Card Meanings Flashcards
Yarrow
Achillea Millefolium
The Edgewalker
Yarrow is a hardworking and precise filter. An edge plant and gatekeeper, Yarrow aids in deciding what stays and what goes, and therefore is a particularly good ally to empaths. If you are often subject to the swirling energies around you, find yourself especially permeable, overly impacted by others, Yarrow is a very meaningful and loyal companion. Yarrow’s name Millefolium, ‘a thousand leaves’, conjures the image of a tightly knitted green lace, and indeed, the work of this plant’s magic weaves your blood and your spirit back into a fortified state. Our blood is the basis of all our physiology, as well as our genetic inheritance and ancestry, it is the thread that stitches all our lineages together. Yarrow speaks to the blood as an old friend, and offers themself as a safety net.
Resilient and undemanding, Yarrow allows us to be ourselves, guarding us from feeling too much of what is outside of ourselves, or outside of our control. For those whose role in their community requires that they often hold space for the wounds and vulnerabilities of others, Yarrow allows us to go deeper into this work of healing, supported without being taxed and depleted from these exchanges. Yarrow can let us go further, without the fear of going too far. The fear of losing ourselves can cause such caution that we end up with self-limiting beliefs and actions. Yarrow can lead us to the edge of our limitations, and then beyond.
Yarrow is also a renowned wound healer. It stitches our bleeding parts, inside and out. It fights infection, staunches bleeding, tightens tissue, and regenerates. Allow yourself to become that green lace, elegantly woven together. Allow yourself to be porous, while knowing that you are discerning and filtering and safe.
Rosmarinus Officinalis
The Holder of Belonging
The Holder of Belonging
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Rosemary is a deep, unconditional, I-will-cross-space-and-time-for-you kind of love. Rosemary has a long history of being planted in front of the house, to act as a guardian and a protector for the household, and to balance the family’s presence within.
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If you are feeling not completely present in your life or your body, if you dissociate, feel forgetful, absent, or are struggling to keep up, bring Rosemary into your family. Aromatic Rosemary is awakening, stimulating, grounding and can bring these qualities into your days with strength.
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Often feelings of being not fully ‘incarnated,’ (or ‘in our body and soul’), linger from a time early in our lives when we may have needed to split from our full selves and live only in parts of ourselves. There are many different reasons children feel the need to protect themselves, sometimes simply from instability or the unknown, other times from direct threat and assault. No matter the cause of this fracturing of self it can leave parts of ourselves out of the conversation with each other. Rosemary helps to build the walls of our personal fortresses, and our sense of home and belonging into the very core of our being.
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The essence of Rosemary is the deep satisfaction of creating something yourself, something that is lasting and meaningful. The sense of home that Rosemary can bring is the harbinger for all of us that we can build whatever we need to house our desires, our longings, our sense of place. Rosemary is at the door, waiting to sit down at the table with you and celebrate.
Catnip
Nepeta Cataria
Soothsayer
We are of all the ages, ageless, and able to experience many lives at once. Each one of us walks around with our whole history inside of us. Each of us is still the small child we once were. Each of us is every single version of ourselves all at once, simultaneously alive through growth and change.
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Knowing this, let us remember what it feels like to be a scared and curious child, everything new, everything to be learned and discovered. Let us whisper lullabies to those parts of ourselves, let us coo, and sing, and rock. Let us befriend catnip. Catnip is the soft pillow, the warm blanket. Catnip is the song and gentle hand of safety.
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We all have reactions that seem to come from nowhere and may not always make sense to the circumstances we react to. We carry past fears, memories, hard lessons, joy, exploration. These are often parts of ourselves that feel agitated, uncomfortable, ill at ease, that have not yet felt safe in the world, and have not learned to self soothe yet. For these parts, Catnip is your rocking chair.
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Catnip will pull you into an embrace and let your eyelids close in restful sleep. Catnip will travel in your dream space with you, and will ease you back into the waking world. Catnip is gentle and warm, soft and slow.
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If you need to cry, if you need to laugh, if you need to rest, invite Catnip in.
Elecampane
Inula Helenium
The Moving River
🌊
Elecampane is the bright sun, the fortifier, the perimeter walker, the wind in a stuffy room. Elecampane has an amazing affinity with the human lungs, the home to our most intimate bodily interface with the world, asking the question “what is me and what is not me?” Our lungs navigate how to draw in what we need to make every cell in our bodies function, without letting in the dangers and pollutants that cause us harm. Elecampane is the ally that shines a light onto what we need, and has the capacity to expel what we do not.
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The lungs are also the house of our grief. Our breath reflects the current nature of our love, family, and sense of belonging. If these elements in life feel clear and secure, we inhale with strength and confidence, and are far more willing to take risks and challenge ourselves to grow.
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Elecampane is an ally if you feel yourself torn between worlds, not quite fitting in, or struggling to be seen in your most authentic self. Elecampane can help center your heart in your body, your actions during a transition, or in a moment when you simply feel unseen or misperceived. A plant with a long history of use for protection and finding love, Elecampane is an ally if you wonder where you belong, and how to arrive there safely. Elecampane will aid you in purging the fears, decay, muck and debris that can build up inside when we are not able to fully express ourselves.
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When the rivers of our breath are running smoothly again we can walk out into the sun and proclaim ourselves to the world with pride. We can be at home, and we can be in love.
Hops
Humulus Lupulus
Moony
Hops is our childhood friend who takes our hand and says Let’s take the rowboat out. Hops is our neighbor that says Sit in this rocking chair with me and listen to the wind. Hops is a collector, of time and space, of quiet and laughter.
Hops can create a light, playful rising of our head into the clouds, when we need to untether from our sense of control. They release our tight grasp and let what may come rise and float like a balloon. When the medicine that we need most is to lie on our backs in a field, and find shapes in the clouds, Hops is our ally. Hops loosens the gears of our reality, oils them, then tightens them back to just the right tension, allowing a flexibility and bounce.
This bitter, sweet, citrusy plant ally has been a long long friend of the human world, integrally part of our ability to connect, relax, and sleep deeply. We have known this plant as a soother and and a warm breeze for more time than numbers need express.
Hops is a weaver of moonbeams and visions, a vine that can grow long and high, whose golden resin floats in the air of the night and causes sweet and languid dreams. Hops is a shadow plant, but one that makes the darkness sparkle.
If you are finding yourself anxious, beholden to the details, tied up, clenching, a need for control; invite Hops in. Invite both the losing and finding your way, the lightning and the floating. Invite in this friend who skips beside you. Lie down and watch the stars come out together.
Strawflower
Xerochrysum bracteatum
Timeless Beauty
🌞
Strawflower is also known as Everlasting or Imortalle. Strawflower is the flower that never loses their color, appearing as though they are already dry as they grow, allowing themselves to be preserved and adored long past the life cycle of the living plant. Strawflower brings the qualities of endurance and concentration that enhance the vibrancy of everything around them. If you find yourself in a climate that has long, cold winters, Strawflower can remind you to have faith that the summer will return, and that you will feel the sun on your skin again. Place them in a shadowy corner and they will. not. fade. Strawflower holds aglow the warm sticky days of heat for us as we travel through the year.
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When used on the human body Strawflower brings this glow in. They are incredibly sparkly, renewing and fresh, bringing a flush and glisten to your skin. Strawflower will not only repair injury, they will prevent it by fortifying and building your cellular integrity. Strong but gentle this plant can be washed across soft erogenous tissue as well as on your face to feel a shine and newness each day, tucking the colorful nature of their flowers into our very cells!
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Strawflower works with our scars, both physical and emotional. When scar tissue is formed it creates a vulnerable place in our physical container. From an emotional perspective Strawflower offers help when dealing with our inner scars that manifest visibly as depression, stress, lethargy and mental exhaustion. Strawflower lends us their colorful endurance so that instead of leaking our lifeforce through old wounds and weak tissue we may pour out our vibrancy and creative energy with strength.
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Red Root
Ceanothus Americanus
The Space Between
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Red Root is an interstitial, interplanetary edge walker. As in so many plant/human relationships, the physical relationship of Red Root on our bodies mirrors and reflects the energetic relationship we have with ourselves and others.
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A plant of authenticity and integrity, Red Root can pass between different tissues in our bodies, making our blood more slippery, making our systems of delivery more effective and our cells more efficient. So is the way of Red Root on the spirit level, helping to clear forms of stagnation and thickness. Red Root is particularly helpful if you feel beholden to community or social values that you may not share or do not feel true to you.
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Red Root is our ally when we are seeking to express ourselves more truthfully, even if it is not what others may want. At times we need to assert who we are in the face of what others may think, or against what our families may want us to be. Red Root helps clear the fog of influence and allows you to find the source of what is genuine and real for you and act directly from that place.
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Call in Red Root to find your voice. State your truth. Be proud of who you are and don’t let others try to tell you what is right or true. Red Root allows you to remember clearly that dishonesty or white lies, even if you think it’s what someone wants to hear, will not serve anyone. Where might you be masking, making yourself small, or hiding what you most desire? Where can you find more of your voice? Claim your essence, Red Root will be there to guide you.
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Thistle
Cirsium Spp. / Silybum Marianum
Sword of Courage
Thistle is a loving warning, a kind-hearted messenger armed with swords. Do not be afraid of this rough spiky plant, they are an ally come to alert you that there is a message that you must attend to. Thistle is here to tell you to be courageous. To be afraid, and to know that the two go hand in hand. When we seek to avoid fear, to banish it from our lives, we drive it deeper into ourselves. When we can be brave enough to acknowledge our fears, to cohabitate with them while not allowing them to govern our lives, then we are truly courageous.
Thistle invites you to stand in your feelings, and own them like the blast of color Thistle shares with the world. This. is. me. Thistle is our friend when we have had to cope, when crisis is a regular event in our lives, when we have shock wired into us from frightening or harmful events and live with our knives and prickers always out. (cont)
Licorice
Glycyrrhiza Glabra
The Sweetheart Mechanic
Licorice makes things work. Like lightning, Licorice conducts energy, allowing different parts to speak to one another. Licorice has a long history with humans and healing. Known as an activator, Licorice can bring plants together in conversation, heightening their effectiveness, and allowing each plant to get to where they need to go with greater ease and efficiency. Licorice also helps things stick in the body, to have a lasting and cumulative impact.
With Licorice, a little goes a long way. This herb will calm inflamed states, of the tissues, the mind, and the kind of residual angst that can linger in the body from inflammatory interactions. When we have relationships, foods, or behavioural patterns that cause us to remain in a state of agitation and stagnancy, our bodies do not send resources where they are needed, creating deficiencies in certain parts of ourselves. Licorice reaches through this fatigue and electrifies our vitality.
Licorice is the bringer of sweetness, at once energizing, joyful and bright. As a powerful conduit, Licorice finds where energy congests or pools and sends streams of vital force flowing through you.
Licorice is an ally to call in when it’s time to gather our resources, and use them with precision to move towards a new and powerful state of being. This begins on an individual level and ripples out into the collective. Licorice believes in the personal becoming the collective, working together with understanding, each of us arriving with our abundant selves to offer care for others.
Marshmallow
Althea Officinalis
The Slip N’ Slide
☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️
Like a gentle spring rain storm, our slippery friend Marshmallow helps us glisten and shine, spreading softness everywhere they pass through. They unwind our clenched tension and grease our places of friction. Marshmallow is an opener, a softener, a sweetener, a listener, a gentle and consensual agreer, an ally in finding the right time to say Yes.
Marshmallow is mucilaginous and emollient, meaning they have lubricating and moistening compounds that soothe, cool and wet your mucus membranes and sensitive tissues both inside and out. They bring down inflammation and irritation, and navigate on a cellular level when those bodily responses are helpful, and when they are not. Marshmallow can help create lasting change in inflammatory patterns and also immediate relief.
Marshmallow is the friend who gently holds the center of your back while you float in a lake, who cradles your head when you are lying in a field, who warms the breeze at your neck and softly whispers sweet nothings, who tucks you in a pile of pillows and reads you stories until you sleep.
Marshmallow is a reminder of how we must treat ourselves when we can. Marshmallow is a reminder of how we can treat others, without tension, without harshness. Marshmallow is a gentle tide swaying you back, and forth, and back, and forth…
Dandelion
Taraxacum Officinalis
The Sparkle Siren
🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼
Dandelion is an ally to the effervescent ones, the strivers, the big blasting sparks of shooting stars. Dandelion is a plant to keep your fires burning steady, rather than burst into flames and quickly go out.
If you are a person that chases a thrill, that seeks to achieve great things, that pushes yourself to fill your every moment, Dandelion understands. They can bring ease, balance and sustenance as you dig into this big energy, as Dandelion roots down everywhere.
It is easy to believe that our worth in this life is based on how much we accomplish, how many things we can say that we do or are. It is easy to measure the value of a day based on how many ‘productive’ activities we complete. This is not true worth or value. We are worthy, simple as that. We are all valuable and precious and important, no matter what our days hold, or how our culture values our actions or perceived inactions.
Dandelion is a friend and ally when you are blasting through your life’s resources, when you are encouraging your energy to push beyond its limits, when you are depleting your reserves for the future. You do not need to push this hard to live a meaningful life, baby. Having room to invite spontaneity, serendipity, and adventure will feed and nourish your activities beyond measure.
Allow yourself some unbracketed time to just be. Ask Dandelion for guidance in letting your intensity shine in the never before seen colors of your imagination.
Angelica
Angelica Archangelica
Guide and Guardian; The Threshold & The Void
Angelica is smoke and earth and swamp. Angelica sits in water and muck and brings this viscous resilience into their tissues, and to yours. Angelica will help you unstick yourself from the muddiness of the mind. Living too often and too long from the neck up is like planting yourself in a bog, making the wading down into the self a sodden and murky process.
They know how to utilize nutrients from the dank earth to brighten and tone and disperse these elements. Angelica’s elegant design knows how to wade through these waters, and create un-stuckness. They can create clear streams where there was thick mud. If your mind is racing, perhaps the energy does not have enough space to roam, contained in the skull like a little rodent wheel, and if the rivers were unblocked and moving, your mind and body could expand and rest.
Angelica is a bridge. They are the electricity in the air when your hair raises on your neck and you know that the physical world has been touched by some other plane. Angelica knows the language of the cosmos, the ethers, the spirits. If you are a person that feels these energies, that knows them or wants to know them, Angelica will help link and protect you. This plant ally allows for your innate perception to unfurl, to bring a crystallized sense of focus and clarity.
Angelica is a friend that encourages us to know that we are cared for and protected by something greater than ourselves, perhaps simply the collective of all of us, the natural world, whatever it is you know deep down to be true. Angelica is a source for soul strength and courage. Call on them when you are prepared to draw near to the veil, when you are going through great life transitions that may involve some connection to the spirit realm. In this way, Angelica is also a great ally in the process of grief. Angelica will walk with you through threshold experiences, those of birth and death, and other liminal spaces.
Ginkgo
Ginkgo Biloba
The Record Keeper
Gingko endures. Gingko embodies an understanding of what can be lasting. Gingko is the memory keeper, the bricklayer of our foundation, the stone in the stream tumbling to a smooth beauty. As we pass through life we have millions of experiences large and small. A mosquito bite, a juicy peach, a car accident, the death of a beloved, a rowboat at sunset. We retain these memories in different parts of ourselves and they can become activated or lodged in our bodies, our decision-making, and our intuition.
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The Gingko tree has lived essentially biologically unchanged for 200 million years. They have lived through eras, epochs, and eons. Gingko is their own botanical family, with no other living related species. Ginkgo has known the dinosaurs, the mammoths, and so many extinct plants and animals; friends that have passed through their life cycles on this planet.
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If you seek to understand something of where you came from, what has come previously, to connect with the cycle of evolution, death and reawakening, call on Gingko as your guide.
Aloe Vera
Aloe Barbadensis
The Life Raft
✨
Aloe Vera glows. Aloe is the thriving thick thighed desert wonder. In conditions of little water, poor nutrients, high winds, Aloe is lush, plump and juicy. Aloe can hold onto moisture, survive and thrive in harsh conditions. Aloe is resilient, decadent, and full of life. Folklore around Aloe speaks of their ability to “create good out of bad”. This can mean many things, healing wounds and building new tissue, caring for scars that show our history but are not our guide to the future, or living in conditions that may have challenges but are also filled with gifts and resources.
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Aloe is a filter, allowing what we need in and drawing out or preventing the harmful. Aloe is known for its soothing, cooling, calming effect on burns and wounds. This applies to those tissues on the inside of the body as well as to our creative, energetic and emotional states. For fiery folks whose drive can exceed their reserves, Aloe is a true friend and resource. If you push yourself too hard, invite Aloe into your life. Aloe is the cooling force that can allow your fire to burn brighter.
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Aloe is a plant of “youth”. For many this means appearances, beauty, agelessness, but really it means vitality. Feeling in touch with youthfulness means being able to live with joy, playfulness, and to follow your drive and passion with enough resources to fuel you all the way through to completion.
