Recipe: Wildcrafted Herbal Blessing Oil

The Druid's Garden

A herbal blessing oil is a simple magical tool that you can make that directly comes from the living earth. The herbal blessing oil can be used to bless tools, seed balls, trees, yourself, other people, or anything else you like. You can include it as part of your Druid’s Crane Bag. Your own unique blend of herbs and wildcrafted ingredients will make it an amazing and potent tool for your practice. While druidry doesn’t use oils extensively, other traditions, like the American folk magic and Hoodoo, use oils a lot to dress candles and do other kinds of energetic work.

Choosing Plant Material

You can harvest material from one plant or from a variety of plants and combine them. Here are some possibilities for you:

Lavender, Sage, Rosemary, Thyme, Lemon Balm, Majoram, – Garden herbs that offer healing and protection. Add one or more of these as…

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Lavender and Aromatherapy

Good Witches Homestead

Lavender is one of those scents that have the power to evoke the senses. Most notably, feelings of relaxation and well-being. In fact, it was long believed that Cleopatra’s secret weapon, in love, was Lavender.

Calm and refreshing it’s not surprising the word Lavender in Latin (Lavoie) means for wash or bathe. Because of its sweet aroma, it was widely used in Europe as a herb to wash linen. Later, Lavender’s antiseptic, anti-inflammatory, anti-microbial and anti-fungal properties were discovered, giving rise to its use as an aid to bug bites, burns, and skin abrasions. This essential oil is also used to repel mosquitoes. Planting Lavender in one’s garden is a great way to naturally repel unwanted pests. If you like to make your own honey, bees LOVE Lavender flowers or if you prefer to buy honey, you can make a Lavender honey infusion using dried Lavender buds…

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Kick Off 2019 With A Health-Minded Resolution!

Good Witches Homestead

All of us want to live happy, fulfilling, and creative lives. How can we achieve this goal? Undoubtedly, creating and maintaining good health is key. Most importantly, we need to pay attention to what is unfolding in and around us. This means regular internal “check-ins” to determine what we need – rest, nutrients, emotional and physical contact, stretching and movement – as well as the daily practice of healthy habits. We must literally “practice to be healthy,” rather than practice to be sick. This requires effort, knowledge, support, and repetition. In today’s world, it also necessitates knowing how best to manage the daily stress that is part of our lives in a way that works for us personally and individually.

Reducing stress and its effect on health is a challenge for nearly everyone. Some of us turn to pharmaceutical medications, which often not only fail to truly reduce stress but…

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The Essence of Your Essential Oils

Good Witches Homestead

About Your Essential Oils…

The Essence…

- Essential oils are organic, volatile, liquids that are secreted by tiny structures in a plant’s various parts such as the seeds, leaves, fruits, flowers, resins, and woods.

- An essential oil gets its name from the plant from which it is derived.

- These oils were given the name “essential,” because they were believed to capture a plant’s essence, that is its odor and flavor. They lend plants their distinctive fragrance.

- Essential oils act like their original plant’s defense mechanism and are more powerful due to the concentration of healing compounds collected in the oil.

- The specific ratio of the constituents in an essential oil gives it its specific wellness-enhancing and therapeutic qualities.

- Fragrance oils are artificial and synthetically created by chemists, thus they do not contain the same therapeutic benefits as essential oils.

- It is best to avoid essential oils under specific circumstances, especially when…

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The Practice of Aromatic Alchemy

Good Witches Homestead

When we approach an essential oil with concentration and mindfulness it begins to reveal hidden dimensions of beauty, power, and intelligence that are not ordinarily noticed. As we integrate these new perceptions into a greater awareness of our own physiological reactions to the plant’s essence, we begin to understand how we are deeply connected to all of life, specifically to the photosynthetic beings that give us nourishment and medicines. By exploring this biological unity through our own senses, we come to realize directly that the processes of life occurring in and around us are truly the expressions and manifestations of an underlying miraculous and profound consciousness, as so eloquently described by the language of Ayurveda. For that reason, we call this practice “Aromatic Alchemy.”

There are two basic ways to use essential oils with meditation practice. The first is to use the oils to enhance meditative states, and the second…

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WHAT ARE HERBAL TINCTURES?

Good Witches Homestead

January is here with its fresh start, and we are enjoying our snowy Utah landscape, cozy fires and turning inward. This time of year is about resetting, refreshing, finding balance and focusing on self-care and the care of loved ones. This is a wonderful time to start new healthy habits that can stay with you all year long. It’s also a great opportunity to share the beauty and accessibility of herbal tinctures with friends and family, resolving to build good health within your community!

When we think about using herbs in our everyday life, there are a few ways that come to mind; fresh harvest from the garden, herbal infusions (tea) and herbal tinctures. While many of you know what a tincture is and use them often, many folks don’t, and our goal is to get more people comfortable using plant medicines and to be inclusive in our information; we…

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Thinking About Planting a Dye Garden?

Good Witches Homestead

Traditional dye plants offer intriguing materials for the gardener who is also a spinner or weaver, or who just wants to experiment with the vast usefulness of the natural world. Nature has its own subtle palette of colors and this little garden represents a few of the dozens of plant dye possibilities, which even include some nuts, fruits, vegetables, and other common foods.

And even if you’re more inclined to pick up some easy powdered dye at the corner store than to make a dye bath from the plants in your garden, you still might appreciate this connection to history and tradition. All of these plants are desirable garden plants.

About Dye Plants

A separate garden isn’t necessary to grow dye plants, as you can incorporate them into an existing flower border or bed (and you might unknowingly be growing dye plants already), but this small corner bed can give…

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Already Thinking About Designing A Herb Garden?

Good Witches Homestead

There are many books written on the various types of herb gardens. Invest in at least one good book on growing herbs that includes garden tips, what herbs to use for what purpose, and harvesting guidelines. Several types of gardens with plant suggestions are outlined below. You may notice that some herbs appear in more than one garden type. This is because herbs are versatile and have many uses.

Culinary Herb Gardens

Historically, a culinary garden is planted as close to your kitchen door as possible. This allows you to step outside and harvest the particular herb you need for the dish you are preparing. If you have too much shade, or your hardscaping won’t allow you to plant right outside your door, you can add culinary herbs to the vegetable garden or plant a container garden instead. Culinary gardens are generally governed by what the planter uses the most…

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MAKING YOUR OWN HERBAL MEDICINE

Good Witches Homestead

Perhaps you have been thinking about making your own herbal medicine, but you have questions. Isn’t it dangerous? Do you need lots of sophisticated equipment? And what about training? You need to be highly skilled to make your own medicines – right?

Actually, making safe and effective herbal medicines at home is an ancient tradition practiced worldwide. In many cultures, everyday ailments have been treated with handmade herbal medications for generations; in fact, only recently have medicines not been made in the home. Are herbal medicines safe? Yes, they are perfectly safe – especially when you prepare and use them as recommended by an experienced herbalist. The recipes and procedures on this website are ones we’ve enjoyed and tested for years, and the herbs suggested are time-honored and effective.

herbal medicine

All it takes to make herbal preparations like salves, creams, and tinctures is a kitchen with common appliances like a blender, measuring spoons, and saucepans…

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Why Is Peppermint Like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

The Herb Society of America Blog

By Kathleen M Hale, Western Reserve Herb Society

peppermint for Xmas My herb spiral is my mad scientist laboratory. Just outside my kitchen door, it is the only part of my garden to experience full sun. The soil is much-amended with compost. And, that is where I plant essential kitchen herbs and the occasional experiment, like a new herb that bears close watching.

However, over the last few gardening seasons, it has devolved largely into a jungle of mint. Mystery mint. Muddle mint. A promiscuous genetic mix of whatever mint I have ever planted, plus whatever mint blew in on its own. In my defense, that’s what mint does. And sometimes, the result is something else.

Peppermint (Mentha x piperita) is a hybrid plant, a cross between water mint (Mentha aquatica) and spearmint (Mentha picata). It was first mistakenly identified by Linnaeus in 1753 as a separate…

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