Author: Paula Cas

I write fiction, non-fiction, verbiage for all our websites, and have been publishing my fan fiction on my various sites for many years. https://paulacas.com I am a Spiritual Medium and use Tarot cards as one my primary tools in doing readings. For 30 plus years have been doing readings in settings from my living room to truck stops. I tell you what Spirit wants you know for your betterment, not what you think you need to know. I’ve worked on computers since before there was such a creature as Windows. A Mountain Maryland native, but have spent years spent living in Oklahoma, Colorado, Texas, Oregon, California, Nevada, and Arizona. My husband, Oro Cas, and I spent 10 years driving tractor-trailer across the 48 contiguous states. Oro Cas and I produced and hosted Internet Radio shows on BlogTalk Radio, video productions on KDCL Media and Oro Expeditions YouTube Channels.

Wild Spring Greens: A Superfood Recipe Round-up! — Gather Victoria

Today there is a huge demand for antiviral and immune-supportive herbs amid growing concern over COVID-19. Many are sold right out as herbalists scramble to get packages out. But don’t worry – I’ve got good news – the wild spring greens are here! Jam-packed with “nutraceuticals” known to have antiviral, antibiotic, anti-inflammatory, immune supportive and…

via Wild Spring Greens: A Superfood Recipe Round-up! — Gather Victoria

What Are the Health Benefits of Eucalyptus?

Crooked Bear Creek Organic Herbs's avatarCrooked Bear Creek Organic Herbs

Eucalyptus is a fast-growing evergreen tree native to Australia. As an ingredient in many OTC products, it is used to reduce symptoms of coughs, colds, and congestion. It also features in creams and ointments aimed at relieving muscle and joint pain.

The oil that comes from the eucalyptus tree is used as an antiseptic, a perfume, as an ingredient in cosmetics, as a flavoring, in dental preparations, and in industrial solvents.

Chinese, Indian Ayurvedic, Greek, and other European styles of medicine have incorporated it into the treatment of a range of conditions for thousands of years.

There are over 400 different species of eucalyptus. Eucalyptus globulus, also known as Blue Gum, is the main source of eucalyptus oil used globally.

Leaves are steam distilled to extract the oil, which is a colorless liquid with a strong, sweet, woody scent. It contains 1,8-cineole, also known as eucalyptol.

The leaves also…

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Finding Balance at the Spring Equinox: A Sun Ritual Using the Three Druid Elements

Dana's avatarThe Druid's Garden

The Spring Equinox, Alban Eiler, is the time when the light and the dark in the world are in balance. The timing of the Equinox is fortuitous–this time of balance–after such turmoil in the world. Here in the last two weeks here in the US, we’ve been on a whirlwind of change where nearly every person’s life has been radically disrupted and changed due to the global pandemic. Given the circumstances of where we are, today, I’d like to offer a balancing ritual for Spring Equinox that you can do personally to help bring balance into your life.  (I’m posting this a few days early from my usual weekly post so that you have it in time for the Equinox!)

Preliminaries

A representation of the 3 druid elements A representation of the 3 druid elements

This ritual uses the three druid elements: Gywar, Calas, and Nyfre, drawn from the druid revival for the ritual. These three terms…

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First Moon of Spring 2020

Food as Medicine: Black Elderberry (Sambucus nigra, Adoxaceae)

Crooked Bear Creek Organic Herbs's avatarCrooked Bear Creek Organic Herbs

Plants commonly known as elder belong to the genus Sambucus and consist of 20-30 species of deciduous trees and shrubs in the Adoxaceae, or moschatel, family.1-3 Sambucus species are native to forested temperate and subtropical climates and grow to an average height of 32 feet (10 m).1,3 Elder shrubs have light brown or gray stippled bark and narrow, dark green pinnately compound leaves with five to nine toothed leaflets.2,4 In early summer, elder plants produce flat to roundish clusters of tiny, cream-white, saucer-shaped flowers. Depending on the species, the clusters of small fruits, botanically characterized as drupes, are blue-black, black, or red (and rarely, yellow or white).2,3 The only elder species with a history of culinary use are those that produce blue-black or black fruits. Elder species are highly adaptable and readily naturalize in an area, making them potentially invasive outside their native range.3 This…

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Health Benefits of Chaga Mushroom

Crooked Bear Creek Organic Herbs's avatarCrooked Bear Creek Organic Herbs

Chaga mushrooms contain a wide variety of vitamins, minerals, and nutrients.
The Chaga mushroom grows on birch trees throughout the northern hemisphere. It resembles a dark clump of dirt more than a mushroom but is distinguished from other growths by its orange tissue.

Doctors, alternative medicine advocates, and researchers are increasingly interested in the potential health benefits of the Chaga mushroom (Inonotus obliquus). Some studies on Chaga mushrooms have yielded promising results.

chaga

Nine potential benefits

In this article, we look at the potential health benefits of Chaga mushrooms and the research behind the claims.

1. Nutrient-dense superfood

Chaga mushrooms are rich in a wide variety of vitamins, minerals, and nutrients, including:

  • B-complex vitamins
  • vitamin D
  • potassium
  • rubidium
  • cesium
  • amino acids
  • fiber
  • copper
  • selenium
  • zinc
  • iron
  • manganese
  • magnesium
  • calcium

2. Preventing and fighting cancer

Some studies suggest that Chaga mushrooms may slow the growth of certain cancer cells.

Increasingly, researchers are taking…

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LAVENDER’S MEDICINAL AND AROMATHERAPY USES

Crooked Bear Creek Organic Herbs's avatarCrooked Bear Creek Organic Herbs

There are few scents in this world that evoke the feeling of clean – lavender is one of them. Its common and scientific name originates from lavare, the Latin word for wash or bathe. Lavender was popular as a linen-washing herb in Europe, no doubt due to its pleasant aroma, but it also possesses antiseptic qualities and can help to keep insects at bay. Discouraging or killing insects was paramount before the invention of glass windows and screens, a time when humans often shared the same roof with flea and lice-ridden livestock. Maude Grieve writes in A Modern Herbal (no longer especially modern, as it was written in 1931):

Dried Lavender flowers are still greatly used to perfume linen, their powerful, aromatic odour acting also as a preventative to the attacks of moths and other insects. In America, they find very considerable employment for disinfecting hot rooms and keeping away…

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HSA Webinar: Growing and Using Herbs of the Southwestern Missions

The Herb Society of America's avatarThe Herb Society of America Blog

Author Jacqueline Soule will be presenting this month’s webinar on Wed, March 25 at 1pm – click here to register. This article is excerpted from her book, Father Kino’s Herbs: Growing and Using Them Today.

Epazote – An Efficacious ‘Erbcover kino

By Dr. Jacqueline A. Soule

Did you know that you can speak at least one word of Nahuatl, the language spoken in Mexico pre-conquest? Epazote is the Nahuatl name for Dysphania ambrosioides (formerly Chenopodium ambrosioides). English common names include wormseed, Jesuit tea, American wormseed, Mexican tea, and Jerusalem oak.

By the time of contact between the New and Old Worlds, epazote had been cultivated for well over a thousand years in southern and southeast coastal Mexico.  It was, and still is, a principal flavoring for a large number of Yucatan and Veracruz dishes and is indispensable for cooking black beans.

Epazote in Cooking

Like the Old World herbs…

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March Equinox Reading 2020

Counter Narative's avatarCounter Narrative Astrology

March is one huge deal of a month and truly the mark of some significant endings and beginnings taking place. The Equinox falls on the 19th as the Sun enters Aries and comes into a conjunction with Chiron, squaring the Nodes. This comet so named after the Greek centaur is a both a symbol of suffering and strength, where healing abilities coexist with a wound that must be endured, and perhaps, eventually dissolved.

Chiron in Aries indicates a kind of collective identity crisis is taking place and that as awareness of the issues at hand and what is behind them begins to grow, so does a collective sense of anger and uprising. And maybe that’s what needs to happen, in order to set some very twisted things straight on this planet. A conflict lies between self-preservation and greed, and this not only entails the masses but the power elite…

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The Essence of Ginger

Crooked Bear Creek Organic Herbs's avatarCrooked Bear Creek Organic Herbs

No modern medication can rival the range and variety of therapeutic effects that can be induced by ginger. However, the full awareness of the health benefits and value of the herbal ginger remedies is rather limited because of the monopolistic health-care systems and a historically biased regulatory environment in most countries. Out of the hundreds of species in the plant family Zingiberaceae, the ginger remains the most famous and popular herb. Ginger is a rhizome, according to the correct botanical classification, though the underground stem of the ginger is often mistaken to be a root. Many different varieties of the ginger herb exist in the wild and in cultivation, these varieties range from mild to spicy in taste, and all of them require tropical conditions and fertile soils to grow at an optimal rate. The ginger herb has traveled out from Southeast Asia to the new world, over a period…

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