Potion Making - Beginnings

I began with the Purification Potion about 8 years ago. It was part of a year long project that I embarked on where I focused on one plant and one goddess for each month for a year.
Rosemary was one of the monthly herbs.
During the month, I made different tea blends, studied historical uses, burned it, made hair rinses, wreaths, face scrubs and steams and so on.
It was during this time that it seemed like wherever I went people would be smudging, which is all well and good except that it didn't seem to mesh well with the elderly, the sensitive and allergic. Generally burning herbs indoors causes people to cough and makes many uncomfortable.
I love the idea of using herbs to purify. My stand-by for my own smudging at that time was sage, rosemary & lavender.
At our house smudging is done seasonally, like deep cleaning and I always open all the doors and windows.
I wanted to come up with a way to have the benefits without the harm.
A "smokeless smudge" was what I called it.
I brewed together
Rosemary - clears the mind as well as spaces, reminds one to stay present
White Sage - clears and dispels negativity
Lavender - gently purifies with love and peace
and a few other herbs with the intention of purification, put a little alcohol in it to keep it from going funky and put in in a spray bottle and voila! it was a smokeless smudge.
I liked it so well, and it worked so well, that I added it to the line of my home based herbal business Bliss Botanicals (no relationship to current online entities) and it became very well loved by customers as well.
When the time came for me to take the next step in my business it seemed that perhaps I should make more Potions.
I sat with this idea for days, scribbling ideas into my notebook.
Should I make 3 or 5?
Should they relate to elements? Earth-Air-Fire-Water?
Should they relate to deities? Planets? Colors?
I had enough inspiration and ideas for dozens of Potions. It wasn't hard to come up with lots of ideas, the hard part was narrowing it down.
Of course, there had to be a Love Potion, but I wanted it to be different than the cliched aphrodisiac potion of bad movies and old songs.
Money spells are often desired and a money potion was a contender.
A Luck Potion?
In a way it's like naming a baby. You come up with a bunch of great names and then you narrow it down to names that fit your family and then to the one that belongs to your baby. The name that was theirs all along that you just had to discover.
The Potions made themselves known and guess what?
They fit none of the boxes that would be easy to describe them.
Earth - Grounding
Fire - Empowering - Sun
Center - Purification - Clearing
Heart - Love
Moon - Perception
They are so lovely and I am honored to do this work.

Fall

What does Fall mean to you?
How does it make you feel?





Fall is many things, obvious things like carving pumpkins, leaves falling from trees, a certain cast of light that comes and goes quickly. Fall is about baking and putting up medicine and food for the winter. Fall is about friends and potlucks and saying goodbye to a good many things. Saying goodbye to all the windows open and to a low heating bill, it's about saying goodbye to the sunshine, about mourning the loss of long days.

Not to sound morose, but Fall is about decay. About death and rot and letting it all go back to the great beyond.

Doesn't it feel good to, after obsessing about the perfect tomatoes and basil all spring and summer, all the tending and the care, to just rip them out and toss them into the compost? Making way for the cold dark time? To prepare for quiet, invisible renewal? I love it. I love the power of the dark and the quiet. Don't get me wrong, I am so in love with spring it's not even funny, but fall offers the same kind of intensity that spring brings. Everything happens so quickly. In summer and winter you get there and then it just is. It's cold and dark or it's hot with long days. Spring and Fall you never know what you're gonna get.

The edginess of a season, that's what gets me going.

We went on a hike this weekend. A walk really. Two of us had a cold, so we meandered and took lots of photos.

Mostly on the hike (walk) I saw death everywhere. Salmon spawning, the last gasp of their lives to return home, many of them literally dead in the water.
The beauty of the decomposition, which I did not photograph, was a marvel; really amazing and really awful at the same time.
I stood with my daughter in silence as we witnessed the end of their lives.
We moved on and were both taken by the blackberries.

Our northwest abundance of blackberries is so taken for granted. These are amazing plants.

I realized that they were flowering and had fresh, new, green berries.

It seemed so sad, I wanted to say you waited too long, you don't have enough time, you should've started earlier. But I knew that this was just such a deep hopefulness that there was enough time for a second harvest. Only the blackberry is so good as to want to give so much all over again.

Really that's not true, but it's how I felt at the time.

I saw it again and again, the hanging on and hoping for something that would never come. Maybe it's just too human of me to be thinking about outcome all the time. Perhaps it's just the moving along, being in the now that the plants and animals were experiencing.

Perhaps I, too can be in the now and know that even if I'll never bring fill-in-the-blank to fruition doesn't mean I shouldn't move along toward being in the now with whatever it is that may or may not come together.

What do you want to bring to fruition in this darkening time of year?
What happens if it doesn't become what you thought it would?
Does it still have value, the reaching towards, the hopefulness?

I'd love to hear your thoughts...

I'm off to carve pumpkins.
xo

recipe exchange

I was invited to join a recipe exchange.
Really this is just a friendly, non-threatening chain letter.
But a chain letter nonetheless.
Most of the time when I receive something like this in my inbox I say a quick blessing and hit delete.
For some reason, partly because I really like the person who sent it to me and partly because it was raining and I was daydreamy, I sent a recipe.

Here is the recipe I sent:

recipe for...
the perfect bath

tuck kids into bed (if you have them)
turn off phones, tv, radio, stereo etc
boil a big pot of water & add one or more of the following but not all:

(with suggested quantities for each item)

sliced apple (one apple)
sliced quince (one quince)
sliced oranges (one orange)
ginger, fresh- good for warming-(1-2 inch piece cut up)
~~
rose petals (up to 2 lg handfuls fresh and 1 lg handful dried)
lavender flowers (handful or less)
chamomile (1/2 cup)
peppermint leaves (1/2 cup)
thyme leaves (1/8-1/4 cup)-good for stuffy nose

*the top set of suggestions should be simmered for 15-30 minutes
*the second set should be added to boiling water, heat turned off, lid on and steep for 15-20 minutes

while the herbs/fruit are steeping/simmering
gather:

robe
towels
washcloth (to dry off your hands if you have a book)
book
tea (can be the same as you are making above)
or water
candle/matches
sea salt

making sure there are no stray bits of other peoples hair (eww) fill the tub with the perfect temperature of water.
add a handful of sea salt to the running water, this will help to release any negative or stale thoughts and energy.
light your candle/s
arrange book, washcloth & tea/water on a stool or small table so you can easily reach them.

now, carefully! pour the tub tea into your bath, it's actually better to have someone do this for you. You can strain it if you like but I prefer not to.
adjust the lights to your reading or not reading needs
get undressed and step into the bathtub.

relax and know that you are taking time for something very important, time for yourself is good for everyone around you.

drink in the goodness of the experience and know that even if you are reading a trashy paperback that magic is happening and you will be transformed in small & maybe barely perceptible ways, and who knows maybe this is the thing that shifts the multiverse and we just needed a recipe exchange to make it happen.

xoxo