Essences To Support You The Whole Year Through When a flower essence is created a bowl of spring or holy water is placed in the vicinity of the plant that we wish to obtain it from. The spirit of the flower is then invited to imprint itself into the water along with any other elements from the ether that wish to emphasise the quality and message behind this particular bloom.
Imagine, if you will, various nuances and subtleties of meaning, spiralling around in the atmosphere, that are just waiting to drop into place within such a vessel at this opportune moment, gently settling and coagulating within the mixture to establish an eternal bond, between floret and water, for our own benefit. This April marks the completion of a two year cycle with the Allies Of Nature range of flower essences. When an entire range of essences is created it forms in a very similar way to how an individual essence does too. It takes time for all the elements to come together, for each essence to circulate and begin to settle into its rightful place, for the collective to reach completion and the common purpose to be known. Little did I realise in the spring of 2019 when first being called toward the hedgerow by the abundant Blackthorn blossom, the inaugural essence of the range, of the journey I was about to embark on with all of the flowers that wanted their spirit to be collected from them to appear in my offering. The first 365 days of that voyage were all dedicated to collecting the 18 flower essences that now make up the individual spokes within the wheel. The second full rotation has allowed me to create poems dedicated to all of those flowers, plus, establish the 6 lunar and solar blends to be included within the package too. Now we are 24 essences strong. Equating to two essences for every month of the year, lending a complete annual support system, to any would be client wishing to embark on a personal development program with me. Like me, if you are to be an ideal client of mine, your primary life concern is likely to be something along the lines of how you are going to 'awaken to a life beyond bullying to claim your true power', for this is my story also. Each of the essences or blends in the range add a restorative quality to us that is often lost when we are bullied, controlled, criticised or conditioned to live our lives to others wishes. The idea of the range is to assist us in coming back to a place of wholeness and balance, one essence and one quality at a time, reclaiming our true power in the process. In April for instance it is the Bluebell and the New Moon Essences that come to assist us with our improved emotional wellbeing. The elegant, slender Bluebell encourages us to engage with our lost beauty, something that may have disappeared from us as early as birth itself, in order to gain an 'inner-sense' of who we truly are. Whereas, the New Moon Essence aims to embed a greater assurance within us of truly 'knowing our purpose' here on Earth at this moment in time also. So to May, with the Red Campion and Waxing Half Moon Essences with their respective qualities of connection and vigilance and so on and so forth, month by month, right throughout the calendar, absorbing further attributes such as courage, confidence, vision, enthusiasm, resilience and trust as we go. If this notion of gaining support from our fellow flower allies the whole year through truly resonates with you, then maybe it is time to get in touch with me and think about how you can start to benefit from the Allies Of Nature range of flower essences in their own right or as part of a wider personal development program with me. I look forward to receiving your inquiry by you answering The Call To Adventure now. If you care to comment on this blog with regards to any issues or feelings it brings up for you then please feel free to do so below.
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The Hedge Bindweed Brings The Quality Of Resilience, But Why October? The Hedge Bindweed is the flower that wanted to present itself to me as the next natural Flower Essence Of The Month for the Allies Of Nature range of flower essences last October. With a quality of resilience and a message that 'Persistence Pays' we may have to ask ourselves why in particular this time of year?
The question is a valid one because initially when this flower essence was gathered it soon became obvious that the prime objective for collecting it was its relationship to being able to help alleviate some symptoms of bullying. Indeed, of all the flowers in the range that have come to assist in helping people overcome the effects of bullying to discover their true identity this flower is the flag bearer of that campaign. This is because even though the flower itself can be seen as a bully in the way that it clambers over, suffocates and strangles other plants in the garden, the more it gets cut back the more it comes back stronger. It gives us the power of creating a strong root or centre to our being and indeed embrace the quality of resilience because each time it gets knocked down it gets back up again. Resilience by definition according to Google is 1) the capacity to recover from difficulties, i.e. toughness and 2) the ability of a substance to spring back into shape, i.e. elasticity. So in order to be resilient you need to have both of these qualities combined, that of toughness and elasticity. In October, going by the Celtic calendars, we are about to enter winter, (officially winter starts on November 1st). At this time the majority of the deciduous trees in the Northern Hemisphere are either shedding their leaves or preparing to let them go. The week of Halloween and Bonfire Night sticks fervently in my memory as being the time when the majority of leaves fall from the trees within the year. Nature at this time is preparing to let go of anything that no longer serves it, the trees are readying themselves to go back to their plain wood, their root, trunk, branch and twig and nothing else. This is so they can become more resilient to the frosty mornings and sub zero temperatures of the winter months. They don't carry any baggage with them at this time they tough it out with the bare essentials, so that they can spring back again in March to be in full leaf. So this is why the Hedge Bindweed appears as the Flower Essence Of The Month for October and offers us the quality of resilience, by being persistent we too will navigate the colder months and begin to bloom again in the spring. If you care to comment on this blog with regards to any issues or feelings it brings up for you please feel free to do so below. Knowing The Way - Direction. This weekend it feels like the honourable thing to do is to acknowledge the inaugural, pioneering essence of the Allies Of Nature range of flower essences. For on the 6th April 2019 the Blackthorn flower essence was created. At the time, it was a Saturday, it was a new moon, it was the start of the financial year, the Grand National was taking place, and there was no hint of any global pandemic being in the twinkling of Mother Nature's eye, or any other eye for that matter also.
As an essence the Blackthorn has proved to be a pioneer in many ways for me. The message it wanted to convey to me on capturing it was 'knowing the way'. Thus it has shown me how to collect an essence, educated me on how spirit wants to communicate messages through its flowers to me and taught me that not everything about an essence can necessarily be revealed at the point of collection. A greater depth of understanding needs to be accumulated about it over a period of time. A year on for instance, we are in very contrasting circumstances to when the essence was collected. Coronavirus has spread across the planet, there are no sporting events taking place and we are all under lockdown. We are also at a very different point in the moon cycle it must be added too, somewhere between a waxing half moon and a full moon. This illustrates that when a 'Mother Essence' is created it is very much born out of the spirit of the moment and cannot be wholly reproduced in the same way ever again. There will always be nuances between essence collections of the same flower. Other distinct scenarios will be playing out within nature and society at the time, new influences will be at work, one could be guided to collect the essence on a totally different day or phase of the moon cycle, the planets themselves will all be aligned differently. This will give a slightly contrasting accent to the language being communicated to the practitioner from the flower itself. Indeed alternative interpretations can be extracted from the initial flower essence collection when more than one practitioner is involved too. When studying at the Chalice Well we would often collect an essence together and each person's understanding of it would be slightly different. There would however be a common theme running throughout the process. Links and connections within the web of information being accumulated would be the same or similar and this would point to an overall knowledge of what the essence was ultimately about. A golden thread of understanding would then eventually come to light. Subtle differences can exist from range to range too when comparing like for like flowers or very similar ones. When I collected the Wild Rose essence last summer solstice and got the quality of 'enthusiasm' from it, it was very reassuring for me to know that when I came into contact with the Wild Rose from the Bach Flower Essences, some time later, that its quality was one of 'enthusiasm' too. This exact match however may not always be the case and our job is then to enquire further as to why such a difference may exist and see where the common ground lies. It is good to approach essence making with what we say in the shamanic tradition is 'beginners mind', i.e. we haven't totally drawn a conclusion at the outset of the essence creation, or the journey thereafter, as to what that essence is wholly about. We endeavour to remain open to other thought processes, inspirations and revelations that might come that are reflective of what is happening with the essence as the process unfolds, layer by layer. We will always then have an opportunity to deepen our understanding of what we are being presented with. That said however, there will always be this overall theme, this golden thread within it, something 'special' about this particular flower and what its purpose is to be upon the planet at this moment in time. This is what the spirit of the plant or flower deva wants to convey to us in allowing us to connect with its unique flower essence in the first place. What I have found in my own journeying with the flower essences, and revisiting them for a second time through the calendar wheel, is that they only want to deepen their connection with us and help us understand the original information given about their essence more intimately. With Blackthorn, its message twelve months prior of 'knowing the way' had been illustrated to me by way of its pioneering spirit breaking new ground with its blossoms in an otherwise barren hedgerow. It was giving all the other plants 'direction' in so doing, as it would give ourselves 'direction' when we connected with its essence also. How then would that message be further ingrained within us in 2020 when visiting with it again? On the Blackthorn Medicine Walk that I completed recently in my own back garden, due to the lockdown regulations, I was able to connect with the original tree I got the essence from again. I asked it the question as to what will give us the opportunity of 'knowing the way' forward given our current very restrictive Coronavirus circumstances? The answer that came back to me seemed to be connected to finding our own inner peace, and then from that place being able to honour all of the other three peaces too, creating peace with others, our community and the planet. We cannot have peace in the world if we have conflict within ourselves. This further message from Blackthorn ties into the message from the Bluebell as mentioned in my previous blog, that of gaining an 'inner-sense' of ourselves, it being the next essence in the sequence of the Allies Of Nature range of flower essences. This further emphasises the connection between the essences as they go through the year. There is a beauty to this unfolding, a poetry, where there is a story to be told which isn't always obvious when each essence is originally collected. I feel that the spirit of Blackthorn in 'knowing the way' is continually with me as I learn more and more about the flowers and their essences, in how they are captured, manufactured and are then to be used at a personal or planetary level. I can always rely on Blackthorn to give me 'direction' throughout my entire essence journey. If you care to comment on this blog with regards to any issues or feelings it brings up for you then please feel free to do so below. Bluebell - Inner Sense These past few months have seen a shift in what I am now to offer through Allies Of Nature. When I completed my shamanic training last year I knew from what I had conceived upon my Medicine Shield that flowers in some way shape or form were going to be a part of my future. The animals and birds had introduced me to The Shamanic Path and had helped me travel along it thus far, but it was the beautiful petal headed plants, ever present in all my Vision Quests that seemingly, more fervently, wanted to take me on the next step of my journey.
Over the last couple of years in particular I have become more aware of the abundance of flowers within nature. As our countryside has become less cultivated, had less pesticide put upon it, had more areas set aside for wilderness and less verges cut on a regular basis due to county council cost savings, so the wild flowers and blossoms have returned to our hedges and roadsides, like which I cannot remember. It is this, or spirit in its many guises has just wanted me to pay more attention to it and become more aligned again with nature, in order for me to truly understand it as a real ally in our everyday existence. For once we start to discover what is at the very essence of every living piece of flora or fauna alive on the planet today, its unique identity, and realise how we can benefit from that mammal, bird, insect or plant with what it wants to bestow upon us, absorbing that essence into us in one way shape or form, then the real healing of our planet can begin. The game changer upon the Earth today is when we start to understand that the animals and flowers that exist around us are here for own personal development and journey towards wholeness. When we begin to grasp this concept is when we start to open up to the great mystery of life. Provided of course that we are able to leave enough space for nature and allow all these great species to stick around long enough to be able to teach us all of their ways. That way, we will not make them extinct simply through our own ignorance and unconscious expansion. This is what essence work and indeed animal spirit work is all about I believe. Not only the flower essences that I am now beginning to offer people but the essence of every living creature on the planet too. What is it that makes a tiger a tiger, an elephant an elephant and a Bluebell a Bluebell? What special thing does it do that no other entity can do upon the planet? What way of being does it want to communicate to us that we can learn from and amalgamate into our own existence for our own benefit once we know how? This can only be communicated to us when we become still, quiet, and just listen to all what is going on around us, then spirit begins to percolate the message through to us that we desperately need to hear for our own health and wellbeing. To capture an essence of a flower one ventures out into the woodland, hedgerow or grassy meadow, the environment where that plant exists, and then sets down a bowl of holy spring water next to it. The vibration from that flower then radiates in the direction of the cut glass vessel and is captured in the water, like that of its own reflection, an imprint of what it is to be that particular child of Mother Earth herself. What comes to us in the witnessing of that process, what nature wants to tell us is going on at that time, helps form an impression of what that essence is all about and the quality of that plant that it wishes to communicate to us. In taking of those waters, that quality can then in turn be transferred to ourselves, where we can start to heal as individuals and indeed excel, helping us to become all that we wish to be. We work in a similar way with the animals but in an ever more spiritual context. As you will appreciate it is a lot harder to keep an animal still long enough to capture its essence, so as a shamanic practitioner or animal essence provider you have to invite the spirit of that animal to work with you in a similar way to that of the flowers. That way there is no need to restrain the animal itself, or god forbid harm it in any way in order to capture its essence, no need to consume or acquire a particular body part to gain its quality, the essence of that animal can simply be infused into a healing remedy or potion in a similar way to the flowers through the holy water. In a recent trip to a woodland in South Devon to capture the essence of Bluebell, I was first given the word innocent, as all flora and fauna are innocent upon this planet and deserve to be treated that way. However me being me, as the particular wordsmith that I am, working in conjunction with spirit I felt that word evolve into 'inner - sense'. So if I am to learn anything from the true power of Bluebell it is to gain an understanding of one's own true inner beauty, my own 'inner - sense' of who I truly am. In essence!! If you care to comment on this blog with regards to any issues or feelings it brings up for you please feel free to do so below. |
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