Marian Green - A Witch Alone - Thirteen Moons To Master Natural Magic

produce a healing reaction in the patient. For example, a plant which makes a healthy person feverish might be used to bring down the fever of a sick one. It is a very delicate and complex yet increasingly successful form of treatment used, among other well-known people, by the Royal family, who are extremely healthy and long-lived!

A homoeopath asks the potential patient many strange questions and so builds up a complete picture of his or her likes and dislikes, symptoms and reactions, and then decides upon a specific homoeopathic drug, vastly diluted, which will usually clear up most conditions that person may suffer from. They do not have ‘cold cures’ or ‘headache medicine’ as such, but preparations which in a given patient will indeed shorten the effects of a cold, or ease a tension headache. Homoeopathy is especially good for migraines and all those odd illnesses and discomforts which conventional medicine has no answer to.

Learning which plants and trees and flowers are associated with which planet will help you to blend particular incenses, make flower talismans or posies to aid healing, for example, as this is a disguised way of bringing certain influences into the life of a patient who would be upset by the idea of actual ‘magic’. (So long as they have asked for help in some way first!) You will also be able to add the planetary influences of trees to the list of things with which any tree is linked, when you build up your tree divination set.

Culpeper’s Herbal, still in print after many centuries, gives the old associations of plants and planets, but the more informative Modern Herbal by Mrs Grieve contains the whole of Culpeper plus heaps more information on pretty well every healing or useful plant, tree, herb, grass, flower, spice or growing thing you could ever want. A well-illustrated herbal book with clear drawings or photographs, especially produced for your home country, should be on the shelves of every New Age witch or pagan healer. If you can devote a section of your garden or window box to herbs you will gain the joy of seeing them grow and flower and seed at first hand.

One of the most powerful magical acts you can experience is a unity with Nature herself. This can be tested beneath the canopy of a large individual tree which, if you allow it, can become your personal counsellor and friend, or deep inside a wood, even a small one, or if there are no woodlands in your area, out along the edges of fields or rivers. Under a tree you need to sit and perform one of the relaxation exercises, completely detaching yourself from the ordinary world. You will soon feel that the tree spreads a circle of protection about itself and you, for this is the area covered by its canopy and its roots. It is an original place of power.

You will be almost invisible if you sit still and allow your awareness to merge with that of the tree. Feel the upward flows of Earth energy, dark and slow like wild honey, filling the whole trunk, branches and leaves with solidity and endurance. Draw upon that force for yourself, becoming slow and heavy and patient. Then sense the down-falling rain of sky power, like a shower of tiny droplets of light, bringing vitality and a lightness of spirit. Breathe deeply, scenting the earthiness of the tree and the land which is its base, smell the leaves and twigs, and the aura of life energy around it. If you reach out with your speedy human senses you will soon detect those emanations from any tree.

This same exercise can be tried within a wood, for there you will also sense the shared tree spirit, or

dryad, of the whole wood, a vast, lofty, almost invisible yet sentient being, which can offer healing for the body, mind and spirit. Such dryads will occasionally give you a small token to take home.

It may only seem to be a twig which stuck into you as you sat down among the roots, or an acorn or seed pod, or just a leaf you found in your hair, but it is a key to that aspect of Nature’s living family with which you need to attune yourself to make the best use of her wide variety of powers and information systems, gleaned with the heart rather than the head.

By a river you will sense two flows, one with the current, washing outwards like the human lungs exhaling stale air, and with that flow you can cast away care and the burdens of illness, worry or pain. The other is an inner sense of power connecting all waters around the earth. Pick a stem of grass or the leaf from a water plant, and holding it flat on your palms, mentally beam into it all your woes and bad feelings. Fill it with them until you can detect the weight of them pressing your hands down into your lap. Then stand up and throw the leaf into the water and watch what happens.

If it swiftly drifts away with the current, vanishing from your sight, so will your worries vanish within a very short time. If it whirls around in an eddy you will need to do more work on understanding the reasons for your unhappiness, seeking, through meditation or ordinary thought, the real root cause and dealing with that yourself, with your divine powers. If the leaf sinks, then you are worrying needlessly, even if you feel something is your fault; as the wise Chinese oracle of the I Ching often says, ‘There is no blame!’ so you must cease fretting.

If the leaf drifts back towards you, then the problem is yours and it is bigger than you imagined. Again there is an underlying cause to be found by hard work, real effort and perhaps consultation with other people who may be part of the problem. It is karmically up to you to sort it out.

A field hedge can offer similar lines of oracular information, by the movements of animals or insects towards or away from you, or the whispering voice of the wind in the leaves and grasses, the hum of bees. All these simple aspects of Nature are her voices, but we have forgotten how to listen in silence, and seek the simplicity to heal us or teach us.

We expect magic to be complicated, ritualistic and intellectual, when really it is so simple, so trivial and a matter of allowing the untaught heart to speak in silence, and the unfocused attention to show us answers which have been there under our feet all the time. We won’t look at these unwritten, ancient sources of wisdom because we will not acknowledge they even exist. Learn to be quiet, be still.

Listen, listen, there is the voice of the Old Ones!

Exercises

As this chapter is mainly concerned with the use of plants it will be obvious that one aspect of your work as a trainee witch will be to grow and understand the uses of as many plants and herbs as you can. If, however, you do not have control of a garden or even a window box, then you will have to look at the other magical applications of herbs, trees, gums and plant products within the occult sphere, and try them instead.

Do look through this chapter of ideas for your ninth moon of practical work and see what you can manage, perhaps borrowing space in a friend’s garden, or cultivating an area not previously considered suitable for plants. Even a tiny plot or collection of containers and tubs can grow dozens of herbs, fruit trees, vines, scented flowers and colourful foliage.

In your Book of Illumination discover suitable seasonal plants which can be used at each of the festivals, within the house, or as garlands for your staff. You could choose vegetarian dishes or salads as ways of celebrating the change of seasons, which could be shared with pagan and orthodox friends alike.

Go to a herbalist and discover which dried plants can solve some non-medicinal problem; for example, tansy helps to keep away flies, and horsetail can be used to polish pewter plates.

Have a go at making some drinks, even if it is from a winemaking kit, or just special blends of fresh fruit juices.

Sniff through the culinary herbs and spices and see which might be useful in incenses. Mrs Grieve’s Herbal tells which planet each is attributed to, and so can be used for blessing a talisman. Cinnamon sticks, cloves, ginger and rosemary can be added to more conventional incense resin mixes for interesting scents.