Happy New Moon in Aries! This is a powerful new moon for new beginnings. Here in Vermont the leaves are still only thoughts in the minds of the trees. I'm still sitting by the fire and wondering how white tomorrow's morning will be. I haven't called down the moon yet, though my intentions have been made, and I've thought of what I want to release.
Meet Mullein
I want to share with you something that happened on a full moon last fall when I gathered Mullein. Have you met Mullein? I have been traveling with her for a while, with her root. I did so intuitively, but recently I learned that doing so protects healers, so that’s appropriate. Her root is smoothly curved, and she sits by my bed or under my pillow. She has been calming my lymph, and I chewed her for toothache. I made a wonderful oil with her leaves, which despite growing mold and repeatedly calling to be peeled back while infusing, has calmed my friend’s large thyroid and, put in my bath, made me feel like I was turning green, green with life and pleasure, energy and health. I highly recommend you meet Mullein!
Messages From Mullein
In the moonlight she called to me, tall stalk and soft leaf. She's a weed, but my father lets her grow tall. She likes to grow by the old stone wall across the road and near our garage, rearing two, three friends. She reminds me of a he, actually, with her tall yellow stalk, standing erect and proud. She grows above our heads. Her dried stalks used to be used as candles by witches who dipped them in wax, I've read.
I pulled her out of the ground, turned her stalk around and she was a staff as I talked to the moon. She said:
The roots are the trees are the roots.
I'm underground
and the moon is the sun
and the dark is the light
and inside is outside
and fire is night
the day is the dark
and the night is the day
and I'm sitting her mooning
my sun tan away.
The winter is spring when you're the other way round
and bedtime is morning
when the stars shine on the ground.
Gather at the roots, she told me, gather at the roots.
Unearthing The Lesson
There are lots of lessons there, about embracing paradox, and going deep with each other, of spending more time in the dirt and with friends.
I enjoyed the feeling of the night on my skin and the small sound of the wind and the bigger sound of the water. It was November, almost exactly six months ago, and it was the Beaver full moon. I thought of the beavers, and I felt so alone here without all the animals that used to roam.
On this new moon in April, a cold early spring, I remember the promise of Mullein, how she will grow, and fill myself up with soil and seed.
(Originally posted April 16th, 2018)