Plant & Crystal Magic 6: Clary Sage & Lemurian Seed Crystals
Clary Sage
Clary Sage is a biennial flower, ruled by the Moon, and deriving from the mint family. Though many people know it as an uplifting essential oil, it is also a complex and dualistic plant with special talents for the magic of dreaming, prophecy, glamour, euphoria, revealing the hidden, and traversing the Underworlds for knowledge and nourishment. Its magical uses have fallen away from collective knowledge in our time, but the flower gives a clue to its nature in its shape signature. Unlike the sunlike shape of most annual flowers, the Clary Sage flower has a shape that belies its prophetic nature. It looks like a mouth that is speaking, but speaking what? So much of its nature is revealed in the interesting way that it grows.
Clary Sage is a plant that knows how to walk between worlds, comfortable in both the darkness and the light. In the first year of its its two year growing cycle it aligns itself with Winter, projecting an image of death above ground, while living underground, using its rosette of large, flat leaves to funnel sunlight down to its roots. Attuning to the dark and protection of the earth, it stores enough energy to transform itself into a seemingly different plant in its second year, sending stalks up tall towards the sun, with subtle blooms that make themselves appear larger and more nectar rich to pollinators because of their big, flower like leaves, which create a glamour effect. Because it plans for and engages both Winter and the Underworld, as a time and place for activity, rather than dormancy, Clary Sage is an excellent guide to the realms of the hidden, dreaming and intuitive revelations, and to the ultimate action of breakthrough. Its ability to cast a glamour of dormancy, and then of abundance, is an indicator that it can help teach not only the art of masking one’s appearance for protection, when vulnerable, and advantage, when needed, but of seeing the truth behind illusive appearances. It’s “clary” is not related to increasing physical sight, but seeing true, beyond the veils. In folk magic, the flower was rubbed on the eyelids of a bewitched person, to clear the inner sight and cast away all spells. Even in scent and taste, Clary Sage has a relationship with glamour, and is often used as a plant-based, but effective, substitute for ambergris in perfumery, and as a means of adulterating wines to taste as if made from muscatel grapes, when they are not. It also potentiates alcohol and herbal wines, to create either an increased stupefaction or a euphoric frenzy, again expressing its dualistic nature. It holds the energy of the full moon, which gives it its relationship with lunacy, euphoria, night activity, disguises and dreams. Clary Sage has a feminine nature and not only raises spirits, but regulates estrogen, encouraging hormone production. For this reason, there is need for caution for those with estrogen promoted cancers.
As a plant that begins its life in the Underworld, Clary Sage can help us to increase our ability to see the mysteries that are hidden, and to utilize them for our growth into our most powerful selves. That means that working with this flower can increase intuitive insight, prophetic knowledge, dream potency, recall and understanding, and in dispelling the illusions and glamours that keep us from seeing with true clarity. These actions, in addition to uplifting the spirits, and teaching comfort within the dark, make Clary Sage a perfect plant medicine for Winter spiritual work. Furthermore, it increases the dreaming faculty, similar to Mugwort, but, interestingly, it provides a pathway to this work that feels more protected. It increases the vivid quality of dreams and promotes divinatory aspects, but unlike Mugwort, it doesn’t come with the side effect of tiredness the next day. It doesn’t increase dreaming by keeping the mind partially awake, as Mugwort does, and so does not make one feel that restful sleep was missed. In addition, because of its relationship to shapeshifting and glamours, it helps one to do this psychic work subtly and unseen, so as to provide energetic protection in dreaming realms, and helps in distinguishing between false and true visions.
In ritual, magical practice, and stress management, the scent of Clary Sage can be very useful. As an essential oil, infused oil, incense, or fresh flower, the scent is relaxing and lowers blood pressure, though some find it too strong. It works like a key to open dreaming states of mind in waking practice, as well as in sleep. It has aphrodisiac effects, and helps to relieve pain. Its scent is musky, smelling something like female sweat, and thus is is sometimes referred to as the sweat of Mother Earth. Clary Sage can be a powerful tool for aligning with the Earth, the Divine Feminine, and the Dark Goddess, whose realm is the deep magic of creating with the forces of life, death, and renewal. Though it is not actually a Sage plant, it shares some properties with Sage, without the thujone toxicity that can create skin irritation, so it is a good ingredient for anointing oils, salves, and lotions, and can also be used as an effective scent fixative for perfumes.
Ways of working with Clary Sage:
• To promote visions, vivid dreams, or ritual states of mind, make a tincture with 95% grain alcohol, 151 rum, or cane spirits. After the infusion time, this can be diluted with rose water and taken directly, or added to warm water or white wine. For best effect, take it on an empty stomach before sleeping, meditation, or magical practice.
• Make a herb bundle of fresh or dried flowers. Place this under your pillow or on your body while sleeping, so that you can breath its scent.
• Add essential oil of Clary Sage to your body oils, lotions, perfumes or bathwater.
• When processing the fresh plant, save the stalks to grind for powders and as an incense ingredient.
• Use Clary Sage in an herbal bath by infusing into hot water for at least 20 minutes, and pouring the infusion, flowers and all, into the bath. Breath the steam and pour over your body until the dream and visioning state is achieved.
• Create a salve or spray for support with pain, relaxation, and improving clarity in stressful circumstances.
• Do a plant meditation, listening to the voice of this plant spirit, and ask a specific question or for guidance in the territory of personal Underworlds and breakthrough to growth and clarity. Try this before falling asleep, as well, and allow your dreams to answer.
Lemurian Seed Crystals
Lemurian Seed Crystals are truly fascinating and palpably magical. They are a kind of quartz crystal, but can be recognized by their cloudier surface appearance, with a clear center, and their notable etchings or horizontal lines, which look something like the steps of a ladder. The lore of the Lemurians is that they were an early civilization, existing in the time before the Atlanteans, who are said to have possessed knowledge, psychic abilities, and technologies far exceeding what we understand today. Oral traditions describe them as a predecessor to modern humanity, which had complete use of the right hemisphere of the brain without use of the left. This means that their knowledge was based on a oneness with all life on this planet and with the essential cosmic energy. They communicated through telepathy and had no need for other language. Learning was from direct transmission and their deep connection, sense of oneness, and harmonious resonance with all energies, especially the Divine Feminine, allowed them co-creative power with the cosmic order and the earth. Their society is said to have created many unbelievable advances, and is rumored to be the basis for our myth of the Garden of Eden, where humanity lived in oneness, a form of paradise we have longed for since. However, some form of catastrophe affected them inside and out, eliminated their culture, and forced them to flee or to perish. Those that survived may have been the ones to start the civilization of the Atlantis, though there is not an exact recorded history. Atlantis is known to have attempted to recreate some of what had been lost, but lacked the essential heart centered sense of oneness that was the soul of Lemuria, and this difference ultimately brought about their own destruction. Before the devastation of Lemuria and its way of life, an attempt was made to preserve their knowledge for future generations by encoding certain quartz crystals with pieces of their teachings, in hopes that what they knew would return to the world to support the growth and healing of humanity in future times. These crystals, however, were lost within the earth, and have only recently begun to emerge. Perhaps it takes a leap of faith, or an intuitive sense of knowing, to believe this version of history, but if you have the chance to hold and meditate with one of these crystals, you may find yourself recalling lost knowledge and divine connection, both that of the ancient culture which planted the messages, or from your own soul memories.
Here is what I have learned about it from the oral tradition of Nahualismo. The story of the Lemurians also has to do with the development of the human brain. Today we become accustomed to using the left hemisphere of the brain almost exclusively in general society. The territory of the right, which rules intuition, dreaming, and magic, we leave to the realm of the mystics and witches, the saints, the mad, and the artists, most of whom we disenfranchise and belittle in modern times. However, oral traditions tell of a slow progression of loss of these right hemisphere faculties each time changes in our culture developed more and more aspects of the left. The discoveries relating to division within our social order, including the acknowledgement of unequal distribution of talent, blood lineage in relation to gifts and talents, specialization in the gifts of one race distinct from others, separatism to protect race purity and eventually the impulse to conquer, oppress, and even eliminate other races, and the development of hierarchical rule by divine right all contributed to the loss of right brain talents and ordered the world according to left brain organization and logic. Having lost the ability to move matter and interact with creation, we created a mechanized world, where our control stems from left hemisphere logic and technologies. No wonder the knowledge of ancient cultures seems impossible to us. Yet, we know we do not use more than a small fraction of our brain’s capacity, and even the sciences of our time are confirming the complex nature of our relationship with reality, that which the ancients espoused in more metaphoric language. Perhaps Lemurian Seed Crystals have a role to play in our remembering and evolution.
On a more basic level, Lemurian Seed Crystals can be tremendous tools for healing and growth, particularly for those looking to increase intuitive awareness, heart centered living, and reconnection with the inner soul, the Divine Feminine, the astral realm, the earth, and the stars. They help to cultivate a feeling of wholeness, of truth regarding who we are, and of the elation of oneness that so many of our spiritual traditions seek. They expand our consciousness, and teach us to recover the gifts we have lost over time, while opening the gates to communication with our own highest guides. They can help to open our hearts and minds, and can be used to facilitate this kind of opening for those we are attempting to heal. Their energy brings a sense of joyful relief, remembering that which we are at the level of heart and soul, and beyond the world created by mind. When working with them, place them on your forehead, crown or heart. Hold them before your eyes and gaze into the lines, following the steps like a stairway. Listen. Dream.
Suggestion for working with Clary Sage and Lemurian Seed Crystals together:
1. These two special gifts from the earth work beautifully together, so the simple action here is to combine them, bringing in Clary Sage first to increase your intuitive capacities and then entering a dream state with your Lemurian crystal to access messages and healing.
2. Begin with an herbal bath of Clary Sage, and/or rub a Clary Sage infused oil onto your skin. Take a dropper full of tincture in a glass of warm water or white wine.
3. Create sacred space for ritual meditation or dreamwork.
4. Use your breath to calm and center yourself. Make an offering to the Divine Feminine, using your breath with intention, a song, a poem, a dance, an altar, as you like.
5. Sit or lay down comfortably with a blanket around you for nurturing. This is a feminine and heart centered pathway. Be gentle with yourself. Hold your crystal and gaze into its lines or etchings. Breath and listen. Follow your intuition to take it to your body, placing it on your third eye, your crown, your heart or elsewhere. Breath. Listen. Ask for both allies to guide you. Focus on an intention or a question. Perhaps allow yourself to fall asleep. When you wake up, write down what you remember right away. The more we honor the messages we receive, the more we open the channel of communion and sacred guidance.
May you dream deeply. May you remember. May your most precious gifts flower.
-This blog was written by Melusina Gomez, originally for publication with the eleventh house.