Opening Up To Ourselves: Agrimony Plant Profile

It can be hard to ask for help when we need it, especially when we use chronic cheerfulness as a way to hide our own suffering in stressful situations. Most of us know (or maybe are) a person who keeps saying “I’m fine! Everything’s great!” when they have every reason to not be ok. Agrimony (Agrimonia eupatoria) is the plant ally that they’ll probably never reach for by themselves (“Really, I’m fine!”) but the sort of plant friend they need and deserve.

Agrimony is a plant that has been in the traditional western materia medica for thousands of years, helping to alleviate many forms of suffering, which is why I’m excited to be exploring this plant more in-depth with all of you.

And maybe, for those of you who have stumbled across this post, after a long day of Agrimony smiling (learn what an “Agrimony smile” is below), you may feel called to get the loving care and connection you deserve.

image source

Agrimony
(Agrimonia eupatoria)

Common + Folk Names : Common Agrimony, burr marigold, liverwort, church steeples, cocklebur, garclive, philantropos, sticklewort, stickwort, red-tail, goosechite, fairy's wand, aaron's rod, grooveburr

Element : Air, Water

Zodiac Signs : Cancer (Remedy Herb), Virgo (Guardian Herb)

Planets : Moon, Mercury, Venus

Moon Phase : New Moon

Tarot Cards :  The Hermit, Justice, The Tower (learn more about the connections between the tarot and herbs)

Parts used : Aerial parts

Habitat : Native to Eurasia. 

Growing conditions : Wildflower conditions. Sunny, sandy hillsides, and poor soil.

Collection : Harvest when flowering through summer.

Flavor : Bitter

Temperature : Dry

Moisture : Cool

Tissue State : Tense/Constriction, Heat/Excitation

Constituents : Polysaccharides, tannins, triterpene acids, glycosidal bitters, agrimonin, furanocoumarins, volatile oils, flavonoids, coumarins, vitamin B, vitamin K, iron, silicon, phenolic acids.

Actions : Analgesic, anti-inflammatory, antiparasitic, antiviral, astringent, digestive, diuretic, emmenagogue, febrifuge, hemostatic, hepatic, vulnerary.

Main Uses : I first met Agrimony through my flower essence studies - it is one of Dr. Edward Bach's 38 original remedies. The essence was described to me as being best for folks who tend to "grin and bear it" or to smile through their suffering. The origin of their smile and its purpose can be manifold for a person. Sometimes folks, especially those socialized as and/or perceived to be women, experience undue expectations to perform cheerfulness for everyone who interacts with them. Sometimes the smile is meant to deflect the curiosity of others, so that the suffering or disharmony beneath the surface goes undetected. The smile might be a shield against confrontation or a way to prove your strength and good-naturedness or to generally appease another person. The smile can be a shield used so often in unsafe situations where a more powerful party must be placated, especially in early childhood, that it becomes a permanent fixture of a person's interaction with nearly everyone in their life.  Learning to spot a smile like this in the consultation room can be a useful skill in helping to figure out what questions to ask to draw a person out and begin to get them help they deserve  but might be afraid to outright ask for not only within an herbal care context but broader health services.

Later on in my practice when I learned about the medicinal gifts that Agrimony offers, I was reminded of the resonance that is often found between the flower essence energetics and the herbal properties of a plant. As an herb, Agrimony helps to alleviate the (often invisible) suffering hidden behind the "Agrimony smile" including peptic ulcers and indigestion. Indications for Agrimony include indigestion that is aggravated by stress and tension caused by "swallowing" your feelings to keep the peace, poor absorption of nutrients, and not enough secretion of digestive bile from the liver and gall-bladder. Greek herbalist Galen classified Agrimony as hot and dry in the first degree making it a useful herb for thinning out build-up in organ systems and re-opening clogged passages.¹ Agrimony has been used since antiquity for ulcers as well as all types of liver and gallbladder diseases and herbalists today still use Agrimony for conditions such as gallstones, cirrhosis of the liver, jaundice, and portal hypertension. Other uses for Agrimony as a drying and opening herb include clearing the respiratory system of excess mucus as well as opening the airways to alleviate the symptoms of asthma. 

Through a traditional western energetic lens, those who would benefit from Agrimony are often experiencing an excess of Earth manifesting as build-up and tension in the body because there is so much Air (self-expression, mental health support, decisiveness) and Water (feeling and emotional need) that needs a structure or container to find a home in that they are not experiencing in their life and relationships. These emotional experiences of Agrimony folk and their use of the "Agrimony smile" to cope are not the cause of their suffering, but are often a result of a life that has been defined by lack - lack of resources to good food and clean water, shelter and quality education, and/or a lack in their personal relationships. It is important to be wary of any belief you hold about how someone may have "deserved" or "manifested" their disease because of circumstances beyond their control and we should honor their stories while making sure they access the support they need to thrive. Agrimony types are already taking on so much all while struggling to maintain a sense of agency - be mindful of how you might be contributing to the pressure of having to suppress their discomfort in order to appease you or anyone else on their healing team. Here, too, is a gift of Agrimony to the practitioner - helping us to sit with our own discomfort and biases and come out the other side more compassionate and curious.

The other primary use for Agrimony, from the ancient world to the modern one, is as a vulnerary (i.e. an herb for wound care). Agrimony is an excellent plant ally, both externally and internally, for wounds of all kinds including bruises, strains, cuts, swellings, and general joint pain. You can use the herb as an astringent compress and as a tea when healing a wound, as well as an ingredient in drawing and blood stopping powders. Agrimony has antiviral and antioxidant qualities, adding to its gifts as a healer of wounds. The herb can also be used in the case of infection as well as clearing out heat present in conditions like fever and inflammatory conditions (from inflamed joints to inflamed gut). As an astringent plant with an affinity for the fluids of the body, Agrimony can be a useful ally in cases of menorrhagia, lessening heavy periods as well as providing mild pain relief - look for signs of excess heat during menstruation. Agrimony can be used in mouthwashes and gargles for mouth ulcers, sore throats, laryngitis, and inflammation of the gums. Use in footbaths to relieve soreness.

image via @wyxina

Magickal Uses : Agrimony has an long association with sleep magick and herbalist Maude Grieve shares an old English rhyme speaking to Agrimony's ability to bring about a restful and undisturbed sleep:

If it be leyd under mann's heed,
He shal sleepyn as he were deed;
He shal never drede ne wakyn
Till fro under his heed it be takyn.²

Include Agrimony in charms against nightmares as well as in blends to bring about trance states. An herb regarded as a panacea by ancient Greek and Roman herbalists, Agrimony can be included in all forms of healing magick to enhance the outcome of the spell. Scott Cunningham notes that Agrimony is an excellent protective herb, one that can be used to return unwanted energy to the sender, as well as banishing negative energy (as well as goblins, apparently).³ Use to help you find community of a healing nature.

The Agrimony Personality : The smile of Agrimony folk hides so much - their fear of conflict, their fear of rejection, of being denied their humanity. Agrimony folk can suffer from a build up of emotions that leads to emotional clogging, stagnation, and an inner tension that feels unbearable. This pattern of hiding their pain while appeasing the emotional needs of others (whether or not their is an expectation of appeasement by the other person), is a defense mechanism that has kept Agrimony folk feeling safe enough in their life, but the price of that "safe enough" feeling has been a high one to pay. While Agrimony folks have been so busy projecting an appearance of cheerful enthusiasm and peace with their situation, this often leads them to believing their own performance, making it that much more challenging for them to admit that they are in any sort of pain.

Vulnerability is terrifying to many Agrimony folk and the honest expression of how they are feeling to people who deserve to hear their story is one of the most challenging experiences Agrimony folk can go through and they have often already been through a lot. Agrimony folk can be adept at hiding their pain because they have overdeveloped skills for "grinning and bearing it" and invest incredible amounts of energy into passing as being more than ok. Sometimes they use tools such as drugs and alcohol, deceitfulness, toxic masculinity, committed superficiality or spiritual bypassing to maintain appearances, but it cannot hold. With bravery, vulnerability, and therapeutic support, working with Agrimony can help these folks to open up emotionally so that they can experience the inner peace they are trying so hard to convince other people they have. Connecting with their inner peace helps Agrimony folks to clear out fear and welcome in the type of transformative relationships with themselves and others they've been seeking for so long.

Contraindications : Avoid in pregnancy and breastfeeding. 

Drug interactions : Caution with anticoagulant medication, insulin, and hypoglycemic medication. Discontinue seven days before surgery.

Dosage : Standard dosage.

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Do you know someone who has an Agrimony smile? Are you that person? I find the emotional indicators for plants so interesting. I hope you had fun learning more about Agrimony and the ways it helps us to tend to our emotional wellbeing alongside our physical healing needs. If you’re looking for more plant profiles, come this way, and you can find a printable copy of the Agrimony profile in The Plant Ally Library.

Agrimony works well with other plants like Milky Oat (Avena sativa) and Skullcap (Scutellaria lateriflora), so if you feel a resonance with what you’ve read so far be sure to check out those plant allies, too.

May your journey of healing lead you back into ever-deepening connection with your community.

This post was made possible through patron support.
❤︎ Thanks, friends. ❤︎

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Footnotes

1. Graeme Tobyn, Alison Dunham, Margaret Whitelegg, The Western Herbal Tradition: 2000 Years of Medicinal Plant Knowledge (Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone Elsevier, 2011), 47.

2. Maude Grieve, A Modern Herbal: Volume I (New York: Dover Publications, 1971), 13.

3. Scott Cunningham, Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs (St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn, 2001), 27.

Plant Allies for Ancestral Healing

I remember sitting alone as a kid, with my well-loved books on working with herbs open in front of me, and feeling like I was being gathered up not just by the stories of the plants themselves, but by something else alongside the green wisdom I was so eager for. I couldn't tell you what half the ingredients were in the botanical skincare book I was reading or yet identify a Peppermint (Mentha piperita) plant from a Sage (Salvia officinalis) from my gardening book, but I could tell that this feeling of being held was a good thing, a needed thing, a healing thing. I now reflect on these moments, where I experienced respite from the loneliness that can haunt strange kids, and recognize my ancestors drawing near and sheltering my curiosity of my plant kin so that it might grow into the life I live now. The books I was reading weren't full of ancestral magick (except for the occasional mention of "ancient people believed this plant to protect against lightning"), but reciting the names of plants worked like a spell, calling forth my ancient people, who understand the power of knowing a plant's name.

While I feel fortunate to have been introduced to working with ancestors as a path of healing early on in my life, I am fascinated and filled with hope by the ways that modern therapeutic practice is embracing the need to heal our ancestral lines, whether we call it epigenetics, inherited trauma or that story our great grandma used to tell. Of course, healing the ancestral line is not a new practice - this is an old path of healing, that some of us have been lucky enough to be raised in and others of us are getting to experience through renewed traditions. It makes my work as an herbalist easier, too, when folks come to me with some familiarity to the idea that the fears and anxieties their ancestors felt, especially from big traumatic experiences, have shaped all of us in all sorts of ways.

Before I was ever introduced to the concept of inherited trauma and epigenetics, however, I understood that some of the plants I was using today had been used by some of my ancestors for hundreds of years, and while I couldn't, as a child, give you a complex explanation of what that meant, I knew it was meaningful. While there is healing that takes place on a physical level through mediums like surgical interventions, appropriate medication, the tending of wounds, the healing that takes place on an emotional and mental level needs, amongst other things, meaning. It is meaningful, even if we don't know our ancestors' names, speak their language or have been offered any of their stories, to work with plants that our ancestors would recognize and feel at home with.

image via @appolinary_kalashnikova

Working with plants has always felt like ancestral practice because I started working with herbs as a way to reclaim and reconnect with the ways my ancestors. When I began practicing as an herbalist, and especially when I started working with other people of the global majority, especially mixed folks like myself, ancestral work and healing became increasingly centered in my work. For me, ancestral plant work starts with honoring plants as our ancestors - plants having watched our species evolve - so that every cup of tea can be a way of acknowledging the presence of and welcoming our ancestors in. One of the simplest ways to start an ancestral healing practice is to set out a cup of tea for your ancestors, inviting them in to enjoy it with you, every time you make a cup for yourself. 

If you are interested in developing an ancestral healing practice with plants as your allies, the following suggestions come from the plants themselves, my own experiences, and from plant folk who've shared them with me. I share them with you now in hopes of inspiring your own ancestral healing practice, as well as supporting the ancestral healing work of the communities you serve.

image via @andrewshelley

Work with ancient plants as your ancestors

If you feel called to honor plants as ancestral spirits, you can work with ancient plants. A few years ago I was in a particularly hard stretch of examining, trying to name, as well as make sense of some of my family’s inherited trauma. I held a complex pain as I sat with these stories of knowing they were incomplete, that I didn’t know many of my ancestor’s names or where even where they came from. I had started working with Rose (Rosa spp.) daily around this time and at one point felt a very clear sense of Rose as ancestor, helping to fill in those gaps of knowledge with their gentle wisdom. I later learned that Rose is an ancient plant species, having been around for millions of years before our modern human species. This experience with Rose changed my relationship with plants within ancestral healing as not just herbs that our ancestors used, but as ancestors themselves, having evolved before and with us as a species.

I consider ancient plants to be species that we know have been with us for millions of years or plants that are particularly long-lived. Ancient plants include Rose (Rosa spp.) and Ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba) both of which you can work with as ancestor spirits to help you connect with your own ancestral line. There is something powerful about sitting in deep reverence with a plant like Rose who has watched us grow and evolve as a species. You're essentially connecting with Rose as the Mighty Dead in order to seek out your known and unknown Beloved Dead. Long-lived trees like Oak (Quercus spp.), Yew (Taxus spp.), and Redwoods (Sequoia spp.) are also good options as well as the ancient plants of folklore such as Mugwort (Artemisia spp.) which is known as the oldest of herbs in Anglo-Saxon lore. 

Working with ancient plants can include using them internally (i.e. teas, tinctures, food, and so on) and externally (i.e. baths, incense, herbal oils, and so on), creating altars, charms, and talismans featuring your ancient plant ally, writing poetry, creating art, journaling with them, dancing and singing with them, and whatever else you're called to do. As I mentioned in the introduction, you can leave out a cup of tea for your ancestors whenever you make one for yourself as a way to invite your ancestors into your home, your practice, and to offer them to participate in healing your ancestral lines (or just have a bit of a chat). You can make this into a deeper practice, by choosing to do this everyday, combined with some sort of meditative activity, for a few days to a full cycle of the Moon.

What I love about working with plants as ancestors is that it helps those of us who do not have direct connection with our ancestral lines or complicated ancestors who we are struggling to connect with, to still work with ancestral healing. Working with ancient plants is a wonderful community practice, especially when working with a group of folks from a mix of ethnicities.

Work with plants within your heritage

Another way to approach ancestral healing work is to work with plants that you either know for certain or can make an informed guess that your (cultural, ethnic, and/or spiritual) ancestors used. This idea is part of many modern Pagan traditions which encourage practitioners to connect with their ancestors through plants, places, food, songs, and anything that would be familiar to their ancient people. Where this idea of ancestral plants for present-day healing really became centered for me was when I was during my training as a doula (birth labor assistant) and my teacher spoke to the healing that can happen when you use foods and herbs with your pregnant client that would be familiar to their genetic line. She spoke of it as a way to help a birthing person connect with the lineage and strength of birthing people before them through inviting ancestors in through the food and herbs they eat during pregnancy. It is a view of healing I've carried with me throughout my herbal practice.

Besides explicit exploration of your own or a client's ancestral and plant medicine heritage, if I have a few similar plants that I am considering offering to a client, sometimes I end up choosing one that is an ancestral plant for them. I've seen a lot of magick happen between plant and person when the story of how this plant has been working with their family and cultural line for generations is finally able to be told and heard. Reintroducing Turmeric (Curcuma longa) to someone as not just a plant they saw their dad cooking with as a child, but a plant with deep-rooted ancestral meaning can be powerful stuff. Working with plants that your ancestors would've known can be one of the ways of addressing epigenetic trauma as you're partaking in a medicine that is familiar to your body and the bodies of (at least some of) your ancestors on a genetic level. 

image via @jplenio

Work with trance plants

You can also work with plants that help to induce transcendent states to help you connect with your ancestors more directly. I'm not speaking about entheogenic plants, but herbs that are often classified as dream plants in traditional western herbal and magickal tradition. Plants like Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) and Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) are good options. For example, I use Mugwort to help bring about dreams where I connect with my ancestors or to deepen my meditation, divination, and/or trancework practice where connecting to my ancestors is the goal. I do think that these herbs work best when you already have a meditation and/or trancework practice already in place and if you're looking to develop either or those, breathwork is a good place to start.

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I hope you've found some inspiration for your ancestral healing practice. To be perfectly honest, it doesn't matter what plants you are working with - I think the most powerful way of working with plants in ancestral work is to view them as partners in calling in and making space for your ancestors.

If you're looking for more inspiration for developing a herbal healing practice, come this way. You can also peruse my collection of plant profiles to see if one speaks to your ancestral line. If you want to not only connect with your ancestors but your ancient self, I have a tarot spread for that. And if you want a classic, Samhain-inspired ancestor reading, I have a tarot spread for that, too. If you’re looking for a collection of Moon-centered rituals to support your ancestral practice, check out The Moonfolk Book of Shadows.

May your explorations of ancestral healing bear fruit while healing your roots.

This post was made possible through patron support.
❤︎ Thanks, friends. ❤︎

Familiars: A Tarot Spread to Connect with Your Intuitive Allies

We are heading towards the deep valley of Samhain and I come to you again with what is becoming an annual tradition of a new tarot spread for the season. Whether studying the celestial energy of the season, connecting with ancestors or exploring the themes of reconciliation, transformation, and shadow work, Samhain is a rich time for practicing divination, in part, because the veil between the worlds is thin and the opportunity to connect with ancestors, descendants, and spirits alike are many.

For this year's Samhain celebrations I wanted to offer a tarot spread that helps us connect with the tradition of the witch's familiar. The following tarot spread helps those of you who want to connect with the magickal current of familiar relationships to do just that. If you have an established familiar relationship, this tarot spread can be one way of communicating with your familiar. If you are calling a familiar to you, the spread can be a casting of a spell, helping you call a familiar to you. For those who are not called to the familiar tradition, the tarot spread easily adapts to being one that helps you connect with your hidden but guiding intuitive and instinctive nature.

If you want, you can make a ritual of casting cards to connect with your familiar and/or intuitive-instinctive self. Light two candles from a common flame, make an offering of water, food, and sacred scent and/or song. Find four stones and hold them in your hands while whispering a spell that only your familiar (or intuitive self) will know, placing them in the four corners of your home helping to make steady the path by which your familiar (or intuitive self) can come home to you. Then cast your cards…

Familiars
A Tarot Spread to Connect with Your Intuitive Allies

Card 1. I Am Called…

Some of the most powerful works of magick are acts of naming. While this card might not offer a distinct name (but, it just might), it helps you understand the name your familiar wishes to be called. For an intuitive-instinctive spread, this is an interesting practice of naming a part of yourself yearning to be named. 

Card 2. By This Sign I Am Known…

This card acts as a descriptor for your familiar and may also indicate the signs they show you to indicate that they are about. For an intuitive-instinctive spread, the sign(s) or descriptive elements of the card indicate when you need to stop and pay attention.

Card 3. Welcome Me With…

This card helps you understand the ways that your familiar wishes to be taken care of. In other words, the feeding of your familiar on a magickal, energetic, practice-based level. The feeding of a familiar can take many forms through offerings of all kinds, breathwork, song, and more. For an intuitive-instinctive spread, this card is about the feeding or nurturing of your intuition.

Card 4. I Call You…

With this card we learn about what your familiar calls you, for it is not only an act of magick to name something, but to be named in turn. Often this card highlights an aspect of your magickal nature that calls your familiar to you. For an intuitive-instinctive spread this card names something important, interesting, inspiring about your intuitive gifts that is important to recognize about yourself.

Card 5. About You, I Know…

Following I Call You, this card further expands on what your familiar knows about you and a certain need you have that calls them to you. In a way, a familiar is an answer to a witch's question, and this card highlights what that answer (or another useful question) might be. For an intuitive-instinctive spread, this card represents something that you are hoping to discover through connecting more deeply with your intuitive-instinctive self.

Card 6. Together We Can…

This final card highlights what may be accomplished, developed or understood through working with your familiar. For an intuitive-instinctive spread, the card represents the same thing, except with your relationship to trusting your intuition.

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If you're looking for more inspiration for your Samhain celebrations, check out my might-do list for the season or my post on the herbs and astrology of Samhain (including Lunar Samhain!). If you're feeling haunted, there are some plant allies you might consider working with.

May your work with the part of you that knows before you know, be it familiar form, intuitive nature or a bit of both, be revelatory and healing.

This post was made possible through patron support.
❤︎ Thanks, friends. ❤︎

A Might-Do List for the Full Moon

Having written a might-do series for the sabbats, I thought it time to make one for the esbats. A "might-do list" is a no-pressure, full of inspiration guide to magickal practice where you are encouraged to do or not do whatever speaks to you for a particular celebration. An esbat is a (typically, though not exclusively) lunar-focused celebration practiced by some magickal folk in some contemporary traditions of Paganism (most notably Wicca) and witchcraft. Sometimes esbat refers to all celebrations of a coven or an individual outside of sabbat rituals. The term "esbat" was adopted into Wicca by the spiritual magpie Gerald Gardner via the work of Margaret Murray who described the esbat as a time for celebration, rites to aid coven members, and times of music, dancing, and "sheer enjoyment."¹ While modern Pagan traditions like Wicca have their own formalized and beautiful rituals and practices for the esbats, I'll be making suggestions for Full Moon celebrations that aren't tied to any specific tradition. 

The Full Moon is a time of gathered energy, ripe and ready for magick. During the Full Moon there can be a feeling of abundance and openness in the air, of expansion and possibility. Under the light of the Full Moon we can feel untethered from what is "normal" and expected as the night becomes brightly illuminated - not quite day, but not quite the feeling of night either, marking a space between the known and unknown.

How we mark time - by fixed calendar, lunar calendar, seasonal changes, personal rhythms, and so on - can create or contract space for the type of healing work and magickal practice we hope to experience, which is why time is such an interesting thing to explore in our lives. When I talk about magickal practice to my students, I always encourage them to begin observing lunar cycles as a way to not only connect back to ancestral rhythms of measuring time, but to begin to connect with time in a way that feels supportive of magickal practice - something cyclical, open to change, and able to hold space for all of our complexities.

So if you're curious about developing a Full Moon practice, here's a list of nine things you might-do for your esbat celebrations.

image via @whileimout

Reorient Your Compass

The Full Moon creates an opportunity for us to pause and reorient. Our lives are busy and filled with all sorts of decisions that need to be made, things that need to be done, and tasks to be tackled. It is easy to forget where we are and where we want to be living our life from. With Her bright light illuminating hidden spaces, the Full Moon is a wonderful time to reconnect to our inner compass of values and visions, of healing and lineage, of purpose and dreaming, so we can feel more connected to our centered self as another lunar cycle unfolds before us. This can be done in all sorts of ways through ritual and actions of care, but one simple ritual is to write down your values and guiding principles in a way that feels simple enough to recite and empowering to say. An example might be:

I am, {Name},
I call in beauty and mirth,
compassion and patience,
kindness and wonder,
that I may be in right relationship
with my beloved community
the land I live with
and the vision of a vibrant, joyful planet

I also think singing simple chants are a beautiful way to realign energy and help us to center ourselves in our values. Let's say you're a peace activist and abolitionist - maybe you sing the Circle Chant by Linda Hirschhorn, which was originally written in support of the 1982 janitor's strike of UA movie theaters, and sings of circling for freedom and peace.² A song like the Circle Chant, or anything from the song collective Beautiful Chorus, or the vast archive of old and modern Pagan chants, can be an easy, joyful way to feel strengthened in our purpose and calling.

Gather Energy

Under the Full Moon, energy is pulled up from deep in the earth, gathering in swirling pools and rushing lines across the land. It is a time when we can walk the land and call that energy into ourselves or summon the light of the Moon wherever we might be on a Full Moon night. It is also traditional to leave items that we want to be charged up under the light of the Full Moon, including tools of divination, stones, and jewelry, being sure to bring them back inside before the Sun rises. 

Connect With the Cosmic Coven

While I'm using the word "coven" I am really referring to the form of community that you are most called to connect with. As a young witch who had limited access to the greater Pagan community, the idea that at every Full Moon there were other witch folk and Pagans creating magick under Her light was completely enchanting and filled me with a sense of belonging as I sat at my bedroom altar. Working with the cycles of the Moon is not just a personal preference for me and an act of liberation from static solar, patriarchal measurements of time, but a way to connect to ancestral traditions, living communities of the present, and helping to make a path of Moon magick for generations to come. If you have a working magickal group, but are practicing solo for the Full Moon, it can be lovely to coordinate rituals or keep an item on an altar that connects you to the rest of your circle. But if you're still seeking a group or don't have an interest in group practice but want to feel connected to the wider magickal community, you might take a moment to visualize and breathe into the web of community that runs through us all. If you're looking for further inspiration, a few years ago I wrote about how every Full Moon you have a coven.

You may have noticed that I've been emphasizing connecting with people, as opposed to land or spirits or divinities, because I think that making time to call in and be called to community that feels good and nourishing to you is an important regular practice. We live in times where the spell of fracturedness is run amok and we feel more separated and lonely than ever. Creating a monthly practice focused on cultivating community with other people is one that I think we need more than ever and calling in community under the light of the Full Moon is an especially magickal way of helping to do that.

image via @joannakosinska

Develop Your Psychic Gifts

With the energy stirred up under the Full Moon, why not channel that into the development of your psychic gifts? I think a playful approach to getting in touch with our intuition is particularly appropriate for Full Moon celebrations and even better with friends. There are all sorts of ways to develop your psychic gifts, but I wrote about how you can use a tarot deck to help you out. You can also work with plant allies like Motherwort (Leonurus cardiaca), Lemon Balm (Melissa officinalis), and Sage (Salvia officinalis) to help support your psychic energy.

Dream Magick

Speaking of developing psychic gifts, performing dream magick at the time of the Full Moon is particularly auspicious. Here is where you can have fun seeking out traditional and modern dream rituals and spellwork, but a very simple ritual is to call in a dream for a situation you're seeking insight on. Using a stone or plant bundle as a point to anchor your magick, hold it under the Full Moon light while chanting:

Full Moon, O Full Moon
Send me a dream
Illuminate for me 
What remains unseen

Visualize the situation you are seeking insight on as you draw the light of the Full Moon down into your magickal item. Keep your item beside or under your bed to help pull the dream towards you sometime over the next few nights. While you might not remember the dream, you may wake up with a sudden knowing or experience a flash of insight over the next few days to help you with your quandary.

A general tip for all kinds of dreamwork: while there are culturally specific traditions for calling in dreams, I find that performing a dream spell in a dreamlike way can be helpful. So wear that piece of dreamy clothing while dancing around a circle of chalk marked onto the earth, your stone held aloft in the Full Moon light, candles burning, familiars purring…

Connect with the Elements

Within western esoteric tradition, each Full Moon is charged by the energy of one of the four elements of earth, air, fire or water. If you do any sort of elemental-based work in your practice, the Full Moon can be a time to immerse yourself in the elemental energy. A Water Full Moon might be a time to do a lunar bath, dream work, and water-based remedies for the cycle ahead while a Fire Full Moon might be spent before an altar full of candles, working fire magick, and dancing up energy. The element of each Full Moon is determined by the sign it is in:

• Earth Moons happen when the Moon is in Taurus, Virgo, or Capricorn.

• Air Moons happen when the Moon is in Gemini, Libra, or Aquarius.

• Fire Moons happen when the Moon is in Aries, Leo, or Sagittarius.

• Water Moons happen when the Moon is in Cancer, Scorpio, or Pisces.

The four elements are central to the traditional western herbalism philosophy of healing and if you're curious you can learn more about that here.

image via @joeehu

Make Moon Water

I've found that making Moon water is an activity that many a new-to-magick practitioner performs early on in their practice - which makes a lot of sense! It's an accessible, inexpensive, and powerfully simple way of connecting with lunar energy that leaves you with a tangible object that you can use after a night of Full Moon festivities. Setting out a bowl of water under the Full Moon light, maybe with herbs and stones added or a silver coin, feels like an old sort of magick. Moon water is versatile - you can use it in lunar baths and in spellwork, for watering plants, cleaning and blessing your home, and on and on. Some witchfolk even make their flower essences under the light of the Full Moon, carrying the magick of Moon and herb with them in tiny bottles of enchantment to use whenever they need extra emotional support.

Learn or Create Your Own Full Moon Chant

One aspect of modern Pagan culture that I love is the preservation and sharing of knowledge through simple chants, sung or spoken. There are circle-casting chants, chants for healing, chants to raise and banish energy, chants to celebrate rites of passage, and chants to pass on wisdom teachings. There are plenty of Full Moon chants and songs out there - Libana's Full Moonlight Dance is a classic, sung by Full Moon circles around the world, but there are plenty more. You can also draw from your own cultural traditions for lunar chants or create your own. When sung or spoken under a Full Moon month after month, a chant has the power to help us move into a state of reverence and flow, of creativity and magick, with little effort. 

Zone Out

While this post is about things you might-do to celebrate a Full Moon esbat, you also don't need to do anything. It is an act of rebellious magick within the overculture of over-productivity and burnout to choose a nonproductive state of being and to bathe in the waters of un-busyness. If you are able to lie down under the light of the Full Moon with no plan in place, just presence in mind, that is a ritual of zoning out of the normal modes of consciousness and tuning into something else. What that something else is is for you to discover. 

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If you're looking for more inspiration, how about a Full Moon tarot spread and healing ritual for your esbat celebrating? You can also find the rest of my might-do lists for the lunar esbats below:

• A Might-do List for the Dark Moon

• A Might-do List for the New Moon

• A Might-do List for the Quarter Moons

I also have a collection of over 120 lunar-centered rituals and recipes - The Moonfolk Book of Shadows - that you can access for free as a member of my newsletter community. 

Friends, I hope that wherever and however you gather 'neath the Full Moon's light that you are held by the dreams of a thousand generations of magick-makers holding fast the circle of love and possibility.

This post was made possible through patron support.
❤︎ Thanks, friends. ❤︎

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Footnotes

1. Margaret Murray, Witch Cult in Western Europe: A Study in Anthropology (Oxford: Oxford Press 1921), 113.

2. Organizations like Rise Up & Sing are excellent resources for finding inspirational chants and songs.

Vitality: A Tarot Spread for Your Sun Sign

The Moon and our Moon sign is something I've explored a lot as lunar-focused rhythms of astrology and healing are ones that I find interesting and useful. The Moon, though, is just one part of the story of astrology and in western astrology the Moon forms an important triad with our Sun sign and our Ascendent (also known as our Rising Sign). 

There are whole books dedicated to exploring the meaning of the Moon, the Sun, and the Ascendent, drawing upon thousands of years of tradition, but the metaphor I've found most useful in understanding these aspects of our birth chart (and ourselves) is to start by imagining a river.  

image via @mateusjatenee

The water of the river represents our Sun sign. How much or how little water there is, the speed and velocity of the water, what the water is able to carry by the strength of its flow, all represent our inherent energy. Within medical astrology the Sun helps us to understand our baseline energy and the way that our vitality most easily manifests. Our Sun sign also helps us to understand where we are prone to burnout, exhaustion, and overdoing it. Our energy is shaped by much older sources of water from high up in the mountains (i.e. our ancestry and genetics), but there is much more that goes into the energy of who we are and our willpower beyond inherited biology. Some people's energy is more like a slow and ambling river, wandering through the countryside. Other people's energy is wild and rushing, moving quickly through the landscape. There is no "good" or "bad" energy and, while there is a pace that our energy can feel most comfortable in, our energy is changed and shaped by our life experiences.

The banks of the river, the rocks in the water's path, the fish and river life, and everything that affects the flow of water is our Moon sign. Our Moon represents the ways that our energy is shaped not only by our internal workings (i.e. our mental physiology, our nervous system, our emotional experiences), but external factors, especially those experienced in our early years (i.e. the type of family culture we were raised in). Our energy is shaped by and shapes our environment. There are riverbanks that feel familiar and suddenly a boulder drops into a quiet part of our river path, disrupting our flow. The boulder shapes the flow of the river (i.e. a new conscious awareness), but the water also shapes the boulder over time, too. There might be two people who have energy that is quick and rushing, but one person's river is relatively smooth and calm on the surface, leading out to the sea, while another person's river is full of rocks and jagged turns, ultimately dropping over a cliff to create an incredible waterfall. All of our rivers are shaped by the circumstances we were born into, culture, society, and our lived experiences. In this way, the Moon represents how our inherent energy (Sun) is shaped into consciousness, helping us to form our own sense of what feels supportive, comfortable, and true to ourselves as well as what feels unsettling and unsafe. 

Finally, our Ascendent is the spirit of the river itself, representing how we want to be perceived and how we are perceived. A group of people will visit a river and each one may have a different perceptive experiences. Some may take delight in the wild, frothy noise of a rushing river, while others might look out and see a dangerous, unstable energy that must be approached with caution. The spirit of the river might want to be seen as a wild and untamed thing, keeping people at a distance, because this is how they have learned to protect themselves and it has kept them safe from undue interference. Or the spirit of the river might try to create soft riverbanks that feel inviting and gentle, working hard to reshape their rocky edges, wanting to be known as a welcoming place. The spirit of the river is hindered and aided by its inherent flow (i.e. it's Sun sign energy) and instinctual expressive shape (i.e. it's Moon sign energy), but throughout life will shift and change as they engage with the world and the world engages with them. 

In other words, our Sun sign represents our energy and vitality, our Moon sign represents expression of our energy, including our personal stories and memories, and our Ascendent represents the engagement of our energy. The Sun, Moon, and Ascendant are shaped by their placement in our chart and their relationships (i.e. aspects) to other planets and celestial objects, but getting a sense for these three parts of your birth chart is a really good way to start to understand your personal astrology.

So with our mini astrology lesson done, let's look at your Sun sign with a tarot spread that can help you to understand your inherent energy, support systems you might consider, and pitfalls to avoid.

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Vitality: A Sun Sign Tarot Spread

Begin by pulling out the Sun card from your tarot deck and set it out at the top of your reading space. If you like you can place candles around it and build a solar altar full of items representing Sun energy and your own Sun sign. You might include solar plant allies like Calendula (Calendula officinalis), California Poppy (Eschscholzia californica), Sunflower (Helianthus spp.), Chamomile (Matricaria recutita), and St. Joan's Wort (Hypericum perforatum).  Focus on creating a space that feels welcoming to your energy.

Card 1: Radiant

This card describes your inherent energy. It can be helpful to observe the elemental signature of the card. Fire and Air cards, for example, tend to represent energy that is quick to manifest, though might not be the most sustainable or prone to last, while Water and Earth cards can represent energy that is slower to move and manifest but with greater longevity and endurance. For those of you familiar with the astrological correspondences of the tarot, you can draw on this knowledge, too.

Card 2: Protected

The characters and landscape of this card can help to describe the sort of people, places, and situations that your energy feels most supported and able to flow easily through. Pulling the 10 of Cups, for example, may represent the way that you feel most recharged and able to act from a place of steady energy when you are surrounded by good friends and family. In other words, an energy that feels protected and nourished by the company of others. Tell a story of how you want to be protected.

Card 3: Hindered

This card highlights the situations, people, and experiences that hinder, harm, and/or drain your energy. In many ways, this is an "obstacles" type card, just on a grander scale. Sometimes this card represents a very present situation that is obstructing your energy, other times it can refer back to an event that has had a lasting experience on how you change the shape of your energy to meet an expectation (making others feel more comfortable, trying to protect yourself the best way you know how, and so on). Often this card represents an ongoing type of experience, person or situation to be mindful of. Realizing, for example, that while many of your friends love a big weekend out, your energy needs more downtime at the end of the week to be able to recharge if you pull the Four of Swords.

Card 4: Hidden

This card gives us a peek into an aspect about our energy that you may only be coming to understand or is still well hidden from you. Reasons for why a part of our energy may be hidden from you can be many including being taught to hide your energy away, experiencing a significant life event that brought this aspect of your energy to the forefront of your consciousness, and just the natural change that happens through your own growing and changing. At first this card might be difficult to interpret and that's ok - it is a card that is meant to give you a glimpse, not a whole explanation, and it might be the first time you're getting a look at this particular aspect of your energy. Other times it can affirm what you've been exploring about yourself and what you've learned so far. It might be a card that you meditate on for the next lunar cycle if you're feeling particularly intrigued by its meaning.

Card 5: Unencumbered Joy

The traditional Sun card imagery from the Smith Waite tarot shows a joyful child, unencumbered in their energy and safe in their self-expression. It is how we all deserved to be loved and cared for as children. This card represents the ways that you feel unencumbered in your joy, freely able to express your energy. 

Of course, it is not unusual for a challenging card to show up here and it can represent a few things. First, there might be an image or symbol on a card that is traditionally interpreted as challenging but that brings an immediate sense of joy to you - it's more than ok to focus only on that part of the card. Second, there might be an overwhelming feeling that makes it hard for you to connect with your joy - shame, doubt, fear, and so on - and this card can be a place to recognize the current story you hold about your ability to access joy. 

A simple act of magick you can perform when pulling a challenging card in this position, either during or after your reading, is to take a challenging card in this position and to cover it with another card, of your choosing, from your tarot deck that represents joy to you. Visualize the challenging card being buried deep in the earth as a seed of experience that has risen to the surface and transformed into something new, as represented by the card of joy you chose. Our roots shape us, but they are not our fruit - choices and possibilities, kind-hearted interventions, are always present to us in our growth.

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While there are so many techniques of discernment and knowledge-gathering within astrology, just becoming familiar with your Luminaries and Ascendant will open up a significant gateway to the part of existence that makes up who you are. If you want to learn more about the signs in astroherbology, including the healing qualities of your Sun sign, come this way. If you’re looking for a reading for your Moon sign, find it here, and here is the post for your Ascendant.

For those of you intrigued by the connections between plant allies, the tarot, and healing practices, you might enjoy The Tarot Apothecary.

The great strength of astrology in healing work is providing us language to tell our story from a more empowered and inspired place which is what I hope this Sun-sign inspired tarot spread helps you do. Remember, the myths are still being written, as they always have been, by people like you and me, so keep telling the stories that need to be told.

This post was made possible through patron support.
❤︎ Thanks, friends. ❤︎