Elder
The name Elder has to do with “Eld”, fire. It is a fever remedy.
Sambucus comes from the latin term for a musical instrument – The Pan Pipes – which were originally made from the hollow stems of Elder.
This hollow signature is reflected as Elder used as a remedy opens all tubes of the body (skin, lungs, colon, kidneys, blood vessels) improving oxygenation, blood flow, perspiration, and elimination by the colon or kidneys. Elder is a relaxant, helpful in spasmodic cough and spasm in the stomach.
The berries are blood building and together with the flowers are healing when you have a fever. Also helpful in red dry irritated skin of the cheeks, as it opens the tubes and pores and lubricates the skin. It improves respiration, digestion and kidney function.
Imagination is the channel of communication from another dimension. Tubular plants such as Elder and Angelica have long been associated with the shamanic journey to the Underworld. The lore surrounding the Elder is immense and mysterious. The Elder serves as a doorway to the Underworld, or magical faery realm.
I start to prepare the Elixir in July when I distilled the flowers and let them macerate until I collected the berries and let them macerate together with the flowers, creating a double tincture from the white flowers that look like five pointed stars and the dark purple almost black berries. These are signatures of saturn, the polar qualities of father time and mother of death and rebirth.
The spagyric tincture is a great antioxidant and aids to improve immunity in winter time. It is also a gatekeeper to the spirit world. It is called Elder for a reason! It is a teacher of nature, of time, life and death.
Horsetail
Horsetail is an important plant teacher for alchemists because it teaches about death, longevity, the quality of life and a long life. It teaches spiritual evolution.
Horsetail is full of minerals, especially silica which builds hair, skin, nails and connective tissue. The silica is not extracted by ordinary tincturing, but through the calcination process it is extracted spagyrically.
It is diuretic, draining water, working on the kidneys. It is is an astringent tonic which means that it brings tone to relaxed tissues.
It is helpful for nervous, tense and anxious people who bites on their nails and twirls their hair around a finger. It is grounding. Call on Horsetail to instill courage and strength. When you need to learn how to be firm, set boundaries and limits, learn to do things step by step with discipline.
Horsetail is a Saturnian remedy. The signature connection between the ringed planet and the ringed stalks.
According to Ayurveda, karma is stored in the bones. Saturnian remedies goes deep into our DNA – the karmic patterns and helps us to break the patterns that are no longer beneficial. Horsetail is a deeply initiatic remedy. It is one of the oldest plants in the world. They used to be as high as trees.