Passionflower

This is a very special Spagyric, created over the course of one summer as our Passionflower gave us her outrageous blooms, which we collected one by one and added to the extraction. When we finally had enough in the menstruum, we finished it off as an Alchymical Initiatic, and we are very pleased with the results.

If you have never been around a Passionflower in person, you should make a point to visit one sometime. The incomparable flower that this plant creates is truly one of the weird marvels of Nature.

Our Passion vine covers the front of our house, and is the most exuberant growing thing in the yard. It has pulled the numbers off our house and worked its way through the crack at the top of the door, reaching into the house over just one night. If you hold a finger against its tendrils for 10-15 minutes, they will close around your finger, and if you watch this vine long enough, you will see it move as it searches for something to grab.

When it flowers, with dozens of blooms at once, the smell is intoxicating, like all the candy in the world combined and drenched in honey. This magical scent is the main flavour note of the Spagyric, tasting similar to Passion fruit, which comes from tropical Passion vines.

Passionflower is a superior nervine and calmative, lowering blood pressure, relaxing muscles, and bringing ease and a calm openness. Our new Passionflower is not as directly sedative as the Essence we make from the whole plant, but the anti-tension and releasing effects are stronger.

If you use Passionflower in a small dose before Yoga or Pranayama, you can feel it kick in from one breath to the next, as you suddenly melt deeper into the pose or your lungs expand greatly.

In northeastern Brazil, where the Ayahuasca is brewed from Jurema/Mimosa species (instead of Chacruna/Psychotria), Passionflower is used as the MAO additive, rather than the Banisteriopsis vine. Passionflower is a shorter-acting MAO inhibitor, and brings its characteristic sense of ease and graceful opening to this type of journey, useful when psychological resistance or tension exists, or where fear or apprehension need to be worked through.