common.  The first thing we need to cultivate, in order to address our Aires as teachers, and not permanent shadows in our lives, is the sacred space to slow down and listen deeply to ourselves.  Perhaps if we can find the way to do this first step with love, we will be able to rescue our internal sense of empowerment and the awareness of our unique soul journey.  We are not meant to be sailboats blown in all directions by wild winds, but to avoid this we must first take hold of the ropes, steady our vessel, and begin to direct it in partnership with the elements surrounding us.

Where do you need to begin?  What Aire has been your most constant companion?  Do you dare to consider that this may not be who you are by nature?  So much goes into creating the identification, including your ancestral heritage and generational traumas, the experiences of your life, and your unconscious beliefs.  Yet, who are you underneath all of this, at the deepest level of soul?  What within you does not change with the shifting winds?  And the Aire that troubles you, what might it be showing you that is not in alignment with that soul truth?  Without necessarily tossing away all the strategies that might be working for you, would it be worth it to consider talking to your most difficult emotions this way, and asking them why they are there?  Are you willing to listen to the Aires Cosmicos as challenging teachers?  Perhaps if we can treat them with this respect, they will respond in kind, and lead us closer to who we are meant to be.  There is no question that we are living in intense times, and we are not the first culture to do so.  May we each learn to weather the winds of our lives with grace and find the growth that is meant for us, in the gentlest manner possible.   

With love for those who came before and all of us here now,

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 22: Fern & Labradorite

Happy Summer Solstice Season, and St.John’s Eve!  We are now in the full expression of summer and its green world magic!  The veil between us and the Faerie realm is at its thinnest, and the flowers and plants are blooming in expansive celebration of the life force.  There may be many troubling things in our world, but each year we are brought back to this moment, where we are reminded to be grateful for our aliveness, and for what we have been able to manifest in beauty, as the light of the sun shines brightly on us.  We are reminded, as well, of the magic that surrounds us in the natural world, hiding often in plain sight.  Engaging with the sight that allows us to peer beyond the facade is one of the many gifts offered by this month’s plant and crystal allies, Fern and Labradorite.

Fern

“We help you to see in the dark, without being seen.  That is the meaning of Fern protection magic.”

Solstice morning I sat outside with the wild Ferns that surround my home.  Native to California and abundant in the forests of West Marin, it is easy to take them for granted, despite their unique beauty.  Yet, anyone who takes a close look at their spiraled fronds, and watches them slowly unfurl, spreading out to gradually transform a landscape into an ancient looking place, will be able to sense their magical nature.  I touched the spores, which look like tiny seeds along the underside of their feathery leaves, placed the spores that stuck to my finger on my heart, and asked what they wanted me to say about their nature and their magic.  The words above are what instantly came to me.  These are plants very much worthy of our respect and reverence.  Plants are our elders, on this planet, and so it is always a good idea to attempt to listen to their wisdom for us directly, but Ferns are elders, even among the plants and stones.  They are prehistoric, even called living fossils, from a lineage that extends back perhaps more than 380 million years.  Recent fossil discoveries place them at the middle of the Devonian period, as part of the grouping of primitive plants called Pteridophytes, which held dominion over the land before the flowering plants, and even before the existence of some well known species of dinosaur.  It is an amazingly long time for anything to survive and continue to thrive.  I can hardly imagine the amount of change they have witnessed and weathered.  They quietly surround us, holding their knowledge and secrets of survival and adaptation.  Held as sacred to the Druid’s, and with a folk history of magic, medicine, and and sometimes fearful regard, I wonder if part of their power is in blending into their environment, augmenting beauty without calling attention to themselves.

What does it mean to see in the dark?  Though fear of the unknown often creates a bad connotation when we hear the word “dark,” its true meaning is simply that which is covered by night, hidden to the light of day.  This can be literal, as the landscape and our own ability to move within it, changes dramatically at night.  It can also hold the more metaphoric meaning of that which belongs to the night and the hidden, including dreams, intuition, the unconscious, magic, the ancestral, the Akashic records, and other elements of the mysterious.  Ferns were once regarded as a plant with many magical applications, and the “seeds” were an ingredient in the famous flying ointment, used by witches for spiritual flight, aiding the dreaming body in astral travel by inducing a very deep state of dreaming awake.    

But, what does it mean to not be seen in the dark?  We live in a time when the arts of the mysterious are often sought with the spirit of adventure.  With the partial knowledge left to us from times when human culture made it unsafe to practice or teach mystery traditions, we may find ourselves trying things we half believe in, just to see what will happen.  This is part of the retrieval of psychic knowledge in our age, but there is also a down side to this.  The realms beyond our conscious awareness are sometimes dangerous.  If we find ourselves in the dreamtime, or in deeply psychic states that allow us access to places just next to our reality, or if we engage in the practices and plant medicines known to us from more mysticism-centered cultures, without the training and preparation that they had undergone to become ready for those levels of awareness, we might find more than the healing or learning we seek.  It’s possible that within unknown territories, as we look deeply and travel innocently, there are other elements that look back and have their own purposes.  To be able to see in the dark, without being seen, is a very sacred gift.  Invisibility is an old form of psychic protection, that is not perhaps as dramatic as in the movies, but relates to how much you are or are not noticed, as you engage the arts of dreaming, seeing, healing, and the cultivation of knowledge.  The first time I was made aware of this principle, I was at Mictla, the temple of the dead and the ancestral in Oaxaca, Mexico.  It happened in a vision, as I gazed at the ancient stone carving of the jaguar glyph, the guide through the underworlds, and at that time as well it was suggested to me to carry a seed of a particular kind to make myself more invisible.  There are many references in books and articles on the folklore of the Fern to the use of its “seeds” for protection by way of invisibility, particularly when they are harvested on Midsummer’s Eve, or at least by moonlight, though often that is all that is said.  The nuance of providing this ability to see, without being seen, is a nuance that I hadn’t heard before, and I believe it sheds light on the particular nature of this plants protective and magical gifts.

There are other references to protection magic, as well as to other enchantments, to be found in folklore, in relation to the Fern.  People once carried ferns as a charm to ward off evil spirits or sorcery, as well as to attract luck, love, and to find wealth.  A particularly interesting talisman was made from the curled fronds of a Male Fern and sometimes called “Lucky Hands.”  It was made by picking a Male Fern on Midsummer’s Eve, stripping it to have only five unfurled fronds, which strongly resemble curled fingers, and then smoking it over a bonfire until it hardened.  In researching Litha, I learned that a bonfire once referred to a fire made entirely of bones, and I can’t say if that is an important element in the creation of this charm, but it was said that once made it could provide immunity from the threat of harmful sorcery and maleficent spirits, for the one who carried it.  Ferns were planted at the doorway to a home for protection, as well as brought inside, and when dried they were burned over hot coals to banish spirits and create a protective aura.  When added to a flower arrangement, they are said to not only add a protective element, but to enhance the properties of the flowers therein.

In Cunningham’s Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs, there is a particularly fun bit of lore that says if you are in a fern covered spot in the forest, at midnight, with no sound at all around you, Puck will appear and give you a purse full of gold.  Doing this as an intentional practice was called “watching the Fern.”  It also says that Fern sap, if it can be harvested, provides eternal youth.  In A Druid’s Herbal, For The Sacred Earth Year, the reference to Fern as a plant of immortality is also made. Perhaps that is a logical gift from a plant so old and ever-renewing.  Yet, as with invisibility, sometimes the meaning of these teachings hidden in folk story form are less literal than metaphoric.  Just as we have looked deeper into invisibility, it is possible to engage in inquiry about the true meaning of eternal youth.

There are many varieties of Fern, each with nuance.  For example, one variety known to the Druid’s as Moonwort, has the specialty of opening locks and breaking charms when it has been gathered by moonlight, and was also used in love spells and alchemy to convert quicksilver in to silver.  Because of this history, it is a good choice if one is looking to conjure financial wealth.  In general, Ferns like to grow in more shady areas and forests.  They are associated with Mercury and Saturn.  The Druids used the root of the male Fern and the root and leaves of the female plant for the treatment of many medical conditions, including issues of the lungs, coughs, jaundice, depression, rheumatism, diarrhea, ulcers, wounds, edema, internal injuries, intestinal worms, burns, and more, though these medicines must be precisely made and administered to avoid potentially harmful effects.

Suggestions for working with Fern:

We are at Midsummer, and can now take advantage of some of the above ritual suggestions for protective and luck increasing magic.  But, before beginning, find a wild place or garden close to where you live or often venture and commune with this supremely magical elder.  Ask it what you can offer it in order to make a deeper relationship.  Ask it what it can teach you.  Then ask to be shown which tradition or what alternate ritual may be of most help to you right now.  Listen quietly.  Sometimes plants speak subtly by bringing up memories and emotions, as well as direct transmission.

Scrape the seeds, respectfully, from the bottom of the leaves of the Fern.  Make an offering in return, and then place the seeds in a pouch to carry as an invisibility charm.  Or, if you’re feeling especially adventurous, follow this older version of the spell on St. John’s Eve, June 23rd, the Summer Solstice eve within the Julian calendar count.  The following text comes from The Element Encyclopedia of 5000 Spells:

“The Fern Seed Spall above has entered the general magical lexicon but actually derives from a more complex magical tradition.  The original spell demanded fern seen gathered on Saint John’s Eve, and not just any fern seed either.  John the Baptist is unusual, as a saint with two feast days–not only the anniversary of his death, but also his birthday.  Allegedly John was born at midnight on the Summer Solstice.  According to legend, on the eve of his birth, at the very moment of his birth, ferns bloom and seed.  If you can obtain that seed, this will work as a charm to render you truly invisible.

1. On the night of Saint John’s Eve, search out growing ferns.

2. Watch them closely.

3. At midnight, if seeds appear, gather them and carry as needed.

Russian magic suggests that the most powerful fern seed, for purposes of invisibility or otherwise, is picked on Bald Mountain on Saint John’s Eve.  The Synod of Ferrara in1612 forbade the gathering of fern seeds on Saint John’s Eve.”

Labradorite

Labradorite is a stone of magic, one that helps to awaken our inner knowledge and to direct it consciously.  When holding and gazing into this green, blue, sometimes dark, sometimes brilliant stone, it is hard not to think about the earth as it must look from space.  Especially when looking at a sphere of Labradorite, its relationship to the ever changing presence and mystery of the earth is called to mind.  When I was younger, this is the stone that spoke to me most, and I recall reading somewhere that it helps to “make a warrior feel like a warrior,” particularly in times of transition.  That phrase always comes to mind now when I consider Labradorite, and gazing into it I think I can understand why, in a larger sense than before.

At a first glance, Labradorite can seem very blue or a deep green, even a muddy brown with some green, blue, gold and black flecks.  If you don’t look any further, you might miss how brilliant and deep it actually is.  But, if the light hits it just right, or if you hold it beneath water perhaps, you will see worlds within worlds, made of shimmering blue and deep green, the images hidden within only limited by your imaginative capacity.  This has always conjured the image of the Faerie realm for me, but I can also think about it in another way.  It is a kind of mirror for the mystery that encompasses both the earth and us, as humans.

On the surface, what we are and what we see around us may seem very fixed in mundane reality.  We wear this concrete identity like a kind of cloak.  It takes a desire to see beyond, and the discipline to pay attention in more subtle ways, to see the true layers within the fabric of reality.  When we are moving too fast, or too mired in our troubles and transitions, we easily forget.  At this time, it is very helpful to have an ally that can remind us of who and what we truly are, while helping us to open to receive more intuitive information, and to direct our larger energetic resources with purpose and power.  That orientation towards life, and the inner discipline it takes to cultivate and maintain it, is the true meaning of warrior-ship.  This is spiritual warrior-ship.  And there we have it:  Labradorite helps to make a warrior feel like a warrior.  It serves to wake up and focus the subtle magic that is inside and outside of us, here on our beloved earth.

In the service of this, it may help in reach beyond the veil of our waking consciousness and into the dreaming realms and altered states of consciousness where we can access the gifts of psychic knowledge, divination, communication with guides, prophetic knowledge and glimpses into the Akashic records, manifestation magic, and increased serendipity, wherein we unconsciously draw favorable circumstances and connections towards us.  At the same time, according to the The Book of Stones, by Robert Simmons and Naisha Ahsian, it offers tremendous help on the path of knowledge and enhanced awareness.  It helps us to avoid the temptation to use such forces for control over others, an inappropriate use of magic.  Instead, it aligns us with our divine soul purpose, and helps us to connect with our quest for knowledge and self development throughout lifetimes, even to recall what we have glimpsed or cultivated therein.  We are purified by its hidden rainbow light, as we take the adventurous journey into the unknown realms and mysterious territories of the Nahual, or dreaming side of life.

This purification element is tied to its protective nature.  Moving between worlds can hold unseen dangers for practitioners.  Labradorite can help to strengthen the auric field around us, so that we travel with more psychic protection and less permeability, thwarting those who would harm us or or intrude upon our energetic system, leaving us depleted.  We need this kind of bright and shielded aura in everyday life as well, so that we are not permeated by the emotions and psychic influences of those around us.  Labradorite can also help us journey more deeply within, uncovering the unconscious influences beneath our self limiting beliefs, problematic patterns of behavior, and emotional or physical dis-ease, so that we can heal and thereby recover our innate empowerment and sense of purpose.       

Suggestions for working with Labradorite:

Meditate with, or bath with Labradorite to infuse yourself with its energies.  Make sure to spend time with it in the sunlight, to empower it and to see its true depths.  Take your meditations into the green world of the Summer Solstice season.

For those who work consistently with the unseen realms and psychic arts, it is a good idea to wear Labradorite.  Rings are ideal, because you can place them on your left hand to increase your ability to see, hear, and otherwise receive psychic messages and impressions, or place them on your right to help empower your will, and directed magical intentions.

Suggestion for working with Fern and Labradorite together:

Tonight is St. John’s Eve, and Midsummer’s Eve in the Julian Calendar.  This evening (or the next full moon perhaps) would be an ideal time to take your Labradorite stone out to a wild or garden place surrounded by Ferns.  Sit there quietly and with a clear intention, and see if you can pierce the veil.  Maybe you will glimpse the Faerie realm, or some other hidden aspect of the natural world beyond you, or the layers of inheritance and knowledge hidden within.  You will be in the right kind of company for a protected, inspired, and very magical vigil.  Make sure to give an offering, perhaps even a song, and most of all your respectful attention and belief in hidden possibilities.  Perhaps when we look for magic this way, it will show us that which we normally miss and remind us of the vastness of our reality.  Don’t forget to ask for a few of the Fern seeds, so that you can place them in a pouch with some Labradorite.  This would make a supreme charm for protection, uncanny luck, deep psychic awareness.    

Ometeotl.

May you grow up without losing your belief in magic.  May your subtle knowledge deepen and ultimately awaken your truest soul self, protected and illuminated in the expansive light of Summer.

With radiant enchantment,

the eleventh house

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

Mysteries of Litha, and Courting the Unseen at Midsummer's Eve

Happy Summer Solstice and blessed celebrations of Litha and Midsummer’s Eve!

This is the abundant time of year, when all is in full bloom and expansion, when the day comes to its longest, and nights are warmer and hold a feeling of enchantment.  Litha is the old European name for the Summer Solstice, also referred to as Midsummer.  This celebration is astrologically based on the longest day of the year, when the sun’s light is strongest, though it is not the actual middle of the Summer months.

The word “Litha” comes from Old English and means “gentle” or “navigable,” in reference to gentle winds and smooth seas.  It became associated with the months of June and July in an old text called De temporal ratione (The reckoning of Time), which was written by a monk named Bede, and outlined Anglo-Saxon Pagan customs and notions, including the naming of seasons and their rites.  Today, we celebrate the Solstice on the 21st of June, though there can be some variation, depending on the exact astronomical timing.  Yet Litha is sometimes still celebrated on June 24th, apart from the Solstice, because the formerly used Julian calendar marked it on that day.  This is why Litha is sometimes represented as the Solstice, and sometimes as a separate Midsummer’s Eve and Day celebration.  The astronomical date for Midsummer is the solstice on June 21st, yet it is still traditionally recognized in Europe as the eve and day of June 24th, and sometimes celebrated as the full period of time between June 19th and 24th.  There is clearly a range of possibilities, however the specifics do matter for some aspects of observance.  The longest day of the year happens when the sun is at the highest point of its arc, in relation to the earth.  The earth’s axis is tilted 23.4 degrees, and it travels around the sun in this manner.  At this moment of summer for us, the Northern Hemisphere is tilted towards the sun, and so gets more light and warmth than in any other time of the year.  At the solstice, we are at a pinnacle of receiving the sun’s light, but it is also a turning point, as from here we move towards a decline of light, and a slow progression towards the dark of Winter, when we will be tilted away from the sun.  It is this tension between light and dark, between the outer expression of what is seen by day and that which is hidden in night that marks the invitation for reflection, mystery and magic within this moment in the Wheel of the Year.

The Dictionary of Witchcraft, by David Pickering, states:

“Midsummer’s Eve “is widely held to be one of the most magical times in the year and is thus a favored date for the holding of witches’ SABBATS.  Marking the moment when the sun’s power gradually starts to diminish and a time when the forces of darkness are reputed to be especially active, Midsummer’s Eve was formally considered an ideal time to probe into what the future might have in store.  For this reason, witches throughout Europe once broke open hens’ EGGS on this night in order to divine from the contents things to come…”

This dual notion about the diminishing of the light and the activation of the hidden in the dark is at the heart of many of the customs of Litha.  In some ways, Litha appears to be a continuation of the rituals of Beltane.  It shares the celebration of fertility, the fullness of the Goddess, pregnant in her mature season between the planting and the harvest, and the presence of the maypole and ritual lighting of fires.  The emphasis on fire, however, was more specific at Litha, and was meant to keep the Sun’s fire strong through the ritual burning of Oak, known as the Sun’s tree, as well as for purification purposes and for fortifying the inner light.  People burned the ill luck of the past, along with sacred dreaming and protection herbs like mugwort and vervain.  They danced around these fires, made processions to sacred sites by torchlight, and stayed awake in vigil until the dawn.  They created fire wheels made of straw woven into a cart wheel, as a form of divination.  When this wheel was ablaze, it was rolled down a hill towards a body of water.  If it stayed lit all the way until entering the water in a display of steam and smoke, then it was predicted to be a good harvest year.  It’s hard to imagine these fire rituals in the context of today’s fire season challenges, so please don’t try any of this at home!  The meaning, however, continues to live and find its adaptations, just as it did when the emergence of Christianity forced these rituals to be cloaked in the guise of St. John’s Day, or the Feast of Saint John the Baptist, whose birthday is said to be June 24th.  Herein the fire rituals became more about spiritual cleansing, or “baptism by fire”, rather than offering support for the sun’s enduring strength in the waning days of the year.

I bring up St John’s Day because of the special relationship Litha has with the flower that bears his name, St. John’s Wort.  The mysteries of the green world are a large element of honoring Litha, and within that there are many lesser known customs for engaging the magic and potential of this time of year.  This is a time for appreciating the gifts given to us by the natural world, and for noticing what is usually unseen as we approach the light of the longest day, and as the Oak King loses his annual battle to the Holly King, until their next meeting at the Winter Solstice.  When we step through the gateway to the seasons of longer nights, we turn gradually towards the dreaming aspects of our world, and at this pivotal moment they are illuminated.  Perhaps that is why it is said that the healing and mystical properties of St. John’s Wort can only be fully accessed if it has been harvested in the full sun of Litha.  St. John’s wort has a long history of use as medicine for treating melancholy, physical aches, and nervous disorders, as well as for fertility support.  It has a strong effect as a tincture, tea, and even as an oil absorbed through the skin, soothing both the emotional body and many ailments of the physical body. As a magical aid, we can look to its alternate name, ‘chase-devil,’ for clues to how it has been used.  St. John’s Wort is known to “chase” away the unwanted “devils” that haunt the mind and heart, but also is said to be a protective herb, shielding one from malevolent spiritual interference, particularly when woven into a garland.  This was important at Midsummer, because as the shift towards the dreaming time begins (which is what is meant more specifically by the term “dark”), spirits of all natures were said to appear, including the more harmful or perhaps mischievous, as the veil between realms becomes thin.  Folklore suggests, however, that if you would like the most powerful and subtle aspects of this plant medicine, then it should be gathered on Midsummer’s Eve, preferably in the nude, while being careful not to step on any of the golden flowers.  Stepping on them may result in a far more intense encounter with the Faerie realm than any of us would enjoy, as the lore states that a Faerie horse may appear from beneath and carry the offender away on a wild ride through the night, to be left in some distant terrain!  Perhaps this evening it would be wise to call to another of the mystical plants of Litha, the lovely Fern, whose seeds when gathered this time of year, may grant the gift of invisibility, one of the most effective of psychic protection techniques.  But, more on that in this month’s plant and crystal ally blog, coming next.

This talk of green magic and Faeries, brings me to my favorite associations with Litha and Midsummer’s Eve, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  For some time I have wondered about the many references that can be found in Shakespeare to sacred traditions and the principles of magic.  (If you’re interested, I also strongly suggest a close reading of Hamlet, for example.)  In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, we see a vivid and fun, but also very spot on illustration of what people expected of Midsummer’s Eve, a moment when the Faeries were active and brought close to the human realm, as the sun shone brightest, illuminating the hidden, before opening the passageway to the dark, where dreaming resides.  People once feared this time, and its potential for magic and mischief, but fear or interest is in the eye of the beholder and age in which one lives.  Midsummer may be a time when the Faerie realm comes close to bless or to tease us, depending on the circumstances, but that means it is also a time when we can initiate some respectful interaction, or at least observance.  As the Bard channels, “And we fairies, that do run By the triple Hecate's team From the presence of the sun, Following darkness like a dream, Now are frolic;”

Just remember, if you choose to sit out this evening before the Solstice, or on June 23rd, to watch for the Faeries, that they have a strict etiquette that should be followed.  Always give an offering.  Make certain it is of a high quality and that you give it before enjoying any yourself.  This includes things like good chocolate, honey, cakes, libations, and other special treats.  You can also build a beautiful altar of natural objects, especially crystals, flowers, shells and other lovely objects artfully arranged.  Best of all, you could make a special ritual on Midsummer’s Eve, or on Litha, honoring the beings of the green world by building Faerie houses somewhere outside your home or in the wild.  This is a fun and sweet activity to do with children, and to connect with the childlike wonder always waiting for attention inside you.  But, remember a few rules.  It’s not a good idea to build these inside your home.  Inviting Faeries inside your home can lead to mischief of many forms.  Make your offerings beautiful.  This shows respect and invites enchantment in the best sense.  Be humble.  Even if you have not been taught to believe in them or understand them, doesn’t mean that Faeries don’t exist, and are not elders to the human race.  From all the lore available, it is easy to believe that they are often offended by our manners and our attitude towards them, so be extra polite and intentional.  Finally, should you encounter the Faerie realm in the natural world or in your dreams during this time of year, be careful not to eat or drink anything there, unless you are willing to never return home.  Remember that time moves differently, and like Rip Van Winkle, if you stay too long, you may find nothing familiar when you return home.  And, dancing in Faerie is an art we are not cut out for.  One dance may be your last dance.

If your eyes are widening, instead of rolling in disbelief or closing tight in fear, then step out into the evening tonight, or greet the whole Solstice season with a childlike heart.  May you find just the right amount of enchantment.  And while the magic is palpable, may you divine, in any of your favorite forms, the answer to this simple question:  What do you need most right now, to feed your inner fire and preserve your childlike wonder?

In the mystery,

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 21: Rhododendron & Rhodonite

We are sending love and rejuvenation wishes for all of the caretakers and nurturers among us, with two earth allies that reflect both loving gentleness and enduring strength.  Balance requires that what we are willing to give to others, we also offer to ourselves, at least some of the time.  Loving care and personal rejuvenation go hand in hand.  When we forget, and begin feeling depleted or even resentful, here are two very feminine wisdom holders who can remind us.

Rhododendron

Mid May is marked by the blooming of Rhododendron flowers, commonly found as ornamentals in home gardens and cultivated public lands.  Their fragrant pink and white flowers call to mind the transition from Spring to Summer, yet the grouping of plants known as Rhododendron hold a wide variety of over 1,000 species in the wild, and a wide range of magical meanings and uses as well.  In the ornamental flower realm, they can be found in shades of purple, red, and white, as well as pink, and include the sweet smelling Azalea in their ranks.  The name Rhododendron comes from the Greek word for “rose tree,” and they range from a hearty shrub to a large flowering tree, while maintaining their dual aspects of vulnerability and strength, just like their namesake.  Perhaps because of this complexity, and due to their toxicity, there is less written about Rhododendrons’ spiritual and herbal applications, and yet they have a lore and an intriguing magical signature.  The large leaves on the Rhododendron tree grow in a spiral pattern, moving down from the top of the branch.  A spiral represents remembrance of our eternal connection with the divine, as well as the cycle of birth, life, death, rebirth, and the gradual journey of spiritual growth.  As an expression of sacred geometry, the Rhododendron can help us to stay connected to this larger cosmic perspective when we find ourselves overwhelmed by the details of daily life.  Rhododendrons are also a form of conifer, meaning that they stay evergreen throughout the seasons, a beautiful reminder of rejuvenation and endurance.   This can be seen as a gentle nudge towards preserving one’s vital energy and allowing for movement through life’s seasons, while preserving a sense of inner balance.  Rhododendrons lose a few leaves, but remain strong and green all year, while storing their energetic resources for the blooming of Spring and Summer.  Perhaps their example can teach us how to move with similar grace and flexibility, instead of overworking and responding to the stresses of life, relationships, and caretaking in a manner that depletes us.

Rhododendrons are easy to grow and maintain, and can allow for the abundant presence of flowers around the home and garden.  Flowers are medicine, each with its own nuance, but overall emotionally cleansing and uplifting to the mind and heart.  My elder teacher of Curanderismo in Mexico, Doña Enriqueta Contreras, once said that she won’t enter a home without flowers present, because the emotional energies inside become too dense and stagnant without their cleansing effect.

In a home garden, Rhododendrons can support us by increasing our capacity for lightness and joy, our connection with the magical realms of nature and our resonance with the principle of renewal inherent in the natural world. They encourage the balance between the forces of gentleness and power within.  As soft and gentle as their appearance may be, these flowers can be dangerous as well.  Rhododendrons can be toxic to animals and hallucinogenic as well, though in careful preparations, by trained herbalists, there can be medicinal applications.  The safest way to work with these flowers is outside, or by engaging them as an essential oil or incense.  (Even in flower symbolism, Rhododendrons are associate with caution, awareness, and staying alert.) Considered sacred in Nepal, where they are the national flower and grow in the form of a larger tree than is found in most landscapes in the U.S., Rhododendron incense and oil is used in ritual cleansing and consecration.

Suggestions for working with Rhododendron:

Plant them with intention around your home and garden and ask for their support in staying connected with the larger rhythms of renewal.

Add the essential oil to a restorative bath.

Rhodonite

Rhodonite is known as “The Stone of Love,” though the true meaning of this might be different than what first comes to mind.  The word “Rhodonite” comes from the Greek language and means rose-red, and the appearance of this crystal is a deep, rose colored pink.  Pink stones, in general, share a relationship to loving self and others, yet the nuanced aspect that Rhodonite brings to this family of healing aids is one of deep restoration, and retrieval of what is most essential.

What does it mean to reactivate the heart?  Fear, loss, trauma, abuse, negative emotions like rage and resentment, and overextension all create emotional depletion.  When these issues reside too long in the heart and energy body, we can become stagnant, walled off from the ability to give or to receive love.  Our true gifts and our sense of trust in life can become blocked.  With compassion, Rhodonite seeks to find and sooth these wounded parts, clearing the wounds of the past, cleansing our heavy emotions, and helping us to increase our inner sense of balance and self esteem, all while restoring our ability to send love outwards.

Sacred nurturers of all kinds are able to do what may seem impossibly difficult, supporting others through illness, trauma, and the uncertain transitions in life, primarily because of a deep inner calling and capacity to give.  When we give, we receive what the tradition of Nahualismo calls “The Good Winds,” something like an invisible karmic current that may bring blessings or growth, and other gifts.  Gratitude from others may be offered too, but more than both of these is the reward of having been of service in a beautiful way that helps others, and puts a personal sense of calling into practical application.  This is how it tends to feel when one is in balance.  However, when over giving, stress, compassion fatigue, and vicarious trauma lead nurturers to a place of depletion, without the ability to renew and restore naturally, illness and emotional dysregulation ensue.  What’s more, this cycle can lead to a feeling of having lost one’s inner gifts, and can contribute to talents going underground in a manner that may result in generational trauma and soul loss, as well as Depression.  Holding, wearing, meditating with, and bathing with Rhodonite can help to disrupt this negative cycle, stimulating more love, balance, confidence, and resilience, so that the ability to offer love and generosity is replenished.  These stones can absorb negative energy, so don’t be surprised if they get hot when you hold them.  That means they are working, and cooling the more heated, and toxic, emotions within you.  If this happens, just rinse your stones with cold water afterwards for cleansing.

Furthermore, Rhodonite has an affinity for recovering, and discovering, innate gifts which have been hidden to the light of our awareness.  Like a spider, pulling on various interconnected threads in an invisible web, it can support its holder in finding a proper expression of soul purpose, drawing those who may benefit from our truest talents, while teaching us how to bring them fully into the world.  This exchange encourages us to believe in ourselves, teaches us more about our personal soul paths, and points us in the direction of service to life and community, in a balanced and loving way.   

Suggestions for working with Rhodonite:

Try sleeping with this stone.  Ask it to rebalance your nervous system and restore your energy body, while bringing clarity about your soul path, within the realm of your dreams.

When you need support, use this stone to charge the water you use for drinking and bathing.

Suggestion for working with Rhododendron and Rhodonite together:

This plant and crystal pairing is a deeply harmonious one, as evident by the shared name and color expression.  Bathing rituals are powerfully rejuvenating, particularly when feeling too depleted for complex energy practices, or unmotivated towards other acts of self care.  If you have fresh Rhododendron flowers in your garden, consider bringing some into the bathroom, in a vase or bowl.  Light a pink candle if you have one.  Run a hot bath and add 15-30 drops of Rhododendron essential oil.  Hold your Rhodonite crystal and breath deeply.  You can ask for help in specific ways, or just for some clarity and rejuvenation.  Place yourself and your stone in the bath and relax.  If emotions come, let them.  Try to release what you’ve been holding.  Pour the water over you with a bowl, cup, or ladle.  Recharge, and offer yourself a little nurturing too.  Be sure to wrap up in a blanket afterwards.

If you don’t have a bathtub, or if the weather is sunny and enticing, this small ritual would be very strong outdoors, in the restorative sunlight.  Run some hot water into a large pitcher or bowl.  (Glass or clay would be ideal, as opposed to plastic or metal, but use whatever you have.)  Add some drops of Rhododendron essential oil and place your Rhodonite crystal inside of it.  Set this fragrant mixture in the sun for an hour or more to let it infuse.  If you can be near some fresh flowers, even better.  Rest in the sunlight for a bit.  When you are warm and ready for a cleansing, remove the crystal from your charged water, and pour it over all of yourself, gradually.

Ometeotl.

May you find the time, permission, and sacred space for renewal.

With gratitude, love, and caring,

the eleventh house

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

The Bridge Between Us and The Holy Mother

After celebrating the many expressions of motherhood this month, and hopefully taking time to honor those who have brought us this far, it feels appropriate to also bring reverence and attention to the sacred feminine force known to us intimately as The Holy Mother.  Truly, to properly discuss something so complex and far reaching requires the length and research of a book, not a blog article.  Whether we call her Blessed Mother, Virgin Mary, Our Lady of Compassion, Señora Guadalupe, Our Lady of Fátima, The Black Madonna, or any of the other nuanced reflections she has offered us, reaching beyond the boundaries of organized religions, she carries within her sacred image, history, and lore of manifested miracles more than can be simply articulated in a few words.  Let us, instead, think of this offering as a meditation, simply us, as children, reflecting on the one who reflects us, continually renewing herself to meet us where we are.  Let’s reflect on the bridge that she creates with her adaptability, and with her dual role as mother and intercessor, between the mysteries of divinity and the sacredness of the earthly.

“I have many names and faces.

Beyond those names and faces,

I am your loving mother always.”

-Alana Fairchild, Mother Mary Oracle Guidebook

To begin, we have to consider The Great Mother, and our role as her children, forever of her, and yet alight with free will and wildness, adrift with confusion and independence, and longing for the union of opposites that stir within us, the mind and the heart, the soul and the life force, the power and the vulnerability that together make us human.  There is something about the Goddess that is so distinctly different than other sacred forces that inspire, guide, and set a holy, archetypal example for us here on earth.  Having spent my younger and middle adult life as a devotee of this sacred presence, learning her myriad faces and aspects, I have come to believe that it is because, despite how vast and complex she might actually be, she is also here.  She both resides within and encompasses the earth.  Even when we forget her, she remains here with us, in the everyday intimacy of a mother, from whose body we are made, and in whose embrace we are held all of our days.  We may read about, or hear the oral traditions that describe ancient cultures which held this reverence for The Great Mother as a central principle.  From these legacies we have inherited many complex images and stories of the Goddess, as the force of both life and of death, not remote but as close as the green earth and as bright as the shining moon and stars.  We can’t really know what it was to live before the last epoch of history, in which the ancient temples were destroyed or defaced, and many of the teachings and practices of the sacred feminine were lost, or at least forbidden, but we do know this.  The Holy Mother arose from this history, and offered the people who were in need of connection to her a way in which to remain close, a form to which they could pray and receive grace.

Remember,

O most gracious Virgin Mary,

that never was it known

that anyone who fled to thy protection,

implored thy help,

or sought thy intercession,

was left unaided.

Inspired by this confidence,

I fly unto thee,

O Virgin of virgins, my Mother…

from The Memorare

It’s hard to deny that the sacred feminine force adapts and stays near, when we take even the briefest look at what might be called the cult of Mary.  Around the world, the shrines and rituals of supplication to Mother Mary are a mystery tradition of their own, rising from the ruins of older forms and yet distinct.  If we cannot embrace her as the Goddess, she will come to us as the Mother, and not only to those in the highest positions, but to those in the lowest, those who need, those who ask.  The many faces she wears, in order that we see ourselves in her, and remember our connection, are the bridge of nurturing and mystery that she builds for us through the changing of times.  As in so many of the painted images and sculpted statues of her, she extends her hands and heart, offering to us a kind of intimacy with the larger cosmic order, as well as a personal face that looks at us as if we belong to all of it.    

“The Divine Mother is a genius of manifestation and she will have her creations come to life through the simplest and most ordinary of steps that somehow combine to manifest extraordinary beauty.”

Alana Fairchild, Mother Mary Oracle Guidebook

The alchemy of the everyday is blessed in the Holy Mother’s hands, but this work of manifestation is something more than the compassionate support she offers to many.  It is the creation of her own sacred image, welcome and holy across the globe, holding the ancient, the esoteric, and the mundane, holding us.  I hope someday to collect the far reaching examples of how the Holy Mother emerged in different parts of the world during the times when Catholicism was law, and what she may have preserved, offered, or transmitted, but for now I can share some of what I have learned about her in my own complex cultural legacy as a Mexican American.   

There is a well known folk story about the first appearance of Señora Guadalupe in 1531 to the Indigenous man called Juan Diego, who was walking to bring remedies to his sick uncle.  The story tells of the Holy Mother as an apparition with brown skin and dark hair, reflecting the Indigenous people of Mexico, speaking the Nahuatl language, and appearing at the sacred hill where once the temple of the Earth Mother Goddess called Tonantzin had stood.  What remained of this sacred site in 1531 was a ruins, and a legacy of loss and danger for anyone who dared to practice the old forms of worship, or the sacred knowledge of precolonial mysticism.  This is why, when she asked Juan Diego to be the one to speak to the ruling Bishop about her presence and desire to have a church built for her there, he tried to decline, despite his reverence and humility, and the rich scent of unseen flowers filling the air.  He knew that he would not be believed, and perhaps even killed for suggesting something like this, being an Indian and a poor man, with no power under Spanish rule.  Yet, she insisted that it be him, and so he tried.  He was laughed away by the Bishop, but left with his life and would perhaps have given up if she had not appeared to him again.  This time, after asking why he had not completed the task she had given him, she offered help.  She filled a cloth wrapped around his shoulders, a traditional carrying sack, with fresh rose petals, flowers that were not found there and would be proof of a miracle.  When he returned to the church, he showed them the flowers in his cloth sack.  The guards, not wanting to let him in again, attempted to take the flowers, but when they reached in the blossoms disappeared, becoming like a painted image on the cloth.  After several tries, the guards let him in and he saw the Bishop again.  After the Bishop tried to reach into the cloth and found the same impossible result, Juan Diego poured out the roses before him and showed in the cloth an imprinted image of Señora Guadalupe.  Convinced of having witnessed a miracle, the Bishop allowed for a church to be built in her name.

This story is an important one in the Mexican culture, though it is not without some controversy.  Many people think of it as proof that the Holy Mother is here primarily for the poorest and most in need, and has brought herself forward in this form to care for the Indigenous and their mixed race, displaced descendants.  Many feel that it shows not only her compassion but her resilience as the Goddess Tonantzin, returned to the people in a form they could openly worship.  Others say the story was used to indoctrinate Indigenous people into the Catholic Church, perhaps in a similar manner to the way in which elements of Pagan traditions were incorporated into new religious holidays and archetypes.  It’s possible that both of these perspectives hold a piece of the truth.  In many ways, this story and her image allowed for the blending of two cultures and two spiritual systems. Still, Señora Guadalupe is at the heart of Mexican culture and Mexican Catholicism.  On December 12th, each year, thousands of people gather at the shrine dedicated to her in Tepeyac to supplicate, to honor, to dance their prayers, and to show their devotion. Indigenous people from all over Mexico join others who come from afar to make this pilgrimage, walking or even crawling up to the sierra de Tepeyac. The sacred site of Tonantzin, honored by the indigenous peoples of Mexico long before the conquest, is actually a small hill behind the church, and the pilgrimage is a continuation of a practice from pre-Columbian times that still holds its power, while remaining safe enough to practice in the light of day. Yet, as potent as this story and practice of worship is, there is another aspect of the image of Señora Guadalupe that deepens the mystery and practicality that combine within her emergence, and sheds light on the imaginative manifestation work of the Holy Mother.           

The image of Señora Guadalupe is deeply encoded.  It is an act of preservation magic and a form of codex where deep principles of the ancient tradition were intentionally preserved and passed down from the times of sacred knowledge, through the times of persecution, to us where we stand now, In Tlacticpac.  I will not pretend to be an expert in every aspect of how this came to be and all of what the image entails, but I will share some of what I know.  In the Mexica (Aztec) culture, knowledge was revered and school was central to communal life.  The scholars who held the sacred teachings were artists who drew the teachings in a language of images, most of which were later stolen and taken to European museums.  The figure of Señora Guadalupe, hidden in plain sight and handed directly to the people, holds the 260 Goddesses (or sacred feminine forces) in Tepeyac, represented by the gold lines that can be seen in the cloth surrounding her, shining like rays of the sun.  She wears the blue and gold that represents the Divine within the material world, in the Deified elements of Water, Corn and Earth.  If you are looking at the original image from a geographical view, you can see that it is split into four planes, which represent the axis of the Earth, and its meridians.  Her head tilts down to the right, at the angle of 23.15 degrees, which is the exact inclination of Earth’s axis.  To her right is the East, where you can see a clear light like dawn  To her left is the West, with the darker light of sunset.  Her head points North, and her feet are at the South.  The stars in her reboso are actual constellations of sacred importance to the ancient Mexicans and their spiritual traditions, recorded in the positions they were in at her first appearance on December 12, 1531.  Her joined hands represent the union of the two cultures that allowed the people to survive, one darker and one lighter.  She is dressed in a Huipil, traditional dress of ancient Mexico, and adorned with flowers of tobacco and the hallucinogenic Ajujuké (Bell flower).  Beneath her is the moon, perhaps the primary feminine force, for which Mexico is named, and a symbol of Tezcatlipoca, who rules the most central tenets of dreaming, the unconscious, and bringing consciousness to the hidden layers of life.  This is represented in the image of the child,  who has the face and receding hair of a wise elder.  This angel-like figure has the wings of a Macaw, representing new ways of seeing and of consciousness.

Here I am only naming a few of the principles encoded.  Further analysis can reveal information about the positions and practices that are ideal for dreaming, and many details of the cosmic alignments and observations made by the ancients, in reference to the particular mysticism of Mexico and its relationship with the cosmos through time.  It, as a whole, represents the divine mysticism of the earth, in one place, from the perspective of the Indigenous cultures of knowledge.  Without knowledge, we are trapped in the concept we are fed about what we are and what the mysteries of life entail.  With knowledge, we are placed and in sacred relationship to something much larger than the tides of time that rule privilege and oppression.  We are free to know who we are, even when others don’t see us, and even when our actions on the outside are limited.  And, part of who we are is a child of the mystery of Earth, one small part of the divine incarnate that The Holy Mother embodies for us.  Perhaps this is the what she communicates to us when we ask for her help and she warmly extends her hand.

I return again to the Mother Mary Oracle, because the spirit of channeling guidance and remembrance, through written blessings and sacred art, feels in keeping with her nature.  In one of the oracle card descriptions, written in the first person of her voice, it says:  “There shall be no prison for your soul, beloved of mine.  Your soul shall be in love with the earth and fly free.”  May we always find our way home to this understanding and the freedom of heart it affords us.  In whatever aspect she appears to us, in whatever face she shows us, may we see our most divine reflection and know it is not something far outside of ourselves.  It is both outside and inside, part of what we are, and part of the enlivened earth that is our home and our body, aligned with the cosmos that surround.

If each of us created our own sacred image, using symbols and words to listen and record the message that the Holy Mother most wants us to receive, and keep close, what would this image reveal?  Would you take this on as a holy task, a meditation, and an act of the inner freedom that can never wholly be violated?  May this small practice of devotion become a bridge between who you are expected to be and who you are really, in the deepest sense.

In Reverence,

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 20: Evening Primrose & Bloodstone

In considering the themes of the Mexica New Year and how to best align with them, we turn again, as always, to our sacred Mother Earth  We have been provided with so many allies and supports, that as we meet the shifts of cosmos and terra, perhaps our challenge with these alliances is in knowing which to choose, and how to learn from them and engage them for our purpose.  Below are some suggestions for harnessing the year’s opportunities for aligning with the Moon, for cultivating manifestation and creativity magic, and for grounding into the best version of ourselves, while transforming unconscious patterns that may try to cloud our clarity.

Evening Primrose

In the Springtime, our attention naturally turns towards flowers.  In a year and season associated with the archetype of Rabbit, the Moon holds special importance and, magically speaking, it is the force with which we should work most closely, when directing our intentions and designing our personal rituals.  So, the question, perhaps, is what flower can provide us with a deeper connection to the moon, call to mind the freshness and renewal of Spring, and help us to focus our manifestation efforts.  Evening Primrose stands out as uniquely gifted at enhancing each of these purposes.

Oenothera biennis  is the latin name for the common Evening Primrose.  These are biennial plants, with cup shaped yellow flowers that usually bloom in the second year and give a lemon-like fragrance.  Though there are several varieties called Evening Primrose, and which may have yellow or pinkish flowers, pay attention to the name and description of any seeds or plants you buy, because not all of this group actually flower at night.  Oenothera biennis and Oenothera flava (called Yellow Evening Primrose) are two options that do bloom in the evening and close again by noon the following day, and either would be a nice addition to a moon garden. 

Evening Primrose flowers have four petals.  This is significant because the number four holds a special importance in nature, and thus in creating movement and transformation.  There are four seasons (Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter), four phases of the moon (new, waxing, full, waning, and dark), four parts of a day (morning, afternoon, evening, and night), and four elements (air, earth, water, and fire), all of which are easy to observe and name.  These are not the only systems of four, as we ourselves have life processes in four, including the four chambers of our hearts and the four aspects of our energy system, which in Nahualismo are described as our teyolia (our soul/ heart/ memory), tonal (our waking self/ego/mind), our nahual (our dreaming body/energetic body), and our ihiyotl (our physical life force).  There are more examples of the expression of four within and without, and the purpose of bringing these to light is to begin to understand why four is a sacred number in many traditions, particularly those who are closely aligned with the Earth.  In the ancient Anahuac traditions, as well as in others, this principle is visualized as an equal distance cross, which in Nahuatl is called Omaxatl, The Cosmic Cross.  It is engaged as a symbol for creating or stopping movement, in alignment with the cosmic order.  All of this is to say that this night blooming flower, with its four petals, appears to be in communion with the forces of sacred movement and transformation, in association with the number four and the Moon, which grants aid in manifestation for those who cultivate her favor, on the earthly plane.  To take these alignments one step further, yellow is the color of the East wind in the Mexican traditions of Anahuac, the kindest wind, the one which brings blessings to our path.  I have not yet attempted to grow Evening Primrose, but I think I just convinced myself to start.

In addition to this sacred magical potential, Evening Primrose is an edible flower!  It can be enjoyed as a delightful culinary garnish, while infusing its medicine into your system.  

Medicinal  primrose oil is also used to relieve pain and inflammation.  It is said to have a positive effect on uterine muscles, metabolism, nervous system.  A tea can also be made from its roots for treating obesity.  The oil is used in skin care for rejuvenation and clearing of blemishes, and a finely ground powder from the flowering stems is sometimes added to cosmetics. 

In researching the folklore surrounding Evening Primrose, I was most intrigued by three ideas for how to work this delicate, and yet potent flower.  The first involves its relationship to protection, not only as a protective plant ally but as one that helps to create a feeling of safety.  Being safe and feeling safe are often two entirely different things, and each need attention.  Evening Primrose is said to invite a strong feeling of safety, which is something essential to both quality of life and the art of manifestation.  When we are overly occupied with survival fear or anxiety, our minds and energetic systems are too busy, and perhaps too clouded, to truly be effective in directing intention and trusting our relationship with the unseen.  Feeling safe allows us to connect with forces beyond our own thoughts, and opens us to more possibility.  That alone is a huge magical service.  Secondly, perhaps due to its alignment with the Moon, Evening Primrose has an affinity for healing the unconscious, particularly in the arena of unravelling the influence of one’s parents and childhood circumstances.  When we are young, we have no real defense against absorbing the emotions and patterns of our parents, and no matter how hard parents work to avoid this, at least some of our human weaknesses are passed down.  To truly address our Rabbits, our unconscious destructive habits and patterns of behavior, we must address this level of inheritance.  Evening Primrose can be a support in healing on this level, and perhaps an ideal flower to use in herbal baths and limpias for children. The third interesting folkloric reference for Evening Primrose is for luck with hunting, making it a solid manifestation ally, particularly when it comes to one’s basic needs. The Complete Encyclopedia of Magical Plants, by Susan Gregg, I found this beautiful suggestion:

“Traditionally, Evening Primrose was used in rituals to ensure good hunting.  Though few people actually hunt for their food today, you can still use this herb to help you hunt for a job, relationship, happiness, lover, etc.  Place the petals on your altar while clearly stating what you want.  After you state your intent, sprinkle the leaves into the wind and allow them to be carried away.  Do this in each of the four directions, leaving a few petals on your altar to remind you of your intent.”

This flower also grows an oblong shaped fruit, about one inch long, which contains many red seeds.  Red is the color of physical healing, purification, and rejuvenation.  If you are able to harvest or purchase these seeds, hold them and consider the unconscious influences that interfere with your feelings of safety and agency, and that which stands in the way of what you most want to manifest.  Whisper to them, asking them to transform these influences, to bring movement to what is stuck.  Then send them into the dark earth, so they can take root and do their quiet work.   

Finally, although the expression is common, we might consider…what truly is walking the Primrose Path?

Bloodstone

Bloodstone is an earthy green, opaque stone, with spots of deep red (or sometimes brownish-orange) that very much look like drops of blood.  The sight of it alone calls to mind some alchemical union of soil, plant, and animal life.  In Medieval lore, its red spots were said to be the result of Christ’s blood, from the final spear thrust, dripping onto a green Jasper stone laying at the foot of the cross, and from this came the notion of Bloodstone as a stone of sacrifice, capable of bringing out the most altruistic aspects within us.   Bloodstone, however, is primarily a form of Chalcedony, and its rich lore goes much farther back.  The Greeks called it Heliotrope, meaning “Sun Turner” or “Sunstone,” and mythic reference from their culture describes the stone as reflecting the sun within the earth, creating the blood red markings.  There is also reference to heliotropic plants, which turn towards the sun and share a similar coloring.  The red within Bloodstone comes from its iron oxide inclusions.  

Interestingly, “Sunstone” or “Piedra del Sol” is also the name given to the Aztec Calendar, though this is because of its content not its material, which is carved basalt.  In the ancient world, including Grecian, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and even Aztec cultures, Bloodstone was widely renowned as both a healing stone and one with great metaphysical powers, and was a key ingredient in medical procedures, potions, and ritual.  It was used as a coagulant, to staunch bleeding, and was dipped in cold water and placed on the body for this purpose, in one form of treatment, as well as carried by warriors in battle.  This cold water method is still used, to stop nose bleeds, for example, or in the making of Bloodstone infused waters that can be soaked in to treat varicose veins and other ailments.  Perhaps based on its appearance, or on its iron content, it has long been deeply associated with regulating systems of blood flow in the body, including heart health, circulation, menstruation and hormonal regulation, anemia, and hemorrhage, as well as with increasing vitality and immune system strength.  At the same time, Bloodstone was considered to have strong manifestation powers that could be even be used to control the forces of weather, and yet the effect may have been primarily focused on creating movement where one was emotionally stagnant, such as cultivating change with the calling of wind, and inviting purification and release with the invocation of rain.  Like herbal medicine, perhaps this stone has a dual action, stopping the flow of something that may cause harm, and creating movement, while renewing strength, in areas where we feel blocked or impeded.  This theme is the one that most relates to how we might engage Bloodstone as a healing ally at the dawn of this year and season. 

Bloodstone activates the Root Chakra, helping us to ground within the Earth and within our physical bodies.  This is crucial for the work of manifestation, or that which we glimpse with our intuition and feel an imperative to create, from a place of soul calling, may not easily come to full blossom.  We need the permission of the Earth in order to create, and for that our feet must be firmly rooted upon her soil, so to speak.  It is interesting that Bloodstone is the original birthstone for March and the zodiac sign of Pisces, before the lovely Aquamarine.  It is a perfect stone ally for Pisces personalities, and those who similarly thrive in the mystery pathways and the abstract, but struggle with remaining connected to the body and the earthly plane.  It can be of great help to anyone who struggles to make clear decisions, as it increases clear thinking and commitment to one’s most soul aligned path, even through the obstacles placed before us.  Bloodstone helps to cultivate an inner sense of safety, similar to Evening Primrose, and can support the feeling of being at home in this world versus feeling out of place, abandoned, or overwhelmed, permeated by all that is around.  It can help in trusting ourselves and the Divine enough to persevere in the face of difficulty.  We must feel at home in our bodies, and grounded in reality, before we can be effective in harnessing the more esoteric energies of the cosmos and earth.

But more than offering encouragement and focus, Bloodstone seeks to provide protection and courage when emotional, psychic, and physical threats are present.  It helps to purify the auric field of negative influence, and draws away negative energies from the environment, as well as the electromagnetic stress that is ever present in our times.  When facing oppositional relationships and difficult situations, from hard family dynamics to school bullies and oppressive adult circumstances, Bloodstone shows its strength as a mover of energy, obstacles, and the problems that deplete us emotionally and physically.  When called on in this way, it has even been known to give its iron oxide to the issue, turning white where once it had been dark red, after the work of moving what was stuck is complete.

Bloodstone is also a stone of fertility, Increasing intuition, motivation, creativity, and dreaming.  It was once the talisman of Isis and considered a potent fertility charm, especially when carved into a Tet Amulet, also known as the Buckle of Isis.  Yet, even without any special design, wearing this stone as jewelry or within a charm bag, is effective and recommended for the purpose of bringing fertility to that which is desired, while fortifying oneself physically and energetically throughout the work of seeing our manifestations and healing transformations to completion.  In this year, as we engage the energy of 10 Rabbit, we are asked both to recover our clarity and energy from habitual destructive patterns and to find the courage and focus to bring our dreams and plans to blossom.  Bloodstone may be just the ally to engage in helping us through the places where we feel most stuck, discouraged, and also most ready to rise to the occasion.

I found this simple, but potent, fertility spell from The Element Encyclopedia of 5,000 Spells, the ultimate reference book for the magical arts, by Judika Illes:

“Bloodstone Spell (2)

1. Lay pieces of bloodstone directly over the womb and ovaries to heal and stimulate fertility.

2. Lie quietly and leave the bloodstone in place for at least 30 minutes.

3. this is most potent if timed to coincide with the exact phases of the moon– New Moon, Full Moon, and quarters.”

This could be done over the womb or over the navel, which is also the place of dreaming and manifestation for any gender, and any number of creations might called into being.  Begin with the Dark Moon, asking for the release of what stands in your way.  Then repeat on the New Moon, asking for what you hope to create.  Follow with the Waxing Moon, asking for your courage to increase and your dream to grow in strength and support.  Finally, repeat it on the Full Moon of the same month, asking for your creation to blossom into fullness on this Earth.  Perhaps incorporating the wearing of jewelry or placing a stone in a pocket or charm bag, and rubbing it whenever you feel stuck or discouraged, can provide a consistent support as you engage this process. 

Suggestion for working with Evening Primrose and Blood Stone:

These two allies feel so similarly aligned, and so in harmony with the energies of Moon, Rabbit, and the Mexica numerology of Ten, that we should feel free to design many rituals of clearing unconscious influence, and manifesting what we were born to create and contribute to our soul or ancestral legacies.  Here is one suggestion that combines some of the ideas above:

• Choose the evening of the Full Moon for this working.  Gather the red seeds or petals of Evening Primrose.  Whisper your intentions and request to them, and to any Bloodstone crystals you have. 

• Use the petals or seeds to design a symbol on the ground, something that represents the healing change or new dream you are intending to create.  Infuse some petals and a Bloodstone crystal in distilled water, and place it near the altar to charge. 

• Lay yourself down on the altar you have made.  Place your Bloodstone on your navel to stimulate fertility on all levels.  Remain there with your flowers, stone, and moonlight for thirty minutes, while you visualize the way to your dream being opened before you with ease and support. 

• When this is complete, gather the petals or seeds and offer them to the four directions and winds.  Sing a song, or offer a prayer or poem, asking for the rain to come and allow your dream to manifest in beauty. 

• Give thanks to your allies, and offer a little of your infused water as a gesture of gratitude to the Earth for her many gifts.  The rest you should drink, taking this medicine deeply within.

Ometeotl.

May you dream in beauty and create unimpeded.

Sending wishes for fertility and grace,

the eleventh house

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