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All About My Favorite Herb, Lavender!
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Welcome to my Herbal Compendium, the little series in which I tell you all about plants that can be found right at home while foraging and/or in your local grocery store! Here we go over a plants physiological properties, medicinal uses, and mythological tales or folk stories to explain their metaphysical correspondences. Today we are talking about the peaceful lavender!
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Photo from Lavender Life Company
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An herb well known for relaxation and sleep
Lavender is one of the most popular herbs you can find in any garden, herbarium, or wellness shop, and for very good reason! It isn’t an herb that just has a pretty smell (although it does have aromatherapeutic purposes), but the oils in the flower and the flower itself offer several medical and physiological benefits beyond esoteric utilizations.
It is most often used for relaxation because it contains linalool and linalyl acetate, which exists in other flowers, but is most present in lavender. Linalool has been conducted in several studies as a promising natural compound in treating depression and anxiety by intervening pathways of neurodegenerative and behavioral disorders. When consumed as a tincture or tea, or applied topically as an oil it also has anti-inflammatory properties to reduce inflammatory related pain such as joint pain or menstrual cramps, as well as decrease the appearance of acne, fine lines, and dark spots (although topically it should be diluted to negate skin irritation). Not something that’s a permanent fix in and of itself, but it is a useful tool to work alongside other methods of these various treatments! Linalyl acetate is similar, but not the same, going a step further to act as a mild natural sedative for sleep and even to interrupt or prevent seizures. When in the form of a highly concentrated oil, lavender has been historically utilized as an antibacterial and antimicrobial to clean dirt and prevent illness from Ancient Rome to even being used as an antiseptic in both World Wars.
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Photo from Dean Allan Photography
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From Cleansing to Love to Divination
The use of lavender as a cleansing and aromatherapy agent was first found in ancient Arabia through distilling oils, but the Romans are what really popularized it throughout Europe. They named lavender after the word “lavare” which means “to bathe” as they utilized steeped bundles of lavender in their bathwater. Before then lavender appeared frequently in the Bible as a symbol of cleanliness and purity, even turned into its own cross for protection either to be carried or hung above windowsills or doors. Ancient Egyptians used lavender as one of the many herbs in their embalming process due to the strong and soothing fragrance, but it’s also said that lavender was a fragrance Cleopatra commonly used for seduction. Throughout folklore in Europe, lavender became quite popular in love workings as well! Putting a sprig of lavender under yours or your love interests pillow to dream of one another, or to bring a vision of your true love in your dreams. On its own or in a mixture of other plants, lavender comes up repeatedly as a tool for protection, divination, and seeing beyond the veil.
Lavender was commonly used in conjunction with other herbs to achieve a particular esoteric or physiological goal. It was a popular reagent to protect people against the plague in the middle ages! Lavender is one of the herbs theorized to have been in Four Theives Vinegar, an elixir that was used by graverobbers to steal from the deceased victims of the Black Plague without contracting the plague itself. During the Plague itself Plague Doctors had their bird-like masks as a way of storing antibacterial herbs, including lavender! At the time we didn't understand how illness was passed from person to person, the belief for most of human history being that illness was caused by bad smells. Which isn't entirely wrong!
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Photo from Diliana Nikolova
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How This Can All be Applied to Your Practice
Lavender has proven itself to be a very versatile herb! One of my favorite uses for lavender in my own craft is for beauty magic and to act as a stabilizer for my spells. I don't just use tea for drinking, but I also fill a spray bottle with it or pour it over a paper towel to enchant tools like my mirror for enhancing the sight of my own beauty or jewelry that I wear to either attract romance or calm my surroundings. I also enjoy drinking lavender tea, as a little ritual before bed, although I have very active dreams without it. And it is helpful that we can utilize lavender in nearly every beauty product we could own to magically enhance their effects!
Lavender, as a calming and cleansing agent, I use it in nearly every spell I do. This is of course wholly optional! But in my experience lavender clarifies my intentions in my spell quite a bit, allowing the spell to offer me just the amount of challenge and growth I need without turning the spell's effects too chaotic. Spellwork is meant to get to its goal along the path of least resistance, but sometimes people (including myself) don't recognize the unintended consequences of the spell or their actions depending on the casters state of mind while casting the spell, or things they simply don't see. I find lavender can negate that to a degree, especially as someone who can have an anxious mind every so often.
Finally, I have gotten a lot of assistance from lavender in my spirit work! Often in combination with mugwort and a few other herbs, I think it's somsthing that helps to clear my mind, soothes my soul, and relaxes my body in a way I need to commune with spirits be it in my day-to-day life or while actively crossing to the Otherworld. Of course, this includes divination ad well. Clearer minds allow for clearer messages and finely tuned intuition for deciphering and recognizing those messages. This could be while you're actively utilizing a divination tool, or looking for a sign throughout your day!
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Photo from Professor Francis Ratnieks
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This series is inspired by my love ecology! The earth has gifted us with immeasurable bounty, and I want to give back. The earth is suffering from human activity, as such so are we, but we have the ability to mitigate or even reverse it. If you have the means, consider donating to The Nature Conservatory, The Rainforest Trust, Clean Air Taskforce, or any other organization you know and trust! $10 can prevent the warming impact of ten tonnes of greenhouse emissions! Even if you can't donate, I hope you learned something useful and can share or reblog my post with your friends! Knowledge is power, and there are so many ways of supporting the planet and our local ecosystems from our homes to volunteer work. When everybody makes reasonable and consistent strides into taking care of the earth in our every day lives, no matter how small, the continuous ripple effect is felt throughout the world and amongst future generations of plants, animals, and people.
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Sources
Maine Lavender
Icy Sedgwick
Golden Poppy Herbs
Cleveland Clinic
National Library of Medicine + And Here
Science Direct
Nourished Kitchen
