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tipsycad147 · 5 years

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Herbs + Essences for the Haunted

Alexis J. Cunningfolk

In some ways, we’re always dealing with ghosts when it comes to healing. We’re haunted by past events, words spoken to us at tender times, promises broken, pleasure denied, the shock of trauma, and the weight of memory. When someone seeks my services as an herbalist and Witch I am not only meeting them in the moment, but I gaze back and forward along their weblines, trying to see what they’ve brought with them and where they might be headed. I get to meet younger and elder you while sitting with the present you.

The shadowlands which we all of us spend time in, meeting with or enthralled by our ghosts, grow all sorts of strange plants that sprout up in our life as grief, anger, shame, despair, loneliness, and more. In other words, the list of recommendations I could have for plant allies that help us to deal with our haunting s could be vast and never-ending. That’s not very useful. In fact, the open secret is that if an herb, any herb, is helpful to you on your path of healing, it is an ally to you in facing your ghosts. So, knowing that there are a great many choices out there, I’ve chosen herbs and essences that I’m fond of, that I think are far-reaching in their scope, and because they are the ones that came forward at the time of writing this post.

The Herbs

Thorn magick, such as Hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna) and Rose (Rosa spp.) is a very valuable ally in working with our ghosts. I’ve written more about working with thorn medicine plants here. In short, Rose helps us to deal with our grief instead of running from it and Hawthorn helps us to open our heart again to life.

Mugwort (Artemisia spp.) is our dream ally as so much of what we feel haunted by can be accessed in liminal states. It’s an incredibly powerful herb for integration and in traditional western herbalism it is honoured as one of our eldest of herbal allies. Working with herbs like Mugwort, which are considered spiritual elders, to actual ancient plants Gingko (Gingko biloba), and Rose (Rosa spp.) that have been on this planet for millions of years is useful in haunting work. These plants have the ability to travel through our timelines with strength, wisdom, and discernment. Use the essence of Mugwort, too, especially if dealing with nightmares.

Skullcap (Scutellaria lateriflora) is an herb that I talk about a lot and that’s because it is so useful when it comes to dealing with excessive mental chatter, anxiety, and the inflexibility that can arise from both conditions. When it comes to our personal ghosts, Skullcap helps us to move out of our heads and into our bodies. Some of us try very, very hard to logic our traumas, to make sense of our ghosts, and while sometimes we can build stories that make sense, that’s not always the case and that’s not always necessary. Sometimes it’s just about recognising, deeply and making space for the emotions that arise, that something hurt and that once we do that we can begin to leave that pain behind. Skullcap is a good ally to work with if you don’t know quite where to begin - you feel like there are ghosts everywhere and they’re all talking. Skullcap can help come in and quiet everyone down.

Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) is another liminal spaces herb and one intimately linked with the Good Folk. In my tradition, the Good Folk are some of our eldest ancestors (you’ll see a theme emerging with my recommendations so far - work with the Old Ones). Trauma and the things which we are haunted by can sometimes happen over a slow period of time and sometimes it happens suddenly, shocking the system. There is a lot of lore tied to the Good Folk and shock - they are often accused of being the source of ill but I think they are often the ones who show us that we are already suffering we just hadn’t realised it yet. Another way to understand this pattern of energy is to recognise Yarrow as a plant ally for the wounded warriors and wounded healers among us. They are the ones who facilitate some of the most beautiful and profound healing spaces for others because they carry a great wound themselves. We are at a moment that as a species we are carrying the vast wound of environmental degradation caused by the choices we’ve made and the distance we’ve created between ourselves and the rest of our living planet. I highly recommend Yarrow as an essence and learning more about the Yarrow Environmental Essence that the folks at the Flower Essence Society has created.

The Essences

The essences listed below are either available as part of the Bach Flower Remedies or the Flower Essence Society collections.

Aspen (Populus tremula) is helpful for those who are afraid of the unknown that lies beyond their current state of being. It can be scary to imagine what our lives would be like without the familiarity of our ghosts, even if we know that we no longer wish to be haunted. Aspen helps us to face our fear and move beyond it.

Bleeding Heart (Dicentra formosa) helps us to let go of our ghost, releasing attachments to the things, places, and beings which are no longer with us.

Crab Apple (Malus sylvestris) helps us come to release feelings of being somehow “contaminated” with our trauma and that makes us impure or unfit for healing and connection with others.

Evening Primrose (Oenothera elata) is a great ally when we are processing childhood trauma and its impact on us today. Take before and after your therapy and healing sessions.

Honeysuckle (Lonicera caprifolium) helps us to arrive back in the present moment so that we can move on with our lives.

Rock Rose (Helianthemum nummularium) helps us to befriend the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. For those who are afraid of dying or loss of self.

Sage (Salvia officinalis) helps us to get out of own way, accept the fact that we have and should change as we grow, and come to accept ourselves for who we are now.

Self-heal (Prunella vulgaris) for those of us who don’t believe we have the capacity to heal, that our minds and bodies are broken beyond repair. Self-heal reminds us that our healing is possible, assists us in reaching out to others for help, and learning how to trust ourselves again.

Star of Bethlehem (Ornithogalum umbellatum) helps us to deal with the shock of loss. We’re not always able to deal with the initial feelings of loss in our life and have to make time and space for it at a later point. Star of Bethlehem helps us to navigate that meeting with our feelings.

Wild Mustard (Sinapis arvensis) is one of my favourite essences for the type of sorrow that feels like there is no light left in our life. It helps to bring back the sun.

Willow (Salix vitellina) helps us to forgive, release bitterness, and move forward with out lives.

Working With Herbs + Essences When You’re Haunted

Before you use any herb or essence, do your research by referencing reputable materia medicas (i.e. books full of plant profiles) to determine if a plant is right for you and the correct dosage. In general, googling a plant is not the best way to find accurate information or appropriate use. Please use discretion, practice empowered choosing, and ask your local herbalist for help, too!

There is something about water-based remedies that I find to be particularly powerful when it comes to working with the stuff that haunts you. We live on an ocean planet, we are made up of so much water ourselves, and we are formed and shaped in a watery womb. If you have access to a bath, I highly taking an herbal bath. If you don’t have a full bath to use, you can still do a foot and/or hand bath, as well as making a shower rinse (i.e. make a strong infusion of herbs and water, strain, and wash with as part of your shower). Teas are another simple way to use herbs in ghost work and adding a few drops of an essence into your morning water is great, too.

Once you’ve chosen what plant allies to work with begin by stating your need to the plant. Begin by setting up a space in a sacred manner - it can be as simple as cosying up on your favourite comfy chair, wrapped up in a blanket or more similar to casting a circle. Once you’ve set space for the work to begin, set your intention with your plant ally. You might already know the work you want to do and the haunting you want to clear from your soulshrine (i.e. your body and sacred being). Or you might not, in which case it is helpful to journal, cast cards or spend time in meditation. Take a moment to greet your plant ally, introducing yourself and speaking to them with reverence and kindness. Once you’ve determined what haunted room you want to walk into, state to your plant ally:

{Plant Name}, I wish to release the ghosts of my past. I am haunted by {describe your haunting}. With your aid, {Plant Name}, I seek to release it. Thank you, {Plant Name}, for guiding me in my healing work.

Repeat this simple ritual for the next three, six, or nine days. Pay attention to how the description of your haunting may or may not change during this time. Take time for journaling, casting cards, talking with your friends and family, your dog, your therapist. Sharing the stories of our haunting s can help to shed light where there was once murkiness - and then at some point the story may feel all told out. Invite your ancestors in, especially the really old ones whose names have been forgotten but are no longer afraid of earthly haunts.

As for how long to take the herbs in haunting work - that depends on the herb and you. In general, using an herb or essence for a cycle of the Moon and reassessing at the end of that cycle can be a good place to start. Does this mean that it only takes a cycle of the Moon to release a haunting? No. Healing work is circuitous, mostly lengthy, and on rarer occasions it feels instantaneous. But when we’ve found the modalities of healing that serve us best, feeling better day by day can become a very familiar feeling. I wish a swift and steady healing for all of you.

May this and all Samhain seasons be ones of reconciliation and healing, of happy reunions and blissful revelations.

http://www.wortsandcunning.com/blog

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wendyimmiller · 4 years

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Lingering Springs, Bittersweet Memories and The Evolution of a Gardener

The latest in the on-going correspondence between Marianne Willburn & Scott Beuerlein.

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May 14, 2020

Lovettsville, VA

Dear Scott,

My heart aches for you and your family coping with the loss of your mother. In a normal year it would be emotionally draining, but right now, with the ability to have less than ten people at the funeral? I am deeply sorry you have had to cope and grieve while normal life is upside down – I cannot imagine. It was this time last year that we lost my father, and that was hard enough.

The arrival of spring has brought back a lot of that tension and sadness. Memory adheres gently to seasons. For years I could not see pumpkins on porches and smell cinnamon in stores without experiencing waves of psychosomatic morning sickness brought on by having not one, but two, romantic Septembers. And now, Dad is messing with spring.

I have had words with him about it. Proper out-loud words to the sky when I’m in the vegetable garden, which is one of the reasons we needed to live somewhere without visible neighbors. That and the outdoor restroom facilities.

I have wondered many times over the last year what Dad would think about my garden now. It is very young, but the last time he saw it, it was a newborn, and for the most part not to be seen. Dad never went in for ornamentals in the same way that he loved his vegetables and the natural world around him. My guess is that he would have nodded gently, raised his eyebrows over some of my kaleidoscope combinations, and then pulled up a chair in the vegetable garden and asked for a beer.

Dad and I in the garden that fed our family during “the college years” in Iowa.

My very earliest memories of a purely ornamental garden and the high ambitions of its creator – a good family friend – are equally strong memories of the bemusement my father felt for such frivolous things. I can still see the marble statues…hear the plans for an amphitheater being discussed with animated hands as mosquitos danced around us in the dusk…and I can still see my father shaking his head.

I must have been ten or eleven and no doubt more focused on one of the wonderful treats Mr. Willson had prepared for us indoors to care what an amphitheater was. Now I routinely stand with gardeners in their Edens and discuss overreaching plans that are based in fantasy and a glass of red wine – including my own.

The only shot I have of Mr. Willson proudly standing in his California foothills garden.

He is gone now too, but I so wish I had had more time to see his garden and his marvelous plans with wiser eyes. I have an aloe pup (of a pup of a pup) he gave me that sits on my desk next to this picture.

Speaking of wiser eyes – or at least, eyes that are now wise enough to recognize how thoroughly un-wise they are – what a brilliant column on the evolution of gardeners in Horticulture this month! No rebuttal from this quarter – you nailed that one. Judging from my young adult children, and my own memories of being supple, invincible and insufferable, it is not only gardeners who go through this “I-know-everything-I’m-a-rock-star” phase.

The fermenters for one. If I am lectured one more time at a party on the merits of lactobacillus by a bearded, gym-ripped Adonis with a koi tattoo on his calf, I may lose my carefully curated reputation as a well-behaved guest. Or as you might say, ‘my shit.’

I get it dude. You can pickle cabbage. So can I. So can three-quarters of the population of Poland. May I assume you’re also fostering a rare sourdough starter you brought back from a hostel in Bratislava last summer?

Whew. That’s obviously been building up.

But as you say (much more wisely, gently, and 100x less arrogantly than I seem to be able to express), it’s payback. I cringe to think of the party-goers I have annoyed with my new gardening discoveries that read to them as ancient history.

And the ones I’m currently annoying for that matter. It’s all relative. Until we leave this Earth with cherubims and seraphims at our heels, there is always someone older and wiser that wants to punch us in the mouth.

Perhaps all this confidence is as it should be. If in those earliest days of discovery, we were to come up against the enormity of all that we know right now that we don’t know, and not experience any wins that made us feel special…made us feel like we alone knew the answer…I think we’d most likely run scared, and turn our talents to ditch digging or politics. I have never felt less able to call myself an expert on growing things than I do now, more than twenty-five years into growing things.

And I feel almost panicked over how little time there is to absorb all that I’m hungry to learn. I’m at it 24/7 and there still isn’t enough time. Life gets so complicated so quickly that dropping everything and offering my unpaid services to Keith Wiley or Fergus Garrett or Panayoti Kelaidis for a year in exchange for knowledge unbound requires that I fake my own death.

One view (amongst hundreds) of Keith Wiley’s garden at Wildside in Devon. Yes, I know we’re back to England and it’s a sore point with you, but when I see a garden like this I realize the enormity of what I have left to learn.

Don’t think I haven’t thought about it. Why can’t we have two decades in our twenties? One to try everything and one for keeps. Or is that what our thirties are supposed to be?

But enough of philosophy and supple young joints.

We too have had one of the most glorious springs in memory. Long and lingering, it has allowed so many early bloomers such as epimedium, dicentra (I know, lamprocapnos, &$%@! taxonomists), claytonia, brunnera, trillium, mertensia, narcissus, leucojum, kerria etc. to hold those blooms for weeks – right up until the freezes we had that you sent from the Midwest.

Self-seeded and superb – Brunnera macrophylla

Even the sanguinaria held on longer than two days. After the freezes, the temps stayed cool and revived almost everything. My newish ‘Rose Marie’ magnolia took a huge hit – both blossoms and leaves – as did ‘Jane’, but as Michael said, now they can boast of a tough childhood.

Sanguinaria canadensis ‘Multiplex’

One of the most surprising semi-casualties was a Rodgersia podophylla ‘Rotlaub’ I have grown for five years since I brought it back from Dancing Oaks Nursery in Oregon. It has weathered much in the way of crazy springs, flagged a little, but never been hit so hard by a cold snap. As I thought of it as an early emerger, I was gobsmacked that it couldn’t pull itself together for a night. But when I went back to my records, I realized that the warm winter had gently made me think that we were later than we were, and with all the days blending together right now, who the hell knows what day of the week it is, much less where the rodgersia should be.

Still, lesson learned, filed away under ‘fail,’ and thankfully the plant has begun to re-sprout. I understand from a friend in Colorado that this is a normal state of affairs in a region that giveth and taketh away every May, but it’s hard to see such a gorgeous plant on its knees. Again, this is where you cannot beat hard experience – and many years of it.

The Lord giveth….

And the Lord taketh away.

Meanwhile, in more resilient quarters, each spring I come back to epimedium and brunnera as two genera that are woefully underplanted by the general public. It’s not their fault. For whatever reason neither is commonly sold. It probably has much to do with how they present in 6” pots – not as much come hither as a greenhouse begonia. But so much ease, and so much to offer shade gardeners tired of staring at hosta. Unaffected by the freezes, and by most things really Except for Southern blight on the brunnera in the summer months – yep, that scourge is in my soil in places.

A little ‘Jack Frost’ brunnera in the midst of some blushing E. x versicolor ‘Sulphureum’

I share your enjoyment of ostrich ferns and try very hard not overuse them in my quest to conquer Japanese stilt grass. They are overusing themselves I fear. Plant one, you have a hundred; and as you say, late freezes halt them only for seconds. They have already shoved out a robust stand of Arisaema triphyllum and are heading for the A. ringens and A. consanguineum if I don’t pull out the shovel. And move the arisaema. Such beautiful Jurassic monsters.

Do you grow vegetables somewhere on that plot of yours? The asparagus are coming in well this year and the kale is putting a little green in my juice every day.

Wait, that’s every week. I’m forgetting. It’s the wine I drink every day. The wine.

Especially at the moment.

I have put off mentioning COVID-19 and the unbearable state of things until the end of this letter, and quite frankly, I am tempted to sign off and leave it there, the entire business is so upsetting. But in response to your question – should we build gardens for nursing homes and tend gardens for first responders during this pandemic – the answer is of course yes; but then, we should build gardens and help our struggling neighbors where we have the ability at every opportunity.

Though it seems like this will never end, it will. The true question is, will we do these things when it is all over? Will the new Victory Gardeners keep gardening without a pandemic to worry them? Will people still remember to bring a bouquet of tulips to a nurse’s door, or plant up a windowsill garden for an elderly friend when there are stores to be shopped and weekend recreating to be done. Will I?

I hope so. We are not judged so much I think by what we do when the emergency is obvious and push comes to shove, but what we do when the world stops shoving and we can quietly return to familiar routines. Your thoughts are laudable and wonderful however. Do not let my cynicism blight them.

As for your promise of you both joining me in the UK next year on a garden tour, you might want to ask yourself if you are truly safe in a country whose beloved horticultural institutions you’ve publicly disparaged. I’m not saying I would rat out your identity, but then again, I’m not saying I wouldn’t. Of course I wouldn’t let them hurt Michele – she’s one of us.

Make sure Michele brings this picture tucked into her passport. They may require proof.

As for me – do I want an Olympic level smart ass sitting in the back of the [exceptionally comfortable] coach, sipping red wine and throwing out occasional witticisms to the raucous laughter of all present? I sat through that once already remember.

What the hell. But I’m telling you right now, I’ll have the microphone this time and I know how to use it.

My best to you both,

Marianne

P.S. We got a new puppy. An Irish Wolfhound named Nessa. Mungo is currently seeking legal representation.

P.P.S. Love your mossy walks. LOVE them.

Lingering Springs, Bittersweet Memories and The Evolution of a Gardener originally appeared on GardenRant on May 14, 2020.

The post Lingering Springs, Bittersweet Memories and The Evolution of a Gardener appeared first on GardenRant.

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turfandlawncare · 4 years

Text

Lingering Springs, Bittersweet Memories and The Evolution of a Gardener

The latest in the on-going correspondence between Marianne Willburn & Scott Beuerlein.

__________________________________

May 14, 2020

Lovettsville, VA

Dear Scott,

Dad and I in the garden that fed our family during “the college years” in Iowa.

The only shot I have of Mr. Willson proudly standing in his California foothills garden.

Whew. That’s obviously been building up.

Don’t think I haven’t thought about it. Why can’t we have two decades in our twenties? One to try everything and one for keeps. Or is that what our thirties are supposed to be?

But enough of philosophy and supple young joints.

Self-seeded and superb – Brunnera macrophylla

Sanguinaria canadensis ‘Multiplex’

The Lord giveth….

And the Lord taketh away.

A little ‘Jack Frost’ brunnera in the midst of some blushing E. x versicolor ‘Sulphureum’

Do you grow vegetables somewhere on that plot of yours? The asparagus are coming in well this year and the kale is putting a little green in my juice every day.

Wait, that’s every week. I’m forgetting. It’s the wine I drink every day. The wine.

Especially at the moment.

Make sure Michele brings this picture tucked into her passport. They may require proof.

What the hell. But I’m telling you right now, I’ll have the microphone this time and I know how to use it.

My best to you both,

Marianne

P.S. We got a new puppy. An Irish Wolfhound named Nessa. Mungo is currently seeking legal representation.

P.P.S. Love your mossy walks. LOVE them.

Lingering Springs, Bittersweet Memories and The Evolution of a Gardener originally appeared on GardenRant on May 14, 2020.

The post Lingering Springs, Bittersweet Memories and The Evolution of a Gardener appeared first on GardenRant.

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