We had our April showers, and here at the beginning of summer, we’re starting to see the May flowers that the old rhyme promises, in a growing palette of the blues of Iris and Red Root, the yellows of Chamomile and Meadowfoam, and the pinks of fruit trees like Apple, Plum and Quince.
When I think about the energy of flowers, in Nature and in healing, I think of the anthroposophical scientist and philosopher Ernst Lehrs. In his book Man or Matter: Introduction to a Spiritual Understanding of Nature, he writes about the different energetic principles in plant growth, based on his studies of the works of Goethe.
Lehrs discusses the principle of levity, which draws the plant upwards in its growth, but which also carries within it the counterbalance energy of renunciation, in which levity is once again withdrawn into the plant. He writes:
While progressing from leaf to flower the plant undergoes a decisive ebb in its vitality. Compared with the leaf, the flower is a dying organ. This dying, however, is of a kind we may aptly call a ‘dying into being’.
Life in its mere vegetative form is here seen withdrawing in order that a higher manifestation of the spirit may take place.
The flower is created by the energy of levity, the upward pull of the forces of light, whose influence is seen manifest in the delicate, translucent structures of the flower, so different from the opaque density of root and leaf. He compares this progression to the metamorphosis of a caterpillar, dying into its new being as a butterfly, and to the changes that the growing human undergoes as metabolic processes in the fetus give rise to the nervous system, which can then be the receptacle for consciousness.
Looking through our shelves for Spagyrics of flowers for this sale, I was struck by the fact that nearly all the flowers we work with are in our Veriditas collection of entheogenic plants, connecting back to the idea of the development of the nervous system and the flowering of consciousness that this allows. The few flowers that we work with that aren’t entheogenically active or initiatic still have strong effects on the mind and nervous system and its actions of awareness, mood, and emotion- all intangible and yet powerful qualities, much like flowers themselves.
The impermanent, evanescent nature of flowers also makes them trickier to source for our work, but fortunately, as a small company, we’re able to grow and wildcraft many of these beautiful beings ourselves. Sometimes it takes several seasons to gather enough flowers to make a Spagyric, as we’ve done twice now with Passionflower.
We created our first all-flower Passionflower Initiatic many years ago in Eugene, where we had a huge passionflower vine covering the front of our herb store. It would pry into the cracks in the walls and around the doorjamb as if trying to come inside, and I would spend lazy summer days “holding hands” with it- letting a tendril curl around my finger as it moved fast, relatively speaking for a plant.
That languid, loose energy is what this Passionflower Initiatic expresses, relaxing muscles and lowering physical and mental tension, while also uplifting the mind and mood to a lighter state. This Initiatic is a good Ayahuasca additive, and can be used instead of the Caapi vine, especially if the journey might elicit fear or darkness that needs to be worked through.
After we moved away from that house and out here to the coast, it was a while before we had a Passionflower vine again. In 2018, we found some at our wonderful local nursery and built them a bed along the north fence of our garden. A couple years later they were producing enough flowers to start a new Initiatic, adding one flower at a time to a jar of wine alcohol until they eventually added up to a batch, finished in 2022.
If the first all-flower Initiatic carried the energy of sitting with the vine, its tendrils holding your finger, this 2022 Fresh Passionflower Initiatic holds the intelligence of the tendrils themselves. It is more body oriented, and it brings a slow grace to movement, invoking the watery flow of plant gestures, different than the sharp, jerky muscle movement of the animal realm. We like this Initiatic for movement-based spiritual practices like Yoga and Tai Qi, and, in bigger doses, for journeying into the intelligences of other plants.
A newer addition to our garden is Cornflower, also known as Bachelor’s Buttons. I started working with Cornflower when I was creating my talk Call & Response: Herbs for Magickal Communication. I had grown them before in mixed flower beds and loved them for their bright blue cheer in the garden and bouquets. When I started researching plants used for communication and sound-based magick, Cornflower kept showing up in the Egyptian iconography as part of a sacred trio along with Mandrake and Poppy.
Cornflower has none of the intense psychedelic chemistry of those herbs, but it is adjacent to them in both art and effect, as I wrote in this post. Our Cornflower Initiatic enhances perception of sound from plants that communicate that way: Mandrake, with its famous shrieks and screams, as well as Heimia’s intensification of sacred sounds and music, and Calamus as it enhances speech.
Speaking of Mandrake and its magickal qualities, also carried by its many nightshade relatives, reminds me of a beautiful initiatic nightshade that I love growing: Petunia Shanin. This vibrant native Ecuadorian flower is related to garden petunias, and is equally easy to grow- this winter, my greenhouse beds were full of Shanin flowers that had self-seeded from hanging baskets I grew in there three years ago.
Shanin is related to Mandrake, Henbane, Belladonna, Datura, and all the other weird plants of witching and magick. Like those other plants, Shanin is also used for spirit flight, astral travel, and Shamanic journeying, as it creates a sensation of lightness, flying, and fast aerial travel as I wrote about here. Unlike the tropane alkaloids that bring those effects in its poisonous relatives, Shanin has no chemistry that would explain these effects, and it is not toxic or dangerous to work with, making our Petunia Shanin Initiatic an ally for invoking levity for journeying, astral travel, and even dance and movement.
For levity of mood and brightness of spirit, we love Wild Dagga as a plant and an Initiatic. In the garden, its bright orange flowers explode like fireworks at the top of tall stalks, soon becoming battlegrounds for bees and hummingbirds. Just watching the attention (and contention!) that creates lifts the spirits. As our Wild Dagga Initiatic, this plant brings a calm but open state of lightness and cheer.
This joyous state is reminiscent of the happiness Cannabis can bring, which the Hottentots of Africa consider a relative of Dagga. Even though the two plants are not botanically related, their uses mirror each other: besides its uplifting quality, Wild Dagga is also used to increase appetite and treat glaucoma, a fascinating study in the intelligence of Nature and the way her plants converge and connect across species.
Although not a plant we grow or find here, no discussion of hummingbirds and the flowers they love would be complete without Hummingbird Bush, Calliandra. This exuberant-looking red puff of a flower will grow in our area with winter protection, but it’s much happier in its tropical home in South America and in warmer areas of the US like southern California. It’s bright red flowers are full of nectar and attract all kinds of insects, but they are especially beloved by hummingbirds, who battle over access to them.
The Aztecs watched these bright little warriors and saw the story of their hummingbird god, Huitzilopochtli, who was a warrior slain in battle. In the after-world, he and other warriors eat the nectar of Calliandra until they transform into hummingbirds and can return to our world. The energy of our Hummingbird Plant Initiatic is all about the right use of power and balanced Mars- strength and courage in protecting what is important, but without imbalanced aggression or anger. This was one of the plants and themes I talked about in my recent class, Power to the (Plant) People, which is available as a recording in our store.
Another plant I have included in several talks and which I enjoy daily is Hibiscus, which is known as Japa in Ayurveda. Japa is also the name of artistic work with a mantra, in which the words of the mantra form the image of the deity it is sacred to. Hibiscus flower tea is used during this practice to keep the mind calm but focused and sharp, and to help activate and manifest the intent of the mantra.
In my Call & Response talk, I shared a technique of written magick that I adapted from the ancient Greek Magical Papyri, using Hibiscus as a magickal ink, enhanced with our Hibiscus Initiatic, to write a spell which can be ingested and then spoken out again. This is a simple but powerful practice for working with the material and immaterial aspects of speech and language in magick.
Finally, coming back to my local environment, two classic wildflowers that are related both botanically and medicinally.
Just down the road from us is Humbug Mountain, which is one of my favourite local hikes for its dramatic forests, beautiful ocean views, and rich plant life. Many medicinal plants grow there, and I love visiting throughout the year to see each one come up in its season. Right now, the trails are lined with Pacific Bleeding Hearts, maybe my favourite of the whole flower cycle there.
These beautiful flowers are more delicate than their showy domestic garden relatives, with feathery leaves and smaller flowers carried in groups of two or three. They grow along the edges of disturbed ground such as trails and even the parking lot at Humbug. You might not know it from looking at them, but they are in the Poppy family, related to our next plant, California Poppy, and also to the famous medicinal Opium Poppy.
As I wrote in this post, Bleeding Heart has some uses for common pain conditions like injuries and cramps, but where it really shines is for pain of a mixed physical-emotional nature. That can be physical injury that led to trauma, emotional imbalances that magnify pain perception, or anything where the body, spirit, and soul are all part of the cycle of suffering.
I have also used our Bleeding Heart Spiritualized Essence for the pain of loss and grief, where it helps the heart open to the sorrow so that it can be understood, processed, and moved past, and I have seen it help many other people with this, as well. It seems to relax the body so that release can happen, while also giving some emotional distance from the distress so that the mind can work through it and come out the other side.
Our final powerful flower today is more obviously a Poppy relative in both looks and uses: California Poppy. Its cheerful yellow and orange flowers also grow along paths and roadsides, but it favours hotter and dryer areas than Bleeding Heart’s forest home. California Poppy is a flower I look forward to seeing every summer, as the land gets hotter and dryer and the flowers of early summer start to fade.
California Poppy has effects more like Opium Poppy, although not nearly as strong. It is a very good painkiller and also a relaxant to the muscles and the mind, bringing a deep sigh of release when it kicks in. In smaller doses, our California Poppy Spiritualized Essence brings out more mental and emotional effects as a state of relaxed ease, and in larger amounts it is more sedative and painkilling. As I discussed in this post, California Poppy’s effects can be really refined through dosing, both because of its balanced and intelligent nature, and from our Spagyric processing that concentrates and refines its gifts on all levels.
