To figure out Mother Nature’s choices, I had to research. I used a MyGardenAnswers App on my phone, the internet, and several books that I had in my library. I also talked to friends who enjoyed wildcrafting. When I identified a plant correctly, I wrote down the harvest date, what I had observed about its growing pattern, its medicinal properties, astrological correspondences, and a plethora of keywords to help me understand and make good use of the plant or herb. I discovered that one of the “weeds” so prevalent that season all around my house was the evening primrose. As I researched the plant, I thought, “Wow! How interesting is that?” The keywords I collected for this plant included protection, remove anger, hunting, fairy potions, love, calming, shapeshifting, luck, goal achievement, antidepressant, attracts bees and butterflies, moon magick, healing of bruises (physical and emotional), and combat procrastination and lethargy. One of its folklore names is “night candle.” Up until this point, I had only ever purchased evening primrose in dried form, and of course it doesn’t look that great and I never connected well with the storebought offering. However, the message I received from the plant was a bit different than all the keywords I’d found: “You have forgotten to laugh.”
And it was true.
My point with this story is that the messages you receive from the plants and herbs won’t necessarily fit what others have written about that plant or herb. It is a living being, and it will communicate what it wants regarding what you need. That doesn’t mean that you should throw out your research—the new information will allow you to expand your knowledge in a way that is best for you and the work that you plan to do.
I added several plants that season to my magickal cupboard, including the following:
Pennsylvania Smartweed: water/venus. Stops gossip or makes someone shut their darned mouth; removes toxic substances; inhibits the growth of bacteria; a booster to magickal healing formulas in general. An excellent herb to use in combination with tiger’s-eye gemstone when you need the truth of the matter and not a bunch of assumptions or inaccurate perceptions based on faulty data.
Horse Nettle: fire/mars. Diverts negativity so that it feeds on itself; protects; the nightshade family. Horse nettles in a garden actually keep bugs from eating potatoes and tomatoes, as the bugs feast on the horse nettles instead.
Pokeweed: water/venus. Poisons an unwanted advancement of love or attention; breaks hexes (unfortunately, as mentioned earlier, pokeweed can cause contact dermatitis). The berries were once used to make ink that turns brown with age.
Wild Blackberry: venus/water. Use for healing, prosperity, and protection, as well as to cause confusion in enemies. The thorns are thought to cut through evil in the aura of a person and shred disease.
Gifted Plants
Spirit will also talk to you through gifted plants—those plants that are given to you as presents for your birthday, anniversary, holidays, illness recovery, housewarming, or just because. Pay particular attention to these plants and their messages. Cut plants can be dried and used in a variety of magickal applications. Living plants carry a deeper message, as the plant or selection of plants have come to you to help you on your spiritual path. I have two African violets that have been with me for several years, one that I purchased when I moved into my new home and one that was given to me as a housewarming present. Both plants are extremely protective in nature and bloom all the time. I talk to them and have even given them names. I dry the flowers and use them in candles, sachets, powders, and conjuring bags. Magickal people often share living and dried plants for magick. If someone offers to give you a plant or you receive a herb you didn’t expect, know that Spirit is talking to that person, and this plant or herb is needed in your life at this moment.
Drying Wildcrafted and Fresh Herbs
Many magickal practitioners harvest wildcrafted and garden herbs early in the morning after the dew has dried. If you intend to wash the herbs, you may wish to collect them while the dew is still clinging to the herb, wash them gently, shake them, and then lay them out to dry on soft white towels or white paper towels. There is a folklore theory that herbs placed on white will help them to retain their power. Pick seeds such as dill just before they are about to turn brown. Hang them upside down with an aerated paper bag rubber-banded over the heads to catch the seeds. This also works well for thyme and rosemary.
If I can’t get to the herbs when they have dried due to a busy schedule, I place several layers of white paper towels on window screens that I set on shelves so that the air can move above and under the screens. I also tie herbs together with twine when they are fresh and hang them from chicken wire screens or wooden towel racks. Whether I hang them or lay the herbs out to dry, I always label everything immediately. There is nothing more frustrating than looking at a sea of herbs from a successful harvest and not knowing what you have picked, especially if this is a newly wildcrafted herb! Once the herbs have completely dried, remove the leaves—try not to bruise them—and store them in airtight glass (recommended) containers in a dark area. For food, six months seems to be the best rule as the herbs tend to lose their flavor past that time. Magickal herbs, however, are a bit different and can be stored for approximately one year (some even longer). There are magickal practitioners who believe the older the herb, the more power it contains.
A Plant a Day
In 2008 I published HedgeWitch: Spells, Crafts, and Rituals for Natural Magick. That book is a collection of magickal practices that I use in gardening and home crafts such as soaps, herbal salts, and sugars (which can be utilized as magickal powders), tea-leaf reading, grubby candles, etc. The heart of the book was a program of thirteen rites for personal transformation. The word HedgeWitch was my interpretation of finding spiritual avenues for oneself through the blending of one’s spirit with the natural world around us and the journey of caring for the physical garden as well as the mental one. To transform, one must be willing to go beyond the self and “ride the hedge” between the physical world and that of the spiritual, which is a pathway that will be unique to each individual. Detractors of the book in the magickal community were upset that I did not follow a more traditional line of thought in the construction of the material, nor did I include medicinal information for reader use, which is often seen as a part of the repoitoire of the HedgeWitch. In public writing I always concentrate on the spiritual aspects of the plants and leave the medicinal information to the experts. I have done the same in this book.
Here, in this book, we take the spiritual idea of HedgeWitchery further by making a concerted effort to welcome the wildcrafting experience into your magickal way of life. To help myself do this, I took a Spirit Walk every day one summer and chose a single plant each day to learn about and study. This opened my eyes not only to the spirituality in the nature of the universe, but also in how I could use these plants in my magickal applications. This type of Spirit Walk may take you beyond your comfort zone, and that is its purpose.
How Many Herbs to Use?
How many herbs used in any given formula depends on the practitioner’s choice. There are those individuals who use even numbers for drawing things to you and odd numbers for banishing. Others prefer to use the three, seven, nine, or eleven formula, and then there are those who use the binary divination system mentioned earlier to determine how many ingredients regardless of the numerical outcome. Some individuals go by intuition, passing their hands over the various herbs to choose what is right for their intent. There are folks who choose by color, texture, or aroma alone, given that those choices carry a correspondence that they understand.
I knew one master practitioner who would go on a magick walk. He had years of experience in herbal correspondences from which to draw. He would go out at a particular time (usually astrologically driven) and just walk the city. Yes, the city! As he walked, he would call the herbs to him under his breath, based not on an herbal name but on the intent. His “call” was open-ended. What he stumbled upo
n or saw on his walk is what he would use given the plant matched the lore he knew so well. If a plant called to him but he was unsure, he would put it in a separate pocket and work with it later to see if it matched his intent. Sometimes this herb was needed for something else, and other times it was for the purpose at hand. Regardless of how you choose your ingredients, again, the intent you have formulated in writing is the basis for any selection.
In interviewing several practitioners who create their own powders and herbal blends, I’ve found that they all have a variety of formulas based on different criteria. Some of their powders and blends come from the study of other practitioners and books, some blends are driven primarily by astrological correspondence, some by folklore references from family members, and others by color alone. There are recipes based on element, such as all ingredients corresponding to fire or to air. Some of those formulas carry a preponderance of one type of element association, with only a single ingredient corresponding to a different element. For example, my fire spell powder is comprised of herbs corresponding to the element of fire, with one herb (vervain) associated with air. Here, the air element is added to push the fire element. This powder works well when it is constructed when the moon is in a fire sign, and it is best used when the moon is in a fire or air sign. However, it can also be used when you need something to move fast (regardless of the sign the moon is in), and it is particularly useful when the moon is exiting any sign and preparing to enter into the next.
Some of you may be saying, “Oh my stars! This is too complicated!” It only has to be as difficult as you make it. As I said earlier, there are those practitioners who have successfully used herbs based on color and shape alone. For example, my hammer down powder consists of all red ingredients: cinnamon, dragon’s blood, dried red hot peppers, red rose petals, and a very odd ingredient: dried red clay that has first been shaped into a petition, written on while still malleable, then dried, anointed (with a magickal oil, pure essential oil, perfume, or liquid fluid condenser), and pulverized to go into the powder. Ah yes, you can be creative and successful at the same time! Hammer down powder has a variety of uses: as an offering to Thor, breaking through blocks, finding success, getting something done or to move fast, or as karmic retribution. One powder. A variety of uses. To ramp it up, add yohimbe powder.
You can also use planetary runes to choose the type and number of ingredients in your powders or herbal blends. You will find this information in chapter five.
If you wish to use color as your primary focus, here is a list to assist you in making choices not only in herbal work but in associated magickal candle selection as well.
Color Magick Correspondences
You may wish to use the vibratory power of color in your workings, whether you are considering candle colors, altar cloths, sachet bags, conjuring bags, or cloth for magickal packets. You might also like to add color to your powders. Use the information below as a guideline until you choose which colors work best for you based on your intent. You may also wish to use your power color, which is the color that represents the day you were born. You will find those colors listed under the magickal days section in chapter three.
Black: Return negativity to sender; divination; negative work; protection; karmic retribution
Blue-Black: Heal wounded pride; broken bones; angelic protection
Dark Purple: Call up power of the ancient ones; sigils/runes; government; working with the dead; honoring dark goddesses; spiritual power
Lavender: Favors from others; healing mind; angelic work; Reiki healing; stress relief
Dark Green: Invoking the power of regeneration; growth, nature spirits, and agriculture (such as gardening); financial work (such as long-term savings, investments, or swaying a financial institution; use with brown)
Mint Green: Financial gains (used with gold and silver or honey)
Green: Healing or health; north cardinal point; good fortune and prosperity (with gold or silver)
Avocado Green: Beginnings; healing of toxic relationships
Light Green: Improve the weather; growth; abundance of food (use with gold)
Indigo Blue: Reveal buried secrets; protection on the astral levels; defenses
Dark Blue: Create confusion (must be used with white or you will confuse yourself)
Blue: Protection; stress relief; water magick
Royal Blue: Power and protection
Pale/Light Blue: Protection of home, buildings, young people; pet healing
Ruby Red: Love or anger of a passionate nature; movement; breakthrough
Red: Love, romantic atmosphere; energy; fire magick; south cardinal point
Light Red: Deep affection of a nonsexual nature
Deep Pink: Harmony and friendship in the home
Pink: Harmony and friendship with people; binding magick; creating chaos
Pale Pink: Friendship; young females
Yellow: Healing; east cardinal point
Dark Gold: Prosperity; sun magick
Gold: Attraction; wealth in the home
Pale Gold: Closure with honor; prosperity in health
Burnt Orange: Opportunity; harvest
Orange: Material gain; to seal a spell; attraction of business and monetary opportunity
Dark Brown: Invoking earth for benefits; treasure; dealing with the root of a problem
Brown: Peace in the home; herb magick; friendship; miracles; winning a court case
Pale Brown/Tan: Material benefits in the home
Silver: Quick money; gambling; invocation of the moon; moon magick; prosperity; spirituality
Off-White: Peace of mind
Lily White: Mother candle (burned for thirty minutes at each moon phase)
White: Righteousness; purity; east cardinal point; devotional magick; angelic assistance; cleansing
Gray: Glamour magick of all types
Nature Meditation for Choosing the Right Color and Herbal Ingredients
It is believed that around every person is their own energy field, nested inside the sea of potential. This field is not only a protective layer, but it is also a storehouse of your thoughts that have attached themselves to your body. These patterns cling to the person. You can clear, reinvent, and change the patterns in this spiritual body at will if you realize that the spiritual body exists and that it has interesting stuff in it. This field is often associated with a color and is the basis of many aura-reading techniques, wherein the color signifies whether you are healthy or ill and the general direction of your thoughts on a daily basis. These colors are often associated with the chakras (the seven energy vortexes of the body). The thing is, not everyone can read auras in the traditional sense of simply seeing color or energy. Some people can’t see anything at all, and as your mind is filled with a variety of issues on any given day, a single color chosen for a working, technique, powder, blend, etc., may not necessarily suffice.
About four years ago I started reading people—not by aura color but by nature images. At the time I didn’t tell anyone about it. I wasn’t doing it to share, I was doing it to understand. I would close my eyes and think about that person in their current state, and then reach out into the universe…into nature…blending with it and then asking that I be given images of nature that most closely correspond with the person at this point in time. From there, I would ask for images (or mind pictures) of what was needed to help a person with their problem or to try to understand why they were exhibiting a type of behavior. For this technique, you must learn to trust what you see. However, before you use the process, your own spiritual body should be cleansed in some way—spiritual bath, deep breathing, or mental clearing, etc.—so that you don’t confuse your private needs with the needs of the person you are trying to help. As this isn’t always possible, having a routine of spiritual cleansing methods on a daily basis keeps your field relatively clear when you need to acce
ss the images quickly. I typically sit on my rocking chair outdoors, close my eyes, breathe deeply, say the person’s full name three times, connect and blend with the world around me, and then ask the universe to bring me the nature images I need to help that person. In all, the process takes about five minutes, sometimes less, a few times more. When I am finished, I write down what I saw so that I don’t forget and can analyze the images for inclusion in the future working.
I do not ask for specific pictures. I just think of my mind as a blank canvas, and a nature scene will develop. For example, with one person I might see a variety of beautiful flowers, with the predominant color as pink or red surrounded by lush green. If I don’t know what the flowers are, I don’t worry about it. The colors I will then choose for her will be red, pink, and green. I might make the conjuring bag green, the candle color red for her working, and then add pink rose petals in the powder or herbal blend. For another, a woodsy scene may come into focus; I will breathe that pine-scented air or the musk of the leaves on the ground, and I will see beautiful birch trees painted with shimmering sunlight. For this person, I would make sure the herb formula contains the aromas I sensed in my vision, pine and patchouli, even though the correspondences aren’t traditional for the type of working they may have requested. I would add a yellow candle (for the sunlight) and a white conjuring bag (the birch). I would also include birch in the herbal blend because that is the tree that I distinctly saw and immediately knew the name. I never assume. For example, in a woods scene, you might reason things are there such as ferns or moss, but if I don’t see it in my initial visualization, I don’t add it.
The Witching Hour Page 10
