Field notes from a flower essence producer

Introduction

The following writing accompanies the Destiny kit of essences, made over a six-month cycle in 2005. With the Irish kit, I was inspired directly by the landscape. In making the Destiny kit, I was prompted by my inner guidance to make the kit by creating various combinations from my repertoire of three hundred essences. This is a complex kit with many applications. I have worked
with the essences in a women’s circle over several months, exploring the themes with movement, meditation, and creative work. I also support individual clients as they focus on the manifestation of their destiny at a particular stage in their life. Rather than imposing a rigid protocol for their application, I have learned that the Raven Essences work best in a climate of creative, heart-centered experimentation. As we open to the healing wisdom of the plant world, the essences foster our co-creative relationship with Nature.

Burgundy Clematis

Burgundy Clematis gives us the encouragement to bloom again after a difficult separation, rejection, or blow to the heart.

THE DESTINY KIT

Destiny’s call

In the stillness you may hear a call —

faint, elusive fragments born of mist.

Quivering in the half-light,

you alone will recognize.        

In the winter of 2005 I was inspired to create this kit of flower essences to support the manifestation of our individual and collective destinies. During this work, I was also writing Gaia’s Invitation. Writing the 120 poems in deep meditative communion with Gaia, the sacred earth broadened my understanding of human destiny. I realized we must consider our fulfillment within the context of the earth’s evolution. At this time of global ecological crisis, we must see our role not as victims or saviors but rather as co-creators with Gaia.

We are not at the mercy of Gaia’s changes. We are a part of Gaia, capable of creating astonishing beauty or appalling destruction. As co-creators, we chose to come here at this time to play our unique part in the evolution of this beautiful earth. Individually and collectively, our destiny is to discover our unique role in this time of global transformation. Gaia’s destiny is to transform into new forms of beauty and balance. Many of us feel this pressure to change radically. Most of the time, we translate this inner pressure as stress and try to find ways to relieve the discomfort. Destiny’s call is urgent. It is not a call to return to the status quo or familiar comforts. Within each of us, there is a unique soul code designed to unlock some aspect of Gaia’s beauty and radiance. This code is being activated now. Many feel it at a deep body-soul level and each must respond in our own true way.

The purpose of the Destiny Kit is to assist people to recognize and stand consciously in their destiny at this critical time in our planetary history. The kit supports the manifestation of unique gifts, ones we barely know we possess and have available to offer to the world, in harmony with Gaia. My hope is that these writings and the flower essences will help you honor your unique path, stand in your beauty, strength and joy, and pour out the blessings you alone came here to offer.

With excerpts from some of the poems in Gaia’s Invitation, I include the perspective of the sacred earth in our human experience so we may open to Her call and sing the world into beauty with Her.

At the gateway of your birth
your destiny sets root in me.
I hold you as we sing together
from your first breath to the last.

Destiny Kit essence definitions

I.  Weaving Sacred Threads of Connection
Includes: Fire, Raven Gold, Peony, Re-evaluation, Balanced Power, Ether, Peacemaker, Red Climber, Zinnia, Water, Tithonia, Horsechestnut, Giant Milkweed, Bougainvillae, Raven Pink, Woman-Being, and Gardenia

Singing, she gathers the grape vines
bending each to find the strong and supple.
Humming with a honeyed warmth, she weaves them
into firmly round and holy baskets.

Singer, vine, and basket reveal the Song.
Shaped and lifted through her weaving
its tone falls gently to the quiet earth
to rise anew through next spring’s greening vine.

Use the essence to strengthen your connections within the web of destiny. At the personal level, it will help link your body and soul, your primary life-connection. It can offer a protective cocoon for various stages of development, cradling you so that you feel neither isolated nor separate. It will help you resonate with the people and places that are integral to your destiny. The essence also offers you means of receiving nourishment and transmitting joy as you build pathways out into the world. Weaving Sacred Threads of Connection brings increased radiance, immunity, and a sense of being an integral part of Life.


 

Oriental Poppy

Oriental Poppy gives us the confidence to boldly be ourselves without pompous arrogance. This well-rooted power is generated through years of fine-tuning our instincts and honing our talents...

II.  Following Desire
Includes: Gloxinia, Raven Orange, Woman-Being, Helenium, Letting Go, Mock Orange, Millenium, Thanksgiving, The Messenger of Forgiveness, Cuban Hibiscus trees, Portia Tree, Castor Bean, Columbine, Sedum, Amethyst, Creativity, Othello, White Lily

The desert, scorched and endless

holds him without mercy.

No green shade nor cool water breaks his horizon.

Still he walks, following the compass of his soul.

Then a tendril of perfume, sweet and complex,

brushes him, capturing his heart.

Is it only imagination?

lingering, fading.

Breathing deeply, he alters his direction.

The sweetness is a memory

drawing him to the ancient source.

all he longs for —

he walks toward the treasure with no name.

The essence will help you to honor desire as integral to your destiny path. Use the essence to help you pause and access
the still point from which all desire originates. It will help you stand in your maturity and access the wisdom that you currently need within your heart, mind, and body. As you open and surrender to the fullness of your dreams, they will gradually appear.  


III.  Preparing to Receive the Holy Fire  
Includes: Arbutus, Annual Trio, Raven Orange, Raven Red, Raven Yellow, Cedar, Ether, Earth, Water, Fire, Air, Quartz, Datura, Crambe, Opening Bud, New Year 2003, Nicotiana, Passionflower, Valentine’s, Portia Tree, Tithonia, Gardenia, Dunderry Essence, Calling forth the Vital Life Force

She trembles, watching the magnificent sleeping lion
from her hiding place in tall grasses.
Her tail twitches, sending a shiver through her taut body,
so expectantly charged with the strangeness of it all.
He does not see her,
or if he does, he will not show it.
Cloaked in his sunlit splendor,
his languid body sprawled on the naked rocks
he terrifies and enthralls her.
She hovers, full of yearning
yet ready instantly to slink away.
Though she knew him all her life
now, only now, does her body
see him. Her blood and fur are electric
with the certain knowledge of their meeting.

Use the essence to stabilize yourself during times of intense inner change. It will help you open to the full current of your life-energy and meet your destiny as it approaches you. Organizing the creative passion within your heart and lower chakras, it will assist you in letting go fear, shame, and resistance to the inflooding energy of your own fulfillment.


IV.  Positioning Radiance
Includes: Fire, Raven Blue, Vibration — Nature’s Music, Resurrection, Cardinal Flower, Chives, Gladiola, Maple, Peony, Stinging Nettle, Wayfaring Tree, Rhododendron

I am still and I am soaring.
I am breathless and I am wind.
I am dragonfly’s silk-net wings
    and I am its dark-worm body.
I am maple, broad, alive, and reaching
    and I am totem, slender, carved, and proud.
I am woman-flesh, warming babies
    and I am fiery kiln, melting metal.

Every possibility hums in me
    past and future shimmer around.
This moment, only this moment is full of all grace.
Let this magnificent strangeness swell within me
as I stretch my hand
    and lift a foot
to dance within this holy space.

Positioning Radiance is the doorway essence. Use it to stabilize yourself before moving forward. It will affirm your stance upon solid ground, helping you include all the elements in and around you that are part of your destiny. Midway through the kit, it provides the awakening point before we meet our greatest fears. It signals the completion of the gathering and embodiment phases and the beginning of self-aware expression. It also marks the threshold between silence and sound. Through the element of fire, the essence stimulates a swift, precise opening and promise of ecstatic joy.


V.  Honoring the Shadow
Includes: Raven’s Retreat, Dunderry’s Call, Centurea, Orchid, Magnolia, Coral, Stepping Out, Yellow Lily, Oriental Poppy, Rudbeckia, Aubrieta, Gloxinia, Crambe, Gardenia, Cardinal Flower, Hosta, Tuberose.

The hidden places —
backs of necks and tailbones
feathered rootlets of a tree
buried faces of large stones
purple insides of vulva petals
rebel thoughts that rarely break free into air.

The forgotten treasures —
ferocious longings turned inside-out and stashed away
cool forests felled for shopping malls
starlight dimmed by sleepless cities
the miracle of silence and the fevered dance
that shapes our tired earth-bodies into singing bowls.

The cast-off pieces —
dark-skinned bearers of ancient grief
broken spirits of chained elephants
poisoned fields struggling to yield
the shattered wills of aging children
littered streets with homeless carcasses mirroring
    our shame.

The shiny masks — taut smiles hiding fear and rage
chilly stainless machines and glossy seduction
fast cars, swift drugs, and soft ice-cream
smooth talk and puffed-up promises
the convoluted ways we run, ever afraid of dying.

Use the essence for psychic protection when you are moving through the challenges of the outer world. It will help you embrace paradox, to sort out what is yours from what needs to be blessed and released. It can help you when your world appears to be falling apart but is actually breaking open. Let the essence strengthen the purity of your heart, the clarity of your intention, and the receptivity of your soul.


VI.  Entering Stillness
Includes: Queen of the Prairie, Bougainvillae, Yellow Lily, Nicotiana, Ginger Lily, Calla Lily, Coral, Essence of Tara, Orchid, Integration, Lighting the World, and Crassula

A stone drops into the sleeping pond
startling the water’s skin
and sending it, trembling, toward the shore.
Making its silent journey into the darkness
the stone is focused on nothing but falling.
The water yields, embracing this new heaviness,
offering a brief buoyancy for the stone
as it tumbles to its resting place.
The last waves whisper against the shore
as the stone settles into its dark new home.

Use the essence for a journey into stillness. It will help you surrender to the power and simplicity of your being. During meditation, use it to help you view your world through your heart. It will assist you to open a deeper connection with spirit for centering and healing, both within yourself and into the world around you.


VII.  Embracing Destiny’s Joy
Includes: Cardinal Flower, black basalt stone dagger (natural formation) and snake skin. Created on Bartram Island in Georgian Bay

Twisting up the black stone dagger
snake spirals to the sky.
Red is the fire of their dance
snake caressing dagger
and shame is shed —
an old skin falls
to the ground.

Use the essence to draw up and dance your own truth and fire-energy. It will help you to stand in who you are, embodying the natural radiance of your joy. The essence will help you to shed the debilitating voices of self-judgment and shame that prevent you from standing fully in your destiny.

Andrea Mathieson trained as a classical musician before moving into her current work with flower essences in 1995. Andrea is developing the Raven Essence project, a practical co-creative philosophy for healing humanity and working with the earth. Her publications include the Raven Essence Manual — A Love Affair with Nature, and Gaia’s Invitation, Poems from the Sacred Earth. In her roles as flower essence practitioner and counselor, she offers individual therapy as well as courses and workshops for people wishing to expand their intuition and deepen their sacred connection to the earth. Grey Heron, her heritage home and remarkable garden in Maple, Ontario, just north of Toronto, serves as a retreat space for women. Andrea’s website: http://www.ravenessences.com/ features a meditative journey for contemplative inspiration.

Contact:

Andrea Mathieson

info@ravenessences.com

905-832-8245  

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