62 Elecampane and Mullein: Herbs for Healthy Lungs in the Cold Season
“Gather close. Keep the warmth at the center. And breathe, slowly, together, until the light comes back.”
Tag: Celtic wheel of the year
61 Samhain: The Ancestors’ Table and the Turning of the Celtic Year
We’ve been thinking all week about why this season matters so much, especially for those of us who’ve lived long enough to have a long table of the dead. When we’re young, Samhain is spooky. It’s about ghosts and masks and being a little bit afraid of the dark. But somewhere in midlife, it changes. The dark isn’t strange anymore. It’s full of people we love.
And there’s another turning that comes with it, if we let it. At some point, we realize that we are going to be somebody’s ancestor. The recipes we make, the way we tend a garden, the herbs we teach our granddaughters to recognize along the roadside, the way we speak to people in the checkout line. Someday someone will set a plate for us. Someday someone will make our soul cakes, or our version of them, and won’t quite get them right, and will laugh about it, and say our name.
That doesn’t feel morbid to me. It feels like the most ordinary kind of hope. It means the table goes on.
57 Mabon: The Balance Of Light And Dark, And The Rising Of The Harvest Moon
“The second harvest is where gratitude stops being a feeling and starts being a practice.”
52 John Barleycorn & the First Loaf: The Story of Lughnasadh
“The field gives back what the field was given.”
47 Litha: An Herbalist’s Threshold
“The solstice gives you the threshold. The Virgo moon hands you the map and asks you to actually look at it.” It’s Litha, summer solstice morning — the longest day…
42 At the Gate of the Year
“This is how we bless ourselves. Not by waiting for someone else to do it. But by bending down to the grass in the early morning light and accepting what the earth is already offering.”
41 Creating Seasonal Rhythms: Herbs & the New Moon in Aries
“For those of us navigating intensity — planetary, personal, or simply the wild energy of early spring — they offer exactly what Aries fire sometimes forgets to give itself: steadiness, and release.”
40 Fierce and Nourishing: What Nettles and Dandelion Teach Us About Strength
“Dandelion is the plant that will not be erased. Every attempt to remove her simply disperses her further — her seeds carried on the wind, landing in new places, beginning again.”
39 First Light: A Celtic Herbalist’s Easter Morning
“The moon is the anchor. The turning of the light is the medicine. The resurrection — whatever tradition names it, whatever language your heart speaks — is written into the sky.”
31 Return of Inner Fire
“You don’t have to burn bright to matter. You just have to stay lit.” Return of Inner Fire is a quiet Imbolc offering for anyone feeling worn thin by late…