Rosemary — Rosmarinus officinalis
She belongs to the ocean mists, mediterranean breezes, dry harsh summers, and above all else the fullness of the sun. Her leaves are resinous, stout and strong, a collection of her strength reflecting her ability to thrive and flourish in these harsh and changing environments. She calls to me from far away, we communicate through her smell, her sweet fragrance welcomes me in, it’s a deep feeling of home, welcome, clarity, love, and joy of the celebration of summer. Rosemary is deeply infused into European cooking, entwined with culture, into the customs and rituals of my ancestors. She sits at the table with us, listening to our stories, a guest of honor at the ceremonies that mark the passing of the cycle of the seasons, plays a critical part in our death and returning to the earth ceremonies, and in our rituals that embody our interconnected relationship with mother nature. In this way she hold space deeply for the unfolding of our lives, we take her into our bodies, she knows us, and she helps us transform the energy of food and experiences into meaning so that we may be in a relationship with the world around us. All experience is the process of the world being brought into contact with the spirit, rosemary is a being that helps facilitate the transmutation of life which allows the spirit to experience the world around us. Emotions inform the spirit of what is being felt by the input of the senses, but the spirit can only know of these emotions once experience is transformed into qi and blood, into the realm of the spirit, and the fluid matrix of water and blood must be clear and unobstructed for the shen to healthfully perceive what is.
The medicine of rosemary is pure flow, she embodies the sun, she is warmth, comfort, and connection through movement of energy that travels unburdened, she drives the blood and ensures the spirit is free and fully integrated and aware of all parts of the self, and the spirit is held by the container of the blood. She dissolves unintegrated, hidden and forgotten parts of self, she brings energy and blood to every little corner of self, no pieces are left behind, no old trauma that normally exists underneath the awareness of self can remain unaddressed.
The color of the tea is golden just like the sun. The taste is slightly sweet, but also quite a fragrant scent that feels relaxing and opening, the smell alone welcomes more flow. The primary taste is resinous yet also pungent, aromatic, tingly, and strongly calming, reflecting flow and relaxation both. Warmth radiates specifically in my center, expanding in all directions from the solar plexus region. The heat is not aggressive nor sudden, it's actually not heat at all, it is warmth that is deep and persistent, it is the feeling of radiant vital energy. It is warmth that is motherly, nourishing, soft and gentle, it's strong and powerful, and even in weakness and deficiency this sort of warmth is welcomed to tenderly enliven the vital force at the core of my being. It's like a mother who knows what's best, warm and steady, a loving energy that would melt a cold, frozen, protected, and disconnected heart space, to bring life back in once more.
Rosemary is a big plant with substance field leaves and strong roots. A squat and solid form, yet her medicine holds and uplifts the spirits, she is caring and serves her community. She is so deeply embedded with food, and food is culture, familiarity, it is ritual and ceremony, food is home, and food brings community around to share life together. Through passed down family recipes and culinary culture I am connected to my ancestors, the memories are in my blood and bones and these stories are my true inheritance. Rosemary even smells like grandmothers. And during these times of celebration there is no agenda, we are allowed to just be and enjoy the simple things, we get to rest into familiarity and enjoy a sense of stability with loved ones.
Rosemary is ideal for kapha constitutions. She provides warming digestive fire to help transform stagnations that are stuck when there either isn't enough digestive strength and/or when this metabolic (Tai Yin/Yang Ming) deficiency results in an accumulation of yin. Thus the ability to process all things. Ancestral traumas are also stagnations, obstructions, accumulations that our ancestors didn't have the capacity to process and deal with during their lifetimes, so it remains until the transformation of fire, until yang-qi is guided and applied to it. It remains deep down in the DNA, and through this pervasive core warm that penetrates so completely, she slowly and patiently illuminates hidden shadows, the flow of the sun reveals and dissolves shadows, and melts and transforms all coldness. Thus, rosemary aids in ancestral trauma healing as it becomes integrated resolved and no longer passed on nor subconsciously stagnating within our own lives, as well as placing us in relationship to our own ancestry, these gifts rosemary shares abundantly.
In my plant spirit apprenticeship we opened first with cedar, only then came rosemary. When exploring with life it is helpful to first protect and hold, to be in stillness, presence, and awareness while still consciously choosing what to let in, what specifically and how to be in relationship with surrounding life, cedar is a gate keeper to begin this work. And then rosemary is able to come in and move, enliven, integrate and flow within this safely held container. I especially enjoy her before seeing patients in clinic, before engaging and holding space, in which my qi must be flowing, she helps me check in and ensure that my spirit is fully present in my body so I can navigate smoothly. She helps brings emotions to the surface to be aware of the energy I'm sharing with others. Worry especially blocks qi in the center, rosemary helps me be in the river and dive in. She is revealing and clearing.
Megan shared the following with our group, plus some Chinese medicine concepts
It is from the solar plexus that our flow of connection extends out into the world, and from this place one’s true original nature radiates into the world, the portal of emotional connection and experience with our surroundings. This space is the experience of the warmth of the fire inside us that is the spark of life, the shen, the constant aliveness that ignites consciousness in all things. It is that which continually combusts essence which generates source qi, this is maintained through the consumption and reception of food, fluids, air, and experience that is then applied to this primordial spark, the spark that is the soul in each of us, it is our unique flame of the universal fire. This process generates source qi, the universal animating lifeforce energy that enlivens all parts of self, it allows the shen, the nervous system, the electric vibrating awareness of self to exist in this body. And the building of the xue and yin allows the pure raw untamable fire of consciousness to reside in a body here on earth.
Rosemary brings around synchronicity by being in this flow, she allows for the evolution of a being by being in relationship to obstructions, aware of what it is that is impeding the smooth flow of the expression of original nature. She is remembrance of ancestors, of the true self and original nature. She helps us integrate, often she does this on the more subtle realms, in hidden ways, and frequently one isn't even aware that she is working and bringing things around to process. Pay special attention to the synchronicities when working with her, to your dreams, to seemingly random happenstance, and these signs may not necessarily be anything that specifically has to do with rosemary in your mind, she is a subtle weaver of magical webs. Compare this quality of subtlety to reishi who is much more clear in its capacity of awareness, of what exactly is being integrated and process, reishi does this far more in the conscious mind.
Many of the most potent and powerful plant medicines are some of the most common culinary herbs. Do not dismiss them simply because they are used in everyday cooking. Herbal medicine knowledge and teachings have been through much over the ages, it has endured extreme persecution, and by hiding some of our medicines in ‘plain sight’ they have been able to remain present and alive, yet they are still secret and safe. Beyond food and culture rosemary is used for transition work of all kinds. Especially in weddings and funerals she holds a traditional place, notably in the Celtic tradition she guides clear passage through these unknown crossings in life. The entire casket would sometimes be lined with rosemary. She helps us transform challenge into teachings and integration, especially deeply held grief resulting from a lack of spiritual connection, a common pattern in the modern world.
Ancestral reclamation work
Plants are amazing beings that have been around a long time, and they have shared this time on earth deeply entwined with humans. They're potent keepers of knowledge and memories, they are our ‘plantcestors’, they are bridges of connection. My ancestors took them into their bodies, they knew them intimately, they wove the tapestry of their stories and genetics with these plants, and that deep knowledge and relationship is absolutely still alive in my blood and bones. I may be connected again to my ancestors, to my story, my people, the land that I come from, why I feel certain resonances and connections to particular places on this earth, to my sense of place and understanding through intentional plant connections, especially plants that my ancestors personally had intimate relationships with. Rosemary is especially suited to this quest. We may recover what has been lost, to embody the full potential of our gifts that are passed down through our ancestors, to be connected to our stories despite no clear continuity of my ancestral people today in my conscious mind, despite growing up in a displaced and fragmented modern way of life. Doing this work we actually ‘re-member' the pieces of the story, it is not lost, only forgotten.
One primary way that we facilitate this work is through partnering with ancestral plants as teachers and agents of consciousness-raising, healing, culture, memory and story. We work in a way that emphasizes relationship and strives to honor and re-centralize the wisdom and memory alive in our own blood, bones, and hearts to uncover/recover "lost" or forgotten ancestral knowledge, and co-create forward from relationship to this place. We call this Plantcestral re-Membrance* work.
We understand that just as ancestral trauma remains alive in the memory of our body, as does ancestral resilience, wisdom, and medicine (which is also alive in the body of our plantcestors). Through building intentional relationship with our plantcestors and lands as well as other ancestral medicines such as our dreams, folk traditions, and cosmologies, we work on waking up this wisdom and healing in our own lives.
Re-membering our ancestors' wisdom necessitates rewiring how we think, relate, and arrive to understanding & truth. We work on this rewiring through creating sacred containers for intentional, experiential, relationship-based knowledge-building and story making with our medicines and one another, and supported by/honoring the teachings of our living Indigenous and traditional elders where it is extended to us.
We ARE our ancestors. What we are re-membering, is ourselves. ~ Layla Kristy Feghali
re-Membrance as in: remembering/returning to something that some part of us has known before - a truth that precedes our current consciousness, awakening primordial knowings inside of us *and also,* re-membering, gathering the fragments of something severed back to a unified and more whole state, collecting + mending the dislocated, displaced, and lost back to oneness - healing.
Ancestral reclamation and healing
We make clear the ancestral lines by inviting and witnessing, there is no need to personally hold and clear traumas that are unresolved, that which isn't yours, and this clear border is vitally important to maintain. Just see and honor that which has never been recognized, be willing to let it all be, the joys and the hardships, to let unresolved blockages dissolve back into the source. But also through this work we very importantly reclaim our ancestral gifts, our heritage, to be the culmination and living embodiment of all the lives and wisdom that came before us, to be able to call on the entire lineage to help live our lives through the faith that flowers from the experience of directly feeling all of your lineage behind you, that is in you always. You're never alone and it is important to feel this truly and deeply in your bones. We could term these ancestral traumas as epigenetics, DNA that is turned off, an expression of self which is possible and held deeply within the code of your being but it is simply not in expression nor relationship with the current experience of life, and it isn't being expressed because of past ‘trauma’ that is blocking it.
There are many herbs and supplements and medicines that may modify the physical structure of non- expressing DNA, yet Megan finds journeying through the ancestral lines and finding a clear ancestor who is able to do this powerful spirit work of epigenetic reclamation in the spirit realm to be the most effective and straightforward path to reclaim our forgotten gifts. One seeks for an ancestor who brings energy through the line and witnesses and gathers all old stagnations, one who is in solid relationship to us, while remembering that we are the bridges of past and present. We seek to form a personal relationship with this ancestor. I am a gate, a channel through which unresolved spirit realm stagnations may be released through. That which my ancestors were not able to do within their lifetimes, yet it all must be cleared in order for one to have full access to all of one’s stories and gifts of their people. Remember that much of your capacities, your interests, your ways and your gifts are passed down from your ancestors, so remember to be grateful and humble of all that you are.
Rosemary — personal ancestral clearing and spirit journey reflection
We are instructed to explore one of our four ancestral lines through our grandparents, to feel into which one of them feels the clearest. It is nice to begin with a relatively clear line that has fewer stagnations, to go and try to find a clear, strong, powerful, beneficent, compassionate, and above all good willed ancestor who is able to do ancestral clearing work and be in relationship and has no other agenda. If one begins with exploring ancestry where there is much challenge and unresolved history, it is a more demanding and difficult task, and to begin it is nice to explore what is it to simply be in connection with your relatives that are ‘wise and well’. There are many many ancestors across all of our ancestral lines, but most certainly not all of them are up to the task, and definitely not all of them are fully good natured. Just as it is in the living realm, not all ancestors are the same.
Several months prior to intentionally working with rosemary I had a potent dream where a strong powerful medicine woman was teaching me about plants, she showed me her home and some healing medicines that would be good for me (yet she spoke in a foreign language and I did not understand which plants she was referring to). A few days after this dream I had an energy healing session with Megan and we ended up connecting to this woman without directly intending to, Megan intuited that it would be nice for me to connect with my guides, and she felt some stagnations along my father’s line. We journeyed together and found this woman, whom I had not mentioned at all to Megan, and she described this ancestor of mine in perfect detail matching the medicine woman of my dream. She is an ancestor of mine who very much is capable and is willing and very eager to help me clear my ancestral trauma along this line. Her name is Greyga, and she comes from somewhere in the north, from the cold lands, she feels of Scandinavian and Germanic roots and has deep penetrating sharp eyes, she possesses harsh strength that is crafted from her surroundings yet her heart is still filled with love and extreme sensitivity and tenderness.
The journey work begins with a drum and I travel into the realm of the spirits. I feel into my different lines and pick my fathers father's line as I feel this is where she lives. I envision myself standing in a great plane of potential, a vast expanse. I call upon Freya as my gate keeper, she is connected to this geographical ancestral line, and all people of my ancestry know her and honor her and she is able to keep me safe and regulate what comes in and out while I am in this special and vulnerable place. I call upon rosemary. It is my feeling that rosemary is the wind, a conduit, she is qi itself, she is the flow of energy that is the current that moves and opens and connects through the gate along the line. She is just like blood flow in the human body; we each have a central artery as well as capillaries that go forth and nourish every single cell of the body. In my ancestral vision there is a central path, a channel that takes me back all the way to the beginning of my ancestral line, the main corridor to quickly travel through time. Every single ancestor of mine is connected to the central corridor, they are arranged in chronological order and flashes of their lives are available as I journey along it into the past. My individual ancestors are the capillaries of this fractal network, just as rosemary's main stem is strait and solid while all her leaves shoot off in every which direction.
I journey along my line back through time, I am searching for a clear ancestor, I am searching for Greyga, and I have to travel quite far back, hundreds and hundreds of years along this energy pathway until I find one who is clear and able to do this work, someone who has not been obstructed by the trappings of dominant western culture, one who doesn’t hold so much collective societal trauma. There is a curious sensation that informs me that my more recent ancestors are not able to do the work I seek as they have forgotten truly what it means to be human, to be a powerful manifestation of life itself, unlimited potential of consciousness. I find Greyga, I find her deep blue eyes, I find her little medicine hut and she welcomes me in, she shows me her world and we connect. More than anything we connect through our eyes, pale blue hers, light blue mine. A gaze of knowing and welcome, that she is always there watching and sees me when I see myself. She is still yet sharp, kind and curious, her energy has a hue of blue, she is cold, and solitary in her life's work, she is devoted to the medicine path, she is vata embodied. She also shows me my hands, and she teaches me that this is how I connect to her, this is how I connect with my ancestors and the gifts that they have bestowed upon me across deep time which culminates into my essence. I, the living embodiment of all my people, stand at the pivoting gates of present reality, the threshold, the portal. She teaches me that my gift of sensitivity in my hands, my proclivity and skill with my hands is not mine alone, the art of craftsmanship is passed down. So many things I do with my hands and my life is a product of engaging and expressing myself through my hands. Acupuncturist, musician, woodworker, energy worker, gardener, tinkerer, extreme sensitivity of touch, connection to the earth and plants through the touch of my hand. My way of being in the world is truly defined by my hands, and to remember and be with my people through my daily life in this way. I can feel Greyga come into me as we share my body for a moment, we look down and her hands are mine, my skill is a gift from my ancestors, I feel humbled with my gifts for they are just that, a gift. My father was given this skill, and it has now been passed along to me. Greyga and I stand on the crossroads of this great corridor that spans my entire lineage, she possesses great raven wings and flies off far into the horizon, all the way back to the beginning of my ancestry along this line. She spreads her great raven wings and touches them all as she flies up towards present time, towards the gates where my physical body stands. To where Freya stands watch, she collects and brings all the trauma of all of my people to the gates to let it process, to let it resolve through me. I am not the one who has to physically endure and experience this, each of these hidden traumas, she will mostly do it as it is of the spirit world and it is not mine to bear nor process. It is not mine to take on, but it is through my willingness to engage and participate that this energy is allowed to resolve fully, transformed through me, by being willing to witness and allow the past to come into current reckoning at the gate-portal that is my body.
Rosemary is for remembrance, of all things, of my inner light radiating outwards and touching the hearts around me, she engenders connection and flow.