Hawthorn
“It's only with the heart one sees clearly, for what's essential is invisible to the eye.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Hawthorn berry is a heart-tonic for the physical heart including arteries and veins. It has a normalizing effect on cholesterols and the coronary circulation. Hawthorn improves the nutrition, energy reserve, and energy release of the heart muscle.
Hawthorn is cooling and anti-inflammatory.
Stress and mental tension often underlying heart problems. By reducing heat, hawthorn lessens restlessness, irritability, anxiety and nervousness that sometimes accompany heart conditions. Hawthorn brings focus by connecting with the heart.
Hawthorn is centering and connects us to our emotional heart. When the mind is taking over, overriding the wisdom of the heart, we suffer. The secret is to be present, relocating the consciousness from the mind to the heart, as it is actually the main organ of perception. We then intuitively know our life's purpose. Tune in to the centre of your inner universe – listen to the wisdom of your heart and use it as a compass when navigating through life.
Lady´s Mantle
The Alchemist distills the Gold of a Thousand Mornings.
Lady´s Mantle has a time honored traditional use as a woman's healing herb. Lady´s Mantle has astringent and styptic properties, on account of the tannins it contains. It is a very healing herb for the womb and can be helpful for painful menstruations. It is a fertility herb, also good to use during and after pregnancy.
As a heart-tonic Alchemilla can be combined with prescribed medications. Strengthens the arteries. Good for swollen feet and legs.
The botanical name, Alchemilla, or “little alchemist” speaks of the uses of Lady’s Mantle which have the ability to transform. Matthew Woods writes an account of this in The Book of Herbal Wisdom.
The alchemists found interest in the fact that the morning dew gathers like a translucent pearl in the center of the fan-like leaves, well into almost mid-day, when other plants are all dried off.
“Something within it is distilling the essence and simultaneously helping to preserve it. In a material sense Alchemila must correspond to processes which encourage cohesion on the surface of the droplet and prevent vaporization, while at the same time (and plants seem to work in two opposite directions) it must possess the ability to refine and distill fluids into their most subtle expression or essence.”
In the same way in which the subtle, invisible membrane preserving the cohesion and integrity if the droplet is maintained, we can imagine Alchemilla making a subtle, invisible membrane around a person. It is encouraging integrity and cohesion. It works uplifting and empowering. It is about a kind of inner circulation and distillation.
It is healing to the emotional waters of the body and supports healing from sexual trauma.