Happy Friday, sweet moonbeams and welcome back to #floweressencefriday! Since we are in the season of harvest for so many plants and flowers, we wanted to concentrate on the medicine making of two of our favorite herbs. This is a wonderful time to responsibly harvest St. John's Wort and Mugwort and the oils these Yin & Yang plants make blend beautifully with flower essences to make more complex medicines working on medicinal and energetic levels for the benefit of body and spirit. Below are a few recipes for you to try in conjunction with your flower essence protocol if you feel they are a fit for your needs.
MUGWORT:
As a flower essence Mugwort enhances the receptive quality of the psyche, allowing greater awareness of dreams, so that the Self can gain insight about the affairs of daily life and can access guidance and direction from the spiritual world. The essence particularly helps the soul to navigate within the flow of psychic life, so that it is neither lost nor overwhelmed. It helps to balance transitions between day and night consciousness, assisting the individual to remain connected in a healthy way with the practical and physical world. Mugwort helps to direct the psychic life into its proper sphere, gradually opening the soul to expanded consciousness.
Western Herbal Therapeutics utilize Mugwort as a digestive and tonic herb, and it has a myriad of uses. Milder in action than most other Artemisia species, it can be taken over the long term at a low dose to improve appetite, digestive function, promotes liver detoxification and absorption of nutrients. In addition to encouraging the elimination of worms, it increases bile flow. Mugwort has long been used in the West to promote menses.
Mugwort Oil: You'll need a mason jar. Fresh mugwort aerial parts, organic extra virgin olive oil.
Fill a mason jar with chopped mugwort leaves,
flowers, and roots. Add olive oil to cover and close the jar tightly. Place it in a warm, sunny spot for 2 or 3 weeks (checking daily to avoid rancidity). Strain out all plant materials and store oil in a dark glass bottle out of sunlight. This oil makes an excellent rub for swollen, tired feet and for sore or tense muscles, or stagnant menses.
ST. JOHN'S WORT:
As a flower essence, St. John's Wort has much to teach us about light...how we connect to divinity and our light within, while still remaining grounded in our manifest earthly bodies. There is a great expansiveness to the souls that are called to St. John's Wort and their lesson is to find centeredness and balance in the expression of their light and energy. St. John's is very much a protective essence in this way.
Long used in many therapeutic modalities, St. John's is (at the very least) antidepressant, anti-inflammatory, astringent, and sedative. Many westerners are familiar with it in their Mood Mender tea, but this plant has a host of medicinal uses. Used to treat pains, diseases and to soothe the nervous system and has shown great success in the treatment of anxiety and mild to moderate depression, both in allopathic and herbal medicine.
St. John's Wort Oil: You'll need a mason jar. Fresh St. John's flowers and organic extra virgin olive oil.
Fill a mason jar with chopped SJW flowers. Add olive oil to cover and close the jar tightly. Place it in a warm, sunny spot for 2 or 3 weeks (checking daily to avoid rancidity). Strain out all plant materials and store oil in a dark glass bottle out of sunlight. Oil will ideally appear ruby red after straining. You can add various blends of your favorite essential oils to this base for an amazing muscular-skeletal pain-relieving, anti-inflammatory rub. It's one of my absolute favorites!
Here's a bonus link to a wonderful article about harvest and medicine making from Jon of the Flower Essence Society. It's a wonderful read for anyone who wild-crafts, cultivates and/or harvests their own plants for medicine making. Enjoy!
Can you mix dried mugwort and St. John’s wort to make a tea?
can i combine taking mugwort and st johns wort (as tinctures)? not exactly together but for example a bit of st johns wort in the morning and mugwort at night ? dont want to create some weird chemical reaction ..! thanks :-)