Finding your Solar Power

20 Tuesday Jun 2017

Posted by Asia in Earth Medicine, Wildcrafting & Collecting

Tags

herbal infused oils, herbal medicine, saint joan's wort, saint john's wort, summer solstice

Summertime is like a linen sheet left out on the line— highlighted, outlined and defined by the omnipresence of sunshine. It sets the poppies aglow and warms the strawberries to ripeness. It pops open the peonies and lights the bowl of our days like porcelain.

Enlivening and inciting, the sun is the very definition of power-full. It is because of the deep eminence of the sun, that our Qi, the life force that animates our own bodies, sparks to life. Next time you are outside try baring your chest to the deepness of the light and see what happens. It might take a moment but soon you will feel infused with a power that throws the shoulders back, opens the heart gate, and helps you truly radiate.

In summer, the sun infuses its bold energy into all it touches. From the explosion of clover in the fields, to the soft weight of squash, the steady chorus of crickets and thickly heated nights— the warmth of the summer sun vibrates everything a bit faster, hurrying it into life. As human beings, diurnal creatures patterned to the light, our days are also directed by its torch. And as such, we too are stirred.

In the traditional tarot, The Sun is a forbearer of triumph, vitality, fulfillment and self confidence. Just like the fires of old, lit in the mouth of cave shelters, the energy of the sun can bring warmth, self assurance and solidity. It also creates important boundaries between the inner sanctum and the outside world. In many ways, fire is sunlight embodied, and it is the tool that forged human kind; when wielded and embodied rightly, fire creates a sacred definition of self. When we can embody the energy of sunshine, as efficiently as the plants soak in its bountiful rays, we can feed the élan of our inner fires.

Image from the Wildwood tarot deck

<< St. John’s Wort >>

High on a mountain bald, in a meadow licked by wind and encircled by an endless fold of mountains, there is a plant that blooms at the peak of the summer solstice and has been revered for centuries for its light. If you weren’t expressly looking for St. John’s (or Joan’s in homage to Joan of Arc) wort you might easily pass right by. Understated and leggy in its growth, Hypericum will often blend right into a hillside. Easy to ID once you familiarize yourself with its sunny countenance, St. John’s wort is most known for its perforated leaves and translucent oil glands that, when held up to the sun, illuminate in polka dots of light. When I go harvesting St. John’s wort, I must often squint and seek with shaded eyes. Hypericum’s small yellow flowers are like droplets of butter amongst the blocks of yarrow and hearty meadow clover. To go searching for St. John’s Wort is to attune yourself to the subtlety of dappled sunlight.

An herbaceous perennial that typically blooms from June until August, St. John’s Wort is a plant with a long history of medicinal and magical lore. In medieval Europe, St. John’s Wort was considered to be an herb of protection, and was often employed against the ‘evil eye.’ Its scientific name, ‘Hypericum’ comes from Greek and means “to ward off an apparition.” Whenever St. John’s Wort has grown, it has been sought and gathered talismanically to help protect and fortify the borders of oneself.

One of the most defining ID characteristics of St. John’s wort is its garnet-red essential oil. When crushed during harvesting or medicine making, the leaves and flowers of this plant will turn one’s fingers tips a deep purplish-rouge. The “blood” of St. John’s wort is not only an important ID marker, it can also help us understand the deeper energetics of this versatile plant.

In Chinese medicine blood is considered to be the physically animating source that gives us life. When someone is full of their own life force, emanating well being, confidence and health, we say that they have good blood. With good blood, our life force can literally reach every corner of our body, filling out all our capillaries and veins, and the chambers of our inner resources. Good blood helps us inhabit the vehicles of our body, imbuing us with a radiance and power that comes from capturing the source of one’s inner energy. In contrast, a lack of blood is a literal lack of life force, an absence that can cause weakness, instability, low confidence and, unsurprisingly, physiological and psychic vulnerability. In Chinese medicine it is said that if you have strong blood, you simply will not be susceptible to parasites or attacks that come from the outer world. Namely, your own power source, your inner sunshine, is so filling and bright that you are unable to be inhabited by any unwanted energies (bacterial, psychic or otherwise).

This is an important medicine of our time, as we come to realize the fine difference between personal power and egoic inflation. Between inner brilliance and anxious manipulation. St. John’s wort, just like the presence of good blood and summer sunshine, is a plant that reminds us that in order to stay whole, healthy and strong we must nourish our personal life force and distinctive light. This lesson becomes particularly important in summertime as our center of gravity tends towards the outside world (just think of all the summertime parties you are required to attend!). In the warmer months it’s vital that we tend the inner fires of personal energy as we are asked to strike out more and more into the outer world.

Traditional people knew this innately, hence why this plant was so often used as a talisman to create healthy barriers to outside influences. While we might guffaw at the idea of the evil eye, when we replace this sentiment with our contemporary understanding of the damage inflicted by energy vampires, negative Nancys and bitter gossip, we see just how important St. John’s wort remains. With good blood and good talismans our boundaries we can remain bright— no matter how many ‘dark clouds’ pass through our lives.

The physical medicine of St.John’s wort echoes its energetic ability to imbue protection and bring sunlight. Most people who have heard of St. John’s Wort are familiar with it as an herb for depression. Though this one action has become almost exclusively popularized in the last decade, this powerful herb has long history of being used for ‘madness’ and melancholy. Interestingly, some studies have suggested that this action might in large part have to do with its hepatic effects. As a hepatic, St. John’s wort aids our liver in its natural protective processes and clearance, helping to ride the body of lingering compounds (which is one reason why it is contra-indicated for those on life saving pharmaceutical mediations). For example, trials have shown that Saint John’s Wort can speed the clearance of excess cortisol (otherwise known as “the stress hormone”) so we can return more quickly to a state of inner peace.

Stagnancy and depression go hand and hand, and when our liver is bogged down it can create an even deeper quagmire in our life. If you have experienced depression or anxiety then you are familiar with the ways in which these emotions can seemingly strip away your personal agency and power. With Saint John’s wort, we bring vital energy and movement to our inner landscapes, freeing up more personal agency and light. One of my favorite ways to invoke the brightly protective energy of this flower is to rub infused St. John’s wort oil into my temples. It can also be particular potent massaged into the area around your thymus gland, in the center of your chest. The word thymus comes from the Greek ‘thymos’ which means “life energy.” If you truly want to feel like super woman, give your thymus a few hard Tarzan fist knocks afterwards and send out a loud whoop.

St. John’s wort is also a strongly protective medicine to guard our outermost selves. The flowers and above around parts are an effective topical remedy for bruising and burns and other abrasions arising out of disastrous interaction with the outside world. The herb is also an important antiviral, used specifically against enveloped viruses in vitro, a class of viruses which are responsible for many long-term viral infections such as cold sores, herpes simplex II, shingles and mono(nucleosis).

This vibrant solar plant can be a powerful remedy for nerve or muscle pain as well. It can work wonders, as both an external oil and/or internal tincture, for sciatica, back spasms, neck cramps, TMH and neuralgia. For many people, the over-reactivity of our bodies’ muscular and nervous system and be traced back to our tender interaction with the outer world. It is common for sensitive nervous systems and tense muscles to overcompensate in response to stressors in our environment. With St. John’s wort, we can take in the live-giving energy of the sun and revitalize our own stores of enlightened power.

** Perhaps unsurprisingly, SJW can cause photosensitivity (extreme sensitivity to sunlight). So be careful when handling and remain aware of your time under the sun when taking the medicine (externally or internally).

** Please use caution when using SJW internally as it can speed the clearance of life-saving drugs, and have potentially serious interactions with other medications.

>> How to make St. John’s Wort Oil <<

Harvest flowering tops (leaves, buds + flowers) when in bloom. The most potent time will be near the summer Solstice

Let wilt overnight if you are in a mold-prone climate

Coarsely chop material and pack loosely into a dry mason jar (choose a jar that fits your plant matter as snugly as possible)

Cover material with high quality oil (organic olive oil works great)

Use a small stick or skewer to poke out any air bubbles

Put a clean and dry lid on your jar and place in a sunny spot (sunlight is a chemically important component in creating strong Saint John’s wort oil)

Let sit for 4-6 weeks and then strain into a clean, dry jar. Use a funnel lined with a fine weave cloth to separate the oil from any plant material. Your oil should be a rich red color. Will keep many years if stored in the refrigerator.

The Season of Pleasure

30 Tuesday May 2017

Posted by Asia in Earth Medicine

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

herbal medicine, passionflower, pleasure, summer

In the wheel of the year each season has its distinctive gifts, its own character and flavor. There is a time for hermitage and planting, harvesting, seeking, risking, budgeting and even dying. But it’s only in summer that pleasure takes center stage.

Here in the mountains, we are just now tipping into the true growpoint of summer and a particular richness is beginning to take center stage. An invitation to kick back, practice relaxing and let senusousness take center stage.

As Ella Fitzgerald so famously popularized in the song “Summertime”, in summer the livin’ is easy. The intensity of building and seeding wanes, the rush of spring fades out of focus like a sunspot on the water and we’re left with an invitation to simply enjoy. Roses are fat on the vine and the fields are sweet with berries. Trees give ample shade to doze and the nights are warm enough to sleep out underneath the stars.

In summer there is something in our animal bodies that sighs. Here, we will not freeze, we will not starve, we will easily survive. It’s a curious but time-worn fact that when human beings aren’t under the immediate threat of survival, we can soften into a more deeply creative state of mind. Without the need to focus on the basics of our existence we can allow ourselves to shift our awareness into more subtle, expansive and fantastical pursuits. In the summer heat, when it’s all but necessary to take a siesta on the front porch, we are given permission to let ideas flow like wine, to indulge in the tiny pleasures of our soul. The poet Walt Whitman gorgeously embodies the restful cauldron of summertime daydreaming in his poem “Leaves of Grass”— “I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.”

Every day of our lives we are guided by desire, the innate ache to capture certain feelings so we can achieve a juicier, more fulfilled, richly embellished state of mind. Far from distractions, our desires can help us understand exactly what we are craving on a deeper level. Desires tell us where we want to go, and what we want to leave behind. And when we indulge our desires, we can begin to understand why we yearn for them in the first place. In our country of religious over-work, summer is often a nationwide sanction to follow one’s desire. Vacation, beach lounging, full-bellied barbeques, late-night mojitos and midnight romance.

Far from the puritanical work ethic that seems to pervades so much of our contemporary work-culture, the hedonistic aspect of summertime invites us to inhabit a more fluid state of being. A tantric exploration of our inner feelings, and a softer, more liberating gateway to soul.

But the only way in which we can both feel and feed our desires, the only way to truly take pleasure and give ourselves permission to enjoy it all is to s l o w d o w n. And though the heat of mid-day seems to demand it, the buzz and rush of summer can sometimes make it feel near impossible. This, is when herbs become heroes.

Passionflower at Sunset

>> Passionflower (Passiflora incarnata) <<

Of all my time on earth I don’t think I have ever seen a flower that is more exquisite, exotic, and captivatingly otherworldly as the Passionflower. Passiflora is one of those honest to goodness botanical show-stoppers and once people meet this exquisite flower they tend to fall head over heels in love. A crush of mine once told tell me that if I was any flower, I’d be a passionflower. I was, of course, endlessly flattered. And you can bet that one statement tipped me right over into full-blown amour.

The name of Passionflower comes from early Christian missionaries, who saw the unique arrangement and presentation of the plant’s floral parts as a prime opportunity to illustrate the crucifixion of Christ (otherwise known as “the passion” of Christ). I can’t say this would have been my first thought, but to each their allegory! The name has stuck, however, because there is truly an aspect of this vigorous vine that not only excites passion, but invites the softness of space to find heady pleasure in one’s life.

Native to the southeastern U.S, Passiflora incarnata thrives in warmer climates and can even become weedy in far southern climes like Florida. Other species of passiflora can be found throughout the world with their own local history of use. In US zones 5-9 Passiflora incarnata is relatively easy to grow and cultivate. Once established in the garden, the swirling perennial vine will quickly take over trellises and send shoots out in all directions. It will bloom all summer long and any blossoms left on the vine will grow into deliciously round fruits call maypops, which contain tartly cooling inner piths.

Historically both the roots and above ground parts have all been used as medicine, but contemporary herbal material medicas focus mostly on the leaves and flowers. Passionflower is one of our safest, yet effective, hypnotics (or sedatives). It is my favorite herb to help soften into sleep, especially for those who have a hard time shutting down their brain and tend towards circular thinking. As I’m prone to mental merry go-rounds, I often take passionfower before bedtime. It is so adept at shutting down well-worn circuits, I sometimes find myself on such a different train of thought, I can’t remember what I had previously been ruminating over! Unfortunately, sometimes it takes a while to get off the beta brain wave state all together and ease into sleep.

Passionflower is also a lovely nervine and anxiolytic. It is one of my most treasured allies for agitated anxiety, buzzing minds, busyness and overwhelm. In tea or tincture form, this mandala-like flower is indicated for those who feel trapped in a cycle of repetitive worries and race track thoughts. As such, it can offer sweet release for those who experience headaches from such brain ruts. Passionflower is also an anodyne (pain reliever) and can be used as an ally for menstrual cramps, PMS and bodily tension.

Blooming in mid-summer, Passionflower helps us to slow down and relax in body, spirit and mind. Each open passionflower is an invitation to let go and recline. You can see this illustrated most effectively through the bees. All summer long these winged imbibers crawl into the corolla of the passionflower, coat themselves in pollen, and then let themselves drift into somnolence for a while. It’s not unknown to see a bee taking a mid day nap in the lap of a passionflower.

Passionflower essence square

The first time I met this plant I had a deeply powerful experience that has shaped the way I’ve understood its medicine ever since— and it began with one sleepy bee. I was in herb school at the time and as we were just meeting passionflower on the vine. As we looked over the plant we found a wee bee asleep in the bloom. In the midst of copying down material medica, an enterprising friend of mine attempted to “wake up” the bee, effectively knocking it out of its perch and onto my arm where it promptly stung me, no doubt quite disgruntled at having its beauty sleep disturbed. Thankfully, I am not allergic to bee stings so, though I had quite a large welt, I was bodily fine.

The very next day I drove with some friends down the coast for a weekend at the beach. A short vacation devoted to pleasure. I was walking back from the ocean on our last day when the welt on my arm began to throb, almost like a homing beacon. I slowed and placed my hand over it and suddenly, I just knew— passionflower was close. Following my instincts I ducked between the houses, through several backyards, and wandered towards a small open space of weeds and debris when, suddenly, there it was! Cascading down a wall of shrubbery was a gorgeous passionflower vine, alit with blooms. It was my first time finding passionflower growing wild and I was as giddy as a child in a field of lollypops. I gathered as much as I felt I could and skipped back to the house to tell my friends so we could all admire. Later that day, I got into the car to drive home and felt a curious shift begin to take place inside of me. I was on the cusp of ending a long-term relationship and had been delaying the decision due to a never-ending circuit of worrisome doubt. But sitting next to that passionflower on the long drive home, something inside of me just snapped. The same repetitive thoughts of fear seemed to break open and before I knew it I was bawling my heart out to this magnificent vine, and coming to a realization that it was time to break the cycle. I realized that I needed to leave behind this relationship to follow the true map of my desires. That ceasing this partnership would open me up to accessing more relevant passions, allowing whole new avenues of creativity and self growth. When I got home I made the decision, and I never looked back.

Years later I was sitting with a group of students who elected to make a passionflower flower essence. I wasn’t surprised when, during the attunement process, this was what they picked up on: “Passionflower is a powerful essence for connecting to the deep reservoirs of your creativity and the guiding voice of your passions. Both opening and grounding, passionflower helps us to let go of outside expectations, express our truth and honor the beauty of who we are. A valuable ally for times of self-realization, intuitive expansion, and compassionate beginnings. passionflower encourages us to embrace the power of our vulnerability, the chaos and symmetry of profound growth. Recognizing the wholeness within new beginnings. This exotic bloom can show us just how many possibilities exist within our individual realm.”

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Passionflower Sun Tea

One of my absolute favorite ways to imbibe passionflower is to use the distinct alchemy of summertime to create a gentle, relaxing daytime tea.

Collect fresh passionflower blossoms
Float in a glass of water (I use about 1-2 blooms per quart)
Cover with a lid and let jar sit out underneath the full sun for 1-3 hours.
Retrieve sun-warmed jar and uncover. You can leave the flowers in or strain out if you’d like
Sweeten with wildflower honey or a tart home-brewed shrub. Serve over ice for the ultimate in a mellowing brew. Sip, sigh, sit back. Enjoy life.

Pine + The Dreamtime

30 Monday Jan 2017

Posted by Asia in Earth Medicine, Inspirations, Wildcrafting & Collecting

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

evergreen, herbal medicine, pine, winter resiliency

Every year is a cycle of living and dying, and every transition is medicine. In winter we approach that beauty of endings. As the cold pushes life back to the roots, the land enters a kind of dreamscape. A stretch of consciousness that carries us into death, and then beyond. (And could this year’s winter be any deeper of an initiation into that death journey?)

The sheer depth and length of darkness in winter’s tilt creates a perfect cocoon for a season of dreaming. With only the faint milk of a winter’s day and a preciously guarded stockpile of wood, many traditional people spent much of the wintertime in intermittent sleep. With the hours of darkness dominating the luxury of light, winter was a time to explore one’s dreams. It was a season of recognizing what continues to exist despite the waning of all outward life. Just as dreaming helps us explore what lies outside the boundaries of our day-to-day existence, winter takes us on a journey to see what lies beyond the door of death. Even as our eyes perceive the fading of the aboveground world, streams still continue to flow, owls swoop quietly from bare branches, and evergreens remind us that the realm beyond death is flecked with ever-present life.

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In many cultures, winter is considered the realm of the ancestors and the shaman alike, those who are the keepers of this beyond-death realm. With the hold of the physical world loosening its grip, it was a time of inward journeying. An exploration of pure being, without the fetters of such a physically oriented routine.

In sleep science there is a state of consciousness between waking and sleeping called hypnagogia. Termed a “threshold consciousness,” in hypnagogia our mind dwells in a borderland, not fully in waking alertness and yet not entirely in the amnesia of sleep. We rest, instead, between the worlds. During the long hours of the night, with few distractions to keep us occupied, people would traditionally slip in and out of sleep for many hours. With darkness quilted around you, there is little distinction between the mystery of dreams and the mystery of night.

When we allow ourselves to rest in this in-between state of hypnagogia we interact with our own inner muse. According to some researchers, this hypnagogic state is some of the most fertile time for creation within our brains. A time for connecting to new thoughts, inventions, feelings, and directions in our lives. This winter, allow yourself long hours to simply lay in the darkness, rest by candlelight in the minutes before bed, or allow yourself slowness upon waking in the morning. Let yourself slip in and out of deeper states of consciousness, and see what harvests lie there.

In many ways sleep itself is a small death, as our consciousness escapes from the confines of daily life. So, too, is wintertime. When we engage with our roles as sleepwalkers in the dream state of wintertime, we can more fully enter the hypnagogic mind. Hypnagogia is a literal brain wave state, one that allows us to slip into deep stretches of meditation, inward exploration, and richly embroidered dreams. In wintertime we realize that we are, in truth, the dreamers of our own life. That we have the ability to create our own lives. In winter, we can dream our lives anew. To figure out, as Mary Oliver so eloquently posits, just what we would like to do with our “one wild and precious life.”

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>> Pine (Pinus spp.) <<

Evergreens have been a symbol of sacred continuance as long as people have been living in the deciduous world. Emblems of eternal vitality and the possibility of life beyond death, evergreens like Pine show us that there is a flicker of consciousness that continues on even after the wide scale sleep of aboveground life. Evergreens are the master of sustaining. They remind us that we can live through anything, even death. Traditionally all evergreens were revered, but none so legendarily as the Pine.

Pine is a deeply versatile and abundant medicine. There are varieties of Pine in almost every corner of our world. The best way to begin to ID your local Pine is to count how many needles grow in a bundle. Here in our Western Appalachian forests we are dominated by Eastern White Pine (Pinus strobus), but you may be graced with Ponderosa (Pinus ponderosa), Jeffrey Pine (Pinus jeffreyi) or Red Pine (Pinus resinosa). Our Eastern White Pine has five needles per fascicle (or bundle), but others will have a different count. This winter, treat yourself to a botany date with a tree ID book and introduce yourself to your neighborhood Pine variety.

Pine was an important medicine and resource for the people of this continent for as long as memory can reach. Traditionally the bark and sap was utilized as an important anodyne (pain reliever) and antiseptic. It was also a prized medicine for disinfecting wounds and staving off wintertime colds and flus. Boiled in a decoction, Pine bark was a foundational remedy for cold weather aches and rheumatism, as well as dispelling coughs and lung troubles.

evergreen

Bright Pine needle tea is one of my wintertime treats. As an excellent source of vitamin C, Pine is an indispensable beverage for those who have little greenery to eat throughout the cold months. In the early days of the colonies, Indigenous peoples showed European settlers how to avoid scurvy by drinking an infusion of the needles throughout the long winter season. Just make sure to brew your batch of Pine tea with branches straight from the tree, as the vitamin C is best preserved in fresh needles.

Traditionally, every part of the Pine was used as a means of survival. When collected and distilled, Pine’s sap lends its volatile oils to create turpentine, an important solvent and cleaner in the early American colonies. Its rosin, the sticky byproduct of distillation, was often used in waterproof glues, sealing waxes, and to grip the strings of bowed instruments like fiddles to make them sing. Today, we can interact with this aspect of Pine’s medicine by collecting previously fallen sap droplets (a reminder that wounds are often our greatest source of medicine) and melt these antimicrobial gems over low heat on the woodstove or in a double burner to combine with salves or apply directly to the skin to heal fungal infections, burns and abrasions. Pine wood itself burns fast and bright. It is a choice log to begin any fire and often the first tinder to be thrown over the coals to get the hearth flaming anew.

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Once upon a time there was a forest of Longleaf Pine (Pinus palustris) that ran the entire length of the south, 140,000 square miles, from Virginia to the edge of Texas. Over harvested to create pitch and to carve the masts for navy ships, today there are only a few patches of these mighty Pines left. But organizations like the Long Leaf Alliance are continuing to bear the torch of this majestic species, replanting forests and embodying the very essence of Pine itself. Life continues and regeneration is always possible, even in the face of seeming extinction.

As a living embodiment of everlasting life throughout the wintertime months, I like to spend time sitting and meditating with Pine to connect into the aspects of my own consciousness that continue on past the borderland of death. For centuries, Pine has been a gateway into the realm of the eternal, that dreamspace where all things continue and are created anew. This winter, try brewing yourself a cup of Pine needle tea before bedtime and see what dreams may come.

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>> Pine Needle Tea <<

1 handful of fresh Pine needles (chopped)

1 quart H2O

Put your chopped needles into a large mason jar or French press. Bring your water to a boil and pour over the herb. Let steep (covered) for 20 minutes.

Press (or strain) and sip to revive and stay resilient throughout the long winter months!

// post originally published in Plant Healer Magazine, Winter 2016 //

You Contain Multitudes

06 Tuesday Sep 2016

Posted by Asia in Earth Medicine, Inspirations

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

flower essences, herbal medicine, self healing, self love, shamanic journeying, shamanism, stone medicine

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Each lifetime contains multitudes. A multicolored collection of insights and experiences. A many-hued menagerie of dusks and dawns. Each lifetime is not just one thing, but many. Like a field that blooms in wildflowers and golden grass from spring to fall. And each one of us is not just one thing, but many, too.

The child whose imagination created shapes from shadows and knew that a summer was also a slice of forever. The teenager who could get lost in poetry and wasn’t afraid to fall head over heels in love. The new parent who experiences the ecstatic largeness of existence in the absolute smallest moments of life. The elder who can take the wide view. The wise one who knows exactly what to say to soothe a wound, and how to laugh at the silliness of living on earth.

supergirl_asia Asia at age 3 channeling Superwoman

When we need clarity in our lives we often look to the exterior for guidance. Seeking outside support from your community can be absolutely vital, but we can also be empowered to seek council directly from the complexity of our own being. The deep diversity of our own selves.

As humans, we tend to turn a critical eye upon our past (and present, for that matter). Picking over ourselves with a fine-toothed comb, we lose ourselves in the subtle imperfections, and cease to remember the gifts and talents that we naturally possessed throughout so many moments of our lives. And we forget that those aptitudes, those wisdoms and insights, still remain somewhere deep inside. Within all of us is a real-life confederation of superheros, with specific powers to share.

So next time your heart aches for guidance, consider the possibility that there is a version of you that knows exactly how to heal the wound. A self that can give you a perspective that will transform it all.

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Authentic medicine people recognize that true healing comes from within. That all healing originates from the self. Even when we have the support of an incredible therapist or herbalist, the alchemy that releases us from dark places is a magic that originates inside. Plants, too, are simply allies that bolster our natural abilities to heal. Even an immune stimulating herb like Echinacea doesn’t bequeath us with something entirely new. It bolsters and supports what is innate to us. It ignites the potential within. All healing is born from the cauldron of your multitudinous self. We just have to be open to the diversity inside.

There is much pressure in our culture to package our own identities, to be easily encapsulated in 140 characters. But the real truth is that within each of us is a diversity of different personalities. An entire kaleidoscope that can be experienced in the span of a single day. We are both, we are all.

The person who drinks midnight margaritas and goes out dancing until dawn. And the person who wakes up at first light to sip tea and simply listen to the birds.

We, all of us, wild and meditative. Carefee and conscientious. Confused and completely clear.

We are wounded. And we are our own most powerful healers.

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There is a part of you that is reaching out right now, with a magic balm to help.

So keep reading to learn how to access this multitudinous self. Develop a deep relationship with the medicine person that you are, and the healer that you have been and will become.

It’s all here. You are here. And so everything is possible, beginning right here.

. . .

// M I C A //

A vastly abundant mineral flecked in field and stream, Mica is a glimmer of light in our journey to see ourselves. A supremely multilayered stone, Mica brings us into a uniquely celebratory relationship with our multifaceted self. Known in Chinese medicine as a sacred mirror, Mica works to reflect back to us our inherent worthiness and inner-brilliance, encouraging us to recognize ourselves for the divine beings that we truly are. Mica acts as a magic gazing glass, through which we can see all the goodness that exists within.

// S E L F H E A L //

A profound ally for healing, Self heal (or prunella) reminds us that everything we need to change, transform, and grow is already within us. Added in essence form to any formula, Self heal is considered a potentiator, a flower that helps all other elements of the formula to harmonize and amplify in healing. A central essence in my own practice, Self heal is vital for both the healer and the healing. This sweetly nurturing essence reminds us that everyone deserves time for self care and rejuvenation. And that, in truth, we do not have to look beyond our own selves to experience the most profound healing. At the deepest level, we are always whole.

>> Visit our Self Heal + Mica elixir in the shop <<

// Healing Selves Meditation //

We are, in truth, our own spirit guides. Listen to this spoken meditation to open a dialogue with your inner healer and multitudinous self. Re-integrate the gifts of spirit from your inner child, and invite the wisdom of the elder you have yet to become.

Be guided from within.

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// Journey to Yourself //

From a shamanic standpoint we aren’t just a self, we have a self. Part of the gift, and responsibility, of this lifetime is to learn how to care for the selves that we are actively creating. Self care can look like many things: baths, baking, taking half an hour to work on a puzzle. Simply put – one of our most central, and unique tasks, is to learn what our selves need in order to feel supported and cared for.

One way we can begin to understand our needs is to journey to a quiet aspect of ourselves and ask. Shamanic journeying is a kind of meditation, combined with focused intention, to enter an expanded state of consciousness. It is a great way to connect in and receive guidance for those of us who have active minds. Next time you are needing support, or are wondering how to engage in more meaningful self care, try a journey with the intention to meet an aspect of yourself that is here to help.

Not sure how to journey?

Check out this blogpost for a guide.

What’s in my Medicine Bag?

31 Tuesday May 2016

Posted by Asia in Earth Medicine

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

herbal medicine, journeying, perspective, stone medicine, travel

Medicine Pouch

Whenever I travel I always pack a medicine pouch. Over time this has evolved. From bandaids and salves to flower essences, stones and talismans. As the years flow by my very definition of medicine changes, grows, and transforms. From the sturdy resiliency of the western medical breastplate, to the more ineffable healing of the natural world— quiet and effective as the swoop of silent downy owls. Whenever I travel I like to carry medicine with me that helps me connect into the deeper, less tended sides of myself. The underground streams that are only healed when I untether and take myself away from it all. When I travel my medicine pouch is more than just a stockpile of first aid herbs, it is a reminder of the transformation that is possible.

Traveling itself is a deep kind of medicine for me. It is a time when I am allowed a kind of shaman’s-view of my life. I slip out of the confines of my day-to-day and journey, meeting strange and wonderful allies, encountering obstacles, seeing life from an expanded perspective. Every time I travel I come closer to home. I am able, with distance, to see more clearly – what is feeding me, and what isn’t? What newness would I like to call into my life? And what can I let go?

{ Photo by Juliet Blankespoor }

For the next few weeks I’ll be traveling to California and back again to share earth medicine. This week I’m headed to the Spirit Weavers gathering, nestled in the heart of the Redwoods, to teach about plants and stones. And when I return I’ll be heading straight for the Firefly Gathering here in western Appalachia with several classes in intuitive plant medicine and dreamskills!Every single time I travel my medicine pouch looks a bit different. In preparation for this journey I’ve spent several dreamy weeks slowly feeling my way into what medicine should be brought along for these particular travels. Herbs, talismans, tinctures and stones. Sometimes the medicine that decides to come into my pouch is a mystery to me. Just like ocean waves, and the contents of my own dreams— I may not grasp the fuller picture, but the meaning stirs me . Each medicine, subtle, ineffable, irreplaceable, brings me closer to embracing the medicine of the journey itself.

So dear friends, come with me and take a peek into my Traveling Medicine Bag. Read on to discover the elements, herbs and medicine I always carry with me when I travel, and find inspiration to create your own medicine bag as you journey into the season.

<< What’s in my Traveling Medicine Bag? >>

A Flower Essence

Every time I travel I choose one core vibrational elixir to imbibe every day.

Traveling is a unique time of stepping out of your day-to-day life and embracing a more potent experience of being alive. As Rick Steves says, Traveling is living intensified. And so when we travel, the deeper emotional and spiritual healing in our lives is intensified as well.

In the days or weeks before my trip I like to sit down in my apothecary of flower essences and intuitively select a blend of one to four flowers based on my intention for the travels. I let my hands and my heart choose, allowing my brain to be quiet for once. When each element has been selected I combine them into a dosage bottle and give the mixture a name. For this journey I called my formula, “The Heartwood.” The name helps me to remember and reconnect into my original intention for this time of inner work and outer travel. I find that taking a step out of my normal life can help me tune in even more sharply to the workings of subtle and vibrational plant medicine. And when you take such medicine every day of your trip, the journey itself becomes a true passport to a new era.

Try making a blend for yourself before your next trip. One Willow’s Flower essences (like most essences you purchase in the store) are all stock bottles, so you can begin to collect your own stock apothecary of flower essences and create literally hundreds of dosage bottles (for you, your mom, your dog… no joke, the use of flower essences in veterinary practice is booming).

(Not sure what stock + dosage bottles are? Or how to make them? Take a gander at our handy Flower essence FAQ )

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A Stone

For every trip I choose one stone to be my talisman. Journeying out of your normal, everyday routine provides you with an incredibly rich opportunity to enter into a time-out-of-time space and tap into a meditative state of receptivity. This is often my favorite time to go deep with a particular stone, letting it potentize my journey.

I let the stone choose me. I visit my stone drawers or the crystal shop or the creek beside my house and see which stone waves or sparkles at me. I particularly love when I know very little about the stone, and so I can start with a blank slate in which to learn through my experiences. Either way, my relationship with a stone deepens dramatically when we travel together. I will often sleep with the stone under my pillow. Hold it in my hands during stressful moments and bring it out to bathe in wild waters or under the moonlight with me.

Two stones I often love to travel with are:
Lepidolite

Deeply calming, soothing and lithium-filled this stone is my go-to for airport anxiety and travel insomnia. I particularly love finding tumbled pieces and holding them in my left hand while I practice deep belly breathing or EFT tapping to refind my peace.

Black Tourmaline

Like many black stones, Black tourmaline creates healthy psychic boundaries as well as protects against negative energies. As someone who identifies as unavoidably empathic (sometimes detrimentally so!) I value the companionship of this stone deeply. Known to help those who hold a lot of energy to “decharge”, it is a vital stone for anyone who facilitates healing work. Tourmalines in general help us to understand that it is okay to go within, to bring your energy down into your personal self and refill the well, a sacred reminder that cannot be repeated enough when we are in the midst of travels.
(Want to learn how to select the right stone for you? Check out my new online course, How Stones Communicate! )

Passionflower essence square

My Top Three Tinctures for Travel

Spilanthes (Acemlla oleraca) – I always bring an immune stimulating herb with me whenever I travel. When we journey out of our comfort zones it’s common to be a bit more susceptible to passing colds. Having an immune stimulant in my pouch has often meant the difference between a day of feeling gunky and the full-blown flu. This zesty flower is one of my all time favorite immune herbs. Stimulating and antimicrobial, I take a couple dropperfulls of the tincture whenever I feel the icy approach of a cold or illness. It is particularly helpful when you are wanting to avoid airplane plagues. Spilanthes is easily adaptable to a wide variety of garden soils and such a curiously fun plant to grow.

Tulsi (Ocimum tenuiflorum)- Traveling is wonderful and exciting … and it can also be downright stressful! To help downgrade the overwhelm, I always travel with at least one adaptogen (an herb that helps your body, heart and mind deal with stress gracefully), and Tulsi is my absolute go-to. A student once asked me if I could bring only one herb to a desert island, what would it be? My answer was Tulsi. In the realm of the multitudinous, the complex and the mysterious manifold, Tulsi (or Holy Basil) reigns queen. A sacred herb of the Ayurvedic traditions, Tulsi has one of the longest lists of herbal actions I’ve ever seen. Along with being an adaptogen, it is also considered an anxiolytic (anxiety reducing herb), anti-depressant, nervine (an herb that relaxes our nervous system) antimicrobial and immunomodulator. It is calming and focusing for the mind and can even lower blood pressure. Tulsi embodies so many different medicinal properties, it is considered a virtual panacea in some traditions. And as such, Tulsi is a brilliant ally for helping us to integrate complexity within our own journey, expanding out into the possibility of all those open horizons.

Sassafras (Sassafras albidum) – Traveling to strange and foreign lands often means eating strange and foreign foods, am I right? I’m normally pretty on point with my diet but when I travel, well, sometimes the best laid plans get thrown out the window! Whenever I journey I never leave home without a digestive bitter. Largely eliminated from our modern diet, bitters are a cornerstone of traditional eating. Bitters, which often accompany food that is difficult to digest or even potentially toxic, send an important signal to our digestive system to stoke the digestive fires. Taken in small doses before a meal, bitters can greatly increase our digestive powers, aiding absorption of essential vitamins and minerals and eliminating bloating, gas and indigestion. Bitters also help bolster the liver, thus increasing the elimination of toxins. Recent studies have found an inextricable link between our brains and our guts. When we improve digestion we can actually improve our mental health and mindset.

Bitters are often chosen by constitution. Do you tend to run hot or cold? Would you be better benefited by a cooling, simple bitter (like dandelion)? Or by a warming, aromatic bitter (like cardamom or sassafras)? I run on the cold side so I always gravitate towards aromatic bitters. And Sassafras is simply my all time favorite. This important Native American medicine is an aromatic and delicious medicinal. The root (or more specifically the root bark) is one of the most traditional spring tonics, due to its blood cleansing and stimulating nature. It is also strongly anti-inflammatory, carminative (gas relieving), and diaphoretic (warming, sweat-inducing and helpful in breaking fevers). I take 5 drops 20 minutes before a meal to stimulate and warm my digestion.

Smudge sticks

Medicine to Give Back

It is important to me to bring offerings whenever I travel. Hand-harvested sage, tobacco from my garden, stones I found and greatly love. I like to leave offerings wherever I lay my head– at the roots of trees, on the banks of rivers, and with friends who graciously offer to host me. Medicine is a moment of exchange, so give back to the people, places and friends who have gifted you such essential experiences.

Blessed travels everyone!

Matrilineal Magic

21 Monday Mar 2016

Posted by Asia in Earth Medicine, Inspirations

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

archeology, crone, goddess, goddess culture, herbal medicine, Marija Gimbutas, matrifocal, matrilineal, Old European, sisterhood, Sylvia Linsteadt

A Kabyle woman weaving Algeria 1973 (credit National Geographic)

There is a thread that runs through the long tapestry of time. A line that connects us back to our grandmothers and great grandmothers and the lineage of womyn who came before. On a loom, each downward string is called a warp. Like time, these warp strings are the backbone that holds the weaving in place. But it is the generations of mothers and aunties, the horizontal weft woven in-between, that fill the loom with life. It is these weft strings, the threads of connection that travels across the space and time, that pulls everything together.

It is from this continuing weft of women that we each come into life.

Science has shown all the follicles (unripened eggs) a woman will ever produce are already present in her body when she is in the womb. The spark that is you was born long before you came into the world. And if you quiet your blood, you can feel a flame that reach back even further. Inside every one of us is a long and often unsung history of women. Fire makers and clay shapers, priestesses and caretakers, those who walked long miles and withstood many centuries of silence. Those who kept the old songs alive.

Photo by Juliet Blankespoor

Connecting back into the power-held lineage of our female ancestors isn’t simply a flight of fancy or genealogical curiosity. To remember the women that came become you, and call upon that distinctly matrilineal magic, is an act of deep reclamation. By calling back we continue the weaving begun from the fingers of our female ancestors, that very first spindle-spun weft.

Long before the tides of Christianity swept across southeastern Europe, there was an ancient Matrilineal network of cultures called the “Old Europeans.” Matrifocal (woman-mother orientated) civilizations with sacred script and professional ceramicists. Cultures that planted seeds and built temples several stories high. Peoples that wove sophisticated lives and prayed to the Goddess(es). According to archeologist Marija Gimbutas, the threads of these largely egalitarian, peaceful and female-centric societies stretched across much of what we now call Europe.

A fired clay Cucuteni figure, from 4050-3900 B.C (credit Marius Amarie)

Archeologically speaking, the memories of these cultures are found in whispers. Empty temples and old village sites filled with ritual ceramics. The famous Venus figures and surviving burials. Each unearthed item, a thread that help us to understand what it would have been like to live in a culture in which women held the chalice of their own power.

In our own blood, however, the remembrances of this culture still rings like a temple bell. We can feel it when we pick berries with our fingers or when we are kept up late at night by the moon. We feel it when we dance, uninhibited and when we sing together. We feel it every time we plait back our hair and squat low to build a fire on the ground. We feel it in the fierceness that surges up through us and the bone-deep anger as well. We feel it when we look in the mirror and see a new wrinkle a gray hair, and we think “Good.” When we welcome growing older because we know a Crone is a woman who has come into her power.

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Though it has been a long time since matrilineal cultures flourished in our world, everything moves in a circle, like the round of a harvesting song or the curve of a well-coiled vase. A world in which we value the power of blood that flows with the moon as much as blood that flows from a wound has already seen its wane and its new moon. Now, we are in the time of the waxing.

It has been many generations since every woman was recognized as the vessel of power that she is, but even now our women ancestors remain close, whispering to us of the waxing to come. Matrilineal magic is a deep and ancient kind of craft. One that will never be forgotten as long as we continue to seek and honor the threads that connect us back.

From the House Painters in Zalipie

<< When the Grandmothers came to Visit >>

The grandmothers never disappeared. They are with us, still. They are helping us to weave the new weft.

Several years ago I set out to make an ancestor altar in my room. A space in which I could honor those that came before me and give thanks for my life. Earlier that day I had spent a totally unexpected sum of money. I was in the midst of a challenging health issue that was asking me to face some pretty overwhelming feelings of isolation and scarcity. On this evening, I tried my best to simply set my worries aside and breathe. I began by reaching up into a worn wooden box for one of my grandmother’s old handkerchiefs, a delicate and lacy swatch of thin cotton. I was shocked when my hand settled upon a softly folded piece of paper. Nestled in the box was an envelope with my name on it, and inside that envelope was a stack of bills– almost the exact amount of money I had spent that day. It was such a moment of unseen assurance; I sank to my knees for a few long minutes to weep.

Many months ago I had kept a small stash of cash in this envelope. But I had since spent every penny, I even had a memory of throwing the empty envelope away. But here it was, full again. In a place before words I instinctively felt my grandmother was there. She was there, cradling me, supporting me, assuring me that I have never, not once, been alone. As I folded onto the floor, time creased as well and I realized that my grandmother has always been here. And the grandmothers before her. And those before her as well. I could feel them, surrounding me in a circle, blessing and cherishing, holding me like the women of old used to do around their wells.

Our female ancestors and the cultures of magic they created has never left.

The grandmothers are here in the shape of my eyes, my long flat feet, the yearning drum I feel in my heart when I hear throat singing, or the way I might pause to touch the first opening cherry blossom. They are here – in childbirth and summer fields, in breasts full of milk, a faded envelope of bills, and flower bulbs.

Matrilineal magic never died.

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<< Weft Vessel >>

Every once in a while we meet a woman familiar in our life who reminds us of our own strong heritage and the profound magic that can be sparked between two sisters who are seeking their own Weft. A few years ago I met Sylvia Linsteadt and such a flame leapt into life. Ever since the beginning we knew there was important work to be done together. Medicine to be realized, experienced and offered together. A thread we were meant to weave.

Now, after a year in creation. We are delighted to offering such a sister-woven creation to the world…

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WEFT is a journey through plant, stone and word back into the long threads of your matrilineal line. Across ancient Europe there were ceremonial spaces created just to initiate women into the mysteries of life and regeneration, places that held the rituals of remembering and the sacred pottery of women who knew how to heal with their hands. With Weft, we offer both a thread and a vessel. A spindle-spun way to connect back into the powerful lineage of the women from which you came, and a richly embroidered place in which we can remember how to initiate ourselves.

Like a coil pot, WEFT was woven throughout many cycles with a single thread. It began in the spring softened hills of Appalachia where Asia Suler, of One Willow Apothecaries, created an elixir from the shades of ancient medicine there. Crafted from violets, wild iris, aquamarine and feldspar– the elixir was brewed from a spark of insight and a feeling of the women ancestors rising to be heard.

Once created, Asia sent the bottle of Sylvia Linsteadt of Wild Talewort. There, over many moons, Sylvia created the story portal that makes up the landscape of Weft. Ignited from her own experiences with the elixir, and from the kind of synchronistic magic that springs up every time two hedgewitches call back to the ancestors, the story unspooled itself over the course of nine months, a full gestation in which archaeological research, a ceramics class and a table loom all played unexpected parts.

Now, a year after the first spark caught, the first Crone song was sung—we offer this WEFT vessel to the world.

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Comprised of….

The Grandmother’s Elixir: Crafted from the spring-softened medicines of Western Appalachia, Grandmothers is an elixir to invoke the initiatory magic of the womyn ancestors and our collective matrilineal line. Once upon a time we were all born from women who understood the mysteries of herbs and roots and death and beginnings. This elixir is a gateway to help remember our place in this continuum of hedgewitches and healers.

Hand gathered from the early April coves of these grandmother mountains— some of the oldest on earth— this medicine contains the seeds of findings ones destiny as a power-filled woman and recognizing one’s place as a vessel of wisdom in the lineage of all things to come. Created from slow simmered violet syrup, wild iris essence and an elixir of aquamarine + feldspar stones, this alchemical medicine is an invitation to open ones womb-deep intuition like the first folds of spring. An elixir of becoming, remembering and embracing your destiny— this purple hued medicine helps you to realize that the wisdom of the ancients still lives in your blood. You must only quiet yourself to find the inner song.

Weft: A Story – The tale of a girl, a drought, an underworld, and the most ancient roots of the Baba Yaga, set in partly historic, partly imagined Neolithic Transylvania around 6500 B.C.E. At this time, settled agriculture brought by small bands of Mediterranean travelers (and their grains, goats and sheep) was taking root across southeastern Europe, woven relatively peacefully into the framework of indigenous Mesolithic hunting and gathering tribes. Out of this union, a matrilineal network of cultures called “Old European” flourished across southeastern Europe, leaving behind temples and villages full of an astonishingly beautiful array of ceramic work that was largely ritual in function. These ancient village sites full of offering jugs and sacred ovens, at the edges of mountains and woods, feel like indigenous ground in me. On a pathway of my own ancestral blood through Austria, through Hungary, through Poland, through Russia, I can follow a part of myself back to a source, a place of balance, a set of ancient lifeways to look to for wisdom, for strength, for wholeness.

This story is a celebration of the deep beauty and power of ancient women’s work: weaving, spinning, pottery, child-bearing, plant-tending, medicine gathering. It is a hymn to the dying we undertake every moon in the underworlds of our own bodies, even if we no longer bleed, and the process of being reborn. Imagine that it is an ancient clay vessel, dug up in a dozen shards from the earth. These are the warp, the structure, of the telling. It is you, the reader, who must weave the weft of their meaning over-under, over-under, using the shuttle of your own soul to make out of it your version of wholeness: the offering jug left out at the edge of the known field, full of milk.

Ancient Vessel Meditation: An audio journey to guide you deeper into receiving the medicine of this matrilineal weaving.

Weft Voices: An audio soundtrack of the songs and sounds that guided our creation of this vessel, from Hildegard von Bingen to the folk songs of mountainous Bulgaria.

<< Order your WEFT >>

Weft Bear

Summer’s Fullness

16 Tuesday Jun 2015

Posted by Asia in Earth Medicine, Inspirations

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

bill plotkin, busyness, consciousness, earth, earth-based living, ecocentric, ecology, fullness, gardening, herbal medicine, meditation, nature, philosophy, sacred work, soul work, summer

On the other side of the strawberry moon, after the late spring blossoms of Beltane and the thick pulses of Hawthorn blooms arises a season that weaves itself around the helm of a single word – fullness.

At this point in the season the full arrival of summer is undeniable. Roses are spilled like wine over the countryside and the branches of riverside trees are heavy enough to sweep the water’s surface with their wands of green. Light finds its way into every leaf of the day and even our nights are lit by the floating embers of fireflies.

Here, the fullness of summer arrives in waves both infinitesimal and quick. Like a jar left open in the rain. Slowly, in swells beneath the perception of our fast moving eyes, everything becomes full. The arrival into summer can be like waking up with a jolt in the bright light of late morning. As your eyes adjust to the fullness of the day you realize that the slow trickle of dawn, with its dispersed moons of early morning fog, have all but disappeared. There is only the high sun and ocean-bright light and insects running like waves through the thigh-high grass.

Summer’s fullness is a mantra, known and carried by every species in these hills. For us humans it means planting the last stragglers into our gardens and tending the sudden tangle of weeds, late-night parties and an endless train of events. It means wild harvests of herbs that last only a week and calendars so full of bustle there is barely enough time to keep the floor swept of barefoot dust and weeds. To embrace summer fully is to be like a bee, in constant motion from the lip of one sweetness to another, to exhaust oneself with so much color and opportunity.

We are just a few nights away from the longest day of the year, our Summer Solstice, and the very strand of life has tightened into an almost watertight weave. Open fields are a ticket of thimble flowers, blackberry fruits and rose thorns. The canopy is crowded thick with ropes that wind themselves from forest floor to crown heights in a cordage of grapevine. What was once a wind blown cove is now a cave of green and shadow. Every branch is so full of life, the mountains themselves change from the blue hue of a winter-colored moon to a newborn coat of emerald. In Summer, the entire world of growing beings weaves itself into a kind of container, a place to hold even more than was possible before. The crosscatch of canopy and forest floor braids itself tight as rivercane, the traditional baskets of the Cherokee people of these mountains. The sheer abundance of life works together to create space for more.

++ Weaving Yourself into the Basket of the World ++

In Appalachia, life grows upon life. There is no end. As a temperate rainforest with some of the highest biodiversity in the deciduous world, the warmer months can be dizzying. Summer here is an initiation into a world of almost overwhelming life. This year I seem to have taken on more than ever before (Hence my two month delay in getting up another blog post!). My schedule from now until the last sigh of summer is already at its brim and, if I’m to be honest, sometimes I wonder if I have enough hands to hold and plant and tend it all! On those days, I like to walk out into the arms of our forest caves, or find the perfect circle of a deer bed in the high grass, and remind myself that the world can contain it all, and so can I. I must only let the earth weave me into its own way of embracing fullness.

Whenever it seems that I am whittling away my life with To-Do lists and calendar dates, I remember this—we are, in truth, nature creating itself. We are a part of this vast and precious ecology, a spectacularly tiny but unbelievably special node in the consciousness of this entire world. When I feel as if I couldn’t possibly hold it all, I return to my place as co-creator on this earth. I bring my heart back to its roots, at the humble foot of this mountain of growth. I am here to bring the gift of myself to this world and when I allow myself to become a prayful part of the container of life on this earth, I can always hold more. In nature there is always space for growth that benefits the whole. When I connect into the gifts that arise from a consciousness of connection, there will always be space. When I give such soul gifts, the world itself expands, and I end up finding more fulfillment than I ever thought possible before.

In Bill Plotkin’s book Nature and the Human Soul he talks about this idea of widening the circle of your identity to become a part of this basket of the world. In an eco-centric society (a culture based around the ecology in which they live), as a person ages they naturally come to a place where the hoop of their recognized identity includes the more-than human world. As we come to understand ourselves deeper we can find more levels on which we can identify with the earth and through this widening we stretch ourselves into vessels of meaning that can literally hold more.

What makes busyness so exhausting is its divorce from soul. The problem isn’t that our days are full, it is that we don’t fill our days with that which truly fulfills us. The only reason why we can look at the growing world and feel such dismay at the blackberry bramble that continues to peek up through the steps or the weeds that must be pulled is because it strikes such a low-hearted chord of recognition in us. So many of us are like gardeners, pulling that which grows wild and cultivating perennials that don’t actually bring us joy. So how can we begin to grow gardens that truly sustain us? Find work that, through its fulfillment, we feel deeply soul-full? Perhaps the best place to begin is simply to ask yourself what you truly want to be full of…. Curiosity passion, wonder, trust? Begin here.

++ Into Emptiness ++

In these mountains the stumble into summer means the arrival of near-daily storms, afternoon tempests of thunder and green. After a full day of humid rocking the very mountains themselves seem to creek with the need to release. Soon enough, a dark, wasp-like cloud gathers on the late afternoon horizon and you know relief is just a strong wind away. The fullness reaches it brim, and then it spills over. The gardens are watered, the plants in the meadows drink deep. There is an almost audible sigh as the forest refills its streams. It is one motion, the filling and the spilling. Without reaching such a state of fullness, the rain in the wooly tangle of clouds would never be released. Without this constant emptying, Appalachia wouldn’t be the unbelievably ecological rich place that it is.

If I watch long enough everything in the world seems to tell the same tale. Fullness leads to emptiness, and emptiness to full. In order to experience emptiness (the pause before the inhale, that space in which anything can shift, the nothingness out of which newness can take hold), we must always move through a moment of being unbearably full. Even as I resist the fullness of my schedule I look out upon the world and see a place that relishes such a brimming basket. Waterfalls and the full blown bloom of lupines. An entire ant colony under each rock in my garden and the red clover blossoms that arise every time I neglect a corner of my lawn. The world speaks in such tones of fullness, and so I embrace my own place in creating more. I spend my mornings writing, I prepare for classes until late into the night. I eat honey by the spoonful and tend my garden between bursts of harvest rains. I buzz from flower to flower covered head-to-toe in the sacred paint of this earth’s pollen and, in between, I find moments, if only as brief as the span between a hummingbirds thrum, to empty once more.

Winter Pearl Diving

02 Monday Feb 2015

Posted by Asia in Earth Medicine, Inspirations

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

ama, appalachia, caspar david fredrich, chaga, florida, hematite, herbal medicine, intuition, meditation, pearl diving, shamanic journeying, southern appalachia, springs, stone medicine, winter, winter weather, wintertime

Today is Imbolc and winter has reached its fullest depths in our blue-hued mountains. Here in Southern Appalachia we don’t get the same thick quilts of winter-hewn snow as our neighbors farther to the north. Instead, we are tucked in by the frost that touches the early chickweed and the amber fountains of summer’s lemongrass still left in garden plots. The earth resumes a subtle wheel, one of silver on gold, glimmer on pewter— a frostshine that disappears with the afternoon sun. Here, we normally get only a dusting of snow, subtle gusts that come through like the tiniest song. A sonatina, quick and small, relished and then released in warmer winds. Here, winter is a fawn-colored mixture of dried beech leaves and muddy raccoon prints. Rivers of grey clouds and frost-covered stones. The white pines sigh and reach upwards through the empty forests, bare armed in the white milk of sunny winter skies. The spruce and fir grow imperceptibly. This is a season that belongs to such evergreen, to winter grasses and standing stones.

There is a mystery to winter days, a fated subtlety. Even in their sameness, each day turns itself over anew, like the dried bones of yarrow stalks, thrown and scryed for imperceptible hexagrams. As the outer world seems to stay stationary, the inner hues change from day to day— from calmness to tumult, interiority and hope. I’ve always cherished the divinatory mystery of winter. It is the only time when the exterior word is allowed to go fallow and the interior worlds, our innermost places, are given permission to take up all of the sky. It is a time for inner wonderings and wanderings, woven blankets and wool gathering, self-study and the smallest sensual delights.

I’ve been cultivating these inner depths ever more richly this year. Researching, gathering and mapping for my newest class series (Winter Intuition School) and beginning the journey of writing my very first book. It has been a time of deep self-exploration, of sea depths and unknown spelunking. It has been a time of seeking hidden treasures and swimming in the conscious unconsciousness. This winter I have been practicing the art of pearl diving.

A few years ago I traveled to Florida to stay in a house that had been built and then carried, and then built again, along a cold spring fed river. Only a few minutes walk from the spring’s origin source, we would make daily pilgrimages to its depths. Upon my first visit, I had expected to find a sweet bubbling pond, a crystal clear brook that was all invitation and gemstone clarity. Instead, after a couple paces, I found myself on the edge of an actual chasm, an electric blue crater whose sheer depth was fathomable only by the deepening gradients of sapphire, cobalt and navy blue. It took me a little while until I felt comfortable enough to venture beyond the ledge, a kitty pool expanse where one could sit comfortably with both knees on the shallow under-rock. The distance between one edge and another was punctuated by an enormous blue hole, deeper than an iris and wider than a full-grown whale. Finally, gathering my courage, I pushed off the crushed rock edge and let myself sink feet first, knowing I would never touch the bottom. It was a thrill and a fear, a fantasy and a kind of ecstasy of bravery all at once. Over the course of the next week I went everyday, and everyday it took a bit of coaxing, heart in my throat, to re-approach the sharp underwater edge once more and throw myself eagerly overboard.

In many ways, this is how almost every day of my winter has begun. Free diving into one’s own depths requires much courage and bravado. To explore the inner realms often means plunging with naught but your hands and the bellows of your lungs to seek the deepest veins, those that seep warm mineral clouds and hold such surprising life. It requires skill, a practice of patience, and the innate knowing of when to kick and surface. When to return to sunshine and sea waves and rest like a seal on the rise. Such inner explorations is its own kind of pearl dive; what you seek is a rare treasure, one that exists solely within the soft bellied shells of the deep.

Traditional Japanese pearl diving was done by women called the “Ama” – sea women. These women of the ocean often lived independently, many of them diving until their elder years in naught but a single loincloth. You do not need to carry much to find such pearls, and here, age is an asset—for it means wisdom and untold skill. It takes great practice to be a pearl diver. Navigating depths with only quick fingers and seaweed strong lungs.

In many traditions, the unconscious (or wider consciousness) of the soul was symbolized by water. Water is an entirely different medium than earth, an entirely different world. In water, our bodies must learn how to move as another type of species. In the waving depths of consciousness expanding meditation, creative work or shamanic journeying, our embodied selves must learn an even deeper fluidity. Exploring one’s deeper self and opening one’s intuition doesn’t happen or unfold all at once. An Ama must sometimes open a thousand mollusks before she finds a pearl. Such exploration is not built as a ship, simply navigated with wheel and star. You must be committed to diving down, over and over, practicing how to keep yourself alive in other worlds. With each dive, frigid and thrilling, we learn how to go deeper and how to sight the glimmer hidden in the centermost folds. Sometimes, it takes pulling open a thousand shells, each one with a kind of learning, to find that absolutely perfect round of pearl. That opalescent build up of years, the gem that results from a single irritation. The desire, first, to know more.

This winter I have been a sea woman, but I have also been a hearth-tender and earth watcher as well. In the midst of such explorations it is always important, vital really, to return to shore. In water, we can be both weightless and as heavy as an anchor. On earth we must stretch these sea bending bones and reground in our solidity. It can be easy, in wintertime, to float away. Whether to different realms of light-bearing consciousness or even into the dark stagnation of our own personal underworlds. Even in the midst of our deepest mid-winter imaginal navigations, we all must come back to the tangible world— the life-giving practices of fire tending, hearth sweeping, water boiling, bone saving, stock making, tea sipping, drop spinning, nut roasting and reading. Winter exists within the halves of both dark night and dry light. We must keep ourselves balanced and whole.

There are many ways to ground in wintertime. Simply getting yourself outside, inspecting ice crystals or the dried heads of winter seeds, can do wonders to re-earth us once more. Often times, on the coldest days, I find that my best grounding happens in the kitchen. Like a sea-farer arriving home to a salt-creaked cottage lit by puffs of woodsmoke, I am often eager to get my fingers in sacks of winter-stored roots or kneaded dough.

In winter, I seek balance within the insides of most things. My home, my heart, the marrow in fresh cooked bones, the sweet blood of oranges that travel hundreds of miles from their Florida homes. I find balance in beginning an evening with a single recipe, working my way from the inside out.

Shortly before the holidays I fell in love with a new chocolate stove-top concoction, created from the core of such interior magic. It has been my dark winter companion ever since. After a full day of deep diving, long travels through inner places seeking pearls, I return home to rough-hewn cups of this Chaga Hematite hot coca, sip and rest once more in the nurturing opportunity of this dark and mysterious Winter’s embrace.

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Dark, earthy, and profoundly grounding, this mystical hot cocoa will settle you in to the warm and nourishing delights of wintertime embers and star rich skies. Crafted from the stone that lies at the center of our earth and the mycelium within and underneath every inch of soil, this drink is a hearty root bringing you back to the warm heart of the day-to-day world. Sweetened with maple syrup and lightened with rich sea-foam dollops of coconut milk, to bring in the milky remembrance of diving for the deepest pearls. Warm yourself a cup of Chaga Hematite Hot Cocoa and settle in for a profoundly meditative wintery evening.

Chaga Hematite Hot Cocoa

Recipe makes two mugs of hot cocoa

(Optional) Vanilla Extract
2 oz maple syrup
2 oz coconut milk
¼ – ½ tsp cinnamon (or to taste)
2 tsp cocoa power
1.5 cups water
½ oz chaga
1 piece of Hematite

Place a piece of hematite in 1.5 cups of water. Let infuse anywhere from one hour to overnight.
Pour the water off your hematite into a separate pot.
Decoct Chaga. Combine chaga with your hematite water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer. Cover and let churn for at least 20 minutes (or until your tea turns to the shade of dark wood). When your decoction is done, strain the tea into a separate container.
Sir in cocoa + cinnamon powder until all lumps are dissolved
Add Coconut milk and Maple syrup
Garnish with a cinnamon stick and make a toast to all rich and nourishing worlds!

Hematite is what makes up the core of our earth. It is the stone upon which our entire world is balanced. Iron rich and dense, Hematite is like the open arms of a profoundly grounding mother, welcoming us home after a hard day with a warm apron and bone stock bubbling away on the stove. An intensely sturdy stone, Hematite reminds us that we are here, now, and that to live on the earth fully is to recognize that we are unconditionally loved. Hematite helps us to come back to the bedrock of who we are, connecting to the precious anchors of body, embodiment, and our own inner places of self-love. Protective and solid, hematite can provide us with the sturdy container needed for shamanic journeying, creative visualization and explorations in consciousness. Hematite reminds us that we do not need to try to survive, this skill comes as naturally as the sunrise. This raw stone can help to bolster our deepest hearts so we know that we will be able to make it through even the longest winter. Hematite is a wonderful stone ally for the wintertime scholar and student of consciousness; this solid stone helps to concentrate the mind, bringing deep focus and balance to any wintertime pursuits. (To learn more about an ancient Daoist Hematite stone treatment for ghosts, check out my Samhain blog post from this past fall)

Chaga is a medicinal fungus that shows us the literal roots of the world. Often called a mushroom, Chaga is actually an outgrowth of the mycelium (or root system) of the fungus itself. Found most often on black birches in our Appalachian forests, chaga is a nourishing immune tonic. Antiviral, immune modulating, and adatogenic, chaga is an indispensable wintertime decoction in the far northern climbs of Russia. Simmered for half an hour or more, chaga makes a rich but mild tea high in antioxidants. Traditionally used internally for cancer, chaga has been shown to have an antitumor effect in clinical trials. Also called tinder fungus, chaga is renown as an excellent ally for catching coals of fresh drilled hand-fires and holding the spark for a deep amount of time. A vital companion for travelers and those who need to bring the spark of new life with them whenever they go. Chaga has been used in this way for thousands of year, it was even found in the pouches of Otzi, the Copper age man who lived and died in the Alps around 3,300 BCE, and who slept in the alpine glaciers on the border of Austria for thousands of years. Chaga is an ancient medicine of fire and continuance. Bring this nourishing companion into your world of tea kettle and late night inspiration and ignite a spark this winter whose embers will carry you through untold distances, perhaps, even, until the spring.

** Paintings by Caspar David Fredrich. Photograph by Iwase Yoshiyuki

Courting Mystery: Tulsi + The Technicolor Moonrise

26 Wednesday Nov 2014

Posted by Asia in Earth Medicine, Inspirations

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

dream, dreamwork, herbal healing, herbal medicine, holy basil, lyme, lyme disease, moonrise, mystery, ocimum sanctum, ocimum tenuiflorum, tulsi

The medicine of my world is fed by many streams— plants, flowers, stones, spirit and dreams. The most profound healing in my life has arisen from the ocean-like concurrence of all these streams. This piece is an homage to the whirlpool that it, itself, the healing.

This time last year I was officially diagnosed with Lyme disease. My story, which is long and fated and slated to be a blog post all its own, holds a special brand of medicine…and it is healing, for me, to simply be told.

Originally published in Plant Healer Magazine, this tale is an ode to the deep and multifaceted mystery of plant healing. It is the story of a medicine encounter that truly changed my life. It is a narrative of sacred basil and holy dreams. Unexpected illness and the call to bow my head to mystery. Thank you, dear readers, for reading…

p.s. If the Tulsi of this tale calls to you, I would be so happy to share. I offer this very same, sweet Tulsi from my garden in the shop. It is a blessing.

// Tulsi + The Beginning //

After several months of traveling I had arrived back home to a new season of profusion and growth. Sprawling honeysuckle and dandelion, squash left on withering vines. There was a fresh crispness to the air, the subtle changes of birdsong and light. Amaranth had sprung up in the tobacco beds and the comfrey splayed out of her niche by the back door. In my absence, the garden had grown wild. What were once rows, now grew over in weed and vine and seed. The Tulsi planted up on the terraces, however, was ever-leggy, fragrant and lithe. I went, as I had gone for so many seasons before, to greet her.

For years Tulsi (Ocimum tenuiflorum) has been my beloved plant ally. She was one of the first medicinal herbs I ever grew. Continually blessed with many early summer seedlings, I often transplant Tulsi to every corner of my yard. The first year I remember placing extra starts in-between the kale and kohlrabi, tucked into overgrown apple mint plots. The next season we found that Tulsi had seeded herself in the most unexpected places: in our fire pit, and the shade gardens, a single ceramic pot left to overwinter on the porch. In the summer I gather leaves in tiny winged fistfuls. I let her get tall and bowed and lay my head between her spines to watch the bees go to and fro, balancing on her willowy curves. By the season’s end the rafters of our mudroom are always hung with thick garlands of the sweet drying herb. We string it up in the kitchen, just above the gaze of our wooden windowsills, and tie bundles to the outside of our bedroom doors. All winter long we drink the last herb of summer, throwing Tulsi leaf and flower into almost every brew.

I love Tulsi for the way she makes me feel, and what I know she can do. Tulsi has helped ease me through early seasonal allergies and indigestion after a full meal. During long hours of study, Tulsi has gently picked up my head from the nest of my arms, clearing and focusing my mind. I’ve used Tulsi to help fight off infections, colds and UTIs. Tulsi has been an ally, a familiar friend, a known entity to me for sometime. But, like most stories, this tale follows the paths unknown, straying beyond the characters or qualities we can string up and keep safe for some future era. In truth, this tale speaks to a much older faith: the insistence that no matter how much we think we know, there is always more, so much more, to understand. All beings change. Even rocks, overtime, will metamorphisize, disintegrate and grow. There is a spirit that lurks behind the familiar— and it is this mystery, and medicine, that we so diligently court.

// The Diagnosis + The Dream //

One year ago this fall, I was diagnosed with Lyme disease. I started showing symptoms of Lyme within days of arriving home from a full season of travels. I had been driving for months— teaching and learning, harvesting wild foods and blazing across long sunlit highways. It began with the typical symptoms: malaise, obscure aches, brain fog. When I heard that several of the friends I’d been camping with had been diagnosed, I immediately recognized the signs.

The morning I was awaiting the call with my final test results, I had a powerful and prophetic dream. In it, I saw myself driving down the long slopes of Eastern Pennsylvania, my childhood home. At the hem of the Pocono Mountains the valleys there are long and slow, like honey poured on a cool autumn evening. If you take the time to lift your eyes, you can often see for miles. I was peacefully coasting down a particularly magnificent slope when a large line of cars came into view. Everyone, it seemed, had stopped in the middle of the road. I had to put on my brakes very suddenly, my easy downhill arrival abruptly interrupted. I wondered, for a moment, if I would even be able to stop quickly enough! With some expert maneuvering I slowed to a creaky, close-shave kind of halt, and straggled out of my vehicle to see what had spurred such a mythic hold-up.

A whole crowd of Northeasterners (who, as you know, are always perennially zooming around from one place to another) had stopped plain in the middle of the road. Why? I followed my curiosity to a crest over the valley. Something had made even these busy-minded people stop, hush, witness and gather…. When I got to the top of the crest I could finally see what event had created such a wondering crowd: It was a technicolor moonrise.

The moment was spectacular. They sky itself seemed to catch its breath. The moon rose, full and brimming, threatening to spill over into the entire sky. Like a bowl left out in the rain, the celestial silver waters swelled at the very boundaries of the night. As it rose, it cast the whole land in a halo. We gazed as she reached her fullest height and then began to change colors. From vine green to parakeet blue, hibiscus red and tangelo. I watched as one color fled into another, into the moon, into the sky. It danced on my skin and I knew I was witnessing a big change, the apex of a great cycle that was demanding me to slow down and give up on the plans I had hoped for, the destinations I thought I knew. I was being called to honor, recognize and watch— welcome in the vast arrival of the new.

I was awoken from this vibrant dream moment by the ringing of my phone. My doctor was calling with the long awaited test results. But, she didn’t need to tell me. I had already been told.

// Courting Mystery //

That day I ghosted around the house. I wasn’t sure yet what to do with myself. I knew I would have to make some hard decisions, not only about what medicine or protocols I would chose (this, I assure you, will be it’s own blogpost someday soon), but how to fit this new journey into my life. I would have to slow down. Tremendously. As suddenly as a hundred cars abandoned in the middle of the road. My life, which had been at a cross-country full throttle, would need to be completely shifted and settled. I had been driving, it seemed, at one hundred glorious miles per hour, per year, and suddenly the whole transit had to cease. This was obviously the beginning of a phase that would be both awful and awe-inspiring…and undoubtedly new. But where to start?

I went to the hill, as I often do when I’m struggling and lonely, dispirited or low. The Tulsi, so sweet and hardy, had taken care of herself in my absence. I thought, perhaps I would make myself “useful” and harvest a few basketfuls of herb to get some fresh wreathes drying in the eaves. I sat down and closed my eyes. Giving gratitude for any harvest is a comforting practice to me, but can have the possibility of becoming rote—especially when it is an herb I have planted and tended, watered and pruned. Sometimes we become so familiar with the living aspects of our lives, we cease to remember that they breathe and change, they hold their own mysteries. This time I felt called to completely clear my mind. Let go of my normal prayers or supplications and just allow the Tulsi to speak to me. She appeared immediately behind my eyes and said in a voice that sounded like sky, Look— Once again, I was witnessing the technicolor moonrise.

In one moment my understanding of Tulsi seemed to pinch and then explode outward, like the creation of a star. An inextricable link of synchronicity spun out from the center, connecting my body and this new disease, to my dreams, to this plant, to the deeper mystery behind it all.

She spoke to me in a language before words and I understood. This moment, this journey itself, would be medicine for me and Tulsi, my beloved ally, would help guide me through the biggest threshold of all. Far beyond the boundaries of what I had previously known and ascribed to this plant, she was, in essence, showing me the vastness of mystery. The beauty that can blossom when you throw away the deadlines or destinations, and approach any illness, plant or dream with a curious eye. The best way to begin is with simple humility, to simply sit and watch the techincolor moonrise.

In this one interaction, my understanding of Tulsi (and my own life) deepened as quickly as an ocean current. I felt, and heard, and was shook. It was like whale song— a transmission that is understood on such vibratory and ancient levels, and yet will never quite be able to be translated in human words.

It was the beginning, the push I needed, to embark upon this new journey with a deep trust in the mystery, my most important and ever-present guide. The experience spoke, in truth, to the heart of why I am drawn to plants and medicine, healing work and herbs. As herbalists I think we can get stuck in the ruts of what we know. We have our material medicas and our herbal actions. Our constituents, our trials, our patient-proven results. But, for me, the most profound healing and transformation has always come from places unknown. From the beginning I could have railed against my contraction of Lyme disease, investing my energy in bitterness and resistance. Instead, I poured myself into research and herbal experimentation, yes, but I also accepted, once again, my place as an apprentice to the unknown. With the guidance of Tulsi and my own dreams, the synchronicity of plants and prayer, the natural mysticism and heralds of the heart, I placed my trust in the kind of transformation that can only arise from courting such mystery.

Throughout my journey with Lyme disease, I have allowed mystery to be my weft. All else— the plant medicine and antibiotics, yoga, supplements, acupuncture and prayer— is the warp. When I first wrote this piece for Plant Healer I felt, at times, like Penelope, weaving and then unweaving, awaiting the return of Odysseus. Wishing for completion but knowing in my heart that the journey had not yet reached its end— in truth, I think it is a lifelong odyssey. Each time I try new thread, change my vision, tweak the weave until it feels stronger than before. I seek out the diversity of all the medicine in this world— plant stories and whale songs, full moons and unexpected gatherings, the humility to see how much more space there is to grow. I honor Tulsi and I keep her by my side. I remind myself daily that what I know, as Mary Oliver says, is “important and honorable, but so small! While everything else continues, unexplained and unexplainable.” Whenever I get overwhelmed or discouraged, imbalanced or unsure, I simply touch the Tulsi still bundled about my door. I come back to the unbelievable comfort of all that I do not know, and cannot see, and trust in the timely revelation of a technicolor moonrise.

Autumn Melancholy + Saturnian Journeys

20 Monday Oct 2014

Posted by Asia in Earth Medicine, Inspirations

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Autumn, carnelian, crystals, depression, fall, flower essences, ghost pipe, harvest, herbal medicine, inward quest, mediation, melancholy, metaphysical, nostalgia, philosophy, sadness, saturn, saturn return, soul search, stones

It is late October, and the peak of the Equinox has come and gone. The fields are golden with constellations of butter-colored squash and dried corn, and every day the light grows dimmer. In the wheel of the year, autumn is a time of both extravagant wealth and liberating death. As the days curl up like leaves, smaller and smaller, we are presented with more literal darkness and invited into a conflicted space of both reapening and reflection.

Autumn wears two crowns. The bright bittersweet berry and the bones of blackberry thorns. It is a time of dichotomy, of arrival and departures, endings and beginnings. Fall is an overwhelmingly evocative season, one that carries the crisp scent of nostalgia at midday, and the fog of old longings at night. For autumn’s light, thin as sorghum syrup poured in early morning sunrise, is the last of its kind. The final flicker before we enter the cave of winter— after fall we are subsumed by the dim unknown. In any spaces of darkness our eyes naturally widen and seek. And in autumn, our pupils begin to open like ponds into the deep.

Autumn’s darkness has a peculiar sheen, like an obsidian scrying stone, there is much to see in such opaque depths. Darkness, an aspect of living that is as integral as the shadow to the light, has been much demonized in our contemporary society; it consorts so closely with the unknown. Traditionally, this time of the year was recognized as a moment when the veils thin and what exists in the underworld (aka. the worlds underneath our perception of this world) can be made visible. The true underworld is not a place of demons or devils; it is the unexplored terrain of the soul. It is a place of individuation, searching, seeking, and deep creation. Like Pele and her lava, this dark place holds the regenerating force of creation in flux, the fluidity that births new land.

Autumn presents us with the opportunity to accept this inward quest, and acknowledge the vital importance of death. In autumn we can consciously invite in the dissolution of old habits or ideas, relationships, ways of being, or concepts of the world. Death, in truth, is a kind of harvest; we cannot collect the seed until the sunflower has become hunched and blackened like a crone. Autumn reminds us that death is a natural cycle of life, and in death there is nothing to fear. We engage in petite deaths all the time— the end of the day, the end of a phase, the end of our moon. Our soul is intimately interested in death. In fact, it is so curious that each and every one of us is born into a body that will one day die. Without death or darkness, how can we be reborn?

Depression is a heavy word in our culture. It carries as much weight as the ferry on the river Styx. As a society, we fear depression, just as we fear death and descent. In the olden days the word melancholy was often used. In contrast to depression, melancholy is not a deaf sinking or a mute plunge into nothingness; it is a search, as important and heroic as an anchor seeking deeper shores. Melancholy is born from a fervent yearning for meaning, a desire to know the purpose behind the pulp of ife. This search is fecund. It is the force that drives us into the unexplored terrain of the soul. In his book Care of the Soul, Thomas Moore echoes the importance of melancholy, recognizing depression’s emptiness as a type of alchemy that can transform the very fabric our lives. Many seeds must first be buried in darkness before they can bloom into light. Melancholy, and all the deep creativity it engenders, is a kind of planting. Traditionally associated with the God Saturn (who is also the God of harvest, age, wisdom, density and wealth), melancholy is a kind of passport into other worlds. In the old days, those who were considered constitutionally melancholy were sometimes called “Saturn’s children” and treated with respect. As progeny of such a distant and deep planet, we are usually asked to travel far.

We all move through Saturnian times in our life. Anyone who has experienced the enormity of change that can accompany your own personal Saturn return already understands the heavyweight importance of such underworld journeys. [Saturn return is a term in astrology, marking when Saturn returns to the same point in the sky that it occupied the moment you were born. This cycle comes about in 27-30 year intervals and is generally accepted to herald a time of massive transformation, new directions and change]. Whether you are literally in your Saturn return, or simply descending into a Saturnian moment, we must remember that such sinking is not the same as driftlessness. Every descent has its necessity, every death its reasons. The autumn leaves on the tree do not wonder why they flame and fall, they simply let go.

Saturn and its melancholy asks us to go deep, casting off our surface personalities to seek the wider identities of our soul. At its most primal element, a Saturian autumn is a time of approaching mystery. Not only the mystery of death and beginnings, fairy tales or witches brews, but the unfathomable mystery of oneself. As Oscar Wilde wrote near the end of his life, “The final mystery is oneself. When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens star by star, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul? “

Autumn is the time for approaching the brave trajectory of your own soul. It is the season in which we are asked to simply witness our rotation, recognizing the fecundity within the dark sides of our moon, and accepting the shadowy gifts autumn’s Saturnian return.

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The Birth of Earth Alchemy

Several months ago I was sitting amongst a patch of Ghost Pipe on the forest floor when, like an ember thrown from a far off fire, Carnelian sailed into my awareness. In that moment, a flame burst into being. I recognized that these two medicines were asking to create magic together, and so I bowed my head and made it a reality. Only a month prior Kunzite + Mimosa has engaged me in a similarly surprising waltz. With this imploring I knew that a new era of One Willow had been born, and so I began to gather tinder to feed this deeply inspiring spark. By definition, alchemy is a practice that can literally transform matter. Soon after I began working with these earth medicines, I knew these elixirs held the ability to turn even the darkest elements into gold. Now, in the richness of this Saturnian time, I am so proud to announce the beginning of One Willow’s new Earth Alchemy line, an ever-evolving collection of flower and stone pairings that have asked to be breathed into life.

Ghost Pipe + Carnelian is the second essence in this alchemical collection. In recognition of this season I wanted to introduce you to the two beings behind this glowingly transformational essence.

Carnelian

In Chinese medicine there exists a concept of ghosts that goes far beyond our understanding of hauntings. In traditional Asian medicine ghosts are not simply the energetic residue of the formally living, they are entities that result from a resistance to what is, a tear in our resonance with the universe. When we resist or reject our current circumstances, we often cause a split. In this way of thinking ghosts can actually be aspects of ourselves— unresolved grief, unacknowledged loss, regrets, guilt, and the haunting of old hurts. In traditional Taoist medicine Carnelian was thought to help move (and thus integrate) the ghosts we have accumulated throughout our lives. This fiery stone works an emissary, or torch, helping energies get to where they ultimately belong. Carnelian can help us mend that original split, enabling us to let go of the grief that has caused us to stagnate in dark places for so long. Historically, carnelian is linked to courage, bravery, and the ability to be eloquently bold. More contemporary understandings of Carnelian revere this embered stone for its ability to help us step into spaces of personal power and leadership. Carnelian encourages us to take action in our lives, moving us like a flame through the darkness in order to manifest our brightest dreams. Carnelian emboldens us to find our deepest courage and take the leap into the unknown.

Ghost Pipe

Ghost Pipe (Monotropa uniflora) is an eerily unique being, one that has captivated the hearts of many people over the years. It is one of the few plants that lacks chlorophyll and survives in a semi-parasitic (some would say symbiotic) relationship by tapping into the mycorrhizal networks of the forest. It has roots in both depth and dependency, embodiment and death. Ghost Pipe has often been associated with states of the underworld, and as a guardian of the threshold it seems to rise like a ghost from the dark forest floor. As an essence, Ghost Pipe can help us enter liminal spaces with safety. In Sean Donahue’s beautiful article on this evocative plant he writes, “Ghost Pipe to me is the distillation of the consciousness of the forest — of the deep peace that comes from complete integration in the cycles of birth and death to the point where the distinction ceases to have meaning.”

Ghost Pipe reminds us that, in truth, death and rebirth are one in the same. Emerging from the soil in a pale stand of downward facing hoods, this plant seems to embody the penetrating vision of the crone— the movement of bringing ones gaze into the inner worlds. After this plant is fertilized, the flower shades a miraculous pink and turns its face upwards to the sky. Ghost Pipe is an exotic example of the life-giving essence than can arise from our journey into the underworld. Once we allow ourselves the time of descent our souls require, we can fertilize a whole new generation, the blush of a fully lived existence returning to our cheeks to help us show our faces even more gallantly to the world.

Ghost Pipe has fallen out of contemporarily popular materia medicas, but was in wider use in the early Americas, where is was listed in King’s American Dispensatory. A nervine, antispasmodic and diaphoretic, Ghost Pipe turns purple when tinctured, a velvety reminder of the insightful alchemy that can happen when seek our medicine in the depths.

Ghost Pipe has historically been used in drop doses as a pain remedy. This curious companion was cited to help “put the pain beside you” where it can be examined, and ultimately transcended. Depression can be overwhelming, but when we focus on the pain we prevent ourselves from moving deeper into the places that our discomfort is asking us to address. Ghost Pipe can help us to put aside the intensity of the hurt and see our wounds as an opening into a truly transformational journey of the soul.

A guide for the Saturnian journeys of our lives

Life, like clouds, moves in cycles. Moments of brightness and clarity exist just as wholly as shape-shifting horizons of storm. To acknowledge the light, is to recognize the darkness, and to interact with the shadow is to learn about the very nature of light. A remedy of ember and empowerment, Ghost Pipe + Carnelian is a guide for such journeys into the underworld. In the old days, the natural seasons of melancholy were considered the domain of Saturn— the Roman God of wealth and wisdom, dissolution and depth, harvest, wholeness and liberation. Ghost Pipe + Carnelian is a torch for all those who are ready to move through the Saturnian journeys of their life. An invaluable ally in times of depression, darkness, or stagnation, this powerful pairing reminds us that we are, in truth, our own guides. We must only trust the imperceptible path. When we embark with willingness into the worlds that lay beyond this one, we consciously enter into the terrain of the soul. Ghost Pipe + Carnelian emboldens us to embrace entirely new ways of soulful seeing and being, a journey of consciousness that necessitates the death of the old. This dynamic essence dispels any energies that may be hindering our quest— ghosts, cords or parasitic attachments, and reminds us that rebirth always arises from places obscured. A bravely alchemical pairing, Ghost Pipe + Carnelian gives us the power and energy to burn like lava through the darkness, manifesting entirely new land.

// Visit Ghost Pipe + Carnelian in the shop //

Woolgathering & Wildcrafting

Tag Archives: herbal medicine

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The Season of Pleasure

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Summer’s Fullness

Winter Pearl Diving

Courting Mystery: Tulsi + The Technicolor Moonrise

Autumn Melancholy + Saturnian Journeys

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