It is a Wednesday afternoon
in late April. The day is overcast
and cold for the middle of Spring.
I wear my winter coat and sling my foraging bag over my shoulder. I am off to Central Park and pray to
the water elementals to hold off until I am finished harvesting.
I am on a mission. Making violet medicine. She’s been calling to me all
Spring. While my ambitious
appetite wants to go out and harvest many things and make lots of different
tinctures, I am reminded my herbal teacher’s mantra, learn one plant a
time. During my entire seven-month
herbal apprenticeship we were asked to find a plant ally and get to know just
one plant for seven months intimately.
While I learned much about many different plants during this time, my
relationship to my plant ally that I meditated with for seven months is of
course the strongest.
This season, a new plant ally
has risen up to be greeted and I am becoming more familiar with her delightful
acquaintance. Violet (viola
odorata). This is my third time harvesting from her this season. First was a glycerin based tincture,
then a vinegar from her leaves that are high in vitamin C along with a violet
cordial which turned out to be truly delicious. Today I was guided to make an oil from her leaves as a new
base for womb and breast salves and a vodka-based tincture from all her
parts.
Violet called to me across
the park and told me exactly where to gather her. In my shamanic herbal apprenticeship, we were taught to
listen to and hear the voice, song and healing energy of the plant through
channeling the plants deva, or spirit.
While this may sound mystical or other-worldly, it is actually quite
simple and involves deep presence, listening and a little trust and belief in
magic.
While many violets were growing
along the Central Park pathways, she was very specific with me about which ones
wanted to be harvested. She asked
that I call her Ms. Violet and sing to her while I harvested her. She told me where there were extra
leaves that needed to be cleared so the ivy could grow and to be generous when
I took her flowers because the spring ones were decorative and her true flowers
that seeded next years violets would be up in the fall.
On singing and picking, I was
transported to when I was a little girl picking wild violets in my
grandmother’s backyard. It
was a ritual I relished every spring.
I would bring a small bouquet of these delicate, purple, handpicked flowers
and present them to my grandmother.
She would put them in a glass vase with opaque glass violets etched into
it. The vase went in my grandmother’s living room among all my grandmother’s
beautiful colored glass and antiques.
Somedays, after picking a fresh bouquet, I would sit next to them in the
green velvet chair in my grandmother’s living room and just look at their shape
– their long slender stem and the ever so fragile nature of their petals. I sighed wistfully at this sweet memory
of long ago. Had I known they were
edible at the time I’m sure I would have found them a tasty snack.
During a self-pleasuring
meditation ritual after I had harvested my first batch of violets this summer,
my clitoris actually appeared to me as a violet. Her delicate petals opening and unfolding, the beautiful
engorged veins in my labia mirroring the lovely purple striping in her
petals. I know women often refer
to their vulvas as flower like but this time I got that metaphor on a much
deeper more profound level.
As I harvested in the park
today, Ms. Violet told me she would sooth this chronic throat irritation that
had been with me for months and when I used her tincture and she would help me
speak more clearly and effectively when I sometimes jumbled my words or
sentences together. Violet has a
delicate but steady flow, like a well tuned violin being playing long sustained
notes. She told me she would help
my throat and voice come back into balance from the nodes and polyps I had
developed on my vocal cords. Her
heart shaped leaves reflected the shape of my thyroid. My body loved having a fresh violet leaf
placed right at my collarbone to support my sluggish thyroid that sometimes
needs encouragement.
Violet has a soothing and
claming effect on the nervous system and supports regulating excess heat in the
body. She has a love for women’s
breasts and is a natural supporter of healthy breast tissue and helps smooth
out lumps, bumps and cysts both in the breast tissue and in ovaries. Her leaves make a wonderful poultice
over skin irritants, eczema, or places where there’s been chronic pain and
inflammation.
If you find yourself in a
field of violets stop and sit with her.
Sample a few of her flowers.
Some are being candied in my kitchen as I write this (painted with egg
white and sprinkled with sugar and left to dry.) She is a beautiful ally to become acquainted with holding
the coolness of Spring in her body to relieve the body’s natural inflammatory
tendencies and a wonderful generous plant high in vitamins that the body
loves.
Thank you Ms. Violet for all
of your wonderful medicine and your generous nature!
