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I promised to start a topic about my methods of working with plants in its very detail in another topic. The Path of Poison: Between Shadow and Wisdom So here it is!
Take a drink and time to digest this.
It is a method where you end with the plant spirit in a bottle, like a genie in a bottle in the physical form of an elixir but after an intense and long process. You don’t ingest this elixir physically, you do it energy wise because of the communication. At the moment you are at the point of having that elixir in the bottle, it starts to communicate with you. And in most cases, the plant will do that in an earlier stage of the process.
I don’t make a tutorial in the tutorial section, for I wanted to make a lot of space for other people to ask questions and share experiences over the next years. I hope to inspire people to work like this. Feel free to ask things AND feel free to have your own tweaks in mind. It is a kind of plant magic that is not often is described by others, but what can bring a lot of change and new insights. However it is not for the faint of heart people. Mostly when people do plant magic, they incorporate a piece of a plant in a spell. That's it, not even more! That is a relatively short process but there is much more possible. One of my reasons to join WF was because I wanted to share methods like this and make it possible for others to grab the fruits of it. I felt that I have to give something back to the universe from the things I learned over years. I am a firm believer of the idea that in life it is a process of give and take. So I am sharing here my magnum opus….. In this method there are moments where you have to make your own choices, I try to mention those moments. One can use divination for it, others are more in astrology and others are more in trance work. It is up to the practitioner.
First I have to tell something about the very start of this method, which was 32 years ago. As children in a rural community we played a lot on farms. Some people still had a calf or pig (the pigs not anymore after the pigs pests in 1997) of their own that they did feed one season, to be brought to the butcher and to be returned as meat for the fridge. The circle of life we watched was just one season long in most cases. We watched how those animals grew, we brought them food and we comforted them. At that time I already made my first potions from dandelions, stinging nettle and honeysuckle, both in my surroundings to be found. Dandelion for better contact with other worldly entities and resilience, stinging nettle for protection to plantpests and purification and honeysuckle elixir for feeding the mind and spirit and to harmonize. On one day I played again on a farm of a school friend of mine and that day the meat returned from the butcher. First I didn’t want to eat from it. I remembered the friendly animal that I did feed and comforted. But the mother of my friend said: you brought food and snuggles to the cow. Now it is your turn to get something back. You are young and need to grow strong from that meat. After that I ate and it clicked in my mind. I got an aha-erlebnis, a déjà-vu feeling that this was very possible with a plant too. Feed it for a season, kill it and use it for my own purposes in a magical way.
So this is how the method was born and I refined it over years, it became a more complex workflow over time. I still use Dandelion, Stinging nettle and honeysuckle in my method, but the plant I make an ally with is a different plant according to my needs. I am always in for very local things so I go for plants or trees that are originally domestic for my area. If you work with herbs that are annual, you have a relatively short process and you need to kill it in the end of season. If you work with perennials and/or trees, you can take a part of it and let the plant regrow. One thing that is important if you want to keep the magic going for years is that you make a little bit of elixir every year and add it to the bottle. So you don’t fill up the bottle completely.
But first things first, you have to choose a plant or tree that matches the magic you want to achieve. Before you have chosen the plant you have to be very sure that you know its folklore and magic properties. That you know where the plant grows in nature and visited such places. That you take notes about the things that draws your attention.
You have to start with a seed or a very young plant and you need to grow it in a pot. Why in the pot? If you grow it in a garden, roots of other plants are involved with your magic. This waters down the results. So the pot is literally the container for your magic. It is advisable to match the color from your pot with your intentions. Then the growing medium. Yes you need a quality medium that matches with what your plant needs to be able to grow, but I add something. I have a little decorated children porcelain tea cup that I only use for bringing special earth. With that tea cup I travel by foot to a few liminal places in my own area: to a burial mound, to a place where a story of a local giant is situated and to an old estate. (So be sure that you know your local history and folklore) From all places I take one cup of earth with me, I meditate on this places and I bring a little offer. When I walk to these places, I connect while walking and these places are on the border of my personal territory. I kind of have my own magical space/territory here, it developed over time which started from childhood………For every process you have to decide in which phase of the moon you do this and on what part of the day, so decide for yourself on what time you go to these places. (and if you are in astrology, do your thing) You have to decide also which places you are going to visit and connect with. Make and define your own territory. That can be as big and as small as you want or need, travel as far as needed and travel in a way that suits you. That area can be a square kilometer but can be much bigger too.
I put that collected earth in the pot at first. After that I put the growing medium in it and the plant can be planted. After that you have to carefully watch your plant, if it needs something you have to bring it. In this process I am using the elixirs of Dandelion, Stinging Nettle and Honeysuckle. Dandelion is harvested when the sun rides at his peak. Stinging Nettle on dark moon at sunset and Honeysuckle at night when the moon rides at his peak. From these plants you make elixirs, see under. Every 3 days your bring a thimble of each elixir to the plant, you connect with the plant, see for your mind’s eye what you want to accomplish with this magic process and meditate. You have to activate the dandelion by projecting a golden light on the thimble. The Stinging Nettle needs to be activated with blue and the Honeysuckle with silver white light. If the plants is in need for water in between, feed natural water. For this you need to decide if you use normal rainwater, molted snow, river water or storm water….. The elixirs are tested over a lot of seasons and this how I work now with them. But if you need, tweak them to your own needs. You do you.
Elixir of Dandelion:
One handful of dandelion flower petals, one handful of cleaned dandelion roots in pieces, a tiny little piece of real 24 K gold leaf foil, 2 cups of good quality spring water (local if possible) Let simmer the dandelion root and flower petals on low medium heat for 15 minutes, sieve, let cool and put in a botlle wherein you did put the gold leaf foil.
Elixir of Stinging Nettle:
2 hands of stinging nettle, 2 cups of storm water, a little piece of flint Let simmer the nettle on low medium heat in the water for 15 minutes, sieve, let cool and put in a bottle wherein you did put the flint.
Elixir of Honeysuckle:
1 handful of Honeysuckle flowers, 1 cup of spring water, little piece of not alloyed silver 999. Let simmer the honeysuckle in the water on low medium heat, sieve, let cool and put in a bottle wherein you did put the silver.
It is recommended to keep a separate journal for this complete process and to record every time when you feed the plant. When the plant is in its adult stage you have to decide when to harvest. Think of moon phase, moment of the day, the right day of the week etc. Find your own moment. Put a white cloth underneath the plant, use a knife that you only use for magic if you harvest leafs and flowers. If you want the roots, dig them up with your bare hands. Clean everything. When you put it in the pot to let it simmer (low medium heat) do it leaf by leaf, flower by flower, piece by piece, see a light coming out of each piece you add and repeat this every piece:
Leaf to leaf, Flower by Flower, every piece will bring me Thy power.
Stirr it as long as needed (decide in which direction) with a silver or wooden spoon, according to your magic. Simmer it as many minutes as needed. So in your process you have to be sure that you meditated on these things when taking care for the plant. Be careful if your plant is highly toxic!
Then, after being cooled, you have to sieve it and bottle it up. That bottle had to be made while the plant grows. But, you can’t make it in the very first period because the plant and you first have to know each other and trust each other’s process. I always used a bottle from glass for it. It has to be one that is possible to be closed very firmly. The bottle has to be strong enough to keep it for years while keeping the elixir inside for years and not harming you or your loved ones physically. The glass bottle needs to have a purification, so use your own favorite method. After that I take self drying clay that I apply around the bottle and form. You can use any form or design you like, in the process you will get a vision about how you need to design it, the plant will tell. You can apply crystals on the clay also and you can paint the clay after drying it completely also. Another possibility is that you powder a few leaves from the plant ally and work it through the clay before you use the clay or you use the ashes from a part of the plant for this. You decide, you do you.
After you filled the bottle with your plant elixir I recommend to take it with you and talk with it on a crossroad at night, thus becoming it the genie in a bottle. You have decide for yourself if this happens on dark or full moon, so another moment of choice. You take the bottle and talk with the genie therein when needed. The genie will have its own character and it will learn you lessons. You can work with more plant allies/spirits together, but then you have to remember that you have to connect them all every once and a while. I have discovered that this is not easy when life is busy. Most cases when I took the bottle the first time to a crossroad, the genie made clear where I should keep the bottle and what kind of attention it needs to remain alive. You can talk at home with the genie, but when talking on a crossroad or liminal place the answers were more clear.
In the process you can decide to share a drop of blood with the plant. It is up to the practitioner to decide if this is needed. If so, the practitioner needs to find it's very own moment for it. You will know if needed and when.
For me this is witchcraft: locality, conjuring, elixirs, creativity, working with a genie you created by yourself, adding powers, filled with mysticism, marking my own territory, be intuitive. Much more than the modern pagan version which I left very soon. These processes are not for the scared ones, but for me there are worth it. (Because of the practicing in secret I have to plan things much more carefully and that is not always easy. But that is a side note)
An interesting thing to add: in my homeland the Netherlands there are stories about flying witches too. But… they often they don’t fly on a broom/besom but on a sieve because of sieving their homemade concoctions. I expect you know now which concoction they sieved before flying
Take a drink and time to digest this.
It is a method where you end with the plant spirit in a bottle, like a genie in a bottle in the physical form of an elixir but after an intense and long process. You don’t ingest this elixir physically, you do it energy wise because of the communication. At the moment you are at the point of having that elixir in the bottle, it starts to communicate with you. And in most cases, the plant will do that in an earlier stage of the process.I don’t make a tutorial in the tutorial section, for I wanted to make a lot of space for other people to ask questions and share experiences over the next years. I hope to inspire people to work like this. Feel free to ask things AND feel free to have your own tweaks in mind. It is a kind of plant magic that is not often is described by others, but what can bring a lot of change and new insights. However it is not for the faint of heart people. Mostly when people do plant magic, they incorporate a piece of a plant in a spell. That's it, not even more! That is a relatively short process but there is much more possible. One of my reasons to join WF was because I wanted to share methods like this and make it possible for others to grab the fruits of it. I felt that I have to give something back to the universe from the things I learned over years. I am a firm believer of the idea that in life it is a process of give and take. So I am sharing here my magnum opus….. In this method there are moments where you have to make your own choices, I try to mention those moments. One can use divination for it, others are more in astrology and others are more in trance work. It is up to the practitioner.
First I have to tell something about the very start of this method, which was 32 years ago. As children in a rural community we played a lot on farms. Some people still had a calf or pig (the pigs not anymore after the pigs pests in 1997) of their own that they did feed one season, to be brought to the butcher and to be returned as meat for the fridge. The circle of life we watched was just one season long in most cases. We watched how those animals grew, we brought them food and we comforted them. At that time I already made my first potions from dandelions, stinging nettle and honeysuckle, both in my surroundings to be found. Dandelion for better contact with other worldly entities and resilience, stinging nettle for protection to plantpests and purification and honeysuckle elixir for feeding the mind and spirit and to harmonize. On one day I played again on a farm of a school friend of mine and that day the meat returned from the butcher. First I didn’t want to eat from it. I remembered the friendly animal that I did feed and comforted. But the mother of my friend said: you brought food and snuggles to the cow. Now it is your turn to get something back. You are young and need to grow strong from that meat. After that I ate and it clicked in my mind. I got an aha-erlebnis, a déjà-vu feeling that this was very possible with a plant too. Feed it for a season, kill it and use it for my own purposes in a magical way.
So this is how the method was born and I refined it over years, it became a more complex workflow over time. I still use Dandelion, Stinging nettle and honeysuckle in my method, but the plant I make an ally with is a different plant according to my needs. I am always in for very local things so I go for plants or trees that are originally domestic for my area. If you work with herbs that are annual, you have a relatively short process and you need to kill it in the end of season. If you work with perennials and/or trees, you can take a part of it and let the plant regrow. One thing that is important if you want to keep the magic going for years is that you make a little bit of elixir every year and add it to the bottle. So you don’t fill up the bottle completely.
But first things first, you have to choose a plant or tree that matches the magic you want to achieve. Before you have chosen the plant you have to be very sure that you know its folklore and magic properties. That you know where the plant grows in nature and visited such places. That you take notes about the things that draws your attention.
You have to start with a seed or a very young plant and you need to grow it in a pot. Why in the pot? If you grow it in a garden, roots of other plants are involved with your magic. This waters down the results. So the pot is literally the container for your magic. It is advisable to match the color from your pot with your intentions. Then the growing medium. Yes you need a quality medium that matches with what your plant needs to be able to grow, but I add something. I have a little decorated children porcelain tea cup that I only use for bringing special earth. With that tea cup I travel by foot to a few liminal places in my own area: to a burial mound, to a place where a story of a local giant is situated and to an old estate. (So be sure that you know your local history and folklore) From all places I take one cup of earth with me, I meditate on this places and I bring a little offer. When I walk to these places, I connect while walking and these places are on the border of my personal territory. I kind of have my own magical space/territory here, it developed over time which started from childhood………For every process you have to decide in which phase of the moon you do this and on what part of the day, so decide for yourself on what time you go to these places. (and if you are in astrology, do your thing) You have to decide also which places you are going to visit and connect with. Make and define your own territory. That can be as big and as small as you want or need, travel as far as needed and travel in a way that suits you. That area can be a square kilometer but can be much bigger too.
I put that collected earth in the pot at first. After that I put the growing medium in it and the plant can be planted. After that you have to carefully watch your plant, if it needs something you have to bring it. In this process I am using the elixirs of Dandelion, Stinging Nettle and Honeysuckle. Dandelion is harvested when the sun rides at his peak. Stinging Nettle on dark moon at sunset and Honeysuckle at night when the moon rides at his peak. From these plants you make elixirs, see under. Every 3 days your bring a thimble of each elixir to the plant, you connect with the plant, see for your mind’s eye what you want to accomplish with this magic process and meditate. You have to activate the dandelion by projecting a golden light on the thimble. The Stinging Nettle needs to be activated with blue and the Honeysuckle with silver white light. If the plants is in need for water in between, feed natural water. For this you need to decide if you use normal rainwater, molted snow, river water or storm water….. The elixirs are tested over a lot of seasons and this how I work now with them. But if you need, tweak them to your own needs. You do you.
Elixir of Dandelion:
One handful of dandelion flower petals, one handful of cleaned dandelion roots in pieces, a tiny little piece of real 24 K gold leaf foil, 2 cups of good quality spring water (local if possible) Let simmer the dandelion root and flower petals on low medium heat for 15 minutes, sieve, let cool and put in a botlle wherein you did put the gold leaf foil.
Elixir of Stinging Nettle:
2 hands of stinging nettle, 2 cups of storm water, a little piece of flint Let simmer the nettle on low medium heat in the water for 15 minutes, sieve, let cool and put in a bottle wherein you did put the flint.
Elixir of Honeysuckle:
1 handful of Honeysuckle flowers, 1 cup of spring water, little piece of not alloyed silver 999. Let simmer the honeysuckle in the water on low medium heat, sieve, let cool and put in a bottle wherein you did put the silver.
It is recommended to keep a separate journal for this complete process and to record every time when you feed the plant. When the plant is in its adult stage you have to decide when to harvest. Think of moon phase, moment of the day, the right day of the week etc. Find your own moment. Put a white cloth underneath the plant, use a knife that you only use for magic if you harvest leafs and flowers. If you want the roots, dig them up with your bare hands. Clean everything. When you put it in the pot to let it simmer (low medium heat) do it leaf by leaf, flower by flower, piece by piece, see a light coming out of each piece you add and repeat this every piece:
Leaf to leaf, Flower by Flower, every piece will bring me Thy power.
Stirr it as long as needed (decide in which direction) with a silver or wooden spoon, according to your magic. Simmer it as many minutes as needed. So in your process you have to be sure that you meditated on these things when taking care for the plant. Be careful if your plant is highly toxic!
Then, after being cooled, you have to sieve it and bottle it up. That bottle had to be made while the plant grows. But, you can’t make it in the very first period because the plant and you first have to know each other and trust each other’s process. I always used a bottle from glass for it. It has to be one that is possible to be closed very firmly. The bottle has to be strong enough to keep it for years while keeping the elixir inside for years and not harming you or your loved ones physically. The glass bottle needs to have a purification, so use your own favorite method. After that I take self drying clay that I apply around the bottle and form. You can use any form or design you like, in the process you will get a vision about how you need to design it, the plant will tell. You can apply crystals on the clay also and you can paint the clay after drying it completely also. Another possibility is that you powder a few leaves from the plant ally and work it through the clay before you use the clay or you use the ashes from a part of the plant for this. You decide, you do you.
After you filled the bottle with your plant elixir I recommend to take it with you and talk with it on a crossroad at night, thus becoming it the genie in a bottle. You have decide for yourself if this happens on dark or full moon, so another moment of choice. You take the bottle and talk with the genie therein when needed. The genie will have its own character and it will learn you lessons. You can work with more plant allies/spirits together, but then you have to remember that you have to connect them all every once and a while. I have discovered that this is not easy when life is busy. Most cases when I took the bottle the first time to a crossroad, the genie made clear where I should keep the bottle and what kind of attention it needs to remain alive. You can talk at home with the genie, but when talking on a crossroad or liminal place the answers were more clear.
In the process you can decide to share a drop of blood with the plant. It is up to the practitioner to decide if this is needed. If so, the practitioner needs to find it's very own moment for it. You will know if needed and when.
For me this is witchcraft: locality, conjuring, elixirs, creativity, working with a genie you created by yourself, adding powers, filled with mysticism, marking my own territory, be intuitive. Much more than the modern pagan version which I left very soon. These processes are not for the scared ones, but for me there are worth it. (Because of the practicing in secret I have to plan things much more carefully and that is not always easy. But that is a side note)
An interesting thing to add: in my homeland the Netherlands there are stories about flying witches too. But… they often they don’t fly on a broom/besom but on a sieve because of sieving their homemade concoctions. I expect you know now which concoction they sieved before flying
