Periwinkle : The Earth's Polaris

Periwinkle ~ Plant Ally Cards ~ Nature's Pharmacy Deck

Today's plant ally is Periwinkle. The very sound of this plant, the way the syllables feel when I say them silently or aloud make something in me wake up and wonder.

My attunement to the plant realm is an area of slow growth. It doesn't come naturally to me. As a writer and poet I'm more comfortable in the realms of the intangible and formless, of words and their offspring. But I recognize this as an imbalance and the need for descent so I'm apprenticing myself to the earth and its details as best as I am able. That means the body, it means loam and trees, plants and flowers. It means patience, humility and the discipline and limit of form.

When I can find a natural way in to any part of the green kingdom I run with it. If it's the sound a plant's name makes within I don't quibble with the logic of magic. I like what Harold Roth has to say about this plant: This Water and Venus plant is considered protective, especially amongst the Celts, and is often referred to as the Violet of the Sorcerers. It has the ability to reinspire love and is usually associated with the past, whether that be past love or memories. In Eastern European systems, it stands for eternal love and was planted on graves. Agrippa associated this magick herb with the the north star, Polaris, which is the fixed star known as the tail of the Lesser Bear (Little Dipper). You can see the steadfastness sought through love magick found in the steady guiding light of this star, so you can consider that periwinkle has the characteristic of being steadfast and trusty. 

I like this idea of an association with the heaven realm, a dialogue between earth and sky. The Plant Ally cards ascribe the quality of Clarity to this plant. One of the French words for light is 'claire' and with all the little stars on the plant the presence of Polaris, of guiding light is evident. The 'winkle' part of the plant's name is so close to the word for what stars do, twinkle. And perhaps that's what has drawn me in to this plant, its shimmering quality, its playful quality, its quixotic movement.

Periwinkle ~ Nature's Pharmacy Deck 

The Nature's Pharmacy deck is not an oracle deck but rather a compilation of beautiful paintings from the New York Botanical Garden's collection. It ascribes no qualities to the plants but instead provides valuable information in the form of the plant's history, some of its uses, its latin name, plant family and origin. The information is done in elegant script as you can see above. The botanical name for this plant, Vinca major comes from the Latin vincire which means to bind. Approaching a plant etymologically is one of the ways I find my way into its deeper message. To bind is a word that brings to mind both positive and negative associations. It's a tactile word. I think of rope, I think of hand fasting, I think of climbing towards something using a rope, hand over blistered hand. It's a visceral word. 

I'm drawn in to the purple, color of the third eye chakra, of royalty and extravagance, of amethyst and the heaven realms. Perhaps its the mix of heaven and earth present in this plant that speak to me. It's where my current focus is, trying to bring those two together in a more balanced partnership, perhaps even the sense of binding them into a seamlessness of body and spirit. For today though it's enough to be aware of its color, the shape of its leaves, its graceful root system, seen above. All these are the tangible realities of this plant. And as it guides me through my day I'm curious to see if its starry-petaled self slips into my dream realm also.

Broom of Awakening

The Morning Flows

I've come to Day 31 of my January Awakenings with Mark Nepo's, The Book of Awakening. It's been a good practice to show up each day to his offerings, to the cards and my journaling of them. And in fact that is the subject of today's entry, Practicing.

Practice makes for experience, pure and simple. The adage about it making for perfection or even better doesn't resonate for me, focused as those qualities are away from the present moment. Mark talks about making the commitment to 'change our ways' but then stalling in the face of old reflexes as new situations arise. It's overwhelming to consider changing our entire approach to life. And I would add that in my experience it's not a useful approach to deepening. But we can become present to our experience, intimate with it which often leads to softening, yielding which in itself is transformative. How do we become intimate with the walls that took twenty or fifty years to erect? Breath by breath is the answer, moment by moment trusting that who or what has done the carrying, if liberated, will continue to carry us with a strength infused with presence.

I asked the question of the cards, what areas of my life need the focus of practice, which is to say, where do I most need to show up?

Horsetail ~ Plant Ally Cards

I used the Plant Ally Cards by Lisa McCoughlin and drew Horsetail ~ Sweep Away the Old. This card invites the celebration of fresh starts by gently releasing the old to enable the new to enter. Sweep away stagnant energy, it suggests.

I have an image of sweeping my kitchen floor with the large, battered broom and as I'm doing so to imagine that I'm creating pathways that allow for stagnant energy to disperse. This is something that I can do as often as the floor needs sweeping and given that we have two dogs it could become a very consistent practice!

The other image that comes to mind is with the breath. In the outbreath the body naturally finds release. It's in the outbreath that we're released from the body upon death, it's with a sigh that we release sadness, exhaustion, bliss. And what is a baby's cry, after that first inbreath, if not the release of intention/effort/joy upon coming into manifestation. It's such a powerful and intentional way to look at and be with the outbreath.

Dropping all the burdens we carry about who we might be, in the eyes of others, in our own eyes, in the eyes of society, dropping all our preconceived ideas and reifications of various states, the secret hurts, the ways we feel we've been wronged, the private sorrows, the cherished burdens of self hatred...dropping each of those one at a time with one meditative outbreath after another allows us to drop right into the bodily experience of our lived truth, away from the mentality of constructs and expectations and right into the pulsing, vibrant heart of the One.

This card feels like such a resonant and relevant way to end my January Awakenings journey and combined with the focus on breath as release, a Sufi song we sing based on some of Rumi's poetry comes to mind ::

Go sweep out the chambers of your heart.
Make it ready, make it ready
to be the dwelling of the Beloved.
When you depart Love will enter
In you, empty of self,
God will display Her beauty.

Touching What Is

Today's entry from Mark Nepo's, The Book of Awakening, focuses on the embodiment that results from responding to the still, small voice within...what I have come to know as 'the call to prayer'. He shares the story of a young divinity student who was stricken with a bout of diptheria that left him paralyzed and extremely weakened and how from somewhere deep within him came the surprising voice calling him to dance. With a lot of difficulty he quit divinity school and began to dance and slowly and miraculously he began to gain the use of his legs again and went on to become of the fathers of modern dance, Ted Shawn. Such a wonderful expression of Dance as divinity lived.

When I read stories like this I'm reminded again and again of the power and grace that comes from listening, from being still enough to catch that small whispered wisdom-voice that contains within it seeds of our embodiment, of the glorious potential of our lived experience. The voice is inescapable but the rising up to meet it and receive it is where the choice lies. Like each of us I have my own relationship with the God within...sometimes I listen, sometimes I ignore, sometimes I flip it the bird and send it packing, sometimes I sit with it. Whatever my response it continues to speak to me, loyal creature that it is, devoted to my unfolding. Each time I allow it an embodied breath in my being I am reborn ever so slightly anew, I take shape around possibility rather than premise, dancing with God rather than 'thinking about' dancing with God.

What is beneath that impulse is the loam of spaciousness...and the willingness to dive deeply into embodiment. It's not always easy when the voice feels uncomfortable and Mark talks about it as 'the secret of loving whatever is in the way until it ceases to become an obstacle.' I experience it as touching what is. I pulled two cards today, hearing the call and embodying it...

Plant Ally Cards ~ Lumina Tarot

These two cards have a perfectly gritty realism when seen through the lens of this exercise...Shadows and the Five of Cups. What do I do when it's the Shadow making the call to prayer? I do what I always do when any sacred body comes calling...bow first and then decided how I feel.

In this instance what I feel moved to do is sit down beside it, take the position of witness, the corvid in the Five of Cups. He's holding in his beak a red thread that is entwined around the stem of each of the cups...the good experiences linked with the challenging ones. And he's holding it in such a way that one could see him as wanting to untie it, to loosen the thread that holds them together, that allows for perspective, inclusion.

The Shadows card, from Lisa McCoughlin's Plant Ally deck, gives a feeling of the womb, of a cave and it asks us to shed the light of awareness on the triggers of our lives. It is represented by the plant Wall Pennywort whose latin name is umbilicus rupestris. Rupestris is latin for 'lives on the cliffs or rocks'. Seeing the figure curled up in the fetal position in a womb-like shape beneath the earth brings to mind images of gestation and germination in the loam. Live with integrity, the card calls us to do, embrace all aspects of your being.

That's a tall order but I can begin somatically...taking up a position close to the earth similar to that of the figure in the card and then gradually unfold feeling what it's like in my body to do so and watching where the breath goes with it. What cups does it flow towards naturally, the full ones or the empty ones? I can allow them all in,  say Yes to them with my whole being, the empty and the full, in this way giving my interest and attention, which is to say my love, to all parts of my life. I can respond to their call to prayer.