Monthly Archives: August 2017
Lemon Balm is bound to the moon and water. It is used in spells associated with healing, health, friendship, love, and success. Historically, it is a symbolic plant used to transmit messages between lovers.
- Latin name: Melissa officinalis
- Folk or Common names: Melissa, Sweet Balm, Balm Mint, Bee Balm, Blue Balm, Cure-all, Dropsy Plant, Garden Balm, Sweet Balm
- Ruler: Venus, Jupiter, Diana
- Planet: Moon or Neptune
- Gender: Feminine
- Element: Water
- Parts Used: Leaves, Essential Oil
- Tarot Card: The Chariot
- Basic powers: Love potions, aphrodisiacs, fertility anti-depressant.
Lemon Balm is used in spells to bring animal healing, compassion, endings, fertility, happiness, healing, longevity, love, mental, prosperity, psychic, release, success,and youth.
Lemon Balm has a long history, dating back to ancient Turkey where it was planted near bee hives to encourage the bees to return home to the hive rather than swarm away. It’s name, Melissa officinalis, is derived from the Greek word Melissa, meaning honeybee, and it was planted and used by the beekeepers of the Temple of Artemis to help keep the sacred honeybees content.
In ancient times Lemon Balm was planted by ones front door to drive away evil spirits. It is an herb which attracts, and is sometimes made into a charm and worn to bring a lover into one’s life.
Lemon balm (as herb or essential oil) may be used in as an ingredient or substitute for magick spells and formulas related to lunar matters (compassion, dreams, family, fertility, gardening, healing, love, peace, promoting sleep, prophecy, prophetic (or psychic) dreams), psychic awareness, sleep, and spirituality).
Lemon Balm was carried into Europe through Spanish trade routes, eventually making its way into the monastic gardens through out Europe. It was included in the formula for Carmelite water, a drink and perfume developed and closely guarded by the Carmelite friars and used as a drink to ward off nervous headaches and as a perfume to bring good cheer while masking strong odors in medieval and renaissance Europe.
Considered sacred to Diana, it is believed that it was once used in her temples. lemon balm was called “heart’s delight” in southern Europe. A tea made of the leaves brings calm, which is appropriate for magickal students while preparing for ritual work. Lemon Balm may also be used as a bathing herbe toward a variety of goals. It may be used as part of the ritual process of invoking the Goddess.
Writers over the centuries have praised lemon balm for its ability to dispel melancholy and in aromatherapy it is used to combat depression. Its pleasing scent makes it a popular ingredient in herbal pillows, often used to promote relaxation and sound sleep. Lemon balm is associated with the energies of the moon and used to help balance emotions, allowing us to perceive our feelings without becoming wrapped up in them.
Drink as an infusion to soothe emotional pains after a relationship ends. For magickal purposes, balm is ideally suited for healing those who suffer from mental or nervous disorders. It is also very useful for those of sound mind who need to keep their mental processes in superior condition.
Carry Lemon Balm in a charm or sachet to find love, or burn it as an incense when doing spells related to success. Drink as a Tea to ease emotional pain after the break-up of a relationship or other personal hurt.
Soak leaves in wine for several hours, strain, then share the wine with the object of your affection to influence love. Historically, it is a symbolic plant used to transmit messages between lovers.
It may be used when sharing a ritual bath with one’s partner; or it may be used to find the fulfillment of one’s personal desires. This usage of lemon balm opens one to the divine love of the Goddess, but is also believed to add energy to one’s being which makes you more appealing in the world of love and romance.
Lemon Balm guides us as we traverse the misty emotional state of the Moon and enables us to view our emotions and feelings without getting lost in them. Lemon Balm sachets placed under your pillow or near the bed are reputed to provide a refreshing, relaxing sleep. In folklore, Lemon Balm was used to ward off evil, and to promote good health, love, and good cheer.
Lemon Balm’s presence is quiet and strong. Running through the soil like her minty cousins, she spreads just under the surface with steady, clear intention. In this way, she reminds us good cheer and sunny confidence will proliferate even when we’re not aware of their presence on the surface of our lives. Lemon Balm magic is the magic of quiet, steady trust.
Lemon Balm’s effect on honeybees, attracting them and encouraging them to remain in their hives, reminds us to nurture our homes, our friends and family, our communities. Through the simple act of contributing to our household, we nurture ourselves. In this way, Lemon Balm asks us to seek joy and peace in the mundane tasks of life as a way of self-nurturing.
Thriving in both sun and shade, soils of a wide pH, dry and damp conditions, Lemon Balm teaches versatility, particularly in how we grow. If Lemon Balm has popped up in your life, it may be time to ask yourself what conditions are present in your life that you must embrace to thrive. Has a challenge surfaced that you resist? Have you identified an aspect of your life that feels unbearable, burdensome, like a whole lotta work? Lemon Balm can help you identify the trouble and find ways to adapt and thrive amidst it, or maybe in spite of it.
I like to think of Lemon Balm magic as the magic of relax-its-only-life. That’s the feeling I get from bruising her leaves and taking in her scent. However melancholy I may feel, whatever darkness or heaviness seems to plague my life, the scent of Melissa officinalis always brings a smile to my lips. Lemon Balm magic is the magic of steady, calm, persistent, good cheer.
Collected from a variety of sources including Herbal Riot
Fenugreek is known as the plant of increase. It stimulates growth of all kinds. It is used in fertility spells, in spells to enhance the size of one’s bust, and in spells to enhance the size of one’s bank account, too.
- Gender: Masculine
- Planet: Mercury
- Element: Air
- Type: Plant
- Deity: Apollo
- Ruler: Moon
- Tarot: The Magician
- Magickal Form: Seeds, powder
Fenugreek is most commonly used magically to attract money. From herbal washes that can be used to attract money to a household, or using adding Fenugreek daily to a jar that should bring prosperity when full. Note that many such workings emphasize the importance of returning the Fenugreek to the ground when the spell is spent.
Fenugreek provides wealth and protects against poverty. Here are some simple ways to use it:
- Sprinkle the seeds across the threshold of a business to draw clients.
- Scatter fenugreek seeds discreetly around your house and property.
- Place some fenugreek seeds in a jar. Every day add a few more. When the jar is full, bury the seeds in the Earth and start all over again.
- Pour boiling water over fenugreek seeds to make an infusion. Strain the seeds out and use the liquid in the rinse water used for cleaning your floors.
Fenugreek can be used for psychic protection and grounding. It helps the practitioner to return to the here and now after a shamanic journey. It can help with centering and focusing one’s intention.
Use fenugreek powder in spells to protect nursing mothers and newborns.
- Dust orange candles with the powder and light them to energize a mother.
- Dust yellow candles and light them for a healthy child.
- Dust blue candles and light them to help correct an infant’s sleep patterns.
The ancient Egyptians not only used it for cooking, but also made a paste from the seeds, with which they embalmed their dead. It was also an ingredient of Kyphi incense, which was burnt in copious amounts for both secular and sacred occasions. Tukankhamen was entombed with seeds from this ancient herb.
- Wash the head with an infusion of fenugreek seeds to protect against demonic possession.
Falling stars have traditionally had a myriad of metaphysical and spiritual meanings behind them. Stars are, in particular, frequently associated with the idea of the human soul. In the Teutonic mythology of central Europe, it was believed that every person was represented by a star which was attached to the ceiling of the sky by the threads of fate. And when Fate ended your story on earth, she would snip the thread attaching your star and it would fall, presaging your death.
In Romania, there is a belief that the stars are candles lit by the gods (and later the saints) in honor of each person’s birth and that the brighter the star the greater the person. The falling star represents the soul’s final journey to the afterlife as it is being blown out and across the sky by the divine candle keepers. In these and other cultures, falling stars and meteor showers were celebrated ~ they honored the ancestors who had come before them, and in particular the newly deceased who were joining the ranks of the highly venerated generations who had come before.
Even in the Middle Ages after the triumph of Christianity, the pagan equation between shooting stars and the movement of souls could not be snuffed out entirely. And so it was vilified; the shooting stars were cast as the souls of evil and impious men being cast out of heaven and down into the bowels of the earth.
Shooting stars in particular hold a special place with the cosmic mythologies of most ancient civilizations. For the falling star represents an interaction between man and the divine. It represents something moving from a heavenly cosmic plain to the mortal, earthly world. It was probably with some surprise that upon tracking the falling place of a “star” to earth, they would discover a small crater filled with a glassy rock, which, today of course, we call a meteorite.
Many cultures venerated meteor rocks as powerful magickal talisman, sent from the sky gods to the denizens of earth. The ancient Greeks believed that finding one would bring you a year’s worth of good luck and a wish; and it is from them that we have ultimately inherited the idea of wishing upon a star. Native American medicine men have been known to wear them as protective amulets, passing them down through generation after generation of shaman as symbols of their power. And temples throughout the ancient Mediterranean were in possession of meteorites, likewise holding them as sacred objects.
Even in the modern world, a meteorite is one of the most venerated objects in contemporary monotheistic religious practices: the Black Stone of the Ka’baa. Believed to have been sent from God to Abraham and then passed down to Mohammad, the Ka’baa stone is technically a relic of all three Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), and is the centerpiece of the holiest of holy Mosques in Mecca in modern Saudi Arabia, a former temple to the local Moon/Water God.
In the modern world we explore the stars scientifically: searching for the answers to the Big Questions regarding the origins of life and the extent of the wider universe around us. We look up at the stars through veils of ambient electric lights and smog, wishing upon them still. We escape to the countryside to truly see the stars as best we may, watching them in place of the television sets which usually fill our nightly vision.
For much of the time mankind has walked the earth, we did not know the stars as we know them to be today: huge balls of plasma energy strung out in space billions of light years away. Instead, we held them on high as something else, something magickal. In ancient societies, when the sun went down, there was the vast illuminated landscape of a starry sky lurking above them: mysterious and constant. It was a distinct part of their cultural worldview; its placement in the heavens and its occasional idiosyncrasies explained as part of ancient mythologies and religions. Imagine their wonder looking up at the night sky and imagining it looking right back at them.
And bear in mind, that without electric lights to dim the view, the night sky would have been distinctly brighter and filled with finer textures and gradients of colors and lights. The Milky Way not a slightly filmier band across the sky but a broad avenue of swirling colors stretching across an upside down starscape: a fitting pathway for the gods or divine river among the cosmos.
Shooting stars have and always will hold a special amazement to those viewing them. For their beauty alone they are worth staying up for.
From: Ray Violet and Within the Sacred Mists,
I think it's time to go shopping... maybe even buy some really cool stuff at one of my online shops!!