If you want to create a beautiful display of herbs consider acquiring a good book on bonsai and try your hand at it. Richard W. Bender wrote a terrific book called Herbal Bonsai that specifically addresses using herbs as bonsai subjects. He explores many additional choices and provides step-by-step instructions on how to create beautiful, herbal bonsai specimens. I think this is a terrific idea to include in an indoor display mixed in with lush pots of green and purple basil, chives, ferny dill, and parsley.

Toxicity: considered toxic

Common Name: Rough Chervil

Continent: North Temperate Zone

Habitat: IV

Applicable Plant Components: herb, root

Sanctificational: herb

Convocational: herb

Pacificatory: herb

Reconciliatory: herb

Amoristic: herb

Vulnerary: herb

Plenitudinal: herb

Plenarial: herb

Affirmational: root

Resurgent: herb

Anecdotal: The spirit within Chaerophyllum is invoked to address spiritual pain. It is deeply linked to circumstantial or ritual birth, death and rebirth.

Toxicity: not known

Common Name: Mouse Ears

Continent: Europe Habitat: IV, VI, VII

Applicable Plant Component: herb

Desistant

Reconciliatory

Reversional

Theurgical

Amoristic

Vulnerary

Resurgent

Anecdotal: The spirit within Cerastium is invoked to address the loss or attrition of spiritual energy or direction caused by genetous experiences. It is a formidable incarnant for reconciling endopsychic wounds. Cerastium brings protection and assurances to the birth and rebirth aspects of rituals.

Soon foredawn will shake his sleepy head and day will be upon us. All the words have been spoken and the prayers made. It is the hour when ancestral spirits come in to sit with us, the matinal moment that brings sacred songs alive. The young ones are called too and find their place in the circle. Those who have brought instruments pull them out and a wonderful collection of flutes, whistles, drums and rattles emerge. A song has started and the other musicians pick up the melody, followed by voices. Young men listen intently; many songs unknown by them and in their behalf round after round continues so that they can learn them. The first blush of morning is visible around us and the twilight songs change to those that welcome the morning. Today we will throw the bones. We call it that even though some will divine with sticks and stones and other wondrous secret keepers.

The sun has risen and the songs conclude. We stretch our weary bones and stand, some more easily than others do. Unrealized by me the young men have rustled up the semblance of breakfast under the trees of their personal Shadowland. It was a particularly sensitive thing to do especially since so many old ones have come to sit in the circle. A group of us, younger and less fallen, stand aside while the elders are served. No sooner have we settled out in the sun to eat the young men scurry off to the talking circle, stoking the fire, hauling more wood, and generally put it back into pristine order. Carefully they pull out a pile of embers and feed them with deliciously fragrant herbs. The smoke travels throughout the camp securing the readiness for the next round. Eight of us must prepare too and we ask Burnt Knife and Star Stalker to help us. As we move off I notice an impressive group of old women have come in. The Twilight Women are pitching in with the young ones to attend to their needs.

[Gobetween]

Even with our intimate connections to the inviolate farcists Twilight Women become part of the supporting ritual structure. Many old ones have now arrived and its imperative that their needs be met first. Male dreamers are lending their help to the boys, now officially overwhelmed. There is a flow to it and each of them moves to the rhythm of the dance.

Elders completely amaze me. They safeguard so much wisdom that the collective knowledge is immeasurable. They are not here to interfere and yet they scrutinize every nuance. Should some misstep occur they quietly consult together. Elders create a single unit of oversight; no one has the last word. Each is completely confident in what she or he safeguards and yet each stream of knowledge flows harmoniously together.

Somewhere deep in the quiet of the surrounding forest eight individuals offer prayers for an entire people. Some of the old women are making their way into the trees to join them, as are a few more old men. What I wouldn’t give to be there. I sit and try to reconcile the importance of what I am doing with witnessing the history taking place in the shadowy depths. Just as I make some fragile peace with this an old woman takes my arm explaining that she needs my help to join them. Even as it pleases me I feel a twinge of guilt for questioning the sacred design. I should know better by now and am bothered that I don’t. Our progress through the trees is slow and I am glad she knows where we are going. I don’t. Guess she has done this before. I speculate about her age and think that perhaps this is the third such event she has witnessed. After awhile we can hear the prayers off in the distance. They sound like whispers.

The elders outnumber the players now and have encapsulated them in a protective ring of power. At its center sits Darkling Light and Moondog. With them I see Burning Grass, Old-Man-Beard-Lichen, Rosebay, Leaps-in-Light, Hides-in-Holes, and Fire Fox. They are among the dearest people on Earth to me and yet I am here, seemingly by chance, to observe. And remarkably a number of other bards are here as well. I don’t know them but can easily see that they are bedizened in unmistakable garb.

The prayers are focused on the need to embrace the responsibility of what each of the players face for their people. I would find it a terrifying commitment to have to make. The most innocent mistake made by one or all of a mere eight individuals could set off a tidal wave of unknown consequence that would ripple through the lives of five thousand people for nearly two decades. And yet the eight are peaceful and through this deliberate prayerful process they are systematically shedding any personal shortcomings that might thwart the intent. I hear words such as fear and doubt, weakness being released, given back to the Earth to be dealt with by the greatest power of all. Their prayer sounds like a soliloquy of the human spirit, sung by the solifidians who know it in their souls. I notice that the only scrutinizing eyes are those of the bards. The old ones silently recite the prayers with their eyes closed. It has gone on for hours and elders are drawing from deep pools of strength to remain on their feet. I struggle to stay a detached witness; overwhelmed by the devotion of spirit that is a privilege to experience.

The prayers are subsiding. With a subtle, almost indiscernible signal from Burnt Knife one of the bards draws a reedgrass flute from his vest, conveying the prayers to all the distant villages and out into the cosmos. Another enters the ring and expertly builds a small fire. One by one our elders offer various herbs to the quiet flames while Burnt Knife seals in the medicine. I am surprised by how many people have shown up.

Moondog takes my hand as I wrap my arm in the frail one of the elder I escorted. Everyone able-bodied has assumed assisting the old ones and we make our way back through the trees to the talking circle. We are now down to the business at hand.

Toxicity: not known

C. erythraea (Feverwort)    Continent: Eurasia    Habitat: VI, VII

C. pulchellum (Centaury)    Continent: Eurasia    Habitat: III, VI

Applicable Plant Components: herb, flower

Convocational: herb

Psychical: herb

Harmonical: herb

Pacificatory: flower

Theurgical: herb

Vulnerary: herb

Plenitudinal: herb

Anecdotal: The spirit within Centaurium is invoked to address spiritual pain associated with past, genetous events that led to the loss of will as well as the loss of spiritual energy or direction. It is a formidable incarnant for reconciling endopsychic wounds including broken hearts. It provides inordinate protection against malevolent spirits, especially those that shoot invisible arrows. The properties extend to include exorcising those that perpetrate the loss of comprehension regarding dreams and visions. It is believed that Centaurium is at it’s finest as smudge or steam entreated during nights when the stars are bright and vivid. Perhaps distasteful to some I learned that when Centaurium is added to plover or lapwing blood and burned in a lamp it invokes malevolent spirits in order to identify and defeat them. In no manner could I personally consider, condone or excuse such practices in my own life. I offer this information only because I found it in the historic record.

Toxicity: not known

C. cyanus (Bluebow, Cornflower)    Continent: Europe    Habitat: VI

C. calcitrapa (Red Star Thistle)    Continent: Europe    Habitat: VII

C. nigra (Black Knapweed)    Continent: Europe    Habitat: VI

C. scabiosa (Greater Knapweed)    Continent: Eurasia    Habitat: VI

Applicable Plant Components: herb, root, seed, flower

Sanctificational: root, seed

Convocational: herb

Psychical: root, seed, herb

Desistant: root, seed

Preserval: herb, seed

Vulnerary: seed, herb, root

Plenitudinal: root, seed

Plenarial: root, seed

Affirmational: flower

Resurgent: flower

Anecdotal: The spirit within Centaurea is invoked to address endopsychic wounds responsible for loss of self-expression or the attrition of spiritual energy or direction. This property extends to include exorcising malevolent spirits suspected of interfering with ones ability to understand the visions or dreams received. Centaurea is an agent of empowerment and deeply linked to sacred cycles.

Over the years I have grown to despise this type of compartmentalized thinking as well as the perception that the very notion of competition was somehow immoral or not evolved. That is certainly not the case in the natural world. We now perceive everything as stored neatly in its own little box. We view an idea such as competition as a satellite sitting alone in space rather than seeing all of Creation holistically. I wondered if such thinking was the outcome of a belief perpetuated for a long time that humanity was superior to all else, separated from the whole and viewed singularly. When confronted by something that tried to climb out its box we became miffed, wielding real or imaginary swords and making it clear, either get back in the box or else. We have displaced and slaughtered everything that did not bend to our will, plants, animals, and other people. After six, eight, maybe ten millennia of such behavior we have cultivated a new mode of thinking; that the moral high ground is to regard all displays of competition as distasteful and often outrageous. Tears come to our eyes when we watch sea lions going after penguins or mountain lions feasting on fawns. As a species we are clearly conflicted and confused, remaining as out of balance as we were in the days of Manifest Destiny and beyond. And even as we hold this moral high ground as the height of enlightenment we fail to view even clinically our horrendous over-population (now exceeding many times the carrying capacity of our beloved Earth) as the very trigger that spawns the most savage competition for resources. I could only conclude that the initial question was flawed and I went back to my understanding of the natural world to sort it out. I realized that I struck upon it in Ancestral Airs:

“Our conversation turned quickly to the tournaments that were to be held the next day. The games represented the sacred mandate of rivalry in natural order. All plants and animals exhibited one or more of these imperatives, driving away opponents with painful or aggressive tactics. Many birds, scavengers, and meat eaters competed fiercely with each other, as did we. It wasn’t uncommon for one to harm another in effort to protect its territory and the resources within it. From the mystery contained in the interchange was sprung the concept of community where the swing and sway of ideas and feelings, even when hostile, were held in loving balance.”

Community, that is what an ecosystem is, a community of plants and animals (including humans) that for whatever strategy might be employed, is held in loving balance. It is definitely not looking individually at two or ten plants and citing them as examples of competition. When we were Earth-worshipping Pagans we were the definitive experts of the natural world’s harmony and we lived within its dictate. We understood innately, and in detail we can only imagine now, that nature held it all in mysterious check and that is a mystery we have yet to resolve. I don’t think we ever will or will know again the complex mystery of the Primordial Mother Goddess the Earth. For millions of years, bands and communities of hunter-gatherers with their incomparable genius for all things Earth succeeded in living as simply one of countless species that made up a given biomass. We didn’t stand on the sideline watching, we were an intrinsic part of it. And yet not our relatives or we made a detrimental impact on our planet, most left without a single trace of having ever been alive.

Before I spin off into too much esotery I want to draw your attention to the book I regard as the finest ever written about ecology and its many facets of mystery. It is called The Machinery of Nature and is written by Paul R. Ehrlich. If you never read another you must read this one. He concludes, after explaining the laws of energy conservation, that “In any ecosystem the amount of energy available to each successive trophic level declines. Thus more energy is available to support plants than herbivores, more to support herbivores than carnivores, and so on.” He goes on to explain “that the biomass of grasses and other grazed plants is much greater than that of the grazers, and that the biomass of the grazers is much greater than that of the predators that attack them.” He further states, “About 10% of the energy that flows into one trophic level is available to the next. Thus if green plants in an area manage to capture 10,000 units of energy from the sun, only about 1000 units will be available to support herbivores, and only about 100 to support carnivores.” Too bad my inquisitor never read this book. Clearly, no two species competes with each other, not really. Each, plant, animal, or we, competes for needed units of energy to survive; we compete for sunlight.

Here, Ehrlich has made an absolutely eloquent case for feeding our ventricose population with plants. But even more intriguing is the fact that this is supported by the study of Paleo diets, a study decades old for me. It has been implied for centuries that our Stone Age ancestors were big meat eaters. That is a myth. Granted, our big, fat brains need a steady supply of protein, but all of the evidence points to the fact that we as humans (and our relatives) are and always have been omnivores where at least 85% of our diets were made up of vegetable matter. Statistically as Ehrlich points out, and esoterically with my insistence of hunter-gatherer genius of the world in which he lived, being a big meat eater is both impractical and probably impossible. But how might this have led to the concept of community?

In the idealistic hunter-gatherer world, population grew and declined based on the availability of food. The only way to protect what was then a fragile and fleeting population was to share equally all available resources. We held a cultivated view that in doing so reproductive imperatives insured the survival and longevity of the tribe via future generations. Over harvesting and over hunting stood in stark contrast to that and we knew it. Frugality quickly became the foundation of a community’s ability to endure and led to a level of Earth worship and mystical knowledge unlike anything we have seen since. Yes, we competed with every organism in the biomass but our wisdom prevented us from driving any species into extinction. We understood in intimate detail the loss of any species led to starvation.

In contrast to that and no doubt due to our notion of human superiority and our over-population we have been driven to compete for every scrap, every inch of soil, every glimpse of attention for which our fragile egos hunger. Any hunter-gatherer from any place or time would immediately recognize how profoundly out of balance his descendants have become.

Technology is now paraded as the measure of civilized society, the litmus test of evolution, even as civilization remains defined by the quality and care it extends to its community. As a species that same technology has driven each of us into our own individual bubbles of isolation even as we celebrate those technological breakthroughs. When once long ago our community held precedence over personal ambition and identity we are left with the identity of one and utterly alone even as our glutted population increases minute by minute. We are rutting out an existence devoid of companionship or sense of purpose, competing fiercely and failing miserably. No wonder competition as one of the sacred mandates of healthy ecosystems has gotten such a bad rap.

If we really want to catch the prayers of our shamanic ancestors, the true magic makers of our species, we must first step into the harmonic balance of community found in knowing the natural world. In principle at least we can take that wisdom and rebuild our sense of community in profoundly simple ways. When we have the resources to buy two heads of lettuce, give one away to our neighbor. When our gardens are particularly productive we can donate the surplus to our local food bank. We can donate time to feed the homeless or help our neighbor solve his problem, whatever that problem might be. There was a time when we continually assessed the needs of our community and took action to insure that all survived, and survived well. We now careen off into a lonely, virtual world that neither feeds our bodies, our souls, our neighbors, nor fuels a sense of mystery and wonder. And while we struggle to relinquish our notion of me, myself, and I, lets remember all those elders imprisoned and forgotten in facilities. They are our last link to comprehend our misguided path. Once revered as the wisdom keepers, we now view our elders with a shrug and a sigh. They and they alone can tell us their piece of the puzzle and show us where our missteps might have happened. Our elders who remain alive today have the long view and have marked the long calendar. With their help we can retrace our steps back to the shamanic view of community, founded in natural order and its sacred mandates, where everything is held in loving balance.

Toxicity: not known

Common Names: Sweetgrass, Water Whorl Grass

Continent: Europe/North America

Habitat: V

Applicable Plant Component: herb

Invitatory

Harmonical

Anecdotal: Catabrosa is Bull and Waterfowl Medicine. Catabrosa is a type of sweetgrass burned in rituals that help open up the ceremony to ancestral and beneficent spirits.

]]> http://www.verdasmedley.com/?feed=rss2&p=1084 0 http://www.verdasmedley.com/?p=1076&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=caraway-carum http://www.verdasmedley.com/?p=1076#comments Tue, 08 May 2012 19:02:00 +0000 verda http://www.verdasmedley.com/?p=1076 Continue Reading]]> Name: Carum verticillatum

Toxicity: uterine stimulant

Common Name: Caraway

Continent: Europe

Habitat: III

Applicable Plant Components: seed

 Sanctificational

Invitatory

Fortificational

Pacificatory

Reversional

Theurgical

Amoristic

Protectant

Plenitudinal

Ecstatic

Divinatory

Affixal

Resurgent

Anecdotal: Carum is Boar Medicine. The spirit within Carum is invoked to resolve spiritual pain. It strengthens both retention and memories. Carum affords inordinate protection against malevolent spirits and its presence is particularly valued for quieting and guarding children. Carum is also believed to prevent the theft of anything that contains it. It is handled to promote harmony within sacred cycles and linked directly to abundance. As love medicine, Carum is associated with enhancing ones appeal to the object of their attention. It is thought to insure that neither fickleness nor infidelity jeopardizes the greater objective of love in a relationship.