Emotional Rescue Remedy

Why does every day seem like it is a week long nowadays? Unplugging from cable news and constant social media feeds will help, as will this time-tested aromatherapy healing potion. This remedy is an excellent way to recharge and refresh after a hectic week. This tincture is most potent right after the sun sets, by the light of the moon.

In a small ceramic or glass bowl, gently mix together the following essential oils with a small amount of base carrier oil:

• 2 drops bergamot
• 4 drops carrier oil (apricot or sesame, ideally)
• 2 drops vanilla
• 1 drop amber
• 2 drops lavender

Take off your shoes so you can be more grounded. Walk outside, stand on your deck, or find a spot by an open window. Now, close your eyes, lift your head to the moon, and recite aloud:

Bright moon goddess, eternal and wise, give your strength to me now.

As I breathe, you are alive in me for this night.

Health to all, calm to me.

So mote it be.

Gently rub one drop of Calm Emotion Potion on each pulse point: on both wrists, behind your ear lobes, at the base of your neck, and behind your knees. As the oil surrounds you with its warm scent, you will be filled with a quiet strength.

Comfrey for Comfort

Comfrey is beloved by healers and is one of the best-known healing herbs of all times. It has even been referred to as “a one-herb pharmacy” for its inherent curative powers. Well-known to and widely used by the early Greeks and Romans, its very name, symphytum, from the Greek symphyo, means to “make grow together,” referring to its traditional use of healing fractures. Comfrey relieves pain and inflammation, and comfrey salve will be a mainstay of your home first aid kit. Use it on cuts, scrapes, rashes, sunburn, and almost any skin irritation. Comfrey salve can also bring comfort to aching arthritic joints and sore muscles.

Mint Refreshes Body and Mind

Another useful herb is mint, which comes from the Latin menthe, which literally means thought. Mint is so easily grown that a little bunch in the backyard can go on to become a scentful, attractive groundcover. It is also called the flower of eternal refreshment. Woven into a wreath, it bestows brilliance, artistic inspiration, and prophetic ability. As a tea, it accomplishes miracles of calming the stomach and the mind at the same time.

Sage Wisdom

Every kitchen gardener should grow an indoor pot of sage, if not a big patch in your garden. Sage is a must to have on hand for clearing energy. It also increases psychic potential. Whether your passion is growing an artful garden, throwing pots, cookery, or music, you can stay in better touch with your personal muse or guardian spirit with an aromatic sage wand. Head out to your garden or the sunny spot on the deck where your hardiest sage grows. Take three large and extra-long sticks of your favorite incense and bind strands of sage around the incense with purple thread. Tie it off, let it dry, and you have a sage wand. Before any creative endeavor, you can light this wand and wave it around your workspace, filling the area with inspiration. (Use a medium-size shell or bowl to catch any ashes or loose sage leaves as you cense your space.) Close your eyes and meditate upon the healing work you will begin.

Aloe: Skin-Soothing Solution

One of Mother Nature’s most effective healers is aloe. When I lived in colder areas with frost and snow, I grew aloe in a wide pot with good drainage and placed it in the sunniest spot in the kitchen, where it thrived with very little water. I am truly fortunate to live where it never gets below freezing, so I have a towering aloe in the left garden corner that is growing to tree-like proportions. When anyone in the household gets a burn, a bug bite, a rash, a scratch, an itch, or a sunburn, I march back and grab a piece, slice parallel with its flat side, and apply the juice liberally. We use it as a medicine as well as a beauty application for facials, hair gel, and skin massage and feel so blessed that all this heavenly healing is utterly free of cost. Aloe propagates through baby plants sprouting off the sides; you can repot the “babies” into little clay containers and give them as gifts to your circle to share the healing energy as well as protection and luck.

Pisces: Pink Yarrow

While our favorite fish are deeply empathetic to the point of being psychic, their big issue can be boundaries. When you begin to feel other people’s feelings too much, this causes emotional muddles, sadness, depression, anxiety, and ongoing overwhelm. Sensitivity and compassion are beautiful as long as you can draw and maintain clear boundaries between yourself and others. Pink Yarrow helps Pisces maintain mental clarity, good self-esteem, and healthy relationships.

Aquarius: California Wild Rose

Water Bearers are the most unique of individuals. However, forging your own path and all that freethinking can create distance between you and others. You can become too detached from people, even your loved ones. You can also separate from staying grounded in practicality in your own life. When you feel gaps growing from disregarded aspects of your existence, turn to California wild rose, which will reenergize your sense of purpose and your ties to the important things in life.

Capricorn: Oak Prevents Overwhelm

Our love-able goats are unbelievably strong, but that can lead to never stopping (even when rest is really needed) and burnout. Capricorns also try to do everything on their own, drawing too much on their own can-do spirit, yet this can be a grueling path to getting to your goals and achievements. Oak is a marvelous flower essence helps with boundaries, energy preservation, and maintaining and not draining yourself while you get to the top of that mountain.

Sagittarius: Vervain Gives Vivacity

Sagittarians often feel like Energizer bunnies. While sharing your ideals with others fuels your spirit of joie de vivre, your ardent enthusiasm can sometimes have you setting overly optimistic goals. If you need support in balancing impassioned pursuits with a pragmatic perspective, try vervain flower essence.

Scorpio: Holly Is Holy

 Scorpios have the height of intensity within them and are also tops in passions. This can lead to heartache, disappointment, upset and, even anger. Evergreen holly helps you feel the eternal love from the universe and brings balance to your life. If you feel like you are bumping up again endless frustration, tap into holly’s holy life-giving energy.

Libra: Scleranthus Serenity

Our favorite Librans are often caught in a balancing act of weighing—and reweighing—their options before they make a decision. This can lead to vacillating in a cycle of indecision. To spur more decisive determination, try Scleranthus flower essence for more clear thinking and real balance.

Virgo: Pine Helps Perfectionists

Sticklers by nature, Virgoans work hard to be organized, on time, and have things just so. None of us are perfect, so that can be a set up for failure when you fail to meet your own extremely high standards, as it can lead to a swirl of negative self-talk. To get out of this cycle of negativity, Virgos can reconnect to self-compassion with pine essence.

Leo: Borage for Brave Lions

Loving, giving, and so dramatic, Leos leave nothing behind as they live life full tilt. This can be emotionally exhausting and may also lead to many a heartbreak. When this happens, anyone, but especially Leos, will benefit from borage flower essence, which offers encouragement and can move you from sad and hurt to healing and openhearted.

Cancer: Honeysuckle Health for Crabs

There are two sides to every coin, and that is so true here. Cancerians have a legendary love of history; so much so that they can start living there. Resist the pull of the past with Sweet Honeysuckle essence.

Gemini: Madia Mental Magic for Twins

Curious Geminis are can overwork their brains by engaging in research and analysis to the point of overthinking. Preserve your intellectual power with a mental balancing tonic. Madia may be a great flower essence to try, as it’s said to calm the waves of a wandering mind.

Taurus: Chestnut Bud Benefits for Bulls

Home, prosperity, and security loving Taureans prefer safe harbor and no surprises. This routinized life can lead to getting into a bit of a rut and sameness. Freshen up your day-to-day with Chestnut Bud.

“Aries: Impatiens Renewal for Rams

High energy Aries often race forward as they blaze new trails. Patience is not their strong suit. When the going gets tough, they just race forward, never stopping, However, this can also be a major source of undue stress and strain; try impatiens flower essence and you’ll discover a wellspring of fortitude.

Lavender Aromatherapy: The Sweet Smell of Serenity

The time you take to restore yourself is precious. Morning is the optimal time to perform a self-blessing, which will help you maintain both your physical health and provide an emotional boost. Today, lavender oil is the most popular essential oil the world over, but the benefits of lavender were actually discovered over three thousand years ago. Because of its deeply powerful calming and soothing effect as well as antioxidant, antimicrobial, sedative, tranquilizing, and antidepressive properties, lavender oil is simply wonderful—even the scent brings joy. When King Tut’s tomb in Egypt was opened in 1923, a faint perfume of lavender remained after three thousand years. In the Bible, lavender was beloved for anointing and healing. Lavender, let us count the ways we love you:

• Anxiety reduction and lessening emotional stress
• Protection against diabetes
• Improved brain function
• Healing burns and wounds
• Better sleep
• Brightens skin health and circulation
• Slows down aging with powerful antioxidants
• Pain relief
• Alleviate headaches

The Scent of Sheer Joy

Lavender is blessedly easy to grow as it is a shrubby plant of Mediterranean origins. It is prized for its lovely scent and is a very powerful healing plant with many other properties: it is used for making teas and tisanes, infusing into honey, and many other practical uses. It can even prosper in dry and drought-prone areas, so make sure your kitchen garden has at least one of the hardy varieties of lavender so you can dry bundles to use in your spellwork as well as in your recipes.

Rosemary Restores You

Rosemary is another of the herbs that thrive best in warm Mediterranean climes but can weather the cold. Tough to grow from seed, cuttings are an easier way to start your row of rosemary plants in your garden. Pots of this bushy plant can enjoy being outdoors in spring and summer and then come in from the cold to a sheltered porch or inside by a sunny window. As a bonus, it requires little water. Rosemary is fantastic as a seasoning for potatoes or roast chicken and makes any Sunday supper taste better and brighter. You can pinch off the aromatic needles to dress plates or sprinkle into soups and stews. Beyond all of what it can do to enhance your cookery, this is a primary plant for rejuvenation. It is prized for how it restores after lingering illness; elixirs and essential oils made from rosemary stimulate, raise mental alertness, and energize as they comfort. In Greco-Roman times, rosemary was believed to help the memory. An excellent kitchen witchery practice is to take dried or fresh rosemary and add it to a steam for an easy infusion where it aids breathing, muscle aches, and anxiety. You can accomplish the same by adding rosemary to a hot bath, either in a fresh sprig or wrapped in a little cheesecloth to keep the rosemary from scattering. Lie back and relax, remembering happy times in your life and those that lie right ahead of you.

Daisy and Echinacea: Healing the Heart and Body

This faithful flower’s name is derived from the Anglo-Saxon daeges eage, “day’s eye,” since it closes in the evening. The daisy has been used in one of the oldest of love charms. To know if your true love will return, take a daisy and intone, “He loves me, he loves me not” until the last petal is plucked, and the answer will be revealed. This flower is not just a boon for romance, however; it also useful in herbal medicine for aches, bruises, wounds, inflammation, and soothing eye baths. As a flower remedy, it is quite helpful with exhaustion and is a highly regarded remedy in homeopathy. Echinacea, also known as purple coneflower, is a member of the daisy family that has become wildly popular as a healer for colds and as a powerful immune booster; it both increases your T cell count and helps to fight off illnesses both minor and major. Echinacea is an herb of abundance “that attracts abundant prosperity, but it can also be used in magic workings to amplify the power.

Herbal Amulets: Handmade Gifts of Caring and Curing

You will experience years of enjoyment from tending your garden, as Voltaire taught us in his masterpiece, Candide. You can share that pleasure with your friends and those you love by giving gifts from your garden. Your good intentions will be returned many times over. I keep a stock of small muslin drawstring bags for creating amulets. If you are a crafty person, you can make the bags, too, sewing them by hand before stuffing the dried herbs inside.

• For courage and strength of heart: Mullein or borage
• For good cheer: Nettle or yarrow
• For fellow witches: Ivy, broomstraw, and maidenhair fern
• For safe travels: Comfrey
• For fertility: Cyclamen or mistletoe
• For protection from deceit: Snapdragon
• For good health: Rue
• For success: Woodruff
• For strength: Mugwort
• For youthful looks: An acorn

Amulets should be kept on your person at all times, either in a pocket, in your purse or book bag, or on a string around your neck.

Angelica, the Digestive of the Heavens

Angelica, said to first bloom on the Archangel Michael’s name day, is part of the carrot family and is a tall, hollow-stemmed plant with umbrella-shaped clusters of pale white flowers, tinged with green. Candying the stalks in sugar was an old-fashioned favorite; angelica was also traditionally used to cure colds and relieve coughs. Nowadays, seeds are used to make chartreuse, a digestive and uniquely tasty liqueur. This heavenly guardian flower is a protector, as one might expect for a plant associated with archangels, and it is used to reverse curses, break hexes, and fend off negative energies. An angelica root, dried and cured, is a traditional talisman that can be carried in your pocket or in an amulet to bring long life. Many a wise woman has used angelica leaves in baths and rituals to rid a household of dark spirits. If the bad energy is intense, burn the angelica leaves with frankincense to exorcise it from your space. While you are protecting yourself and your home from negativity during this angelica smudging “session, you will also experience heightened psychism. Pay close attention to your dreams after this; important messages will come through.

Coltsfoot Cures Coughs

Coltsfoot, also called Butterbur, is so named for the leaf’s resemblance to a horse’s hoof. Viewed as a weed, except by those who know, this spiky flowering plant grows wild along creeks, wetlands, or loamy fields. Tussilago, its Latinate botanical name, means “cough dispeller,” and this is a powerful aid to those with asthma or bronchial conditions and is very good medicine for colds and flu. In folklore, young maidens would use the leaves in a simple spell to see their future husband off in the distance galloping toward her. Truly knowledgeable hedge healers have a herd of coltsfoot in the shadiest, dampest part of their property. Coltsfoot’s medicinal mojo can be unleashed by infusing its leaves and/or flowers as a steeped tea. It is also commonly used as an ingredient in non-tobacco smoking blends; though naturally smoking of any sort is stressful to the lungs, if someone is determined to smoke in any case, smoking a little coltsfoot is thought to be a lung tonic.

Edible Flowers

Organic pesticide-free posies are tasty additions to salads, cake décor, and even savories such as fried squash blossoms. Florals add a stunning beauty to any dish. Grab your basket and add a bouquet to your culinary creations: impatiens, marigold, gladiola, daylily, cornflower, daisy, carnation, and viola. My favorites are peppery, fresh-flavored nasturtiums, which are so easy to grow, have a lovely aroma, and their yellow, red, and orange-bright blooms are the color of happiness.

Basil Bliss

This sweet tasting herb is excellent in savory dishes. Basil truly grows like a weed, and you should cultivate it right on the kitchen windowsill so you can snip basil leaves to add to your Thai or Italian-inspired dishes. Give your basil plants plenty of sun and lots of water and you will reap a mighty bounty to share with the neighbors. Old wives and hedge witches claim basil protects while it brings prosperity and happiness to any gardener’s home. Basil helps steady the mind, brings happiness, love, peace, and money, and even protects against insanity. (What more can you want?) The benefits of this plant are as plentiful as the plant itself; it can be used for manifesting and attracting love and on the highest vibrational level for abetting psychic abilities, even astral projection.

Cheer Up with Chives

Allium, also known as chives, is blessedly easy plant to grow anywhere and everywhere—on the kitchen windowsill or in the garden patch. A member of the onion family, this is a lovely case where the entire plant—bulb, leaves, and flowers—can be eaten. Plant the bulbs six inches apart, water them, and you can pretty much ignore them after that as all they require is water. A plus is that this relative of onion has insect repellent properties, so you can plant rows of this beside veggies and fruits and the bugs will stay away. They propagate quickly, so you can dig up mature bulbs, separate them, and replant them. One tip to remember is that chives do lose their flavor when dried, so use them fresh. The flowers are a lovely surprise to add to salads for their edible beauty, and many a kitchen gardener uses chives in all manner of dishes as it is good for weight management and is a plant of protection for both home and garden. Chives were used by healers of old in amulets to ward off evil spirits and mischievous fairy folk. Fresh cut bunches were also hung beside the sickbed to speed healing, especially for children. If you see a home surrounded by rows of allium, you know they hold to the “old ways.

Lemon Balm Soothes Those Aches and Pains (Including Heartbreak)

Balm also goes by the equally lovely Latinate name Melissa. From Greco-Roman times, this relative of the mint family has been held to be a significant medicinal. You can grow lemon balm with ease from seed packets in almost any kind of soil, but it likes shade in the afternoon to prevent wilting. This is one of the happy plants that will “volunteer” to spread in your garden, and it can be used in your home to bring love to you and to heal after a breakup or divorce. It can also be employed as an aphrodisiac. Infusions and teas made from lemon balm make good on the offer the name implies as it can soothe the heart and any lingering upset, blue moods, or aches and pains from trauma, both physical and emotional. I suggest we all grow as much as possible and let some go to seed for those new plants that will pop up in unexpected places in your herb garden. An herbalist never complains about a plentitude of balm; anyone who makes much use of lemon balm in brews and cookery will enjoy an abundance of love.

Plenty of Thyme—An Herb for Physical and Spiritual Strength

You could say that thyme is a classic herb, so much so that the venerables, Virgil and Pliny, sang the praises of this medicinal mint relative over two thousand years ago. While thyme loves Mediterranean weather, it can grow elsewhere from seeds and cuttings. Good for the stomach and especially effective as respiratory relief, thyme induces sweats to remove toxins and reduce fever. Thyme honey tea is truly a sweet way to make the medicine go down, so much so you will find you drink it even when hale and hearty. Thyme is also a culinary plant, making it a delightful additive to savory dishes. When I lived in a warmer clime about ten years ago, I planted wooly thyme in among the flagstones of my front yard and let it spread as much as possible. By the hour when I came home from work, the sunny eighty-plus degree sunny weather had warmed the thyme, creating a perfumed walkway; coming home was a heavenly experience.

It has been believed for centuries that thyme brings courage and both inner and physical strength. Even when you are facing seemingly insurmountable odds, spells and smudging featuring thyme can get you on track and bring you to your goal. I think the greatest of all aspects of thyme is to rid your home and family of melancholy and overcome despair after extreme difficulty and loss. If your loved ones have experienced a catastrophe, try thyme for rituals of magic and restitution. I have no doubt that practitioners of green witchery will be singing the praises of thyme for at least two thousand more years.

Sleepy Thyme

This herb improves your quality of sleep; gather and dry thyme it to use in sachets so the divine fragrance freshens linens and laundry. A little bag of this dried “thyme tucked in your pillowcase makes for sweeter sleep. As if all that is not enough, the plant itself also repels bugs and pests but attracts honeybees! As we all know, deep sleep is a great healer.

Thyme (Thymus vulgaris)

Thyme has so much to offer, including relief for colds, coughs, and congestion; above all, it is an antimicrobial and antispasmodic. One cup of tea made from a teaspoon of dried thyme leaves steeped “in boiling water will bring much healing energy to you and your family.

St. John’s Wort (Hypericum perforatum)

This is one of the most relied-upon of all herbal treatments for mild to moderate depression, PMS, perimenopause symptoms, and general immune and mood boosting, It is so popular now that you can find the extract in capsules at most pharmacies, grocers, herbal supply stores, and the like. Take three to six hundred milligrams per day to brighten your days. You can also find St. John’s Wort as a tincture if you prefer a liquid extract.